Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Subject: Re: Soviet plot to sabotage Apollo: nonsense?
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 18:23:54 GMT

In article <69g8m3$ldj@omnifest.uwm.edu>,
Chris Roth <croth@omnifest.uwm.edu> wrote:
>...Or does that story belong in the same bin as
>the imaginary bomber gap, missile gap, nuclear window of
>vulnerability, and MiG-fighter-in-Nicaragua ('84)? (An aside
>to youngsters: All of those four "incidents" never really happened.
>All were used to scare people about "godless commies" and
>preserve profits for military contractors...

I can't speak to the MiG incident, but at least some of the others come
under the heading of honest mistakes based on inadequate information.
It is simplistic and misleading to blame them on right-wing conspiracies.

If you don't *know* how many ICBMs the USSR has, do you base your plans
on the CIA estimates (which always said "not very many") or on the SAC
estimates (which naturally said "lots and lots", because SAC was in the
business of preparing for the worst case)?  The missile gap did not go
away because somebody exposed a deliberate hoax; it went away because
spysat images greatly reduced the range of uncertainty in the missile
count.  (And in a way this was a bit awkward, because the blanket of
secrecy on spysats was so absolute that this could not be mentioned at
the time.)

Similarly, the "window of vulnerability" was not entirely imaginary;
it was merely the result of basing policy -- or at least, policy
pronouncements -- on severely pessimistic assumptions in an area where
solid data was very hard to get.  (There are reasons to wonder whether the
USAF/USN estimates for the accuracy of *US* missiles are reliable; what,
then, of estimates about poorly-known Soviet missiles?)

Mind you, I don't deny that right-wing politicians and prosperous
contractors shamelessly and misleadingly exploited these issues for their
own ends (a phenomenon which is hardly confined to the political right).
But the issues themselves were not just concocted fairy tales.

It would be surprising if somebody, somewhere, in the Soviet covert-ops
apparatus had *not* thought about the possibility of sabotaging US space
operations.  (Nor was such speculation confined to the Soviets; the Apollo
guidance-system specs said that it had to be able to fly an entire lunar
mission, including landing, with no help whatsoever from the ground... for
fear that communications might be jammed or spoofed.  That requirement was
relaxed later.)
--
Being the last man on the Moon                  |     Henry Spencer
is a very dubious honor. -- Gene Cernan         | henry@zoo.toronto.edu

From: jamesoberg@aol.com (JamesOberg)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
Subject: Re: Soviet plot to sabotage Apollo: nonsense?
Date: 14 Jan 1998 04:18:09 GMT

<<Mind you, I don't deny that right-wing politicians and prosperous
contractors shamelessly and misleadingly exploited these issues for their
own ends,....>>

Uh, SORRY, Henry, the "missile gap" was shamelessly exploited by the Democratic
Party in 1960 against the Republicans and Eisenhower, and Kennedy used it to
nudge his narrow victory over Nixon -- who denied there was any such gap. So
are you saying that Kennedy compared to Nixon was "right wing"? Or are you just
making an honest mistake?

From: jamesoberg@aol.com (JamesOberg)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
Subject: Re: Soviet plot to sabotage Apollo: nonsense?
Date: 14 Jan 1998 04:19:38 GMT

<<The missile gap existed because
there was a lot of empty territory in which the Soviets could field ICBMs,
the Soviets were ahead of the US in some ICBM areas, and because US
intelligence planners made false assumptions about how the Soviets would
test and deploy their ICBMs (we essentially assumed that they would do it
the same way that we did and that implied a large ICBM force).>>

And because Khrushchev SAID there was such a gap. Don't forget that little
basis for the fear.

From: jamesoberg@aol.com (JamesOberg)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
Subject: Re: Soviet plot to sabotage Apollo: nonsense?
Date: 14 Jan 1998 04:15:21 GMT

<< Or does that story belong in the same bin as
the imaginary bomber gap, missile gap, nuclear window of
vulnerability, and MiG-fighter-in-Nicaragua ('84)? (An aside
to youngsters: All of those four "incidents" never really happened.
All were used to scare people about "godless commies" and
preserve profits for military contractors.>>

Boy, have you ever been living on another planet! The 'bomber gap' and 'missile
gap' were claims made BY THE SOVIETS themselves, and the latter gap became
quite real when the US stopped deploying new ICBMs in the 1960s and the Soviets
kept building and kept building and kept improving warhead accuracy.

Pentagon claims about expected Soviet military forces, historically, turned out
to be underestimates. Sorry to burst Parenti's  balloon in your face. Didn't he
also think that KAL-007 was a deliberate spy flight in 1983?

Re the sabotage story, I also recall reading some such claim, I figured it was
some defector looking to sell a book contract.

Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Subject: Re: Soviet plot to sabotage Apollo: nonsense?
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 16:04:40 GMT

In article <19980114041800.XAA17116@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
JamesOberg <jamesoberg@aol.com> wrote:
><<Mind you, I don't deny that right-wing politicians and prosperous
>contractors shamelessly and misleadingly exploited these issues for their
>own ends,....>>
>
>Uh, SORRY, Henry, the "missile gap" was shamelessly exploited by the Democratic
>Party in 1960 against the Republicans and Eisenhower, and Kennedy used it to
>nudge his narrow victory over Nixon -- who denied there was any such gap. So
>are you saying that Kennedy compared to Nixon was "right wing"? Or are you just
>making an honest mistake?

Note that I said "issues", plural.  Historically, most exploitation of
perceived defence inadequacies has been by the right wing; the missile gap
was an exception.
--
Being the last man on the Moon                  |     Henry Spencer
is a very dubious honor. -- Gene Cernan         | henry@zoo.toronto.edu