JAMIE RICHARDSON: The 60/20 podcast is produced by the JFK Library Foundation and made possible with the help of a generous grant from the Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation.
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MATT PORTER: On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into space. At 180 pounds and about the size of a basketball, the little satellite that could shocked Americans who thought the Soviet Union would never reach space first.
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Historian and former Nixon Library director Tim Naftali said Americans had previously taken comfort in American dominance in the fields of science and technology.
TIM NAFTALI: Sputnik both has a jarring effect on American assumptions about the country's technological superiority and it suggests an existential threat.
MATT PORTER: The success in space was also a national security issue. It turned the theoretical threat of a Soviet missile attack into a more concrete one.
TIM NAFTALI: The missile could be directed at an American city and just set off. Sputnik shatters certain American certainties and a sense of security.
MATT PORTER: Later in November, Eisenhower's fledgling space administration would try to launch its own satellite, the Vanguard TV-3, which would fail to reach orbit. The embarrassing public failure inspired nicknames of Kaputnik and Stayputnik. And a young Senator John F. Kennedy would begin to focus his energy on the lack of American progress in matching Soviet advances in technology.
TIM NAFTALI: This is the climate in which the presidential contest of 1960 occurs.
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RICHARD NIXON: While it is dangerous to see nothing wrong in America, it is just as wrong to refuse to recognize what is right about America.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Today our concern must be with our future-- for the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do. It is time, in short, for a new generation of leadership.
MATT PORTER: 60 years ago, Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon would face off in one of the closest elections in the nation's history. The election would leave lasting impacts on future races right into today.
In today's episode, we'll look at how the threat of creeping communism, particularly from the Soviet Union, influenced the 1960 campaign. And we'll see how 60 years later, threats from Russia--this time in cyberspace-- still linger over our elections. From satellite spies to Russian trolls, this is 60/20.
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From the moment Americans heard the pulsing beeps of Sputnik and read newspaper headlines the next day announcing "Soviets launch first artificial moon into space," the country became increasingly concerned about falling behind in the space race.
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Historian Tim Naftali said the USSR's very public success with Sputnik and the satellites that followed portrayed a dismal picture of the current administration.
TIM NAFTALI: The Eisenhower administration was complacent, had lulled itself into a sense of security-- a false sense of security. Meanwhile, the Soviets-- a totalitarian machine with all the efficiencies assumed of a totalitarian regime-- was just making missiles. By the way, as Nikita Khrushchev-- the head of that country-- said, "like sausages."
MATT PORTER: The perception gave Eisenhower's political opponents a chance to argue there was a so-called missile gap between the United States and the Soviet Union.
TIM NAFTALI: The gap was supposed to be between Soviet nuclear missile capability and that of the United States. And the gap would be so enormous that it could tempt the Soviets to launch a nuclear first strike and wipe out major American cities. That was the fear. And the sense was that the United States had been asleep at the switch.
MATT PORTER: In his pursuit of the White House, Senator Kennedy latched on to the missile gap theory. He argued that the Eisenhower and Nixon administration had left the country dangerously unequipped to deal with the Soviet Union's arsenal. This would become a common part of his campaign stump speeches, including this speech in Portland.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: But now they are no longer certain that America's lead will continue in the future when they see the missile gap widen and once our atomic monopoly begins to cease.
MATT PORTER: Naftali said the missile gap theory would plague the Nixon campaign, which was trying to portray Nixon as better equipped to deal with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s administration.
TIM NAFTALI: Nixon's problem was that he was presenting himself as someone who could deal with the Soviets. And yet, there were all kinds of issues that John F. Kennedy could raise in the campaign that suggested that the Eisenhower/Nixon team had not done a great job in foreign policy over eight years.
MATT PORTER: In the fourth presidential debate, Kennedy turned Nixon's own words against him when discussing the race for supremacy in space.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: We may have made more shots, but with the size of their rocket thrust and all the rest-- you, yourself, said to Khrushchev, "You may be ahead of us in rocket thrust, but we're ahead of you in color television" in your famous discussion in the kitchen. I think that color television is not as important as rocket thrust.
MATT PORTER: While there was public alarm over the missile gap, President Eisenhower, with his military experience, was confident the claim of Soviet superiority was overblown.
TIM NAFTALI: So even though Dwight Eisenhower did not believe that the United States was far behind the Soviets in missile technology, he couldn't prove it.
MATT PORTER: Eisenhower's problem was that it was difficult to verify Soviet capabilities in the 1950s. Naftali describes early spy satellites as more DIY than something you'd expect from a global superpower.
TIM NAFTALI: And those first satellites were like Kodak cameras thrown into space with cartridges. And then the cartridges were ejected from space and then captured in nets that flew behindAmerican military planes. I kid you not. That's how it worked.
MATT PORTER: Eisenhower had other options besides those rudimentary satellites. The United States had one of the most advanced spy planes in the U-2. However, as Tim Naftali explained, spy plane missions had their own problems.
TIM NAFTALI: Whereas a satellite could give you a big picture, a spy plane could only give you pictures of about a mile and a half on each side of the plane. So you had to pick your routes very carefully to increase the odds that you will actually catch a military installation.
MATT PORTER: One of those U-2 missions would become a flash point in the presidential campaign. On the advice of his advisors, Eisenhower flew a mission over the Soviet Union on May 1st, the holiday of May Day in many parts of the world, including the USSR.
TIM NAFTALI: May 1st is the holiday, the national holiday of the Soviet Union. And it'd be like violating US sovereignty on July the 4th. And the Soviets shot down the U-2.
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MATT PORTER: The problem was the United States was not supposed to be making spy flights over the Soviet Union. Initially, Eisenhower called the crash a weather survey plane that malfunctioned and drifted into Soviet territory. Pilots in the top secret spy planes were given a cyanide needle if capture was imminent. So Eisenhower had no reason to believe the pilot survived.But in this case, pilot Francis Gary Powers did survive. And several days later, on May 7th, the Soviet Union revealed that they had captured Powers, forcing the United States to admit that they had been running spy missions for several years.
The incident came at a terrible time. Eisenhower and Khrushchev were scheduled to meet in Paris on May 17th, along with the leaders of Great Britain and France. The summit was set to discuss a possible nuclear test ban treaty and try to resolve the issues of Berlin and Cuba. Khrushchev demanded Eisenhower apologize for spying. Eisenhower refused and Khrushchev walked out of the summit, leaving nothing achieved. In a report from the United Press International, Eisenhower's Press Secretary Jim Hagerty read a statement blaming Khrushchev for sabotaging the summit.
JIM HAGERTY: It was thus made apparent that he was determined to wreck the Paris conference. He came all the way from Moscow to Paris with the sole intention of sabotaging this meeting, on which so much of the hopes of the world have rested.
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MATT PORTER: Kennedy tried to portray Eisenhower as making a tactical mistake by not trying to appease Khrushchev and that he may have cost the world a chance at peace. He suggestedEisenhower should have attempted to express some regret for the mission to bring Khrushchev back to the table. But Kennedy's position backfired. And in the second debate, Nixon would seize on it.
RICHARD NIXON: We all remember Pearl Harbor. We lost 3,000 American lives. We cannot afford an intelligence gap. And I just want to make my position absolutely clear with regard to getting intelligence information. I don't intend to see to it that the United States is ever in a position where while we're negotiating with the Soviet Union that we discontinue our intelligence effort.And I don't intend ever to express regrets to Mr. Khrushchev or anybody else if I am doing something that has the support of the Congress and that is right for the purpose of protecting the security of the United States.
MATT PORTER: In the end, the missile gap theory was correct, but the gap favored the United States. As satellites got better, the picture became clearer. With Kennedy in office in 1961, he received intelligence showing the United States had outpaced the Soviet Union many times over, and there was never a period where the US had a shortfall and nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.
TIM NAFTALI: It was preposterous. The Soviets understood this, though. The Kremlin understood the American people can be scared and the Russians are expert at dividing the American people. They are brilliant at it. But the Soviets-- just like Saddam Hussein later on and other dictators-- felt the only way to deter the United States was to pump themselves up. I call them the pumpuperfish. The Soviets pretended to be stronger and more powerful than they were. So they lied about how many missiles they had. They didn't ever give a number, but Khrushchev repeatedly said, we make missiles like sausages. We-- we're producing them all the time.
MATT PORTER: Historian Fredrik Logevall said while JFK received evidence disproving the missile gap theory in 1961, it was likely, even in the middle of the campaign the year before, thatKennedy didn't fully believe in the missile gap, but saw it as a useful political tool.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: If you had asked him in, say, the middle of 1960-- do you want to trade places with the Soviets when it comes to missiles and to this particular kind of technology? I think he would have said no. So I think he understood pretty early on that, in fact, this was an issue that he could use politically-- which of course he did to good effect-- but not the kind of crisis that he wanted to-- or suggested that it was in his pronouncements.
MATT PORTER: Logevall said Kennedy's pollster Lou Harris convinced the Senator the missile gap issue was a political winner. And so it became a chief part of Kennedy's foreign policy agenda.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: That's a message that he's quite intent to run on, that he does run on. And I think it works. We can bemoan the fact that he did this, because it's actually a very misleading argument that he's making. But whatever we think of it, in political terms, I think it worked for JFK.
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MATT PORTER: For the Soviets, Tim Naftali says their strategy of exaggerating their power may have worked too well.
TIM NAFTALI: And I think that the Soviets ultimately realized the mistake they made. The Soviets-- what they ended up doing by pretending to have more than they had, was they goaded theUnited States into building more bombers and building better spy techniques and ultimately building more missiles. So that by the middle 60s, the United States was way ahead in all aspects of the strategic competition.
MATT PORTER: Missiles and satellites would not be the only focus of foreign policy in the campaign. For the first time, many emerging independent nations were rising from old colonial powers, bringing concerns of creeping communism. We'll have that story next.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Are you listening to our podcast and wondering if there's more to the story? Of course there is! If you want to learn more about what you've heard today, we have links to resources from the JFK Library's archives, including photos, films, and primary source documents. We also have oral history interviews from some of the key members of the Kennedy campaign.Visit jfklibrary.org/6020 to get started.
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ANNOUNCER: The UN General Assembly puts differences aside to extend the hand of fellowship to the United States of Indonesia.
MATT PORTER: As colonial powers began to break up in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, historian Fredrik Logevall says new nations were emerging all across the world, providing unique political opportunities.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think the state of the world in 1960 is a fascinating one from a historian's perspective. Maybe the most interesting thing to me is that you have a whole slew of new nations. And it's interesting that JFK sooner than most-- including in his own party, on the Republican side-- is realizing the importance of this decolonization, this mass movement toward decolonization.
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MATT PORTER: The rise of so many new, independent countries provoked some concern in the 1960 election. In 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China and many were worried the Soviet Union would expand its sphere of influence and communism would expand across the globe. These developments were key factors in leading to a second Red Scare across the United States in the early 1950s.
Fredrik Logevall says few politicians were as focused on the needs of winning over these new nations as Senator John F. Kennedy. Logevall says Kennedy had an understanding that the new ColdWar wouldn't be won by just amassing arms, but to establish what is now known as soft power. Soft power is defined as attracting allies not through coercion, but by persuasion.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: We as Americans need to give the people in these new nations and these emerging nations something to believe in and something that we stand for that they can respond to in some way.
MATT PORTER: Historian Tim Naftali says Kennedy successfully attacked the Eisenhower/Nixon administration as standing pat while countries like China and Cuba-- a country just 90 miles from the United States-- were lost to Russian influence.
TIM NAFTALI: That because of the mishandling of decolonization and the mixed signals sent by the Eisenhower administration-- that the Soviets were making allies in places where the UnitedStates should be the true friend of nationalists.
MATT PORTER: In the second debate, Nixon and Kennedy went back and forth over the issue of Cuba.
RICHARD NIXON: First of all, I don't agree with Senator Kennedy that Cuba is lost. And certainly, China was lost when this administration came into power in 1953. There also wasn't any question that the freed people of Cuba-- the people who want to be free-- are going to be supported and that they will obtain their freedom. No, Cuba is not lost. And I don't think this kind of defeatist talk by Senator Kennedy helps the situation one bit.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: And where I criticize Mr. Nixon, was because in his press conference in Havana in 1955, he praised the competence and stability of the Batista dictatorship. That dictatorship had killed over 20,000 Cubans in seven years. Instead our aid continued to Batista, which was ineffective. We never were on the side of freedom. We never used our influence when we could have used it most effectively. And today, Cuba is lost to freedom. I hope someday it will rise. But I don't think it will rise if we continue the same policies towards Cuba that we did in recent years and in fact, towards all of Latin America.
MATT PORTER: Logevall says Kennedy had a commitment to international organizations like NATO and the UN as important bodies to keeping the peace.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think he sees the United States as the most important player on the international stage, but he insists that it has to work alongside allies and it has to work alongside these institutions.
MATT PORTER: While Logevall says Kennedy had to be seen as forceful against the communist threat, he says Kennedy also understood it couldn't win the Cold War solely by winning the arms race. Instead, the country had to also win the hearts and minds of the dozens of newly developed nations.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I don't see any evidence that he backs off this belief, that the United States, if it wants to be on the right side of history, has to speak to the aspirations in the developing world, has to respond in some way where people live in these areas of the world. It can't just be about anticommunism. It's got to be a more positive message.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: We must have an administration that moves rapidly to shape our image here at home until it is clear to all the world that the revolution for equal rights is still an American revolution. We must have an administration that moves forward on the road to peace until we demonstrate to a watching world, as we said on a most conspicuous day, that we are willing to devote the same energy to the struggle for peace as we now do on the struggle for arms. Finally, we must have an administration that holds out a helping hand to all those who desire to be independent, that assist them in meeting their own problems, assist them on the road to freedom as a friend, not as a paternalistic country that desires to use them in a Cold War struggle.
MATT PORTER: Looking into the future, Kennedy's policy towards welcoming new nations to the global community would help lead to a rapid spread of Democratic ideals across the globe and a decrease in Soviet influence until its dissolution in 1991.
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Today, the United States still faces threats from Russia, but in a different way. Next, we'll talk about how the United States is involved in a new cyber war against Russia and also discuss some of the other global threats influencing the 2020 election.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Are you enjoying the 60/20 podcast? This podcast is just one of many initiatives, programs, and resources supported by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. TheJFK Library Foundation is a nonprofit that provides financial support, staffing, and creative resources for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Learn more about the JFK Library and the Foundation at jfklibrary.org.
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REPORTER 1: Russian hackers successfully gained access to voter databases in two Florida counties ahead of the 2016 election.
REPORTER 2: One group the Russians operated under was called being patriotic, calling themselves an online community. They were actually Russian internet trolls according to the FBI, tryingto direct unwitting Americans to holding rallies, posting Russian made anti-Hillary Clinton messages, even telling them what to print on their homemade signs.
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MATT PORTER: Today the threat from Russia is not the same as when Kennedy faced the Soviet missile threat and nuclear oblivion. Instead, former US Ambassador and Harvard UniversityProfessor Nicholas Burns says the war has gone from outer space to cyberspace.
NICHOLAS BURNS: They no longer have the power the Soviet Union did. They don't have the military power that can-- at least the conventional military power-- that can equate with the UnitedStates. So what they've done is they've turned towards asymmetric means. They've developed the ability to use cyber offenses to harm the United States. Not just cyber directed at our military and national security agencies, but cyber directed at the American people. What they did in 2016 was to fill our social media space and the internet with false information, with red flags. And they continue to do that today.
MATT PORTER: Burns says while America no longer has to do duck and cover drills, the threat from Russia today is still not to be taken lightly.
NICHOLAS BURNS: So the threat now is very different than 1960, but it's equally complicated and complex for us to deal with and equally dangerous.
MATT PORTER: Unlike in 1960 where both candidates fundamentally agreed about the threat from the Soviet Union, the choice in 2020 is between a candidate who has called out Russia for attacking and another who prefers to avoid confronting President Vladimir Putin.
JOE BIDEN: With many countries in Europe slated to hold elections this year, we should expect further attempts by Russia to meddle in the Democratic process. It will occur again. I promise you.
DONALD TRUMP: I believe that President Putin really feels, and he feels strongly, that he did not meddle in our election. I feel that having Russia in a friendly posture as opposed to always fighting with them is an asset to the world and an asset to our country, not a liability.
MATT PORTER: Nicholas Burns, who has served as a foreign policy advisor for the Biden campaign, says it's important for the United States to take the hacking threat seriously.
NICHOLAS BURNS: And we also need to be able to hit back. If the Russians are going to do this to us, the Russians have to understand that there's a price that they're going to pay in a cyber conflict like this.
MATT PORTER: During the 1950s and 60s, Tim Naftali says both countries' understanding of each other was like something out of the popular Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series airing at the same time.
NARRATOR: --belonging to-- Oh, no! It isn't! It can't be!
BORIS BADENOV: (IN RUSSIAN ACCENT) Say the name.
NARRATOR: Boris and Natasha!
BORIS BADENOV: Ta-da!
NATASHA FATALE: (IN RUSSIAN ACCENT) When we steal mattress, Boris?
BORIS BADENOV: (IN RUSSIAN ACCENT) No time like the president, Natasha!
TIM NAFTALI: The whole nature of the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union was so distant. It was a big deal when people visited the Soviet Union. It was a big deal whenVice President Nixon went to Moscow. So when you have societies that are hardly interacting, each one can develop a cartoon understanding of the other.
MATT PORTER: Naftali said that lack of understanding led to some pretty unsophisticated attempts at subversion.
TIM NAFTALI: The Soviets had a cartoon vision or cartoon understanding of the United States. So they could not engage in kind of the efforts to divide American society successfully that theRussians had done.
MATT PORTER: But by the 2016 elections, the open communication channels provided by social media and the opening of both countries to each other allowed Russian hackers to be far more sophisticated when it came to manipulating the American psyche.
TIM NAFTALI: Whereas in this era, Russians and Americans are interacting-- or at least were interacting-- and so if Russian intelligence or the Kremlin wanted to engage in a sophisticated disinformation campaign, they had the tools-- not only the tools, but the data to do it.
MATT PORTER: Fredrik Logevall says social media provided Russia a new avenue to spy on and attempt to influence American internal affairs.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: The rise of new technologies-- in particular, I think, social media-- that allow them to penetrate the United States in this way.
MATT PORTER: Logevall says hacking is providing Putin and the Kremlin a different way to assert themselves as players on the world stage.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: The Kremlin wants to strengthen its own position vis-a-vis the United States. In this case, the Russians are seeking to do it by sowing divisions within the United States. I think it's reflective of Moscow's weakening position in terms of its international stature. It's not the powerful force that it was in world affairs in the early 1960s.
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MATT PORTER: With Russia's power and influence having fallen since the 1960s, there is a new number two superpower in the world-- China. In 1960, the People's Republic of China was just emerging on the national stage. Here again is Nicholas Burns.
NICHOLAS BURNS: In 1960 China, China's revolutionary communist regime had only been in power for 11 years. Mao was in a radical phase, murdering lots of his fellow countrymen in what would become the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. China was also not at that time, by any measure of military or economic power, on a par with the United States.Quite the contrary, it was a poor, agrarian country with a communist system that held their economy back.
MATT PORTER: But today, China's economy is second only to the United States. And during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the country introduced itself to the world.
[MUSIC - "BEIJING WELCOMES YOU"]
The country produced a sleek video with English subtitles featuring Chinese actors, singers, and artists from all over the world. The lyrics included, "Beijing welcomes you. We open our world to you."
Nicholas Burns says in the next decade, China and America will compete for influence in the same ways the Soviet Union did in the 60s.
NICHOLAS BURNS: As we prepare for our presidential election on November 3rd, Americans and our political leaders are talking about China in remarkably similar ways to how JFK andRichard Nixon were talking about the Soviet Union back in 1960.
MATT PORTER: China, like America, is well aware in the advantage of accumulating soft power. The country is engaged in global infrastructure projects for developing countries known as theBelt and Road Initiative.
NICHOLAS BURNS: This is a Chinese export of capital and infrastructure projects in 70 different countries in the world-- in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in Western Europe in countries like Serbia and in countries like Italy.
MATT PORTER: Burns says it will be imperative for the next administration to work with China as a partner more than an adversary. The United States faces several global challenges, including climate change, of which the US and China are the two largest carbon emitters.
NICHOLAS BURNS: These are threats that affect every country and every person on Earth that require global cooperation, in many cases led by the United States given our power and influence in the world. We've got to have the United States working with countries around the world to make sure that we can fight each of them, because the United States acting alone cannot be successful on a single one of them.
MATT PORTER: And of course, there is the coronavirus pandemic, which is believed to have originated in China, but now has infected more than 36 million worldwide and killed more than a million people, including more than 200,000 in the United States.
NICHOLAS BURNS: Once the vaccine is found, we'll want to make sure that it's distributed equitably around the world. That's international cooperation. If we're going to avoid a recession becoming a depression, we've got to work with all the central banks and finance ministries around the world to align our monetary and fiscal policies. There's no question that working together globally is the right thing to do.
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MATT PORTER: As the United States faces these existential global threats, historian Fredrik Logevall says leaders of the United States should look to Kennedy's idea of global citizenship-- the idea where we must not only act for the safety and security of the United States, but that making the world safer and more secure is also beneficial to the United States.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think he's calling here for public service in a sense not just for Americans, but for others. And I can tell you that in my native Sweden, a little country in Scandinavia, there, too, the message that he imparts-- that he articulates so vividly so powerfully in his inaugural address in 1961-- even there it resonates. And we have countless examples of other people in other countries who also heard this message.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own.
MATT PORTER: But in October 1960, the inaugural address was far off, and Kennedy and Nixon would still need to make their final case to voters. As the campaign entered its last few weeks and days, the two candidates conclude their very different journeys in the final episode of our series, next time on 60/20.
Thank you for listening to this episode of 60/20. Along with Jamie Richardson and myself, Matt Porter, 60/20 is made possible with the help from our co-producer, Rick King. Thank you to our research assistants Megan McKee and Cassie Marando. Special thanks to our Foundation colleagues, in particular Megan Hohl and Director Rachel Flor. Our music is composed by Blue.Sessions and artwork by Brian Kang. We also thank all of our guests for lending their voices and expertise to this podcast. And of course, none of this would be possible without the work by archivists and other staff of the JFK Library Museum, who make much of the material discussed available to all online and to visiting researchers.
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