Interview with Thomas Lanphier, 1986

Item Information

Title:
Interview with Thomas Lanphier, 1986
Description:
Thomas Lanphier was a fighter pilot in World War II (credited with shooting down the plane carrying Admiral Yamomoto in 1943); after the war he served as Special Assistant to the first Secretary of the Air Force, then Special Assistant to the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board. He was a Vice President of General Dynamics in the 1950s, which acquired the company Convair. He begins the interview by describing a meeting he attended with President Truman and his top advisers at which the North Korean invasion of South Korea was discussed. Recalling his time at Convair, he discusses various weapons and missile development activities he was involved with. He also describes perceptions of the missile gap issue at the time, which leads to a discussion of his role in the national debate. A challenge for industry at the time, he notes, was how to determine the best ways to address future threats without having official access to intelligence about the nature of those threats. Confiding that there were other means of obtaining that information, he recalls a meeting with CIA Director Allen Dulles at which Mr. Lanphier conveyed his view that Soviet missile capabilities were greater than the CIA estimated. This eventually led to Mr. Lanphier’s resignation from Convair, amid allegations he was trying to gin up business for his company, and a six-month public campaign on his part to press his argument. He defends his actions as not politically motivated, but acknowledges that they constituted for President Eisenhower an example of the undue influence of the military-industrial complex.
Interviewee:
Lanphier, Thomas
Date:
March 7, 1986
Format:
Film/Video
Location:
WGBH
Collection (local):
WGBH Open Vault
Series:
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
Subjects:
U-2 (Reconnaissance aircraft)
General Dynamics Corporation. Convair Division
Scoville, Herbert
Soviet Union
Photographic reconnaissance systems
United States. Central Intelligence Agency
National Security Council (U.S.)
Hydrogen bomb
Defense contracts
United Nations
Nuclear weapons
Intercontinental ballistic missiles
Korean War, 1950-1953
United States. Dept. of Defense
Military-industrial complex
Acheson, Dean, 1893-1971
Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994
Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973
MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
Dulles, Allen, 1893-1969
Symington, Stuart, 1901-1988
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969
United States. Congress
Places:
California > San Diego (county) > San Diego
Extent:
00:54:17:05
Link to Item:
https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_7D5B4D37FFC441D4924F9C64D2135822
Terms of Use:
Rights status not evaluated.
Contact host institution for more information.
Publisher:
WGBH Educational Foundation
Identifier:
V_7D5B4D37FFC441D4924F9C64D2135822