49. Memorandum of Conference With President Eisenhower0
OTHERS PRESENT
- General Twining
- Major Eisenhower
[Here follows discussion, included in the Supplement, of NATO and personnel matters.]
The President now brought up the matter of publicity in connection with our defense posture. Specifically, he has been advised by General Persons that the American public should know more about missiles and armaments. In order to give proper publicity in this matter, General Persons feels that we should do something a little different. Speeches are inadequate. Accordingly, it has been recommended that the President make a trip to a Strategic Air Command base, to Cape Canaveral, and to a Nike site, and at each location, he should make an appearance to the press and attempt to give some understanding of what our defense structure is all about. Accordingly, he requests a restudy of our public information policies on the part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to determine what type of facts the President might give out under these circumstances.
General Twining, while he expressed approval of this scheme, pointed out that facts and logic are often wasted when the opposition employs tactics similar to those of Senator Symington on the matter of airborne alert. While testifying before Congress, General Twining had been asked by Senator Symington how many aircraft were on airborne alert that particular day. There had been a recent exercise which involved an airborne alert in SAC, but that exercise having been terminated, General Twining so advised Senator Symington. As a result, Senator Symington had made a great issue of this matter to the effect that it is a shame that none of our aircraft are on airborne alert and blamed the budget for this deplorable fact. Senator Bush had also expressed shock. When General Twining mentioned this later to General Power, he learned that Senator Symington had telephoned General Power that morning and asked how many aircraft were on airborne alert. General Power had given him the facts. As the result, General Twining has received a volume of mail, and in his answers, has cleared the record. In General Twining’s view, we have no need for an airborne alert and our capability to respond with SAC on fifteen minutes warning is adequate for our military posture. [Page 182] General Twining then proceeded to describe the tendency on the part of some people to discount everything but relative ICBM capabilities. He pointed out that our Air Force is four times the size of that of the Soviets and ten times as good. It does execute airborne alert exercises from time to time to keep the Soviets uncertain. General Twining expressed admiration for the performance of the Secretary of Defense in his testimony before Congress.
The President stated that he had spoken before about self-appointed military experts. He is considering another statement about neurotics— either honest or dishonest neurotics—who are so fearful that they advocate taking the entire SAC into the air and keeping it there. He conceded that these people realized the aircraft must come down occasionally to gas up. General Twining expressed the view that the public must realize that the USSR has a capability to hit the U.S. and to live with this realization. It is a hard fact of life. The President agreed except that he pointed out that our estimates for the last four years have included the Soviet capability to destroy the U.S. 100%. This was first based on one-way bomber missions and is now based on the ICBM. He reiterated his stand for a reasonably adequate program.
General Twining continued the discussion on enemy capabilities by stating that in his testimony before Congress he personally admitted that he had previously fought for more bombers. He had been concerned over the Soviet capability to build Bisons and Bears. However, as it had turned out, the Soviets had not built these aircraft and now possess only 100–115 heavy bombers. He had further pointed out to Congress that missiles are only as good as their launching sites. We have not as yet obtained any hard intelligence on any launching sites in the Soviet Union.
The President and General Twining then reviewed the concept of a trip by the President to SAC, to a Nike site, and to Cape Canaveral, and to issue statements at each location. General Twining stated he would open a study on what might be said at these locations. In this connection, he made mention of the successful flight of the Titan on February third, adding that this is the first missile which had been successful on its first launching. The President observed that manufacturers in Denver had predicted this.
General Twining then completed his report on the Congressional hearings by describing the question on the subject of the missile gap. When asked how to remedy the missile gap, he had answered that we should merely produce lots of big Atlas missiles. However, he does not advocate this. The Atlas is not the weapon that we would ultimately like, and, therefore, large quantities of this weapon would be obsolete soon. He does not believe the USSR is in a mood for general war, particularly in view of the pride that they take in having rebuilt their cities from World [Page 183] War II. He repeated the desires on the part of fearful people, stating that if we bought everything they advocated we would wind up spending $70 billion for defense alone. Finally, he had suggested to the Congress that they employ the word “operational” when discussing missile sites. He pointed out that there is no glamor to the subject of base building, only to the production of missiles. The President suggested we might mention to the Congress that every missile site near a city makes that city a prime target. General Twining now reiterated his admiration for the performance of the Secretary of Defense before these hearings. In this connection, the President expressed the view that Secretary McElroy, while he should not be made to look too partisan, possesses talents which are such that he should not be lost to Government service when this particular job is terminated.
[Here follows discussion, included in the Supplement, of Congress, command structure, and personnel matters.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Eisenhower Diaries. Top Secret. Drafted by Major Eisenhower on February 10.↩