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                                        National Security Policy 615
     The National Security Council: 6
     Noted and discussed an oral presentation by the Department of
 Defense on the status of the U.S. Military Program on June 30, 1957,
 based on Part 1 of NSC 5720.
     [Here follows agenda item 2.]
                                                   S. Everett Gleason
    6The paragraph that follows constitutes NSC Action No. 1807, approved
by the
 President on October 24. (Department of State, S/S-NSC (Miscellaneous) Files:
Lot 66
 D 95, Records of Action by the National Security Council)
 151.   Memorandum of a Conference With the President, White
        House, Washington, October 29, 19571
 OTHERS PRESENT
     Dr. Rabi
     Admiral Strauss
     General Cutler
     Mr. Gordon Gray
     General Goodpaster
     Mr. Gray said the purpose of the meeting was to enable Dr. Rabi
to present some findings of the Scientific Advisory Committee, regard-
ing an emergency defense against the Soviet ICBM to the President.
The essence of the recommendation was that, in view of a defect our
scientists feel exists in the Soviet atomic weapon for their ICBM, we
should proceed at once to develop an anti-ICBM system, particularly
for the safeguarding of SAC, and should give consideration to discon-
tinuing atomic tests at once, before the Soviets achieve the thing they
are now lacking in their weapon.
     Dr. Rabi said the Soviets must be expected to have an ICBM in the
fairly near future, and to have a warhead for it. The warhead may be
expected to have the same weakness our earlier ones had. By explod-
ing a 100 KT weapon at an altitude over 100,000 feet, within several
miles of the incoming Soviet weapon, pre-initiation of the Soviet
weapon, with a low order explosion, would be induced. To safeguard
SAC there should be initiated the construction of long-range radar for
    ' Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries. Secret; Restricted
Data.
Drafted by Goodpaster on October 30. For President Eisenhower's diary entry
on this
conference, see vol. xx, p. 754.