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"The Cuban missile confrontation was the whole watershed. The Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister [Vasili] Kuznetsov told John McCloy, who had been Kennedy's disarmament adviser, 'We agreed to pull out, but you Americans will never be able to do this to us again.' "After that began the massive Soviet buildup of nuclear arms." We had a policy of building 1,000 weapons, and we thought that if they built up to 1,000 as well, that would be all right, a standoff. What happened is that they didn't stop at 1,000. That is the situation that confronted me when I became President."
The world of real missiles that Nixon conjures up is one he has never visited. Some of that world lies in Montana, where 200 Minuteman missiles are planted in 23,000 sq. mi. of flat farmland extending from the middle of the state to the northern Rockies. Spread out at good distances from one another are 150 Minuteman IIs and 50 Minuteman IIIs, representing 20% of the total 1,000-lCBM force to which Nixon referred. A Minuteman III travels at more than 15,000 m.p.h. at an altitude of 700 miles. Flying over the Pole, it can reach its target in the Soviet Union in less than half an hour.
Ten Minuteman Ills are under the immediate control of the "launch facility" called Tango Zero. Tango is situated on a farm 80 miles northwest of Great Falls. Aboveground the launch facility appears to be an elongated, plain, fenced-in house. Belowground lie two connected "capsules," rooms shaped like medicine capsules; one is the equipment room, the other, sealed behind an 8'/2-ton blast door, is the room where a two-man crew, sitting at two separate "status consoles," receives messages and stares at boards of lights. On June 6 this year, the command crew was 1st Lieut. Donald R. ("Skip") MacKinnon, 32, and 1st Lieut. Stephen J. Griffin, 24. June 6 was an atypically busy day for them because the launching codes were being changed, as they are periodically. A Diet Pepsi can rested on one of the consoles. Five miles away from Tango Zero, a Minuteman III "floats" in a vertical underground cylinder, pointed upward, held in place by mechanical "articulating arms" that look like four sets of three fingers. The missile is hospital green; no U.S. flag is painted on its side.
If a U.S. President were to begin launch procedures, he would signal the Strategic Air Command headquarters near Omaha, which would send messages with an "enabling code" to places like Tango Zero. The enabling code allows the missiles to be unlocked. MacKinnon and Griffin then open a red metal box containing a book that verifies the code received, along with two small keys. The six-figure code is dialed into a machine, and the missile's "safety" removed. Standing 12 ft. apart, the two crewmen then turn their keys within no more than 1.5 sec. of each other (it is impossible for a single person to turn both keys) and hold them in place for 5 sec. In another launch facility, another two-man crew performs the same procedure simultaneously. When all this is done, the missile lifts off.