Office of the Historian

168. Memorandum of a Conversation, Governor Adams’ Office, White House, Washington, November 27, 1957, 9:45 a.m.1

Washington, November 27, 1957, 9:45 a.m.

PARTICIPANTS

  • The Vice President
  • The Secretary of State
  • The Secretary of Defense
  • Governor Adams
  • Deputy Secretary Quarles
  • Mr. Percival Brundage
  • Mr. Mansfield Sprague
  • (and others)

There was a long discussion about accelerating the intermediate missiles program. I said that from a foreign policy standpoint I thought that the need could be met if, in addition to meeting our UK commitment, we were in a position to deliver one or two squadrons of missiles to the continent by the end of 1959. I said that getting ready to receive these would involve a series of measures, strategic, political, fiscal, and so forth, quite apart from the actual construction work which I understood would take about a year. Also there would be training required, etc. I felt therefore that a NATO program looking toward reception would probably take about two years from the present date. However it seemed to be the consensus that the program should be somewhat accelerated beyond that, largely for psychological reasons, and it was tentatively agreed to try to have the British missiles ready by the end of 1958 and the others for the continent by the middle of 1959. Mr. McElroy said that they would probably go into production with both Jupiter and Thor if they had to go now. I inclined toward a more conservative program, delaying the production until a choice could be made. However, it seemed to be felt that other factors were controlling and there was an irresistible pressure to accelerate the program and demonstrate our capacity as rapidly as possible.

[Page 698]

I emphasized that an accelerated program would on net balance be very serious if the cost of acceleration were, directly or indirectly, taken out of the Mutual Security Program. I said this program represented the struggle we were actually fighting on a daily basis and that our resources were stretched very thin. I referred to the fact that I understood the Bureau of the Budget was proposing to cut our figure by about $1 billion and that I said would be disastrous. Mr. Brundage said the figure of $1 billion was an exaggeration. Mr. Sprague said that it was at least $700 million.

JFD
  1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, General Memoranda of Conversation. Top Secret; Personal and Private. Drafted by Dulles.↩