Credibility gap is a term that came into wide use with journalism , political and public discourse in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, it was most frequently used to describe public skepticism about the Lyndon B. Johnson administration's statements and policies on the Vietnam War . It was used in journalism as a euphemism for recognized lies told to the public by politicians. Today, it is used more generally to describe almost any "gap" between an actual situation and what politicians and government agencies say about it.
56-497: The term "credibility gap" came against a background of the use of the term " missile gap ", which the Oxford English Dictionary lists as first being used by then-Senator John F. Kennedy on 14 August 1958, when he stated: "Our Nation could have afforded, and can afford now, the steps necessary to close the missile gap." "Doomsday gap" and "mineshaft gap" were the imagined post-apocalyptic continuations of this paranoia in
112-767: A nuclear bomb from their bases to the US. The aircraft was the Myasishchev M-4 Bison . Over the next year and a half, the rumors were debated publicly in the press and soon in Congress . Adding to the concerns was an infamous event in July 1955. At the Soviet Aviation Day demonstrations at the Tushino Airfield , ten Bison bombers were flown past the reviewing stand, flew out of sight, quickly turned around, and then flew past
168-578: A "mine shaft gap" between the US and Soviets. In reference to the alleged "missile gap" itself, General Turgidson mentions off-hand at one point that the United States actually has a five-to-one rate of missile superiority against the USSR. The Soviet ambassador himself also explains that one of the major reasons that the Soviets began work on the doomsday machine was that they realized that they simply could never match
224-469: A clear advantage for the US, were far above the actual count. Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it was soon demonstrated that the gap was entirely fictional. John F. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term in 1958 as part of the ongoing election campaign in which a primary plank of his rhetoric was that the Eisenhower administration was weak on defense. It was later learned that Kennedy
280-471: A pre-emptive strike on them. As Corona could find the sites no matter where they were located, the Soviets decided not to build large numbers of R-7s and preferred more-advanced missiles that could be launched more quickly. Later evidence has emerged that one consequence of Kennedy pushing the false idea that America was behind the Soviets in a missile gap was that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and senior Soviet military figures began to believe that Kennedy
336-503: A professor at the University of Chicago , accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment in his 1974 foreign policy article, "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?" Wohlstetter concluded that the US was allowing the USSR to achieve military superiority by not closing a perceived missile gap. Many conservatives then began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of
392-459: A spade a bloody shovel. This country is in an undeclared and unexplained war in Vietnam. Our masters have a lot of long and fancy names for it, like escalation and retaliation, but it is a war just the same." The advent of the presence of television journalists allowed by the military to report and photograph events of the war within hours or days of their actual occurrence in an uncensored manner drove
448-593: The 1964 Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove . The term "credibility gap" was widely in use as early as 1963, according to Timetables of History . Prior to its association with the Vietnam War, in December 1962, at the annual meeting of the U.S. Inter-American Council, Republican US Senator for New York Kenneth B. Keating praised President John F. Kennedy's prompt action in the Cuban Missile Crisis , but he said there
504-474: The American public. Nikita Khrushchev asserted that long-range missiles were rolling off the assembly line "like sausages", a bluff that contributed to the perception of a missile gap. Political opponents seized on the event, helped by Eisenhower's ineffectual response, as further proof that the US was "fiddling as Rome burned." Senator John F. Kennedy stated "the nation was losing the satellite-missile race with
560-500: The B-52 but also grudgingly accepted calls for expanded air defense. The Air Force was generally critical of spending effort on defense after it had studied the results of the World War II bombing campaigns and concluded that former British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin 's pre-war thinking on the fruitlessness of air defense was mostly correct: " The bomber will always get through ." Like
616-532: The British, the US Air Force concluded that money would better be spent on making the offensive arm larger to deter an attack. The result was a production series consisting of thousands of aircraft. Over 2,000 B-47s and almost 750 B-52s were built to match the imagined fleet of Soviet aircraft. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower had always been skeptical of the gap. However, with no evidence to disprove it, he agreed to
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#1732855482585672-474: The CIA stated that the program appeared to be winding down, not speeding up, and that the estimates for the force should be decreased. The Air Force, however, remained skeptical. In May 1958, they instead suggested that production was being carried out at Kuybyshev , Kazan , and Irkutsk , and the aircraft being delivered to Engels-2 , Bila Tserkva , and Orsha Southwest - all locations that had not yet been overflown. They suggested these be photographed, with
728-560: The CIA, called it "a million-dollar photo". At least in official circles, the gap had been disproved. As it was later discovered, the M-4 was unable to meet its original range goals and was limited to about 8,000 kilometers (5,000 mi). Unlike the US, the Soviets still lacked overseas bases in the Western Hemisphere and so the M-4 could not attack the US and then land at a friendly airbase. Production ended in favor of an improved version,
784-513: The Director of the CIA, Allen Dulles , in July 1960. Still, Kennedy continued to use the same rhetoric, which modern historians have debated as likely being so useful to the campaign that he was willing to ignore the truth. In January 1961, McNamara, the new secretary of defense, and Roswell Gilpatric , a new deputy secretary, who strongly believed in the existence of a missile gap, personally examined photographs taken by Corona satellites. Although
840-489: The Eisenhower administration for allowing a missile gap to exist. Hawkish members of Congress, such as Senator Stuart Symington , continued to beat the drums about the alleged missile gap in an effort to pressure the president to increase spending on military hardware . President Eisenhower resented being bullied based on inaccurate information and was beginning to formulate the term " military-industrial complex " to describe
896-401: The Eisenhower administration. Senator Symington accused the administration of “deliberately manipulating the intelligence estimate to mislead the public.” Journalists, such as Joe Alsop, charged the Eisenhower administration with “gambling the nation’s future” on questionable intelligence. Alsop’s ideas would appeal to John F. Kennedy who incorporated them in his election campaigns that criticized
952-502: The NIE's record on estimating the Soviet missile force in the 1970s was mixed. The NIE estimates for initial operational capability (IOC) date for MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs were generally accurate, as were the NIE predictions on the development of Soviet strategic air defenses. However, the NIE predictions also overestimated the scope of infrastructure upgrades in the Soviet system and underestimated
1008-540: The National Security Council acknowledged a missile gap with the Soviets and that they would possess over 1000 ICBMs by 1963. Later that month, The New York Times would publish an article that claimed that there was “clear evidence that the Russians [had] superiority in intercontinental ballistic missiles.” The distortions and inconsistencies caused by the inaccurate articles in the media led the public to mistrust
1064-531: The Soviet R-7 missile launchers were large and would be easy to spot in Corona photographs, they did not appear in any of them. In February, McNamara stated that there was no evidence of a large-scale Soviet effort to build ICBMs. More satellite overflights continued to find no evidence, and by September 1961, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the USSR had no more than 25 ICBMs and would not possess more in
1120-467: The Soviet Union because of… complacent miscalculations, penny-pinching, budget cutbacks, incredibly confused mismanagement, and wasteful rivalries and jealousies." The Soviets capitalized on their strengthened position with false claims of Soviet missile capabilities, claiming on December 4, 1958, "Soviet ICBMs are at present in mass production." Five days later, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev boasted
1176-540: The Soviet ambassador to Washington protested the high-altitude violation of Soviet airspace, a fact denied by Washington and reported on by the press. Curtis LeMay argued that the large stocks of missiles were in the areas not photographed by the U-2s, and arguments broke out over the Soviet factory capability, in an effort to estimate their production rate. In a widely syndicated article in 1959, Joseph Alsop even went so far as to describe "classified intelligence" as placing
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#17328554825851232-419: The Soviet missile count as high as 1,500 by 1963, while the US would have only 130 at that time. It is known today that even the CIA's estimate was too high; the actual number of ICBMs, even including interim-use prototypes , was 4. Although U2 intelligence programs provided unprecedented and reassuring evidence that there was a missile gap in favor of the United States, President Eisenhower’s administration
1288-534: The Soviet threat. That led to an exercise in competitive analysis, with a group called Team B being created with the production of a highly controversial report. According to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger , the USA had a six-to-one advantage in the number of nuclear warheads over the USSR by 1976. A 1979 briefing note on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of the missile gap concluded that
1344-469: The US was working along similar lines and wanted to avoid a "Doomsday Gap." As the weapon is set up to go off automatically if the USSR is attacked, which occurs as the movie progresses, the president is informed that all life on the surface will be killed off for a period of years. The only hope for survival is to select important people and place them deep underground in mine shafts until the radiation clears. The generals almost immediately begin to worry about
1400-418: The close nexus between U.S. politicians and the defense industry . In 1958, Kennedy was gearing up for his Senate re-election campaign and seized the issue. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of the term "missile gap" on 14 August 1958, when he stated, "Our Nation could have afforded, and can afford now, the steps necessary to close the missile gap." According to Robert McNamara , Kennedy
1456-475: The collection of photo-intelligence by high-altitude U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union in 1956, the Eisenhower administration had increasingly-hard evidence that strategic weapons estimates favoring the Soviets were false. The CIA placed the number of ICBMs to be closer to a dozen. Continued sporadic flights failed to turn up any evidence of additional missiles. But the White House and the CIA wished to protect
1512-621: The development of the U-2 to find out for sure. The first U-2 flights started in 1956. One early mission, Mission 2020, flown by Martin Knutson on 9 July 1956, flew over an airfield southwest of Leningrad and photographed 30 M-4 Bison bombers on the ramp. Multiplying by the number of Soviet bomber bases, the intelligence suggested the Soviets were already well on their way to deploying large numbers, with National Intelligence Estimate 11-4-57 of November 1957 claiming 150 to 250 by 1958, and over 600 by
1568-554: The discrepancy between evidence of Richard Nixon 's complicity in the Watergate break-in and his repeated claims of innocence. Since 2017, the term has been used to describe the Trump administration , particularly in relation to the use of what White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway called alternative facts . Missile gap In the United States, during the Cold War , the missile gap
1624-419: The discrepancy widely referred to as "the credibility gap". After the Vietnam War, the term "credibility gap" came to be used by political opponents in cases where an actual, perceived or implied discrepancy existed between a politician's public pronouncements and the actual, perceived or implied reality. For example, in the 1970s the term was applied to Nixon's own handling of the Vietnam War and subsequently to
1680-505: The escalation of American involvement in the war. A number of events—particularly the surprise Tet Offensive , and later the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers —helped to confirm public suspicion that there was a significant "gap" between the administration's declarations of controlled military and political resolution, and the reality. These were viewed as examples of Johnson's and later Richard Nixon 's duplicity. Throughout
1736-454: The expectation that it would also provide information on new equipment. By this time, after receiving a stern diplomatic note from the Soviets, Eisenhower had shut down the U-2 flights. To preserve some sense of plausible deniability , in 1957 the CIA had reached an agreement with MI6 and began training Royal Air Force pilots on the U-2. The group moved to Turkey in 1959 and began preparing for
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1792-635: The fighting capabilities of two forces were not new, as a "bomber gap" had exercised political concerns only a few years earlier. What was different about the missile gap was the fear that a distant country could strike without warning from far away with little damage to themselves. Concerns about missile gaps and similar fears, such as nuclear proliferation , continue. Promotion of the missile gap had several unintended consequences. The R-7 requires as much as 20 hours to be readied for launch so they could be easily attacked by bombers before they could strike. That demanded them be based in secret locations to prevent
1848-547: The future capabilities of the Soviet Union to produce ICBMs by members of the National Security Council leaked to the public causing the false notion of a missile gap. As members of the National Security Council, representatives of the U.S. Air Force pessimistically estimated that the Soviet Union could possess more than 800 ICBMs by 1963. One week after the National Security Council meeting, Washington Post reporter, John G. Norris, published an article that selectively reported and misinterpreted highly classified information that claimed
1904-580: The gap was used as a political talking point in the United States to justify a great increase in defense spending . One result was a massive buildup of the US Air Force bomber fleet, which peaked at over 2500 bombers to counter the perceived Soviet threat. Surveillance flights by the U-2 aircraft indicated that the bomber gap did not exist. On February 15, 1954, Aviation Week published an article describing new Soviet jet bombers capable of carrying
1960-407: The knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor. Warnings and calls to address imbalances between
2016-477: The mid-1960s. In fact, the U-2 had actually photographed the entire Bison fleet; there were no M-4s at any of the other bases. Follow-up missions over the next year showed increasing evidence that the Soviet military was actually at a very low level of activity. Further, the CIA received information from the factories that showed that production rate had slowed down. A follow-up report in April 1958 by Sherman Kent of
2072-593: The missions. The very first flight, on 6 December 1959 with pilot Wing Commander Robert ‘Robbie’ Robinson, photographed the Kapustin Yar missile test range, the Engels-2 air base, and the Kuybyshev bomber factory. They showed no sign of the bombers nor the production capacity for them, and demonstrated that the total number of Soviet bombers was far less than the inflated estimates of the CIA and Air Force. Allen Dulles , head of
2128-449: The near future. The missile gap was greatly in the US's favor. Satellite photographs showed the Soviets had 10 operational ICBMs, the US 57. According to Budiansky, the SS-6 and SS-7 missiles "took hours to fuel and had to have their unstable liquid propellant drained every thirty days to prevent them from blowing up on the launch pad; the new U.S. Minuteman missile , entering final testing,
2184-558: The period from mid-1958 to mid-1959." The numbers started to inflate. A similar report gathered only a few months later, NIE 11-5-58, released in August 1958, concluded that the USSR had "the technical and industrial capability... to have an operational capability with 100 ICBMs" some time in 1960 and perhaps 500 ICBMs "some time in 1961, or at the latest in 1962." However, senior U.S. leadership knew these estimates of existing Soviet missile capabilities were completely inaccurate. Beginning with
2240-507: The rate of American military production (let alone outproduce American missile construction). The doomsday machine cost only a small fraction of what the Soviets normally spent on defense in a single year. Bomber gap The bomber gap was the Cold War belief that the Soviet Union 's Long Range Aviation department had gained an advantage in deploying jet-powered strategic bombers . Widely accepted for several years by US officials,
2296-418: The secrecy of the source of the information--the photographs captured by the U-2 flying in illegal violation of Soviet airspace--and so they continued to hide the more accurate information that there were nearly zero Soviet ICBMs deployed. They kept the American public in the dark even though they knew from the start that the Soviets were monitoring the U-2 overflights. On the very day of the first U-2 overflight
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2352-478: The secret U-2 flights. Consequently, Eisenhower was frustrated by what he conclusively knew to be Kennedy's erroneous claims that the United States was behind the USSR in its number of missiles. In an attempt to defuse the situation, Eisenhower arranged for Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to be briefed on the information, first with a meeting by the Joint Chiefs of Staff , then Strategic Air Command , and finally with
2408-555: The speed of Soviet improvement in accuracy and proliferation of re-entry vehicles. NIE results were regarded as improving but still vague and showed broad fluctuations and had little long-term validity. The whole idea of a missile gap was parodied in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in which a doomsday device is built by the Soviets because they had read in The New York Times that
2464-622: The stands again with eight more. That presented the illusion that there were 28 aircraft in the flyby. Western analysts, extrapolating from the illusionary 28 aircraft, judged that by 1960, the Soviets would have 800. At the time, the Air Force had just introduced its own strategic jet bomber, the B-52 Stratofortress , and the shorter-range B-47 Stratojet was still suffering from a variety of technical problems that limited its availability. Its staff started pressing for accelerated production of
2520-521: The successful testing of an ICBM with an impressive 8,000-mile (13,000 km) range. Coupled with the US's failed launch of the Titan ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) that month, a sense of Soviet superiority in missile technology became prevalent. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 11-10-57, issued in December 1957, predicted that the Soviets would "probably have a first operational capability with up to 10 prototype ICBMs" at "some time during
2576-478: The technological achievements of the Soviets and sparked some worrying questions for the politicians and general public of the US. Although US military and civilian agencies were well aware of Soviet satellite plans, as they were publicly announced as part of the International Geophysical Year , US President Dwight Eisenhower 's announcements that the event was unsurprising found little support among
2632-411: The war, Johnson worked with his officials to ensure that his public addresses would only disclose bare details of the war to the American public. During the war the country grew more and more aware of the credibility gap especially after Johnson's speech at Johns Hopkins University in April 1965. An example of public opinion appeared in The New York Times concerning the war. "The time has come to call
2688-541: Was a dangerous extremist, who worked with the American military to plant the idea of a Soviet first-strike capability to justify a pre-emptive American attack. That belief about Kennedy as a militarist was reinforced in Soviet minds by the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis after the Soviets placed nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. A second claim of a missile gap appeared in 1974. Albert Wohlstetter ,
2744-508: Was accused of allowing the Soviet Union to accumulate a missile gap against the United States. The false claims behind a Soviet Missile gap began after CIA Director Allen W. Dulles presented new estimates of the Soviet’s nuclear program to the National Security Council on January 7, 1960. The report presented by Dulles showed the Soviet Union did not have a crash program to build ICBMs and that they only had 50 ICBMs operational. Disagreements between
2800-583: Was an urgent need for the United States to plug the "credibility gap" in U.S. policy on Cuba. It was popularized in 1966 by J. William Fulbright , a Democratic Senator from Arkansas, when he could not get a straight answer from President Johnson's Administration regarding the war in Vietnam. "Credibility gap" was first used in association with the Vietnam War in the New York Herald Tribune in March 1965, to describe then-president Lyndon Johnson's handling of
2856-521: Was asked about the missile gap. According to Budiansky, McNamara replied, "Oh, I've learned there isn't any, or if there is, it's in our favor." The room promptly emptied as the Pentagon press corps rushed to break the news. Paul Nitze , Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs , told the Soviet Ambassador to the United States that the missile gap favored the US. The president
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#17328554825852912-405: Was embarrassed by the whole issue; the 19 April 1962 issue of The Listener noted, "The passages on the 'missile gap' are a little dated, since Mr Kennedy has now told us that it scarcely ever existed." Now the president, Johnson told a gathering in 1967: I wouldn't want to be quoted on this.... We've spent $ 35 or $ 40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except
2968-400: Was informed of the actual situation during the campaign, which has led scholars to question what Kennedy knew and when he knew it. There has been some speculation that he was aware of the illusory nature of the missile gap from the start and that he was using it solely as a political tool, an example of policy by press release . The Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 , on October 4, 1957, highlighted
3024-490: Was leaked the inflated US Air Force estimates by Senator Stuart Symington , the former Secretary of the Air Force . Unaware that the report was misleading, Kennedy used the numbers in the document and based some of his 1960 election campaign platform on the Republicans being "weak on defense." The missile gap was a common theme. Eisenhower refused to refute the claims publicly for fear that public disclosure would jeopardize
3080-434: Was powered by solid propellant and could be launched in minutes." During a transition briefing, Jerome Wiesner , "a member of Eisenhower's permanent Science Advisory Committee,... explained that the missile gap was a fiction. The new president greeted the news with a single expletive "delivered more in anger than in relief". During McNamara's first press conference, three weeks into his new role as Secretary of Defense, he
3136-578: Was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR 's missiles in comparison with those of the U.S., causing a lack of military parity. The gap in the ballistic missile arsenals did not exist except in exaggerated estimates, made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force (USAF) figures. Even the contradictory CIA figures for the USSR's weaponry, which showed
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