Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [122]
The matter of the subcommittee had thus been settled. Johnson, however, had not rushed out and announced his intentions to hold Pre-paredness hearings. For all his reputation as a freewheeling horse trader, as a reckless and charmingly relentless rogue, he was an inherently cautious legislator, never putting himself out front of an issue unless the outcome was guaranteed. Like the lawyer who only asked questions for which he already knew the answer, Johnson only supported measures to which he’d already secured prior passage. He knew that challenging President Eisenhower on national security, no matter how subtly, was a risky proposition. But as Johnson scanned the hysterical articles on Sputnik II, the satellite’s specifications made him bolt upright. The thing was monstrous: a staggering 1,120 pounds, and well over three terrifying tons when the rocket casing to which it was welded was factored into the equation. Unlike its predecessor, this second Sputnik was almost as heavy as a hydrogen bomb—incontrovertible proof that the Soviet Union did in fact have the capability to hurl heavy nuclear warheads at the United States, despite Eisenhower’s dogged assurances to the contrary.
Johnson knew he now had his ammunition, the silver bullet he and Senator Russell had been waiting for to take on the popular president. “Sputnik II absolutely made the decision for them,” recalled his aide Glenn P. Wilson, “because it weighed so much more.”
The following day, Johnson and Russell called a press conference on the steps of the Pentagon. The members of the media, by then, had already worked themselves up into a speculative frenzy over Sputnik II’s passenger, the mix-breed terrier Laika, and her planetary laps. “The greatly increased size of the second Sputnik means that it was probably not fired by the same rocket system that launched the first one,” Time opined erroneously. “This is enough weight allowance to put a powerful atomic bomb on the moon,” the magazine added, also erroneously. The New York Times fared no better, wondering “whether the Soviet Union might be using some new form of rocket propellant unknown in the West” (which it was not) to generate so much lift. Analysts at the Pentagon and the CIA, meanwhile, feverishly revised their estimates of the Russian ICBM’s thrust from a too-low 500,000 pounds to a too-high 1.5 million pounds—still out of range of Time’s moon shot but more than enough to plunk a hydrogen bomb anywhere on earth.
Johnson and Russell whipped up the overeager press. Pronouncing themselves deeply “alarmed” at the briefing they had just received from the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the relative state of American missiles, they announced that an emergency session of the Preparedness subcommittee would be convened later that month. “As Chairman of the Committee, the Senate Democratic leader reported that it would cover such matters ‘as our record of consistent underestimation of the Soviet program, and the Government’s lack of willingness to take proper risks,’” the New York Times duly informed its readers.
The inquest the administration had feared was now official. “It’s a real circus act,” John Foster Dulles grumbled. Unfortunately, he added, “the weight of this thing” was deadly serious. Once more Nixon pleaded with Eisenhower to head Johnson off. The vice president had his own electoral future to think about, and he knew that Johnson was no fool. The Texas senator was certain to tarnish him with the same mud-flinging brush he was going to use to paint the entire cabinet as incompetent. But Ike wasn’t worried. The American people would see through the populism and demagoguery. “Johnson can keep his head in the stars if he wants,” the president replied. “I’m going to keep my feet on the ground.”
Nikita Khrushchev, meanwhile,