{"id":865149,"date":"2022-11-02T02:23:13","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T02:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=135027"},"modified":"2022-11-02T02:23:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T02:23:13","slug":"camelots-slurs-the-libelling-of-adlai-stevenson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/11\/02\/camelots-slurs-the-libelling-of-adlai-stevenson\/","title":{"rendered":"Camelot\u2019s Slurs: The Libelling of Adlai Stevenson"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you bury responsibility for a decision inspired by a pilfered idea?\u00a0 Blame someone else, especially if that person came up with the idea to begin with.\u00a0 This tried method of distraction was used with invidious gusto by US President John F. Kennedy, who recast his role in reaching an agreement with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.<\/p>\n

The stationing of Soviet nuclear capable missiles in Cuba, and the response of the Kennedy administration, took the world to the precipice of nuclear conflict.\u00a0 Its avoidance, as things transpired, involved dissimulation, deception and good, old-fashioned defamation.<\/p>\n

In a crucial meeting on October 27 between Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, the first intimations were made that a quid pro quo arrangement could be reached.\u00a0 If the Soviets were to pull out their missiles in Cuba, the US would return the favour regarding their missiles in Turkey.\u00a0 That part of the agreement would, however, remain secret.\u00a0 RFK, as the administration\u2019s emissary, informed<\/a> Dobrynin that his brother \u201cis ready to come to agree on that question with N.S. Khrushchev.\u201d\u00a0 For the withdrawal to take place, however, some four to five months had to elapse.\u00a0 \u201cHowever, the president can\u2019t say anything public in this regard about Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time was pressing.\u00a0 A U-2 spy plane had been shot down over Cuba that day; the hawks in the administration were baying for blood, demanding US military retaliation.\u00a0 \u201cA real war will begin,\u201d warned RFK, \u201cin which millions of Americans and Russians will die.\u00a0 We want to avoid that any way we can, I\u2019m sure that the government of the USSR has the same wish.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his subsequent account of the meeting with the Soviet ambassador, documented in a report<\/a> to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, RFK ducks and weaves.\u00a0 Recalling the urgency with which he impressed upon Dobrynin on removing the Soviet missiles, he also offered a slanted reading.\u00a0 When the ambassador had asked about the US missiles in Turkey, \u201cI replied there could be no quid pro quo<\/em> \u2013 no deal of this kind could be made.\u201d\u00a0 Mention is made to the elapse of four to five months, by which time \u201cthese matters could be resolved satisfactorily.\u201d\u00a0 (In the draft version, that reference is scrawled out by RFK.)<\/p>\n

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev\u2019s response<\/a> on October 28 to President Kennedy did acknowledge, in an uncharacteristically subtle way, \u201cthe delicacy involved for you in an open consideration of the issue of eliminating the US missile bases in Turkey.\u201d\u00a0 He appreciated the \u201ccomplexity\u201d involved and thought it right that it should not be discussed publicly.\u00a0 Any mention of the quid pro quo agreement would be kept secret, to be only communicated via RFK.\u00a0 The Soviet Premier then made intimations about \u201cadvancing the cause of relaxation of international tensions and the tensions between our two powers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Within hours of Khrushchev\u2019s announcement that he would be ordering the dismantling and withdrawal of the missiles in Cuba, Kennedy made a call<\/a> to former president Herbert Hoover.\u00a0 The message is distinctly, to use that immortal phrase from the charmingly slippery Alan Clark, economical with the actualit\u00e9<\/em>.\u00a0 Moscow had supposedly gone back \u201cto their more reasonable position\u201d in accepting a pledge that Cuba would not be invaded in return for the withdrawal of the missiles.<\/p>\n

The train of fibbing continued chugging in another call<\/a> made that same day to former president Harry Truman.\u00a0 To Truman, Kennedy suggests, falsely, that his administration had \u201crejected\u201d trading the Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the Soviet withdrawal of their missiles in Cuba.<\/p>\n

On October 30th, Robert Kennedy returned the quid pro quo letter<\/a> to Ambassador Dobrynin instead of conveying it to his brother.\u00a0 Brother Jack had not been \u201cprepared to formulate such an understanding [regarding the missiles in Turkey] in the form of letters, even the most confidential letters, between the President and the head of the Soviet government, when it concerns such a highly delicate issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such an attitude could hardly be explained as noble or even reasoned; the Kennedys were concerned that any moves seen as conciliatory towards Moscow could ruin their electoral fortunes and those of the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Dobrynin\u2019s own summary<\/a> reveals a political animal contemplating his future prospects.\u00a0 RFK was against transmitting \u201cthis sort of letter, since who knows where and when such letters can surface or be somehow published\u201d.\u00a0 The reasons had little to do with averting nuclear catastrophe or preserving the human species.\u00a0 Such a document, were it to appear, \u201ccould cause irreparable harm to my political career in the future.\u00a0 This is why we request that you take this letter back.\u201d<\/p>\n

With such manoeuvrings achieved, the Kennedys went to work on covering their tracks and scrubbing the fingerprints. On December 6, 1962, Stevenson received a letter from JFK about a story<\/a> soon to be published by the Saturday Evening Post<\/em> titled \u201cIn Time of Crisis\u201d.\u00a0 The article, authored by Stewart Alsop and Charles Bartlett, promised an insider\u2019s overview of how Kennedy and his circle resolved the Cuban missile crisis.\u00a0 In the true tradition of insiders, the overview was utterly compromised.<\/p>\n

The decorative account came with the baubles and splendour of Camelot, depicting the president as calm and collected in the face of crisis.\u00a0 He only ever \u201clost his temper on minor matters\u201d but never his nerve.\u00a0 \u201cThis,\u201d the authors remark, \u201cmust be counted a huge intangible plus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The very tangible plus, for the Kennedys, came in the form of former Democratic presidential candidate and US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson.\u00a0 Stevenson had, according to a \u201cnon admiring official\u201d \u2013 later identified as National Security Council staffer Michael Forrestal \u2013 \u201cwanted a Munich.\u201d\u00a0 His heretical proposal entailed trading Turkish, Italian and British missile bases for Soviet missiles in Cuba.\u00a0 Forrestal had himself been urged by the Kennedys to feed that version to Bartlett and Alsop, despite their embrace of the idea.<\/p>\n

Alsop\u2019s brother, Joseph, went so far as to argue<\/a> in a column that this revealed a president keen on finding some basis to fire Stevenson.\u00a0 Special aide McGeorge Bundy, on being made aware of the article in advance, had talked him out of doing so.<\/p>\n

As things transpired, the origins of the \u201cMunich\u201d slur against Stevenson came from the president himself.\u00a0 As historian Gregg Herken noted<\/a> in his book, The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington<\/em>, \u201cThe president had pencilled in the \u2018Munich\u2019 line when he annotated the typescript of the draft article\u201d.\u00a0 Alsop\u2019s son, Joseph Wright Alsop VI, also claimed<\/a> that his father had told him \u201cthat it had actually been JFK who added the phrase \u2018Adlai wanted a Munich\u2019 in his own handwriting.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Alsop\u2019s correspondence with his editor at the Saturday Evening Post<\/em>, Clay Blair Jr., there is a pungent warning<\/a>: the president\u2019s role was to remain concealed and had to \u201cremain Top Secret, Eyes Only, Burn After Reading, and so on.\u201d\u00a0 If Alsop \u201cso much as hinted that JFK was in any way involved, I\u2019d be run out of town.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his delightful, if severe, dissertation<\/a> on presidential mendacity, Eric Alterman makes the admirably radical suggestion that the US commander in chief should not lie.\u00a0 Doing so triggers \u201ca series of reactions in the political system that builds on itself and can easily spiral out of the control.\u201d\u00a0 One lie becomes many; the drop becomes an ocean.\u00a0 And Kennedy showed not only a willingness to be mendacious but a certain aptitude for it.<\/p>The post Camelot\u2019s Slurs: The Libelling of Adlai Stevenson<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you bury responsibility for a decision inspired by a pilfered idea?\u00a0 Blame someone else, especially if that person came up with the idea to begin with.\u00a0 This tried method of distraction was used with invidious gusto by US President John F. Kennedy, who recast his role in reaching an agreement with the Soviet [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Camelot\u2019s Slurs: The Libelling of Adlai Stevenson<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1010,138,8319,54108,311,1320],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":865150,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865149\/revisions\/865150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}