The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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160
Sec,et N6F6AN
Chapter 4
Launch of Sputnik,
4 October 1957
Premier Nikita Khrushchev asserted that the Soviet Union had an
ICBM capable of carrying a 5-megaton nuclear warhead 8,000 miles.
These statements seemed all the more ominous because, during this
same month of December, the firs:t attempt to launch the new US
Titan ICBM failed. In reality, all of the Soviet statements were sheer
propaganda; they had encountered difficulties with the SS-6 ICBM,
and the program was at a standstill. As a result, there were no ICBM
launches from Tyuratam between 29 May 1958 and 17 February
1959, a space of almost nine months.:
To conceal the difficulties in their missile program. Soviet lead­
ers continued to praise its alleged successes. At the beginning of
February 1959, Khrushchev opened the Soviet Communist Party
Congress in Moscow by claiming that "serial production of intercon­
tinental ballistic rockets has been organized." Several months later
Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky stated that these missiles
were capable of hitting "precisely ainy point" and added, "Our army
is equipped with a whole series of intercontinental, continental and
other rockets of long, medium and short range." When asked at a
press conference to comment on Malinovsky's statement, President
Eisenhower replied, "They also said that they invented the flying ma­
chine and the automobile and the tellephone and other things .... Why
should you be so respectful of this statement this morning, if you are
not so respectful of the other three?'"
3 Nevertheless, the Soviet state­
ments were taken at face value by most Americans, including many
members of the intelligence community.
' Lawrence Freedman. US lntell(~ttnce and the Soviet Strategic Threat. 2nd. ed.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1936). pp. 69-70.
' Ford Eastman. .. Defense Officials Concede Missile Lag:· Aviation Week, 9 Febru.:lf)'
1959, pp. 26-27.
Scerel