Response to Alic

285 rationale beyond the support they provide for the institutional interests of one or another service or service branch.8 Therefore, I see no reason why the Atlas decision should have hinged on the availability of thermonuclear warheads, as a matter of technology. It seems at least as likely that the prospective availability of such warheads provided rhetorical leverage that could be exploited in the politico-bureaucratic conflicts that surround all U.S. weapons programs. These are matters of the low politics of organizational behavior within and among the services, sometimes rising, especially for strategic systems, to the highest political levels of the White House.9 Although Gainor does not ignore these dimensions of the Atlas program, they remain murky in his account, as they do in all others that I have seen. More than technological signposting, bureaucratic politics deserve further exploration. Gainor helps us to understand Atlas, but there is much still to learn.