“The General’s Conscience” From The Washington Post, 12/07 © 1996 Washington Post Company. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. All other interior images - George Lee Butler. All rights reserved - used with permission. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opin- ions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book. Uncommon Cause - Volume II A Life at Odds with Convention The Transformative Years All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2016 General George Lee Butler, United States Air Force, Retired v8.0 Cover Illustration © 2016 Victor Guiza/Outskirts Press, Inc. All rights reserved - used with permission. This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quota- tions embodied in critical articles and reviews. Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com ISBN: 978-1-4787-5173-1 Outskirts Press and the “OP” logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. Albert Einstein, 1938 For my brilliant co-authors Ted Warner and Frank Miller Who served their nation with unsurpassed excellence and For my irreplaceable helpmates Larry Kutcher and Dan Harrington Whose boundless devotion brought this memoir to closure Foreword Welcome back, dear reader, and my apology for the interruption occa- sioned by my decision to divide this memoir into two volumes. That decision was driven by two realities: the final page count, which would have produced a book of unseemly size, and a roadblock to the timely publication of what is now the second volume that I would never have anticipated. For eighteen months of utter frustration, I was forced to navigate a bureaucratic maze in the Department of Defense that left me angry with and embarrassed for organiza- tions I knew intimately, given my three tours of duty in the Pentagon. I was quite aware when I made the decision to publish that a DoD direc- tive required all such writings to be submitted for review and approval. The directive notes that the author should allow at least 30 working days for the review, with caveats as to length, subject matter, etc. In my case, it became a year and a half, including four months of review, beginning in early May of 2014, by the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM, the organization I headed before retirement), followed by the Department of the Air Force. The manuscript was passed to the OSD office responsible for shepherding the manuscript through the next steps the first week of September, 2014, and from there it was passed to other offices in OSD, to the Joint Staff, and to the Department of Energy (DoE). STRATCOM and Air Force Headquarters made no comments; the vari- ous OSD and DoE offices requested minimal changes, easily accommodated. To my astonishment, the principal delay proved to be caused by the chapter that opens this volume, co-authored by Frank Miller, about whom much more shortly, and disarray in the Joint Staff, where two directorates, Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5) and Operations (J-3), issued starkly opposing reviews. The J-5 division, which has principal responsibility on the Joint Staff for the material of primary interest – nuclear weapons employment policy – had little to offer, whereas the J-3 representative demanded that some twenty-five pages, virtu- ally all from the chapter that immediately follows, be amended in some form, or in some instances, that entire pages be removed. This outcome only came to my attention when a FedEx package arrived unannounced on my porch on a Saturday morning almost exactly a year after I i submitted the manuscript to STRATCOM. It contained cover memoranda from the Public Affairs Office of the Secretary of the Air Force and the OSD office responsible for the review process as well as thirty pages of text redacted to some degree. As I cross-referenced these pages to my original manuscript, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Nearly all of the material marked “classified” was available to the public in declassified United States govern- ment sources. The reader would be quite correct in assuming that Frank and I had taken great pains before ever putting pen to paper not to reveal security information; indeed, we were the Original Classification Authorities for the very material in question and knew better than anyone else what was or was not appropriate for open publication. After consulting with Frank, we began the appeal process, which we were assured would be expedited with expected completion in 30-45 days. In the course of what became almost another 5 months, we came to two other startling realizations: the review process was marred by two embed- ded flaws, both to our detriment. First, there was no requirement for any- one in the administrative chain of review to reconcile conflicting judgments among reviewers. Second, despite the fact that at least a half-dozen review- ers had made no or only minor comments, the system defaulted to the most restrictive review. When the response to our appeal finally arrived, the re- sults were decidedly mixed, posing a host of problems for us to resolve. At times, wholesale passages were excerpted, leaving us to create connective tissue to replace the Swiss-cheese-like document returned to us without guidance on what might be acceptable. In other instances, terms or con- cepts were marked for exclusion on some pages but not on others. In the same vein, some of our most important judgments regarding terminology were upheld but others were not, despite our irrefutable documentation that these terms had been declassified. For example, Frank was precluded from using a particular phrase in describing an especially egregious case of the JSTPS purposefully ignoring presidential guidance, even though this con- struct and many others were made public years ago when the documents that gave it birth, National Security Decision Memorandum 242 and Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy 74, were declassified. I include this bit of back story drama only because the more expert readers will immediately realize that at several points in the narrative we are purpose- fully skirting the use of data that is well known to be declassified. While they will be very familiar with the source material, lay readers will not. Hence for the latter audience, I urge you to consult the Presidential and Secretary of Defense documents that originated such concepts—NSDM 242, NUWEP 74, ii PD 59, and NSDD 13—which have been declassified in full or in part and may be found at the following websites: NSDM 242: http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/nsdm_242.pdf NUWEP 74: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB173/SIOP-25.pdf PD 59: http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/pddirectives/pd59.pdf NSDD-13: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6879614?q=declassified In sum, this guidance is of unsurpassed importance in shaping all of the planning and operational dimensions that I will describe in my introduction to Frank’s portion of the narrative. Notwithstanding the obvious complexity of the subject to be addressed, I ask that the reader bear in mind that for years crucial guidance from the President was often deliberately ignored with mind- chilling consequences. And now, dear reader, I offer you the rest of my life’s story, the pace of which quickens like that of a thoroughbred under the finishing whip and the import of the issues addressed elevates to a global stage. But first, I would be remiss if I did not thank Rob Green and Kate Dewes for parachuting in from New Zealand by email at the eleventh hour in order to reconstruct for me the complex relationships among people, organizations and nations in the frac- tured arena of nuclear weapon abolitionists. iii Table of Contents Foreword ................................................................................................i PART TWO: Executive (Continued) Chapter 23: Masters of the Nuclear Weapons Enterprise ................... 1 Chapter 24: Joint Staff Director (1989 – 1991) ................................... 22 Chapter 25: Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Air Command (1991 – 1992) .................................................................. 83 Chapter 26: Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Command (1992 – 1994) .............................................. 147 Chapter 27: President, Kiewit Energy Group (1994 – 1999) ............. 201 PART THREE: Humanist Chapter 28: Private Citizen, Public Servant (1994 – 1999) ............... 219 Chapter 29: Reluctant Activist (1995 – 1999) ................................... 235 Chapter 30: President, Second Chance Foundation (1999 – 2001) .... 285 Chapter 31: Seeker of Self-Awareness (2001 – Present) .................. 331 Afterword ......................................................................................... 338 Afterthoughts ................................................................................... 341 Glossary ...........................................................................................