Word: symingtons
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...midst of the uproar over atomic energy and the TVA one day last week, Missouri's Democratic Senator Stuart Symington rose on the Senate floor to change the subject. The first Secretary of the Air Force (1947-50) and today the Senate's most informed man on air power, Symington brought up a problem which hardly anyone else was thinking about: intercontinental ballistic missiles...
...Each day that goes by," said Symington, "sees the relative military strength of the U.S. and its allies becoming weaker as against the growing strength of the Communists." For example: "The incredible destructive power of hydrogen warheads makes it possible to destroy a nation by launching a hail of ballistic missiles against it ... The most ominous aspect of this new weapon is that once launched, there is no defense against it. Such a missile does not depend upon electronic guidance as it approaches its targets, and therefore it cannot be thrown off course by electronic jamming . . . Will the Communists have...
...Must Build. "But," continued Symington, "we have gone 'jogging along, improvident, incompetent, waiting for something to turn up.' ... All of us know now that we have failed to stand our ground when we should stand, and are failing to build our strength while we still may have the time to build it ... God has given us the opportunity to defend [our] way of life through adequate military strength. The sooner we attain that strength, the sooner we can halt the present drift towards a helplessness which can only result in the loss of the free world...
McCarthy slurred at Symington as "Sanctimonious Stu," and once remarked: "I'm glad we're on television [so] millions of people . . . can see how low an alleged man can sink." Symington replied: "You'd better go to a psychiatrist." The new directions of attack seemed to indicate that McCarthy, in his own fantastic way, was trying for some kind of happy ending in the Republican family...
Back at the hearings, he called the signals for his two committee colleagues, Washington's Henry ("Scoop") Jackson and Missouri's Stuart Symington. Occasionally, Jackson got out of hand by worrying a point to death; Symington was caught with his monitored telephone calls showing, and probably gained nothing from his wrangling with McCarthy. But John McClellan saw to it that the net Democratic effect was to the good...