Charles Platt says: "Few people outside of the military-industrial complex know
the name 'Bennie Schriever,' but it's quite likely that if he
hadn't been in the right office of the Pentagon at the right
time, Soviet missiles would still be based in Cuba and the
United States would have been a distant second in the race to
the Moon. One can even argue that the Soviet Union would have
had such an advantage in its strategic arsenal during the
1960s, the United States would have been unable to maintain a
balance of power and would have been at a hopeless
disadvantage during the mad years of Kennedy/Khrushchev
brinkmanship.
Schriever was the primary architect of U.S. strategic
capability, for better or worse. He was a radical force in
government at a time when intercontinental ballistic missiles
seemed farfetched and manned spaceflight was a fantasy. He
died on June 20th yet no obituaries have appeared in any
general-interest publications. A well-balanced tribute is
here: Link
