Of War & Warning

Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington, Democratic presidential hopeful who has made defense his favorite issue ever since he served as Harry Truman's Secretary of the Air Force (1947-50),* summoned Washington reporters to a committee room in the old Senate Office Building one day last week. Gravely Symington passed out advance copies of a speech that he was about to make on the Senate floor attacking the Administration's new lower appraisal of Soviet missile production (TIME, Feb. 1). Said he in the speech: "The intelligence books have been juggled so that the budget books may be balanced. This is a serious accusation, which I make with all gravity.''

A reporter asked if this was not ground enough to seek impeachment of President Eisenhower. Symington flushed, paused and replied in a low voice: "That would be unthinkable." But the great defense debate, partly sparked by politics, partly set in motion by the Administration's failures to explain itself, partly grounded on serious concern about the rate of missile production, roared on.

Sleep in Peace? Defense Secretary Thomas Gates, red-eyed and dead tired after days of testifying and nights of homework, even ran into a snag over Senate confirmation of his appointment. Gates had upset the Senate Armed Services Committee by testifying last fortnight that the U.S. had reduced its estimate of future Russian missile production by judging Russian "intentions" instead of "capabilities." One day last week Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson announced casually that Gates's nomination was going to be held up because "several Senators" had questioned it (actually, only Wyoming Democrat Joe O'Mahoney, recovering from a stroke at the Bethesda naval hospital, had asked for an additional day to study Gates's testimony). Just as casually he let Gates know after the next day's tough headlines that the nomination would go through. It did, by voice vote.

Central Intelligence Agency Director Allen W. Dulles leaped to Gates's side to explain that there is nothing mysterious about an attempt to assess Soviet "intentions" to build missiles. He told a Manhattan audience that the U.S. generally stresses capabilities to produce in the early stages of Soviet weapons development and "then, as more hard facts are available, we estimate their probable programing, sometimes referred to as 'intentions.' " Dulles did not attempt to gloss over the possibility that the U.S.S.R. could outnumber the U.S. by 3 to 1 in long-range missiles in 1961-63, even though a few new hard facts of intelligence point toward production plans that would reduce the ratio to 2 to 1. In Washington Democrat Symington snapped: "He completely confirms my position without reservation." Said Democrat Johnson less sharply: "I believe that our officials are patriotic men trying to do the best they know how, but I think we could all sleep in more peace if our country spent more time putting its best effort into solving a situation rather than putting the best face on the situation."

The Republicans, for their part, drew up solidly behind President Eisenhower's defense budget. Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen termed the criticism "an awful thing . . . It is a reflection on the presidency of the U.S.--the grand captain of the greatest military effort the world has ever seen." In Chicago, Vice President Nixon said: "It is time to quit selling America short. We are not a second-rate country."

Destroyed on the Ground? The newest military contribution to the defense debate came from the Strategic Air Command's General Thomas Power, who flew in from his headquarters at Omaha to address the American Legion's National Security Commission in Washington. Fortnight ago Power warned that the Russians with a force of just 300 missiles --half intercontinental ballistic missiles and half intermediate-range ballistic missiles--could destroy the U.S.'s 100-odd air bases at home and overseas and "virtually wipe out our entire nuclear strike capability within a span of 30 minutes."

"There can be little doubt," he went on last week, "that the Soviets are producing ballistic missiles at the high rate indicated repeatedly by Premier Khrushchev [250 ICBMs per year out of one factory]. It is, therefore, conceivable that within about two years they will have a sufficient stockpile to permit a massive missile attack on the U.S. . . . We will not have in full operation warning systems which will give SAC enough warning time to get the alert force airborne before it can be destroyed on the ground."

Power's recommendations: immediate funds to get SAC's B-52 bombers ready for a round-the-clock airborne alert, large-scale procurement of the B70 Mach 3 bomber, and a big military space program --"control of space may well mean control of the globe in a future war." Power was seconded on the space argument by Major General John B. Medaris, chief of the Army Ordnance Missile Command. In an interview with Missiles and Rockets, on the eve of his retirement, Medaris blasted as "utter nonsense" the Administration's dividing the space program into civilian and military spheres.

Sometimes lost sight of in the heat of partisan charges was the fact that the U.S. is, in the here and now, the world's mightiest power--and if partisan debate were to convince the nation otherwise, the Soviets would be the only beneficiaries. The big defense questions apply to two or three years from now and are boundlessly technical. Answers are hardly likely to be discovered in platform give-and-take. Yet the nation's long-range interests will be well served if an intelligent debate alerts the U.S. to onrushing problems of military preparedness, braces its citizens to be ready for whatever price preparedness might demand.

* And as Assistant Secretary of War for Air joined, after a moderate protest, in a Truman Administration decision July 8, 1947 not to go ahead developing the Atlas ICBM project.

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