R.I.P. Bennie Schriever

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