The Rough & the Smooth

"I am going to lay the facts before you --the rough with the smooth," said President Eisenhower. "Some of these security facts are reassuring; others are not--they are sternly demanding."

Sputnik 11 had brought the Administration under new and stinging fire. Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson, who was trumpeting economy only last summer, was now moving full speed ahead on plans to investigate the Administration's defense program. Some hysterical pundits were suggesting a negotiated peace with the Russians "before it is too late." It was time for Ike to move fast.

Retrieved Nose. "It is my conviction," he said in his well-advertised television speech, "supported by trusted scientific and military advisers, that although the Soviets are quite likely ahead in some missile and special areas, and are obviously ahead of us in satellite development, as of today the overall military strength of the free world is distinctly greater than that of the Communist countries."

One by one, the President ticked off the list of new U.S. weapons: missiles of all shapes and sizes for the Army, Navy and Air Force.* The jewel of his collection was on a red velvet coverlet near his desk as he spoke. It was the 4-ft. nose cone to an Army Jupiter missile. Said the President: "One difficult obstacle on the way to producing a useful long-range weapon is that of bringing a missile back from outer space without its burning up like a meteor . . . This object here in my office is the nose cone of an experimental missile. It has been hundreds of miles into outer space and back. Here it is, completely intact."

Threatened Lead. The President also had a warning: "I must say to you in all gravity that, in spite of both the present overall strength and the forward momentum of our defense, it is entirely possible that in the years ahead we could fall behind. I repeat: we could fall behind--unless we now face up to certain pressing requirements and set out to meet them at once."

Outstanding among these special requirements was the need for "greater concentration of effort and improved arrangements within the Government in the fields of science, technology and missiles." That led to the appointment of M.I.T.'s Dr. Killian (see box). It also led to the investiture of William Holaday, already the Pentagon's missileman, as a special kind of official "clothed with all the authority that the Secretary [of Defense] himself possesses in this field, so that no administrative or interservice block can occur."

Clearly, the President had determined to get going on everything he could do to move the U.S. into outer space. But there was something more important. "What the world needs today," he said, "even more than a giant leap into outer space is a giant step toward peace."

*Ike's statements that 1) the B-52 jet bomber, supported by its jet tankers, is standard in the Strategic Air Command, and 2) the B-52 will in turn be succeeded by the B-58, a supersonic bomber, brought snorts from the Air Force itself. Reasons: 1) the B-52 depends for support, as the President said, on its jet tankers--but the U.S. now has only 30 such tankers operational, and is getting only four new ones a month under the Administration's slowdown; 2) no production contract for B-58s has yet been announced; and 3) the B58 was considered not as a successor to the long-range B-52 but to the B57 medium-range bomber.

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