Is Mystery Missile the new Sputnik?

An image of what appears to be the trail of a large missile launched from beneath the sea 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles appeared on the California TV screens last night. But the Pentagon said it had “no clue” who fired it.

"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. "So far, we've come up empty with any explanation."

Trying to figure out “what it is” Robert Ellsworth, former secretary of defense, told reporter Marcella Lee it could be an ICBM from a submarine to demonstrate mainly to Asia that we could do that, accompanying President Obama’s trip to the East. He said that was done in the Atlantic to demonstrate America’s power to the Soviets when there was the Soviet Union but he doesn’t believe it was ever done over the Pacific. Just speculating, he said.

For more than a decade now, the Pentagon has been conceptualizing the same Cold War containment paradigms to China as it had with the U.S.S.R. But there is no indication that this missile, if it is a missile, is American. The Chinese are masters of political symbolism and learn strategy from the predictability of our own approaches: It is Sun Tzu 101. If, b y tomorrow morning, the Pentagon is coming up with the “usual suspects” of UFO lore – swamp gas, “weather balloon,” vapor trail, it is not one of ours.