THE MAN WHO DIFFERED--AND THE REASONS WHY

SAC Commander Thomas Sarsfield Power, the four-star Air Force general who last week took a foursquare stand against the nuclear test ban treaty, has never shied away from a scrap with his superiors. In 1959 he completed a book advocating, under certain conditions, a preemptive first strike against Russia. The Defense Department hurriedly suppressed the work, ordered Power not to permit its publication. In 1960 Power raised President Eisenhower's hackles by damning the Administration's defense budget as perilously inadequate. Last year Power clashed with the Kennedy Administration over its foot-dragging on the B70 bomber.

"That Is Deterrence." In his field, Power is an expert among experts. He has read and remembered virtually everything ever written on nuclear weaponry and strategy. Missouri's air-minded Senator Stuart Symington has called him "one of the world's two foremost authorities on strategic airpower"--the other being Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay. At 58, Powers is the oldest bomber commander still on duty; under his control are hundreds of long-range missiles and a fleet of 1,400-odd Strategic Air Command bombers that account for perhaps 90% of the free world's firepower. "You must convince the enemy that no matter what he does, he will be destroyed," says Power. "That is deterrence." The son of Irish immigrants, Power was born in Great Neck, N.Y. He fell in love with the air at 20, after a spin in a Flying Jenny, skipped college to attend flying school, and won his second lieutenant's bars in 1929. A bomber man from the first, he was assigned to the 2nd Bomb Wing at Virginia's Langley Field. During World War II he flew B-24s over North Africa and Italy, commanded a Guam-based B-29 wing that made the first large-scale fire-bomb raid over Tokyo. Later, he helped plot the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the 1946 A-bomb tests at Bikini.

Power served under growly, grumpy Curt LeMay in the Pacific and impressed his boss--probably, say some cynics, because Power was so much like LeMay. The day LeMay took over SAC in 1948, Tom Power became his deputy, soon earned a reputation as a hatchet man who executed orders with iron-pants precision. After six years, he moved to Baltimore to head the 40,000-man Air Research and Development Command, returning to Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base to take over SAC in 1957.

Six Rings Away. As SAC commander, Power is never more than six rings away from telephones that can put him in immediate touch with the President, the Joint Chiefs, and a global network of 75 SAC bases. Even his golf cart is rigged with communications gear. As commander of the 200-man, multiservice Joint Strategic Targeting Planning Staff, he is also charged with assigning targets to every bomber and guided missile in the U.S. arsenal.

Power drives his subordinates to supersonic effort. Says one harassed underling: "He's been around Mach 2 planes for so long, that's the only speed he knows." But Power's impatience is rooted in the conviction that the U.S. must maintain a powerful deterrent "as long as our very existence is threatened by an untrustworthy, unpredictable and unreasonable power." Acting on that conviction, he told a 1959 congressional committee that was reluctant to give him the bombers and missiles that he wanted: "You are risking the whole country." He was always demanding more money for SAC, to the point that he finally drew a stinging rebuke from Ike, who griped publicly: "There are too many of these generals who have all sorts of ideas." But Power persisted, eventually won authorization to keep 50% of all SAC bombers on 15-minute alert and a smaller number--the exact figure is secret--constantly in the air, each toting a 24-megaton H-bomb.

Nuclear Impasse. To Power, the best answer to the Soviet threat is to "maintain the deterrent margin at the same convincing level which thus far has made aggression against this country appear too costly." Ultimately, he says, the answer is "nuclear impasse," which he defines as the point at which "a surprise attack can no longer prevent or even minimize retaliation." And to those who accuse him of warmongering for holding such views, he replies: "It is invariably the weak, not the strong, who court aggression and war."

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