Memorandum of Conference with the President Authored by John S. D. Eisenhower

LUP SECRET April 3, 1959 MEMORANDUM OF CONFERENCE WITH THE PRESIDENT April 3, 1959 - 9:00 AM BE Others present: Secretary McElroy Dr. Killian Secretary Quarles General Twining General Goodpaster Secretary Murphy Major Eisenhower Mr. Allen Dulles Mr. Dulles opened the meeting by describing the difficult and delicate problem of obtaining information on the subject of enemy ICB M development. We do not know whether the ICB Ms being developed by the Soviets will be mobile or fixed; hardened or soft. The intelligence community considers this about as high in importance as any intelligence we can get. Unless we have unexpected breakthroughs, our only method of learning about this would be another overllight with the U-2. The President had considerable reservations on the advisability of flying such a mission at this time. These reservations he expressed as follows: (a) If the Soviets develop a sufficient number of ICB Ms, it would ap- pear that information on their degree of hardness and their degree of mobility would be of little value to us. (Here the President was referring to the Macmillan briefing which quoted the possibility eventually of a Soviet attack by 1500 missiles in salvo. ) Here General Twining and Mr. McElroy agreed, so long as we are dealing in that order of magnitude. They pointed out, however, that we do not at this moment know of a single missile site under construction. (b) Failure to find hardened sites will prove nothing. What we are seeking here is information, but negative information will have no value. Here the President pointed out the feasibility of concealment of ICBM pro- duction sites, quoting primarily the TITAN site near Denver. (This point he brought out in connection with General Twining¹s remark that the Soviets DECLASSIFIED WITH DELETIONS E.O. 12958, 9EC. 3.6(b) Agency Case 96-1-9855/0-1996-00194 NLE Case 94-164#1 T-11