The Pentagon's Brain (46 page)

In the 1950s, John von Neumann—mathematician, physicist, game theorist, and inventor—was the superstar defense scientist. No one could compete with his brain. (U.S. Department of Energy)

Rivalry spawns supremacy, and in the early 1950s, a second national nuclear weapons laboratory was created to foster competition with Los Alamos. Ernest O. Lawrence (left) and Edward Teller (center) cofounded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Herb York (right) served as first director. In 1958, York became scientific director of the brand new Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), later renamed DARPA. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

In his farewell address to the nation in January, 1961, President Eisenhower warned the American people about the “total influence” of the military-industrial complex. The warning was a decade too late. (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)

Edward Teller and Herb York—shown here with Livermore colleague Luis Alvarez—envisioned a 10,000-megaton nuclear weapon designed to decimate and depopulate much of the Soviet Union. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Harold Brown was twenty-four years old when he was put in charge of thermo-nuclear bomb work at Livermore. He followed Herb York to the Pentagon and oversaw ARPA weapons programs during the Vietnam War. In 1977, Harold Brown became the first scientist to be secretary of defense. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Physicist and presidential science advisor Marvin “Murph” Goldberger cofounded the Jason advisory group in 1959, paid for solely by ARPA until the end of the Vietnam War. The Jasons, still at work today, are considered the most influential and secretive defense scientists in America. Photographed here in his home, age 90 in 2013, Goldberger examines a photo of himself and President Johnson. (Author’s collection)

Senator John F. Kennedy visiting Senator Lyndon B. Johnson at the LBJ ranch in Texas. Each man, as President, would personally authorize some of the most controversial ARPA weapons programs of the Vietnam War. (Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, photo by Frank Muto)

In 1961 Kennedy sent Johnson to Vietnam to encourage South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to sign off on ARPA’s weapons lab in Saigon. In this photograph are (roughly front to back) Ngo Dinh Diem, Lady Bird Johnson, Madame Nhu, Lyndon Johnson, Nguyen Ngoc Tho, Jean Kennedy Smith, Stephen Smith, and Ngo Dinh Nhu, the head of the secret police. In 1963, Diem and Nhu were murdered in a White House–approved coup d’état. (Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, photo by Republic of Vietnam)

President Diem’s small-in-stature army had difficulty handling large, semi-automatic weapons carried by U.S. military advisors in Vietnam. ARPA’s William Godel cut through red tape and sent 1,000 AR-15 rifles to Saigon. In 1966 the weapon was adapted for fully automatic fire and re-designated the M16 assault rifle. “One measure of the weapon’s success is that it is still in use across the world,” says DARPA. (NARA, photo by Dennis Kurpius)

The use of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange was an ARPA-devised scheme. “Your decision is required because this is a kind of chemical warfare,” advisor Walt Rostow told President Kennedy, who signed off on the program in 1961. In 2012 Congress determined that between 2.1 million and 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to Agent Orange with the number of U.S. veterans remaining the subject of debate. (NARA, photo by Bryan K. Grigsby)

Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara explains the situation in Vietnam, during a Pentagon press conference in February 1965. Many of today’s advanced technology weapons systems were developed by ARPA during the Vietnam War. (U.S. Department of Defense)