Turnabout

The U.S. Government last week turned full face to enter the age of the satellite. It left behind the notions that no speedup was necessary in missile and satellite development, that the administrative organization of the defense establishment was satisfactory, that interservice rivalries were somehow healthy, that the budget remained sacrosanct even while Red moons spun through the sky. Just a few weeks before, President Eisenhower, asked at his press conference if he might name a special White House scientific adviser, replied: "I hadn't thought of that." Last week he not only appointed such an adviser but gave him far-reaching powers. Indeed, the turnabout irrevocably set the U.S. on a new course in nearly all defense fields.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY: In a national radio and television speech (see below), President Eisenhower named Massachusetts Institute of Technology President James Rhyne Killian Jr. as his Special Assistant for Science and Technology. Killian's assignment: to marshal U.S. science against the advance of Soviet technology. Killian will not be a "missile czar." Instead, he will act as the President's trusted eyes and ears, will join the small group of advisers--such as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams--who have immediate access to the President. Acting on Killian's advice, Ike intends to take over as his own missile czar (a term he intensely dislikes).

INTERSERVICE RIVALRY: The President ordered that William M. Holaday, special Defense assistant for missiles, be given full authority to crack down on what Ike called "alleged interservice rivalries" that might hinder missile development. No more than Killian will Holaday be a missile czar. Rather, he will be a Pentagon straw boss for missiles, working for the President through Killian and Defense Secretary Neil McElroy.

SATELLITES: The day after the President's speech the Administration provoked more interservice rivalry by blowing an opening whistle on an Army-Navy satellite game. To the surprise of both Army and Navy, Defense Secretary McElroy shifted dramatically from the Administration position that the Navy's Vanguard Project is coming along on schedule and is all the satellite program the U.S. needs, ordered that Vanguard be "supplemented" by the Army, which has long insisted it could put a satellite into outer space with its Jupiter-C test rocket (in September 1956 a Jupiter-C was fired to an altitude of 600 miles and a distance of 3,500 miles).

NEW PROGRAMS: Whenever practicable in the future, said the President, new military development projects will be taken out of the hands of the individual services and put under a single manager. One possible fruitful field for such a change: anti-missile missilery, still in its infancy, but already the subject of an Army-Air Force custody fight.

SPENDING: New Hampshire's powerful Senator Styles Bridges, senior Senate Republican and a dedicated budget-firster, conferred with President Eisenhower, carried out word that next year's "accelerated" defense program may cost $2 billion more than the $38 billion planned by the Administration. Said Bridges, even while renewing his respects to the principle of Government economy: "I believe this comes first." Late word spread that the President will ask Congress to lift the $275 billion debt ceiling.

FOREIGN POLICY : Under the pressure of the Sputniks and Russian rocket diplomacy, the Administration began a major effort to renew bipartisan foreign policy. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conferred for 2 1/2 hours with foreign-policy experts of the Truman Administration, e.g., former Army Secretary Frank Pace Jr. and onetime State Department Policy Planner Paul H. Nitze. Subject of the meeting: plans for the Western heads-of-government meeting at the December NATO conference in Paris. Note of anxiety in the new planning: the U.S. will have a workable intermediate-range ballistic missile well before it has an intercontinental ballistic missile, hence will need all the overseas bases it now uses for airpower, plus any more it can get.

In general, the turnabout made good sense, and it helped revive the President's prestige when it was sinking fast. There was still confusion on details and next steps, but it was the healthy kind of confusion that comes from bustling activity, and infinitely better than the everything's-all-right serenity that had for too long confused the nation and the free world.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.