When Bolshakov returned to Moscow in 1955, he handed off the Holeman contact to his GRU successor, Yuri Gvozdev, whose cover was as a cultural attaché. Gvozdev had passed through Holeman, who described himself as the Soviets’ “carrier pigeon,” a crucial message that the Eisenhower administration should not overreact to Khrushchev’s November 1958 Berlin ultimatum because Khrushchev would never go to war over Berlin. Working through Holeman, Gvozdev also helped lay the groundwork for Nixon’s visit to the Soviet Union thereafter, handling negotiations over the conditions.
When Bolshakov replaced Gvozdev in 1959, he reacquainted himself with Holeman and the two struck up such a close friendship that their families often got together socially. As fortune would have it, Holeman had been close for some years to the new attorney general’s press secretary, Ed Guthman, to whom he had been passing on the most interesting aspects of his conversations with Bolshakov. Guthman in turn had reported the gist of those talks to Robert Kennedy. With Guthman’s blessing, Holeman on April 29 first floated the possibility of a meeting when he asked Bolshakov, “Don’t you think it would be better to meet directly with Robert Kennedy so that he receives your information at first hand?”
Ten days and countless conversations later, Bolshakov sensed something important was up when Holeman asked if he would join him for a “late lunch” at about four p.m.
“Why so late?” Bolshakov asked.
Holeman explained he had tried to reach Bolshakov several times over the course of the day but that the holiday duty officer had told him Bolshakov was at the printing office, finishing the new edition of his magazine.
A short time later, after they had settled into the chairs in the corner of a cozy, inconspicuous Georgetown restaurant, Holeman looked at his watch. When Bolshakov asked whether it was time for him to go home, Holeman said, “No, it’s our time to go. You have an appointment with Robert Kennedy at six.”
“Damn it,” said Bolshakov, looking at his old suit and frayed shirt cuffs. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Are you afraid?” asked Holeman.
“Not afraid, but I’m not ready for such a meeting.”
“You are always ready.” Holeman smiled.
At the Justice Department, Bobby told the Soviet his brother worried that tension between the two countries was caused in large degree by misunderstanding and misinterpretation of each other’s intentions and actions. Through the Bay of Pigs experience, Bobby said, his brother had learned about the dangers of taking action based on bad information. He told Bolshakov that his brother had made a mistake after the Bay of Pigs in failing to immediately fire the senior officials responsible for the operation.
“The American government and the President,” said Bobby, “are concerned that the Soviet leadership underestimates the capabilities of the U.S. government and those of the President himself.” The message he wanted Bolshakov to relay to the Kremlin could not have been clearer: If Khrushchev tried to test his brother’s resolve, the president would have no choice but to “take corrective action” and introduce a tougher approach toward Moscow.
He told Bolshakov, “At present, our principal concern is the situation in Berlin. The importance of this issue may not be evident to everybody. The President thinks that further misunderstanding of our opinions on Berlin could lead to a war.” Yet, he added, it was precisely because of the complications of the Berlin situation that the president didn’t want the Vienna meeting to focus on a matter where it would be so difficult to achieve progress.
What the president wanted, Bobby told Bolshakov, was for Khrushchev and his brother to use the meeting as a chance to better understand each other, to create personal ties, and to outline a course to further develop their relationship. He wanted real agreements on matters like the nuclear test ban. On Berlin, however, he believed in delaying significant diplomatic steps until both sides had had more time to thoroughly study the matter.
For an individual who had only been called to join the meeting a couple of hours earlier, the Soviet seemed well prepared to respond. If the top U.S. and Soviet leaders met, Bolshakov said, Khrushchev would then consider “substantial” concessions on nuclear testing, and would also offer progress on Laos. Bolshakov did not comment on RFK’s insistence that Berlin remain off-limits in any summit decisions, which Bobby may have misinterpreted as agreement.
Encouraged by Bolshakov’s response, Bobby sketched out a potential nuclear test ban deal. The two countries had been negotiating at lower levels since 1958, but their sticking point was verification. The U.S. had sought without success the right to inspect sites in the Soviet Union. Bobby proposed a unilateral concession under which the U.S. would cut in half, from twenty to ten, the number of inspections it was demanding each year on each other’s territory to investigate seismic events. The condition for this agreement, he said, would be that neither side would veto the creation of an international commission that could monitor complaints.
Behind Bobby’s proposal lay a growing U.S. fear that the Soviets were digging holes so deep and large that they could conceal a weapons test. The most annual inspections Moscow had been willing to accept previously were three. And Moscow wanted any verification to be performed by a “troika”—three officials representing the Soviet bloc, the capitalist West, and the Third World. U.S. officials had opposed that approach as it would have granted a Soviet representative a de facto veto. Said Bobby, “The President does not want to repeat the sad experience of Khrushchev’s meeting with Eisenhower at Camp David and hopes that this forthcoming meeting will produce concrete agreements.”
Playing the role of suitor, Bolshakov said nothing that would make Bobby believe the president’s preconditions for a summit were unacceptable to Khrushchev. There was only one problem: Bolshakov was a mere message carrier who could not know Khrushchev’s mind as well as Bobby knew that of his brother.
The perils to the U.S. of the Bolshakov–Bobby Kennedy contact were deep and multiple. Bolshakov could deceive on Moscow’s behalf without knowing he was doing so, while Bobby was far less likely to engage in disinformation and, even if he had tried, would have been less skilled in doing so. Beyond that, Bolshakov almost undoubtedly was tailed by FBI agents. Reports back from field agents on their meetings could have increased FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover’s suspicions of the Kennedys.
Finally, Bolshakov lacked Bobby’s license to horse-trade. And because JFK would keep the contacts secret even from his own top Cabinet members until after the Vienna Summit, he had no independent means to verify Bolshakov’s reliability. Moscow not only controlled what Bolshakov could discuss, it also determined the precise manner in which he would raise issues. If Robert Kennedy raised a matter for which Bolshakov was unprepared, the Soviet spy would respond that he would consider the issue and get back to the attorney general later.
The most important messages Bolshakov brought back from his first meeting with Bobby relayed the president’s readiness for a summit, his fear that the Soviet leader perceived him as weak, his aversion to negotiating Berlin’s status, and his desire above all else to achieve a nuclear test ban deal. Bobby came away from the initial contact unable to provide his brother any greater insight into Khrushchev. He was at the same time gaining the false impression that Khrushchev was ready to accept his brother’s conditions.
After five hours of conversation, Bobby gave Bolshakov a ride home. Kept awake by adrenaline, the Soviet operative stayed up all night before cabling a full report to Moscow early the next morning. Through Bolshakov, Khrushchev knew far better what Kennedy hoped to achieve through a summit and what he feared about it. At the same time, he had effectively misled the president about what the Soviet side was willing to accept.
MOSCOW
FRIDAY, MAY 12, 1961
Eager to close agreement for a Vienna Summit, Khrushchev rapidly satisfied Kennedy’s desire for confidence-building gestures.
In Geneva, Soviet officials negotiating Laos reached agreement with British repr
esentatives on a formula to defuse an impending crisis. The result would be a fourteen-nation conference on Laos in Geneva, with the goal of an end to hostilities and a neutral Laos.
On the same day, Khrushchev delivered a speech in Tbilisi, in the Soviet republic of Georgia, that senior State Department officials considered the most moderate Soviet statement on U.S.–Soviet relations since the U-2 incident the previous May. Repeating language he had used in his acceptance of Kennedy’s summit invitation, Khrushchev said, “Although President Kennedy and I are men of different poles, we live on the same Earth. We have to find a common language on certain questions.”
On that day, too, Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy accepting his invitation of nearly two months earlier to a summit meeting. The letter made no mention of a nuclear test ban, though it touched upon areas where they might make progress, such as Laos. However, Khrushchev was not willing to lay Berlin to the side. He said he did not seek unilateral advantage in the divided city, but wanted through their meeting to remove a “dangerous source of tension in Europe.”
Now it was Kennedy’s move.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SUNDAY, MAY 14, 1961
Not wanting to appear rushed, Kennedy took forty-eight hours to reply. He was unhappy about Khrushchev’s failure to embrace the test ban issue and his insistence on discussing Berlin. The Soviet leader’s letter had walked away from Kennedy’s preconditions as relayed by Bobby to Bolshakov. Yet for all the perils, Kennedy saw no option but to agree to the meeting.
Khrushchev’s Tbilisi speech and his gestures on Laos were encouraging. However, the awkward truth was that what could be one of the most decisive meetings since World War II was less than one month off and there would be little time for the two sides to reach agreement on what diplomats referred to as the summit’s “deliverables.” To veteran diplomats, the president’s haste looked restless and naive.
Kennedy sent cables to his closest allies informing them of the upcoming meeting, knowing particularly the Germans and the French would be skeptical of his plan. To the distrustful Adenauer, he wrote, “I would assume you would share my view that since I have not previously met Khrushchev, such an encounter would be useful in the present international situation. If the meeting in fact takes place, I would expect to inform you of the content of these discussions with Khrushchev, which I anticipate will be quite general in character.”
Preparations went into high gear for what everyone knew would be a historic meeting—the first such summit of the television age. Despite Kennedy’s efforts to avoid the Berlin issue, his foreign policy team was coming to accept that it would define the president’s first year in office far more than Cuba, Laos, a nuclear test ban, or any other issue.
On May 17, State Department Policy Planning staff member Henry Owen captured the growing consensus of the administration. “Of all the problems the administration faces, Berlin seems to me the most pregnant with disaster.” He suggested putting more money into the fiscal year 1963 budget for conventional arms and the defense of Europe, “to enhance our capability to deal with—and thus perhaps deter—a Berlin Crisis.”
Two days later, on May 19, the Kennedy administration officially announced what the press had been reporting from leaks for several days: The president would meet with Khrushchev in Vienna on June 3 and 4 after seeing de Gaulle in Paris.
Western European and U.S. commentators worried that a weakened president was heading to Vienna at a disadvantage. The intellectual weekly Die Zeit compared Kennedy to a traveling salesman whose business had fallen on bad times and who was hoping to improve his prospects by negotiating directly with the competition. In its review of European opinion, the Wall Street Journal said Kennedy was projecting the “strong impression…of a faltering America desperately trying to regain leadership of the West in the Cold War.” The influential Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung despaired that the summit was being badly prepared by the Americans, and that Kennedy had abandoned his prerequisite that the Kremlin demonstrate a changed attitude before any such meeting take place.
Although Vienna was technically neutral ground, European diplomats still considered Austria to be far closer to the Russian sphere of influence than the alternative of Stockholm. “Thus there is an impression of Kennedy going to see Khrushchev at a place as well as a time of Khrushchev’s choosing,” said the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. It saw a damaged U.S. president “rushing about to patch up his alliances and coming meekly to Austria to meet the powerful Russian leader face-to-face.”
EAST BERLIN
FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1961
Sensing the wind shift in his favor, East German leader Walter Ulbricht moved with greater confidence in Berlin. The Soviet ambassador in East Germany, Mikhail Pervukhin, complained to Foreign Minister Gromyko that Ulbricht, without Kremlin approval, was ratcheting up pressure on West Berlin through heightened identity controls of civilians.
“Our friends,” said the ambassador, employing the term used by Moscow for its East German allies, “would now like to establish such control on the sectoral border between Democratic West Berlin which would allow them to, as they say, close ‘the door to the West,’ reduce the exodus of the population from the Republic, and weaken the influence of economic conspiracy against the GDR, which is carried out directly from West Berlin.” He reported that Ulbricht wanted to slam shut the Berlin sectoral border, in contradiction to Soviet policy.
Khrushchev worried Ulbricht might go so far that he would prompt the Americans to cancel the Vienna Summit, so he asked Pervukhin to restrain his increasingly impatient and insolent East German client.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SUNDAY, MAY 21, 1961
President Kennedy began to fear he was walking into a trap.
Two weeks ahead of the summit, Robert Kennedy again reached out to Bolshakov, this time on a Sunday when their meeting would be less noticed. The attorney general invited the Soviet spy to Hickory Hill, his brick country house in McLean, Virginia, for a two-hour conversation.
Bolshakov laid out the Soviet position, having memorized with great skill five pages of detailed briefing notes before his meeting. His recall was remarkable, and his informal manner masked the fact that his conduit role was still unfamiliar terrain.
Bobby made clear he was speaking for the president. He told Bolshakov to call him only from a pay phone when making contact, and to name himself only to his secretary and his press spokesman Ed Guthman. On occasions when Bolshakov didn’t want to risk telephoning himself, Holeman did so for him, saying to Guthman, “My guy wants to see your guy.” Bobby told Bolshakov that only his brother knew of their meetings—and that he approved of them.
By contrast, Bolshakov’s role was now becoming known to a larger circle of Soviet officials. The GRU relayed all Bolshakov’s reports to Anatoly Dobrynin, the foreign ministry official who headed the group of Soviet advisers for the Vienna talks. One of Bolshakov’s Moscow bosses wrote with astonishment about the May 21 meeting with Bobby Kennedy, “The situation when a member of the U.S. government meets with our man, and secretly, is without precedent.” Moscow was sending directions to its embassy and its intelligence operatives on how to ensure that the meetings were kept secret from the U.S. press and the FBI.
Bobby told Bolshakov he had been disappointed that Khrushchev had not had more to say in his letter to the president about the possibility of a nuclear test ban treaty. He offered a concession to Bolshakov: Washington would accept the troika of inspectors that the Kremlin wanted—representing the Soviet, Western, and nonaligned world—but Russia could have no veto over what could be inspected.
Bolshakov encouraged Bobby to think he had been given more leeway to negotiate than actually was the case. He said the Soviets would accept fifteen unmanned detection stations on Soviet soil, which came closer to what had become the American demand of nineteen.
Seeking a further bond with Khrushchev, Bobby said he and his brother agreed in principle with the Soviets on what they regarde
d as the historic German problem and sympathized with their fear of German revanchists. He said the president shared Soviet opposition to the notion of a nuclear Germany trying to recover its eastern territories. “My brother fought them as enemies,” Bobby told Bolshakov. The two sides only disagreed on the remedies, he said.
Bolshakov and Bobby Kennedy continued their meetings as close to a week before the Vienna Summit. Perhaps for that reason it took only a day for Moscow to respond to President Kennedy’s request that the two leaders include more tête-à-têtes at the summit, attended only by interpreters.
However, it would not be until two days after the final Bolshakov meeting before the Vienna Summit that Khrushchev would send the clearest message of all regarding how determined he was to negotiate Berlin’s future.
For that, he would use the official channel of Ambassador Thompson in Moscow. He wanted no one to mistake his intention to force the issue.
PALACE OF SPORTS, MOSCOW
TUESDAY, MAY 23, 1961
By coincidence, Khrushchev would make clear that he intended to bring the Berlin matter to a head in the same sports field house where he had launched the Berlin Crisis two and a half years earlier before an audience of Polish communists.
Within minutes of Ambassador Thompson’s arrival with his wife in Khrushchev’s box at a guest performance of the American Ice Capades, the Soviet leader complained that he had seen enough ice shows to last a lifetime. So he escorted the Thompsons to a private room for dinner, explaining that his invitation to them had all along been an excuse to discuss Vienna.
Thompson did not take notes, but he would have no trouble afterward recalling the conversation in a cable to Washington. Against the background sound of American music, skates scraping on ice, and the crowd’s applause, Khrushchev delivered an unmistakable message. Without a new agreement on Berlin, he told Thompson, he would take unilateral action by fall or winter to give control of the city to the East Germans and end all Allied occupation rights.
Berlin 1961 Page 23
