Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [33]
Eisenhower was skeptical, and when Charlie Wilson testified that the intelligence was “very sketchy indeed,” Symington indignantly accused him of “unconstitutionally contradicting patriots” like General Nathan Twining, the air force chief of staff. In reality both the flybys and serial numbers were Soviet ruses to mask the weakness of their bomber program. The Soviets simply used the same squadron of planes to circle the airfield out of eyesight and to pass over the reviewing stands repeatedly. Knowing that American observers would have their telephoto lenses trained on the planes, they fudged the serial numbers to further the impression of an inflated count.
The ploy, however, backfired and played right into the hands of the air force and its supporters, who saw a perfect excuse to bolster America’s bomber fleet. The truth of the matter was that by the forecast date, the USSR would build only 85 of the 700 new bombers projected by air force intelligence, while the U.S. heavy bomber force would grow to 1,769 planes—a twenty-to-one ratio in America’s favor that hardly called for additional reinforcements. (The Strategic Air Command would add another 1,000 bombers to that already overwhelming superiority by the end of LeMay’s reign.) But in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary, the alarmist air force assertions were accepted. The accuracy of the hyped data was not pertinent, but its potential political value was. The dearth of reliable information on the Soviet Union simply heightened paranoia and made the worst-case scenario easier to swallow. “You’ll never get court-martialed for saying [the Soviets] have a new type of weapon and it turns out that they don’t,” Victor Marchetti, the CIA’s top Soviet military analyst, ruefully remarked. “But you’ll lose your ass if you say that they don’t have it and it turns out that they do.”
The bomber gap was “fiction,” as Eisenhower well knew. But the president did not challenge Symington’s findings. In fact, many of the air force officers who provided the testimony and information for the hearings were promoted, including the air force’s intelligence chief, Major General John Samford, who was rewarded with the top slot at the newly formed National Security Agency. Nor did Ike veto the supplemental $928.5 million budget increase for LeMay to add six more SAC wings—180 new B-52s—to his armada. Boeing, the principal financial beneficiary of the supplement, immediately started a second production line to fill the order.
The billion-dollar boondoggle was the price Eisenhower paid to prevent the Democrats from making national security an election issue. He could not appear dovish, especially since his failing health had left him exposed to criticism. Already the New York papers were hinting that the heart attack and Eisenhower’s subsequent stomach surgery for ileitis in early 1956 had debilitated him. Arthur Krock of the New York Times acidly speculated whether Eisenhower’s “frequent changes of scene and recreation imply that he is irked by his heavy and incessant duties.” The president’s penchant for delegation, disdain for detail, and notoriously tangled speaking style (“in which numbers and genders collide, participles hang helplessly and syntax is lost forever,” according to Krock) offered more grist for allegations of mental torpor.
The growing disenchantment of the press had not yet filtered down to the average voter, who still liked Ike. But, as the historian Fred Greenstein noted, “the much publicized golfing trips, the working vacations, and even the Wild West stories he read at bedtime, which many critics suggested were the outward signs of a passive president with a flaccid mind,” left