START A LITTLE BIT BEFORE THE... THE MISSILE CRISIS, AND JOHN F. KENNEDY'S RELATIONSHIP WITH CUBA, AND PREOCCUPATION WITH CUBA AFTER THE BAY OF PIGS. YOU TALK IN YOUR BOOK ABOUT THAT WHOLE... MONGOOSE AND THAT WHOLE OPERATION, IT'S... NOT EXACTLY ROBERT KENNEDY'S... FINEST, UH, FINEST HOUR. HOW WOULD YOU, DO YOU RECALL HIS, UH, CONCERN ABOUT CUBA?

Yes, after the Bay of Pigs, I think, this was, a... humiliation for the United States and for the Kennedys, and there were two concerns: one was to decide to get the Bay of Pigs prisoners out, and both John and Robert Kennedy felt that uh, the CIA having sent them in there, we had some obligation to do what we could to get their release. And negotiations for the release of the prisoners was a constant preoccupation. And the other was to do what was possible through covert action to make life difficult for Castro, and this was the so-called Operation Mongoose. And it included efforts to try to supply arms to alleged rebels inside Cuba, and efforts to sabotage Cuban factories and mills and so on; it was really kind of a... program of pinpricks, of...had no effects of any... any sort. The results, though, quite separately from Operation Mongoose, they the campaign to assassinate Castro, which was being carried...sorry.

LET'S, UH, I THINK WE GOT THE PRISONER PART OKAY ( ), SO WE CAN TAKE UP ON THE COVERT STUFF ON THE ASSASSINATION.

Yes at the same time the Kennedy administration tried to d-do everything it could to make life d-difficult for Castro through programs of covert action. This was the so-called Operation Mongoose. And that really meant a program of sabotage and a program, an attempt to create and to supply guerilla, anti-Castro guerillas within Cuba. It was a very ineffectual program of pinpricks, and accomplished very little, as the administration came to understand after a while. At the same time the CIA was running separately from Operation Mongoose, a program of, an attempt to assassinate Castro. This had begun in the Eisenhower administration in the, in 1960, at which time they actually, uh, hired members of the Mafia to attempt the assassination, and it was continued well into the Johnson administration. So far as the Church committee could discover this program was not known to or approved by, or authorized by any of the three presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson, and it appears to have been a... private initiative on the part of the CIA.

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN (unintelligible; long pause)... HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS, UH, ALMOST OBSESSION WITH CUBA AND CASTRO THAT ROBERT KENNEDY SEEMED TO HAVE?

Well, I think there was general feeling that to have a Communist state in the Western Hemisphere was not a good thing, not good for the Cubans, not good for other countries in Latin America, because Castro in that phase was doing his best to stir up revolution in other countries. His efforts were particularly directed against the government of Venezuela, which had a progressive democratic regime under President Bettencourt, with which the Kennedys had very close relations. You know, it was a general situation that this was no more tolerable to the United States than an anti-Communist state would have been tolerable in Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. But the U. S. being less ruthless about this than the Soviet Union didn't do to Cuba what the Soviet Union did to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I do think so I don't think it was an unintelligible preoccupation, but I think that our Operation Mongoose was a total waste of time and effort.

DO YOU THINK KENNEDY, ROBERT KENNEDY WAS AT ALL EMBARRASSED BY IT, WOULD YOU SAY?

Well I think, looking back, he became, by the, by the autumn of 1963, of course, he was strongly in support of the efforts made by the Kennedy administration to normalize relations with Castro. But, uh, he had a lot of other things on his mind at that period... Operation Mongoose was a very minor part, so when he... came from dealing with civil rights or organized crime or the life of Attorney General he would come into these meetings and he'd always be, feel the CIA wasn't doing enough, so he'd try to stir them up. But I think it is a mistake to suppose that it occupied more than three percent of his thoughts.

SOME THEORIZE THAT ALL THAT MONGOOSE STUFF AND THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, MAYBE HELPING CASTRO TO, PUSHING CASTRO TO ASK KHRUSHCHEV FOR MISSILES.

Well, I don't think so, because Khrushchev--Castro did not ask Khrushchev for missiles. Castro asked Khrushchev for protection. I think that it certainly increased Castro's general sense of insecurity; Castro believed then, as he believes again today, that the United States is planning to invade Cuba. Well, after, if the United States had planned to invade Cuba, it would have done so at the Bay of Pigs, and it didn't; Kenn,... Kennedy had no intention of invading Cuba. But clearly Operation Mongoose might well have given Castro reason to suppose that this was a softening up in preparation for an invasion. But he did not ask for nuclear missiles for that reason or for any reason. He didn't want the nuclear missiles; he would have liked to have some Soviet troops stationed on the island and have some means of defending against invasion or of making invasion an international issue. But the, the nuclear missiles were put in for Russian reasons, not for Cuban reasons. They were imposed by Khrushchev, and Khrushchev in his memoirs says he had a hell of an argument with Castro before he could get Castro to accept them.

YOU, UM, .... YOU CLEARLY SHARED THE FEELING OF MOST OF THE PEOPLE OF THAT TIME, INCLUDING THE CIA, AND JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY ELSE, I GUESS, OTHER THAN JOHN MCCALLUM, THAT THESE, UH, THIS WHOLE ACTIVITY WAS NOT TOWARDS ANY OFFENSIVE ... MISSILES.

Yes, it seemed inconceivable that that That was August, 1962, that was, at that very time, the... the plans were going forward to install offensive missiles in Cuba. Well, it was the general view of everyone that the Russians who characteristically have been, had been cautious in their particularly in any action within the American sphere of influence; that is, in the Western Hemisphere. It was inconceivable that they were going to install offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba. They hadn't even put nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe. So that they all the experts ..., the experts dismissed this as a, as a possibility.

WHAT WAS UH, KENNEDY, UH, ROBERT KENNEDY'S ROLE IN THE ...MEETINGS: HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE HIS CONTRIBUTION, WHAT, HOW HE ACTED?

Well, Robert Kennedy's main characteristic role in meetings was to ask the penetrating questions. Uh... he would always try to see, make people confront the consequences of decisions. He had not been present in the meetings on the Bay of Pigs, and had he been there, there might never have been a Bay of Pigs f because the kind of questions he asked were not asked. But he had what Winston Churchill said about Harry Hopkins...Churchill called Harry Hopkins "Lord Root of the Matter." And Robert Kennedy was always trying to... pene... trying to ask the jugular questions. And his role there was initially to do that, but then as... as people's views became crystallized, he... became a very strong opponent of the whole concept of a sneak attack. And on the Friday meeting he... when Dean Acheson and others had argued in the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a... surprise attack on the bases, Robert Kennedy very strongly, very eloquently opposed it, saying it would be... Pearl Harbor in reverse, that a sneak attack of this kind would be... alien to our traditions, and that no president could authorize it, and he convinced... a large number of... people present, like Douglas Dillon and others, who previously had been for such an attack. Odd how our moral sense has changed, because uh, Robert Kennedy was able to say that a sneak attack was... that on a small island was not an American...American tradition. But it was only 20 years later that Ronald Reagan launched a sneak attack on a small... defenseless small island, Grenada, and was... this was applauded as a glorious American military victory.

YOU'VE HAD ACCESS TO HIS DIARY AND LOTS OF OTHER PAPERS THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO SEE, AND SO I'M INTERESTED IN TALKING TO ...AS A ROBERT KENNEDY EXPERT. IN YOUR BOOK YOU TALKED ABOUT HIM SAYING THAT THE CASTRO MEETINGS... SOME OP THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ROOM HAD THEY BEEN PRESENT AT THE TIME. OTHER DECISIONS MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE... COULD YOU TALK A BIT ABOUT THAT?

Well, you know, there were a number of people who... were in favor of the military solution, and... for the Kennedys, military action was a last resort, not a first resort. They were preparing for an invasion, and had... that been the only way to get the missiles out, they would have invaded, but they were prepared to do everything else, to exhaust every diplomatic possibility before they reached that final, that last resort. Others felt that to initiate diplomatic action would be to tip off the other side and give them time to prepare, running undue military risks and therefore we should begin with military action. And what Robert Kennedy had in mind was if some of those people, like Dean Acheson, or General Taylor, or John McCollum(?)or the... members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had they been president they presumably would have ordered military action as a first step, and not as a last step.

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THESE TRANSCRIPTS THAT ARE NOW AVAILABLE, OF ROBERT KENNEDY SAYING, SHOULDN'T WE SINK THE MAINE OR SOMETHING?

Well, I think... The first day they were all confronted by this, and, I think all of them... like some staggering phenomenon in their lives... they walked around it and looked at it from one side and then from another — in the beginning they were trying to sort out their ideas, and there was a lot of thinking aloud. And Robert Kennedy was trying to, he was — someone had proposed an air attack, and he said "We shouldn't have an air attack — it would kill too many people, and if we're going to take military action at all we ought to... And besides an air attack would not only kill too many people, but then 6 months later they might bring the missile bases back — It's not a long-run solution; if we're going to consider a military solution we ought to look further down the road — maybe we should do an invasion. But he was raising this as a possibility... The dialogue shows that; I mean, McNamara said, "That's right, we ought to consider the possible consequences of the various lines of action, as the Attorney General's been suggesting." And... This is just... thinking aloud. I think in the first day no one knew... quite what they thought, and... took a day or two to begin to digest this, to digest the consequences of various lines of action....I think what these transcripts show is the... is the way in which a decision eventually evolved, and I think a wise and just decision, out of a lot of confused... initially confused reactions.

I UNDERSTAND THE CHIEF PROTAGONIST, IN TERMS OF ROBERT KENNEDY, IN THOSE MEETINGS, WAS ACHESON. ACHESON WAS KIND OF UPSET WITH KENNEDY'S MORALISTIC ARGUMENTS.

Yes... Acheson... I don't know whether... what Acheson would have done had he been Secretary of State and had the responsibility but... in his later years he... remained brilliant, but was rather high-handed and irresponsible...He felt very strongly the need for military action as in... during the Berlin crisis in 1961 he'd argued very strongly for military action there, sending an armed division into Berlin or something. And that was just his general attitude and he was contemptuous of what he regarded as confusing, cluttering up foreign policy decisions with moral considerations. And he also... Robert Kennedy was 40 years younger than he and I think he probably —"Hell, what's a young snip like this trying to do, trying to organize foreign policy?" But he was quite haughty and contemptuous of the view that we ought to be restrained from action by moral considerations.

MAYBE YOU CAN GIVE ME A BIT OF A SENSE OF HOW STEVENSON FIT INTO THIS.

Yes, my assignment was to work with Governor Stevenson on the... presentation at the UN. And.... at the end of the first week, on the Friday of the first week, Stevenson called me and said he wanted to talk to me, I went to see him and he said, "The President has given me permission to tell... what we've, what's on everyone's minds, to you," so he told me about the... And I then... accompanied him to New York, and...worked with him during that week at the UN. He was, from the beginning, the most articulate champion of... negotiation, though... a number of people, Chip Bolen (?), until he went to the... went off to Paris, and Tommy Thompson, who were both Soviet experts, and. McNamara, George Ball, Bill Patrick, um... and others, were also — Ted Sorenson — had, were also in favor of exploring diplomatic possibilities. Stevenson wanted to throw in too much, from the point of view of... some members of the committee, and... I think that what really... irritated some of the hard-liners was when he suggested trading Guantanamo... Ah... he, as I recall, his views were that to get the missiles out, we should give them the Turkish missiles in Guantanamo. Well, everyone was prepared to give the Turkish missiles, though not to do it in a formal, public way, because the Turkish missiles were no use, and... they'd been thinking of trying to get them out for some time, but Guantanamo seemed going a little far. And also there was this tactical question... Stevenson wanted to begin by making an offer along these lines, whereas people, whereas Robert Kennedy, who was in favor of negotiation, thought that that offer should come way down the line, and that we would reduce our bargaining power by doing it at the beginning. So for these reasons, Stevenson's position, which he argued... well, did not... arouse the resentment of other people, during that tense week.

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? YOU MUST HAVE BEEN CLOSE TO HIM, OR SPOKE TO HIM AFTER COMING OUT OF THE MEETING, OR SHORTLY AFTER. HOW DID HE FEEL ABOUT HOW HE WAS TREATED? I UNDERSTAND HE WAS TREATED VERY BADLY BY SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE.

Well, I don't think it was... I don't recall that he objected to the discussions in the meeting. He was very resentful of an article which appeared by Stewart Alsop in the Saturday Evening Post a month or so later, in which someone... was supposed to have said that he was advocating another Munich. And that indeed was very unfair — the position he took was very much the position that we finally came out with. And, um... but I don't recall that in the meetings themselves he had any complaint.

THE KENNEDYS' CONCERN THAT HE MIGHT NOT BE TOUGH ENOUGH AT THE UN?

Well, Robert Kennedy was... Before I went to New York he took me aside and said, "You have to make... you have to watch that fellow...." He said, "We want to make sure he's going to be strong enough." But... Of course he was; he was very effective, and... John Kennedy was very much impressed.... by his effectiveness... In the longer run, Robert Kennedy was, too; as he wrote in Thirteen Days, he said... some of the things Stevenson said seemed... seemed extreme, but they were no more extreme than a lot of things a lot of other people were saying during that week.

LET'S TALK ABOUT STEVENSON'S PRESENTATION AT THE UN, AND HOW YOU REMEMBER WATCHING IT, AND HOW OTHERS PERCEIVED IT.

Well, I think the high point, of course, came when he... brought out the photographs, and... confronted Zorren (?) with them, and Zorren declined to answer, and Stevenson made the... unforgettable remark about being prepared to wait till hell freezes over. Kennedy was watching this, and Washington was delighted by it, and called Stevenson afterwards, and... he thought that Stevenson had performed with great skill and force at the UN. And he was right, it was a very effective... moment, one of the great moments in the history of the UN.

WERE YOU, DO YOU RECALL WATCHING THAT? WERE YOU WITH A GROUP AT THE MISSION, OR...

I... I... I'm just now trying to remember. Part of the time I was in the chamber, but I think I... at that point I was in Stevenson's office at the mission, watching it on television.

WHAT WAS STEVENSON'S ATTITUDE DURING THAT, AFTER THAT DAY, DO YOU REMEMBER WAS HE...

He was exhilarated. I mean, he was, he felt this was... He was also — I mean, everyone was of course deeply concerned over getting some kind of reactional outcome for this situation, but... he was personally exhilarated by what he... what was, indeed, a great triumph.

ONE PROBLEM OF ALL THIS, THAT I'M SURE YOU FACE AS A HISTORIAN, AND WE'RE STARTING TO FACE IN INTERVIEWING PEOPLE, IS THE KIND OF REVISIONISM THAT CREEPS INTO EVERYONE'S MEMORIES. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT? IT MUST BE A CONSTANT PROBLEM FOR HISTORIANS.

It is a constant problem for historians, and that's why... though world history has its uses, it's not entirely dependable... Public figures are not unique in this; everyone's memory is terrible. Everyone's memory is self-serving. We all embellish stories in our, as we recall them and repeat them, and generally in such ways as to give us, make us look better in them. So it's a common human failing. But the way... it's like in... any other forms of evidence, it has to be checked against the original documents, against the minutes of the meetings, against the recollections of other participants, and so on.

CAN YOU TELL ME, DO YOU RECALL YOUR CALL FROM HARRIMAN?

Yes, at one point when I was in New York I got a call from Harriman. Harriman was very... concerned; Harriman had been ambassador to the Soviet Union, and he knew the Soviet Union very well; he said, "Khrushchev is signaling that he wants...to get out of this." And I said, "What do you mean?" and he named a couple of things. Apparently some American businessman had been to the ballet in Moscow, as I recall, and... Khrushchev had seen him afterwards, and... another thing, and Harriman said, "These are clear indications that the Russians are looking for a way out. I think it's terribly important not to force them against the wall, ah... on this. And... and we must find some means of helping them... get out of this." He said, "I'm very concerned about it, but I can't reach anybody," so I telexed a message to Kennedy, and... then Kennedy, later that evening, called Harriman and Harriman... set forth his views again. And I think that just reinforced Kennedy's own conviction that some diplomatic solution, resolution just had to be found.

YOU HAD ACCESS TO KENNEDY'S DIARIES. THERE'S THIS MEETING BETWEEN ROBERT KENNEDY AND DOBRYNIN ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, THE LAST ACT OF THIS WHOLE... AND DOBRYNIN REPORTS TO KHRUSHCHEV AND KHRUSHCHEV HAS IN HIS MEMOIRS THAT ROBERT KENNEDY SAID "YOU KNOW, THE MILITARY ARE OUT TO GET MY BROTHER AND IF WE DON'T SETTLE THIS THING QUICKLY, IT'S GOING TO BECOME MUCH WORSE." DO YOU THINK THAT'S SOMETHING THAT ROBERT KENNEDY MIGHT HAVE SAID, AS A WAY OF GETTING SOME ACTION?

No, I do not think so. I think that it's a most improbable... thing, and Khrushchev rather over dramatized it, by suggesting that he, ah, took the missiles out in order to save Kennedy from a military coup... Sort of "Seven Days in May" situation.... I think that what Kennedy probably said... was that there was strong desire and preparation on the part of the military to... invade Cuba, and... that... Dobrynin probably reported this to Moscow. Khrushchev in his memoirs remembered that there was something about the military... but of course he was dictating his memoirs out of memory. He didn't have — being in disgrace — he didn't have access to those diplomatic papers, so I think he got that garbled in recollection.

SHORTLY AFTERWARD, YOU WERE TELLING ME, KENNEDY GAVE FRANKENHEIMER PERMISSION...

Yes... I do think that the... the Kennedys were never very enthusiastic about the military per se anyway... both of them had served in the Navy, and... they didn't have any undue respect for top brass, and, um, the, um, particularly the Admiral Anderson... created problems, he felt that... the civilian authorities were interfering too much with the naval job, whereas the Kennedys... the main anxiety through the whole thing wasn't that Khrushchev was going to initiate nuclear war — he knew that that would not happen — but that somewhere along the line, down the line, someone, something might go wrong, some subordinate official would do something... and that's why he was very anxious to... have command and control down to the smallest point; well, the military resented that, and there was a lot of... acrimony about some of the... about the military in general. So... later, when "Seven Days in May" was being made, Pierre... Kennedy told Pierre Salinger, he asked...whether he could come and shoot it at the White House, and he rather encouraged the project.

YOU'RE SAYING THAT HE DIDN'T ENJOY MILITARY CEREMONY VERY MUCH, HE DIDN'T ENJOY THE WHOLE POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCES...

No, he didn't.... I mean, military parades and all that were not... not his... he'd go through with it.... He had great appreciation for his soldiers, and sailors, I mean — he liked the lower ranks very much, and he felt — and he... he particularly liked General Shoop, the commander of the Marine Corps; he was the member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff... Kennedy liked the most but General May... he found extremely trying, and... Admiral Burke almost as much so.... He...he was... he greatly appreciated the role of the troops... but he was very skeptical about the... high command in the main. General Taylor was another exception; he liked General Taylor.

YOU HAD A MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT THE DAY AFTER...(BREAKING IN)

...The day after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Monday morning... I saw him, and he was in a very... kind of, reflective mood.(BACKING UP)The day after the... the resolution of the crisis, which was on a Sunday, on the Monday morning... I saw the President, and he was in a... reflective mood that morning, and he was concerned, he said, that the people might misinterpret... what had happened. He said he was terribly afraid that the people would take a look at this and say "All we had to do was to be tough, and the Russians would back down." ...And he said... that worked, apparently worked in this case, but it's not a good general rule. He said, "This... three particular features about this crisis: First, we have local military superiority; second, the vital interests of the Soviet Union were not involved; and third, we have the better of the case before the world — the Soviet Union could not make a strong case before the world that what it was doing, ah, was... justified." He said... "In that kind of situation... ah, we were able to succeed... But you have a situation in which we don't enjoy local military superiority, where Russian vital interests are involved, and where the Russians feel that equity is on their side, that's a very different situation, and in that situation the... force will not, by itself, prevail." He said, "I just hope people don't learn the wrong lessons from this crisis."

DO YOU THINK THAT'S A PROBLEM NOW, AS A TEACHER AND A HISTORIAN?

Well, I think it always is. I think it is... a problem that's pre-dated in the sense of the Cuban Missile Crisis; I mean the whole thing ...force is the only thing the Russians understand, and so on, is a... a cliche which has caused a lot of, misled a lot of people, in the case of the crisis. I don't know now... Now...we all know that the missiles were negotiated out, and that... the Kennedys had arranged and... gave this assurance to the Russians that the Jupiter missiles would be removed from Turkey, and thereby saved Khrushchev's face and enabled him to claim to his people that it hadn't been a total disaster... Now that we know that, I think that we have a better understanding that... what you must have is a combination of force and diplomacy to succeed in this dangerous world.

WHY COULDN'T THAT DIPLOMACY BE MADE MORE OPEN — WHY COULDN'T IT BE SOMETHING THAT WAS KNOWN TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?

Well, the reason why it was felt that it could not be done... was because it would impact on the NATO allies. It was felt that if the United States were bargaining without the full consent of the NATO ally Turkey, ah, to... withdraw missiles that had been committed to the defense of Turkey unilaterally, ah... that this would cause great protest and disarray in the alliance... If you read Harold Macmillan's memoirs, for example, he still denies, or denies in the volume that was published ten years ago so ago, that such a deal was ever made, and said it was a great triumph that it was possible to end, resolve the crisis without um... unilateral action at the expense of a NATO ally. And that was the... the great restraint on it and that is why the administration always refused... either to make it public, or even to say to the Russians that... the two actions were connected...(Said) we were going to do this anyway, and... we will do it, but if you can say there was any connection between that and the withdrawal of the missiles, the deal's off.

MANY PEOPLE NOW SAY THAT THE KENNEDYS WERE PRAISED FOR THEIR GREAT RESTRAINT DURING THIS PERIOD, BUT THAT KHRUSHCHEV REALLY DESERVED SOME CREDIT.(TALKING AT THE SAME TIME)

Well, I don't think Khrushchev deserves much praise for restraint; he had no alternative but restraint. He lacked not only local military superiority, but he... he lacked nuclear superiority... In both cases he was in an impossible position; he had no desire to commit suicide, he was trying a big gamble, the gamble failed, and he had no choice but restraint or suicide, so I don't think he deserves great credit for it.(TALKING AT THE SAME TIME)Restraint implies you might do something else which would be effective in getting your objectives; there was nothing else he could do.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE MISSILE CRISIS CHANGED PRESIDENT KENNEDY? DO YOU THINK IT CHANGED HIM AT ALL?

Well, I think it changed the world a great deal. Uh,...

The Cuban Missile Crisis, I think, changed both President Kennedy and the world... it changed Khrushchev, too... I think both Kennedy and Khrushchev were forced to stare down the nuclear abyss, so to speak, and they didn't like what they saw. And they came out of it both absolutely persuaded that the drift toward nuclear war had to stop, and that the arms race had to be brought under control. This had been Harold Macmillan's view for some time, and, uh... David Holly (?) — David Ormsby-Gore as he was then — who was the British ambassador to the United States and an old personal friend of Kennedy's from Kennedy's..."student days from London urged very strongly the view that we must move... as fast... move forward from the missile crisis as fast as possible towards some kind of control over the nuclear arms race. And Kennedy strongly agreed with that, so as a result of the of the missile crisis we were able to move toward a test ban treaty, which was not the comprehensive test ban treaty that Kennedy, Macmillan and Khrushchev would have liked, but still, even with its limitations, was a great step forward. Had... the missiles not been removed from Cuba, had... were there Soviet missiles in Cuba... in the 1960s and today, the world would have been a much more dangerous world. The destabilizing effect of allowing the missiles... to remain in Cuba would have been immense and the political consequences incalculable. So that I do not see how anyone can rationally argue that the world would have been better off if we had taken no action and permitted the Soviet missiles to stay in Cuba.

LET'S TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SPEECH. HOW MUCH DID THAT GROW OUT OF KENNEDY'S EXPERIENCE DURING THE CRISIS?

Well, I think the American University speech was made possible by the resolution of the, of the missile crisis. Uh, Kennedy, when he went, met Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, had proposed an effective standstill agreement that the world had sort of gotten divided into various spheres, and that each person, each nation, should; stay-out of the other nation's spheres, and Khrushchev…rejected that, he said wars of national liberation are going to take place, and we're going to back them, and so on. And I think that Kennedy hoped that the missile crisis and our response to it and the withdrawal of the missiles had persuaded Khrushchev of the value of... standstill, and caused... and both Kennedy and Khrushchev came, were somewhat shaken by the fact that they had to face the possibility of nuclear war, and both men were determined to stop that. Ah, therefore... private correspondence between them resumed after the missile crisis, and both were moving toward uh, some form of negotiation. Ah... an important figure... a middleman in all this was Norman Cousins... editor of the Saturday Review, who visited Khrushchev and Kennedy, and the Pope, and carried messages... played a role... Cousins was persuaded that an initiative by Kennedy might have some useful effect, and this coincided with Kennedy's own gathering feeling that he wanted to make some public statement about it, and so in the spring of 1963 he decided that the time was propitious... for a restatement of American position in the cold war. And, um, he called a group of us in one day and we had a long... talk about it... and the result of that was the American University speech.

DO YOU RECALL THE SPEECH, THE DELIVERY OF IT?

Yes, I did not... go to the... actually, the American University on the day the speech was given, ah, but this speech, which was... very carefully considered is... was... something......... Kennedy cared very much about, and that... Sorenson and Bundy and Carl Kaysen and I all... found, worked on it, had, uh, understood that... as I say, it was a restatement of the American position in the cold war, and what it was, it was a... cutting away from the John Foster Dulles theory of... a "this is a holy war against the godless Reds," and there was an effort to recognize the fact that the Soviet Union was a great power and had its interests... which had to be accepted and respected, and that there was a possibility of, not only a possibility, but a vital necessity, of... of conciliation and of... more civilized relations.... Compare the Kennedy speech of 1963 with the speech that Ronald Reagan gave 20 years later to Orlando, Florida, about the "Evil Empire" — you'll see how much Soviet-American relations have regressed in 20 years.

WAS IT A RISKY SPEECH, IN TERMS OF THE CONGRESS, IN TERMS OF POLITICAL AND DOMESTIC SUPPORT?

It wasn't, I don't think it was a disastrously risky speech, and in fact it was a much applauded speech; it had some political risks, but the situation was urgent, and the, one of the jobs of the President is to... educate the people and persuade them, and this was part of the process.

DO YOU FEEL THAT IN TEACHING IN THE SCHOOLS TODAY, AND ALSO IN THE PUBLIC MIND, THAT THE CORRECT LESSONS OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS HAVE BEEN LEARNED?

I don't know whether the... to what extent the people... students today understand the correct lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think too many people may still suppose that all we have to be, do is be tough and the mother side's going to crumble. But President Kennedy himself was concerned very much that the wrong lessons be drawn. I think a lesson has to be drawn that it's necessary for us to maintain, um, military strength but it's also necessary to combine that with diplomatic resourcefulness. And that arms and diplomacy must go hand in hand.

DOES IT CONCERN YOU THAT THE MISSILE CRISIS IS USED EVEN TODAY BY PEOPLE IN THE ADMINISTRATION AND OUTSIDE WHO ARGUE FOR NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY?

I don't think the missile crisis can be properly used as an argument for attempts at nuclear superiority. It's true that the fact that we had nuclear superiority in 1962, um, meant that... it would have been suicide for Khrushchev to contemplate anything that might lead on to a third world war. But nuclear superiority still meant something in 1962, due to the fact that the Soviet Union did not have enough missiles to survive a first strike and retaliate. The... one consequence of the missile crisis, ah, which was a, really a quick fix by the Soviet Union to try to remedy their missile gap, was to launch a... for the Soviets to launch a... big program of missile construction... and... which resulted in their having, by the 1970s, a sufficient stock of missiles. So the missile, nuclear superiority therefore after became meaningless, because once... either side, once both sides have enough to absorb a first strike and to retaliate in force, then superiority is... has no longer... have any meaning. So whereas nuclear superiority did have a me-, meaning when the Russians' missile stocks were low, it no longer has meaning to today.

THAT'S ONE OF THE UNFORTUNATE... LEGACIES OF THE MISSILE CRISIS.

There had been much concern in the United States about a missile gap in the 1960 election and before; this concern had come out of a, the report by the Gaither Commission in the late 1950s, and it was widely believed by Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense, and by Kennedy in the 1960 campaign, and many, many of the experts. Eisenhower himself was skeptical of it, but Eisenhower as a general knew how the Pentagon always inflates everything. And therefore didn't take it very seriously — Eisenhower was quite right. McNamara, we did, we found out some months after the Kennedy administration began that the missile gap was mythological, that what missile gap, missile gap there was, was in our favor. Ah, the Russians had bluffed us, and uh... and uh, we learned this when we got satellite reconnaissance in, and we began to get reports from the British spy Penkovsky (?) in the Soviet Union. By that time we'd unfortunately launched a…expansion of our missile program, which was... unnecessary, and was... in retrospect a mistake. And I think this may have, have provoked the Russians into feeling that they had to improve their missile position by installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. And when that failed, the then turned to a long-term program of expansion of missiles.

I THINK KUZNETSOV IS QUOTED AS SAYING TO MCCLOY, "YOU'LL NEVER DO THIS DO US AGAIN."

Yes, I think the me, the, the, the, the... remark that Kuznetsov made to McCloy about... where... you're never going to be... we'll never... let ourselves be put in a position where you can do that to us again, ah... is the lesson the Soviet Union draw, drew from the missile crisis.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS THAT WE SHOULD LEARN FROM THE MISSILE CRISIS IN TODAY'S WORLD?

I think the, the, it's a double lesson from the missile crisis, and one lesson is that we have to keep up our... our military strength, which does not mean that we have to... have this extravagant defense budgets that we have today. If we don't have adequate military strength from the enormous amounts of money which the Defense Department has been getting the last four or five years, then there's something badly wrong with the Defense Department. I don't think we have to continue expanding the defense budget this way; as Eisenhower used to point out, having a healthy economy is the also part of, ah, of defense. But we do have to have adequate military strength, and the other lesson is we have to have a constant readiness to negotiate, we have to understand that diplomacy is as much a weapon of national power as armaments. And what the impressive thing about the missile crisis was that Kennedy, both Kennedys were alert throughout to the possibilities of a negotiated solution, and that was in the end what they brought about.

JUST IN YOUR OWN PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE KENNEDYS, DID YOU GET A SENSE THAT THEY WERE PERSONALLY FRIGHTENED BY THE MISSILE CRISIS?

I think…were the Kennedys frightened by the missile crisis? Well, they were deeply concerned — I mean, no one knew what the hell might happen. As I think as I said, I do not think that Kennedy, um, thought that the Soviet Union is likely to initiate nuclear war, but he was terribly concerned that some- thing might go... wrong down the line, and that was... was much on his mind, and no one knew quite what might happen in the, in the... a crisis of that sort. Plans were circulated evacuation... in case of nuclear war. Robert Kennedy tore his up; and... said, "I'm not going to be a vie-, go down in any of those... down, underground shelters;" he said, "If nuclear war comes I'm going out to Hickory Hill and be with my family." So there was that kind of apprehension, ah, but I think... there, there...was a general feeling that... you kept at it, that Khrushchev in the end would be, was a rational man, and that some resolution would be found.

THE CRITICS OF ALL THIS...WOULD SAY THAT THE CHANCES OF WAR WERE SOMEWHERE BETWEEN ONE IN THREE — THAT PERHAPS KENNEDY WAS BEING A BIT RECKLESS IN THIS WHOLE ENTERPRISE.

Question, was Kennedy reckless? I would, I wouldn't have thought so. I think the reckless thing would have been to leave the missiles there. And I think the country... the world... would have been such a dangerous world, had the missiles remained. I think it was absolutely indispensable to get them out. And I think he got them out in a very non-reckless way. And he got them out effectively and peace was preserved and... ah, I don't know what more one could expect.

LIPPMAN'S FEELING WAS THAT JUPITER SHOULD BE TRADED AND MAKE IT OPEN. DID HIS ARTICLE HAVE ANY EFFECT?

Question of Walter Lippman's article — he wrote one during the crisis, proposing... uh, the... with... exchange of the Turkish and the... Cuban missiles... and uh, that provoked a kind of favorable reaction in Moscow — caused great irritation in the White House, and not because they disagreed... with... Lippmann... line... of thinking, which indeed was the line of thinking that K- that Kennedy himself was pur- pursuing, and on which he finally acted. Ah, but they felt that to say that publicly was... stiffen the Russians, and make them increase their bargaining terms. So that the irritation of Lippman had not to do with the substance of his argument, but the timing of it, and the fear that this would harden the Soviet position.

AND EVEN STEVENSON, WHO PROPOSED THE TRADE, IN THE END WHEN THAT PLAN HAPPENED, HE SAW HE WAS JUSTIFIED.

A number, a number of people in the executive committee meetings have... from time to time, proposed the trade: McNamara did; Stevenson did... I mean, the reason Stevenson got into trouble wasn't the Turkish missiles, it was the further suggestion of Guantanamo that... ah, but it was... much, much on people's minds throughout — and on the other hand, a number of people strongly opposed the Turkish missile deal, on the ground of its... impact, they thought, on NATO.