Gaither Committee: Eisenhower & Cold WarAs the United States struggled to respond to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower received a top secret report prepared by a committee of leading scientific, business, and military experts. The panel, called the Gaither Committee in recognition of its first chair, H. Rowan Gaither, Jr., emphasized the inadequacy of U. S. defense measures designed to protect the civilian population and the vulnerability of the country's