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Schlesinger

Page 50

by Richard Aldous


  2 Here I follow Patrick Anderson’s superb sketch in The President’s Men: White House Assistants (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 213–220; Christina Schlesinger, interview with author, April 16, 2014.

  3 AMS to JFK, March 6, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 6, Memoranda to the President, Box WH 66, 1961.

  4 Ira Stoll, JFK: Conservative (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 82–83; Anderson, The President’s Men, 216; Tevi Troy, Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 28–29; David Halberstam, The Best and The Brightest (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993 edition), 28–29.

  5 Anderson, The President’s Men, 214–215.

  6 AMS to Carl Bridenbaugh, Jan. 30, 1960, JFKL, Series 09.1, Box WH 54, Jan. 30, 1961–Feb. 5, 1961; AMS, The Coming of the New Deal, 1933–1935 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), 576.

  7 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, Disposition of Presidential Papers, Feb. 6, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.1, WH 54, Feb. 6–-9, 1961.

  8 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president: Disposition of Presidential Papers, Feb. 6, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.1, WH 54, Feb. 6–9, 1961; AMS, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), x–xi; Time, Dec. 17, 1965; Ted Wilmer, ed., Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John. F. Kennedy (New York: Hyperion, 2012), 1.

  9 Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 5; Benjamin C. Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy (New York: Norton, 1975), 127–128; Troy, Intellectuals and the American Presidency, 31.

  10 AMS to Isaiah Berlin, Feb. 11, 1961, AMS Letters, 244; AMS, A Thousand Days, 168; diary entry, Feb. 6, 1961, AMS Journals, 103.

  11 Diary entries, Feb. 20, Feb. 24, 1961, AMS Journals, 103–106; Robert Sam Anson, McGovern (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 106–109.

  12 AMS to JFK, Feb. 11, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  13 AMS to JFK, Mar. 10, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  14 AMS to Adolf Berle, Mar. 20, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  15 AMS, draft white paper on Cuba, undated, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  16 AMS to JFK, Mar. 10 & Mar. 15, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  17 Diary entry, Mar. 28, 1961, AMS Journals, 108.

  18 E. W. Kenworthy, “Kennedy Helps Draft Appeal on ‘Struggle’ for Hemisphere,” New York Times, Apr. 4, 1961; “White Paper on Cuba,” New York Times, Apr. 5, 1961.

  19 AMS to JFK, Apr. 5, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Diary entry, Apr. 7, 1961, AMS Journals, 109.

  22 Diary entry, Apr. 12, 1961, AMS Journals, 110; Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 176–177.

  23 Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, eds., Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 242.

  24 Patricia Sullivan. “Gilbert Harrison, 92, Longtime Editor of New Republic,” Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010703193.html; diary entry, Apr. 7, 1961, AMS Journals, 109.

  25 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, Apr. 7, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61; AMS, A Thousand Days, 271; diary entry, Apr. 12, 1961, AMS Journals, 110; Walter Johnson et al., eds., The Papers of Adlai Stevenson, vol. 8 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 53; John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World: The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 624, 628.

  26 Alan Brinkley, John F. Kennedy (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2012), 68–69; Michael Beschloss, Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years 1960–63 (London: Faber, 1991), 132; Jim Rasenberger, The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs (New York: Scribner’s, 2011), 227ff.; Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 99–100.

  27 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, Apr. 10, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  28 Robert Dallek, Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (New York: Harper, 2013), 136–146.

  29 William J. Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (New York: Random House, 1966), 47–48; Randall Bennett Woods, Fulbright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 265–268.

  30 AMS, A Thousand Days, 255–256; Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 173.

  31 Diary entry, Apr. 21, 1961, AMS Journals, 113–116.

  32 Brinkley, John F. Kennedy, 71–72; Beschloss, Kennedy v. Khrushchev, 128.

  33 Diary entry, Apr. 21, 1961, AMS Journals, 118.

  Chapter Thirteen: Playing Cassandra

  1 AMS, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 290.

  2 Diary entry, Apr. 21, 1961, AMS Journals, 119.

  3 Ibid., AMS, A Thousand Days, 291.

  4 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, May 3, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61; diary entry, Apr. 22, 1961, AMS Journals, 120.

  5 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, May 3, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Diary entry, May 7, 1961, AMS Journals, 120; “The Laos Crisis, 1960–1963,” United States Department of State: Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/laos-crisis.

  8 Diary entry, June 7, 1961, AMS Journals, 121; David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century (London: Penguin, 2007), 195; Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 6–7.

  9 Diary entry, June 7, 1961, AMS Journals, 121.

  10 AMS, The Coming of the New Deal, 1933–1935 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), 524–525.

  11 AMS, A Thousand Days, 681.

  12 AMS to Richard Goodwin, July 8, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  13 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “CIA,” Apr. 21, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  14 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “CIA reorganization,” June 30, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  15 Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2013), 303.

  16 AMS to Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger, undated [mid-June 1961], AMS Letters, 245; Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 212.

  17 Diary entry, June 18, 1961, AMS Journals, 121.

  18 AMS, The Vital Center (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 149; AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, Fanfani visit, June 10, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  19 AMS to Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger, undated [mid-June 1961], AMS Letters, 245.

  20 AMS to Walt Rostow, July 6, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  21 Dean Rusk, As I Saw It: A Secretary of State’s Memoirs (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991), 454–455.

  22 Diary entry, April 21, 1961, AMS Journals, 119; Washington Star cartoon: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/acd1996003110/PP/.

  23 David Halberstam, The Best and The Brightest (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993 edition), 189.

  24 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “State Department Changes,” June 12, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61; Halberstam, The Best and The Brightest, 36.

  25 Beschloss, Kennedy v. Khrushchev, 268.

  26 AMS to JFK, memoranda for the presi
dent, “Berlin” and “Berlin Planning,” July 7, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  27 Beschloss, Kennedy v. Khrushchev, 242–243.

  28 AMS to JFK, memoranda for the president, “Berlin” and “Berlin Planning,” July 7, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  29 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Berlin Planning,” July 7, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  30 AMS to McGeorge Bundy, July 13 & July 18, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61.

  31 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Berlin Planning,” July 7, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61; diary entry, July 28, 1961, AMS Journals, 125; Niall Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist (New York: Penguin, 2015), 497–498; Frederick Kempe, Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth (New York: Putnam’s, 2011), 298–299.

  32 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Berlin,” July 7, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/18/61; Kempe, Berlin 1961, 298–299.

  33 Kennedy in Hyannis Port: Kempe, Berlin 1961, 306–307.

  34 Diary entry, Aug. 1, 1961, AMS Journals, 125.

  35 Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968, 495–496, and on the Berlin crisis more generally, 493–503; diary entry, July 28, 1961, AMS Journals, 124.

  36 Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968, 497–499.

  37 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, Nov. 10, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/20/61; Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968, 499–501.

  38 John Newhouse, The Nuclear Age: From Hiroshima to Star Wars (London: Michael Joseph, 1989), 138–143.

  39 Ibid., 147.

  40 Robert Dallek, Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (New York: Harper, 2013), 209; Glenn T. Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 47–48.

  41 Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 136; AMS, A Thousand Days, 455.

  42 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “The nuclear test ban issue,” July 17, 1961, JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 3/20/61–7/20/61.

  43 Diary entry, July 22, 1961, AMS Journals, 122–123.

  44 Diary entry, Aug. 1, 1961, AMS Journals, 125. For a summary of Penkofsky report see Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban, 74–75.

  45 Dallek, Camelot’s Court, 211; Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban, 84; diary entry, Sept. 4, 1961, AMS Journals, 131–132.

  46 Diary entry, Sept. 4, 1961, AMS Journals, 132–133.

  47 Christopher Sandford, Harold and Jack: The Remarkable Friendship of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President Kennedy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2014), 127.

  48 Diary entry, Sept. 5, 1961, AMS Journals, 135.

  Chapter Fourteen: Looking So Arthurish

  1 Annual physical conducted by Willard Dalrymple, MD, May 14, 1959, NYPL 532/1; Marian Cannon Schlesinger, I Remember: A Life of Politics, Painting and People (Cambridge, MA: TidePool Press, 2012), 139.

  2 John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 205–206; John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World: The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 662; Howard B. Schaffer, Chester Bowles: New Dealer in the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 227; diary entry, Sept. 4, 1961, AMS Journals, 134; Walter Johnson, ed., The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, vol. 8 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 119; Albin Krebs, “Chester Bowles is Dead at 85; Served in 4 Administrations,” New York Times, May 26, 1986, http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/26/obituaries/chester-bowles-is-dead-at-85-served-in-4-administrations.html?pagewanted=all.

  3 Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World, 653–655; Patrick Anderson, The President’s Men: White House Assistants (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 213–220; diary entry, Sept. 4, 1961, AMS Journals, 133.

  4 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “John McCone,” Sept. 27, 1961, JFKL, Series 09.2, Box WH 54, 3/20/61–7/20/61; diary entries, Apr. 21, Oct. 8, 1961, AMS Journals, 118, 137.

  5 Diary entry, October 17, 1961, AMS Journals, 137; Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 263; Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 470–471; AMS to JFK, undated [Dec. 1961], JFKL, AMS, Series 11.2, Box WH 67, Football Hall of Fame, 12/5/61.

  6 Diary entry, Feb. 6, 1961, AMS Journals, 102; diary entry, Feb. 4, 1961, Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, 28.

  7 Diary entry, Jan. 14, 1962, AMS Journals, 143.

  8 Diary entry, June 17, 1962, AMS Journals, 157.

  9 On the background of US involvement in Vietnam, I follow Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 698–699, 702–703 [sic] passim.

  10 Ibid., 703; AMS, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 545.

  11 Barbara Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 100–101.

  12 AMS, A Thousand Days, 545–547; Rudy Abramson, Spanning the Century: The Life of Averell Harriman, 1891–1986 (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 607; Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 372–374.

  13 Diary entry, Jan. 14, 1962, AMS Journals, 145.

  14 AMS to Nathan Pusey, Jan. 11, 27, 1961, NYPL 59/3.

  15 Stephen Schlesinger, interview with author, Jan. 17, 2014; diary entry, Jan. 21, 1961, AMS Journals, 145; Secretary to the Harvard President and Fellows to AMS, Feb 5, 1962, NYPL 532/1.

  16 Diary entry, Jan. 21, 1962, AMS Journals, 146.

  17 Clint Hill, Mrs. Kennedy and Me (New York: Gallery Books, 2012), 127.

  18 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Around the world in 42 days,” JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 1962; “Resolutions Adopted at the Eighth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Punta del Este, Uruguay, January 22–31, 1962,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/intam17.asp.

  19 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Around the world in 42 days,” JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 1962; Robert Sam Anson, McGovern (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 111–112.

  20 Diary entry, February 19, 1962, Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, 304–305.

  21 AMS, Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), vol. 2, 599; diary entry, Feb. 21, 1961, Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, 304–305; Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 10.

  22 Diary entries, June 19, 1961, June 25, 1962, AMS Journals, 121, 159; Sandra Hochman, “Arthur Schlesinger Halfway Through His Book on Bobby and Enjoying His Life to the Hilt,” People, August 16, 1976, http://people.com/archive/arthur-schlesinger-is-halfway-through-his-book-on-bobby-and-enjoying-his-life-to-the-hilt-vol-6-no-7.

  23 Marian Cannon Schlesinger, I Remember, 166.

  24 AMS, Robert Kennedy, 600; Marian Cannon Schlesinger, I Remember, 166–167; AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Around the world in 42 days,” JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 1962.

  25 AMS, A Thousand Days, 402.

  Chapter Fifteen: We’re Counting on You

  1 Last Year in Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais, Cocinor, 1961, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054632; diary entry, Mar. 31, 1962, AMS Journals, 150.

  2 Diary entry, March 31, 1962, AMS Journals, 150; Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (London: HarperCollins, 1998 paperback edition), 226ff.; Thomas C. Reeves, A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy (New York: Free Press, 1991), 10, and more gen
erally on JFK’s personal life, 328–364; AMS, The Cycles of American History (New York: Mariner Books, 1999), 407.

  3 John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 340.

  4 Galbraith to JFK, March 2, April 4, 1962, Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, 310, 342.

  5 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Around the world in 42 days,” JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 1962.

  6 Diary entry, April 5, 1962, AMS Journals, 153–154; diary entry, Mar. 27–Apr. 8, 1962, Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, 340; Bowles to JFK, Apr. 4, 1962, Glenn W. LaFantasie, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 2, Vietnam, 1962, United States Department of State: Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v02/d142.

  7 Galbraith to JFK, April 5, 1962, Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, 342–344.

  8 Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 390–391; Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 272–274.

  9 “Quotation of the Day,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 1962, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/01/12/87312516.html?pageNumber=36; diary entry, Jan. 14, 1962, AMS Journals, 144. On JFK’s speechwriting process, I follow Robert Schlesinger, White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 120.

  10 AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Around the world in 42 days,” JFKL, Schlesinger, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 1962; AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Berkeley Speech,” March 9, 1962, JFKL, AMS, Series 11.2, Box WH 67, Berkeley, 3/23/62.

  11 “The age of hate or the age of knowledge,” TCS [Sorensen] draft, Mar. 3, 1962, text of an address by the president at Charter Day, University of California, Berk-

  eley, Mar. 23, 1962, JFKL, AMS, Series 11.2, Box WH 67, Berkeley, 3/23/62; AMS, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 614–616; Robert Schlesinger, White House Ghosts, 122.

  12 Remarks by President John F. Kennedy at Yale, June 11, 1962; AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “New Haven Speech draft 2,” June 6, 1962; AMS to Galbraith, June 4, 1962, JFKL, AMS, Series 11.2, Box WH 67, Yale 6/11/62; AMS, A Thousand Days, 645–648; AMS to JFK, memorandum for the president, “Business and Government: An Historian’s View,” July 11, 1962, JFKL, AMS, Series 09.2, Box WH 69, 1962; AMS to Daniel Bell, Sept. 10, 1985, NYPL 11/1.

 

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