An Unfinished Life

When others at the meeting explained that resistance on their part to a march would alienate them from the members.h.i.+p of their organizations, Kennedy said, "Well, we all have our problems. You have your problems. I have my problems," mentioning Congress, the Soviets, NATO, and de Gaulle. As he left for a briefing on what to expect in Europe during his upcoming trip, he concluded by saying that they should work together and stay in touch. Though they would disagree from time to time on tactics, their strength was in unity of purpose.

Since it was now clear that they would be unable to stop the August 28 march, the Kennedys tried to ensure its success. Worried about an all-black demonstration, which would encourage a.s.sertions that whites had no serious interest in a comprehensive reform law, Kennedy asked Walter Reuther, head of the Automobile Workers union, to arrange substantial white partic.i.p.ation by church and labor union members. Kennedy also worried that a small turnout would defeat march purposes, but black and white organizers answered this concern by mobilizing over 250,000 demonstrators. To ensure that as little as possible went wrong, Bobby directed his Civil Division a.s.sistant attorney general to devote himself full-time for five weeks to guarding against potential mishaps, like insufficient food and toilet facilities or the presence of police dogs, which would draw comparisons to Bull Connor in Birmingham. Moreover, winning agreement to a route running from the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument to the Lincoln Memorial precluded the demonstration at the Capitol that the president feared would antagonize the Congress.

The march marked a memorable moment in a century-long crusade for black equality, its distinctive features not violence or narrow partisans.h.i.+p on behalf of one group's special interest but a dignified display of faith on the part of blacks and whites that America remained the world's last best hope of freedom and equality for all: that the fundamental promise of American life-the triumph of individualism over collectivism or racial or group ident.i.ty-might yet be fulfilled.

Nothing caught the spirit of the moment better, or did more to advance it, than Martin Luther King's concluding speech in the shadow of Lincoln's memorial. In his remarks to the ma.s.sive audience, which was nearly exhausted by the long afternoon of oratory, King had spoken for five minutes from his prepared text when he extemporaneously began to preach in the familiar cadence that had helped make him so effective a voice in the movement: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.... I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.... And when this happens... we will be able to speed up that day when all of G.o.d's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank G.o.d Almighty, we are free at last!'"

As the marchers dispersed, many walked hand in hand singing the movement's anthem: We shall overcome, we shall overcome,We shall overcome, some day.Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,We shall overcome some day.

Despite the success of the march, which received broad network TV coverage, Kennedy remained uncertain about prospects for a bill of any kind. But he was genuinely impressed and moved by King's speech. "I have a dream," he greeted King at a White House meeting with march organizers that evening. (When King asked if the president had heard Walter Reuther's excellent speech, which had indirectly chided Kennedy for doing more to defend freedom in Berlin than Birmingham, Kennedy replied, "Oh, I've heard him plenty of times.") Almost euphoric over the size of the turnout and the well-behaved, dignified demeanor of the marchers, Wilkins, Randolph, and Reuther expressed confidence that the House would pa.s.s a far-reaching bill, which would put unprecedented pressure on the Senate to act. Kennedy offered a two-p.r.o.nged defense of continuing caution. First, he said, though "this doesn't have anything to do with what we have been talking about," the group should exercise their substantial influence in the Negro community by doing something that "the Jewish community has done," putting an emphasis on "educating their children, on making them study, making them stay in school and all the rest." The looks of uncertainty, if not disbelief, on the faces of the civil rights leaders toward a proposal that, at best, would take a generation to implement moved Kennedy to follow on with a practical explanation for restraint in dealing with Congress. He read from a list prepared by special a.s.sistant for congressional relations Larry O'Brien of likely votes in the House and Senate. The dominance of negative congressmen blunted suggestions that Kennedy could win pa.s.sage of anything more than a limited measure, and even that was in doubt.

Kennedy's a.n.a.lysis of congressional resistance moved Randolph to ask the president to mount "a crusade" by going directly to the country for support. Kennedy countered by suggesting that rights leaders pressure the Republican party to back the fight for equal rights. He believed that the Republicans would turn a crusade by the administration into a political liability for the Democrats among white voters. And certainly bipartisan consensus would better serve a push for civil rights than a one-sided campaign by liberal Democrats. King asked if an appeal to Eisenhower might help enlist Republican backing generally and the support of House minority leader Charlie Halleck in particular. Kennedy did not think that an appeal to Eisenhower would have any impact on Halleck, but he liked the idea of sending a secret delegation made up of religious clerics and businessmen to see the former president. (Signaling his unaltered conviction that the "bomb throwers"-as Johnson called uncompromising liberals-would do more to r.e.t.a.r.d than advance a civil rights bill, Kennedy jokingly advised against including Walter Reuther in the delegation seeing Ike.) In the end, Kennedy concluded the one-hour-and-ten-minute meeting by promising nothing more than reports on likely votes in the House and the Senate. It was transparent to more than the civil rights leaders that Kennedy saw a compromise or bipartisan civil rights measure as his only chance for success.

On September 2, when he gave CBS anchor Walter Cronkite an interview at Hyannis Port, Kennedy did not blink at the likelihood that his support of major reforms, especially civil rights, would hurt him in the South. But he tried to blunt potential Republican gains and advance the civil rights bill by asking Republicans to "commit themselves to the same objective of equality of opportunity. I would be surprised," he said, "if the Republican Party, which, after all, is the party of Lincoln and is proud of that fact, as it should be... if they did not also support the right of every citizen to have equal opportunities, equal chance under the Const.i.tution."

A bombing at a church in Birmingham on September 15, which killed four young black girls-two of them sisters-made the sense of urgency greater than ever. On the nineteenth, King and a group of black Birmingham leaders met with Kennedy at the White House to discuss ways to avert further violence against blacks and preserve the city's tranquillity. King described the situation in Birmingham as so serious that it not only threatened the stability of the city "and Alabama but of the whole nation.... More bombings of churches and homes have taken place in Birmingham than any city in the United States and not a one of these bombings over the last fifteen to twenty years has been solved," King told the president. "The Negro community is about to reach a breaking point.... There is a feeling of being alone and not being protected.... If something isn't done to give the Negro a new sense of hope and a sense of protection," King warned, "... then we will have the worst race rioting we have ever seen in this country." The presence of state troopers was no help. To the contrary, their methods," King said, were "just unbelievable and barbaric.... We feel that these troopers should be removed, and be replaced with federal troops, to protect the people." Second, King urged the cancellation of federal government contracts with Birmingham businesses that continued to discriminate against blacks.

Kennedy resisted both suggestions. If conditions in Birmingham continued to deteriorate, he promised to consider dispatching troops, but he believed that once he sent in federal forces, he would have "an awful time getting them out" (as he feared would be the case in Vietnam). He thought it essential for the black community to avoid violence. "If the Negroes begin to respond, shoot at whites, you lose," he said. "Because when everybody starts going for guns, they'll shoot some innocent people, and they'll be white and then that will just wipe away" any white goodwill toward blacks. "I can't do very much," Kennedy added. "Congress can't do very much unless we keep the support of the white community throughout the country." If that disappears, "then we're pretty much down to a racial struggle, so that I think we've just got to tell the Negro community that this is a very hard price they have to pay to get this job done." All Kennedy would commit to was sending former Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall and former West Point football coach Colonel Earl Blaik to mediate the crisis. Kennedy saw their national status as so high that they would be able to draw Birmingham's white moderates into some kind of agreement with the city's black leaders, which Governor Wallace would find difficult to challenge. He also met with Birmingham officials at the White House. He had no illusion, he told them, that the desire for segregation would disappear, and he predicted that a city with a 40 or 45 percent black population could not cling to traditional habits without increasing tensions and racial violence. He urged the hiring of some Negro policeman and clerks in department stores as a useful way to head off further agitation. The alternative was a city that would likely disintegrate as a viable community.

When the city fathers complained that these steps would probably lead to integration in places of public accommodation, Kennedy encouraged them to develop a sense of proportion about what they faced. Integrating the police force and department stores or even public accommodations like hotels and motels would be relatively painless, he said. There would be few black policemen and clerks; nor, he said with a slight condescending twinge, would many blacks have the financial wherewithal to stay at hotels and motels. The greatest difficulty he saw would be in integrating elementary and secondary schools, where cla.s.ses would be almost evenly divided between blacks and whites. When the city fathers complained that outside agitators like King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Young were a princ.i.p.al source of their problem, Kennedy replied that even without black activists from outside the state, Birmingham's problem would not go away. In addition, if moderates like King stood aside, more radical groups like SNCC would take their place, and "they're sons of b.i.t.c.hes," Kennedy emphasized. He ended by asking his visitors to support the Royall-Blaik initiative, which would allow the federal government to stay out of Birmingham and create some sense of progress and provide a breathing spell from more violence. As newcomers to the city's government, the city officials pleaded for time to establish their administration before addressing so controversial an issue as civil rights.

Kennedy knew that it would take years and years to resolve race relations in the South, but he still believed that pa.s.sage of a limited civil rights bill would be "very helpful" in buying time for the country to advance toward a peaceful solution to its greatest domestic social problem. But it was not to be. Between the end of September and the third week in November, House Democrats and Republicans-liberals and conservatives-entered into self-interested maneuvering over the administration's civil rights proposals. A lot of "these fellas would rather have an issue than a bill," Kennedy said about liberals and conservatives. He was so discouraged by late October over the "bad news" coming out of the House that he told Evelyn Lincoln, "he felt like packing his bags and leaving." He also complained that the Republicans were tempted "to think that they're never going to get very far with the Negroes anyway-so they might as well play the white game in the South." Still, because he believed that it would be "a great disaster for us to be beaten in the House," he made a substantial effort to arrange a legislative bargain. Kennedy's intervention in a meeting with Democratic and Republican House leaders on October 23 produced a compromise bill that pa.s.sed the Judiciary Committee by 20 to 14 on November 20. But the Rules Committee remained a problem. Larry O'Brien and Ted Sorensen asked the president how they could possibly get the bill past Committee chairman Howard Smith, the Virginia segregationist, who was determined to stop it from getting to the House floor in the 1963 session. Kennedy left for a political trip to Dallas on November 21 without an answer to their question. If, as seemed most likely, Smith could keep the bill bottled up in his committee for just one month, it would go over to the 1964 session, when so controversial a measure would have little chance of surviving in an election year.

Yet the news on civil rights was not all bad for Kennedy. After a visit to Arkansas in October, where he spoke about the state, the South, and the country, the Arkansas Gazette Arkansas Gazette declared his visit a "solid success," that "suggests that the Republicans may be counting prematurely in adding up all those electoral votes for 1964 from a Solid Republican South." The paper acknowledged that the president was "probably... beyond help in Mississippi and Alabama, but then Mississippi and Alabama weren't even with him the last time around." Southern moderates saw Kennedy as a voice of reason in the shrill debate over civil rights. The president "came to Arkansas as a friend and not to do battle with anyone," the declared his visit a "solid success," that "suggests that the Republicans may be counting prematurely in adding up all those electoral votes for 1964 from a Solid Republican South." The paper acknowledged that the president was "probably... beyond help in Mississippi and Alabama, but then Mississippi and Alabama weren't even with him the last time around." Southern moderates saw Kennedy as a voice of reason in the shrill debate over civil rights. The president "came to Arkansas as a friend and not to do battle with anyone," the Gazette Gazette declared. "He said the state and national governments should be partners, not antagonists. His good humor was evident, along with a flas.h.i.+ng wit, and his habit of mixing with the crowds stands him in good stead. There is not much question that the President, as they say, did himself some good on this venture into the South." declared. "He said the state and national governments should be partners, not antagonists. His good humor was evident, along with a flas.h.i.+ng wit, and his habit of mixing with the crowds stands him in good stead. There is not much question that the President, as they say, did himself some good on this venture into the South."

If Kennedy's political problems in the South were less than he feared, the racial divide in the region remained a problem that seemed certain to dog the country and his administration for the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that the administration's November 20 bill won House and Senate approval, it would not have satisfied civil rights advocates for long. The bill had eliminated retail stores and personal services from the public accommodations section, included no Fair Employment Practices Commission, sharply restricted EEOC enforcement powers and federally a.s.sisted programs that had to meet desegregation standards, and limited voting rights to federal elections. Constrained by fear of white resistance, including possible violence, to a comprehensive civil rights statute and by concerns about southern support in 1964, Kennedy had reached for compromise solutions that could buy time and allow him to address the issue again in a second term.

In doing so, Kennedy misread the situation, as he had in dealing with southern congressional Democrats in the Eighty-seventh and Eighty-eighth Congresses between 1961 and 1963. His hope that avoiding a confrontation with southern congressmen and senators over civil rights might help win pa.s.sage of other administration priorities, like a tax cut, Medicare, and federal aid to education, proved false. Would a strong appeal for civil rights legislation from the first have better served Kennedy's legislative agenda? Almost certainly not, but given congressional resistance to his initiatives, it wouldn't have hurt it, either. And it would have put the administration in a stronger position to win pa.s.sage of a comprehensive civil rights bill in 1963. If Kennedy had urged such a law from the start of his presidency, he could then have argued that his bill would have prevented the racial strife in Mississippi and Alabama in 1962 and 1963. It would have been a forceful justification for enactment of civil rights legislation in the summer of 1963.

Kennedy also failed to see that even the most committed segregationist senators and congressmen and the great majority of southern whites would accept a congressionally mandated civil rights bill. In August 1963, no less than Bonnie Faubus Salcido wrote him "to give you hope in the fight for civil rights. I want you to know there are many in the South who are for you tho [sic] are afraid to speak out. I am the sister of [Orval Faubus] the Governor of Arkansas.... Five of my brothers and sisters are for you also." Having fought and lost the civil war over slavery and states rights, most southerners were not about to urge another secession crisis in response to federal imposition of the Const.i.tution's equal protection clauses. Except for a tiny minority of racist extremists, they could imagine nothing less than a unified nation in the face of an international communist threat.

Moreover, Kennedy did not fully understand what Johnson was telling him about the importance of taking a moral stand on civil rights and leading a crusade for something that could be defined as fundamental American values. To be sure, Kennedy's June appeals for civil rights legislation rested on forceful statements of this kind. But his willingness to reach compromises with various congressional groups undermined his ability to press the issue. It did not need to be so. As Kennedy himself said in one of his conversations in October, while polls showed that most Americans were not ready to have Negroes living next door to them, they did support a defense of const.i.tutional rights. With majority sentiment thus favoring congressional action if couched correctly, Kennedy could have taken the moral high ground and invoked the dangers to the national well-being from a failure to enact a bill that could largely ensure equal treatment under the law. His attempt to find a middle ground made him less effective in a fight that required unqualified expressions of faith in the righteousness of the cause. Since civil rights-more so than any other national issue confronting him-raised fundamental ethical questions, he certainly could have made it the one great domestic moral cause of his presidency.

BY CONTRAST WITH his uncertain handling of civil rights, Kennedy had no doubts about the wisdom of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Budget deficits and demands for greater spending on domestic programs could not deter him from a commitment he believed essential to America's international prestige. In June 1962, after the successful orbital flights by Alan Shepard and John Glenn, Kennedy told a press conference that he had no intention of diverting money from s.p.a.ce programs. "I do not think the United States can afford to become second in s.p.a.ce because I think that s.p.a.ce has too many implications militarily, politically, psychologically, and all the rest." He cited a survey of French students, two-thirds of whom regarded the Soviet Union as being first in science and technology. "I think the fact that the Soviet Union was... first in s.p.a.ce in the fifties had a tremendous impact upon a good many people who were attempting to make a determination as to whether they could meet their economic problems without engaging in a Marxist form of government. I think the United States cannot permit the Soviet Union to become dominant in the sea of s.p.a.ce." Kennedy partly justified the lunar program's costs by citing its "many industrial benefits." "No one can tell me that the United States cannot afford to do what the Soviet Union has done so successfully with a national income of less than half of ours," he said. his uncertain handling of civil rights, Kennedy had no doubts about the wisdom of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Budget deficits and demands for greater spending on domestic programs could not deter him from a commitment he believed essential to America's international prestige. In June 1962, after the successful orbital flights by Alan Shepard and John Glenn, Kennedy told a press conference that he had no intention of diverting money from s.p.a.ce programs. "I do not think the United States can afford to become second in s.p.a.ce because I think that s.p.a.ce has too many implications militarily, politically, psychologically, and

In 1962, a double orbit by two Soviet cosmonauts and continuing advantages in the "size and total of weights placed in orbit, in the thrust of their operational rocket engines, and in the development of" s.p.a.ce rendezvousing techniques strengthened Kennedy's commitment to the Apollo program. Surveys of West European opinion on the Soviet-American s.p.a.ce compet.i.tion showed a growing regard for U.S. capabilities, further bolstering Kennedy's determination to advance the lunar landing. In August, to counter allegations that Apollo primarily aimed to give the United States a military advantage in s.p.a.ce, Kennedy directed the National Security Council to encourage public understanding of America's peaceful intentions. (The NSC was a peculiar choice as spokesman for the administration's opposition to militarizing s.p.a.ce.) Kennedy also urged NASA officials to consider accelerating the manned lunar mission by diverting monies from other s.p.a.ce projects. At a meeting with budget advisers in November, he clashed with NASA head Jim Webb, who opposed putting more money into the lunar program to advance the landing date. A forceful, overbearing character who did not like being contradicted, Webb bristled at Kennedy's policy directives, interrupting and speaking over the president. Webb urged a balanced program of s.p.a.ce exploration that did not overemphasize the lunar probes. He described the moon walk as just one of several s.p.a.ce priorities and invoked the authority of scientists, who "think the highest priority is to understand the environment of s.p.a.ce."

Believing that public support for his s.p.a.ce program would weaken without clearly tying it to the Soviet-American compet.i.tion for s.p.a.ce dominance, Kennedy rejected Webb's advice. While only 33 percent of the public endorsed the expenditure of $40 billion on the manned moon mission, Kennedy saw a well-defined and dramatic achievement as essential to sustain national backing. And he saw that backing as vital to a larger national security goal. "Everything we do ought to really be tied in to getting on to the moon ahead of the Russians," he told Webb. "Otherwise we shouldn't be spending that kind of money, because I'm not interested in s.p.a.ce.... [The costs] wreck our budget on all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it... is because we hope to beat them to demonstrate that instead of being behind by a couple of years, by G.o.d we pa.s.sed them."

"Do you still have the same enthusiasm and high hopes for the results of the vast outlays we have undertaken in the s.p.a.ce projects... [as] when you first started into these?" a reporter asked Kennedy in December 1962. He acknowledged that $5 billion in the coming year was a lot to spend on the program but pointed to the "tremendous effect" that Sputnik Sputnik had in the fifties. It made people everywhere believe that Moscow had "the secret of the organization of society." He also urged the reporters to keep in mind that s.p.a.ce expenditures translated into new industries and new technical skills. had in the fifties. It made people everywhere believe that Moscow had "the secret of the organization of society." He also urged the reporters to keep in mind that s.p.a.ce expenditures translated into new industries and new technical skills.

Kennedy's commitment to the moon landing did not insulate the administration from growing complaints about the "moon-doggle," as critics began calling it. U.S. scientists were among the most outspoken critics. They a.s.serted that "large-scale applied research ought to concentrate on problems 'here on earth': Medicine, Third World development, urban renewal" were all more worthy of investment and study than the moon program. Liberals joined the attack by pointing out that s.p.a.ce spending could be funding valuable social programs. On the other side of the fence, Republicans, led by Eisenhower, weighed in with complaints that Kennedy's moon project was too focused on America's international prestige and too little on gaining military advantages in s.p.a.ce. Eisenhower said that spending a total of $40 billion to reach the moon was "just nuts."

In the spring of 1963, Kennedy launched an aggressive response to his critics. In April, he asked Johnson to tell him what technical and scientific accomplishments might result from s.p.a.ce exploration. At the same time, Kennedy told the press that nothing had changed his mind about "the desirability of continuing this program. Now, some people say that we should take the money we are putting into s.p.a.ce and put it into housing or education," but, Kennedy a.s.serted, if they "cut the s.p.a.ce program... you would not get additional funds for education." Instead, the Congress would use the monies to balance budgets. Slowing or eliminating the manned moon mission would only produce later recriminations over our failure to keep up with the Soviets.

At the end of July, to blunt continuing attacks on Apollo, Kennedy wanted Johnson to tell him whether the Eisenhower administration had ever had a moon program, what its time schedule was, and how much they had planned to spend on it. He also asked Johnson to report on how much of the s.p.a.ce program was militarily useful. The vice president replied that Eisenhower had no moon program and that it was impossible "to ascribe a quant.i.tative measure to the military spin-offs from the non-military portion of the s.p.a.ce program." However, Johnson confidently a.s.serted that everything they were doing in s.p.a.ce was both directly and indirectly of military value, concluding that the "s.p.a.ce program is expensive, but it can be justified as a solid investment which will give ample returns in security, prestige, knowledge, and material benefits."

When reports about Soviet second thoughts on a manned moon mission surfaced in the summer, Kennedy came under additional pressure to reconsider the U.S. program. He refused. He continued to see substantial Soviet gains in prestige from s.p.a.ce exploration. According to a USIA worldwide opinion survey asking which country was "ahead in s.p.a.ce developments," people everywhere believed the Soviets had the advantage. In j.a.pan, 69 percent of the poll saw Moscow in the lead, while only 6 percent said the United States; in Britain, the split was 59 to 13, and in France, opinion ran 68 percent to 5 percent against the U.S.; in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, only 10 to 18 percent believed that the United States was winning the s.p.a.ce race. "Are we going to divert ourselves from our effort in an area where the Soviet Union has a lead, is making every effort to maintain that lead, in an area which could affect our national security as well as great peaceful development?" Kennedy rhetorically asked reporters in July.

To increase public support for Apollo, Kennedy emphasized the idealistic as well as the practical advantages of his policy. In particular, he publicly urged Soviet-American cooperation in outer s.p.a.ce. In a September 20, 1963, speech before the United Nations General a.s.sembly, he underscored the rising hopes for peace resulting from reduced tensions over Berlin, Laos, and the Congo and the test ban treaty. "In a field where the United States and Soviet Union have a special capacity-in the field of s.p.a.ce-there is room for new cooperation," Kennedy declared, "for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of s.p.a.ce. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon.... Why... should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national compet.i.tion?" There was no need for the immense duplication of research, construction, and expenditure. "Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries-indeed of all the world-cannot work together in the conquest of s.p.a.ce, sending some day in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries." Though Khrushchev gave no response to Kennedy's proposal, in November, JFK instructed Webb personally to a.s.sume responsibility for exploring possibilities of Soviet-American cooperation and to report back to him on "the progress of our planning by December 15."

At the end of October, when Khrushchev told journalists that they were "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the moon," American newspapers gave his remarks front-page coverage. (Khrushchev reflected Soviet ambivalence about a manned moon mission; it was not until 1964 that Russian leaders formally committed themselves to enter this compet.i.tion.) But Kennedy refused to take Khrushchev's statement as an excuse to quit the moon race. "I would not make any bets at all upon Soviet intentions," he told the press. When Khrushchev confirmed to reporters that Moscow had not dropped out of the moon race, Kennedy accepted it as vindication of his policy. "An energetic continuation of our strong s.p.a.ce effort is essential," Kennedy told Congressman Albert Thomas. "In the larger sense, this is not merely an effort to put a man on the moon; it is a means and a stimulus for all the advances in technology, in understanding and in experience, which can move us forward toward man's mastery of s.p.a.ce."

As demonstrated by a 1965 survey showing 58 percent of Americans endorsing the country's moon mission, Kennedy accurately a.s.sessed a s.h.i.+ft toward increased public backing for the expensive s.p.a.ce effort. As important, the success of the manned moon landing program by 1969-the end of the decade, as Kennedy had promised-ensured an enduring U.S. commitment to s.p.a.ce exploration. He had indeed helped open a new frontier.

IN 1963, along with the battle to keep the moon mission on track, Kennedy struggled to find answers to continuing difficulties with Cuba and South Vietnam. At the center of his policies toward both countries was a search for effective compromises that would free his administration to focus on bigger challenges from Moscow and at home, where a presidential campaign was certain to consume considerable energy, and his plans for a tax cut, civil rights, Medicare, and aid to education had been stalled. along with the battle to keep the moon mission on track, Kennedy struggled to find answers to continuing difficulties with Cuba and South Vietnam. At the center of his policies toward both countries was a search for effective compromises that would free his administration to focus on bigger challenges from Moscow and at home, where a presidential campaign was certain to consume considerable energy, and his plans for a tax cut, civil rights, Medicare, and aid to education had been stalled.

Cuba, which had been a constant concern since January 1961, seemed especially in need of some fresh thinking. Kennedy's eagerness to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action had been evident since the Bay of Pigs and was as apparent during the missile crisis. His affinity for finding compromises on Cuba surfaced again in November 1962, when he agreed to give up on-site inspections in return for removal of the IL-28s.

But tensions remained. Khrushchev wanted an unqualified noninvasion pledge, but the best he could get, Kennedy told him on November 21, was that "there need be no fear of any invasion of Cuba while matters take their present favorable course." In response, Khrushchev asked Kennedy to "clearly confirm... the pledge of non-invasion of Cuba by the United States and your allies." Kennedy replied on December 14 that "it is clearly in the interest of both sides that we reach agreement on how finally to dispose of the Cuban crisis.... We have never wanted to be driven by the acts of others into war in Cuba. The other side of the coin, however, is that we do need to have adequate a.s.surances that all offensive weapons are removed from Cuba and are not reintroduced, and that Cuba itself commits no aggressive acts against any of the nations of the Western Hemisphere."

Through the fall of 1963, Kennedy remained open to the possibility that Cuban aggression or developments on the island could compel U.S. military action. At a Palm Beach conference with defense and military chiefs in December 1962, he told them that despite the lull in Cuban difficulties, "we must a.s.sume that someday we may have to go into Cuba, and when it happens, we must be prepared to do it as quickly as possible." He asked them to plan an invasion "one, two, three, or four years ahead." On February 28, when the Chiefs advised him that it would take almost three weeks to launch an attack, he wanted suggestions on how to get "some troops quickly into Cuba in the event of a general uprising." At the end of April, he asked McNamara, "Are we keeping our Cuban contingency invasion plans up to date?" In October 1963, he told McNamara that "the situation could develop in the Caribbean which would require active United States military intervention." He doubted that the United States was "prepared for this satisfactorily," and he asked McNamara to give such plans "the highest priority." The 150,000 Cuban exiles in Florida also pressed Kennedy to act against Castro or at least to allow them to act on their own. (Kennedy made futile efforts to persuade the exiles to settle in other states, which would blunt their political influence in a presidential contest for Florida's votes.) In a speech in Miami's Orange Bowl to welcome members of the Cuban brigade, whom Castro had released after twenty months of imprisonment, Kennedy celebrated their courage and devotion to Cuba's freedom. Few of the forty thousand Cuban exiles listening to the president's speech could imagine that he had anything in mind for Cuba other than its eventual liberation from Castro's rule. Presented with the brigade's flag for safekeeping until it could be returned to Havana, Kennedy in emotional, unrehea.r.s.ed remarks declared, "I can a.s.sure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana." The president's speech triggered shouts from the crowd of "Guerra! Guerra!" "Guerra! Guerra!"

The presence of thousands of Soviet troops in Cuba gave Castro's elimination an enduring appeal, but subversion remained a greater concern. At a post-missile crisis meeting on November 3, when Rusk cited sabotage in Venezuela that was "instigated by a pro-Castro group of Cubans," Kennedy responded, "We should be as tough as we can in dealing with such situations." To reduce Cuban influence all over the hemisphere, Kennedy asked U.S. national security officials to pressure Latin governments into lessening, and possibly eliminating, "the flow of students, labor leaders, etc., who go to Cuba for training and indoctrination and then go back to their own country as possible communist organizers."

In January 1963, an Interdepartmental Coordinating Committee on Cuban Affairs had been set up to replace the failed Mongoose. The unauthorized decision of William Harvey, CIA Mongoose coordinator, to send reconnaissance teams into Cuba during the missile crisis had provoked a Harvey-Bobby shouting match, which, following a blowup between them in September over other Cuban missteps, spelled the end of Mongoose. The new ICC was "to work out an improved arrangement for our handling of Cuban policy and action," including the creation of a subcommittee on Cuban subversion. It was to gather information on the dissemination of communist propaganda, arms s.h.i.+pments, and transfers of funds to other Latin American countries. In September 1963, Llewellyn Thompson, relying on the subcommittee's findings, told Dobrynin that Cuban-trained guerrillas were engaged in "terroristic activities" all over the hemisphere; that Cuba was "furnis.h.i.+ng funds to revolutionary groups"; and that Castro and other Cuban leaders were publicly exhorting revolutionaries "to resort to sabotage, terrorism and guerrilla action."

Yet despite continuing interest in ousting Castro, renewed discussions yielded no better plans than in the previous two years. The ICC wished to encourage "developments within Cuba that offer the possibility of divorcing the Cuban government from its support of Sino-Soviet Communist purposes." But how? The ICC could only suggest applying "increasing degrees of political, economic, psychological and military pressures... until the Castro/Communist regime is overthrown." It offered no explanation of just how this would be done or why it would work. And though the CIA had resumed covert activities, including new a.s.sa.s.sination plots against Castro, they were as ineffective as before. Indeed, their schemes were often ludicrous. In 1962, for example, McCone suggested they could acquire a Soviet fighter plane through defection, purchase, or U.S. manufacture. The plane could then be used "in a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack U.S. or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for U.S. intervention." Although McCone made no mention of Cuba in his memo, the U.S. base at Guantanamo was a perfect fit for his idea. The White House ignored the proposal.

According to Lawrence Freedman, "Kennedy was maintaining his military options [against Cuba] for no better reason than his preference for never closing any options off, just in case circ.u.mstances changed." JFK's affinity for competing rapprochement proposals makes Freedman's a.s.sertion convincing. In November, as the Cuban missile crisis ended, Castro's anger at Khrushchev for giving in to U.S. pressure and agreeing to on-site inspections raised the possibility that Castro might actually welcome a rapprochement with the United States. In fact, Castro announced himself ready for an agreement with Was.h.i.+ngton, but his conditions for an accommodation-an end to Was.h.i.+ngton's economic embargo, subversion, exile raids, U-2 overflights, and control of Guantanamo-were more than any American government could accept, especially if it hoped to avoid a firestorm of criticism from Cuban exiles and their American allies.

Castro's demands did not kill Kennedy's interest in reducing Cuban-American tensions. In February, after an NSC staffer urged him to talk publicly about isolating Cuba from the Soviet bloc and not other hemisphere countries, Kennedy told newsmen that the communist threat in the hemisphere did not emanate "primarily" from Cuba. Instead, it fed on economic "hards.h.i.+ps" suffered by Latin American peoples. If Cuban subversion disappeared, a communist threat would still exist. A few days later, when a Cuban MIG fighter fired at an American shrimp boat in the Caribbean, the administration's measured protest and a "soft" Cuban reply avoided an escalation in Cuban-American tensions, and, as the New York Times New York Times reported, became instead an opportunity for the two sides to discuss their overall differences. reported, became instead an opportunity for the two sides to discuss their overall differences.

Bobby remained the princ.i.p.al voice in the administration for anti-Castro action, and the failure of Mongoose and the CIA to propose practical means of ousting Castro moved him to look to Cuban exiles to rescue their country. In March 1963, when McCone told an NSC meeting that an internal military coup in Cuba was more likely than a civil uprising facilitated from the outside and predicted that congressional pressure over Cuba would ease, Bobby disputed his a.n.a.lysis. He also took exception to Rusk's advice against giving the Cuban exiles false hopes. The next day, he sent his brother a memo urging "periodic meetings of half a dozen or so top officials of the Government to consider Cuba and Latin America." He felt that the NSC meeting showed an insufficient commitment to new anti-Castro actions. They needed to "come up with a plan for a future Cuba." "I would not like it said a year from now," he explained, "that we could have had this internal breakup in Cuba but we just did not set the stage for it."

When the President ignored Bobby's recommendations, Bobby wrote his brother: "Do you think there was any merit to my last memo?... In any case, is there anything else on this matter?" Another Bobby suggestion in early April that the administration support a five-hundred-man raiding party also received no reply.

Kennedy was in no mood to exacerbate tensions with Cuba. In March, after Cuban exiles attacked Soviets s.h.i.+ps and installations in Cuba, Kennedy expressed concern at the potential damage to Soviet-American relations and the need to prevent further a.s.saults. He told an NSC meeting that "these in-and-out raids were probably exciting and rather pleasant for those who engage in them. They were in danger for less than an hour. This exciting activity was more fun than living in the hills of Escambray, pursued by Castro's military forces." McCone warned against openly cutting off the commandos; it would produce "intense public and press criticism" as well as congressional complaints. And while he acknowledged that the raids would probably increase difficulties with Castro and the Soviets, he also saw potential benefits, including a Soviet reappraisal of their Cuban commitment, which might cause them "to open a discussion of their presence [in Cuba] with the United States." Kennedy was not convinced. Although he was willing to consider encouraging the raiders to strike only at Cuban targets, this was as much to give himself political cover as to promote Castro's demise. Negotiations with Castro for the release of twenty-two American citizens held in Cuban prisons as CIA agents were one reason for discouraging exile attacks. James B. Donovan, a New York lawyer who had negotiated the release of the nearly twelve hundred exile Cubans captured at the Bay of Pigs in exchange for $53 million worth of medicines, had Kennedy's approval for these additional talks. In April, Kennedy privately made clear to the exiles that for the time being he wanted no more attacks. By May, the CIA described the exile groups as "puzzled with regard to the American policy toward Cuba and the exile community." Exile leaders, the CIA also reported, saw "[no] real reason for unity because obviously there is no moral or financial support forthcoming from the U.S. government and without this support there is no point to unity."

Though Donovan was careful to emphasize his status as a private citizen during his April visit, Castro and Kennedy saw him as an intermediary who might help initiate better Cuban-American relations. During his five days in Cuba, Donovan spent more than twenty-four hours in conversations with Castro. A first meeting on Sunday, April 7, lasted from 1:00 A.M. A.M. to 6:30 to 6:30 A.M. A.M. Castro asked Donovan for suggestions on "how relations.h.i.+ps could be established with the United States." When Donovan replied that American public sentiment toward Castro might be changing, as White House limits on the exiles and majority opinion against a war with Cuba demonstrated, Castro declared that a future "ideal" Cuban government "was not to be Soviet oriented.... There was absolutely no chance that Cuba would become a Soviet satellite." He also stated that "Cuba was not exporting subversion to other Latin American countries." He pressed Donovan to say how Havana and Was.h.i.+ngton could achieve better political relations and raised the possibility that Donovan be given some official status that would allow him to continue these discussions in Havana. Castro saw official relations with the United States as a "necessity," but explained that "certain Cuban Government officials, communists," currently limited what he could do. A report from Donovan greatly interested Kennedy, especially the part about Castro's eagerness for better relations and his description of communist constraints. Castro asked Donovan for suggestions on "how relations.h.i.+ps could be established with the United States." When Donovan replied that American public sentiment toward Castro might be changing, as White House limits on the exiles and majority opinion against a war with Cuba demonstrated, Castro declared that a future "ideal" Cuban government "was not to be Soviet oriented.... There was absolutely no chance that Cuba would become a Soviet satellite." He also stated that "Cuba was not exporting subversion to other Latin American countries." He pressed Donovan to say how Havana and Was.h.i.+ngton could achieve better political relations and raised the possibility that Donovan be given some official status that would allow him to continue these discussions in Havana. Castro saw official relations with the United States as a "necessity," but explained that "certain Cuban Government officials, communists," currently limited what he could do. A report from Donovan greatly interested Kennedy, especially the part about Castro's eagerness for better relations and his description of communist constraints.

In May, when Castro visited Moscow for a month, the CIA, White House, and State Department tried to decipher the consequences for Cuban-American relations. Was Castro's visit meant to remind the United States that no attack on Cuba would be tolerated? Was it an effort to reduce Soviet-Cuban tensions and head off a U.S.-Cuban accommodation? Or was it a demonstration of Khrushchev's conviction that a Cuban "rapprochement with the U.S. [was] a necessity" and that Castro needed "indoctrination to this end"? Although the State Department acknowledged that the visit might signal the start of a campaign to improve Cuban-American relations, it argued against a rapprochement: An agreement with Castro would be destructive to the development of democracy in Latin America and would touch off a firestorm of domestic political opposition. Yet Kennedy did not want to close off the possibility of reaching an accommodation with Castro. As the NSC conceded at the end of May, all of the existing courses of action proposed for toppling Castro "were singularly unpromising." Bundy was even more emphatic: The anti-Castro measures being considered "will not result in his overthrow."

Pessimism about U.S. capacity to alter conditions in Cuba, however, did not deter the administration from agreeing to renewed raids and sabotage. The political consequences of open efforts at rapprochement were more than Kennedy felt he could risk a year before his reelection campaign. Though raids and sabotage would not unseat Castro, they would meet continuing domestic pressures for action and encourage the belief that he was vulnerable to defeat. In September and October, respectively, when Dobrynin and Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko told Kennedy of Khrushchev's unhappiness with these raids, Kennedy conceded that they were serving "no useful purpose."

Consequently, albeit secretly, Kennedy agreed to further explore the possibility of improved relations. The princ.i.p.al advocate of change was William Attwood, a former Look Look magazine editor, who had interviewed Castro and had served from March 1961 to May 1963 as amba.s.sador to Guinea, where he had helped bring a government friendly to Moscow into the Western camp. Appointed an adviser to the United States Mission to the U.N. in the summer of 1963, Attwood listened attentively to "neutral diplomats," who suggested "a course of action which, if successful, could remove the Cuban issue from the 1964 campaign." Stripping the Republicans of the Cuban matter by "neutralizing Cuba on our terms" had considerable appeal to Kennedy. It would also eliminate international embarra.s.sment over the image of a superpower America bullying a weak island country. If rapprochement included the removal of all Soviet forces from Cuba, an end to Cuba's hemisphere subversion, and Havana's commitment to nonalignment in the Cold War, Kennedy believed he could sell it to the American public. magazine editor, who had interviewed Castro and had served from March 1961 to May 1963 as amba.s.sador to Guinea, where he had helped bring a government friendly to Moscow into the Western camp. Appointed an adviser to the United States Mission to the U.N. in the summer of 1963, Attwood listened attentively to "neutral diplomats," who suggested "a course of action which, if successful, could remove the Cuban issue from the 1964 campaign." Stripping the Republicans of the Cuban matter by "neutralizing Cuba on our terms" had considerable appeal to Kennedy. It would also eliminate international embarra.s.sment over the image of a superpower America bullying a weak island country. If rapprochement included the removal of all Soviet forces from Cuba, an end to Cuba's hemisphere subversion, and Havana's commitment to nonalignment in the Cold War, Kennedy believed he could sell it to the American public.

With Adlai Stevenson's support and the president's approval, Attwood secretly discussed the possibility of a Cuban-American dialogue with Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's U.N. amba.s.sador. Lechuga urged that someone travel to Havana for an initial talk with Castro. Attwood was not hopeful. Lechuga and Castro might be interested, but they were "too well boxed in by such hardliners as Guevara to be able to maneuver much." But Attwood, who believed that he could handle the a.s.signment in secret, was eager to try. After a meeting with Bobby about possible negotiations, Attwood suggested to Lechuga that they hold secret talks at the U.N. "The ball is in Cuban hands and the door is ajar," Attwood told Bundy in October.

Kennedy's receptivity to a possible accommodation with Castro registered forcefully on Jean Daniel, a French journalist on his way to Havana at the end of October. Agreeing to a meeting with Daniel at Ben Bradlee's urging, Kennedy did not want to talk about Vietnam or say much about de Gaulle. "I'd like to talk to you about Cuba," Kennedy said. He began by acknowledging U.S. responsibility for Cuban miseries perpetrated by Batista. "I believe that we created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it," he declared. Batista was "the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States." All this, which Kennedy a.s.sumed would be repeated to Castro, was meant to suggest that he had genuine concern for Cuba's well-being. Castro's willingness to act as an agent of Soviet communism in Cuba and the hemisphere, Kennedy added, had put them at odds; indeed, Castro had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war. Kennedy did not know whether Castro understood this or even cared. Kennedy stood up at this point to signal an end to the conversation, but Daniel asked him about the economic blockade of Cuba. The end of subversive activities in the hemisphere could bring an end to the blockade, Kennedy replied. Kennedy asked Daniel to see him again after returning from Cuba. "Castro's reactions interest me," he said.

Castro surprised the Americans by sending word that he "would very much like to talk," but that it would have to be in Cuba, not at the U.N. He "appreciated the importance of discretion" and offered to send a plane to Mexico or Key West to fly an American official to Cuba, where they could meet in a secret airfield near Havana. Castro did not wish to be seen as in any way soliciting U.S. friends.h.i.+p. As a Greek intermediary told Attwood, "Castro would welcome a normalization of relations with the United States if he could do so without losing too much face." Similarly, Bobby told Attwood that the administration could not risk accusations that it was "trying to make a deal with Castro."

On November 12, Bundy advised Attwood that the president saw the visit of any U.S. official to Cuba now as impractical. Instead, he, as Bobby had before him, suggested that Castro send his personal envoy to see Attwood in New York. Kennedy wanted Castro to say first whether there was any prospect of Cuban independence from Moscow and an end to hemisphere subversion. "Without an indication of readiness to move in these directions, it is hard for us to see what could be accomplished by a visit to Cuba." Bundy advised Attwood to make clear to the Cubans "that we were not supplicants in this matter and the initiative for exploratory conversations was coming from the Cubans." On the eighteenth, Castro sent word to Attwood that the invitation to come to Cuba remained open and that the security of the visit was guaranteed. When Attwood said that a preliminary meeting "was essential to make sure there was something useful to talk about," Castro's emissary promised to send an "agenda" for discussion between Attwood and Lechuga as a prelude to a future meeting with Castro.

On the same day, Kennedy spoke in Miami before the Inter-American Press a.s.sociation. His speech included veiled references to an altered relations.h.i.+p with Cuba. Latin America's problems would "not be solved simply by complaining about Castro, by blaming all problems on communism, or generals or nationalism," he said. He declared it "important to restate what now divides Cuba from my country and from the other countries of this hemisphere. It is the fact that a small band of conspirators has stripped the Cuban people of their freedom and handed over the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban nation to forces beyond the hemisphere. They have made Cuba... a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American Republics. This, and this alone, divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible. Once this barrier is removed, we will be ready and anxious to work with the Cuban people in pursuit of those progressive goals which a few short years ago stirred their hopes and the sympathy of many people throughout the hemisphere."

The Cuban community in Florida did not miss the president's implied receptivity to a fresh start in relations with Cuba. In general, the exiles saw the speech as "expressions of willingness to accept 'Fidelismo sin Fidel.'" This did not please the substantial number of conservatives in the community. If they had known about the Attwood initiative and the Daniel conversation, they would have been up in arms.

There was still intense pressure for covert action. On October 1, Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA's director of planning and new head of secret operations, described a 5 to 7 percent decline in Cuban production, with a 20 percent drop in the sugar harvest, which had caused a deterioration in living conditions and undermined Castro's popularity. The fact that the economic downturn had not yet affected the Cuban military made it difficult to foresee a coup. But when the decline continued into November, "causing increasing hards.h.i.+ps to the civilian population," U.S. a.n.a.lysts thought that Castro's "grip [was] weakening." Since U.S.-sponsored sabotage seemed likely to further weaken the economy and Castro's popularity, McCone urged a continuation of such hara.s.sment.

Kennedy, however, had heard too much optimistic talk about bringing down Castro to trust current a.s.sessments and predictions. At a November 12 meeting on Cuba, he asked whether the sabotage program "was worthwhile and whether it would accomplish our purpose." Nevertheless, his unresolved problems with Cuba and continuing worries about threats to the hemisphere and his own reelection made him reluctantly receptive to continuing subversion. Indeed, no one listening to his Inter-American Press a.s.sociation speech on the eighteenth could have doubted that overturning Castro's government remained an active option.

Kennedy's dual-track Cuban policy in 1963 did not, however, include a.s.sa.s.sinating Castro. A CIA scheme (or, more precisely, a Desmond Fitzgerald scheme) set in motion on November 22, to have Rolando Cubela Secades, an anti-Castro member of the Cuban government, kill Castro with an injection from a hypodermic needle hidden in a ballpoint pen, was directly at odds with Kennedy's policies. It was one thing to hope that hit-and-run raids and economic sanctions could provoke an internal uprising, but a.s.sa.s.sinating Castro seemed certain to make things worse. The devoted communists, who were allegedly holding Castro back from a rapprochement, seemed likely to react to a martyred Castro by ending any chance of accommodation.

No one knows what the future of Cuban-American relations would have been after November 22 or during a second Kennedy term, when he would not have had to answer to American voters again. The great likelihood that Castro was going to outlast U.S. plotting against him made it almost certain that Kennedy would have had to deal with him during that second term. And given the growing interest in moving beyond the stale conflict of the previous five years, who can doubt that a Cuban-American accommodation might have been an achievement of Kennedy's second four years? Whatever the uncertainties in November 1963 about future Castro-Kennedy dealings, it is clear that they signaled a mutual interest in finding a way through their antagonisms, which were doing neither of them any good.

UNCERTAINTIES OVER CUBA were matched by those on Vietnam. Back in February 1962, after the administration announced the creation of Military a.s.sistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), and an anonymous official told the press that the United States was determined "to win" the war, a reporter had pressed the president to answer a Republican charge that he had been less than candid with the public about U.S. involvement. Kennedy had reviewed the "long history" of U.S. commitment, urged a continuation of the "very strong bipartisan consensus," and described U.S. a.s.sistance as logistics and "training missions," not combat. In March and April, reporters had only three brief questions about Vietnam: How was the war going? Would he ask Congress for approval before sending combat troops? And what did he intend to do about American soldiers being killed? Kennedy's a.s.surances that the South Vietnamese were holding their own, that he did not plan to send combat troops, and that the handful of losses were regrettable accidents of war had satisfied the press, which asked nothing more about the war in the President's twice monthly news conferences during the rest of the year. were matched by those on Vietnam. Back in February 1962, after the administration announced the creation of Military a.s.sistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), and an anonymous official told the press that the United States was determined "to win" the war, a reporter had pressed the president to answer a Republican charge that he had been less than candid with the public about U.S. involvement. Kennedy had reviewed the "long history" of U.S. commitment, urged a continuation of the "very strong bipartisan consensus," and described U.S. a.s.sistance as logistics and "training missions," not combat. In March and April, reporters had only three brief questions about Vietnam: How was the war going? Would he ask Congress for approval before sending combat troops? And what did he intend to do about American soldiers being killed? Kennedy's a.s.surances that the South Vietnamese were holding their own, that he did not plan to send combat troops, and that the handful of losses were regrettable accidents of war had satisfied the press, which asked nothing more about the war in the President's twice monthly news conferences during the rest of the year.

The lull in discussion about Vietnam, however, ended in November and December 1962 when conflicting reports about progress in the strategic hamlet program reached Was.h.i.+ngton and then leaked to the press. Indications that Diem saw the program more as a way to control rural areas than to ensure their security, coupled with a paucity of hard information from the hamlets themselves, provoked questions in the executive branch about the program's effectiveness. In early November, Mike Forrestal, the State Department's official most responsible for Vietnam, told Bobby that "Averell and I feel that the war is not going as well out there as one might be led to believe.... The political problem is growing relatively worse.... The major fault lies with the GVN." To get a clearer picture of developments, Kennedy asked Mike Mansfield, who enjoyed a reputation as an Asian expert, to visit Vietnam.

On December 18, Kennedy received two conflicting reports on Vietnamese conditions and prospects. Theodore Heaver, the State Department's Vietnam specialist, who had spent March and April in the country and then another forty days visiting seventeen provinces in the fall of 1962, acknowledged that "fact is not always easy to come by in Viet-Nam." He had concluded nevertheless that a standoff in the war was now more likely than Saigon's defeat. "But the tide has not turned. The VC are still very strong, and our key programs are still in many respects experimental." If they worked, he foresaw a GVN standing on its own "with greatly reduced US military a.s.sistance."

Mike Mansfield had been less confident. He said, "[It distresses me] to hear the situation described in much the same terms as on my last visit, although it is seven years and billions of dollars later. In short, it would be well to face the fact that we are once again at the beginning of the beginning." He certainly had heard "extremely optimistic" evaluations of the strategic hamlet program, which Vietnamese and Americans in Saigon predicted would solve the insurgency problem in a year or two. But having heard optimistic talk like this from the French in the early 1950s, he doubted the wisdom of uncritically accepting such current hopes. The "real tests [of strategic hamlets] are yet to come." They involved "an immense job of social engineering, dependent on great outlays of aid on our part for many years and a most responsive, alert and enlightened leaders.h.i.+p in the government of Vietnam." If current remedies failed, Mansfield foresaw "a truly ma.s.sive commitment of American military personnel and other resources-in short, going to war fully ourselves against the guerrillas-and the establishment of some form of neocolonial rule in South Vietnam. That is an alternative which I most emphatically do not recommend," he had told Kennedy. "Our role is and must remain secondary.... It is their c