Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy

by Ted Widmer

  KRULAK: I’ll tell you the reason. It’s metropolitan versus national. That’s my judgment, sir. Mr. Mendenhall has expressed a metropolitan viewpoint, and I have expressed one that reflects more of the countryside. Now, this is not to say that my viewpoint should prevail, at all, but the city of Saigon is like the bull’s-eye in a target, but there’s a great big target around it, too. The attitudes in Saigon indeed are different, they are far more political, far less pragmatic, than are those in the countryside. With respect to Mr. Mendenhall’s comments regarding degradation in the war effort in one of the northern provinces, I was there, and talked to our military advisors, whose view is the reverse, and I believe that their view is correct. It would seem difficult to make a synthesis between these two widely divergent views, until our attention is focused on our purpose in Vietnam, which is to win. And I believe in military terms, we are winning. And this wretched government that is there, much as we deplore it, and Mr. Nhu is certainly the figurehead of the things that we deplore, we can still [unclear] through and win the war if somehow we could be permitted to tolerate their conduct, I feel sure of it.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY AT A PRESS CONFERENCE DISCUSSING SOUTHEAST ASIA, MARCH 23, 1961

  PRIVATE DICTATION, NOVEMBER 4, 1963

  The mere fact that he recorded this dictation indicates that President Kennedy was upset by the events that had led to the overthrow of President Diem and his brother, and by the faulty planning process that had allowed the coup to move forward. As he had done during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy paused to outline how an event of unusual historic significance had germinated and how the members of his top staff had felt about it. Midway through taping, he was interrupted by his son, which deepened the personal tone of his remarks, and the shock he expressed into the Dictaphone.

  JFK: Monday, November 4, 1963. The … Over the weekend, the coup in Saigon took place, culminated three months of conversation about a coup, conversation which divided the government here and in Saigon. Opposed to a coup was General Taylor; the attorney general; Secretary McNamara; to a somewhat lesser degree, John McCone,8 partly because of an old hostility to Lodge, which causes him to lack confidence in Lodge’s judgment, partly, too, as a result of a new hostility because Lodge shifted his station chief. In favor of the coup was State, led by Averell Harriman, George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported by Mike Forrestal at the White House.9 I feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it, beginning with our cable of early August in which we suggested the coup. In my judgment, that wire was badly drafted, it should never have been sent on a Saturday, I should not have given my consent to it without a roundtable conference in which McNamara and Taylor could have presented their views. While we did redress that balance in later wires, that first wire encouraged Lodge along a course to which he was in any case inclined. Harkins10 continued to oppose the coup on the grounds that the military effort was doing well. There was a sharp split between Saigon and the rest of the country. Politically the situation is deteriorating. Militarily they had not had its effect. There was a feeling however that it would for this reason, Secretary McNamara and General Taylor supported applying additional pressures to Diem and Nhu in order to move them …

  [John F. Kennedy, Jr., enters room]

  JFK: Do you want to say anything? Say hello.

  JOHN: Hello.

  JFK: Say it again.

  JOHN: Naughty, naughty Daddy.

  JFK: Why do the leaves fall?

  JOHN: Because it’s autumn.

  JFK: Why does the snow come on the ground?

  JOHN: Because it’s winter.

  JFK: Why do the leaves turn green?

  JOHN: Because it’s spring.

  JFK: When do we go to the Cape? Hyannisport?

  JOHN: Because it’s summer.

  JFK: It’s summer.

  JOHN: [laughter] Your horses.

  [John F. Kennedy, Jr., exits room]

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND ATTORNEY GENERAL ROBERT F. KENNEDY WITH JOHN F. KENNEDY, JR., AND CAROLINE KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, OCTOBER 14, 1963

  JFK: I was shocked by the death of Diem and Nhu.11 I’d met Diem with Justice Douglas many years ago. He was a extraordinary character, and while he became increasingly difficult in the last months, nevertheless, over a ten-year period he held his country together to maintain its independence under very adverse conditions. The way he was killed made it particularly abhorrent. The question now, whether the generals can stay together and build a stable government, or whether Saigon will begin to turn on public opinion in Saigon. The intellectuals, students, et cetera, will turn on this government as repressive and undemocratic in the not too distant future.

  Also, we have another test on the Autobahn12 today. This is serious, and not the result of any misunderstanding. It’s obviously a determination by the Soviets to demonstrate that they determine the conditions under which we move on the Autobahn. We are attempting to determine that we have free access and that therefore are not subject to their artificial rules. This is a substantive matter, and we cannot tell how it will end.

  Also concerned about the prospective annulment of all the American oil contracts. The Argentine. This will mean that the Hickenlooper Amendment13 goes into effect, and we’ll find it very difficult to give them assistance, and it will make our relations more bitter. We may have a similar situation in Peru. The use of the Hickenlooper Amendment in Ceylon has not been a happy augury for its use in other countries, particularly in Latin America, where nationalist passions run high.

  Adenauer said that we should have pulled the wall down in 1961, that for sixty hours we were immobilized in spite of their fervent pleas. This is totally erroneous. I asked Bundy to get together a whole record on that period to show that no German party, no major paper, certainly not our military, nor that of France or England, advocated any actions such as that.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND FRENCH PRESIDENT CHARLES DE GAULLE LEAVE THE ELYSÉE PALACE, PARIS, FRANCE, JUNE 2, 1961

  “We must deal with the world as it is,” President Kennedy asserted in his speech at American University in June 1963.1 But a world in flux made that a constant challenge. When he ran for president in 1960, one of Kennedy’s many arguments was that the world was changing quickly and the United States was not doing enough to change with it. For eight years, Americans had heard of dominoes falling and chessboards divided into two colors. Kennedy wanted to describe the world with more nuance. As a senator he had nurtured this vision with speeches on Vietnam and Algeria, and as president, he went to considerable lengths to convey his interest in Africa, India, China, Indonesia, the Middle East, North Africa, and many other parts of the global community. There were nineteen new nations in 1960 alone, and as the former colonial powers continued their retreat from dominance, these new nations needed to be addressed with seriousness and respect. Kennedy understood this instinctively; he invited numerous African heads of state to appear at state ceremonies with him and spent surprising time with their ambassadors. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., called him “the Secretary of State for the third world.”

  Sometimes this new diplomacy paid surprising dividends—as, for example, when African nations refused to allow Soviet aircraft to refuel on the way to Cuba during the Missile Crisis. At other times, it did not; Vietnam was a former colonial power whose wishes did not run especially parallel to those of the United States, no matter how much money and military aid was offered. But as the new decade dawned, these imperfect aspirations marked an important attempt to give new relevance to the core principles of self-reliance at the heart of American history.

  MEETING WITH AFRICA ADVISORS, OCTOBER 31, 1962

  Throughout his career as a senator, and then as President, Kennedy displayed an interest in Africa that was unusual for the time, and for anyone schooled, as he surely was, in Cold War brinksmanship. He spoke up for Africa’s relevance to the world, championed African student exchange programs, and referred to Africa 479 times during the 1960 campaign. An impressive numb
er of state visits came from African leaders—eleven in 1961, ten in 1962, and seven in 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis was barely over when the President’s Africa advisors sat down with him to discuss matters relating to the Congo, where the cruel legacy of Belgian colonialism, combined with more recent acts of violence (particularly the assassination of the charismatic leader Patrice Lumumba, on January 17, 1961), had led to increasing volatility.

  G. MENNEN WILLIAMS:2 Mr. President, there’s one other factor that we ought to have in mind, and that is, we needed the Africa vote in the Cuban situation …

  JFK: Yeah.

  WILLIAMS: … and we needed it in the ChiCom3 situation. And they’re not going to have much faith in us if we don’t push through with the Congo, so I think we’ve got to keep this thing moving. Now, I think the plan that George has outlined will do it. But I just think we’ve got to show our determination.

  JFK: Well, I think we’ve done a hell of a lot. I mean, I know that we haven’t been successful, but no one can say that we’ve been less than any European country. My God, just look through the list! The English haven’t done anything for us. The French, nothing for us. [unclear] The Germans and Italians can’t even, so that there’s no other Western power that’s doing anything now, we haven’t done enough to get the job done, but …

  WILLIAMS: Now, sir, after Cuba you look ten feet tall to them, and they say, here’s a man who can do it in Cuba, what’s he doing for us here? So I think we can …

  JFK: Well I think we ought to use whatever influence we’ve got very hard now, in the next couple of weeks with these people.

  PRESIDENT AND MRS. KENNEDY WELCOME FELIX HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY, PRESIDENT OF THE IVORY COAST, NATIONAL AIRPORT, WASHINGTON, DC, MAY 22, 1962

  MEETING ABOUT DEFENSE BUDGET, DECEMBER 5, 1962

  JFK often threw out arresting thoughts in his frequent meetings with military advisors, fighting against the conventional doctrine that was so easy to find in Washington. This conversation between Kennedy and his advisors took place shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis and centered on U.S. policy toward Cuba, the military budget, and the value of nuclear weapons, both as a deterrent and as a practical weapon. At the meeting, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presented the President with a review of the Department of Defense’s $54.4 billion budget for FY 1964. Recommendations on funding, programs, and forces for each of the service branches were also discussed in detail. McNamara was a helpful ally as he brought his formidable executive skills to bear on reforming the enormous bureaucracy he was charged to lead. In this meeting to review the Department of Defense budget, JFK questioned the military’s nimbleness at planning for the years ahead.4

  JFK: What I’m thinking about is, in Cuba where we’ll be on a unilateral basis, in which we bear total responsibility, Southeast Asia, where you can see a crisis coming, either something in Laos, or something in South Vietnam, number 2 … number 3, where we’d be required to do a rather rushed job in India, in which we’d have to send a lot of equipment, planes. Those seem to me to be the most likely things to happen. What is rather unlikely is to have a long sustained conventional war in Europe, because I don’t think that our allies are preparing for that.

  MAXWELL TAYLOR: We are not prepared to fight that kind of war in Europe at the present time.

  JFK: Well, then what’s the use of having six divisions, plus two spares, plus enough equipment to carry on a conventional war there until we get our [unclear] reduced? I think it makes sense, I’m all for it if it gets the Europeans to do it, but if they’re not going to do it, then that’s what we’ll decide at NATO, then it seems to me that we ought to say to them, this is what we’re prepared to do, but it only makes sense if we’ve got somebody on our right and our left.

  ROBERT MCNAMARA: This is exactly the theme of my statement, I have a draft of it ready now. [some chatter] What I propose to say is exactly this, it makes no sense for us to buy enough for the U.S. divisions, and have our flanks bare at the end of thirty days. And that’s exactly the position we’re in. But I fully agree that in fact, there are other situations in the world that would justify the major part of that, if not all.

  JFK: Well, I’m thinking of … I’ll give you three examples. Number one might be, if civil war in Brazil or someplace, and you’d want to send down a lot of equipment there, your airlift and so on, so I think as long as we don’t sort of concentrate it on Europe, I’m all for it. I just don’t think we ought to be thinking about it, except [unclear] in the rather unlikely contingency, when we’re fighting a conventional war in Europe, until such a point where our [unclear] can sustain us.

  CALL FROM SARGENT SHRIVER, APRIL 2, 1963

  In this brief call, Peace Corps Director and President Kennedy’s brother-in-law R. Sargent Shriver voices his concern that one of the President’s most idealistic proposals, the Peace Corps, is in danger of being subverted by the Central Intelligence Agency. Kennedy quickly understands the danger posed by this threat to one of his most valued forms of cultural diplomacy and promises to put a stop to it.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND PEACE CORPS DIRECTOR R. SARGENT SHRIVER, THE WHITE HOUSE, WEST WING COLONNADE, AUGUST 28, 1961

  JFK: Hello.

  SHRIVER: Hello, Jack?

  JFK: Yeah, Sarge.

  SHRIVER: Hi, how are you?

  JFK: Good. Fine, fine.

  SHRIVER: I’m sorry to bother you.

  JFK: Not a bit.

  SHRIVER: But I’m getting rather suspicious over here that, despite your instructions, that some of our friends over in the Central Intelligence Agency might think that they’re smarter than anybody else, and that they are trying to stick fellows into the Peace Corps.

  JFK: Yeah, yeah.

  SHRIVER: And John McCone has told me on two or three occasions, and Dulles of course did, that they never would do that.

  JFK: Right, right.

  SHRIVER: They sent out messages and the rest of it.

  JFK: Right.

  SHRIVER: But we’ve got a group in training now that looks suspicious, and I’d like to follow whatever you recommend, but I sure in hell want those guys …

  JFK: Well, would you call Dick Helms?5

  SHRIVER: Dick Helms?

  JFK: Yeah. He’s the operations officer over there, and just say to him that you’ve talked to me and that I don’t want anybody in there.

  SHRIVER: OK.

  JFK: And if they are there, let’s get them out now, before we have it. And if there is any problem about it, that Dick Helms ought to call the President about it. That …

  SHRIVER: OK.

  JFK: This is very, we are very, very anxious that there be no, we don’t want to discredit this whole idea.

  SHRIVER: OK, fine.

  JFK: And they, Christ, they’re not gonna find out that much intelligence!

  SHRIVER: That’s right.

  JFK: Now, the other thing is, I notice with these people coming back, can we do anything about seeing if we can get some of them to go into the Foreign Service?

  SHRIVER: Yes. The Foreign Service has already changed their examination schedules, and the kind of exams they give, and the places that they are going to be given, and done everything that they think they can this year to facilitate Peace Corps guys getting into the Foreign Service, and …

  JFK: Yeah.

  SHRIVER: USIA6 has done the same thing, and AID7 is trying to do something.

  JFK: Yeah. Yeah.

  SHRIVER: I think we’ll have to find out by one trial run to see whether it’s successful.

  JFK: OK. Well, I just wanted to be sure. Let me know if there’s anything we can do, but these are the guys I’d like to get into the Foreign Service.

  SHRIVER: OK, fine.

  JFK: OK.

  SHRIVER: Thanks.

  JFK: Bye, Sarge.

  MEETING ON INDIA AND CHINA, MAY 9, 1963

  Most Americans were trained to think of nuclear war in the traditional way, as a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. In
this excerpt, JFK contemplates a range of other disturbing scenarios, including the unpredictable actions of the Chinese.

  JFK: I gather we’re coming to the defense of Israel, and Saudi Arabia. What I think we ought to think about is, [unclear] it’s desirable (?) for us, to give India a guarantee which actually we would carry out. I don’t think there’s any doubt that this country is determined that we couldn’t permit the Chinese to defeat the Indians. If we would, we might as well get out of South Korea and South Vietnam. So I think that’s what we’ll decide at the time. Now, therefore, I don’t mind making, seeing us make some commitments. Now, if it is politically important …

  MAXWELL TAYLOR: Mr. President, I would hope before we get too deeply in the India question, we take a broader look at where we’re, the attitude we’re going to maintain versus Red China, all the way from Manchuria to [unclear]. This is just one spectacular aspect of the overall problem of how to cope with Red China, politically and militarily, over the next decade.

  JFK: It seems that India is the only place where they’ve got the manpower to really do it.

  TAYLOR: I would hate to think we’d fight this on the ground in a non-nuclear war, if indeed Red China came in and matched us in any part of Asia.

  JFK: That’s right, I think the chance would be much less if they knew we were clearly committed. Maybe they know by our actions last fall that we are, and by our actions in South Vietnam. What I was thinking is, whatever restraint we impose on them, and whatever assistance it would give us politically, we should be prepared to go some distance to give a guarantee, because I think it’d be just like, an attack on India in force would be just as much a red flag as the North Korean attack on South Korea was in 1950.