In early July 1954 Eisenhower turned to Lt. Gen. James Doolittle, a former World War II bomber pilot who had gained fame as the first American to launch a strike against mainland Japan in 1942, to ask if he would lead a task force to review the CIA. The project, as Eisenhower explained it to Doolittle, was to review not only the CIA’s covert operations but “the entire National Intelligence Program,” including the “collection, interpretation and dissemination of intelligence dealing with the plans, capabilities and intentions of potential enemies.” Doolittle accepted the job and spent an intensive two-month period studying the CIA, interviewing its top officials, and combing through its records. What he found was unsettling: the CIA employed too many mediocre personnel; it suffered from leaks; the agency’s relations with the armed services were terrible, and not much better with the State Department; the covert operations office had become too large and messy and needed a “complete reorganization.”33
In private Doolittle was even more critical. On October 19, 1954, he met with Eisenhower in the White House and made clear that he thought the CIA’s main problem was Allen Dulles himself. Though a man of deep knowledge, passion, and integrity, Doolittle said, Dulles was disorganized, a bad manager, “sloppy,” “highly emotional,” and surrounded by incompetent people. Also, there was “a complete lack of security consciousness throughout the organization. Too much information is leaked at cocktail parties.” Eisenhower defended his CIA director, saying the agency was a “peculiar” organization and “it probably takes a strange kind of genius to run it.” Yet the president could not have taken comfort from such a dismal assessment of his intelligence chief.34
Eisenhower seemed to anticipate the conclusions of the Doolittle Report, because he had already tasked another high-level committee of scientists to consider new means of finding out more about the Soviet nuclear threat. On March 27 Eisenhower met with his Science Advisory Committee and told its members of his anxiety about the inadequacy of America’s weapons technology, especially the inability to detect and deter a surprise attack by the Soviets on the American homeland. What means could be devised to guard against a surprise attack and ensure America’s overall safety in the nuclear age?
The man to answer that question was James R. Killian, president of MIT, a skilled administrator who had significant experience dating back to the Second World War in linking his research institution to national defense needs. In the summer of 1954, on Ike’s orders, Killian assembled a team of leading scientists and innovators to begin “a searching review of weapons and intelligence technology.” Killian formed three task forces: one to explore means of improving America’s offensive striking power; one to examine new means of defense and early warning against attack; and one to consider new sources of intelligence on the Soviet threat. The Killian group was officially called the Technological Capabilities Panel, and for five months it examined the problem of using new technology to strengthen America’s nuclear and strategic forces. “There was a growing realization,” Killian wrote later, “that thermonuclear weapons in the hands of the Soviets posed a threat of terrible dimensions that required urgent efforts to construct new defenses.” His final report, sent to the president in February 1955, bore an arresting title: “Meeting the Threat of a Surprise Attack.” It offered a breathtaking list of military and technological initiatives that needed urgent attention. The Killian Report, along with NSC 162/2 and NSC 5412, sketched a vision of a powerful and enduring warfare state.35
The lengthy report began by discussing the likely evolution of the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union in the next decade. In Period I, the current moment, the scientists perceived one great U.S. strength—a significant advantage in air power and deliverable nuclear bombs—and one great U.S. weakness: poor early-warning technology and poor intelligence. America in 1955 was thus vulnerable to surprise attack. By 1960, however—Period II—Killian thought the situation would have changed. The U.S. nuclear arsenal, he predicted, would have grown enormously to include many “multi-megaton weapons,” as well as the deployment of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Furthermore the early-warning systems and interceptor fighters would be much improved. “Our military superiority may never be so great again,” Killian said of the year 1960. He urged the president to consider that in the late 1950s, the United States would have such strength that it might be able to impose a settlement on the cold war rivalry.
But Killian argued that after the 1960s the picture would change again. In Phase III the Soviets would gradually catch up, building ICBMs of their own, improving their own defenses, and building more powerful nuclear devices. By Period IV there would be a massive arsenal of weapons on both sides that was large enough to survive a surprise first strike and still deliver a massive counterattack. This phase might come by the middle of the 1960s. Rather than bring mutual deterrence and stability to U.S.-Soviet relations, that phase “would be a period of instability that might easily be upset by either side.” A small conflict on the periphery, they feared, could easily escalate to a nuclear war. (The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 would show that these fears were not wholly misplaced.)
What were the implications of this timetable? For Killian the policy to be followed was clear: the United States needed a program of rapid expansion of all aspects of its weapons technology to stay ahead of the USSR as long as possible. The goal was to prolong Period II and forestall the arrival of Period IV. “We must press forward to develop more sophisticated offenses and defenses,” Killian concluded. “We must constantly seek new technological breakthroughs that will bring about significant advances in our military power.”36
Killian and his scientists delivered the report in a full-dress presentation to the president and the NSC at the White House on March 17, 1955. Their recommendations were vast in scope. In the area of offensive weapons, the report called for an immediate crash program in building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could deliver a nuclear warhead a distance of 5,500 miles. This would prove to be an enormous engineering challenge, and such ICBMs would not be ready for use until 1959. But Killian’s recommendations turned what had been a stalled research program into a national effort of the “highest priority.” The report also sought the production of an intermediate-range missile that could be placed on ships and submarines. Killian’s team pushed for more air fields and bases at which nuclear-armed bombers could be dispersed around the country, and the scientists wanted to see innovations in aircraft fuels and the construction of a larger and more powerful class of nuclear bombs. The report also called for an extended network of early-warning radar stations across the globe and research on antiballistic missiles to shoot down incoming rockets.37
These programs were going to have a major impact on U.S. defense planning in the coming years, but perhaps nothing was of such immediate consequence as the recommendations of Killian’s intelligence task force. Led by Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera and a man Killian described as “an authentic genius,” this team insisted that the best defense against surprise attack was more “hard facts upon which our intelligence estimates are based to provide better strategic warning” of Soviet intentions. The best way, perhaps the only way to obtain these hard facts was by sending aircraft over the Soviet Union to take high-altitude photographs of its military installations. Land and the Killian team knew that sending American planes into Soviet airspace was enormously dangerous. Indeed the U.S. Air Force had been doing just that since at least 1946. Using modified bombers such as the RB-29, the air force sent planes mostly along the periphery of the USSR in hopes of spotting and photographing important bases and industrial facilities. But since the major weapons projects were hidden deep inside the Soviet hinterland, these flights did not yield terribly valuable results. In 1951 and 1952 numerous missions were sent across Soviet territory, but Soviet radar and fighter aircraft often spotted and intercepted these flights; a considerable number of them were shot down. Eisenhower continued the practi
ce and personally approved of occasional overflights despite the loss of aircraft and their crews. He had to balance the risk of discovery of these overflights with the urgent need to know about Soviet military hardware.38
And the need for intelligence only grew more pressing. In late 1953 Eisenhower learned that the Soviets had begun production of a new class of long-range bomber, the Myasishchev-4, a plane with much greater range and payload capacity than anything the USSR had built before. In May 1954, at the Moscow Air Show, the Soviets flew a number of these behemoths, labeled “Bison” bombers by the United States, over the capital, while American attachés on the roof of the U.S. Embassy snapped photographs. As one former participant in the reconnaissance program recalled, the new plane “generated an intelligence crisis,” for now it was assumed that the heartland of the United States was vulnerable to an attack from the Soviet bomber fleet. The prospect of an atomic “first strike” upon the major cities of America could no longer be discounted.39
The Killian team was fired up by the challenge of finding a way to learn more about the scope of the Soviet threat. Land was aware that engineers at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation had been drawing up plans for an aircraft that could fly into Soviet airspace at such an altitude as to be beyond the reach of interceptor aircraft, and maybe even radar. The plane they sketched—and would become the famous U-2—was essentially “a jet-powered glider,” stripped down to its absolute minimum and carrying high-powered cameras. American engineers believed that Soviet radar could not detect an aircraft flying above 65,000 feet, and also assumed Soviet fighters could not intercept an aircraft at that altitude. Such an airplane, defying Soviet air defenses, could provide instant detailed data about the Soviets’ capabilities and perhaps catch them in the act of a sudden buildup of their atomic forces. The U.S. air force, however, wary about diverting more funds into reconnaissance planes and away from the expansion of the bomber fleet, wasn’t interested. Curiously the director of Central Intelligence was also wary. Dulles desired the fruits of the new technology but did not wish to divert his resources into an untested project that would take attention away from human intelligence and old-fashioned spycraft.
For Killian and Land, however, the growing Soviet capabilities strengthened their arguments about the need for a secret surveillance airplane. After assessing the Lockheed design, they took the case directly to the president. According to Killian’s later memoir, Eisenhower “asked many hard questions” and then approved the concept of the new U-2 spy plane. It was Eisenhower himself who saw the need to keep the plane out of the hands of the military bureaucracy and to allow the CIA to run with it. Energized by this expression of presidential support, Killian and Land now went back to Dulles to press him to accept ownership of the project. They urged him to see the problem as one of bureaucratic control, in which the CIA must control intelligence gathering. “You must always assert your first right to pioneer in scientific techniques for collecting intelligence,” Land wrote to Dulles in early November. The secret plane could provide “large amounts of information at a minimum of risk.” Within 17 months Lockheed could deliver four operational planes that could sweep across the Soviet skies and record detailed pictures of air bases, missile sites, roads, power grids, railways, and the like: a gold mine of hitherto unavailable intelligence. The spy plane could film a “strip 200 miles wide by 2,500 miles long per flight.” Equally important, the whole project would cost only $22 million—a bargain for such valuable results.
Allen Dulles, perhaps feeling the sting of the Doolittle Report, which had charged his agency with failure to grasp the promise of new technologies, set aside his hesitations and embraced the project. In a memorandum of November 24, 1954, he summarized Land’s arguments about the high value of the project and the low risk: “There is a definite and urgent National requirement for photographic and electronic reconnaissance overflights of the Soviet Bloc.” Dulles took this document to the president on the same day, with a request for $35 million to produce 30 such aircraft. Eisenhower approved on the spot, but also insisted that he personally approve of each and every overflight of Soviet territory. Later that day he reflected on the top-secret technological breakthroughs of his scientists and nervously remarked, “I know so many things that I am almost afraid to speak to my wife.”
Though aware of its extreme danger—penetrating Soviet airspace could trigger war—Eisenhower desperately wanted the information the U-2 spy plane could provide. He insisted the plane be funded off the books and that no active military personnel be used as pilots; the CIA would run the show. Within a month the highly secret design project, code-named Aquatone, was under way. By August 1955 the U-2 aircraft was ready for its first test flight. A new chapter in the secret war against the USSR was about to open.40
The period from mid-1953 to mid-1955, then, was a crucial one in the evolution of the military-industrial complex and the warfare state. NSC 5412, the March 1954 charter for covert operations, provided an ambitious global plan to counter communism at every turn, by any means. The Doolittle Report of October 1954 called for the CIA to become better organized and better managed precisely so it could also take on a bigger role in the cold war. The Killian Report of February 1955, infused with anxiety about the inability of the United States to predict or deter a surprise attack on the nation, called for a dramatic expansion of new weapons systems, new aircraft, new forms of radar and early detection, bigger and more secure air bases, more powerful bombs, and more aircraft to deliver them.
Eisenhower kept up the pressure on his scientists and engineers and technicians. Especially in the race for a new class of long-range rockets, the ICBMs, he was adamant. In late 1955 he expressed to his senior advisers his frustration at the delay in getting these missiles built. According to official NSC minutes, “he was determined not to tolerate any fooling with this thing. We had simply got to achieve such missiles as promptly as possible, if only because of the enormous psychological and political significance of ballistic missiles.” The arms race was not just about a state of readiness, Eisenhower understood, but also about a state of mind: the United States must never seem to be playing catch-up to its allegedly inferior and less developed enemy.41
This reliance upon covert operations and high technology to address America’s strategic dilemmas reveals an essential characteristic of the Age of Eisenhower. During the 1950s Eisenhower and the political establishment elevated the scientific “expert” to a position of extraordinary power and prominence. Eisenhower himself disdained partisan politics and preferred to place his trust, and the security of the nation, in a cadre of patriotic scientists, technicians, engineers, and veteran military officers to provide innovative solutions to America’s strategic problems. The decisions they made—about which weapons systems to build, about how to spend national resources, about which enemies to pursue and what risks should be taken to counter communist expansion—all took place behind closed doors, largely hidden from the scrutiny of Congress or the public. Naturally Eisenhower felt that it was essential to keep American national security policy hidden from the enemy, but he also found it desirable to hide such matters from Congress and even members of his own administration; the U-2, for example, was never discussed in the National Security Council, remaining one of Eisenhower’s most closely guarded secrets.
Eisenhower found nothing wrong with this. He was used to making important decisions, and he placed the burden of command on his own shoulders. He personally approved the risky U-2 overflights of Soviet territory and he personally engaged in the coup plotting of the 1953–54 period. But in the meantime he set a pattern that would bedevil America for decades: the closing off of national security decision-making from even the most cursory review by elected officials or the public. It is a paradox, hardly the only one of these years, that a man who so ardently championed America’s dynamic, free-market society, and who asserted that America could defy communism while sustaining its democratic values, did so much to obscure the inner workings
of the nation’s security from public debate. In this sense the Age of Eisenhower would live on long after Ike had passed from the scene.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
Asian Dominoes
“I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy for America than to get heavily involved now in an all-out war in any part of those regions.”
I
ON NOVEMBER 2, 1953, VICE president Nixon found himself riding shotgun in a green military troop transport, enduring bone-rattling bumps as the truck ground its way along a rutted path in the dank jungle of southern Vietnam. Alongside the vice president’s vehicle, French and Vietnamese soldiers carried their weapons on their hips and periodically unleashed bursts of gunfire into the jungle undergrowth at unseen enemy targets. Suddenly a few mortars landed close by and live rounds sizzled overhead. But this was only an exercise. Enthusiastic Vietnamese Army troops had loosed a few shells to impress the visitor, and some landed a bit too close for comfort. Nixon, who had never fired a shot in anger during his wartime navy service, smiled bravely and declared himself impressed with these fighters for freedom.1
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