01-06-2013, 08:38 PM
10/26/1962 According to political scientist Scott Sagan in his book The Limits of Safety, the U.S. Air Force launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base on October 26, 1962, the day before the U-2 was shot down. The ICBM was unarmed, a test missile destined for Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. The Soviet Union could easily have thought otherwise. Three days before, a test missile at Vandenberg had received a nuclear warhead, changing it to full alert status for the crisis. By October 30, nine Vandenberg "test" missiles were armed for use against the Soviets. At the height of the missile crisis, the Air Force's October 26th launch of its missile could have been seen by the Soviets as the beginning of an attack. It was a dangerous provocation. Had the Soviets been suckered into giving any sign of a launch of their own, the entire array of U.S. missiles and bombers were poised to preempt them. They were already at the top rung of their nuclear war status, DefCon ( Defense Condition) -2, totally prepared for a massive strike. Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety ( Princeton, N.].: Princeton University Press, 1993) , p. 79.
Also at the height of the crisis, as writer Richard Rhodes learned from a retired Air Force commander, "SAC [Strategic Air Command] airborne-alert bombers deliberately flew past their customary turnaround points toward the Soviet Union-an unambiguous threat that Soviet radar operators would certainly have recognized and reported." With their far superior number of missiles and bombers, U.S. forces were prepared for a preemptive attack at the slightest sign of a Soviet response to their provocation. Fortunately the Soviets didn't bite. Richard Rhodes, "The General and World War III," New Yorker (June 19, 1995), pp. 58 -59.
McNamara recalled how strongly the Chiefs expressed their feelings to the president. "After Khrushchev had agreed to remove the missiles, President Kennedy invited the Chiefs to the White House so that he could thank them for their support during the crisis, and there was one hell of a scene. LeMay came out saying, 'We lost! We ought to just go in there today and knock 'em off! '" (Rhodes, " General and World War III, " p. 58) Robert Kennedy was also struck by the Chiefs' anger at the president. "Admiral [George] Anderson's reaction to the news," he said, "was 'We have been had."' (Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 565) "The military are mad," President Kennedy told Arthur Schlesinger, "They wanted to do this." (Ibid)
10/27/1962 Around 10:15 to 11:00A.M.: A U-2 from a SAC base in Alaska strays into Soviet airspace over the Chukotski Peninsula on what was reported to be a "routine air sampling mission." The U-2 pilot apparently enters Soviet airspace as a result of a navigational error. The pilot radios for assistance and a U.S. F-102 fighter aircraft in Alaska scrambles and head toward the Bering Sea. At the same time, Soviet MiGs take off from a base near Wrangel Island to intercept the U-2, which eventually manages to fly out of Soviet territory with no shots being fired. Alaskan Air Command records suggest that the U.S. fighter planes are armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles. According to one account, when Secretary of Defense McNamara hears that a U-2 was in Soviet airspace, "he turned absolutely white, and yelled hysterically, `This means war with the Soviet Union.'" President Kennedy's laconic reaction upon hearing of the incident is simply to laugh and remark that "there is always some S.O.B. who doesn't get the word." (War Room Journal, 10/27/62; Chronology of the Cuban Crisis October 15-28, 1962, 11/2/62, p. 14; Interview of David A. Burchinal, 4/11/75, pp. 114-15; Hilsman 1, p. 221; Sagan 2, pp. 117-18; Air Defense Operations, ca. 12/62)
Robert Kennedy's climactic meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin became the moving force for Khrushchev's dramatic announcement that he was withdrawing the missiles. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs what he thought Robert Kennedy told Dobrynin, who had relayed it to Khrushchev: "'The President is in a grave situation,' Robert Kennedy said, 'and he does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba . . . We want to ask you, Mr. Dobrynin, to pass President Kennedy's message to Chairman Khrushchev through unofficial channels . . . Even though the President himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for his help in liquidating this conflict. If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control." (Khrushchev Remembers)
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Foreign Ministry declassified Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's October 27, 1962, cable describing his critical one-on-one meeting with Robert Kennedy. Dobrynin's report offers a less dramatic version than Khrushchev's memoirs of Robert Kennedy's words concerning the military pressures on President Kennedy: "taking time to find a way out [of the situation] is very risky. (Here R. Kennedy mentioned as if in passing that there are many unreasonable heads among the generals, and not only among the generals, who 'are itching for a fight.') The situation might get out of control, with irreversible consequences." (From Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's cable to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, October 27, 1962. Reprinted in translation in Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 523-26. Cited by Jim Hershberg, "Anatomy of a Controversy: Anatoly F. Dobrynin's Meeting with Robert F. Kennedy, Saturday, 27 October 1962," The Cold War International History Project Bulletin (Issue 5, Spring 1995)
In November 1962 SAC started inactivation planning of the 306th Bombardment Wing at MacDill AFB in Florida, slated for April 1963. Phase down and transfer of B-47s was started, and by 15 February 1963 the Wing was no longer capable of fulfilling its part of the strategic war plan. General Curtis E. LeMay, USAF Chief of Staff, recalling his days as the 306th Bomb Group's executive officer, compared its WWII role as "one of the handful of groups" that pioneered strategic daylight bombing and "carried the air war to the enemy during the lean days of 1941-43", to its role in the late forties as pioneer of jet bombardment tactics and combat ready deterrent force. He went on to say that this considerable accomplishment was done while at the same time assuming the staggering mission of maintaining a bomber alert force. On 1 April 1963, SAC inactivated the 306th BW at MacDill and activated it at McCoy AFB, Florida. The 4047th Strategic Wing personnel, equipment, B-52Ds and KC-135As were re-designated the 306th Bombardment Wing.
11/24/1962 The Pentagon announced that the TFX contract would be awarded to General Dynamics. Henry M. Jackson, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Government Operations Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, learned that: "Boeing's bid was substantially lower than its competitor's. Reports indicated Boeing's bid was $100 million lower on an initial development contract and that the cost difference might run as high as $400 million on the total $6.5 billion procurement."
December 1962 Following the death of Herman Brown, Halliburton Energy Services acquired Brown & Root (a Texas construction company). According to Dan Briody, who wrote a book on the subject, the company became part of a consortium of four companies that built about 85 percent of the infrastructure needed by the Navy during the Vietnam War. At the height of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, Brown & Root was derided as "Burn & Loot" by protesters.
12/5/1962 McNamara was quoted as telling Congress that he planned to eliminate eight National Guard divisions and 750 units of the organized reserves. (St. Louis Globe Democrat)
12/6/1962 Gen. Edwin Walker spoke before the Miss. House of Representatives, and warned that a planned reorganization of the National Guard and Reserves was part of a "State Department plan to put our armed forces under the control of the United Nations." (UPI 12/7)
12/7/1962 JFK went to Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, was briefed by Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power about their secret underground SAC base.
12/18-19/1962 St Louis Globe Democrat reported that the Administration had stopped all production of long range manned bombers and cancelled production of the Skybolt missile.
12/31/1962 The joint US-UK Skybolt missile project is canceled.
In 1963, US military intelligence controlled more agents than the CIA and had nearly as large a budget. In the '70s it became known that the Army had long been conducting surveillance and keeping files on thousands of Americans with suspected leftist affiliations. Senator Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights revealed that by 1969 the Army had built up a "massive system" for keeping tabs on US politics and politicians. US military and intelligence groups had used psychics, at a cost of $20 million over two decades, to try to uncover otherwise unobtainable secrets. (Washington Post 11/30/1995)
Drew Pearson in his Washington Merry-Co-Round column datelined January 23, 1963, headlined the presidential challenge of the year ahead, "Kennedy Has Chance to End the Cold War." Pearson stressed the need for the president to seize the time for peace: "President Kennedy today faces his greatest opportunity to negotiate a permanent peace, but because of division inside his own Administration he may miss the boat. "That is the consensus of friendly diplomats long trained in watching the ebb and flow of world events. " They add that Europe is moving so fast that it may take the leadership away from Mr. Kennedy and patch up its own peace with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. " The diplomats Pearson was drawing upon could already discern a massive shifting of political fault lines beneath the Kennedy-Khrushchev settlement of the missile crisis. At the same time they had identified the primary obstacle to an end of the Cold War-powerful forces in the U.S. government who did not believe in such a change, and who were throwing their weight against it. Pearson noted that, in spite of this deep opposition within the government, the president was nevertheless " sitting on top of the diplomatic world" in settling the problems of the Cold War. He cited Kennedy's decision to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey and Italy without fanfare: " This should decrease tension between the U.S.A. and USSR, but the United States has neither taken credit for it nor used it as Khrushchev used his removal of missiles from Cuba. " The columnist had interviewed Khrushchev at his villa on the shores of the Black Sea over a year before. He believed the Soviet leader sincerely wanted peace. Khrushchev's retreat from Cuba and his subsequent statements for peace reinforced that conclusion. " The latest, " Pearson wrote in his January 1963 column, " is his amazing speech in East Berlin last week in which he renounced war as an instrument of Communist policy." As a result of these swirling currents of change, the United States and the Soviet Union were on the " brink of peace, " especially on nuclear testing and Berlin. However, Pearson emphasized, if the sharply divided Kennedy administration kept " gazing passively at this rapidly changing picture, " other Western leaders such as President de Gaulle would jump ahead of Kennedy and make their own peace with Khrushchev.
1/25/1963 JFK phoned Roger Hilsman, the head of State Department intelligence, at his home to complain about a front-page box in the New York Times on a U.S. general visiting Vietnam. In what Hilsman remembered as "decidedly purple language, " (Roger Hilsman, letter to the New York Times, January 20, 1 992) Kennedy took him to task. He ordered Hilsman to stop military visits that seemed to increase the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. Kennedy said, "That is exactly what I don't want to do. Remember Laos," he emphasized. "The United States must keep a low profile in Vietnam so we can negotiate its neutralization like we did in Laos . " (FR US, 1961 - 1963 , Volume III: Vietnam, january-August 1963 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991) , p.63. Hilsman letter to the New York Times.) After listening to the angry president, Hilsman pointed out that he had no authority as a State Department officer to deny a Pentagon general permission to visit Vietnam. "Oh," said Kennedy and slammed down the phone. That afternoon the president issued National Security Action Memorandum Number 217, forbidding " high ranking military and civilian personnel " from going to South Vietnam without being cleared by the State Department office where Hilsman worked. This action by JFK, reining in the military's travel to Vietnam, for the sake of a neutralization policy, did not please the Pentagon.
3/1963 Kenny O'Donnell, who sat in on part of their meeting, recalled: "The President told [Senator] Mansfield that he had been having serious second thoughts about Mansfield's argument and that he now agreed with the Senator's thinking on the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam. '' 'But I can't do it until 1965-after I'm reelected,' Kennedy told Mansfield. "President Kennedy explained, and Mansfield agreed with him, that if he announced a withdrawal of American military personnel from Vietnam before the 1964 election, there would be a wild conservative outcry against returning him to the Presidency for a second term. "After Mansfield left the office, the President said to me, 'In 1965, I'll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I'll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don't care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I'm reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected. "' (O'Donnell and Powers, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, " p. 16.)
The President sought advice from General Douglas MacArthur, who spent much of his career in Asia, and met with him in the latter part of April. MacArthur warned the President against committing American foot soldiers on the Asian mainland. He also told President Kennedy there were elements inside the US government who did not share his motives and who were seeking to destroy his administration. MacArthur said, "The chickens are coming home to roost, and you happen to have just moved into the chicken house." (Sorensen, Kennedy')
3/14/1963 Sen. Goldwater complained, "Not one new weapons system has been proposed under the present Administration. The RS-70 has been abandoned. Skybolt has been dropped, manned bombers are being phased out, Nike-Zeus is being delayed, the Dyna-Soar is being re-examined for possible junking. This is not only stagnation, this is Disarmament." (None Dare Call it Treason, Allen p85)
3/30/1963 McNamara decided to close 52 military installations located in 25 different states, plus 21 bases overseas. This reorganization was to be spread over a three- year period. His announcement had important repercussions throughout the country.
4/3/1963 "Memo for the Secretary of Defense. It would be helpful if we could get an analysis of what our military strength was in 1961 if there had been a call for military action at that time, what is available to us today, and what will be available next summer. I am thinking particularly of President Eisenhower's statement that the defense budget could be cut back to the levels which were maintained in his last defense budget without in any way weakening the security of the United States. I think we should have a positive response to that thesis. [signed] John F. Kennedy."
In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots. One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest. (Bamford, Body of Secrets)
5/17/1963 TIME magazine: "The dirty work fell to Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric. On Sunday afternoon he drove to the official quarters, atop Observatory Hill in northwest Washington, of the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations. There he informed Admiral George W. Anderson Jr. that he would not be reappointed when his present two-year term is up in August. Anderson was stunned. So was most of the Navy. "A military man has really got to bow to this Kennedy crowd,'' said an admiral who is close to Anderson. ''Guys who get in their way get knocked off." And Anderson had been getting in the way...
June 1963: The announcement this month that Adm. George W. Anderson would not be reappointed as chief of naval operations, and Curtis LeMay would be reappointed for a single year only, prompted legislation in Congress to fix a four-year term for all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Previously, members of the Joint Chiefs were appointed to two-year terms by the President, except for the Commandant of the Marine Corps, whose term is fixed by law at four years. Anderson and LeMay were thought to have displeased McNamara when they expressed their views before a Senate committee investigating the awarding of a contract for a new tactical aircraft (TFX). (1964 Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook)
6/10/1963 John Kennedy's Commencement Address at American University in Washington. Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins summed up the significance of this remarkable speech: "At American University on June 10, 1963 , President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War. " (Norman Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1972 ) He had outlined his thoughts for what he called "the peace speech " to adviser and speechwriter Ted Sorensen, and told him to go to work. Only a handful of advisers knew anything about the project. Arthur Schlesinger, who was one of them, said, "We were asked to send our best thoughts to Ted Sorensen and to say nothing about this to anybody. " On the eve of the speech, Soviet officials and White House correspondents were alerted in general terms. The speech, they were informed, would be of major importance.
6/20/1963 A memorandum of understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union establishing a "hot line" between Washington and Moscow is signed. The agreement establishes a direct teletype communication link to be used "in time of emergency" in order to clarify intentions and prevent accident, miscalculation, or misunderstanding from leading to unintentional war. (ACDA, pp. 28-33)
This summer, JFK signed into law the Defense Budget for fiscal year 1964: $47.2 billion, a reduction of $1.8 billion from the budget estimate. "This was the biggest reduction in any administration defense budget in six years." (1964 Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook)
On July 9, 1963, the President met privately in the Oval Office with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor. This meeting took place immediately after a larger National Security Council meeting on the test ban negotiations, specifically Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Averell Harriman's upcoming mission to Moscow. General Taylor expressed to the President the opinion of several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were privately critiquing the idea of a test ban and about the possibility that they may state these opinions publicly to Congress. The President, although open to debate on the subject, is concerned about the timing of any formal, public evaluation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the test ban issue:
"I don't care who comes up and testifies - it ought to be wide open. That's the time you gotta say it and we haven't presented our case then I can say this is why I am for it and that's the way - then the Chiefs can speak about the military disadvantages and advantages. Proliferation is certainly a danger to us… I am afraid that if the Chiefs ever met that there are (risks) having position against even an atmospheric test ban, at a very time, which would will leak out, at a very time when Harriman (is in Moscow) …So even though they've all taken a separate position, which seems to me somewhat better off than we are that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have met and said this is a threat' - God we would be in a terrible shape."
Also at the height of the crisis, as writer Richard Rhodes learned from a retired Air Force commander, "SAC [Strategic Air Command] airborne-alert bombers deliberately flew past their customary turnaround points toward the Soviet Union-an unambiguous threat that Soviet radar operators would certainly have recognized and reported." With their far superior number of missiles and bombers, U.S. forces were prepared for a preemptive attack at the slightest sign of a Soviet response to their provocation. Fortunately the Soviets didn't bite. Richard Rhodes, "The General and World War III," New Yorker (June 19, 1995), pp. 58 -59.
McNamara recalled how strongly the Chiefs expressed their feelings to the president. "After Khrushchev had agreed to remove the missiles, President Kennedy invited the Chiefs to the White House so that he could thank them for their support during the crisis, and there was one hell of a scene. LeMay came out saying, 'We lost! We ought to just go in there today and knock 'em off! '" (Rhodes, " General and World War III, " p. 58) Robert Kennedy was also struck by the Chiefs' anger at the president. "Admiral [George] Anderson's reaction to the news," he said, "was 'We have been had."' (Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 565) "The military are mad," President Kennedy told Arthur Schlesinger, "They wanted to do this." (Ibid)
10/27/1962 Around 10:15 to 11:00A.M.: A U-2 from a SAC base in Alaska strays into Soviet airspace over the Chukotski Peninsula on what was reported to be a "routine air sampling mission." The U-2 pilot apparently enters Soviet airspace as a result of a navigational error. The pilot radios for assistance and a U.S. F-102 fighter aircraft in Alaska scrambles and head toward the Bering Sea. At the same time, Soviet MiGs take off from a base near Wrangel Island to intercept the U-2, which eventually manages to fly out of Soviet territory with no shots being fired. Alaskan Air Command records suggest that the U.S. fighter planes are armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles. According to one account, when Secretary of Defense McNamara hears that a U-2 was in Soviet airspace, "he turned absolutely white, and yelled hysterically, `This means war with the Soviet Union.'" President Kennedy's laconic reaction upon hearing of the incident is simply to laugh and remark that "there is always some S.O.B. who doesn't get the word." (War Room Journal, 10/27/62; Chronology of the Cuban Crisis October 15-28, 1962, 11/2/62, p. 14; Interview of David A. Burchinal, 4/11/75, pp. 114-15; Hilsman 1, p. 221; Sagan 2, pp. 117-18; Air Defense Operations, ca. 12/62)
Robert Kennedy's climactic meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin became the moving force for Khrushchev's dramatic announcement that he was withdrawing the missiles. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs what he thought Robert Kennedy told Dobrynin, who had relayed it to Khrushchev: "'The President is in a grave situation,' Robert Kennedy said, 'and he does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba . . . We want to ask you, Mr. Dobrynin, to pass President Kennedy's message to Chairman Khrushchev through unofficial channels . . . Even though the President himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for his help in liquidating this conflict. If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control." (Khrushchev Remembers)
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Foreign Ministry declassified Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's October 27, 1962, cable describing his critical one-on-one meeting with Robert Kennedy. Dobrynin's report offers a less dramatic version than Khrushchev's memoirs of Robert Kennedy's words concerning the military pressures on President Kennedy: "taking time to find a way out [of the situation] is very risky. (Here R. Kennedy mentioned as if in passing that there are many unreasonable heads among the generals, and not only among the generals, who 'are itching for a fight.') The situation might get out of control, with irreversible consequences." (From Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's cable to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, October 27, 1962. Reprinted in translation in Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 523-26. Cited by Jim Hershberg, "Anatomy of a Controversy: Anatoly F. Dobrynin's Meeting with Robert F. Kennedy, Saturday, 27 October 1962," The Cold War International History Project Bulletin (Issue 5, Spring 1995)
In November 1962 SAC started inactivation planning of the 306th Bombardment Wing at MacDill AFB in Florida, slated for April 1963. Phase down and transfer of B-47s was started, and by 15 February 1963 the Wing was no longer capable of fulfilling its part of the strategic war plan. General Curtis E. LeMay, USAF Chief of Staff, recalling his days as the 306th Bomb Group's executive officer, compared its WWII role as "one of the handful of groups" that pioneered strategic daylight bombing and "carried the air war to the enemy during the lean days of 1941-43", to its role in the late forties as pioneer of jet bombardment tactics and combat ready deterrent force. He went on to say that this considerable accomplishment was done while at the same time assuming the staggering mission of maintaining a bomber alert force. On 1 April 1963, SAC inactivated the 306th BW at MacDill and activated it at McCoy AFB, Florida. The 4047th Strategic Wing personnel, equipment, B-52Ds and KC-135As were re-designated the 306th Bombardment Wing.
11/24/1962 The Pentagon announced that the TFX contract would be awarded to General Dynamics. Henry M. Jackson, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Government Operations Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, learned that: "Boeing's bid was substantially lower than its competitor's. Reports indicated Boeing's bid was $100 million lower on an initial development contract and that the cost difference might run as high as $400 million on the total $6.5 billion procurement."
December 1962 Following the death of Herman Brown, Halliburton Energy Services acquired Brown & Root (a Texas construction company). According to Dan Briody, who wrote a book on the subject, the company became part of a consortium of four companies that built about 85 percent of the infrastructure needed by the Navy during the Vietnam War. At the height of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, Brown & Root was derided as "Burn & Loot" by protesters.
12/5/1962 McNamara was quoted as telling Congress that he planned to eliminate eight National Guard divisions and 750 units of the organized reserves. (St. Louis Globe Democrat)
12/6/1962 Gen. Edwin Walker spoke before the Miss. House of Representatives, and warned that a planned reorganization of the National Guard and Reserves was part of a "State Department plan to put our armed forces under the control of the United Nations." (UPI 12/7)
12/7/1962 JFK went to Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, was briefed by Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power about their secret underground SAC base.
12/18-19/1962 St Louis Globe Democrat reported that the Administration had stopped all production of long range manned bombers and cancelled production of the Skybolt missile.
12/31/1962 The joint US-UK Skybolt missile project is canceled.
In 1963, US military intelligence controlled more agents than the CIA and had nearly as large a budget. In the '70s it became known that the Army had long been conducting surveillance and keeping files on thousands of Americans with suspected leftist affiliations. Senator Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights revealed that by 1969 the Army had built up a "massive system" for keeping tabs on US politics and politicians. US military and intelligence groups had used psychics, at a cost of $20 million over two decades, to try to uncover otherwise unobtainable secrets. (Washington Post 11/30/1995)
Drew Pearson in his Washington Merry-Co-Round column datelined January 23, 1963, headlined the presidential challenge of the year ahead, "Kennedy Has Chance to End the Cold War." Pearson stressed the need for the president to seize the time for peace: "President Kennedy today faces his greatest opportunity to negotiate a permanent peace, but because of division inside his own Administration he may miss the boat. "That is the consensus of friendly diplomats long trained in watching the ebb and flow of world events. " They add that Europe is moving so fast that it may take the leadership away from Mr. Kennedy and patch up its own peace with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. " The diplomats Pearson was drawing upon could already discern a massive shifting of political fault lines beneath the Kennedy-Khrushchev settlement of the missile crisis. At the same time they had identified the primary obstacle to an end of the Cold War-powerful forces in the U.S. government who did not believe in such a change, and who were throwing their weight against it. Pearson noted that, in spite of this deep opposition within the government, the president was nevertheless " sitting on top of the diplomatic world" in settling the problems of the Cold War. He cited Kennedy's decision to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey and Italy without fanfare: " This should decrease tension between the U.S.A. and USSR, but the United States has neither taken credit for it nor used it as Khrushchev used his removal of missiles from Cuba. " The columnist had interviewed Khrushchev at his villa on the shores of the Black Sea over a year before. He believed the Soviet leader sincerely wanted peace. Khrushchev's retreat from Cuba and his subsequent statements for peace reinforced that conclusion. " The latest, " Pearson wrote in his January 1963 column, " is his amazing speech in East Berlin last week in which he renounced war as an instrument of Communist policy." As a result of these swirling currents of change, the United States and the Soviet Union were on the " brink of peace, " especially on nuclear testing and Berlin. However, Pearson emphasized, if the sharply divided Kennedy administration kept " gazing passively at this rapidly changing picture, " other Western leaders such as President de Gaulle would jump ahead of Kennedy and make their own peace with Khrushchev.
1/25/1963 JFK phoned Roger Hilsman, the head of State Department intelligence, at his home to complain about a front-page box in the New York Times on a U.S. general visiting Vietnam. In what Hilsman remembered as "decidedly purple language, " (Roger Hilsman, letter to the New York Times, January 20, 1 992) Kennedy took him to task. He ordered Hilsman to stop military visits that seemed to increase the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. Kennedy said, "That is exactly what I don't want to do. Remember Laos," he emphasized. "The United States must keep a low profile in Vietnam so we can negotiate its neutralization like we did in Laos . " (FR US, 1961 - 1963 , Volume III: Vietnam, january-August 1963 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991) , p.63. Hilsman letter to the New York Times.) After listening to the angry president, Hilsman pointed out that he had no authority as a State Department officer to deny a Pentagon general permission to visit Vietnam. "Oh," said Kennedy and slammed down the phone. That afternoon the president issued National Security Action Memorandum Number 217, forbidding " high ranking military and civilian personnel " from going to South Vietnam without being cleared by the State Department office where Hilsman worked. This action by JFK, reining in the military's travel to Vietnam, for the sake of a neutralization policy, did not please the Pentagon.
3/1963 Kenny O'Donnell, who sat in on part of their meeting, recalled: "The President told [Senator] Mansfield that he had been having serious second thoughts about Mansfield's argument and that he now agreed with the Senator's thinking on the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam. '' 'But I can't do it until 1965-after I'm reelected,' Kennedy told Mansfield. "President Kennedy explained, and Mansfield agreed with him, that if he announced a withdrawal of American military personnel from Vietnam before the 1964 election, there would be a wild conservative outcry against returning him to the Presidency for a second term. "After Mansfield left the office, the President said to me, 'In 1965, I'll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I'll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don't care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I'm reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected. "' (O'Donnell and Powers, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, " p. 16.)
The President sought advice from General Douglas MacArthur, who spent much of his career in Asia, and met with him in the latter part of April. MacArthur warned the President against committing American foot soldiers on the Asian mainland. He also told President Kennedy there were elements inside the US government who did not share his motives and who were seeking to destroy his administration. MacArthur said, "The chickens are coming home to roost, and you happen to have just moved into the chicken house." (Sorensen, Kennedy')
3/14/1963 Sen. Goldwater complained, "Not one new weapons system has been proposed under the present Administration. The RS-70 has been abandoned. Skybolt has been dropped, manned bombers are being phased out, Nike-Zeus is being delayed, the Dyna-Soar is being re-examined for possible junking. This is not only stagnation, this is Disarmament." (None Dare Call it Treason, Allen p85)
3/30/1963 McNamara decided to close 52 military installations located in 25 different states, plus 21 bases overseas. This reorganization was to be spread over a three- year period. His announcement had important repercussions throughout the country.
4/3/1963 "Memo for the Secretary of Defense. It would be helpful if we could get an analysis of what our military strength was in 1961 if there had been a call for military action at that time, what is available to us today, and what will be available next summer. I am thinking particularly of President Eisenhower's statement that the defense budget could be cut back to the levels which were maintained in his last defense budget without in any way weakening the security of the United States. I think we should have a positive response to that thesis. [signed] John F. Kennedy."
In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots. One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest. (Bamford, Body of Secrets)
5/17/1963 TIME magazine: "The dirty work fell to Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric. On Sunday afternoon he drove to the official quarters, atop Observatory Hill in northwest Washington, of the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations. There he informed Admiral George W. Anderson Jr. that he would not be reappointed when his present two-year term is up in August. Anderson was stunned. So was most of the Navy. "A military man has really got to bow to this Kennedy crowd,'' said an admiral who is close to Anderson. ''Guys who get in their way get knocked off." And Anderson had been getting in the way...
June 1963: The announcement this month that Adm. George W. Anderson would not be reappointed as chief of naval operations, and Curtis LeMay would be reappointed for a single year only, prompted legislation in Congress to fix a four-year term for all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Previously, members of the Joint Chiefs were appointed to two-year terms by the President, except for the Commandant of the Marine Corps, whose term is fixed by law at four years. Anderson and LeMay were thought to have displeased McNamara when they expressed their views before a Senate committee investigating the awarding of a contract for a new tactical aircraft (TFX). (1964 Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook)
6/10/1963 John Kennedy's Commencement Address at American University in Washington. Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins summed up the significance of this remarkable speech: "At American University on June 10, 1963 , President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War. " (Norman Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1972 ) He had outlined his thoughts for what he called "the peace speech " to adviser and speechwriter Ted Sorensen, and told him to go to work. Only a handful of advisers knew anything about the project. Arthur Schlesinger, who was one of them, said, "We were asked to send our best thoughts to Ted Sorensen and to say nothing about this to anybody. " On the eve of the speech, Soviet officials and White House correspondents were alerted in general terms. The speech, they were informed, would be of major importance.
6/20/1963 A memorandum of understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union establishing a "hot line" between Washington and Moscow is signed. The agreement establishes a direct teletype communication link to be used "in time of emergency" in order to clarify intentions and prevent accident, miscalculation, or misunderstanding from leading to unintentional war. (ACDA, pp. 28-33)
This summer, JFK signed into law the Defense Budget for fiscal year 1964: $47.2 billion, a reduction of $1.8 billion from the budget estimate. "This was the biggest reduction in any administration defense budget in six years." (1964 Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook)
On July 9, 1963, the President met privately in the Oval Office with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor. This meeting took place immediately after a larger National Security Council meeting on the test ban negotiations, specifically Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Averell Harriman's upcoming mission to Moscow. General Taylor expressed to the President the opinion of several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were privately critiquing the idea of a test ban and about the possibility that they may state these opinions publicly to Congress. The President, although open to debate on the subject, is concerned about the timing of any formal, public evaluation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the test ban issue:
"I don't care who comes up and testifies - it ought to be wide open. That's the time you gotta say it and we haven't presented our case then I can say this is why I am for it and that's the way - then the Chiefs can speak about the military disadvantages and advantages. Proliferation is certainly a danger to us… I am afraid that if the Chiefs ever met that there are (risks) having position against even an atmospheric test ban, at a very time, which would will leak out, at a very time when Harriman (is in Moscow) …So even though they've all taken a separate position, which seems to me somewhat better off than we are that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have met and said this is a threat' - God we would be in a terrible shape."