Thomas W. Wolfe Oral History Interview –JFK #1, 10/30/1970 Administrative Information
Creator: Thomas W. Wolfe Interviewer: William W. Moss Date of Interview: October 30, 1970 Place of Interview: Washington, D.C. Length: 25 pp.
Biographical Note Wolfe, Thomas W.; U.S. Air Force; Regional Director for Sino-Soviet Affairs, Department of Defense (1961-1962). Wolfe discusses becoming the International Security Affairs [ISA] Director for Sino-Soviet affairs, his responsibilities with that role, the missile gap issue between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as his opinion on various government agencies and their members, among other issues.
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Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.
Suggested Citation Thomas W. Wolfe, recorded interview by William W. Moss, October 30, 1970, (page number), John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
GENERAL SERVICES ADX!NISTRATION NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SERVICE JOHN f. KEl'fNEDY LIBRARY
Legal Agreement Pertaining to the Oral History Interview of Thomas W. Wolfe
In accordance with the provisions of Chapter 21 of Tit l e 44, United States Code, and subject to the terrns and condit i ons hereinafter set forth, I, Thomas W. Wolfe, of Washingt on, D.C., do hereby give, donate and convey to t he United States of America all my righ ts, title, and interest in the tape recording and transcr ipt of per sonal interviews conducted on October 30, 1970, at Washington, D. C. and prepared for ~~posit in the John F. Kennedy Library. Thi s assignment is subject co the following terms and conditions:
l. The transcript shall be available for use by researchers as soon as it has been deposited in the John F . Kennedy Libr ary.
2. The tape recording sha 11 be available to those researchers who have access to the transcript.
3. Unt i l May 5 , 1982 I retain all copyright in t he material given t o t he United States by the terms of th~s instrument. Thereafter t he copyright in both t he t ranscript and tape re cording shal l pass to the United States Government. Prior to May 5, 1982, researchers may publish brief "fair use" quotations from the transcript and t ape r ecordings without my express consent in each case.
4 . Copies of the interview transcript, but not the tape record ing, may be deposited in or loaned to i nstitutions other than the Kennedy Library.
Donor ) c) l..£1 ! Arc~ vist of the United States Date / Thomas W. Wolfe Table of Contents Page Topic 1, 25 Wolfe’s background and becoming the International Security Affairs [ISA] Director for Sino-Soviet affairs, as well as his role 3, 13, 19 Missile gap situation 4, 8 Concern and uncertainty regarding the missile balance between the Soviet Union and United States 5 Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell L. Gilpatric’s address, October 21, 1961, and Wolfe’s involvement in writing it 6, 8, 19 Dichotomy between Robert S. McNamara and the Defense Department’s positions regarding the missile gap 12 Explanation for various intelligence gathering and analysis agencies 15 Wolfe’s opinion of, and discussion about, various agencies’ members 20 Wolfe’s job with RAND Corporation and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962 21 Wolfe’s thoughts on the United States’ ability to truly understand Russia’s actions and motives 23 Wolfe’s focus and concerns with Sino-Soviet affairs Addendum I Name Index Addendum II Subject Index WITHDRAWAL SHEET (PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES) Document Correspondents or Title Date Restriction Type Pages Containing Closed Portions OH Page 11 September A Reviewed and Determined to Remain Closed 2018 Updated: 12/17/2018 File Location: John F. Kennedy Oral History Project Thomas W. Wolfe, Interview #1, October 30, 1970 Restriction Codes (A) Closed by applicable Executive Order governing access to national security information. (B) Closed by statute or by the agency which originated the document. (C) Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in the donor's deed of gift. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION Oral .History Interview with COLONEL THOMAS W. WOLFE October 30, 1970 Washington, D.C. By William W. Moss For the John F. Kennedy Library MOSS: Let me ask you at the beginning, Colonel Wolfe, how you became ISA [International Security Affairs] director for Sino- Soviet affairs, ~tarting right · at the beginning. WOLFE: Well, I had had some experie~ce i n the f ield of ) Soviet affairs during my professional career. At that time (1960) I was on the joint staff. The head of ISA at that partic·ular time was John Irwin, now the second man in the State Department. Jack Irwin knew me per s'onally, slightly; knew me by reputation, perhaps, more . The ISA had felt the need for someone with some experience, bdth political and military, which is the area of their parti cular interest, to look after the Sino~Soviet aspect of affairs. Up to that time ISA, although it was the Defense Department 's International Security .Affairs agency, really had no particular expertise on either the Soviet or the Chinese problem. Most of the problems with which .ISA came to grips had to do with relations with our allies r ather more than with potential adversaries. MOSS : A spin-off of. the old mutual security. WOLFE : Yes. A large part of ISA 1 s responsibility was over seeing and administering the milit ary aid program. It also had a direct interest in the relations with our NATO -Qforth Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies, and was )_ SA NITIZED E.O. 13526, SEC. ;3.9, NL \Z ~ I S - ?- >> By ·-- . :...2- the port~on of tpe Defense Department which was sensitive to the problems of NATO as they bore both on our own military ) planning and on our allies. · By its nature ISA was also close to the State. Department in many· respects. But there ·had been no. place in ISA to which the: people there could turn for immediate advice on how Sino-Soviet affairs impacted on ISA~s functions. For that reason they wanted an ·office of this kind, and they were looking for somebody to fill it. I just happened to be there and was asked if I'd be int erested, and I said I would. MOSS: That's the way, then, that you would explain your role, as sort of. being the Sino- Soviet expert on tap in ISA, the political, military man in ISA on tap for advice, for studies, staff papers, this kind of thing, or was your role more comprehensive than that? · WOLFE: · Well, it -was primarily that of· rendering advice. It was a small office. I wrote a good many papers. But they were not research papers in depth, of the kind that a large staff would assemble. In a sense, I was also the link between ISA and the various intelligence functions of the government. I knew my way around that part of the bureaucracy. Many times in a large bureaucracy the problems are those of internal communication and, sort of, feedback from one part of the bureaucracy to another. I had had some role, I suppose, in being, if I may say so, a sophisticated communication channel ) for a lot of internal communications. MOSS: Right. I wondered_if that was more the function, because on paper it looks like a lot of functional redundancy in the organization. You have a J CS [Joint Chiefs of Staff) staff that works on international security matters; you h~ve CIA [Central Intelligence Agency); DIA fbefense Intelligence Agency]; you have State Department; you have AID [Agency for International Development)--all of them, in a way, interrelated. I wonder just what the necessity is. What seemed ·to b_e the necessity for the ISA operation? WOLFE: Well, I think it was the felt need of both Jack Irwin and his successor, Paul Nitze, to have close at hand ·· someone in whom they had a certain amount of confidence, whose . judgment could be brought to bear on what were the often either ambiguous, or sometimes even conflicting, products of the intelligence commun ity. - .. -3- If I may recall, this was a period of time we were just emerging from the so-called missil e gap situation. \ :· There had. been· a somewhat confused situation within the intelligence communi ty for some time as to.preci sely where the missile situation really stood. _At the time I came into ISA this matter was just beginning to clarify itself, so tp speak, by the appli cation of a very vigorous intelligence program, to finding out what the .real missile situation was. · The U-2 episode, I think, graphically ill ustrated part of this effort. MOSS: As an aside on the missile gap, it's my understanding that the initial estimates were based on what parti cularly the Air Force had thought the Russians logically ought to be doing wi thout hard evidence. Then when the over head reconnaissance began to come in, we began to get a true picture of just what the Russian missile situation was. Is this a fair . . . ·woLFE: I think that somewhat oversimplified it. First of all, it wasn't only the Air Force. The intelligence effort, and the agencies whose collection activities and whose analytical and estimating resources were devoted to this pro blem were much wider than the Air Force. The Air Force was involved in it more as a collector, ·and even this role was, of course, shared with the CIA. The way that the reconnaissance program had developed it was a mutual effort. · As far as the ) . estimating and anal ytical _side of the house was concerned, t~e place where the -real hard, nitty- gritty, analytical work was done was not an Air Forc·e agency-; it was staffed by people from various agencies, but actually was a CIA function. MOSS: It was CIA, rather than over in the NSA [National Security Agency), operation? WOLFE: This was a part of the problem and it continues to be in the government .. . There are several. major agencies which produce component.parts of the intelligence picture. These, at some sta ge, have to be made into community oriented and national intelligence estimates of some kind. ·But there are many, many stages in the evolution of an e$tim~te. In the case of the Soviet missiles, the situation basically was that the research and development and testing program was the main source of information available. In the nature of things this is the activity that occurs first. J'he J deplojment of these missile had begun -on a very small scale ) - - . --.. -4- sometime perhaps around 1960. This was the period when [Nikit a S .] Khrushchev was in a sense attempting to inflate· the image of Soviet mi ssile progress. He had some basis for doing this, ins ofar a s the first part of the Soviet missile effort went int o shorter range missiles . They actually were turning out missi les, as KhrushO.hev had once put it, "We've now got the production line going and we're turning them out like sausages." He didn't distinguish between the kinds of missiles he was talking about, whether they were MRBMs ( Medium Range Ballistic Missiles) or ICBMs (Intercontinent al Ball istic Missiles]. · It was true that the Russians were producing, and began to deploy around 1955 and 1956, the first of the MR.BM missile units-in the western part of the U. S .S.R~ targeted on Western Europe. Most of t his is known retrospectively. It ·wasn't nearly so clear at the time. But the great factor of uncertainty was the rate at which the Soviets would deploy the. first of their ICBMs . That was t he so-called SS- 6 ~ · The missile gap itself had always been not a reflect ion of what r esponsible people thought was the actual depl oyed s trength at the moment, but it was the question of how rapidly the Soviets woul d deploy a force now that they developed a first generation missile. MOSS : So it was an extrapol ation process. ) WOLFE: It was an extrapolation through the next two or three years of buildup, during which period the United States was not in a position t o match the expected Soviet buildup. Its own programs got a great stimulus from the missil e gap, but at that particular point the United States was not yet in a position to match the deployment rates of which the Soviets appeared to be capabl e. That was the fundamental uncertainty. Now what was c l arified i n the course of th~ intelligence c ollect ion and analytical pro'grams dur ing. this period, was that the Soviets had not, in fact, begun to deploy the SS- 6 as extensi vel y as it had been esti mated or feared they would. MOSS : How much, then, does fear enter into an estimate like this? How much of a rol e are the psychological over- tones? WOLFE : I t hink t he psychological overtones are very important. I don't know whether fear i s necessari ly the most apt choice of a word. One can say prudent concern or ...r . ).. --- -- . - 5- caution or conservative or worst case approaches to this problem, but all of them certainly have a psychological ingredient. Of course, the game that Khrushchev was playing at this time ·was pre-eminently a · psychological game, and· in a sense, historically, I think one can say that he got paid back in his ovm coin. In the period roughly from the early part · of 1960 to the fall of 1961, was when the uncertainties about where the Soviets really stood in their initial missile buildup; when these were largely resolved. The psychological factor certainly entered on our side. Offi cials who traveled to Europe in the early months of 1961, when the new administ ra tion was getting its moorings, one of the impressions they c ame back with from Europe was that the people in Europe, like [Konrad) Adenauer and others, were deeply concerned about what was this apparent gap opening b etween American power, on which their security rested; and Soviet ·power. MOSS: Adenauer was particularly . . . WOLFE: Adenauer was concerned about this. But he was not the only European. A· good many others were. This was · reflected, too, in public opinion polls taken at the time in Europe. I've cited the results of some of these polls in my most recent book on "Soviet Power and Europe." What they ) added up to essentiall y was a widespread belief on the street among people who were polled in Europe that the military balance had passed in favor of the Soviet Union, and that it would probably be a long time, if ever, before the United States would be able to rectify this situation. But this was the basis for concern. in Europe which could, of course, have very r eal effects on the confidence of Europeans in American commitment, or also on (Charles A.) De Gaulle's then emerging estimate that this commitment wasn't too good either. This, in essence, was the basis of the Gaullist view. Partly as a consequence of this concern, the people in ISA took the initiative in the late summer and early fall of 1961 saying, "Now that we know what the s i tuation is with respect to. the Soviet missile situation, something has to be d one· to stem this, one could call it, ebbing confidence in the A~erican commitment." There was this general feeling that some kind of not only private but public reassurance had to be made that led to (Roswell L.) Gilpatric's rather significant October 21, 1961, address which, to my knowledge, for the first time in public by a responsible, high-ranking, defense official, stated that the ) -6- missile balance was not running strongly in Soviet favor, and ) that the United States had reason to believe that the Soviet · Union-did not havB this position. MOSS: · ·Now, that's October of 1961. What do you know of the supposed( (Robert S.] McNamara press conference in February of 1961 in which he supposedly is reported to have ·said that there was no missile gap? WOLFE: Well, from the early months of 1961 through the late summer and fall, this was a period when within. the government the estimating process was reflecting the collectors' data. It takes a certain amount of time--it certainly did then, and I suppose it .still does--to go through · the whole process from the first analyst's piece of paper which says, 11 Now, I have looked at all this evidence and I've come to the conclusion that there are only ten Soviet missiles deployed instead of maybe twenty- five or thirty, and that we don't see any new deployments in various areas where we bad thought there might be some. 11 Between the time that the shirt-sleeve workers, analysts, who do this begin to come up with these conclusions · and the time a paper is processed through all of the government and becomes a national intelligence estimate is a matter of, at the very least, weeks and sometimes months, partly because the national estimate's producing cycle is geared to an annual schedule. It happens that the particular national intelligence estimate that deals with Soviet strategic forces has been ) scheduled usually in the falL.of the year, so that the contri: butions to it are already being developed in the early months of the year, as early as February. Now, McNamara was ref.lecting some of the early insights, I presume, of analysts into this changing picture before the whole government process w:hich produces national intelligence estimates had gone through it all and satisfied itself that this was-:," in fact, the best judgment the United States government as a whole could ·come to, . and not- some individual analysts and their views. I think. in a sense, pf•obably, Mr. McNamara was antici pating what later became validated results. I must say I don't · recall this particular McNamara press conference at the moment. The part that I was closest to, and which remains etched in my recollection most, was the later Gilpatric thing; I remember that particularl y because I was one of the two authors of the particular speech. ) - -· -7- MOSS: Tell me about writing that speech. What was the process by which it was done and cleared, and that kind of thing? WOLFE: Well, Tim [Timothy W.] Stanley, who was at. that · time still in ISA, and I jointly worked up this. You know, the thing went through several drafts. It covered other things besides thi s particular problem. This particular part of it was, in a sense, my field and my dish, so that I wrote the portions of it that dealt with that particular problem. There was no special way in which it was done. I was closely in touch with vari ous parts of .the intelligence community. MOSS : The thing that goes ori normally, staff through state and NSC LNational Security Council) staff as well? WOLFE: Yes . I must say that I don't recall with this parti- cular paper just how it was staffed. Normally the political, military affairs office in the State Depart ment was t he one with which ISA usually made contact. I 'm frank to say I don't recall at that particular period who was occupying that office in the State Department. In fact, I'm not even sure when that office came into being. ) MOSS : That kind o_f thing is simple enough to substantiate from the records. WOLFE: Yes . But that was the place in the State Department t hrough whic.h in a routine fashion a paper would be coordinated. If I r ecall, this particular speech was probably discussed, and maybe even gone over, at the level of the deputy secretary of defense, his counterpart in the State Department , the so- called. . . . Now here's wher e my r ecollect ions fail me. This group has a well- known label. It was t he coordinating group for many of the joint actions in t he State Department, Defense Department. The director of CIA was a member of this group. What in the world was it cal led? It was very active during the Kennedy administration. Its members wer e also members of the Wednesday aft ernoon- luncheon group· that Walt Rostow and others parti cipated in. I've forgotten the formal name by which the group was known. But at any rate . . . MOSS : I ·should be able to come with that . WOLFE: I sense . ' . ) -8- <... - MOSS: There are so many others that are k:i,._cking around in ) my mind now, and I lalow that none of them .... The one you are talking about. • . . I'm thinking of things _like the Mongoose committee and 5412, and thi ngs of that sort. None of which were what you're talking about. WOLFE:- But, at any rate, that's what I recall of the genesis of that particular paper. I was more int~re s~ ted in the preparation of it than I was in its coordi nation through the r est of the government. Once my part of this job was done som~body else was really .carrying it. MOSS: Who decided that it should be given? WOLFE: Oh, I think thi_s grew out of a cumulative series of discussions of the problem and so on. Certainly, Paul Nitze was well aware of the problem I spoke of earlier, this sort of flight of confidence _of the Europeans in the - sturdiness of our deterrent in face of what was soon to be this very rapid shift in the balance. This was a matter we had dis cuss'ed among ourselves on various occasions all through that spring and summer. Why this particular occasion was chosen for that parti cular speech, this is something I don't recall. But it could probably have been any number of other occasions. There was no ) particular reason why this particular date and audience and so, on had been chosen. I think that was minor and incidental. But from that time on the whole question then became much more a matter of public discussion. MOSS: I'd like to get back to the subject of the psychological situation in somewhat different terms. We're getting a series of things coming out, not only now but have been over the past several years, evaluating the McNamara Defense Department .. - . . . • I ' m thinking most recently of [Herbert F.) Herb York's new_P,ook on Race to Oblivion _and a ~ook by [James M.J Jim Doherty on .McNamara decisions [pecisions of Robert h McNamarit, which illustrate ~hat I'm tal king about. But there was a difference between two approaches going on in the Defense Department. One was a McNamara rational objective, management technological approach to all problems across the board. . The other· one a highly charged emotional, self serving, military service oriented, congressional military committee oriented, Navy league oriented, if you will, attitude towards our strategic position ·vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Now, _) :---.. , ---· -9- do you have any comment on this thing? I think it's something that's going to puzzle historians for a while because the argu ments seem to be so .highly charged on both sides. Did this kind of thing have any impact on ISA? That 's a long question. . . WOLFE: Well, I think the dichotomy you describe did exist and continues to exist. I think perhaps it's drawn a little bit more vividly than in actual fact it was. Because there are many people who cr ossed lines and who were both per suaded that it was time to have somebody like McNamara bring his particular kinds of talents to bear on this whole process, to construct a defense posture and to manage th~ enormous bureaucracy involved and who, at the same t 'ime, felt that there were certain shortcomings in this approach, that it did tend to neglect:. One of the charges made against McNamara was that it neglected the human element, that it sort of forgot the man and the role of experience and tradition and judgment, that many of the traditional mil itary values were felt to be slighted in this approach. I suppose there was and always will be a certain emotional content in the defense of traditional experience and the ·like, whether it's relevant to the situation or not . There wasn't a sharp line through two camps. Many people had feet in both camps, and I 'd say, describing my own position at the time, that that's probably where I was because I certainly sympathized with a lot of things that McNamara was ) trying to do. On the other hand, I don't believe I ever had any blind faith in the efficacy of this highly rational calculus i'n handling the problems, simply because as a ·political scientist- I ' m a political scientist as well"- as a professional military man --my analysis, both historically and of the cont emporary scene, of the way policies are formulated ·in government both in this country and other pl aces, is that they are not a lways formulated within the framework of purely rational calculus, where the, optimum cho~ ce is made after all the pro and con elements have been considered.. There are:· many. extraneous influences that co;ne to bear. You know, you can carry it back to your own personal life usually. You make all sorts of decisions every day that aren't r eally the most logical and rational ones about how you'll conduct your day's affairs. ,· MOSS: Well, is it realistic then, in the jargon, I suppose, to optimize the rationality in the process? WOLFE: Well, I think the task of a manager and of a strategist is really to try to optimize the resources at his dis posal to reach some particular goal. In a sense, any ) -- - 10- kind of organizational planning-has to be done -according_t_.o some strategy for the use of ' the resources in relation to goals . In---this -Sense, -one is_ a l ways .trying to. optimize, I suppose,- either --consciously or unconsciousl y. I think the problem comes when one reposes too much faith or too much - confidence i n the outcome of some of the optimizing approaches to human endeavor. I must say, I don't swing around to the other . side of this spectrum which has rejected and so distrusts the rational approach to things that it ' s rejected it entirely, and s9ys the only way you can solve our problems is on the basis 0£ pure emotion, soul . This is the reaction to the extreme in the other direction. MOSS: You always live is a sort world between where both things are operating, I suppose~ WOLFE: Yes . MOSS: Let me ask you this . Was there any direct impact of this dichotomy, or one side of it or another, on your operation in ISA? WOLFE : As far as I was personally concerned, and as -far as the operations of the office which I headed, I think I can say frankly that I was out of the major crossfire on these problems, primarily because I was not a manager of resources . Had I been then I ' d have. been involved in decisions about how the resources were to be used and what the procedures were to _decide how they were to be us.ed . It was in these areas that the arguments arose between the services and the uniform military establishment and Secretary McNamara's .new group of civilian analysts . The area in which I operated was , I think, not really centrally exposed to these stresses and strains . MOSS: There ' s a lot of talk about a building of scenarios and so on. I was wondering if the systems analysis approach, for instance, had anything to do with that . at all, in reconstructing the possibilities and probabilities of Soviet activity, for instance. Was this kind of tool used in the assessing of the Soviet situati on? WOLFE : I think the .use of some kind of model and some kind of scenario certainly antedates the McNamara adminis tration. Whatever it may be called, the methodology \ / ---. -11- that analysts have traditionally emp l oyed does make use of models even if they're not explicitly stat-ed. There are ) assumptions which in essence outline a model of how you think the Soviet· system operates-- and into which you fit the policy making and decision making and programming aspects of Soviet activity. MOSS: I 1 m getting the impression, then, that there was . felt no need for an extra rationalization of the intellig~nce estimating process. . . WOLFE:_ No, I don't think that it would be fair to say that. I think one of the areas ·inwhich McNamara, or some of the people working for him, knew that there had to- be.'some fresh air let in and new thinking certainly was in _ the intelligence area. The practical expression otf these efforts, during the peri-od that we' re talking about ·here and that I 1 m familiar with, was.an _attempt which was_. given some institutional form, to involve both people in the Pentagon and especially in CIA in more joing activity aimed at making future judgments and assessments. This took the form of a group called, I think it was, a net assessment or the net evaluation group. Lieutenant=General [Leon1 Johnson was the responsible head of this, and a chap named' was a very active and responsible person_ on the CIA side, and various people from the Pentagon were involved in this activity. It was anactivity that was encouraged by both Mr. McNamara and ) by people then in CIA to try to introduce into the future estimating process a set of net assessment judgments. Now, where this departed from the traditional intelli- gence approach to things was that traditionally the intelligence function, whether it was in the J-2, in the Joint Staff, or one of the services, or even in CIA, did its estimattng of Qoth the present and the · projected course_ of Soviet activi ty, in - · whatever the particular field was, on the basis of i t -s know ledge of and judgment of :the way trends were going in the Soviet Union. The element that was not ·particularl y intro duced into this process was the interaction with what the United States might be doing, and how this would change the Soviet · posture, attitude, policy, decisions, and so on, or how it might change it in th'e f'uture. This is an ·old and cla.ssical problem in intelligence. Again, it is one that certainl y antedates the McNamara per_iod, and this wasn 1 t a 0nique discovery_ of that period. But it happened that during that time there was a much more conscious effort made to try to get at the interaction process, and part of the contribution to this was ) ' ..., ...· . ~ . : . ·. :- ·. _ • -12- made by the net assessment which took the interaction · between both sides into account in trying to project the ) future. - For methodological reasons this is . still an unresolved problem. The.re are so many variableq that trying to work out a suitable model, one that you could for example, put into computer langua·ge and handle that way, is dd.fficult. There have been a great many attempts made in this direction. So far as I'm aware, none of them have yet been successful in getti ng a readout from the computer of what the future is going to look like . There are just so many unforseen con tingencies and variables involved that one doesn' t as -yet have clairvoyant powers at one's disposal. Nonetheless, it's probably an improvement over the older method of simply takipg the other side int9 account in the estimates without trying to take account of the interaction factor. From where I sit~ or· from what I recollect, it was in this area that the influence of the McNamara regime in the Defense Department made itself felt on the intelligence community. This is a different subject and one that would lead one far from the subject of our discussion here, but the intelligence community, · itself, has not been insensitive to the need for trying to develop better methodologies than the ·ones it has tradi tionally use.d. There have been all sorts of experimental efforts ~~de to evolve .new ways of studying ) and handling these problems. ~OS S: You talked also about the fact that t here are s everal different intelligence gathering agencies and analy sis agencies. You've got NSA. CIA . DIA: State Denart ment has its I and R [Intel1igence an~_Re5ear9h]. within ~he different. services you still have a residue. of.. intelligence.-·.- ---- operations and estimating. The input to the NIEs [National Intelligence Estimate], you still have a residual representa t ive from each. service.,- in addition to the DIA rep. WOLFE: He ' s there as an observer now· under the present arrangement. MOSS: Is he now or WOLFE: The · service representatives do hot have a ·\r"ote on ·the USIB (United States Intelligence Board] . ) -13- MOSS: That's right. But at-the lower level--I speak. from some experience here because I sat on a couple of NIE preparation. things for NSA; I was with them for about four years--in the drafting of the document that even tually went to USIB we had some very decided input from the individual military services, when we were sitting around the table hashing out the thing. Now, the point I'm getting at is that yoµ have a multitude of sources, and you alluded to the problem earlier of having to weigh these, and so on. You had in the beginnings of the Kennedy administration the development qf DIA and· the attempt to bring some lines of demarcation between the efforts of the different agencies. You had the shift of the national intelligence survey from I and R to CIA and _ th~ngs of this sort. What prompted these_ in your recollection, and how effective was lt In bettering . the intelligence pos-itlire? · WOLFE: Well, I think one of· the factors that prompted this, probably something that. I've alluded to here earlier, was that the new people in charge happened to come in at a time when, in an area very vital to the country's security and its policy, its stance against the Soviet Union and so on, there were differing views as to the direction the Soviet Union was going·; to move in the missile field. The arguments made by each particular agency, with whatever its self-serving interests were, rested on basically the same body of evidence. What you had in effect was multiple inter~ pretations of the same body of evidence. The guy who·has to fashion policy and make decisions is himself in no position to unravel the history of each of these conflicting positions and, you know, go back and overturn, look under all the stones and everything. There simply was a great sense of impatience and sometimes frustration for the policy makers. Here we're confronted with, "SAG [Strategic Air Command) says. - -. · · ~ . 11 We haven't mentioned SAC, but they had a strong intelligence activity of their own, and they were often the dissentient voice in many of these early estimates. The policy makers felt that there had to be some way of getting a best judgment for the government to act on and to try to do this in a way that would take account in the formulation process of th~ differing views. But at some point or other someone had to sign off. It was during this period that the strengthening of the statu tory role of the director of CIA as the chief intelligence officer of the government occurred. This took place in many ) - 14:_ different ways. But during this period his role did become more central, and that of the separate services while it didn't by any means ... disappear, and :hasn't yet today, it . certai nly began ·to decline. I think the · main reason for it is that policy makers can't be left with some committee answer to a questi on .they put , which offers them four or five different alternative views and leai..es it up to them to decide which of the views has the most merit. Now, there is some point, and this boundary line has never really been defined, when th~ policy maker does have to make the final judgment. There are some situati ons of a nature ·where the answers are not ever going to be clear-cut. With the best of :~· intentions and the best will, the intelligence community wil l have to present what is a picture of several a l ternatives . There ' s some point at which it becomes the prerogative and the responsibility of the policymaker to make the judgment as to which of these views he's going to base policy on. He ' s the one who is going to have to answer for the policy. If it happens to be a bad choice and turns out to neglect the interests of the United States in some egreg- ious way, he's the guy, the policy maker, the decision maker who will be burnt, and not the intelligence agency which was unable to come up with a clear- cut conclusi on in some other direction. ) MOSS: All right. But he's not looking just at recommenda- tions on paper. He's also being beset by a very strong advocacy system in which the different pro ponents are competing among themselves for his attention and for the policy as well. What happens here? _WOLFE :· Well , ·· it '-s true that· the advocacy ·of;· and the · skill ~· - wi th whi ch a case i s advocated has much to do with. the kind of i nput that the decision maker acts on. I don't know -what the answer to this question is. I think it ' s in the nature of oureaucraci es, even in very-highl y centralized and authoritarian systems, that the people who sit at the top simply don't have enough span of attention to master the details of all the probl ems that they have to address. These problems are going to be defined and advocated by competing elements in the bureaucracy. The way the advocacy shapes the probl em as it's presented to the decision maker in any system is going to affect the range of options and the way that the policy mak er looks at the problem~ Now, I suppose what he. wants to do is to try to assure himself that this ) ----· -15- advocacy system is balanced enough so that, in a sense, the plural competition of views will result in some amalgam of judgments that best approximates what has to be done. It's at this point that you have to repose a certain amount of faith in the pluralistic advocacy process. In a sense, this is the essence of our· system of representative democracy. I mean, we assume that there are advocates for interest groups who compete in the market place of ideas and policies, and so on, and that somehow or other, the collective result of having heard the various advocates adds up to a reasonable and somewhat.purposeful policy choice. Now, whether in fact .this is the case, many times it is, I think, arguable. It may well be that one man whose opinion -runs against that of. a whole host of special advocates maynave ·been, in the light· of history, closer to · the mark. But you never know that at the time . The way our system operates, with what amounts to bureaucracies which have power that has to be taken in account in the system, sometimes it's · statutory, sometimes it's not; but the views have to be heard. There has to be this compet ition of proposed policies and approaches. I suppose that.'s probably pr eferable to having a chief decision maker, or an ) executive who operates by intuition, by the seat-of his pants, or who s creens out all the competing voices at some very early stage in the process, so that what he event ually gets is a set of views that have shaped the problem and distorted the whol e d·irection toward ,one set of biases and left a lot of other iIIJ>ortant considerations out. MOSS: Okay, the Bay of Pigs is probably the example that comes to mind in all this talk. I wonder if .•.. Conventionally, .-the accounts have it, that President Kennedy suddenly -decided that he had to have some ·kind of change in his approach to the advisory system on things of this sort. I get the impression tpat prior to the Bay of Pigs his approach, and perhaps that of McNamara as well, was a more simplistic, deterministic one in which they r€ally · didn' t appreciate the political, interbureaucratic things that were going on. Is this 'fair? Were they naive about the way the executive operates until the Bay of Pigs? / WOLFE: I suppose there was a.certain element of naivete a- bout it. But I think, again, that this is the experience of almost all new administrations; they \ .. -16- come into office usually with a certain amount of enthu siasm and the feeling that they're going to move things in a way that previous administrations haven't. I think \ ) there's probably a tendency to overestimate the extent to which those- sitting at the apex of the bureaucracy can enunciate_ what they want to have done, and also to over estimate -the extent to which the bureaucracy is going to respond. - I think it's the experie~ce, usually, of every new administration that the enduring and ongoing resis tance of the bureaucracy to being a really supple instru ment- in the hands of the executive, that this becomes part of the experi ence of every new ad.ministration. MOSS: Let me ask you, since you 're talking about new· administrations, what were your impre~sions of the new civilian ISA leadership as they were coming in? Were th~~e significant differences among them? How were they expecting you to support them and do your job? Let's take Nitze and [William P.1 Bundy particularly, as the top men. How did they strike you as they were coming in? WOLFE: In almost all cases, the new people coming in were men whom ! had known professionally one way or another prior to that time . I had and still do have a high regard for the compet ence and the_ interest in getting things done of people like Paul Nitze and Bill Bundy. [ Henry S.] Harry Rowen was one of the important, responsible executives in ISA under Paul Nitze; and John McNaughton, he ) was really the only one of the group whom I hadn't known before they came aboard. MOSS: Hadyn Williams? WOLFE: Hadyn was a civil servant who had been there some time before the new group came, and he'd left -about - May. I guess he went out to the University of Washington. I wouldn't catalogue Hadyn with the new group. He was a holdover, a competent man in his own right . The new men brought with them a c ertain animation and verve and a sense that we're really going to have some infl uence on the course of events.· 1 I think so far as concerns the internal, one wants to call it' the esprit of the organization, these . riew men had a real s-timulating and vigorating i nfluence . MOSS : Does this continue throughout the period or did it wane? WOLFE: I think it continued.' It may have altered s omewhat , but it c ertainly was plain to the people who worked in ISA throughout the t i me I was there t hat ISA di d I / -- -... -17- really count in the formulation of policy, not only in the Defense Department but in wider government councils. It was clear that ~aul Nitze was not just a figurehead sitting at a desk,. but that he was an active_ participant in, and had access to and had the ear of, and the respect of, people who .were making decisions in government right up to the pres ident. This, in turn, obviously had some effect on the way people in ISA at lower rungs of the responsibility ladder felt about him and ·the way they worked. MOSS: There is even some suspicion that the focus of foreign policy decision making shifted somewhat in the di rection of the Pentagon from the State Depart ment during this period. Is that fair or not? Is it fair to Rusk? WOLFE: Well,- this is a very difficult question to answer. I think it's certainly true that there was more vigorous advocacy of points of view. Some problems were, in a sense, recognized and identified and spelled out sometimes perhaps in the Pentagon, when one might have· said that they· were the kind of problems that should have been first identified and spelled out and brought to the attention of the collective agencies of the government concerned by the State Department. I think that it would probably be fair to say that this happened on a nwnber of occasions. But it's not my ) impression that the Pentagon was picking up the ball and running with it. .There was the very studied, conscious , deliberate effort t o briqg the State Department as closely into working on the kinds of problems that were identified as could be. As a matter of fact, one of the minor institutional expressions of this was the process of having some State exchange officers in the Defense D~partment and in ISA .to .facilitate closer working contact. · MOSS: You ' ve got an awkward situation there-_ At least, it looks awkward for Rusk, more or less bracketed by the Kennedy brothers on one hand and the Bundy brothers on the other. Was this fraternal relationship really s~gnifi ~ cant? WOLFE: I ' m really not the best witness to testify to.this. I have the impression that the American counterpart of the old school tie system here , or the old boy network or whatever it is that one notices in the British system of government, this was probably a little more pronounced, a little bit more evident. · At this time, these were all men who ) ) -18 - had not orily the kind of family links that you speak of, but in many respects they were men who had been prof essional~y . and-intellectually associated before they happened to find themselves together in roles in the government. MOSS : Neither Rusk nor McNamara really- fit this pattern, do they? WOLFE: No, on the other hand, of course, neither of them were exactly strangers to the government. They certainly were not card carrying members, 'i f one can say that there was a certain fraternity of intellectuals involved here . But neither, I think, can one say that they were complete~y strangers either. Both McNamara and Rusk ar e intellectuals in their own right and not solely men of business or _statecraft or action or what have you. MOSS: It's not quite, though, the New York ( John j _J McCloy, ( Averell W.] Harriman, (Dean S.J Acheson, [ Robert A.J Lovett crowd, is it? WOLFE : No. There is a different group. at the ce·nter of -things. But, of course, McCloy,,.. Harriman, and the influence of other men from the New York group is to be-discerned and felt during this period of time. They perhaps weren' t at the center of things . ) BEGIN SIDE II TAPE I , WOLFE : I ' d like to be a little less discursive ; I ' d like to be more crisp ·and to the point. · MOSS : You were saying that the New York group had its impact.· - Was there any special evidence that you had of disagreement between the .new young crow(l and the older New York group? Sometimes a great deal is made of Acheson and his crowd being a product of the [Harry S j Truman cold war period. I think, perhaps, people thin_'k Rusk suff.ered from this somewhat and that the newer group had a different slant on things . Did you see any of this? WOLFE : Yes. I think it's probably fair to say that the new group had a sense of its own identity and felt that it was going to be able to make an impact on some of the problems here in a way that others hadn't been able to do. I think this was a kind of collective self- confidence that later on got shaken pretty severel y. I suppose one can' t really say by the end of the Kennedy administration because that was so --··- ·. ) -. -19- abruptly terminated, but .at least by the time the holdovers ) of this group had begun to leave during the [ Lyndon B.] ·Johnson administration, I think what I have described .as. a collective sense of self-confidence, the way of looking at, analyzing, and acting on problems that they brought to - government, that this was going to yield mor e impressive results than predecessors had been able to derive, I think this confidence had been somewhat shaken by the nature of the obdurate problems, particularly by Vie tn~m . MOSS : Particularly by Vietnam. Would you include the Soviet situation in this., the question of $oviet. WOLFE: No. Although one can't speak of this group as having a single collective view, and I don't want to overstress its close-knit nature because obviously there were people .who came and went during this period of time. Nevertheless, I think that, by and large , this group probably felt, so far as- the relationship with the Soviet Union was concerned, the United States had made progress in starting a dialogue with the Soviet Union in .areas which are precursory to the era of negotiation. A dialogue on strategic problems was advanced with the Soviet Union during this time. I think McNamara had a tendency to.be slightly tutorial toward the Soviet Union, to lecture them on what they ought to do with their strategic forces in order to ·contribute to stability and to' make the general situation better for all concerned. The fact is that, of course, the Russians did do many of the things that McNamara suggested they ought to do, such as dispersing and hardening their.missile_forces . so that. they would not be so sensitive to first strike impulses. Now, .whether the Soviets did these things because.they listened to Mr. McNamara or because they came to these conclusions on their own , its difficult to say. But to answer the question here, I think this group probably felt that the relationship with the Soviet ·Union had been managed i~ a way that . represented pluses for the United. States. I think, probably, the Cuban s i tuati on had a great .· deal to do with this. This was the highpoint, the kind of crowning achievement in persuading the Soviet Union that the United States was not to be. gulled and not to be trifled with. Yet, it was done in a way that left a door_ open for Soviet retreat. They weren.' t put in a corner and boxed in. I think, to greatly abbreviate the discussion here, that this group probably felt that the Soviets better understood both· U. S. ) -20- resolve and U. S. willingness to entertain a reasonable kind ) of dialogue with the Soviet Union. MOSS: You said you were called back for the missile crisis. For .what purpose? What was your function in that? - WOLFE: I was then working for RAND [RAND corporation1. I retired on the first of October just in t he midst of the genesis of these events. I was aware, at the time I retired, that something was brewing here. When I went to work for RAND I retained the clearances I had had so that I was still privy to what was going on and became, at the time I went to work for RAND, a c onsultant . to .ISA. I had a new office, but the transition of roles hadn't r eally ·been complete. I was called back by Paul Nitze and asked if I would work wi th a group which he had formed in his office to respond and make recommendations to the executive group in the White House that was carrying the ball during t his period of time. · The group in ISA was sort of a focal point f or the people on the Joint Staff who were concerned with this problem, and anybody else in the Pentagon. Also, during the period of the intense crisis right up t o and through the president's address this group was just on call, night and day, grinding out, inputs . Paul Nitze himself was the link back and forth, although s i tting wit h us at some times were ·people from other parts of the ) government . Llewellyn Thompson, £or exampl e , sat with us, on several occasions, as we worked on some problems. MOSS: What sort of inputs were you making? Assessments of t he intelligence on Soviet forces coming in, or what? WOLFE : · No . That was a portion of it. These assessments were being made by the· intelligenee-agencies- of-the govern ment. In this group in ISA we had representatives from CIA .and DIA. But the main focus of xhis group ' s activiti es was recommendations as to the kind of policy on which the United States should act. Various alternati ves were being expl or"ed £or the whole array· of contingencies. MOSS : The published record·s of what went on indicate that -- - there wer e two groups at the White House l evel t hat were split up·. One was proposing a stronger, i nvasion type view, and the other one was going after what eventually developed into the quarantine. How many other groups around town were doing this kind of t hing, do you know? In addition to your own·. \ ,, ) ---.... --. -- -- -21- WOLFE: I don't think very many others were, primarily ) because this effort was highly compartmented arid restricted. There were relatively few people in the crucial stages of this who were put in positions where they were privy -to what was going on, and who were able to read--the messages that were going back and forth between (Nikita S.l Khrushchev and the White House were on an extremely limited distribution. They were not going through the usual channels. So that ma.ny of the people who were called in to make contributions to the particular group I · was associated with, had to work with a limited fund of in formation. These people would come in and be asked questions and provide their information without themselves really knowing exactly what was going on. I MOSS: Were you in direct support of McNamara and Gilpatric? j Or was it in support of the whole operation over a t the E:x:Comm [E:x:e·cutive Committee of the National Security Council)? WOLFE: Well, I think it was in support of the ExComm opera- tion. The channel for the things that we set our hand to was through Nitze and McNamara, t o the ExComm . We weren't, ourselves, running over and sitting in the hall out side _the ExComm . We were, in a sense, a staff extension of McNamara and Nitze and not principals ours.elves , ) those of us who wer e working on t h ese probl ems . MOSS : You t alked about McNamara l ecturing the Russians. As an expert on Soviet affairs, how well do you think that the Kennedy team ~understood the Soviet situation and what to do about it? · WOLFE--: ,~ .... Well, I think' it:' s extremely difficult for· Americans· - in general to put themselves into. another cultu:re. . We're a fairly culturebound people when you come right down to it. We cart our whole cultural ambience with us when we go any place in the world. I think we start out, / regardless of whether we ' re Kennedys or who we are, with a very strong tendency to view the way other people look at.the world t hrough our own eyes. I think that probably most of the people in the top rung positions in the Kennedy administration were not men who from their own personal experience could be said to have a close feeling· f or the way the Russians look at the world. I don ' t think t his i s a problem peculiar to t his particular administration or any other. It's just something t hat flows from the way Americans ar e bred and the way they look a t the world. · ) -22- I would certainly ·be very conservative about any ' ·, assertions that the leadership at this time really knew /' how ... the Russians looked at the worl d·.and really felt about things. · I think -this is an ongoing problem . Now, if one were to compare them with others, I suppose one· would really have to say that probably they were open to certainly, a le·ss orthodox way of looking at and . appreciating the Russians than maybe administrations both before and since then have been. MOSS: You have several remarks that are made or situations that develop. You have at one point a perspective of the Berlin crisis, President Kennedy r emarking that the situation is almost a mirror image kind of thing. We call up the reserves, the Soviet Union calls up r eserves. We move in some tanks, the Soviet Union moves in some tanks, and that this is the way the thing operates. You have the Cuban missile crisis situation in which they see that the ·Russians have put themselves out on a limb and they see that they have to give them a chance to back off it. Understand ing in this way, then, you have the gambit of the American university speech, which is supposedly an opening; you have · ·the attempt at-the test ban treaty which went through, and the idea that there might also be a nonaggression pact. In terms of these specific things , were these evidences of good understanding about how to live with the Russians? ) '. WOLFE: In my view, yes . . This is what I had in mind when' I said I thought that this group probably had a more open view of, and certainly a less narrow, etiologi- cal view, orthodox view of , the mainsprings of Soviet motivation · and the stereotypes and cliches about Soviet behavior. But Ithink there __ were also ·some .limits . to this. _ This isn't said_· in any spirit of censure . It's just the way the problem is. But I think it was probably not really appreciat ed that the Russians would respond to their experience in the CubQ!n c'risis by makins the enormous effort they subsequently did to change their posture so they wouldn't find themselves put in that position again. I think there may have been a t endency to assume that they had seen the light and learned the lesson and they would, in a sense, be content to allow the relation ship with the United States to be frozen in the pattern it was set after the Cuban missile crisis. I doubt whether anybody had really given much thought to the question of, what will be the impact of this experience on the Russians ·insofar as the kinds of things they feel they --· --.... -- - 23- have to do, now, for the next decade. But , again, I think ) it's in the nature of government to live with. the problems it has to solve today, and when you' ve successful ly come through a crisi s like this one, which was followe~ by two · - years of attempts ·by Khrushchev to cultivate a detente with the West then, pardonably I think, i t looks to those who've made the decisions at t his time as though they' ve done rather well. This has also ~d the effect· of stimulat ing the Russians to go ahead wi tn programs that are now er.eating pr oblems for another American admini stration. This is in the nature of thi ngs and one can ' t, I don' t think, fault the decision makers o~ ask that they have acted somewhat different l y than t hey did in the Cuban mi ssi le cr isis. MOSS : Let me shift ground for a moment to China since you were heed of the Sino- Sovi et office. With the exception of a reported preoc6upation with the China problem on the part of Presi dent Kennedy f r om time to time, really dui.'ing this period al l you have is a flurry over the buildup of forces in Fukien Province opposite. Taiwan and the Sino- Indian border war to concer n you:.· Really how much did China figure in your considerations during this ·period? WOLFE : The question was one of contenti on in the early 1960' s , since the open surfacing of t he Sino- Sovi et ) di spute came to the att ention of the world at large; and didn' t occur until , 1960. But for several years there after, the central issue really was one which had not so much an immediate but a future policy implication, and .that was whether, is this really a genuine split or is it a very clever decepti on move? ~hrough thi s whole _period there were still - many people who felt that the whole thing was ~ cooked up device to mislead u s. The .view that I was interested in seeing promoted a.r having understood was t hat the roots of this conflict were ver y genuine , and that i t was not a deception and it was going to become a serious policy preoccupation for the Soviet Union, and by it ' s very nature, it affor ded the United States a ·certain amount of elbow room and freedom of action that. . . • At least, i t presented the United States with ·a small er probl em than it would if the two were acting in close concert and pooling theiriresources . Beyond this interpretation of the quarrel, which had future pol icy implications, but didn' t come to bear on particular issues of the day, I can' t say that ,-\ -..... - 24- the Sino- Soviet question intruded itself from day to day .in any major way on the kinds of activities that I was associated with. MOSS: It was not until after you left, of course, that you began to get the hard intelligence on the Chinese nuclear development. They didn't put out their first bomb until 1965 or something? WOLFE: · Yes, I don't remember the exact date, but some time in 1964. MOSS: You weren't really concerned about this at that time, the development of Chinese strategic forces? WOLFE: There was an awareness that the Soviet Union had sent engineers_and was helping the Chinese build a gaseous diffusion plant. What was not known at that time was that the Russians had reneged on the weapons technology part in this process. This had apparently taken place shortly before the split surfaced. This was not, at the time, known. So there was underlying, I think, concern that Chinese- Soviet nuclear collaboration was going to present some real problems for the United States at some time in the future. In my recollection, this didn't lead at that period to ·· really serious ) policy consideration of what do we do about this. There was a period after I was gone when some sugges tions were made. Occasionally one found them mentioned in the press that it mignt be a good idea for some sort of surgical operation.on these Chinese facilities, and that maybe the · Russians, although they wouldn't openly co1·1ude in this, might ,be -cooperative by not _makirig too much of a fuss about it since, the argument ran, it would be in their long- term interest, · too. MOSS: Was this by implication? WOLFE: As far as I know. I ·was out of the government by that time. But I don't think these propositions had a real serious policy content. The thing came sort of full circle in the fall of 1969 when it was the Russians who began to circulate the rumors that they might take these things out. MOSS: Let me ask you one last question here since we're getting to the end of the time. My impression in --- -25- talking with you is that a l though the position you held was on the same level and commensurate with that of several other people . such as Admiral [Luther c.) Heinz and General [William A.) Enemark and so on, you 1 re- a different--sort of person . . . You have a different sort of approach. Whereas they're primarily military, you have an academic, you ~ight call it, approach to things. Was this a significant difference in the time you were there? WOLFE: Well, I think the picture you draw· is a fair one, . that I did have a somewhat different combination of interest and b~ckground than some of ·the other people. But I think the nature of their jobs was considerably different than rhine. MOSS : Even though they . . . WOLFE: Yes. The ki nds of questions they had to answer were, "What do we do about some specific probl em that concerns our military aid program in a particular country, or our relations within NATO? There's a NATO council meeting coming up. We have to take a position on a certain number of questions there. Here they are. 11 So the people in the other offices had to make the recommendations for taking those positions with our allies. I was not so concerned with our allies. I was concerned with our relationship ) largely, with the Soviet Union and the Sino-Soviet .world. By its nature, the kinds. of problems here were much .different, 'and consequently, my role, I think, was a somewhat different one than that of th_e parallel officers on the organizational ·tree . MOSS : Okay, fine . Thank you very much indeed, Colonel Wolf'e. ·- \ ·" Name Index THOMAS W. WOLFE Acheson, Dean l8 Adenauer, Konrad 5 Bundy, William P. 16 de Gaulle, Charles 5 Doherty, James M. 8 Enemark, William A. 25 Gilpatric, Roswell L. 5, 6, 21 Harriman, W. Averell 18 Heinz, Luther C. 25 Irwin, John 1, 2 Johnson, Leon William 11 Johnson, Lyndon B. 19 Khrushchev, Nikita S. 4, 5, 21, 23 Lovett, Robert A. 18 McCloy, John J. 18 McNamara, Robert S. 6, 8, 9, 10, ll, 12, 15, 18, 19, 2l McNaughton, John T. l6 Nitze, Paul H. 2, 8, 16, 17, 20, 21 Rostow, Walt W. 7 Rowen, Henry S. (Harry) 16 Rusk, Dean 17, 18 Stanley, Timothy Wadsworth 7 Thompson, Llewellyn E., Jr. 20 Truman, Harry S. l8 Williams , Hadyn 16 York, Herbert F. 8 ) Subject Index THOMAS W. WOLFE Agency for International Development (AID) 2 Air Force, U. S. 3,_13 Berlin Crisis, 1961 - 22 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 2- 3, 11-14, 20 China, People ' s Republic of U.S . Rel. 23-24 U.S.S .R. Rel. 23- 24 Cuba Bay of Pigs 15 Missile Crisis 19-23 Defense, Dept . of International Security Affairs. (ISA) 1 -2, 5- 8, 16- 20, 22, 25 Kennedy Administration 8 -12, 13, 19 Personnel 5-6, 8-9, 19 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) 2, 12-13, 20 For eign aid Military Assistance Program 1 Foreign policy Kennedy Administration 17 ) . France U. S . Rel. 5 Germany, Federal Republic of U. S. Rel. · 5 Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Kennedy Ad.ministration 1 - 2, 20 Kennedy Administration Advisors 18 Cabinet 18 Missiles ICBM. (Intercontinental.Ballistic Missile) 4 MRBM (Medium Range Ballistic Missile) 4 National Security Agency (NSA) 3, 12 National Security Council (NSC) 7, 21 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 1-2, 25 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 22 State, Dept . of Kennedy Ad.ministration 1-2, 7, 12, 17-18 U2 Episode 3 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U. S.S.R.) Kennedy Administration and 21- 22 Space Program 3-6, 13 U.S . Rel. 3- 6, 8, 13, 19-23, 25 )