“MR. GENERAL DYNAMICS”

“MR. GENERAL DYNAMICS”
 From the book "act Of Retribution".

Senate hearings into the TFX contract began on February 26, 1963 amidst growing nationwide publicity. During the many months of testimony which followed, it was revealed that Korth and Assistant Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatrick, were guilty of conflict of interest. In Gilpatrick’s case, it was discovered that General Dynamics was an important client of the law firm with which he was connected prior to his becoming Assistant Secretary. After Gilpatrick left the firm for public service, M. Tex Moore, a close friend and partner in the law firm, took his place as General Dynamic’s favorite source for
legal counsel. “The coincidence,” writes Roger Franklin, “seemed too neat for mere happenstance, and there were many in Congress who wanted to ask what part Gilpatrick might have played in the decisions” which led up to the TFX contract being awarded to General Dynamics-Fort Worth.

As for Korth, the circumstances surrounding the TFX contract award were even more incriminating, especially when it was discovered that while the TFX contract was being decided, the Navy Secretary continued to maintain close ties to several key executives of General Dynamics, whose Convair division was conveniently located in Korth’s home town, Fort Worth. When he was asked by Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, one of the senior members of the committee investigating the TFX contract award, to explain the seven separate visits he had from Frank Davis, Vice President of the Fort Worth General
Dynamics Division, while the TFX contract award was being deliberated, Korth casually replied: “This {Davis} was an old friend of mine who came to say hello, to have a cup of coffee and to have a visit with him. He is an old Navy man like myself. He is certainly interested in the Navy and he is interested in a country boy like me, coming up to the big city and finding out how he is doing.”

When the South Dakota Senator then inquired whether Korth was “connected with any business institutions in Fort Worth or elsewhere that do business with either of these two corporations {Boeing or General Dynamics}, he replied: “I do own stock . . . in the Continental Bank of Fort Worth which I did have business connections; that is, they had a small amount of business with the General Dynamics corporation. Whether they do today or not I do not know. I have made no inquiry and I don’t intend to make any inquiry.”

In this regard, Korth was being less than forthcoming, for not only did he remain in frequent contact with several senior General Dynamics-Convair executives (several of whom were close personal friends), after he became Navy Secretary,
he also retained a $160,000 stock option in the Continental Bank of Fort Worth.
In point of fact, far from severing his ties to the banking industry, Korth, instead, exploited his position as Secretary of the Navy by drumming up fresh clients. Indeed, so successful was Korth in this respect that Leon Jordan, the Comptroller
of Continental National Bank, wrote to him in September 1962 in praise of his efforts on behalf of the bank: “On today’s new account list that you have secured a $25,000 account from Neiman-Marcus for us and only a few days ago another
$25,000 savings account, the name of which I do not recall at the moment,” triumphantly proclaiming that, “it was probably more business than the people primarily responsible for new business have gotten in the past two or three months.”

Senate committee members were particularly disturbed by the manner in which Korth attracted investors. In letters he sent to potential clients bearing the Navy Secretary’s official seal, Korth not only heaped praise on Continental National as “a reputable and solid financial steward of its depositor’s funds,” he also offered to entertain clients of the bank aboard the Navy’s official yacht, the Sequoia.

Although the actual amounts involved in these transactions were relatively small, seldom exceeding $50,000, “if such paltry sums elicited the Navy Secretary’s personal attention,” comments Roger Franklin, “the committee was inclined to wonder how the bank looked upon its business with Convair,” a matter of particular concern to the Senate Committee.  Here, the Committee did not have far to search.

Shortly before he became Navy Secretary in January 1962, with his personal approval, Continental National loaned $400,000 in cash and credits to General Dynamics-Convair Division, Fort Worth. When asked by Senator Mundt to explain the nature of this particular loan, Korth argued that his bank’s loan to the Fort Worth airframe company was only part of a much larger transaction involving $20 million to the corporation by Chase Manhattan of New York,owned by David Rockefeller. (6) “{I}f General Dynamics Convair Division went to the wall,” writes Franklin, “{Continental National} would not only suffer with the rest of Fort Worth’s business community, it would also have trouble collecting one of the largest loans on its books;” hence, the main rea sonfor the loan. All of which gives added reason to suspect that Korth’s interest in securing the lucrative TFX contract for Continental National’s chief client, General Dynamics-Convair, was more than routine.

Throughout his testimony before the Senate Committee, Korth continued to insist that as “a man of integrity,” he was not guilty of any conflict of interest whatsoever between Continental National and General Dynamics. When Senator Mundt - who, at one point in his questioning of Korth, referred to him as “Mr. General Dynamics” - suggested that a motive other than patriotism may have played a major role in his decision regarding the TFX contract award to General Dynamics, Korth replied, somewhat disingenuously: “I am an American long before I am a resident of Fort Worth. If you think for a moment that I would permit my residence in Fort Worth and in Texas to influence my decision, you are completely wrong . . . so completely improper in implying this - that I am aghast.”

Nor, as it turned out, was Senator Mundt Korth’s only antagonist who was seriously concerned about his suspected improprieties as Navy Secretary. Others in Congress also had their doubts, despite Korth’s repeated protestations of innocence. Led by Senator John Williams, a Delaware Republican, several Congressmen petitioned the Justice Department to launch a full-scale investigation of what was being referred to in the media as “the TFX affair” to determine whether those involved in the TFX contract negotiations, including Korth, might be open to accusations of unethical conduct.  Senator Williams was joined by two ranking members of the Senate Committee, Democratic Senators Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Chairperson John McClellan, both of whom were demanding a wide-ranging inquiry into the whole sordid matter.

As the TFX incident gained nationwide notoriety, the possibility of a major scandal involving top officials in the Kennedy administration began to press heavily on the president and his brother, the Attorney-General. Soon, embarrassing questions concerning what was labeled by the media as “the TFX scandal” were being raised at presidential press conferences. Although the President was to escape the negative publicity that awaited his chief subordinates in the Defense Department, the fact that eight days before the final announcement was made awarding the TFX contract to General Dynamics, Defense Secretary McNamara had visited the President at the White House to inform him of the pending decision in favor of General Dynamics, did little to allay the public’s lurking suspicion of possible White House involvement. Even before the fourth rounds of proposals had been completed, McNamara was informing the President that “it looks as if general Dynamics would be chosen.”

MacNamara’s decision in favor of General Dynamics, we are told, was based on several key factors: the use of titanium by the Boeing design, “which was risky and might interfere with the ability to meet contract dates;” the General Dynamics proposal conformed “more closely than Boeing’s to the overriding ideals of low apparent development risk, more realistic cost estimation, and, in particular, more identical parts, i.e., more commonality, to the extent that 83.8 percent of the General Dynamics F-111A (the Air Force version), and F-111B (the Navy version), were interchangeable.” Although Boeing’s two versions appeared almost identical, the Boeing design “was faulted for electing to reduce the weight of its Navy version by substituting similar but lighter-gauge parts.

 But the commonality factor was judged to be only 60 percent and therefore {was deemed} inferior to the General Dynamics proposal.” Vice President Johnson, meanwhile, fanned the flames of controversy over the TFX affair still further by hinting, during his December 12 visit to the Convair plant, that he played a major role in the final decision. Proclaiming the twentieth-century as “one of the most exciting, challenging times in the history of the world,” Johnson declared triumphantly that, “Texas is going to have a little chunk of the century,” an obvious reference to the recently awarded TFX contract.  Writes Roger Franklin, “it was hardly surprising that critics of the contract and the administration took to calling the plane the LBJ rather than the TFX”

In the face of repeated calls in Congress demanding an official investigation by the Justice Department, the President and the Attorney-General were forced to act. Robert Kennedy had already received several confidential briefings from influential Democrats both inside and outside Congress who had warned him about the grave seriousness of the situation and its political repercussions on the upcoming presidential election in 1964. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Clark R. Mollenhoff, then Washington correspondent for the Des Moines Register, recalls the Attorney-General’s reaction when he called on him one day at the Justice Department carrying with him a five page synopsis of the unfolding scandal and a summation of the latest charges. He was told: “It was all McNamara’s business,” stated Mollenhoff. “He said he had no intention of getting {the Justice Department} involved under any circumstances.”

Nonetheless, when Senator Mundt took the initiative by asking Senator McClellan’s investigators to begin inspecting Continental National’s correspondence files to determine if Korth (who, incidentally, was himself a prominent Democrat and LBJ protégé), had, in fact, severed all ties to his former employer following his appointment as Navy Secretary as he was required to do by law, the Attorney-General, we are told, anxious to avoid further embarrassment to the President, felt obliged to call for Korth’s resignation.

To resolve the matter once and for all, it was agreed that the President, together with the Vice President, Fred Korth, Governor Connally and prominent Texas Democrat, Homer Thornberry, meet in El Paso where they could also discuss the President’s forthcoming trip to Dallas. It was here, in this Texas border-city, that Fred Korth’s fate as Secretary of the Navy would be decided.

How does this scandal differ from any other defense procurement scandal? How egregious was the corruption relative to the standards of the day?

I have a hard time seeing how this scandal would be a motivation for the JFK assassination. If anyone was willing to use murder to stop the inquiry, a more reasonable and lower risk target would be one of the Senators pushing the investigation such as Henry Jackson. Murder might not even be necessary as it would be easy to find a personal scandal to discredit a politician.

At least the theory has one thing going for it. Unlike the JFK assassination being motivated by a desire to provoke an invasion of Cuba which did not happen, I don’t believe anyone was fined or imprisoned as a result of the scandal and General Dynamics was not dropped as the contractor.

lanceman wrote:How does this scandal differ from any other defense procurement scandal? How egregious was the corruption relative to the standards of the day?

I have a hard time seeing how this scandal would be a motivation for the JFK assassination. If anyone was willing to use murder to stop the inquiry, a more reasonable and lower risk target would be one of the Senators pushing the investigation such as Henry Jackson. Murder might not even be necessary as it would be easy to find a personal scandal to discredit a politician.

At least the theory has one thing going for it. Unlike the JFK assassination being motivated by a desire to provoke an invasion of Cuba which did not happen, I don’t believe anyone was fined or imprisoned as a result of the scandal and General Dynamics was not dropped as the contractor.

That's because the inquiry was dropped after the assassination. 

Inquiries that you do not control yourself sometimes develop lives of their own and find more than expected. 

As it is, this was treated by the press as a growing scandal. You assume it went no deeper than what is known now, but who knows what else it may have uncovered if it had not been stopped?

What makes Korth a person of interest goes beyond this scandal and his forced resignation.

-He knew the Oswald family from being Edwin Ekdahl's lawyer.

-His wife was related to Roy Sansom Truly. Truly himself was almost cerrainly the inside man in the plot.

-His wife and Truly were related to Robert Sansom whose office was where Oswald got his paper on life in Minsk and the factory typed up. The information in that would have certainly been of interest to intelligence analysts.

-Marguerite claimed that Korth had some control over the life of Lee and helped get his early exit from the Marines.

-Korth almost certainly had close ties to ONI. 

-Korth separated from his wife soon after the assassination.

-His daughter allegedly committed suicide in May 1969 using a shotgun (females statistically do not use firearms to commit suicide). She was found by her husband, Alex Sheshunoff who was a lawyer involved mainly in venture capital deals. They had both been given life membership of Texas University the month prior. In 1969, he was doing deals with Hughes Aircraft regarding capital for research.  

Does all of this make Korth the mastermind?

Who knows. Involved is as far as I'll go. Others no doubt had different motives for involvement.

My guess is that the JFK assassination has something to do with Cuba and this is why the US still does not recognize Cuba even though we gladly do business with Vietnam despite the war. The US will intervene all over the globe (even on Russia’s doorstep) and certainly in Latin America but we don’t seem to fuck with Cuba (as far as I know) even though it doesn’t have nukes and I don’t think Russia gives a shit about it anymore. 

It will be interesting if the current Cuban government falls, its archives are opened and insiders start talking. Could be very embarrassing.

Korth with his daughter.

And guess who made contact with Marina almost immediately upon her arrival in Fort Worth in mid - 1962?

Max Clark.
MEMO: THE LEE HARVEY OSWALD CASE #351164 (ADDRESS BOOK)
biography of Max Clark Maxwell Edward Clark
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9836&relPageId=3
“Max Edward Clark was employed by Convair, a division of General Dynamics Corporation, Fort Worth, Texas, as a “Supervisor of Industrial Security and Investigation”, requiring access to classified matter up to and including, Top Secret”.

Steve Thomas

Steve Thomas wrote:And guess who made contact with Marina almost immediately upon her arrival in Fort Worth in mid - 1962?

Max Clark.
MEMO: THE LEE HARVEY OSWALD CASE #351164 (ADDRESS BOOK)
biography of Max Clark Maxwell Edward Clark
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9836&relPageId=3
“Max Edward Clark was employed by Convair, a division of General Dynamics Corporation, Fort Worth, Texas, as a “Supervisor of Industrial Security and Investigation”, requiring access to classified matter up to and including, Top Secret”.

Steve Thomas

Steve, I think you were spot on with this comment on the EF:

In the early 1960's, the Soviets were interested in two things: atomic weaponry and space travel.

You were possibly hinting about why Marina was permited to leave the USSR and why she ended up in that area of America.

Funny thing. The fake American town in the Ukraine used to train  agents going to the US, had ranch-style suburban homes.

Marina spent two weeks without Lee in the Ukraine after marrying him.

The Paines moved into that Irving  ranch style home in the fall of 1959. Fall of 1959 was when Lee entered the Soviet Union.

Lee went to the Soviet Union after the commencement of the US-USSR exchange program began. This included everything from student exchanges through to technical and scientific data.

The hawks in both administrations were against the exchange of military science and tech. The US at least, got creative with how to exchange without looking like traiters themselves.

Two things of great interest to the Soviets. 

Heat protection for rocket re-entry

Radar for detecting underground nuclear bomb testing

The US had both problems covered. 

Robert Webster gave the Soviets the data for the heat-protecting spray guns and was sent to a secret lab to work on it. 

Oswald was a Marine radar operator with experience as a "runner" delivering sensitive maerial to the docks in New Orleans. 

Oswald threatened to give the Soviets whatever information he had.

The US consul "refused" to take his denunciation and kept his passport. The Soviets refused him citizenship and issued him stateless persons papers. Those two actions combined allowed him to return to the US. In the interim, he was sent to an experimental workshop of a domestic radio factory. That experimental workshop had been located in a satelite country during WWII. During the war, it specialized in military radio and radar.

Nixon, btw, had held talks in the Soviet Union while there about the issue of how to handle marriages between citizens of each country... specifically the issue of free choice of where to live. 

Somewhat speculative:
I believe there was a last minute add-on to Oswald's mission which put an end to his dream of attending Albert Schweitzer College (which was going to be his "reward"). I also believe that the whole deal with the trip had quid quo pro  between the Superpowers attached to it.

Highly speculative:
RFK knew his brother's death was a conspiracy because he knew who Oswald was and what he had been doing. That is why he could say jack shit or cause waves.  Oswald was a tiny cog in a massive wheel, and that wheel had to keeo turning. As oresident it would be different. He could expose the perps without putting a wrecking ball through the thin veneer of democracy they clung to - achieveable by doing exactly what the WC did - control the narrative.

Steve Thomas wrote:And guess who made contact with Marina almost immediately upon her arrival in Fort Worth in mid - 1962?

Max Clark.
MEMO: THE LEE HARVEY OSWALD CASE #351164 (ADDRESS BOOK)
biography of Max Clark Maxwell Edward Clark
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9836&relPageId=3
“Max Edward Clark was employed by Convair, a division of General Dynamics Corporation, Fort Worth, Texas, as a “Supervisor of Industrial Security and Investigation”, requiring access to classified matter up to and including, Top Secret”.

Steve Thomas

Steve, what do you think was Clark’s motivation in contacting Marina Oswald? To pass on classified material regarding Convair projects? Your link indicated that one source identified Clark as a potential security risk but it doesn’t indicate what the ultimate disposition of the allegation was.

Looking at the Marina Oswald thread on the EF, it was suggested that Marina presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area would be useful to Soviet intelligence due to the concentration of aerospace industries in the region. I don’t know how useful Marina would be for such an effort other than as a honeypot to entrap knowledgable insiders.

By 1962, the Soviets had long solved their materials problems with afterburners (the Soviet MIG-17 had afterburners in the late 1950s) and heat shields for return of spacecraft (Sputnik 5 in 1960 successfully returned to earth with two dogs and Yuri Gagarin’s 1961 orbital flight confirmed the success).

lanceman wrote:

Steve, what do you think was Clark’s motivation in contacting Marina Oswald? To pass on classified material regarding Convair projects? Your link indicated that one source identified Clark as a potential security risk but it doesn’t indicate what the ultimate disposition of the allegation was.

Looking at the Marina Oswald thread on the EF, it was suggested that Marina presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area would be useful to Soviet intelligence due to the concentration of aerospace industries in the region. I don’t know how useful Marina would be for such an effort other than as a honeypot to entrap knowledgable insiders.

By 1962, the Soviets had long solved their materials problems with afterburners (the Soviet MIG-17 had afterburners in the late 1950s) and heat shields for return of spacecraft (Sputnik 5 in 1960 successfully returned to earth with two dogs and Yuri Gagarin’s 1961 orbital flight confirmed the success).

lancerman,

It's just a hunch that I have; that Marina was sent here, to either receive information from someone, or to deliver information to someone.
I don't have any solid information, it's just a hunch. It goes back to October, 1961, when Marina went on vacation by herself, six months after she and Lee were married. Lee wrote a letter to his mother that the separation was "mutually agreeable", and I went, hmmmm...

Steve Thomas

greg_parker wrote:pot on with this comment on the EF:

In the early 1960's, the Soviets were interested in two things: atomic weaponry and space travel.

You were possibly hinting about why Marina was permited to leave the USSR and why she ended up in that area of America.

Greg,

If you read through the State Department cables {the Warren Commission Exhibits in the mid to upper 900's}, you begin to realize that it wasn't the Soviets who were standing in the way of Marina coming to the U.S., it was the Americans; in particulat, the State Department.
I don't believe that Marina was "permitted" to come to the U.S. She was sent here.

Steve Thomas

Some other alternatives:

1. Marina allowed to leave because being left behind as a single mother in the USSR she would be “damaged goods”. If her relatives had the right political connections, they might be able to swing a favor.

2. If Oswald was an intelligence project or the Soviets suspected he was, Marina could be allowed to leave to monitor Oswald, the idea being Oswald would also be working on other intelligence projects and who knows what fruit that would bear. I’ve suspected that the US government was far more interested in Marina than Oswald. They had to be suspicious of her. I would also think they’d be reluctant to use Oswald for anything sensitive until Marina’s bona fides were established. Marina didn’t have enough technical knowledge to conduct any espionage on engineering or scientific developments for the USSR other than serving as a courier and it might be years before she wasn’t under suspicion.

“I also believe that the whole deal with the trip had quid quo pro  between the Superpowers attached to it.”


In his book, “Out of the Shadows”,  CIA Director Robert Gates described a post-USSR collapse dinner meeting between CIA and KGB higher ups. He made it sound like a post-game wrap up session. One wonders just how much of the Cold War was staged. Was the removal of JFK and later, Khrushchev a quid quo pro? Yes, I realize this is pretty “out there”. This is why I asked you (Greg P.) what you meant by saying “The cold war ran on bullshit” a while back.


Gates also mentioned he was shocked at the antiwar posters many of the analysts displayed when he was hired on by the CIA in the late 1960s. The CIA was always more sober about progress and troop counts during Vietnam and McCone was opposed to removing Diem. This is one of the reasons I don’t think JFK was removed because of Vietnam. Of course, the field operatives such as Howard Hunt might have had a different culture from the analysts.

This Youtube video proposes that Roscoe White and Robert Oswald both worked at Convair in 1956-57. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in14o-6X4sw

Does anyone have any idea whose Youtube channel this is? It appears to have been created in the past couple of months but has a lot of videos. He presents some ideas I don’t agree with such as JD Tippit was present at the grassy knoll during the assassination but was removed by an ambulance!

Nevertheless, another video presents some intriguing information explaining Warren Commission by a Johnny Pardis who managed another shoe store near the Texas Theater that sounds like what Johnny Brewer claimed to do. If this guy’s hunch is correct, Oswald would have approached the Texas Theater from the west instead of the east as the WC narrative has it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e1yJnp4ZuA&t=338s

Firstly,  in regard to th meeting I said Nixon had regarding marriages between citizens of each country - Nixon followed up that meeting with the following letter:

Moscow, August 1, 1959.

DEAR MR. KHRUSHCHEV: In the course of our talks last Sunday. I ha occasion to speak of certain persons, American citizens and relatives of American citizens, who desire to be reunited with their families in the United States, and said I would write you on the subject before my departure. In pursuance of this talk, I enclose the names and latest known addresses in the Soviet Union of a number of those persons whose situation I believe merits the compassionate attention of both our
Governments.

Source: Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 64 D 560, CF 1416. No classification marking.

A list of names of Soviet residents and names and addresses of their relatives in the United States who wanted them to come to America is in the briefing book on Nixon's visit.(Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 64 D 560, CF 1416).

Nixon's letter continued...

The United States stands ready to admit these persons under our immigration laws. I hope the Soviet Government will also find it possible, for its part, to facilitate their departure. In the interests of a continuing improvement in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, I believe that matters such as this, involving principles of non-separation of families which we both support, should not persist as irritants to larger solutions. In this regard, I can state that the United States Government does not stand in the way of persons including its own citizens who desire to depart from the United States to take up residence in the U.S.S.R. The only case which I know to be of concern to the Soviet Government is, as I mentioned to you, that of the Kusmin children now pending in our courts; and I desire to report to you the intention of the United States Government to facilitate a solution of this matter. I very much appreciated your receptive and sympathetic attitude when we talked about this question and I shall be grateful for your attention.

Sincerely,
Richard Nixon

[color:1cad=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)]https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v10p1/d104



On quid pro quo: This goes back to the Test Ban Treaty and the Soviet sticking point regarding the ability of the US to detect underground testing. The Soviets argued that this tech could be used to improve nuclear arsenals as well as the stated aim of detecting tests. Ike's chief scientist wrote in his diaries that they devised all manner of devious ways to share such technology to nullify the issue. 

The deviousness was due to the fact that military science and tech was only to be shared (if at all) with NATO countries. 

I posit that Oswald was sent to the Soviet Union with blueprints for the radar in question. I believe he was to atttend the Albert Schweitzer College after completing this mission. Then, the mission changed. He was to "defect" and stay in the Soviet Union (whether it changed or they just failed to tell him this was the plan all along, who knows). I think the Soviets agreed to allow him to stay in Minsk and collect whatever data he could in return for marrying a Soviet girl and taking her back to the US. She does not even need to have any particular mission - just provide data on how she was treated, what appproaches are made, and whatever else she can find whithout arousing suspicion, particular in hooking up with members of the NTS.  

Oswald was briefed by Ed Keenan on what to expect as far as life in the SU. That was why Keenan was in Snyder's office when Oswald attended. That was Keenan's job description for the CIA - orientation as a Soviet expert. 

The CIA got the test ban talks back off track by making that U2 flight that they knew the Soviets could and would bring down. 

That was the real war. It was between those who wanted to peacefully co-exist and those who didn't. 

I further believe that Mikhail Platovsky made contact with Marina before being arrested and executed.

As it turned out, Marina was really a George deM soul mate - not a true believer in any system, but a survivor - even a victor of sorts, over both systems. 

On the Cold War running on bullshit - not sure how I answered before, but to me anyway, it seems pretty obvious with 20/20 hindsight. The Cold War was a propaganda war run by professional liars for personal gain, power and control. Everything was bullshit - from the so-called domino effect through to the reason for the VN war, and from the forcing of Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union through to the SU exaggerating its achievements and eventually callapsing by being sucked into brinksmanship. That "war" ran its course. Time for something new to take its place.

greg_parker wrote:

The CIA got the test ban talks back off track by making that U2 flight that they knew the Soviets could and would bring down. 

Greg,
There's been some suggestion over the years that the CIA deliberately gave the Soviets outdated technology to throw them off the track.

I'm sorry I didn't keep my notes, but one day I was researching Gary Powers and wound up reading some stuff in the CIA's Reading Room.
I was surprised to learn that, at the time, we also had U-3's and T-38's. I was also surprised to learn that U-2's could land on aircraft carriers.

Steve Thomas

Steve Thomas wrote:

greg_parker wrote:

The CIA got the test ban talks back off track by making that U2 flight that they knew the Soviets could and would bring down. 

Greg,
There's been some suggestion over the years that the CIA deliberately gave the Soviets outdated technology to throw them off the track.

I'm sorry I didn't keep my notes, but one day I was researching Gary Powers and wound up reading some stuff in the CIA's Reading Room.
I was surprised to learn that, at the time, we also had U-3's and T-38's. I was also surprised to learn that U-2's could land on aircraft carriers.

Steve Thomas

Yeah, pretty sure any nuclear testing detection systems they shared were about to become obsolete.

One of the predecesor programs - FICON - also had that capability. The portmanteau actually stood for Fighter Jet + reconnaissance. This was the program that Sylvia Hoke worked on as part of a team of psychologists looking at issues around manpower selection for the program.

After a weapons system reaches a certain level of domestic and certainly foreign sales, it’s probably in the financial interest of the military contractors and the military if it falls into the hands of an adversary as it will spur the demand for a new round of military spending to maintain the advantage over the adversary.