"Unpleasant Information"

No sooner did Sputnik I go into its orbit last Oct. 4 than Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, orbiting in his own familiar sphere, ordered a full-fledged tracking of U.S. preparedness. Last week, gaveling his seven-member Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee to order for the first three days of the hearing, Texan Johnson tersely outlined the Senate's objectives. Said he: "With the launching of Sputnik I and II and with the information at hand of Russia's strength, our supremacy and even our equality has been challenged. Our goal is to find out what is to be done."

The Johnson subcommittee got a dour estimate of U.S. strength from its first witness. In four hours of testimony, shaggy-browed, often emotional Dr. Edward Teller (TIME, Nov. 18) ran off a grim morning line on U.S. chances in the race for survival. The University of California physicist estimated that Russia is closing the gap in nuclear weapons, is about equal to the U.S. in aircraft and radar development, is ahead in ballistic missiles. Said Teller: "I would not say that the Russians caught up with us because they stole our secrets. They caught up with us because they worked harder. A Russian boy thinks about becoming a scientist like our young girls dream about becoming a movie star."

Pay & Priority. Moving from past and present to the potentials of the future, Teller predicted that the Russians "within the next decade or two" may be able to manage even the weather. Said he: "Please imagine a world in which the Russians can control weather in a big scale, where they can change the rainfall over Russia, and that might very well influence the rainfall in our country in an adverse manner . . . What kind of a world will it be where they have this new kind of control and we do not?"

Behind Teller came a top-name team of experts on science and military matters to criticize and suggest. Dr. Vannevar Bush, able wartime director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, urged a revamping of the Armed Forces Unification Act "so that we can have in this country unified central military planning that transcends the interest of any particular service." Lieut. General James Doolittle warned that the U.S. must overhaul its educational system. "Certainly," said he, "the scientist and the educator must be given more prestige and more pay." Beyond that, said Doolittle, the Defense Secretary needs the services of a new type of general staff, i.e., "an advisory military staff to assist him in resolving the honest differences of opinion that now occur between dedicated military people." Dr. John P. Hagen, director of Project Vanguard, insisted that if the U.S. had treated its own satellite as less of a bauble, had assigned it higher priority, "I think that we probably would have come very close to the same time [as Sputnik I], if not ahead of them."

"Sad & Shocking." To each of these witnesses the subcommittee pressed a single serious question: Is a missile czar necessary to speed the U.S. missile program? All but Vannevar Bush thought that one was. But when the Senators turned to testimony from Defense Secretary Neil H. McElroy, they were informed politely but firmly that the missile programs had a top man: Neil McElroy. Missileman William M. Holaday, explained the Defense Secretary, is missile "director," and "I consider that I am easily accessible to him when he needs the power that I happen to possess.'' As for President Eisenhower's new missile adviser, M.I.T.'s Dr. James Killian: "I do not believe it was intended at any point for Dr. Killian to come into the Defense Department for order-giving, and I do not believe that he thinks so."

Rounding out the three-day hearing, the subcommittee went behind closed doors with CIA Director Allen Dulles and his staff. U.S. intelligence officers crisply informed them that the Russians were far, far ahead of the U.S. in some important techniques, were moving ahead rapidly in military technology, were untroubled by budgets, manpower needs, or the necessity of competing with private industry for brains. One result, according to CIA: Russia has produced a handful (probably four) of submarines capable of launching nuclear-headed missiles from as far at sea as 900 miles.

Emerging from the briefing, the Senators quickly put their distress on record. "A sad and shocking story," said Missouri Democrat Stuart Symington. Said New Hampshire Republican Styles Bridges: "Very unpleasant information."

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