DEFENSE PICTURE: A ROLE FOR RIVERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300080034-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 9, 2006
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: December 7, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2006/01/30
Defense Picture:
A Role for Rivers
By Marquis Childs
OF ALL the characters in the cast that
will determine whether the United
States is to spend $30 billion to $40 bil-
lion on an anti-ballistic missile system,
none is more flamboyant - or unpre-
dictable than Rep. L. Mendel Rivers.
The South Carolinian with the dramatic
mane of silver hair and a manner to go
with it is chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee.
He might have come out of one of
William Faulkner's n o v e l s of the
Snopeses, the poor boy rising to power
and position in the remnants of the
aristocratic South. Seniority gave him
his chairmanship. and he exercises his
power with the imperial touch. As for
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNa-
mara, when he comes to Capitol Hill
to testify the chairman looks on him
frowningly as an emissary from a hostile
power.
Rivers is planning the kind of mission
to Puerto Rico that he led last January.
He orders an Air Force plane-using
Air Force planes to commute to Char-
leston and wherever the whim directs
him he considers his prerogative - that
will. take a number of committee mem-
bers to Ramey Air Force base near San
Juan. There in early January they will
plot the strategy to give McNamara
his comeuppance.
cv.0
THE REPUBLICANS with their vic-
tory of 47 seats in the House will carry
far more weight in the committee than
they did in the 89th Congress. If they
decide to make the "anti-ballistic missile
gap" a political issue it would be sur-
prising not to find Chairman Rivers
giving them tacit and perhaps open sup-
port. He led the committee last year in
adding nearly $1 billion to the defense
appropriation that McNamara insisted
the Defense Department did not need or
want.
Committee members, most of them on
.the conservative side, are singularly
susceptible to the pressures of big con-
tractors who are part of what President
Eisenhower called in his farewell ad-
dress the military-industrial complex.
In his zeal to keep the shipyards of- his
native state in operation Rivers has had
a running battle with McNamara for ap-
proval of two nuclear-powered frigates.
The frigates are still an angry gleam
in Rivers' eye.
Understandably in view of the enor-
mous complexity of the decision on the
anti-ballistic missile, members of the
committee with the best will in the
world are likely to be'swayed by emo-
tions. The whole matter is shrouded in
secrecy. The National Intelligence Esti-
mate, revealing what the Soviets have
done to place anti-ballistic missiles, is a
top-secret document for the eyes of a
half-dozen policymakers.
The story, so far as it is known, is as
follows. About five and a half years ago
the Russians began to build the sites
for anti-ballistic missiles around their
principal cities. After somewhat more
than a year the operation was suspended.
The reason for the suspension is con-
jecture - the possibility that they were
devising more sophisticated devices for
destroying incoming missiles at a much
greater height and at a distance of sev-
eral hundred miles from the target,
Then a year ago they began to build a
more extensive system.
McNamara will say only that despite
rumors that the Soviet system is poten-
tially more effective than any official
is ready to acknowledge he considers the
National Intelligence Estimate valid. On
this basis he reaffirms his 1964 state-
ment that there is no break in the stale.
mate foreseeable into the '70s. If either
of the two scorpions should try a first-
strike knockout the result would be
death for both.
cf.0 ----
rr HAS been said on apparently good
authority that the U>}1tg_.4tates had
anti-ballistic missile. If_ you don't build
it, we won't.
But in the opinion of the most-season-
ed Kremlinologists this has not pre-
vailed against a deep and growing under-
current of fear. Marshall D. Shulman of
llarvard's Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy and an associate of the
Russian Research Center there, wrote
recently in The Washington Post after
a stay in the Soviet Union that almost
everyone he talked to believed the John-
son Administration was on a course of
conquest. They simply did not credit the
President with sincerity in his expressed
desire to improve relations with the
Communist world.
McNamara has always been confident
that the United States with its fabulous
productive system could afford what-
ever the nation's defense needs might
be. He cannot escape seeing now, how-
ever, that the cost of the Vietnam War
is cutting deeply into p r o g r a in s for
domestic reform. And if on top of this
i, billion or so a year is added for a
Nike X system of questionable value
the cuts will be even deeper.
CJ 19G6, United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
By George C. Wilson
Waihtnaton Poet Staff Writer
The United States last year
underestimated the future pro-
duction of Soviet intercontin-
ental ballistic missiles, De-
fense Secretary Robert S. Mc-
Namara said yesterday in Aus-
tin, Tex., after meeting with
President Johnson.
But McNamara stressed that
the U.S, offensive missile
force was built big enough to
cover such underestimation
and would continue to have a
8 or 4 to 1 edge over the So-
viet force.
The Defense Secretary said
the 1.965 national Intelligence
estimate of future Soviet mis-
sile strength was proving to
be accurate for 1966, still
looked good for mid-1867 but
not for mid-1908.
"Evidence n o w suggests
that the Soviets In mid-1968
will have more ICBMs than
were predicted for that time
period by Intelligence esti-
ntates in 1065," McNamara
said.
"But we had more than an-
ticipated this development in
our planning," he added. "This
new Intelligence estimate,
therefore, has no basic impact
on our offensive strategic
force requirements."
McNamara then made these
three points, declaring "it is
vital" 'that they "are clearly
understood by the American
public:
? "Even if the new Intelli-
pence estimated for mid-1968
proves accurate, the United
Stales, without taking any ac-
t 6 ns beyond those already
plAUned, will continue to have
qualitative superiority over I
the Soviet Union in ICBMs'
at that time.
as many ICBMs today as the
latest national intelligence
estimate gives the Soviet,
Union several years hence.
? "Our strategic offensive
continue to have in the future
strength to inflict unaccept:
sor or any combination of ag
gressors."
The United States has a
force of about 1000 ICBMs
hacked up by a fleet of 41
carrying 16 nuclear4t i p p e d
are ready to fire. The plan is
to have a total ICBM force
Titan 2s.
IICBMs now. The worrisome
ligence officials, is that the
Sovict_s are increasing their
ICBM production rate. Quan-
tity production has always
1 well.
surances that the U.S. of-
fensive missile force will stay
well ahead of Russia's, his j
latest disclosure about Russian;
missile progress cannot help
but escalate the strategic bal-
eWinlT oil1 51
Approved For Release 2006/01/30 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000300080034-0