DASA 2019-2
302
UPTON:
Independent of existing wires”
EISENBUD [If they made it available to people who contracted with
the city. We didn't look into that. The point is that the channels available to the City of New York numbered twelve,
I'm familiar with what they did in New York itaelf, which is a com
munications network,
They have a fine building aad they, themselves,
have a eystem that can support iteci{, But the puint is that New York
City then only had twelve channels and there was no easy way in which
they could get additional ones without taking the channele away from
people, who wanted to hang onto them, and most of ther were govern-
ment controlled,
The other thing was that the intelligence network at the time wae
so inadequate that st would be impoenible for the local civil defense
people to find out how big the borib was, exactly where it wae deto-
nated and howhigh off the ground, which are three fundamental things
you would want to have.
This injormation could not be made available
from the outside at that time.
The organization simply didn't exiet with which it wae possible to
integrate the civil defense requirements of New York City with those
of the surrounding communities, So, some of the evacuation plane
that some of the New York suburbs had were completely opposite to
what New York was teying ta do, and vice veraa, Hut the point is
that, just as happened now, when everyone talks about civil defense
one tends to focus on the family shelter, which [think ts a dreadiul
thing.
[think that tf the federal government, through its military
organization, can't provide the ultimate amount of capabrher to deal
with these problema, {| don't see how the individual family can sor do
Tt sce how the individual community can,
WARREN:
The point of view of the military is, ian't it, Merril,
that they have their own assignments?
They can take on this addi-
tional assignment and their own aseignn.ent, At least when I was
active inthis field=I can't speak for the last four years=—their own
assignment had to do with defending the local a:tuation against tnvasion, which is a pretty outmuded policy.
LISENBUD:
Well, we ended up just discuasing these things with
the military and we just threw up our hands and decided that there
was juet nothing that the police department, the fire department and
the civil defense organization could do,