Q: Do you believe that SAC was a key element, if not the key element,
in surviving and winning the Cold War?
JE: Yes, I do. I believed it, of course, when I was a part of it. But I think
I saw it from the outside during the Cuban missile crisis, when I was not in
SAC but I was in Europe, where I could see pretty well what was going on there.
And I was convinced SAC's reposturing was the one thing that the Russians
understood and that made them back out of that confrontation that was staring
us in the face on the-- over the missiles in Cuba. So I believed it at the
time, and I still believe that SAC was the major force that kept the Russians
from stepping off the deep end until they spent themselves into oblivion...
I think that SAC and the capability that we built into SAC, and having a man
like General LeMay around at the time to run it, is what enabled us to reach a
point where the Berlin Wall would come tumbling down and people would be saving
blocks of it to take home for souvenirs.
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