Kennedy

by Ted Sorensen

  The Soviet Chairman did state at Vienna, however, that his country would wait for the United States to be the first to resume testing. Gromyko said the same to Rusk. Both agreed with Kennedy that the negotiations at Geneva should continue. The President told his news conference that “the stakes are too important for us to abandon” the effort. In August he asked Dean to return to Geneva for one more try, “with our hopes and prayers, and I believe with the hopes and prayers of all mankind.” He asked Dean to outsit, outtalk and outlast the Russian negotiators (in what Dean had once privately called “the bladder technique” of diplomacy) until he could find out for certain whether any glimmer of progress was possible.

  But ever since he had taken office, Kennedy had been pressured to authorize a resumption of U.S. testing. Renewed American testing, according to the military and the Teller wing of the scientific community, was indispensable to the development of new nuclear weapons. It would provide a necessary hedge against the possibility that the Soviets were secretly testing underground. The Joint Chiefs urged him in February to resume testing if no agreement could be reached after sixty days of negotiations (implying that they agreed to his test-ban proposals only if he agreed with their position). They were for atmospheric testing; the Defense Department was for underground testing; the State Department was for putting off a decision; and a variety of nuclear scientists said that no agreement was in sight, the moratorium had dangerously slowed our technical progress and the United States should test while continuing to talk.

  A Gallup Poll in July, 1961, showed public support, by more than a two-to-one margin, for America’s resuming testing on its own. The Joint Atomic Energy Committee of the Congress, almost always a force for bigger and better bombs, favored resumption. Similar pressures came from various parts of the Congress and press. Dr. Teller maintained publicly that the Soviets had been testing underground steadily since the moratorium began. The President convened in June a special scientific panel to examine the latter possibility and that panel concluded in the negative. Finally, early in August, despite a new recommendation from Maxwell Taylor and the Chiefs that testing be resumed immediately, he decided to order preparations for underground tests but not actually to resume them until it was absolutely clear—not only to him but to the world—that he had done everything possible to obtain a treaty, that the Soviets had not bargained in good faith or really wanted such a treaty, and that the security of the free world required this country to test.

  At both Vienna and Geneva it had seemed to Kennedy at times that the Soviets were attempting to goad us into resuming testing first. The appealing logic of the U.S.-U.K. proposals seemed only to make them more indignant. Nevertheless, asked at his August 30 news conference about continued Soviet objections, the President refused to acknowledge the cause as hopeless. Shortly after his return to the White House that afternoon, he was handed the grim news: the Soviets had announced a resumption of atmospheric tests.

  His first reaction is unprintable. It was one of personal anger at the Soviets for deceiving him and at himself for believing them. For their tests had obviously been under secret preparation even before Vienna and throughout the Geneva negotiations. His second reaction was one of deep disappointment—deeper, I believe, than that caused by any other Soviet action during his tenure.

  But anger and disappointment were not panic. As a two-month series of enormous Soviet explosions went forward, Khrushchev boasted of a hundred-megaton bomb.2 “No super-deep shelter,” said the Russian Army newspaper Red Star, “can save [one] from an all-shattering blow from this weapon.” His hope, Khrushchev told two British visitors, was to shock the West into concessions on Berlin and disarmament. But if that actually was his intention, he was doomed to disappointment.

  In a series of emergency meetings which followed the Soviet announcement, Kennedy was the calmest man in the room. His advisers were filled with suggestions, including a “fireside chat” detailing our nuclear superiority, a prompt announcement of our own test resumption, the explosion of a test bomb immediately to show we weren’t unprepared, and knocking out the Soviet test site with one well-placed nuclear bomb. But the President, rejecting all these answers, was filled with questions: Why did our intelligence not detect their preparations? What kinds of weapons will they need to test? How thoroughly can we monitor their tests? Can we now maintain our superiority by testing underground only? When should we test and when should we announce it?

  One of the most thoughtful pieces of advice, in the President’s view, was that of his United States Information Agency Director, Edward R. Murrow. Murrow urged no precipitate action that might throw away this opportunity to consolidate our leadership of the non-Communist world and isolate the Communist bloc. The voices on the right “who today urge you to resume testing immediately,” he said, “will tomorrow contend that the decision to do so was merely another belated reaction to Soviet action.”

  What emerged from these meetings was a controlled and deliberate response that made the most of world-wide antagonisms toward the Soviets without compromising our own freedom to test:

  1. On that same night of August 30, a White House statement denounced the Soviet tests as a hazard to health and peace and as proof of their hypocrisy and duplicity, leaving the United States “under the necessity of deciding what its own national interests require.”

  2. The following day, after a formal NSC meeting, another statement called the Soviet action “primarily a form of atomic blackmail, designed to substitute terror for reason…testing not only nuclear devices but the will and determination of the free world.” That statement reassured all allies—and a subsequent full-scale briefing reassured the Congress—as to the adequacy of our nuclear capabilities.

  3. Over the Labor Day weekend various statements on and off the record made clear that a hundred-megaton bomb was “far too large for military objectives,” and that the United States could make one if desired but could accomplish the same impact with two well-placed ten-megaton bombs.

  4. On September 3 Kennedy—joined by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan—gave Khrushchev a chance to draw back by proposing an immediate three-power ban on atmospheric tests.

  5. On September 5, having “taken every step that reasonable men could justify,” and having waited until the Soviet bombs were actually exploding to the dismay of people the world over, the President ordered the resumption of underground testing in the United States. Those tests began almost immediately thereafter.

  6. In the following weeks, in his talks with spokesmen for the Belgrade conference of nonaligned nations (which had timidly refused to censure the Soviet blasts) and to the General Assembly of the United Nations, he indicted the Soviets for “secretly preparing new experiments in destruction…while we were negotiating in good faith in Geneva,” defended the necessity and safety of U.S. underground tests, and denounced the use of terror as a weapon “by those who could not prevail either by persuasion or example.” He publicly appealed to the Soviets not to test a fifty-megaton bomb which could serve only to pollute the atmosphere, and then announced the explosion when it occurred—as our government had announced most of the Soviet explosions. A White Paper, reviewing the Soviet’s negative negotiating position and detailing the fallout effects of the fifty-megaton bomb, was distributed to all UN delegations and others.

  7. Finally, as the Soviet test series came to a close on November 2, the President issued a brief statement more carefully rewritten than any of similar size on which I worked. In addition to making clear that their tests had not ended our over-all superiority (“In terms of total military strength, the United States would not trade places with any nation on earth” was deemed by the President to be the most positive way of saying this without being provocative), the President made his first specific statement on the possibility of this nation’s resuming nuclear tests in the atmosphere.

  Despite all the cautions and conditions he attached to it—which were aimed at his own military as
well as the world (some of the Joint Chiefs, for example, wanted all kinds of tests immediately)—it was widely assumed that the decision had already been made with absolute finality to resume atmospheric tests. It had not. It was, in fact, one of the closest decisions the President ever had to make. While believing he had little choice other than to resume, he at least wanted to keep the door open. He had no intention of being stampeded into so serious an action merely because the Soviets had done so first. He made clear to the Pentagon that preparations to test did not commit him to test; that his personal approval would be required for each test proposed; that no test would be conducted to provide information not strictly essential and otherwise unobtainable; that no test would be undertaken which could not hold fallout to a minimum; and that several of the tests that were proposed would have to be combined, others deferred or held underground and some excluded as unnecessary. Having been told before August 30 how much progress could be made by merely testing underground, he was now skeptical when the same military and scientific authorities told him only atmospheric tests could do the job. He wondered whether our nuclear superiority and weapons development had not already reached the point where they were adequate, regardless of Soviet gains. Inasmuch as Soviet progress had not ended our deterrent, and U.S. tests could not give us a pre-emptive first strike or an anti-missile missile capability, did we need to test? Talk about a neutron bomb which destroyed only people, not buildings, struck him as foolish in the extreme.

  He was, moreover, genuinely concerned about fallout: the airborne radioactive debris produced by all atmospheric nuclear explosions which emitted tissue-damaging rays into human bodies and food. He realized that natural radiation hazards would have a far greater impact on present and future generations than several series of U.S. and Soviet tests combined. But he could not accept the bland assurances of Teller and others that there was no danger at all. Even one more case of leukemia, cancer or sterility was an unwelcome responsibility; and he thought it remarkable that extremist groups opposed to fluoridation of urban water supplies could strongly favor this pollution of our air.

  One rainy day, seated at his desk, he asked Jerome Wiesner what brought the radioactive particles down on areas not immediately beneath an explosion. “And I told him,” said Wiesner, “that it was washed out of the clouds by the rain, that it would be brought to earth by rain, and he said, looking out the window, ‘You mean, it’s in the rain out there?’—and I said, ‘Yes’; and he looked out the window, looked very sad, and didn’t say a word for several minutes.”

  Even after August 30 he repeated his hopes for a test-ban treaty, his hope to get the nuclear “genie back in the bottle.” Now he had to decide whether his resumption of atmospheric tests would convince the Soviets that a treaty was necessary or impossible.

  An impartial panel of scientists evaluating the Soviet tests concluded that they had made important weapons progress, particularly in the development of larger weapons of low weight and high explosive content. Another long, secretly prepared and intensive Soviet series, based on the findings of the first series, might achieve a breakthrough of dangerous proportions if the U.S. had not meanwhile conducted its own experiments. The Defense Department argued that the improvement in our own capabilities from a new test series, even if not essential to the deterrent, could help provide that extra margin for limiting damage should deterrence ever fail. The unanimous military and scientific opinion was that underground and outer space tests would not be adequate.

  Nearly all the principal advisers involved favored resuming atmospheric tests (although a few days before the tests began McNamara startled Rusk and Bundy at lunch by suggesting that they were not really necessary). Wiesner thought the technological arguments about even. Arthur Schlesinger suggested that we agree not to test unless and until the Soviets tested again, and Britain’s Macmillan made a similar suggestion. But that meant a return to the pre-August 30 status quo as though nothing had happened. “If they fooled us once,” said the President, “it’s their fault. If they fool us twice, it’s our fault.” American scientists could not be kept constantly in a state of readiness with no testing of our own, no commitment from the Soviets and no knowledge of their possible preparations.

  Macmillan was eloquent in his pleas to the President to find some way to avoid more testing. He agreed that the West must test if no agreement could be reached. But a new round of testing by both sides, he said, could spur the arms race onto a path “at once so fantastic and so retrograde, so sophisticated and so barbarous, as to be almost incredible,” with nuclear weapons ultimately turning up in the hands of all kinds of “dictators, reactionaries, revolutionaries, madmen…. Then sooner or later, and certainly I think by the end of this century, either by error or folly or insanity, the great crime will be committed.”

  Kennedy shared Macmillan’s concern. He agreed on the need for a “determined new initiative, a supreme effort to break the log jam” before he ordered atmospheric tests resumed. But how was that new initiative to be launched? Macmillan proposed a summit. Not without evidence that agreement is possible, said JFK. But the Soviets might stir up a new crisis over Berlin if the United States tests, warned Macmillan. They could anyway, said Kennedy. The new disarmament talks opening in Geneva might be wrecked unless the Americans forgo testing, said the Prime Minister. The Soviets would be more likely to attribute such a decision to weakness rather than goodwill, said the President, and make a treaty all the more difficult to reach.

  In the end, Macmillan—whose cooperation was essential as our long-time nuclear ally and partner at Geneva, and whose Christmas Island test site was badly needed—loyally supported the President’s decision. But it was the leader of his loyal opposition, Labour Party Chief Hugh Gaitskell, who helped shape the final Presidential policy. Gaitskell, whom the President liked immensely, suggested in a letter on February 20 that our tests not begin before the new disarmament conference opened in Geneva on March 14, that they be announced before that date to enable the Soviets to agree to a treaty during the first month of that conference, and that the President make clear that the conclusion of a treaty would call off our tests. The President liked this approach, for he was willing to take whatever disadvantages would accrue from the Soviets’ testing last in exchange for the advantages of an enforceable treaty.

  Some delicate problems remained. Some urged that he not announce our decision until the day of testing. No, said the President, secret preparations by the United States during the Geneva talks would seem too much like the previous year’s Soviet performance. The State Department proposed a test over Nevada immediately after the President’s announcement to show there was no indecision, no fear of fallout and no agonizing wait ahead. That made no sense to Kennedy on any of those grounds. Writing Macmillan on February 27, after we had worked on his speech over the holiday weekend at Palm Beach, he stated his intention to make a nationwide TV address on March 1 announcing atmospheric tests beginning April 15, unless an agreement were reached before then. The Prime Minister requested that the speech be given March 2 when the House of Commons would have recessed for the weekend (JFK agreed) and that the Soviets be given until May 3 (JFK changed it to “the latter part of April”).

  The President’s solemn, factual televised address was impressive. He refused to sound so reassuring on the possible dangers of fallout that a future test-ban treaty would seem unimportant. He explained that his own soul-searching had concluded that the overriding dangers were those confronting free world security if the U.S. failed to test. With a painstaking detail which made no effort to oversimplify the facts, he reviewed the results of Soviet tests, the types of American tests needed, the stricter controls he would impose on fallout, the illogic and impossibility of another informal moratorium and the renewed offer to the Soviets of a treaty. He was acting, he stressed, on behalf of all

  free peoples who value their freedom and security and look to our relative strength to shield them from danger….

&
nbsp; It is our hope and prayer that these grim, unwelcome tests will never have to be made, that these deadly weapons will never have to be fired, and that our preparations for war will bring us the preservation of peace. Our foremost aim is the control of force, not the pursuit of force, in a world made safe for mankind. But whatever the future brings, I am sworn to uphold and defend the freedom of the American people, and I intend to do whatever must be done to fulfill that solemn obligation.

  No Soviet agreement was forthcoming, and the tests began on April 25, 1962. They received as little publicity as the President could “manage.” He wanted no pictures of mushroom clouds, no eyewitness reports of each blast, and as little stimulus as possible to picketing and ban-the-bomb parades around the world. The Chinese Communists said the tests showed him to be “more vicious, more cunning and more adventurist than his predecessor”; the Russian news agency Tass called his last-chance offer to the Soviet Union a maneuver “strongly resembling blackmail”; the Young Americans for Freedom denounced him for waiting so long to resume; and the Students for Democratic Action denounced him for deciding to resume at all. But, as the result of Kennedy’s careful approach, both domestic and world opinion leaders were generally far more united on the necessity of our tests than they had been a few months earlier and far less critical of the U.S. than they had been of the Soviets.

  It was John Kennedy who still had doubts about the value of his test series (although not about the necessity of his decision). He followed the tests closely, regarded their results skeptically and resisted constant pressures to expand them. Privately he speculated that fears of Soviet nuclear test progress might have been akin to previous fears of a Soviet “bomber gap” and “missile gap”; and he continued to ask just how much nuclear power beyond the deterrent level was really necessary. His ever-increasing mastery of these complex questions would enable him to make the most of the test-ban opportunity when it came.