Missile Gap - Playing For The Public

Playing For The Public

In 1958 Kennedy was gearing up for his Senate re-election campaign and seized the issue. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of the term "missile gap" in 14 August 1958 by John F. Kennedy: "Our Nation could have afforded, and can afford now, the steps necessary to close the missile gap." According to Robert McNamara, Kennedy was leaked the inflated USAF estimates by Senator Stuart Symington, the former Secretary of the Air Force. Unaware that the report was misleading, Kennedy used the numbers in the document and based some of his 1960 election campaign platform on the Republicans being "weak on defense". The missile gap was a common theme.

Eisenhower refused to publicly refute the claims, fearing that public disclosure of this evidence would jeopardize the secret U-2 flights. Consequently, Eisenhower was frustrated by what he conclusively knew to be Kennedy's erroneous claims that the United States was behind the Soviet Union in number of missiles. But knowing the truth that America was substantially ahead in missiles, and confident that Americans would not believe that a professional soldier like him would ever leave America vulnerable to an enemy, Eisenhower chose not to publicly refute Kennedy. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were made aware of the differing estimates in a CIA briefing by the Director, Allen Dulles, in July 1960. Dulles later summarized the briefings in a letter to Eisenhower in early August 1960.

In January 1961 McNamara, the new secretary of defense, and Roswell Gilpatric, a new deputy secretary who strongly believed in the existence of a missile gap, personally examined photographs taken by Corona satellites. Although the Soviet R-7 missile launchers were large, they did not appear in the photographs, and in February McNamara stated that there was no evidence of a large-scale Soviet effort to build ICBMs. More satellite overflights continued to find no evidence, and by September 1961 a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the USSR possessed no more than 25 ICBMs and would not possess more in the near future. There was a missile gap, but it was greatly in the United States' favor, as it had already deployed substantial numbers of several varieties of land- and sea-based missiles. Beyond disproving the missile gap, the Corona satellites' existence had caused the Soviets to choose to not to build large numbers of the R-7—which required secret bases as it was vulnerable during the 20 hours of launch preparation—in favor of more advanced missiles that could be launched more quickly. Kennedy was embarrassed by the whole issue. Kennedy had already admitted as much publicly, The Listener, 19 April 1962 noted "The passages on the 'missile gap' are a little dated, since Mr Kennedy has now told us that it scarcely ever existed."