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    "localId": "12009263",
    "label": "Memorandum of Conference with the President Authored by John S. D. Eisenhower",
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    "id": "12009263",
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    "title": "Memorandum of Conference with the President Authored by John S. D. Eisenhower",
    "description": "This memorandum records a discussion of the difficulty and need of intelligence on enemy Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) production.",
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    "url": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/presidential-libraries/eisenhower/186628/12009263.pdf",
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    "ocrText": "LOP SECRET\nApril 3, 1959\n0\nDwight\nMEMORANDUM OF CONFERENCE WITH THE PRESIDENT\n141\nApril 3, 1959 - 9:00 AM\nOthers present: Secretary McElroy\nDr. Killian\nSecretary Quarles\nGeneral Twining\nGeneral Goodpaster\nSecretary Murphy\nMajor Eisenhower\nMr. Allen Dulles\nMr. Dulles opened the meeting by describing the difficult and delicate\nproblem of obtaining information on the subject of enemy ICBM development.\nWe do not know whether the ICBMs being developed by the Soviets will be\nmobile or fixed; hardened or soft. The intelligence community considers\nthis about as high in importance as any intelligence we can get. Unless we\nhave unexpected breakthroughs, our only method of learning about this\nwould be another overflight with the U-2.\nThe President had considerable reservations on the advisability of flying\nsuch a mission at this time. These reservations he expressed as follows:\n(a) If the Soviets develop a sufficient number of ICBMs, it would ap-\npear that information on their degree of hardness and their degree of\nmobility would be of little value to us. (Here the President was referring\nto the Macmillan briefing which quoted the possibility eventually of a Soviet\nattack by 1500 missiles in salvo.) Here General Twining and Mr. McElroy\nagreed, so long as we are dealing in that order of magnitude. They pointed\nout, however, that we do not at this moment know of a single missile site\nunder construction.\n(b) Failure to find hardened sites will prove nothing. What we are\nseeking here is information, but negative information will have no value.\nHere the President pointed out the feasibility of concealment of ICBM pro-\nduction sites, quoting primarily the TITAN site near Denver. (This point\nhe brought out in connection with General Twining's remark that the Soviets\nDECLASSIFIED WITH DELETIONS\n96-m-0055/ E.O. 12958, SEC. 3.6(b)\nAgency Case\n5/20-1996-00194\nNLE Case\n94-164#1\nTOP SECRET\n- 2 -\ncan make ample use of our uncertainty if we have no hard intelligence\non their actual capabilities.)\n(c) With regard to Tyura Tam, the President felt that information\nobtained from that area would indicate nothing as recent progress of actual\nconstruction. In this connection, he cited the great difficulty of concealing\nconstruction while it is under way. He does not feel that our intelligence\non this matter must be obtained \"this year or never. 11\nThe\n(d) The psychological impact on Khrushchev of our flying such a mission\nat this time would be very serious. We are currently in a state of negotia-\ntions over the Berlin crisis which threatens to be one of the most serious\nof our crises to date. As an example of the mood, he cited the statement\nmade recently by Khrushchev to Mr. Carlo Schmid of the German Socialist\nParty that no unilateral action would be taken by the Soviets until after the\ntermination of a summit meeting. He further cited the State Department's\napparently optimistic outlook for negotiations, as evidenced by their re-\nquesting his approval asking Khrushchev for information on our eleven\nmissing airmen (from the C-130 incident last fall). Since our U-2 flights\nhave been detected consistently for the past two years, we will inevitably\nbe needling Khrushchev by conducting such an action. This could have\nserious repercussions on the negotiating atmosphere we are trying to foster.\nMr. Murphy confirmed the President's view that Khrushchev would exact\na price for such action on our part.\nIn the course of the discussion, various other issues were brought out:\n(a) The unfavorable reflection of Soviet testing on their claims of\nhaving ICBMs in serial production.\n(b) The timing of our own production of a successor to the U-2, which\nDr. Killian estimated as two years.\n(c) The vulnerability of the U-2 to the Soviet YAK interceptor. Here\nMr. Quarles feels the U-2 is relatively safe so long as the Soviets have not\ndeveloped a reliable air-to-air missile. This was confirmed by Mr. Bissell\nand Dr. Killian by mentioning the mission last fall in which the Soviets\nscrambled fifty aircraft.\n(d) A comparison between Soviet and U.S. SAM capabilities. It was\nagreed that the Soviets apparently do not have a capability comparable to\nthat of NIKE (60, 000 feet altitude and\nrange for AJAX; 75, 000 feet\naltitude and\nfor HERCULES). If they did, the U-2 would not\nTOP SECRET\n- 3 -\nbe able to perform its mission.\nThe Dwight D.\nAs a result of this meeting, the President stated that he is not happy\nwith the idea of overflights at this time, but he said that he would dis-\ncuss the matter in detail with Secretary Herter.\nb.\nJohn John S. D. SD Eisenhower Sisenhower"
}