Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [102]
Eisenhower knew he could not tell the American people that there was a silver lining to the Soviet breakthrough—that the United States would be able to phase out the secret U-2 overflights and spy on the USSR from space without violating international laws. Still, he had to say something to mollify the public, and at Hagerty’s urging he finally agreed to hold a press conference the next day.
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When Eisenhower walked into conference room 474 of the Old Executive Office Building at precisely 10:31 AM on Wednesday, October 9, he was greeted by one of the most hostile press corps the president had ever faced. Hagerty, anticipating angry questions about why the army had not been permitted to use a loaded orbital stage during the Jupiter C trials, had prepared a two-page statement that was distributed shortly before the president’s arrival. “The rocketry employed by our Naval Research Laboratory for launching our Vanguard,” it explained, “has been deliberately separated from our ballistic missile efforts in order, first, to accent the scientific purposes of the satellite and, second, to avoid interference with top priority missile programs. Merging of this scientific effort with military programs could have produced an orbiting United States satellite before now, but to the detriment of scientific goals and military progress. Our satellite program,” the statement concluded, “has never been conducted as a race with other countries.”
The White House press corps was not pleased. “Mr. President,” demanded Merriman Smith of United Press International, “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. I ask you sir, what are you going do about it?”
Eisenhower was not accustomed to this sort of treatment, and he appeared surprised by the ferocity of the question. Photographs show him scowling, eyebrows arched, leaning across the microphone, pale in a dark tie and charcoal three-piece suit. The president had always enjoyed a friendly and jocular relationship with the men and women who covered him, and often played a game of making his press conferences as obtuse and unintelligible as possible to avoid delicate topics. This time, though, the assembled journalists were in no mood for meandering answers.
Eisenhower delivered a lengthy response to Smith’s question that reiterated America’s intention to put up a satellite as part of its IGY efforts but offered little concrete evidence of a new plan of action or any juicy sound bites. Charles von Freed of CBS was not satisfied. “Mr. President,” he said, “Khrushchev claims we are now entering a period when conventional planes, bombers and fighters will be confined to museums because they are outmoded by the missiles which Russia claims she has perfected. Khrushchev’s remarks would seem to indicate he wants us to believe our Strategic Air Command is now outmoded. Do you believe that SAC is outmoded?”
“No,” Eisenhower shot back emphatically. The process, he explained, would be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and would take twenty years.
May Craig of the Portland Press Herald kept up the pressure. “Mr. President, you have spoken of the scientific aspects of the satellite. Do you think it has immense significance in surveillance of other countries?”
“Not at this time,” Eisenhower obfuscated, not mentioning that just the day before he had grilled Donald Quarles on the progress of the air force’s lagging space reconnaissance program. “I think that period is a long ways off when you consider that even now, and apparently they have, the Russians, under a dictatorial society, where they have some of the finest scientists in the world, who have for many years been working