SO, MR. LANPHIER, COULD YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE MEETING WHERE YOU WERE PRESENT WHEN THE KOREAN WAR WAS VIRTUALLY DECIDED UPON BY PRESIDENT TRUMAN?

Well, it was in June of 1950, and I was Stuart Symington's senior staff member on the National Security Council. He was chairman of the NSRB, and as such was one of the five statutory members of the security council, including the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State. And on a Sunday, North Korea invaded South Korea and the word came to Washington. And at that time, both President Truman and Stuart Symington were in Kansas City. And the President jumped on Air Force One, or whatever it was called at that time, and flew home but Stuart didn't make the plane, so he called me and told me to go to the meeting that evening at the Blair House, which is where the President was living, the White House was being renovated, to represent him and simply listen, keep my mouth shut and just listen. I did and present were Secretary Acheson, General Bradley, Secretary Marshall, and a number of other people. And the President opened the meeting by, incidentally...meanwhile throughout the meeting Frank Pace, Secretary of the Army kept coming in and out with messages from General MacArthur saying unless advised otherwise, I have to do the following, since the JCS had no plans to do anything about an invasion of North Korea, he... The President went around the room and asked various advisers what to do and most of them had no particular positive reaction to offer until he got to Secretary Acheson, the Secretary of State. Now some weeks before, Dean Acheson had uttered, closed a speech which, in effect was a policy speech and he drew a line around the world to put areas we would defend and those we wouldn't and he excluded South Korea at the time. So when the President got around to him, other people, not having given him a yes or no, really, Secretary Acheson said, 'Mr. President, I think we ought to fight the sons of bitches, which is most... a speech pattern most unlike his ordinary one. The President said, so do I. And there was some other conversation and he was about to break up the meeting when a fellow sitting up in the back said, I've forgotten his name, he introduced himself as being from the UN. He said, don't you think it would be a good idea if we asked the United Nations to join us in this enterprise on behalf of the freedom of the South Koreans?' And the President said, 'by all means carry that forward. And that was how a national policy, as a sort of an afterthought...

JUST TELL US THAT LAST BIT ABOUT...

I don't hear it. I'm so fascinated with what I'm saying.

HE WAS ABOUT TO CLOSE THE MEETING. IF YOU COULD JUST TAKE IT FROM THERE.

He was about to close the meeting when a fellow stood up in the back of the room and introduced himself as being from the United Nations. I don't remember his name. And said, Mr. President, don't you think it would be advisable if we asked the United Nations to share this defensive freedom in South Korea with us?' And the President said, by all means, do that. And that's how national policy, in that case was engendered, and unhappily, nobody thought to do that when we got into Vietnam, where we went out alone, without the United Nation's support.

THAT WAS AN AFTERTHOUGHT REALLY ALMOST.

In effect. Yes it was apparently so in that room, I'm sure that sooner or later during the night the State Department would have thought of it. But at the moment, the meeting was about to break up when this fellow interjected that the UN is of consideration.

HERE THEY ALL COME, EH? YOU LEFT THE PENTAGON AND YOU BECAME ASSOCIATED WITH... CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE INCIDENT WHEN CONVAIR WAS MAKING PRESENTATION TO THE VAN...COMMITTEE AND IT WAS DECIDED TO GO FOR AN ICBM. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THAT?

Around 1954, will your voice have been heard in asking the question? Alright. Sometime later... In, sometime in 1954, the ah, the President decided to step up the investment in the missile. And at that time, it was still pretty much a study program at Convair, under Charlie Bossart and the MX-774. Ah, so he appointed the Van Neumann Committee of a group of scientific advisers, including, among others, Jim Doolittle, who was a scientist of some eminence as a matter of fact. They came out, and ah, presented, to review us for a full day. And the day before, Si Ramo who was the secretary for this committee came by and...that, to some of us, General McNarney and several others, that while we tincutters, as he put it, had done an excellent job of bringing the Atlas with it's steel balloon and it's swiveling rockets and it's detachable warhead into being to that point, that a couple of Nobel Prizes would still have to be won before it could be an operational ICBM that is in guidance and in heat transference for re-entry in the atmosphere. Charlie Bossart very quietly, who's the chief engineer, said, "I believe, Doctor, it's an engineering problem." General...agreed with him. So the next day, Charlie presented an Atlas with five missiles, of five engines, because we had a,...given us was a sizable atomic weapon, nuclear weapon, which required five inches to propel it half way around the world. So at lunch, Jimmy Doolittle got me aside and said, 'Tom, why are you showing us that...?'And I said, well that's the requirement. It takes that many engines to push the ball over there. He said, haven't you been advised that there's a hydrogen bomb been created...been, well, engendered at least in principle, weighing 2,300 pounds. I said, no, nobody's told us that. So, I called Charlie Bossart and : he came over and he, and told him the problem, and he came over and brought with him a presentation that he had done surreptitiously as it were, from the jungle grapevine, he had learned of this bomb. This required only three engines. So that afternoon, Charlie presented the Atlas missile with only three engine...and Johnny went on and before the meeting broke up said I think we can approve this, and they did. And thereafter created of course ...command up in Los Angeles, with Si Ramo as the technical adviser and secretary for that operation under which we created the weapon system which developed and produced and delivered to SAC, the Atlas ICBM system.

BUT YOU HADN'T BEEN TOLD ABOUT THE H-BOMB?

No we had not. We had not been formerly told. We did have a system, of course. We had to have to find out as much as we could about what we were doing with the...might be doing on an informal basis and Charlie's people had discovered with their contacts in the Pentagon that this was going on, and had planned for it, in case it was necessary. Which it proved to be, fortuitously.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE JOB THAT YOU DID FOR CONVAIR AND LATER FOR GENERAL DYNAMICS IN WASHINGTON OVER THE NEXT TEN YEARS OR SO? WHAT WAS, IN EVENTS, DIDN'T YOU MORE OR LESS INVENT THE POST OF WASHINGTON LOBBYIST IN A SENSE?

Not lobby. We never, never ever in the ten years I was there did we ever lobby Congress ever. What we did do was create a system at Wright Field and the various other places where the services, Air Force and Navy and Army had offices to oversee the development of the, what is that?

CAN YOU DESCRIBE FOR ME WHAT YOUR JOB CONSISTED OF AS YOU WORKED FOR CONVAIR, AND LATER GENERAL DYNAMICS THROUGH THOSE TEN YEARS?

Well, I went to Convair in 19...in mid-1950, shortly after Korea, when Stuart Symington went over to the RFC and I left the government and I came out and was appointed ah, by first Floyd Odlum in the company, and then General McNarney, who came about a year later to preside over the affairs of the company for the next decade, to organize and operate a planning system, a long-range planning system. It was the first one in the defense business. And in so doing, at that time, we had Fort Worth building the B-36s and going into the B-58. We had San Diego building the 102s and going to the 106s. And during the early part of that decade, we created the Atlas division, the astronautics division to develop and produce the Atlas. We also had a division up in Pomona which produced anti-air craft missiles for the Terrier for the Navy and after 1953, when Jay Hopkins bought control from Floyd Odlum of Convair, he created a whole new ensemble....General Dynamics bought Electric Boat into it with the nuclear.... submarines, which I did not have anything to do with planning and so forth. My responsibilities were in Convair with all the major air defense...

CAN YOU TELL ME, NOT JUST WITH THE NUMBERS BUT ALSO WHAT KIND OF WEAPONS THEY WERE. LIKE...THE FIGHTER PLANES AND SO ON, SO WE KNOW WHAT...JUST TELL ME WHAT ALTOGETHER, THE NUMBER OF SORT OF WEAPONS SYSTEMS WERE THAT YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR DURING THIS TIME.

Well, during the decade I was there from 1950 until 1960, in charge of long-range planning and also General McNarney's alter-ego in the Pentagon to sell to the civil services whatever ideas we had for weapon systems, or eventually weapons systems. The Atlas was the first weapon system, and we created it. Ah, when I arrived, they were doing the B-36...the B-36 intercontinental bomber at Fort Worth. They were doing the 102 interceptor subsonic delta wing. They were doing the Terrier anti-aircraft missile at Pomona. And... Phylis...would you push that away, you're kicking and making noises. OK.

JUST START AGAIN IF YOU WILL...

During the decade I was there, when I arrived in 1950, ah, Fort Worth division was building the B-36 and was inventing the B-58 supersonic bomber, which had created and finally delivered while I was still there. In San Diego, San Diego division was making the 102 subsonic delta wing interceptor, and the 240-340 series of commercial liners. At Pomona, we were doing the terrier anti-aircraft missile for the Navy. During that decade, we went from around 300 million to, and impending, two billion. Ah, at the time I left in 1960, not through any genius of mine but because the engineers in our company were quite extraordinary in terms of foreseeing what the requirements would be through some help from our system, which consisted of an office at Wright Field, an office in Washington, ah, manned by people who were not only engineers and highly intelligent, sophisticated men in terms of weapons themselves, but also had the faith and trust of the people in the Pentagon and at Wright Field and could learn informally what the services thought the threat was going to be, five, ten years down the road, and this gave our long-range engineering planners the basis for developing weapons which kept us competitive and at the end, as we got to this two billion dollar mark toward the end of the decade, we had just about every major weapon system in the free world in General Dynamics, which became General Dynamics in 1953, when Jay Hopkins bought control from Floyd Odlum and brought in the Electric Boat company and the nuclear submarines. Later in the decade, pardon me, in the middle of the decade, the Pentagon began to fund the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile which was created by Charlie Bossart and these people in the San Diego division, which became the astronautics division. We created and built an entire system, gambling about $20 million of the company's money in a modest gamble to do that. By the way, a tribute to Odlum before I got there...

CAN I JUST STOP HERE? WHAT WE'RE AFTER, AS SHORTLY AS YOU CAN, JUST TO GIVE AN IDEA, IN ABOUT A MINUTE OR SO OF THIS ENORMOUS EXPANSION AND, AS YOU SAY, IN THE END GENERAL DYNAMICS IS RUNNING JUST ABOUT EVERY WEAPONS SYSTEM THERE IS... BUT I THINK WE NEED TO AVOID ALL THE NAMES. JUST GO THROUGH, THERE WAS B-36 AND B-55 AND THE CONTINENTAL BOMBERS...

During the decade from 1950 to 1960, when I was responsible for long-range planning for Convair, the company at Fort Worth was building the B-36 intercontinental bomber and eventually built the B-58 supersonic intercontinental bomber. At San Diego, they were building the F-102 subsonic delta wing interceptor, and eventually built the 106 supersonic interceptor. They were also building commercial airliners, 240s, 340s. The... Pomona division, built the Terrier anti-aircraft missile for the Navy, and in the mid-fifties, there came into rather substantial fruition, the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, which had been born even before, long before I ever arrived there, in terms of a study of the MX 774. But in 1953 Jay Hopkins bought control from Odlum and added Electric Boat to our complex and called the whole thing General Dynamics, which it is to this day. And the then Convair is now a division, as well as the astronautics division of that operation, which went from about 300 million dollars in 1949-50 to an impending two billion in 1960, to give you a feeling for the volume that we were involved in, as well as the variety of, in effect, we had just about every major weapons system, offensive and defensive, and submarine in the free world by 1960.

WHAT PART WERE YOU PLAYING IN THIS. WHAT WAS YOUR FUNCTION AS FAR AS CONVAIR AND GENERAL DYNAMICS WERE CONCERNED?

My function, though I'm not an engineer, or a technical man in any respect, was to organize and to conduct the long-range planning for the company. And I simply set up systems within each division of people who did know, who were engineers and did know through our various offices at Wright Field and in the Pentagon and so forth, what the services were anticipating in the future so that they could create and invent systems that they could compete with the competition...

SORRY. JUST START AGAIN FROM WHAT YOUR FUNCTION WAS IF YOU WOULD.

When I came in 1950, Gen...General McNarney followed me briefly thereafter and asked me to create a long-range planning department. Now, I'm not an engineer or a technical man in any respect, but I did set up a system for collating the long-range plans into several divisions which were peopled by technical people who, through our Wright Field and our Washington offices had access to and the trust of people in the requirements departments of the civil services looking into the future. So we had a pretty well organized espionage system, if you will, industrial... system of what the services thought the future threat would be, and then we, in turn, gambled our engineering talents and our money in preparing ah, proposals to meet those threats before the services even came out with the requirements, which gave us an edge which resulted in, at the end of the decade, having gone from 300 million to 2 billion dollars worth of these weapon systems, which range from the intercontinental offensive systems to the continental defensive systems and the submarines.

SO YOU MUST HAVE HAD VARIED IN CONTEXT YOURSELF. WITH PEOPLE IN THE PENTAGON AND THAT WAS A VERY IMPORTANT PART OF THE BUSINESS.

I was born and raised in the air service, and in the air corps and therefore, as a boy, I knew, came to know many of the ranking officers that were then in the Pentagon and they had a measure of trust in my judgment, although I was considered somewhat of a hothead, which I guess I was without any question. But the essence of it was that General McNarney when he came to Convair had been the best manager the government ever had. He ran the Pentagon for General Marshall during the war. He also did some combat service in Africa. But, when he came to us, he called me and he said, I, by nature, am not going to go to the Pentagon and sell, as a matter of principle, I'm not going to go in there and sell, so you will be my... We'll decide here what our policy is and you go in and express it. So, my acceptance in the Pentagon, and the acceptance of all our people in the Wright Field and...was based on the integrity of General McNarney really and that's an essential part of the success of the Convair outfit for that decade that we were all together.

CAN WE MOVE ON TO WHAT HAPPENED IN 1959-1960 WHEN THERE WAS THE TALK OF THE MISSILE GAP AND INDEED THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY WAS PROPHESYING THAT THE SOVIET UNION WOULD END WITH A GREAT MANY MORE ICBMs THAN THE UNITED STATES, BY SAY 1960-61. AND THEN THEY STARTED, THE CIA ANYWAY, STARTED LOWERING THE ESTIMATES. AND YOU DIDN'T AGREE WITH THAT, DID YOU? CAN YOU TELL ME HOW YOU KNEW ABOUT IT AND WHAT YOU THEN DID?

In 1959 or so, the...we had ways of knowing what the ELINT--Electronic Intelligence System--was telling that we were getting from the Soviets, as to what they were doing in the ICBM business. And I also had associations in the defense, in the intelligence establishment so that...from my associations when I had been on the National Security Council still had an idea, at least, of what the difference between these raw materials that were going into Washington and the reports that were going to the President, which differed quite a bit, the stuff I saw implied that the Soviets were doing fairly well with ICBMs. And the stuff that the President was being shown did not reflect that much of an effort by the Soviets. So, we had on...the CIA at that time, had two committees devoted to ICBMs. One to study the production capabilities of the Soviets, and another to study the testing down at... They did not have a committee for, to determine what the operational bases were and where they might be and what there status was. So I took exception to this in a visit to John Foster Dulles, taking Stuart Symington along as a witness, as it were. And also...

SO DO YOU MEAN ALLEN DULLES OR DO YOU MEAN JOHN FOSTER?

I meant Allen..., excuse me

THAT'S ALRIGHT. I'LL ASK YOU THE QUESTION AND YOU CAN START AGAIN...SO YOU BELIEVED THAT THE CIA WEREN'T LOOKING HARD ENOUGH FOR DEPLOYING...

Yes. You see when we...we...when the Sputnik went up in 1957, in October, that educated a certain capability of propulsion and guidance It was a year later that we put up the Atlas missile head and the President at Christmastime, passed the word of...down from it. So in effect, we were a year behind them at that time in like projections into space. I assumed from that time one, through a latter of three or four years of the decade that they were at least a year ahead of us and maybe more in producing intercontinental ballistic missiles. And in 1959, we were at a state where we were testing a half a dozen missiles and were going to deliver them in 1961-62 to SAC. So I assumed that they were at least a year ahead of us, and yet, in terms of production, into operational missiles, but I could find no area, nor could my people where the President and the planners were being told that the Soviets were doing any such thing. There was no indication of operational missiles or bases at all. So, I went to Allen Dulles with Stuart Symington accompanying me, and protested this void in the review by the CIA of what the Soviets were doing on ICBM. His response was to ask the President after Stuart Symington went and visited the President a couple of times on the same subject, he was alarmed, and...the word got around then about the missile gap, and, not from me, not from Symington, I'm pretty sure, but it got around anyhow, and the... it was a matter of contention during that Presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon. But the President would then authorized additional U-2 flights over the northern part of Russia, where the likely...the shortest distance to us, where the operational sites might be, and sure enough, they found five or six in state, different states of readiness but within, still with a year or so to go before they'd have operational missiles in them. Now, an odd thing...this was...the President learned this in September of 1959, was that right? Yes, '59. Ah, he did not tell Vice President Nixon anything about it, although Nixon had he known it, would have been able to harpoon Kennedy pretty well, who was bespeaking the missile gap, or what we thought was a missile gap. Ah, in any case, when Kennedy became president, one of the first things he noticed was, he said he read this and was quite upset that he felt he had been misled until he heard the reason...

LET ME GO BACK A BIT. DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE U-2 AT THE TIME?

Yes.

YOU DID?

Yes.

YOU DIDN'T KNOW OFFICIALLY?

No... when did Gary Powers go down?

1960.

Yes I knew before then. Yes. Most knowledgeable people in the industry knew about it. We have a lot of friends at Kelly Johnson Skunkworks up at Lockheed where it came from, you know, and our engineers worked back and forth. You can have all the security in the world, but you can't stop human beings, who are worried about their country passing word to each other to be helpful, even if it's an opposing company, with an opposing weapons system, if they think it may be advantageous. That went on then, it goes on now.

..WHAT'S STARTING TO HAPPEN IS THAT YOU'RE ANSWERING A QUESTION, AND THEN YOU'RE SORT OF GOING ON TO ADD...IT GETS A LITTLE BIT LONG...

I don't want to use too much of your film, but I do want to be right, you see, in my recollection. And this is 25 years ago.

I WAS A LITTLE CONCERNED ABOUT WHEN YOU SAID THE PRESIDENT HEARD ABOUT THIS IN 1959, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING OF THAT HE HEARD ABOUT?

Well, it was the first that he knew that there wasn't a committee to review the operational sites. And therefore, he authorized the U-2 at Allen Dulles' request in that summer and the information they'd been getting was from satellites.

OK LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION ABOUT THAT AGAIN... WHAT WAS ALLEN DULLES, THE HEAD OF THE CIA AFTER ALL, AND HERE WERE YOU, SOMEONE WHO WASN'T PRESUMABLY ENTITLED TO HAVE ANY REAL INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION AT ALL, COMING AND TELLING HIM THAT HIS INTELLIGENCE WAS WRONG, WHAT WAS HIS REACTION TO THAT?

Well now...should I paraphrase your question?

WE'LL FILL THAT IN.

Well that's an interesting question. How do you expect the industry to create weapon systems to guard against future threats unless they know what the enemy is planning in the future' Now, officially then and officially to this day there's no formal advice from the Pentagon to the various industrial elements, as to what the estimates for the future, CIA and what have you, estimates for the future are. But one way or another, we have to find them out in order to be timely in our inventions to meet those threats when they appear from the Soviets. And...

LET ME START ON THIS, BECAUSE IT'S AN IMPORTANT ANSWER. CAN YOU TELL ME WHETHER YOU WERE OFFICIALLY ENTITLED TO GET THIS INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION, AND IF NOT, HOW AND WHY YOU DID GET IT?

We were not in the industry officially entitled to whatever the intelligence services were developing in the way of the enemy current and impending threat. But we had to know it in order prepare, to develop systems to meet that threat in a timely fashion. So, through our various and others eventually copied our system, through our field officers, Wright Field and Canaveral and Washington and wherever they were, we did our best to keep privy to what we, our intelligence people thought was the threat in the future, as well as associations we had, we had people on the committees of the CIA. One of our people was on both the ICBM production facility committee and the...testing committee. Ah, he didn't ever tell me anything...

SORRY I HAVE TO STOP YOU AGAIN.

OK. I'M JUST GOING TO ASK YOU THAT ONCE AGAIN, THEN. SO MOST PEOPLE WOULD ASSUME THAT YOU WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ENTITLED TO GET THIS INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION THAT YOU WERE GETTING.

No. There may have been an assumption that we weren't entitled to get information about what the enemy's threat in the future was going to be but we had to if we were going to provide proposals in a time...in a fashion timely enough to meet the threat when it became obvious from Soviet Russia. So, we did everything we could to find out from the Pentagon and the various field officers and intelligence officers what they thought the threat was into the future. And of course, we had people on CIA and other committees, technical experts to advise. They didn't convey anything to me. I was not involved, as a planner for the company, I was not involved in direct or formal knowledge of these things so they never told me formally, but I had my ways from previous associations in the CIA and in the National Security Council and the Pentagon to learn in general, what the numbers were.

HOW DID THE HEAD OF THE CIA REACT WHEN YOU CAME ALONG AND TOLD HIM THAT YOU DIDN'T THINK HIS INTELLIGENCE WAS RIGHT?

Well, he was very pragmatic about it. He just, he asked, I believe it was Pete Scoville was in the room. He asked him if that were so, and Scoville admitted it wasn't and Scoville, I think had overall con...oversight of these two committees and the third one came under him. And this was in the Spring of 1959, and in the summer of '59, the U-2 picked up additional information in Siberia, deliberately flew up there, over there, to take pictures to see, and found that there were some...half a dozen near operational sites there. Ah, why the Soviets weren't at least a year or more ahead of us and into operational missiles by that time, having been given a lead time of at least a year at the time of Sputnik and our Christmas voice a year later, which were equivalent experiments in space, I do not know. But I assumed mistakenly, that they were at least doing as much as, if not more than we were to develop operational ICBMs. At least to the schedule we were which would put them at least a year ahead of us at that time. They weren't.

WHAT INTERESTS ME IS THAT YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW SOMETHING. YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW BETTER THAN THE EXPERTS WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO BE STUDYING THIS THING AND WHO HAD FULL ACCESS TO ALL THE INTELLIGENCE. IT TURNED OUT, YOU WERE VERY, VERY WRONG AND THEY WERE MORE NEARLY RIGHT.

No I wasn't very, very wrong.

WELL THERE WAS NO MISSILE GAP WAS THERE?

No, not at the time, there was not. No, I was mistaken, yes. My extrapolation was mistaken and if you will, I was arrogant about it. It...now, the President was upset with me for having done this. He was also upset with me because I criticized the Secretary of Defense some months earlier when he said we had, I think a half a dozen Atlas' operational that year, in the turn of '59-'60. We were still a year or two from that point. I said this in closed session to...Lyndon Johnson prepared this committee, but he took exception to that as well. And so he was angry at me because I was saying in closed sessions that he was underestimating the enemy and overestimate our operational capability in ballistic missile And I was about eight or ten years later, when I was playing golf at El Dorado, where he had a winter home, he called me over in front of his home and said, Tommy, will you admit that I was half right and you were half wrong, a decade ago. I had to admit that was true.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT HE WAS ANNOYED WITH YOU AT THE TIME?

He made it very clear. I was called...on, I don't want to go in to go into the White House. I promised I wouldn't do that...He made it very clear through his people and well, for instance, the President made it very clear that he was upset with me when Scott, a Senator from Pennsylvania got up on the center floor and said Lanphier was talking about this shortage of our strength and the impending strength of the enemy to sell more missiles for Convair and General Dynamics. And at that time I chose to resign so that he couldn't say that any further. It wasn't a fact, it was just a simple, my observation....

LET ME ASK YOU DIRECTLY ABOUT THAT. FIRSTLY, YOU RESIGNED IN 1960 FROM CONVAIR AND GENERAL DYNAMICS...

In February, I think it was.

BUT YOU CONTINUED, VERY PUBLICALLY TO WARN THE PUBLIC ABOUT WHAT YOU THOUGHT WAS A DANGEROUS MISSILE GAP?

Yes.

CAN YOU JUST TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED THEN? WHAT WAS THE CHAIN OF EVENTS...YOU RESIGNED, AND TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT DURING 1960.

Well over the advise of General...and Jack Nash, who ran Convair of General Dynamics, I felt it was, they thought I should stay, that they felt I was right in my comment. I felt, however, that I was doing damage to the company's future possibilities and the President was angry at me and therefore, it could eventually. Although he wasn't that kind of man, but I just assumed it might eventually...take effect on the company. He would never have done anything like that, you know, penalize Convair for something I'd said, but he was a classmate of my old man's and I knew him all my life. But, the...I resigned. I resigned as a matter of fact on Dave Garroway's Today Show. And he asked me, he'd heard rumors and I said, sure, and so he asked me and he gave me two segments. I had a full half hour on his Today Show one morning to publicly resign after I had notified Frank Pace in Washington that I was going to do so. Well the next thing I knew I was on Meet The Press and then Face The Nation and the various national... for about six months as long as my money held out, I carried on this argument that I felt the President was underestimating our strength and overestimating the...vice versa. Underestimating the enemy and overestimating us. I still think that was right.

HOW CAN YOU STILL THINK YOU WERE RIGHT?

Well in the first place, he was dead wrong about, his people were dead wrong about giving us more strength than we had. We didn't, we were a year or two from having operational Atlas's, which the Secretary of Defense had said a month before, we had, a few. Now, the Soviets knew better but the American people didn't, and I felt that was wrong. On the other side, I still felt that they had not thoroughly enough and rightly prosec...Phyllis, please...

SO YOU WERE...HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT YOU WERE RIGHT AND THEY WERE WRONG, NOW THAT WE KNOW THAT THERE WAS NO MISSILE GAP. THAT THE SOVIET UNION WAS STILL VERY...

You're talking about the system and the attitude. The attitude was one that, the very attitude that resulted in their not having a committee to assess the operational capability of the enemy, when there's every reason to believe since they were a year ahead of us with Sputnik that they would have one. That disturbed me then and it still disturbed me after I'd left Convair, because they didn't make all that much change in their attitude. And I felt that as long as I'd gone off the board, whether there was water in the pool or not, I'd carry on the argument to try and influence them to pay a little closer attention to what the Soviets were doing in the intercontinental ballistic missile field with a more open minded, rather than just indifferent attitude.

WERE YOU AT ALL CONNECTED WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AT THAT POINT?

Not the slightest. I voted Republican most of my life. And Symington was running that summer for the nomination for the...which Kennedy won and Kennedy had promised him the Vice Presidency until Lyndon Johnson, to Kennedy's surprise accepted his invitation and Stuart didn't...but no, I was not a Democrat, nor did I ever campaign for Stuart in the four times he was elected Senator in Missouri. I wasn't preoccupied with other things. Had he asked me to, I'd have been glad to. I still think he'd have made a great President.

BUT YOU HAD NO CONNECTION WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY...

No. Not at all. I've never been in politics. The only, I voted independently for years now, but in those days I was voting generally Republican. I voted for Eisenhower.

WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION? WERE YOU SURPRISED WHEN IN 1961, IT EMERGED AS A RESULT OF THE SATELLITE RECONNAISSANCE THAT THE SOVIET UNION WAS WELL BEHIND THE UNITED STATES IN THE DEPLOYMENT OF ICBMs. DID THAT SURPRISE YOU THEN?

Yes. Yes. Very much so. It did surprise me and...I don't know...

LET ME REPHRASE THE QUESTION. YEAH. SO JUST TELL ME WHETHER YOU WERE SURPRISED WHEN IT EMERGED IN 1961 THAT THE SOVIETS WERE WELL AHEAD...

Yes, I was surprised, given the fact that I thought they would logically extrapolate a year ahead of us that lead into production missiles and operational missiles at least a year before we had them and we were within a year in 1960 of having them. Therefore I assumed they would have them at least as many, if not more, half a dozen or more in 1960. I was wrong. However, on the plus side, as far as I'm concerned at least I was, along with Stuart Symington a party to the fact that the CIA got off it's duff and took a look to see if they were operational and found that they were damn near operational. They hadn't even looked for them, before the summer of 1959.

SO YOU REALLY THINK THAT IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR WHAT YOU AND STUART SYMINGTON DID THAT THE CIA MIGHT NOT EVEN HAD LOOKED?

Primarily Symington. He visited the President twice to press his point and the President then in turn asked Dulles to do it. Yes, I'm quite sure that Stuart had a major effect... I don't think they paid that much attention to me as you implied by the question earlier. The same question the President once conveyed to me. He said, what do you an amateur know about weapon systems when you contradict the Secretary of Defense on a matter of intercontinental ballistic missiles? And I very unwisely, as was my... said, well Mr. President, I, we are developing, delivering and training SAC to use these weapon system. I know at least that much and I know a hell of a lot more than a guy who is selling soap six months ago. That was McElroy, the Secretary of Defense then. He was very angry with me and never did accept that response.

THE MISSILE GAP, WHICH NEVER EXISTED IN FACT WAS A VERY POWERFUL POLITICAL CLIMATE...

Yes it was.

AND IT MADE IT VERY HARD FOR THE UNITED STATES WHEN IT FOUND IT WAS AHEAD TO...BACK, FOR EXAMPLE IF IT HAD WANTED TO.

Why would it want to?

MAYBE IT JUST DIDN'T WANT TO SPEND SO MUCH MONEY...IN RETROSPECT, A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD SAY THAT YOUR ACTIVITIES, CONNECTED AS YOU WERE WITH THE ACTUAL MANUFACTURING OF AMERICAN ICBMs, COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DISINTERESTED. THAT THERE MUST BE SOME CONNECTION BETWEEN THE MANUFACTURER OF ICBMs...WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE MAKING THESE VERY STRONG STATEMENTS, WHAT'S YOUR REACTION TO THAT?

Well, on the one hand, I understand the conclusion that I was trying to sell more weapons for my company...my company. Actually I was trying to develop more weapons for my country, and the people who knew me and, both in the Pentagon and in the Congress knew that too except for the Republicans. They were bespeaking President Eisenhower's objection to me. Ah...

START AGAIN. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THOSE WHO SAY THAT ALL THESE ACTIONS MUST HAVE BEEN TAKEN MAINLY IN ORDER TO INCREASE CONVAIR'S AND GENERAL DYNAMIC'S PROFITS AND TO MAKE MORE MISSILES?

All I can say is they're mistaken. That I had a more altruistic and patriotic motive as did all the people, the engineers, and the production people, everybody in that company. For that decade, there was a remarkable esprit decorum among them that had very little to do with dollar profits. That was, of course, important to the people in New York, but ah, the operational people were dedicated to the fact they wanted to create these supersonic systems and intercontinental systems for the defense of the country as fast as they could. I...don't regret it to this moment, nor do any of them, I'm sure. But I can't argue with the ob...some, that next fall when I was on the tour bespeaking my argument, Walter Ruether who was then head of the UAW and a friend of mine, I was raised around Detroit, said Tom, the word's around that the industry is paying you to do what you're doing. And I said, well Walter, I guess the only answer I can give to that is that I, if you don't mind, I came here on a bus, but I'd like to borrow five bucks for a cab back home. He knew better, but...the word, I think he said I had been paid a million dollars to a hundred thousand dollars a year at that time...absolutely untrue...Well, one other interesting thing, just to... this. The afternoon after I was on MEET THE PRESS, John McCormick, the head of the house, called me. Now, I had testified before him on other committees of the house through the years, and they had taken my testimony for what it might be, a munitions maker to in there to make his point on behalf of his company. But he called and said, Tom, I watched you this morning on Meet The Press, congratulations and so forth, but he said would you mind meeting with a few friends of mine this afternoon, now that you're out of the company, I'd like to have them hear your straightforward point of view. And so he brought over six people, the chairmen and vice chairmen of various committees and they were there for about six hours and they took me as a man of credibility and integrity. So, I have that response to you. In terms of the pros who were around on the other side in those days. I can't answer it in any other way except to say it's an easy thing to say about me, and it's a mistaken thing to say about me. Or the other people that shared...Incidentally, during that six or eight months, I...my clearances of course, when I left Convair, were chopped off, and I had clearance right up to the cue for atomic, you know, all the rest. Some that I had had in the Security Council I did not carry with me from there to the industry, but I still had plenty of clear.... they were all chopped off. But a...of men, who's faces kept changing, but from the State Department and the Pentagon would meet with me about every month, once a month and just sit and whatever I'd been saying during the month, they would review it with me as to whether I was getting into the area of mistake. And...

IF YOU COULD JUST START OFF BY SAYING, "WHILE I WAS... CONDUCTING THIS CAMPAIGN..."

Among the people who gave credence to my argument as something other than a biased pitch for more weapons for the company I was working for, were, I mentioned...we got McCormick in, did we not?

LET'S START AGAIN.

In addition to the acceptance of my credibility by the congressional people, I, throughout the four months or so that I was on the tour, television and talking to various conventions and so forth, lawyers and bankers, I was met once a month, four times, by changing group of three, four men from the Pentagon and the State Department who would review what I had been saying the previous month, my clearances having been chopped off when I left Convair, and, these are all men I'd known for back through the Security Council days, and they trusted me, and my discretion, to keep me correct in terms of factual statements I might be making in case the circumstances had changed since I left the Pentagon, left Convair unhappily. Nothing changed because nothing much was done in those four months that would change anything that I was criticizing.

SO YOU WERE ACTUALLY GETTING INFORMATION...

Not information, implied endorsement... from people who were quite responsible in the Pentagon, on the JCS staff, in the Air Force staff, the Navy staff and the State Department Operations staff.

LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING AND ASSUME THAT THIS QUESTION WILL BE HEARD. HERE WERE YOU, A FORMER FIGHTER PILOT, FORMER ASSISTANT TO A SECRETARY FOR THE AIR FORCE, FOR TEN YEARS A VICE PRESIDENT OF A MAJOR CONTRACTOR, WELL KNOWN ASSOCIATION WITH A MAJOR AND IMPORTANT SENATOR AND OPPONENT OF PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S WITH TREMENDOUS CONNECTIONS WITH THE PENTAGON AND PARTICULARLY WITH AIR FORCE AND AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, COMING OUT, IN PUBLIC AND WITH APPARENT INSIDE KNOWLEDGE SAYING THAT THE INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES WERE WRONG. THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS NOT DOING ENOUGH IN TERMS OF ICBM DEVELOPMENT AND SO ON. ISN'T THAT, DO YOU THINK EXACTLY THE SORT OF THING WHICH PRESIDENT EISENHOWER WARNED ABOUT WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT THE UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?

Yes, I believe it is the sort of thing that President Eisenhower had in mind when he talked about the industrial military complex. He, there wasn't any such thing.... even in an informal basis in those days. It was still catch as catch can. Mind you, I'm talking up to 1960. Now, by the very weight of the 300 million plus, billion plus dollars...what is that the percentage of the national budget?

IT'S LESS THAN IT WAS ACTUALLY.

In any case, the three hundred billion dollars worth of weapons implies a rather close association between the-

WOULD YOU WANT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION THAT...

Well, I don't, I'd answer that question by asking you to assess my motive as to why I was a fighter pilot, why I went to the Pentagon, I went, I was in the Air Force as a civilian, why I went into the Security Council, why I went into the defense business. And essentially my motive throughout was I wanted to do, I appreciated from the time I was a kid my country, Billy Mitchell and the rest were contemporaries of my father...

I'M SORRY. YOU MUST STOP DOING THOSE ASIDES. IT DOESN'T WORK.

You have to assess my motive. My motive has always been that my concern for the defense of the United States. I was born and raised that way. I was a fighter pilot for that reason. I left the newspaper business and went to work in the Air Force as a civilian for that reason. I went on the National Security Council with Stuart Symington for that reason, and I went to work for Penta, for Convair and Floyd Odlum for that reason. It was there, a decade for that reason. I thought I was rendering the maximum service I could with my physical and my intellectual capabilities to the defense of my country. And not for the dollar.

FINE. LET ME JUST ASK YOU NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT THE KIND OF ACTIVITY THAT YOU WERE INVOLVED IN AND THE CIRCLE AS IT WERE OF CONNECTIONS THAT YOU HAD WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY POLITICIANS, WITH THE MILITARY, WITH THE CONTRACTORS THAT YOU REPRESENTED, AND HERE YOU WERE USING ALL THOSE CONNECTIONS AS EISENHOWER MIGHT HAVE SEEN IT TO OPPOSE HIM IN AN ELECTION YEAR, DON'T YOU THINK THAT'S WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT WHEN HE SAID THE UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?

When um, the President Eisenhower, ah, bespoke the ah, the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex, he undoubtedly ah, had the sort of thing I was doing in mind. Ah, he was mistaken at the time in that there were, to the extent it was going on, it might have been going on, as you've already indicated. But ah, it was not an organized thing. Nowadays, in those days the budget was maybe 30 to 50 billion a year. Nowadays when it's $300 billion it is by force of circumstance and fact, a very close marriage between the... the military people and the industrial people to keep ah, the highly sophisticated weapons systems ah, in timely and ah, and ah, operable. Ah, he at the time, he uttered that phrase in a speech, ah, when he left the Pentagon. Ah, he was mistaken. He's....he's right in retrospect. That is he was mistaken in the fact that he implied there was an organized effort. People were just doing what they felt best for their own interests or their company or whatever interest at the time, ah, independent of each other. Then for instance, ah, Leon Johnson the...Medal of Honor hero over... he told me once that ah, he and Tuey Spocks had heard the President say, ah, take ah, Stuart Symington's and my name in vain as a hyphenated combination of what he meant by the military-industrial complex. Unhappily for the President's logic in that respect, I was some several years at Convair, and Stuart was some several years into the Senate. He was in no position to be you know a part of the military-industrial complex. Although he was still bespeaking a stronger defense. And...and criticizing President Eisenhower therefore.

I'M JUST GOING TO ASK YOU TO MENTION THAT AGAIN. SO YOU WERE ACTUALLY TOLD BY SOME PEOPLE THAT EISENHOWER HAD YOU AND SYMINGTON IN MIND. IS THAT RIGHT?

As an example. Not the fundamental... Yes, the President had ah, apparently, according to Leon Johnson who is still around if you want to check it with him. Ah, Tuey Spocks was also present, but he's gone, when the President named Stuart and I as an...as an example of the sort of thing that bothered him, where the military,...he had Stuart in the military when Stuart was some years into the Senate at the time. But that...we were not his idea of...we were., we didn't engender the idea, but he used us as an example, mistakenly, as I've already told you that there were years that I did, went by after I came to Convair and Stuart was in the Senate that we simply talked on the phone once in a while. I was never associated with him in any political activities, although I would have been glad to if he'd asked me.

I'VE ONLY GOT ONE MORE QUESTION. WE HAVEN'T TALKED MUCH ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS WHICH IS WHAT THIS SERIES IS ACTUALLY ABOUT. LOOKING BACK ON THAT DECADE, DO YOU THINK THAT THERE WAS ANY WAY THAT THE GROWTH IN THE AMERICAN NUCLEAR ARSENAL COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?

Ah, the United States at the start of the --while I was in the National Security Council working for Stuart Symington, in 1950, Bernard Baruch, who was representing us at the United Nations, presented the plan to the President whereby the United States would disavow any further, the creation of any further nuclear weapons if the Soviets would agree not to go forward with their experiments toward one. They didn't have one yet. And that presentation was made to the UN The UN informally endorsed it, but the Soviets by, I think they were absent at the time, ah, ah, in any case they didn't join in the...in the ah, in the agreement and then went forward with their... But we did at that time, yes. Had they agreed at that time, ah, not to arm with the bomb, we would have given up the bomb at that time, according to President Truman's plan. That's 3-5 years ago. And now of course Gorbachev is saying, they'll give up the nuclear weapons if we will. Of course, if indeed we both give up our nuclear weapons, then it's kiddy bar the door for the overwhelming conventional forces that the Soviets have throughout Europe and we will have lost our allies and our...and our...our national security in the process. It's a...it's a 20, what is... what is the problem anyway? Catch 22, that's right. Ah, if you get if you rid yourself both sides of the nuclear weapons, which won't happen for a lot of obvious political reasons on both sides, ah, no matter how people are with the idea. If that happens, meanwhile ah, the...the Soviets are armed five to ten times what we are, anywhere on any front, anywhere in the world in conventional weapons, and they will without question do to the rest of Europe what they've done to Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Hungary. At the moment they have the freedom to do so without a threat from us implied by nuclear weapons in our arsenal. It's a Catch 22.

OK, GOOD. LET'S LEAVE IT THERE.

Could I just make a little speech on...on Star Wars?

WELL, IF YOU LIKE, BUT I CAN'T USE IT IN THIS PROGRAM.

How about, I want to go back as...as to the bomb, the hydrogen bomb being the key that opened the door to space programs. Can I do that?

IF YOU LIKE. WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT TO —?

Well, there...our space program as we know it today would be years and years later than it is had not the urgent requirement for an Atlas Missile ah, that could...had not the hydrogen bomb and its light weight created an operable Atlas missile, which in turn with its three engines then pushed the Mercury Astronauts into orbit, and ah in the form of the Centaur extrapolation sent our people, our Apollo program to the moon and out into space. We'd have... had we not created the hydrogen bomb when we did ah, for military purposes, we would not be within a decade, I think, of where we are today in space. And the Soviets meanwhile would have plugged right along with their military approach to space. They're not concerned with our political, I mean our propaganda sort of thing, but the moon and so forth.