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Show $elitnd lite JJead fined ! As Vice-President Lyndon B. ! Johnson exclaimed in hailing Astronaut John Glenn, Jr., he has done what two Presidents were unable to by encouraging Soviet Chairman Khrushchev to urge greater East-West cooperation coopera-tion in outer space. The idea is not new. It has been a cornerstone of American policy since the Eisenhower Administration, Ad-ministration, and the Soviets have blown hot and cold on the idea until now. Whether the Soviets are now sincere, is highly doubtful. It remains to be seen. In the mean-1 accept. As far as this columnist can determine, it was ex-Eisenhower Administration Disarmament Advisor Harold Stassen (remember (remem-ber him?) who first urged East-West East-West cooperation in outer space in 1956. Critics and political foes dubbed him "Buck Rogers" Stassen Stas-sen for urging advance consideration consider-ation of a space law and cooperation cooper-ation that seemed outlandish then. When the Soviets first formally formal-ly advanced proposals for international inter-national cooperation in space exploration, ex-ploration, at the United Nations m 1958, the U.S. realized that it would be at a disadvantage if it accepted them while the Soviets claimed space superiority. The U.S. began to take the lead in seeking an East-West space pool and UN-sponsored space cooperation, cooper-ation, when it began overtaking the Soviet space lead. The 1959 meeting of NATO parliamentarians- urged that "barriers for a freer trade of all technical data between East and West be removed." Soviet space scientists have continually urged greater East-West cooperation, joint laboratory research and manufacturing efforts, and joint training of U.S. Astronauts with Soviet Cosmonauts. The American Ameri-can Rocket Society has been urging urg-ing similar cooperation. This columnist reported in 1959 that the whole idea had the Pentagon in a frenzy. It still does. time, President Kennedy's new hope that the space race might be separated from the arms race is not very likely to be realized. The Administration will, of course, pursue the possibility as far as possible, and so long as Khrushchev offers some genuine hope that greater East-West space cooperation is worth pursuing. pur-suing. In the meantime, it is no secret despite much public enthusiasm for the idea, that there is also widespread skepticism, even if Moscow should be sincere about sharing its space knowledge, over whether it is actually a good idea. For the moment, most Americans Amer-icans are trying to fathom just why the Soviets have chosen this moment to endorse a far-reaching space cooperation proposal they have heretofore ignored. Has Khrushchev decided that the U.S. is overtaking the Soviet space lead faster than he had expected? Has Moscow decided that the great costs of the space race, and especially the race for the moon, are too much of a strain on the Communist economy? econ-omy? Have the Kremlin's militarists mili-tarists finally realized that the high costs of the space race are draining funds sorely needed for more conventional armaments? Is Khrushchev just trying to make Cold War propaganda? Was Moscow merely trying to take attention away from the orbital flight achievement of Astronaut John Glenn, Jr. by launching a new Soviet space "peace offensive"? offen-sive"? Is Khrushchev trying to "use" Colonel Glenn to further Soviet Cold War objectives, in the same way that Francis Powers, another an-other able, but more controver-sal controver-sal American pilot, was used? It is ironic that Moscow should capitalize on the space flight of Colonel Glenn in order to improve im-prove East-West relations that deteriorated when U-2 spy plane pilot Powers was downed in Russia. Rus-sia. Knowing the keen U.S. fascination fasci-nation over the race for space, was Khrushchev merely hoping to trap, or tempt, the Kennedy Administration and America's NATO Allies, into an early summit sum-mit conference on disarmament? Was the shoe-banging Commissar Com-missar hoping to create more tension in U.S. domestic politics by making a far-reaching proposal pro-posal which U.S. right wing conservative con-servative groups, in particular, would be certain to violently oppose? At a time when there is new concern about Communist espionage espio-nage and subversion, following the case of the Soviet spy, Colonel Colo-nel Rudolf Abel, were the Soviets Sov-iets making a blatant attempt to infiltrate the U.S. space program? pro-gram? All these and other possible motives were and are under study in Washington, as the Kennedy Ken-nedy Administration decides whether to pursue a U.S. idea it did not really expect Moscow to The U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force are barely anxious to exchange ex-change space-missile information with each other, let alone the Russians! FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Central Intelligence Agency Director John McCone fear that a big U.S. -USSR space exchange program could lead to widespread wide-spread Soviet espionage infiltration infiltra-tion of our space-atomic programs pro-grams just when they seem to be pulling ahead of the Soviet Union's. There is also a very genuine fear that if the U.S. should launch a big new program for broad East-West exchange of space technology, many smaller countries with which we are allied al-lied will also follow suit. And soon NATO, SEATO and other key allied nations receiving U.S. military aid would find that the Reds were infiltrating our overseas over-seas defense program, missile bases, etc. with U.S. sanction. An East-West space pool is an imaginative, perhaps inevitable idea. The U.S. does not intend to surrender its propaganda value to Moscow. The Kennedy Administration Admin-istration will pursue the idea as far as it can and hope it may lead to a "thaw" in the Cold War. But compelling reasons for going slow on joint space research with the same nation with whom we are close to war in Berlin, etc., suggest that the pool is still a long, long way off and should be approached with more caution than it is. |