As I understand it, the Democratic Party used the so-called “missile gap” as a campaign issue to attack the republicans, in the 1960 presidential election campaign.
Supposedly, under President Eisenhower, the Russians gained ascendency over the USA, in the area of long range missiles (ICBMs). According to Kennedy, the USA was vulnerable to instant nuclear attck, because the USSR had more missiles and larger A and H-bombs that the US.
This “missile gap” was mentioned in the hilarious 60’s film (“Doctor Strangelove”).
Now, in reading the history, Eisenhower had very accurate information about Russian technical capability-his science advisor (Dr. George Kistiokowsky-himself an ex-(czarist) army officer) told Ike that the russians had a few missiles and some obsolete 'Bear" bombers-which could carry a few bombs. But there was no way that the Russians could have mounted anything like a mass attack on the USA.
In N.S. Kruschev’s memoirs, he admitted that the USSR had nothing to match the USAF’s offensive capabilities-and that an attck on the USA would be answered by a counter-attack-that would obliterate the USSR.
My question: why did Eisenhower allow Kennedy to get away with these falsehoods? Was it to avoid revealing the source of US Intelligence.
Interestingly, Kennedy never admitted that he lied about this-nor did geroge Soresen.
Why was this myrh allowed to go unchallenedged?
- Eisenhower wasn’t running, Nixon was. Eisenhower really didn’t like Nixon all that much.
- “Was it to avoid revealing the source of US Intelligence?” – Yeah, probably had something to do with it. I kind of doubt that a veteran red-baiter like Nixon really wanted to get up and say “oh, we don’t need to worry about the Russians!”
- “Why was this myth allowed to go unchallenged?” – Because Kennedy died in office and was promptly canonized. The silliness of the “missile gap” instead slowly dissipated.
Kennedy first used the term ‘missile gap’ on August 14, 1958, according to the Oxford Dictionary and he used it during his Senate run to play up the need for stronger defense. He then used it during the 1960 campaign. The numbers he was basing this gap on were incorrect, but was a strategy to show the Republicans as being weak on defense.
Apparently Kennedy was embarrassed by this when he was given accurate numbers in August 1960.
Eisenhower appeared more concerned about about jeopardizing the U-2 flights, which is how he had the information about the USSR’s capabilities in the first place.
There’s more information located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missle_gap
Actually, Ike despised Nixon (who he took on as VP only to appease radical anti-Communists) and actively undermined his efforts to run for president.
“If you give me a week, I might think of one.” – Eisenhower’s response to a reporter’s question on what initiatives Nixon contributed to the Eisenhower administration.
Kennedy was well aware that there was no “missile gap”, both from a pre-election intelligence briefing in September of 1960, and later from an analysis performed by the CIA and the office of the Secretary of Defense. The air force, which sought to become the main nuclear arm (owning two prices of the deterrence triad, the bomber force and land-based ICBMs) however, continued to insist that the Soviet Union maintained an advantage until information provided by Oleg Penkovsky definitively (if somewhat erroneously) established that the Soviets were lagging behind on industry, even though their b basic rocket technology was ahead of the United States as demonstrated by their space program.
Stranger
And there’s more to the story to that. Because of the “missle gap” (the Soviets had something like a total of 4 ICBM missiles that could reach the U.S., at a time when the U.S. had only long-range bombers) Eisenhower installed (and Kennedy maintained) shorter-range American missiles in Europe.
This made the Soviets edgy, and one of their responses was to install their own shorter-range missiles in their own forward base. Thus came the Cuban Missile Crisis.
As for why the lie was allowed to persist – it was in neither Kennedy nor Nixon’s interest during the 1960 election to reveal how much the U.S. really knew about Soviet capabilities.
Although the “missile gap” was largely an exaggeration for political purposes, it’s worth noting that the Soviets got the first true ICBM operational two years before the United States, and it had a larger “throw weight” (payload) than its later US rival, the Atlas missile. That’s probably the underlying kernel of truth that made the missile gap plausible.
The R-7 was expensive, vulnerable, and could only be intermittently operational (it took 20 minutes to fuel for launch and could not be kept fueled; it had to be drained of fuel after a while and returned to storage). But it was scary.