Why I like Ike (and Nixon)

[Platapus]

Why I like Ike (and Nixon)

Here is some declassified history that might be interesting.

The year was 1960. Dwight Eisenhower was the outgoing president. Richard Nixon was the Republican candidate and John Kennedy was the Democratic candidate.

The debates between Nixon and Kennedy were very close and heated. Nixon was considered an Ike mini-me, which was either a great advantage or a great disadvantage depending on your political position.

Kennedy decided that the best tactic to defeat Nixon was to attack the policies of Eisenhower. One of the political attacks against Nixon concerned what was called “The Missile Gap”.

Since the late 1950’s the Soviet Union successfully test launched several ICBMs, satellites, and space probes. The Soviets were winning the space race. There was a concern that the Soviets had more operational ICBMs than the United States did. Most of these concerns came from US Amy Intelligence reports. These Army reports always included recommendations for increased budgets for specific Army missile programs.

Ike was worried that these Army reports were self-serving as a few years before, the US Air Force reported a Soviet “Bomber Gap”. Naturally, the Air Force, based on their studies, wanted increased budgets for the Air Force. Ike was suspicious.

Imagine the DoD exaggerating a threat in order to garner increased military spending? Glad that sort of stuff doesn't happen these days.


Ike was distrustful of these reports, but had very little evidence to either support or challenge the military reports. The press took these “gap” stories and ran with them… so did Kennedy.

Kennedy made this missile gap a key weapon against the Republicans (Ike and Nixon). Kennedy accused Ike as being weak on defense by allowing these “gaps”.

What Kennedy did not know, but Ike did know was that in late 1960, the United States operated its first photo-reconnaissance satellite. CIA analysts at NPIC analyzed these photographs and were able to determine that the missile gap was greatly exaggerated.

Nixon, knowing that the election was close and being the target of Kennedy’s political attacks concerning the now disproved missile gap, asked Ike if this information could be used to challenge and discredit Kennedy.

Ike refused. This information and the system used was too sensitive to be used for political gain. Even though, it might cost the Republicans the election, this sensitive source must be protected. Nixon agreed.

So for the remainder of the presidential debates, Kennedy continued to hammer Nixon about the Missile Gap and the failure of the Republicans to properly address it. All this time, Nixon had, in his head, knowledge that the missile gap was exaggerated. But he never leaked this information and in fact made himself look bad by not having a good answer to this non-question.

Kennedy won the presidency by 112,754 votes. 49.7% to 49.6%. One of the closest presidential elections ever held.

We will never know if the outcome would have changed if Nixon was allowed to discredit Kennedy’s political attacks. But it might have made a difference.

Ike and Nixon knew this but decided to put country before party, even if this meant losing the presidency. Honour is not a word I use often when describing politicians. But in my opinion, Ike and Nixon showed real honour in the face of great, and ultimately realized, political risk.

Placing country before party is often bantered about as a political slogan. But here was an example of actually doing it. And accepting the consequences.

I wonder if any of today’s politicians would, if put in a similar position, would truly place country before party?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Ps. Dr. Charyk (first director of the NRO) said in a recent interview that shortly after Kennedy became president, Charyk was briefing Kennedy on the space reconnaissance programs and on the intelligence derived from these missions. When briefing on the Soviet Missile programs, Dr. Charyk said that Kennedy “gave a nervous laugh and said ‘well, I guess there was no missile gap after all’”.