JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (18 page)

“A great deal changed after the [missile] crisis: A direct communication link between Moscow and Washington was established, nuclear testing (except for underground tests) was banned, and the confrontation over Berlin was ended.

“But there was much that President Kennedy and my father did not succeed in seeing through to the end. I am convinced that if history had allowed them another six years, they would have brought the cold war to a close before the end of the 1960’s. I say this with good reason, because in 1963 my father made an official announcement to a session of the U.S.S.R. Defense Council that he intended to sharply reduce Soviet armed forces from 2.5 million men to half a million and to stop the production of tanks and other offensive weapons.

“He thought that 200 to 300 intercontinental nuclear missiles made an attack on the Soviet Union impossible, while the money freed up by reducing the size of the army would be put to better use in agriculture and housing construction.

“But fate decreed otherwise, and the window of opportunity, barely cracked open, closed at once. In 1963 President Kennedy was killed, and a year later, in October 1964, my father was removed from power. The cold war continued for another quarter of a century . . .”
[216]

Kennedy finally obtained the support of the Joint Chiefs for the test ban treaty, although Air Force chief LeMay said he would have opposed it had it not already been signed.
[217]
Strategic Air Command general Thomas Power denounced the treaty.
[218]
Other military leaders testified against the test ban. Admiral Lewis Strauss said, “I am not sure that the reduction of tensions is necessarily a good thing.” Admiral Arthur Radford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said, “I join with many of my former colleagues in expressing deep concern for our future security . . . The decision of the Senate of the United States in connection with this treaty will change the course of world history.”
[219]

The Citizens Committee continued its campaign in support of the test ban. In September public opinion polls showed a turnaround—80 percent in favor of the treaty. The Senate vote on ratification was held on September 24, 1963. The Senate approved the test ban treaty by a vote of 80 to 19—14 more than the required two-thirds. Sorensen noted that no other single accomplishment in the White House gave the president greater satisfaction.
[220]

Before he initiated his all-out campaign for approval of the test ban, Kennedy told his staff that the treaty was the most serious congressional issue he had faced. He was, he said, determined to win if it cost him the 1964 election.
[221]
He did win. But did it cost him his life?

NOTES

[
1
].
Dorothy Day: Selected Writings,
edited by Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983, 1992, 2005), p. 266.

[
2
]. Nigel Hamilton,
JFK: Reckless Youth
(New York: Random House, 1992), pp. 42, 104, 147-52; Robert Dallek, “The Medical Ordeals of JFK,”
Atlantic Monthly
(December 2002), pp. 49-61.

[
3
]. Quoted by George Smathers in an interview by Peter Collier and David Horowitz for their book
The Kennedys:
An American Drama
(New York: Warner Books, 1984), p. 208.

[
4
]. Robert J. Donovan,
PT 109
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 166.

[
5
]. John Hersey, “Survival,”
New Yorker
(June 17, 1944), pp. 34-37.

[
6
]. Joan and Clay Blair, Jr.,
The Search for J.F.K.
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), p. 376.

[
7
]. Robert F. Kennedy, foreword to John F. Kennedy,
Profiles in Courage
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1964), p. xii.

[
8
]. The Melanesian islanders continued to remember him, as he did them. On September 25, 1962, Barney Ross accompanied their Solomon Islands rescuer Benjamin Kevu to the White House, where he and President Kennedy embraced. Kennedy also invited two of the other rescuers to visit him, but to their grief he was killed before they could see him again. Hamilton,
JFK,
p. 602.

[
9
]. Cited by Helen O’Donnell,
A Common Good: The Friendship of Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth P. O’Donnell
(New York: William Morrow, 1998), p. 48.

[
10
]. Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 46.

[
11
]. Hamilton,
JFK,
p. 698.

[
12
]. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 88.

[
13
]. Ibid.

[
14
]. Ibid.

[
15
].
Prelude to Leadership: The European Diary of John F. Kennedy,
ed. Deirdre Henderson (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), p. 20.

[
16
]. Ibid., p. 7.

[
17
]. Michael J. Hogan,
A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954
(Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 413.

[
18
]. Gregg Herken interview of Jerome Wiesner, February 9, 1982. Cited by Christopher A. Preble, “Who Ever Believed in the ‘Missile Gap’? John F. Kennedy and the Politics of National Security,”
Presidential Studies
Quarterly
33, no. 4 (December 2003), p. 816.

[
19
]. Gareth Porter,
Perils of Dominance
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 14.

[
20
]. Marcus G. Raskin,
Essays of a Citizen
(Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1991), p. 52.

[
21
]. “
Let the Word Go Forth”: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Delacorte, 1988), pp. 370-71.

[
22
]. Herbert S. Parmet,
Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Dial, 1980), p. 286.

[
23
]. Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days
, p. 553.

[
24
]. Ibid., pp. 553-54.

[
25
]. Ibid.

[
26
]. Richard D. Mahoney,
JFK: Ordeal in Africa
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

[
27
]. Hugh Sidey, introduction to
Prelude to Leadership
, pp. xxiv-xxv.

[
28
]. Ibid., p. xxix.

[
29
].
Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1961
, “Inaugural Address” (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962), p. l.

[
30
]. Thomas Merton,
Cold War Letters
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2006), p. 4.

[
31
]. Ibid., p. 6.

[
32
]. From Thomas Merton’s January 18, 1962, letter to W. H. Ferry, in
Letters from Tom: A Selection of Letters from Father Thomas Merton, Monk of Gethsemani, to W. H. Ferry, 1961-1968
, edited by W. H. Ferry (Scarsdale, N.Y.: Fort Hill Press, 1983), p. 15.

[
33
]. Evelyn Lincoln,
My Twelve Years with John F. Kennedy
(New York: Bantam Books, 1966), p. 230.

[
34
]. Sidey, introduction to
Prelude
, p. xxxii.

[
35
]. Lincoln,
My Twelve Years,
p. 230.

[
36
]. Paul B. Fay, Jr.,
The Pleasure of His Company
(New York: Dell, 1966), pp. 162-63.

[
37
]. Theodore C. Sorensen,
Kennedy
(New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1965), pp. 606-7.

[
38
]. Ibid., p. 606.

[
39
]. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), p. 485.

[
40
]. Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg,
The Celluloid Muse: Hollywood Directors Speak
(New York: New American Library, Signet reprint, 1972), p. 92; cited by Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy.

[
41
]. “The Bay of Pigs Invasion: A Comprehensive Chronology of Events,” in
Bay of Pigs Declassified
, edited by Peter Kornbluh (New York: New Press, 1998), pp. 269-70.

[
42
]. Ibid., p. 275.