Still, the chilling specter of nuclear war hung over the first two years of the Kennedy presidency. Having won the election in part by exploiting the fear of a missile gap, once in office Kennedy asked McNamara to quickly ascertain just how big the gap was. It took only three weeks to confirm that a gap did exist, but it was in the United States’ favor. Kennedy wanted to keep that information from the public. He intended to exploit the apocryphal missile gap to justify a robust increase in defense spending. But on February 6, his politically inexperienced secretary of defense shocked reporters by announcing “There’s no missile gap.” McNamara offered to resign over this faux pas. Kennedy explained that all such judgments were “premature,” and the issue faded quickly.

But in October 1961, Kennedy decided to come clean on the striking disparity between U.S. and Soviet military strength. He authorized Gilpatric to publicly flaunt the United States’ superiority in a speech to the Business Council in Hot Springs, Virginia. The speech was carefully crafted by young RAND consultant Daniel Ellsberg. Gilpatric announced that the United States “has a nuclear retaliatory force of such lethal power that an enemy move which brought it into play would be an act of self-destruction. . . . The total number of our nuclear delivery vehicles, tactical as well as strategic, is in the tens of thousands.” McNamara publicly confirmed that the United States possessed “nuclear power several times that of the Soviet Union.”108
Several times was an understatement. The United States had approximately forty-five ICBMs. 109 The Soviets had only four, and those were very vulnerable to a U.S. attack. The United States had more than 3,400 deliverable nuclear warheads on submarines and bombers. The United States had more then 1,500 heavy bombers to the Soviets’ 192. The United States also had some 120 IRBMs stationed in Turkey, Britain, and Italy, 1,000 tactical fighter bombers within range of the USSR, and nuclear missiles on Polaris subs. Overall, the United States had approximately 25,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviets had one-tenth that number.110

Reading what Stone and Kuznick actually wrote, maybe not so stark at all. From the presidential meetings recordings.

The President initially responds by poking fun at himself, evoking laughter from his military staff, stating, “As one of those who put that myth around – a patriotic and misguided man…”

He then calls for an investigation into the beginnings of the missile gap theory since the previous administration, Pentagon officials and members of the Democratic opposition all believed there would be a missile gap.

Yeah, does not sound so damning, at all.