EME Beereo S
The President said the studies should include the question:
What are the manageable proportions of disaster? There was no use in
talking of recuperation after 100 million casualties. We must talk
in redsonable figures. We are going through the dispersal exercises
on the assumption that something will be left after an enemy attack.
Secretary Dulles said the study should take into account
the political considerations advanced in the Council discussion; it
should not be just a theoretical study. A policy premised on vast
destruction and embracing measures to meet such destruction, would
lead to loss of allies abroad and followers at home.
The President said perhaps the NATO countries, not the
United States, should take the lead in shelter programs.
Secretary Dulles remarked that perhaps the United States
_ and the USSR should conclude a disarmament agreement under which
_ neither would build shelters.
Mr. Cutler then reported on the tentative schedule of
follow-up reports on the Gaither Recommendations (see paragraph g
of the action below).
The National Security Council:
a.
~
Continued discussion, initiated at the last meeting,
of the comments and recommendations by the respective
departments and agencies on the Report to the President by the Security Resources Panel of the OIM Science
Advisory Committee (NSC 5724), as contained in NSC 572h/1,
with particular reference to a nation-wide fallout shel-
ter program (paragraph III-B-3 and Annex B of NSC 5724),
"Costs and Economic Consequences" (paragraph V of NSC 5724),
ooh the schedule of reports called for by NSC Action No.
1-b.
b.
Agreed that, during a long future period of continued
threat of Soviet bloc nuclear attack, in order to maintain the defense of the United States, to protect most
effectively the civil popmlation, to sustain the morale
of the American people, and to retain the support of
our allies, predominant emphasis should continue to be
placed upon measures to strengthen our effective nuclear
retaliatory power as a deterrent and to improve our active defenses, as compared with--but not to the excluSion of--passive defense measures such as shelter for
the civil population. This agreement was based upon
an over-all appraisal of how best to defend the people
of the United States against nuclear attack. The cost
and over-all economic consequences of a shelter program
was only one, but not the determining, element in this
appraisal.
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