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

Secret NOFORN
Chapter 4
160

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 first 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. $ ^{2} $

To conceal the difficulties in their missile program, Soviet leaders 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 intercontinental ballistic rockets has been organized." Several months later Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky stated that these missiles were capable of hitting "precisely any 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 machine and the automobile and the telephone and other things. . . Why should you be so respectful of this statement this morning, if you are not so respectful of the other three?" Nevertheless, the Soviet statements were taken at face value by most Americans, including many members of the intelligence community.