Thomas S. Gates websearch @ GOOGLE indypress @ GOOGLE booklist @ NAMEBASE socialmap @ NAMEBASE Gates was Secretary of Defense in the Eisenhower Administration, from 1959 to 1961.

Gates was appointed Under Secretary of the Navy in 1953 and Secretary in 1957. He became Deputy to Defense Secretary Neil McElroy in 1959, then succeeded him later in the same year.

"Gates devoted more time than [Secretaries of Defense C.E.] Wilson and McElroy to the development of basic defense policy, a sphere in which the president remained dominant. ...[During Gates's tenure] two missile elements, the ICBM and the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) joined the manned bomber to form a 'triad' of strategic nuclear delivery systems"."

As Gates pointed out at a congressional hearing in January 1960, the two principal U.S. defense objectives were "to deter the outbreak of general war by maintaining and improving our present capability to retaliate with devastating effectiveness in case of a major attack upon us or our allies" and "to maintain, together with our allies, a capability to apply to local situations the degree of force necessary to deter local wars, or to win or contain them promptly if they do break out.[1]

U.S. spy planes over Russia:

Perhaps the most spectacular event of Gates's administration occurred on 1 May 1960 when the Soviet Union shot down over its territory a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced the incident four days later and accused the United States of spying, the Eisenhower administration initially suggested that the plane might have strayed into Soviet airspace. On the recommendation of representatives from State and Defense, including Gates, President Eisenhower later admitted that the U-2 was on an intelligence- gathering mission (actually under CIA control) and assumed responsibility for the flight. In mid-May Gates accompanied Eisenhower to Paris for a summit meeting that had been scheduled prior to the U-2 affair. There Khrushchev demanded termination of all U.S. flights over the Soviet Union, an apology, and punishment of those responsible. Eisenhower indicated that the flights would not be resumed but rejected the other demands, whereupon Khrushchev refused to proceed with the summit meeting. Gates suggested later that the Russian leader used the U-2 crisis to abort a meeting that he had determined in advance would not result in gains for the Soviet Union.

On the eve of the summit conference, Gates ordered a worldwide alert of U.S. military communications facilities - a decision criticized by some as provocative. Stoutly defending his action, Gates later explained that he decided, with the concurrence of Eisenhower and Secretary of State Christian A. Herter, to call the alert when he became aware of the belligerent position Khrushchev intended to take when the summit convened the next day.

Eisenhower's China policy:

During the last 3 years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, the United States followed the basic policies established during the preceding 5 years toward the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China government (GRC) on Taiwan, but developments in China brought some significant policy departures and one major crisis. The 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis, in which the mainland government shelled Nationalist-held offshore islands of Quemoy or Kinmen while the United States supported the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan, alarmed many Americans and international leaders by raising the threat of direct conflict between the United States and China and the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. ... U.S. policy in the crisis engendered much opposition at home and abroad and raised significant questions about U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons. [2]