The Age of Eisenhower

by William I Hitchcock

  That same month the Little Rock school board won approval from a federal district court to delay the city’s desegregation plan, citing continuing trouble in the school and hostility in the community. The school board wanted black students to go back to segregated schools for at least two and a half years. The NAACP filed an appeal, and won. The case, Cooper v. Aaron, then went to the Supreme Court. On September 12, 1958, the Court upheld the appeals court’s ruling: desegregation must continue. But Governor Faubus had one more trick to play. He closed the public schools entirely and tried to set up a private corporation to lease the public school buildings; these would then open only to white students. Not until June 1959, under yet another federal court order, did Little Rock High reopen as an integrated school. And how far the country still had to go! As the 1959 school year opened, five years after Brown, only six percent of black students in the South attended desegregated schools.63

  As white Americans continued to resist desegregation, black leaders grew understandably restive. The continued defiance by state and local authorities, combined with provocations like the September 3, 1958, arrest in Montgomery of Martin Luther King for loitering, led to calls for mass action. Wilkins wrote to Morrow at the White House and asked for help: “Doesn’t the White House understand that it cannot remain aloof from this struggle?”64

  On October 25, King and Randolph initiated the Youth March for Integrated Schools and organized the travel of about 9,000 students from across the East Coast to Washington, D.C. The large group gathered at the Lincoln Memorial and heard speeches that praised the Little Rock Nine and their heroic mentor, Daisy Bates. They heard calls for bolder leadership from the White House. Jackie Robinson, a pioneer in crossing the color line, urged the students to see that the real America was not in Little Rock but right there among the protesters, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, peacefully voicing their concerns.

  As the gathering broke up, the singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte led a small delegation of marchers across the National Mall to the grounds of the White House. Halting at the wrought-iron gates, the students asked the guard for an audience with the president, as they wished to present him with a petition on behalf of “equality in education.” The president did not receive them, nor did any administration official. The youthful idealists, their hearts full from an afternoon of prayer and singing before the statue of Abraham Lincoln, stood and waited for a while at the house of Eisenhower. Then they were politely shooed away.65

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  Ike’s Missile Crisis

  “The world must stop the present plunge toward more and more destructive weapons of war.”

  I

  THE FIGHT OVER THE CIVIL rights act of 1957, followed by the bitter clash in Little Rock, left Eisenhower reeling and unsteady. His political fortunes sagged further when, in August 1957, the nation’s economy slipped into a short, sharp recession. High interest rates, held in place by the Federal Reserve, began to curtail consumer spending. A falloff in purchases of durable goods, especially automobiles, and a tight-fisted government approach to spending triggered a contraction of the economy. Unemployment climbed to 7.5 percent—the highest since 1941—and in auto-dependent Michigan it topped out at 11.4 percent. Northeastern industrial states were also hard hit. At the start of 1958 polls showed that Americans were more anxious about the economy than at any time since the Great Depression.1

  Eisenhower might have muddled through the racial turmoil and the economic troubles of the country. But in October 1957, just two weeks after sending federal troops to Little Rock, he endured a jolt that nearly wrecked his presidency. On October 4 the Soviet Union successfully put into orbit the world’s first man-made satellite, a 184-pound aluminum sphere named Sputnik, meaning “fellow traveler.” Moving at 18,000 miles per hour and orbiting the Earth every 96 minutes, the satellite carried a simple radio transmitter that emitted periodic beeps. “An eerie intermittent croak—it sounded like a cricket with a cold—was picked up by radio receivers around the world last week,” noted Life magazine. Not only was it audible; some Americans claimed they could see it in the night sky, a bright dot moving rapidly through the darkness.2

  After a decade of intense anti-Soviet propaganda, Americans had come to believe that the USSR was a brutish, backward, and totalitarian society in which individual creativity had been extinguished. Yet Sputnik demonstrated that a communist nation with a command economy could outperform the free world in scientific achievement. The R-7 rocket that carried the sphere into space produced 220,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff, powerful enough to break free of Earth’s gravity and put its cargo into orbit. And the implications were terrifying: if the USSR could accomplish this feat, it could surely place an atomic bomb on a missile and launch it at the United States.

  Inside the White House, Eisenhower hastily gathered his military and scientific advisers to discuss the Soviet achievement. He wanted to know why the USSR had beaten the United States into space. Undersecretary of Defense Donald Quarles explained: In 1955 the president had told the defense establishment to put all its energies into building long-range missiles for the purpose of carrying nuclear warheads. The effort to launch a satellite had been considered of secondary importance since its value was scientific rather than military. There was “no doubt,” said Quarles, that the United States could have launched a satellite earlier, but there had been no urgency about the matter.

  This must have been an awkward moment. The decision to sidetrack satellite development now looked shortsighted. CIA chief Allen Dulles told the president that the USSR had done what the United States had not: it had combined its rocket research with its satellite program and would reap the huge propaganda reward of having put Sputnik into orbit. Dulles admitted that in the Middle East and the underdeveloped nations, the Soviet success was getting great play.3

  The American press now engaged in recrimination and soul-searching. Weekly magazines Time and Newsweek rushed out articles bemoaning Soviet superiority in science and technology. Life magazine called Sputnik “an epochal breakthrough into the new age of space exploration” but wondered in a headline, “Why Did the U.S. Lose the Race?” Democrats provided ready answers. Senator George Smathers of Florida blamed “government ineptness and smugness.” Senator Henry Jackson of Washington accused Eisenhower of failing to make the missile program a priority. “Russia has dealt a devastating blow to U.S. prestige as the world’s technical leader,” he declared. Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, who had served as the first secretary of the air force under Truman and had his eye on the 1960 presidential race, asserted that “ironclad budgets have harmed our defense.” Lyndon Johnson claimed, “The Soviets have beaten us at our own game—daring scientific advances in the atomic age.”4

  During a news conference five days after the launch, the first question to the president, from Merriman Smith of United Press, carried a tinge of accusation: “Russia has launched an earth satellite. They also claim to have had a successful firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile, none of which this country has done. I ask you, sir, what are we going to do about it?”

  Eisenhower tried to reassure the public. He downplayed the Soviet achievement and said the United States planned to put a satellite into orbit by the end of 1958. Since the satellite was little more than a scientific curiosity, he suggested, there was no need for haste. “Never has it been considered a race,” he stated, fooling no one. As to the missile used in launching Sputnik, the Soviets had proved “they can hurl an object a considerable distance.” But could their rockets hit a target anywhere on Earth? Ike was doubtful. “Until you know something about their accuracy, you know nothing at all about their usefulness in warfare.” When asked if the presence of “a Russian satellite whirling about the world” made him anxious about the nation’s security, Ike replied firmly, “That does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota.”5

  Eisenhower’s nonchalance did nothing to quiet the national outcry. Co
lumnist Arthur Krock, normally an administration supporter, asserted that Sputnik had vindicated the critics: on Ike’s watch, America had fallen behind. Moreover the USSR had scored an undisputed propaganda victory, one that could pull neutral nations toward the Soviet orbit. The United States would have to rethink its entire defense effort, Krock argued, and the Democrats would be quite right in putting the heat on the administration for its lackluster space effort. There would be political consequences: “Eisenhower’s image as the soldier to whom the people can safely entrust every military decision will be permanently damaged.”6

  Walter Lippmann, often a sharp critic of Eisenhower, agreed: Sputnik represented a failure of American science, ideas, and daring. American leaders had become complacent and anti-intellectual, nurturing a “popular disrespect for, and even a suspicion of, brains and originality of thought.” Low-brow culture had dampened the intellectual firepower of the country. Prosperity had become “a narcotic,” while President Eisenhower, dozing in “a kind of partial retirement,” let the nation drift. Reflecting these morose sentiments, the stock market took its sharpest plunge in two years.7

  II

  The picture worsened in November. In fact the administration endured a series of hammer blows that badly dented Eisenhower’s image. The Soviets sent another satellite into space on November 3, this time with a dog named Laika on board. Immediately labeled “Muttnik” by the jocular press, this satellite weighed six times more than Sputnik I. The rocket that carried it into orbit generated over a million pounds of thrust—a major scientific achievement. And in placing a dog on board that survived the launch (but died hours later), the Soviets had taken the first step toward putting humans into space. Laika’s craft reached an altitude of over 1,000 miles above the Earth, twice as high as Sputnik I. Timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the launch prompted enormous pride and self-congratulation in Moscow. Khrushchev taunted the Americans at his anniversary address to a huge Communist Party assembly, with Mao Zedong at his side: the Soviet Sputniks “are circling the Earth and are waiting for the Americans and other satellites to join them!”8

  Americans were once again amazed but rueful about Soviet technical prowess. “We have at last been out-gadgeted,” the Washington Post editorial page sighed. Stewart Alsop in his column declared that Sputnik II “proves beyond serious question that the Western world is in deadly danger.” The Democrats moved quickly to capitalize on the political opportunity. The day after the Sputnik II launch, the Senate scheduled hearings, to be chaired by Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, to probe America’s lackluster missile program. Congressmen who a few months earlier had railed against government spending now demanded to know why the missile program had been starved for funds.9

  Just days later, on November 7, the National Security Council met to hear the recommendations of a large blue-ribbon panel that had been commissioned the previous April to examine the state of America’s readiness to survive a nuclear attack. Under the chairmanship of H. Rowan Gaither, one of the founders of the RAND Corporation and a former president of the Ford Foundation, some 90 defense experts had come to the depressing conclusion that the United States was woefully unprepared to deter and to survive a large Soviet nuclear “first strike.” The United States relied upon a fleet of over 1,600 medium- and long-range nuclear-armed bombers, directed by Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Strategic Air Command, as its principal means of deterring a Soviet attack. But with Soviet advances in rocketry, these airplanes could soon be obsolete. “By 1959,” the Gaither Report concluded, “the USSR may be able to launch an attack with ICBMs carrying megaton warheads against which SAC will be almost completely vulnerable.” The United States had no way to defend against such an attack, nor could it protect enough of its bombers to ensure the delivery of a sufficiently lethal counterattack. The way the Gaither group saw it, America was now more vulnerable to a Soviet nuclear attack than ever.10

  Eisenhower greeted the Gaither Report like a skunk at a picnic. He did not like its doom-laden tone, and he simply did not believe that the USSR would launch an unprovoked nuclear attack. He had taken the measure of Soviet leaders at Geneva in 1955 and concluded that they were more inclined to avoid war than start one. If anything, the report reinforced Eisenhower’s core belief that nuclear war must be avoided at all costs. And the report carried enormous financial implications: the measures it proposed to defend the nation would cost an additional $4 billion per year over the next five years—on top of the $38 billion per year already spent on defense. Miffed that Ike refused to take the report seriously, members of the panel leaked much of its contents to the press, causing further headaches for the president.11

  Try though he might to dismiss the anxious counsel of the Gaither team, Eisenhower received still more bad news just a few days later from Allen Dulles and the CIA. A long and detailed National Intelligence Estimate titled “Main Trends in Soviet Capabilities and Policies, 1957–1962,” presented a sobering picture. This analysis depicted the USSR in the midst of a spurt of economic, technological, and military growth. The testing of two long-range missiles in the summer of 1957, in addition to the Sputnik triumph, clearly revealed an advanced Soviet missile program. By 1959, this report concluded, the Soviets would probably have about 10 prototype operational ICBMs that could carry a megaton warhead a distance of 5,500 nautical miles—a capability the Americans did not yet possess. And the USSR had made even more rapid progress with its intermediate-range missiles, which could travel some 1,000 miles—enough to hit Western Europe. Those missiles would be ready for use by 1958. Assessing all this information, a CIA review panel concluded that the U.S. missile program was “lagging by two to three years” behind the Soviets’. “The country is in a period of grave national emergency,” the experts concluded. For the first time, intelligence analysts began to fear that a significant gap, soon to be called “the missile gap,” had opened up between the two cold war adversaries.12

  In an effort to calm troubled waters, Eisenhower gave two televised speeches, on November 7 and 13, 1957. Hastily prepared by Arthur Larson, the theorist of “modern Republicanism” who was now running the U.S. Information Agency, the texts had a certain “Father Knows Best” quality to them. Rather than ring the alarm bells, Eisenhower sought to reassure the public. The United States was immensely strong, the president asserted. It was spending an average of $42 billion a year on its defense and was “well ahead of the Soviets in the nuclear field.” As evidence of American progress in the missile program, he displayed next to him in the Oval Office the nose cone of a Jupiter missile that had been shot 270 miles into space and then retrieved at sea by the navy. Sputnik gave no cause for panic: “Certainly we need to feel a high sense of urgency. But this does not mean that we should mount our charger and try to ride off in all directions at once.” He cautioned against rash spending: “There is much more to the matter of security than the mere spending of money.” Instead of more money for missiles, he advocated a broad investment in scientific education across the nation’s schools and announced that he was bringing James Killian of MIT directly into the White House to lead the President’s Science Advisory Committee.13

  Such parsimony at a moment of nationwide anxiety over Sputnik failed to quiet the president’s critics. Lippmann panned the performance, saying Ike had sought “to dampen down and to soothe, rather than to awaken and to arouse.” Senator John Kennedy was even less charitable. “The people of America,” he said in a speech in Topeka, Kansas, “are no longer willing to be lulled by paternalistic reassurances, spoon-fed science fiction predictions, or pious platitudes of faith and hope.” He denounced Eisenhower’s “complacent miscalculations” and “penny-pinching” as the source of the lag in missile production. The country demanded action.14

  No doubt the strain of those anxious days weighed on the president. The combined Little Rock and Sputnik crises left him exhausted. On November 25 he was in the Oval Office, awaiting the arrival of King Mohammed V of Mor
occo for a state dinner, when he felt dizzy and found that he was having difficulty reading his official papers. Suddenly he felt cold and his body grew numb. When he tried to speak to his secretary, Ann Whitman, he was able only to mumble. Dr. Snyder arrived within moments and got Eisenhower to bed. Neurologists examined the president and concluded that he had suffered a small stroke—an occlusion of the left middle cerebral artery—but that his condition would be temporary. Richard Nixon took the president’s place at the dinner for their royal guest. After two days of bed rest, Ike took Mamie to Gettysburg for a quiet Thanksgiving holiday.15

  Almost immediately voices in the press called for Eisenhower to resign. Drew Pearson, the influential muckraker, asserted that in view of the high-stakes Sputnik crisis, Eisenhower should step down. Stewart Alsop agreed. The president’s third illness in two and a half years, coming at a time of “major crisis,” raised the question of whether he ought to continue. Newsweek polled 20 leading newspaper editors; half of them thought Eisenhower should resign or delegate all power to Nixon until he recovered.16

  However, Eisenhower improved rapidly and returned to Washington on December 2 for his weekly cabinet meeting, followed the next day by a meeting with top congressional leaders. He looked well enough, but that afternoon, he met with Nixon and the two discussed Ike’s health. Eisenhower said he was determined to attend to his duties as president, even if his speech was still a bit troubled. He admitted he had occasional difficulties recalling certain words, giving the example of thermostat. Otherwise he felt well, though he told Nixon that if his health prevented him from functioning fully, he would have to do some “very hard and tough thinking about the future.”17