How to Prevent a Nuclear War: The Diplomacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis An interview with Ambassador Philip M. Kaiser
Interviewer: Amalia Maletta Interviewee: Mr. Philip M. Kaiser Mr. Alex Haight February 10, 2006 Table of Contents
I. Release Form………………………………………………..……………………….…2
II. Statement of Purpose……………………………………..…….……………………...3
III. Biography of Ambassador Philip Kaiser………………..……….…………………...4
IV. Historical Contextualization…………………………..………………………….…..5 “How to Prevent a Nuclear War”
V. Interview Transcription………………………………………………………...….…21
VI. Interview Analysis………………………………………………………..……..…..46
VII. Time Index Log………………………………………………………………..…...50
VIII. Appendix I…………………………………………………………………………51
IX. Appendix II………………………………………………………………………….52
X. Appendix III………………….………………………………………………………53
XI. Appendix IV………………………………………………………………………...54
XII. Works Consulted………………………………………………………………….55 Maletta 3
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this oral history is to provide a more complete understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis through the interview of Ambassador Philip Kaiser. Mr.
Kaiser’s perspective as the ambassador of Senegal during the Cuban Missile Crisis allows him to support as well as discredit existing knowledge and theories about the Crisis and its politics. This project also aims to examine the importance of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the greater context of the Cold War as a whole. Maletta 4
Biography of Philip M. Kaiser
Philip Kaiser was born in Brooklyn, New York in July of 1913 and was raised with his nine other siblings in a strictly religious household. His parents were Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, then part of Russia. After attending a local school for two years, Philip Kaiser went to poroquial school where he studies Hebrew for eight hours a day. After high school, Mr. Kaiser attended Oxford College and then University of
Wisconsin, playing on the tennis, baseball, and basketball teams. Graduated from
University, he married in 1939, and then became involved in the state department.
While in the state Department, Mr. Kaiser then became involved in the international division of the Labor Department from 1946 to 1947. President Truman, elected in 1948, soon made him assistant secretary of labor in international affairs in
1949. Because of these two offices, Mr. Kaiser traveled to Europe more than three times a year in order to cover the meetings. When Kennedy was elected, Mr. Kaiser became the American ambassador to Senegal and Mauritania. While ambassador to Senegal, Mr.
Kaiser played a key role in securing America’s safety during the Cuban Missile Crisis by persuading the President of Senegal to not allow Soviet planes to refuel in Senegal on their way to Cuba.
As well as being ambassador to Senegal and Mauritania, Mr. Kaiser was also special ambassador to Winston Churchill, as well as the American Ambassador to Austria and Hungary. While ambassador to Hungary during the Carter administration, Mr.
Kaiser aided in the return of the crown of Saint Stephen to the Hungarian government. In
1992, Mr. Kaiser published his book Journeying Far and Wide: A Political and
Diplomatic Memoir. He is now retired and resides in Washington, D.C. with his wife. Maletta 5
How to Prevent a Nuclear War The Diplomacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Tension between Communist Russia and the Capitalist United States started with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, in the middle of the First World War. But who then knew that this tension between the two ideologies would rise to a point when, as
Eisenhower described it in 1960, “…all humans in the northern hemisphere [might] perish” (May 1), for each economic system called for the destruction of the other. The idea of communism frightened the U.S. to such a point that the United States welcomed
Hitler because he was a strong anti-communist and rivaled Stalin for the control of
Europe. During the Second World War, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were allies only because both nations were anti-fascist. However, after the common enemy was eradicated, the U.S. and the Soviet Union went back to fighting with one another. The continuous Arms Race during the Cold War and the Korean War escalated the tension between the two powers to an even greater magnitude. Finally, the U.S.’s failed attempt to overthrow Soviet-allied Castro at the Bay of Pigs invasion led Russia to plant surface- to-air missiles in Cuba, capable of hitting the U.S. The close proximity of the Soviet- planted missiles to the U.S. and the power of the United State’s missiles brought the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis to the brink of a nuclear holocaust.
It is important to understand the U.S.’s foreign policy towards both the U.S.S.R. and Cuba in order to explain why events played out the way they did. The foreign policies toward the two countries had very different strains which led to the tensions of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The first strain, which expressed itself prior to the Cuban
Missile Crisis, was the Arms Race between Russia and the United States as well as the fear of Communism among the American people. Many people believe that the start of Maletta 6 the Arms Race, and ultimately the start of the Cold War developed at the Yalta
Conference in February of 1945. The Second World War had not yet ended, but the “Big
Three”; the United States, Great Britain, and the U.S.S.R., already predetermined to win, met to draw the map of post-war Europe. This map would ultimately draw out Russia’s sphere of influence in Europe. It was at the Yalta Conference that the U.S. and Great
Britain realized Soviet power. Since the U.S. and Russia were the prevailing victors of
WWII, they were the two countries who battled over which country would have the most worldly influence: Communist Russia or Capitalist America? It was difficult to tell during the Arms Race whether the two countries were building nuclear weapons for protection, or whether they were creating nuclear missiles to proclaim themselves superior to the other country. Russia already knew that the U.S. had a head start on creating nuclear weapons because the U.S. had already detonated two of them during
WWII. The Soviet’s did not detonate their first atomic bomb until 1949, four years after
Hiroshima. The U.S. detonated their first hydrogen bomb in 1952, with Russia’s own following close behind in 1953. Also during that time, the U.S. developed highly accurate ICBMs. Russia tried to duplicate them, but their missiles were neither as reliable nor as accurate as the U.S.’s ICBMs. The U.S.S.R sought to compensate for the unstable rockets. Soviet Russia knew that a deployment of nuclear warheads in the
Western Hemisphere would double the Soviet strategic arsenal and provide a real deterrent to a potential U.S. attack against the Soviet Union, hence, the placement of missiles in Cuba.
During the Eisenhower Administration, the United States’ policy towards nuclear weapons was based solely on the Eisenhower Doctrine. The Doctrine called for “massive Maletta 7 retaliation”, meaning that the U.S. was willing to use nuclear weapons during war and that the U.S. believed that they would win the war if they did so (also called N.U.T.s: the
Nuclear Utilization Theory). After the Cuban Missile Crisis however, the policy changed to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), meaning that if any side used nuclear power during a war, both powers would be destroyed as a result. The Vienna Summit meeting with Khrushchev on July 3-4, 1961 sought to control nuclear warhead testing. However
Khrushchev resumed testing his nuclear devices in late August of 1961. It was not until the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, that the terror of nuclear disaster started to subside.
During the Cold War era, another race took place between Russia and the U.S.
On October 18, 1957, the USSR launched their first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit, launching the beginning of the Space Race (See Appendix IV). The launch of Sputnik proved to be a significant victory for the Soviets during the Space Race. Not only did this historic launch prove that they had a greater amount of technological knowledge than the U.S., but it also established their presence in space. Not wanting to live forever in the shadows of Sputnik, the United States began its own quest for space. Finally, in 1958, the U.S. achieved their goal of having one of their own satellites orbit the earth: the
Explorer 1. Following the issuing of this challenge, both countries began preparations to land on the moon. Although both countries would land a spacecraft on the moon, only the United States was successfully able to land a human in 1969. In the early 1970’s, when the hostilities between the U.S. and the Soviets began to decrease, the two countries took part in a joint project to dock their crafts in orbit. It was only through this action that both countries were able to learn from each other, and further their technology. Maletta 8
Aside from the idea of Russia gaining nuclear strength, the U.S. also feared
Russia’s economic ideology: communism. The U.S. believed that communism was a
“poison” to their capitalism and must be destroyed (Schoenherr). Then in one of his telegraphs, a diplomat named George F. Kennan who worked in Russia decided that the only thing America could do to prevent communism from spreading was to “contain” it in Russia. The U.S. government theorized that if communism were to be contained in one place, the idea would slowly fall apart on itself. Under the theory of containment, the
Truman Administration developed the Truman Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine was a response to the threat of the collapse of Greece to communist guerrillas. The Doctrine enunciated that nations striving to maintain their independence, and combating efforts at control by totalitarian minorities, would receive American military and economic aid.
The Truman Doctrine was essentially a vast financial aid to all countries, especially
Greece and Turkey, who were trying to halt the spread of communism.
Another policy that came out of containment was the Marshall Plan. George
Marshall was made Secretary of State during the Truman Administration. The Marshall
Plan consisted of sending twelve billion dollars to Europe to help rebuild it after WWII.
It was the United States’ hope that the money would help develop the European nations so that they would not turn to communism as an alternative to their current state. None of the communist nations in Europe accepted any money, and Soviet Russia interpreted the
Marshall Plan as a personal threat. The United States’ military solution to the spread of communism was the 1949 creation of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The creation of NATO was an attempt to follow the “Collective Security Doctrine”; the idea that Western European nations would seek to collectively protect one another. The Maletta 9
Soviet Response to NATO was the Warsaw Pact, created in 1955. The pact consisted of
Eastern European countries that supported communism, and was created to try to offset the powers of NATO. The Korean War is another example of how the U.S. tried to stop the spread of communism from Soviet Russia. From 1950 to 1953, the United States aided South Korea in fending off the North Korean forces that ploughed through the border on the thirty-eighth parallel. The North Koreans were financed and equipped by
Russia in order to spread communism to South Korea. The war ended in a stalemate, causing each side to question their superiority over the other.
The most prevailing example of the United States’ fear of communism is
McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy was a senator from Wisconsin when he was asked to lead the Republican investigation of Communism in the Truman Administration in 1950.
From then on until his condemnation by the Senate in December of 1945, McCarthy went on what is considered none other than a modern day witch-hunt, accusing more than a hundred people working in the government of being communists or communist spies. It got to a point when he was so paranoid about communists in the government that he started carrying around a pistol in his pocket. He even accused George Marshall,
Truman’s Secretary of State, of being an “instrument of a Soviet conspiracy”
(Schoenerr). The American people latched on to McCarthy’s paranoid communist-hunt because they were scared that communism would root itself in the states. Because of
McCarthyism, hundreds of lives were destroyed and the ever-present threat of communism still lingered. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1965 which separated
East Berlin (German Democratic Republic) and West Berlin, although not a precursor to Maletta 10 the Cuban Missile Crisis, was another example of the tensions between Communist
Russia and the Capitalist United States.
The second strain leading to the Crisis concerned Cuba and Castro’s role as dictator. The political tension between Cuba and the United states started with the
Spanish-American War, when the U.S. helped Cuba gain its independence from Spain, yet basically took over the country when it moved in big American Corporations. When
William McKinley said, “The trade of the world must and shall be ours” (Zinn), it was clear that America had profit on its mind when it decided to aid Cuba during the war.
The Teller Amendment passed by Congress gave Cubans proof that America did not desire to annex the country; Cubans hoped that the amendment would guarantee their independence. However, after the war, the U.S. started taking over Cuba’s natural resources and placed an investment of fifty million dollars in Cuban sugar cane. The
U.S. did not annex Cuba, but did integrate the Platt Amendment in the Constitution. The
Platt Amendment gave the United States “the right to intervene for the preservation of the
Cuban independence” (Zinn). Many Cubans viewed the amendment as a betrayal of the idea of Cuban independence. The United States had brought independence to Cuba, but the island was still in its sphere of influence. In short, the U.S. had pretended to help
Cuba win its freedom from Spain, then immediately planted itself on the island with a military base (Guantanamo Bay), investments, and rights of intervention (Platt
Amendment).
If Cuban-U.S. relations were not very friendly before, Fidel Castro’s rise to power certainly made them worse. Cuba’s military dictator prior to Castro, Fulgencio Batista, had the approval of the United States because the U.S. interests dominated the Cuban Maletta 11 economy. However, Batista’s control over Cuba ended when Fidel Castro, after two failed attempts two years previously, managed to overthrow Batista and gain power on
January 1, 1959. Immediately after his rise to power, Castro set up a nationwide system of education, housing, and land distribution to the landless peasants. The redistribution of land caused Castro’s government to seize the land of three American corporations in the process. Although Castro gave to the people, he also took away. He refused to hold public election, he suppressed civil liberties, and expropriated all American and foreign land, businesses, utilities, and banks, taking away thousands of jobs for the common man.
The US was so enraged by Castro’s lack of responsibility that when Castro visited New
York, President Eisenhower refused to meet with him. Seizing the opportunity to have an ally, Khrushchev, Premier of the U.S.S.R., offered his allegiance to Castro, who accepted it. This new-formed alliance caused the U.S. government to become even more infuriated, and in January of 1961, the U.S. imposed an embargo on all Cuban goods. The embargo hurt Cuban economy, but Castro’s cry for help was answered in February of
1961, when the Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Mikoyan visited Cuba and arranged for a large-scale economic and military aid to the impoverished island. It frightened the U.S. to have a country like Cuba which was so close and which had such close ties to communist Russia. Cuba was the only country in the Western Hemisphere to have
Communist government tendencies. The U.S. could see that the U.S.S.R. had spread its influence to the Western Hemisphere and so decided that something had to be done to stop its spread.
The United States theorized that the most promising way to eradicate communism in the Western Hemisphere was to overthrow Castro’s regime in Cuba. Maletta 12
Mock invasions, such as Operation Mongoose and the mock invasion of a Caribbean island to overthrow a dictator named Ortsac (Castro spelled backwards) were meant to keep the Castro regime nervous and scared of the United States. Consequently, Castro was convinced that the U.S. was serious about invading Cuba. For years, the American government plotted to overthrow Castro through different secret assassination attempts, yet no attempt to overthrow Castro failed as miserably as the Bay of Pigs invasion (See
Appendix I). In January of 1961, the CIA came to President Kennedy requesting permission to reactivate the Bay of Pigs plan previously put into affect in the Eisenhower administration. The Bay of Pigs plan consisted of a group of Cuban refugees who were loyal to Batista and fled when Castro rose to power. These refugees and exiles were trained and supplied by the CIA so that they may attack and overthrow Castro’s regime and obliterate communism from Cuba. The CIA notified Kennedy that the citizens of
Cuba would welcome the Cuban exiles and start a revolution to overthrow Castro.
Kennedy approved of the plan, under the condition that the U.S. involvement would remain a secret. Four days before the attack, President Kennedy told a press conference,
“…there will not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by the United States’ armed forces” (May). The attack however, did not go as the CIA had planned.
On April 15, 1961, six U.S. bombers disguised as Cuban supply crafts flew from
Nicaragua and started firing on Cuban airfields, however their attack cause very little damage to the airfields. The following day a force of fourteen hundred or more Cuban exiles, having been trained by the CIA in guerrilla warfare, landed at the Bay of Pigs.
Castro however, was prepared and the Cuban exiles met a force of more than twenty thousand Cuban troops. When Kennedy learned that the Cubans had discovered that the Maletta 13
United States initiated the attack at the Bay of Pigs, he immediately cancelled all other strikes on Cuba, including much needed air-support for the men who landed at the Bay of
Pigs. Realizing that they were leaving the men stranded, the CIA finally convinced
Kennedy to enable American air-support. Kennedy allowed only an hour for Navy jets to help protect the B-62 aircrafts already in Cuba. However, due to a miscommunication between the B-62s and the jets, the B-62s entered Cuban airspace an hour earlier than the jets were expected to arrive; they were easily destroyed by Cuban ammunition. When the jets arrived an hour later, there were no B-62 planes to give assistance to. The guerrilla units were then left to fend for themselves. The Cuban air force shot down any U.S. supply ship carrying ammunition for the men. Hopelessly outnumbered and without any food or ammo, the guerrillas were either captured or killed within the next three days.
Because the United States’ secret plan to overthrow Castro failed horribly, the
Kennedy administration faced international disgrace and condemnation for trying to alter the political state of another country. The CIA was in disgrace as well because they had given Kennedy information that was actually untrue. They informed Kennedy that Cuba did not have the necessary fire power and equipment to retaliate against the U.S.’s attacks and that the Cubans actually wanted to be free from Castro’s reign. Kennedy was also promised that U.S. participation in the attack would remain secret. None of these were in fact true, and were part of the reason why the Bay of Pigs plan failed. The CIA also made many tactical errors, including the miscalculation of the B-62s and the sinking of a
U.S. supply ship carrying food and ammunition to the guerrillas. Kennedy, in this case, was wrong to trust the CIA, and because he did, the U.S. was looked down upon in international eyes. Castro accused America of “cowardly aggression” and therefore was Maletta 14 able to proclaim Cuba’s superiority over the United States. In response to the attacks,
Cuba declared itself a fully communist state. It asked Russia for aid and protection against the United States, expecting another attack soon after the disaster at the Bay of
Pigs. Premier to Russia Nikita Khrushchev obliged and sent forty two Soviet nuclear warheads via sea to Cuba to be used on newly created Soviet military bases stationed on the coast of Cuba facing the United States. The positioning of nuclear missiles in Cuba and so close to the United States escalated the threat of nuclear war and ultimately started the Cuban Missile Crisis.
On August 29, 1963, a U-2 spy plane on a reconnaissance mission took photographs of Soviet missile sites being constructed; missile sites that were a mere ninety miles off the coast of the United States. The photographs were sent to Washington
D.C. where, by October 15th, White House analysts were certain that there was a presence of live nuclear warheads in Cuba. Kennedy was surprised when he heard the news because Khrushchev had previously told him that there were no Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Unsure of what to do, Kennedy organized the Executive Committee of the National
Security Council (ExComm) so that he might get advice from fellow politicians and military advisors. The committee members were as follows: President John F. Kennedy,
Secretary Dean Rusk, Under Secretary George Ball, Latin American Assistant Secretary
Edwin Martin, Deputy Under Secretary Alexis Johnson, Soviet Expert Llewellyn
Thompson, Secretary Robert McNamara, Deputy Secretary Roswell Gilpatric, Assistant
Secretary Paul Nitze, General Maxwell Taylor, Director John McCone, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillion, and White House aids
McGeorge Bundy and Theodore Sorenson. The committee met that morning to discuss Maletta 15 the possible U.S. responses to the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. President
Kennedy made sure that the committee as aware of two things: firstly that there were
Soviet missiles in Cuba capable of hitting any major city in the United States, and secondly that the position of the Soviet missiles granted Russia the ability of the first strike. ExComm’s first task was to draft a response to the placement of the missiles.
Several days passed and two propositions presented themselves. The first proposition was an air-strike over Cuba. Taking Cuba by surprise, the fighter jets would destroy the missile bases and be done before Cuba had a chance to retaliate. The second proposition was a blockade and a quarantine of Cuban waters to prevent more Soviet missiles from entering Cuba. Many members of the committee favored that aerial strike over the blockade.
The aerial strike was favorable simply because it was time efficient. The military promised that the strike could be accomplished quickly and effectively, but the United
States would have to act right away. Any procrastination of a response would enable
Castro to reinforce his military and the number of missile sites. Although the aerial strike was time efficient, there were more bad qualities than good ones (May 2). For example, the United States Air Force did not know the locations of all the missile sites, and even if they did, there was no guarantee that all of the missile sites would be disabled without
Cuba firing at least one nuclear missile at the U.S. On September 11, 1961, the White
House received a message from Russia which stated that any offensive military action against Cuba would be taken as an attack on Russia, resulting in nuclear war. Therefore, the committee could not commence with the air strike when they knew that it could only lead to a nuclear meltdown. Kennedy then sought another option: the blockade. Viewed Maletta 16 by many in the committee as being one of the weaker responses, many people claimed that all a blockade would do was allow the Cubans and Soviets more time to build up their missile sites already stationed on Cuba. The blockade had drawbacks as well, many of them the same as the aerial strike’s drawbacks. Firstly, if Russia disregarded the blockade, the U.S. would have to fire first, making the States the starters of the next
World War. Also, the blockade was considered illegal based on the Organization of
American States (OAS), unless it received two thirds votes. However, the biggest problem with the blockade was time. Many people, such as Sorensen believed that although it was a safer approach, it was also, “…a prolonged and agonizing approach, uncertain in its effect…” (Sorensen 687). Although it seemed time-consuming, the blockade proved to be a safer response to the missiles, and after seven days of intense debate, the blockade was voted the most effective. It was “...a more limited, low-key military action than the air strike. It offered Khrushchev the choice of avoiding a direct military clash by keeping his ships away” (Sorensen 688). Washington decided to issue a blockade on Cuba in effort to thwart Soviet aid.
Although the blockade was effective by sea, the U.S. had no real way of protecting the air. The Soviets were able to fly weapons and supplies into Cuban but needed to refuel somewhere in western Africa in order to make it over the Atlantic. The only country in west Africa with a big enough air strip to accommodate the soviet planes was Senegal. Kennedy immediately went to the United States ambassador to Senegal,
Mr. Philip Kaiser, and had him convince the president of Senegal, Mr. Leopold Senghor, to not allow Soviet planes to land on the Senegalese air base (See Appendix III).
President Senghor agreed, frustrating the Soviets’ attempts to reach Cuba by air. Days Maletta 17 later, President Kennedy held a meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko. The meeting allowed President Kennedy to talk to Russia privately without altering the press of any real crisis. During the meeting, Gromyko acted as if there were no Soviet missiles in Cuba and when Kennedy read him the warning against offensive missiles in Cuba,
Gromyko insisted that he had no idea what Kennedy was talking about (Sorensen 689-
690).
Although Kennedy had tried to keep information from the press about the events taking place, it came to the point where Kennedy truly needed to tell the American people about the crisis taking place. ExComm was against it at first, but after much debate it was decided that Kennedy would publicly announce the existence of Soviet missiles in
Cuba, and the blockade as a way of defending America from such a threat. Kennedy also publicly proclaimed that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union. He then demanded publicly that the
Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba. The public reacted to
Kennedy’s announcement with a sense of fear and panic. While the Congress attacked
Kennedy for not doing more to protect national security, others such as Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times, believed that Kennedy’s blockade as the plan of attack “…was obviously intended to provide opportunities for second thought and negotiations”. When the OAS finally approved the quarantine, the Kennedy administration immediately put the blockade into action, hoping that it would prevent the flow of nuclear warheads and ammo from Russia to Cuba. On Tuesday evening, there came reports that the eighteen soviet ships heading toward Cuba had neither slowed down nor changed their course. If the ships continued toward the blockade and refused to halt, the United States would have Maletta 18 to fire on the ships, again being the cause of the possible World War III. However, early the next morning, there came word that the ships had finally stopped in front of the blockade, some of which were even heading back to Russia. At least for the time being, the world was safe from nuclear war.
On the evening of the 26th, Kennedy received a letter from Khrushchev outlining a deal to remove the missiles in Cuba if the United States gave a pledge to never invade.
The next day, the worst of the crisis, a second letter arrived. The second letter demanded that the old Jupiter missiles in Turkey must be removed as well if the Soviet missiles were to be removed from Cuba. The idea of a Turkey-Cuba missile trade might have sounded like a fair trade, but Kennedy realized that his alliance to Turkey was extremely important. If the U.S. removed its missiles from Turkey, a NATO ally, the whole alliance could falter and crumble. Kennedy had to be very careful in making his decision of whether or not he would buckle under the pressure of Khrushchev’s letter, as this conversation with Bundy, an aid to the White House:
JFK: He’s (Khrushchev) got us in a pretty good spot here, because Most people will regard this (new letter) as not an unreasonable Proposal, I’ll just tell you that. In fact, in many ways— Bundy (interrupts): But what most people, Mr. President? JFK: I think you’re going to find it very difficult to explain why we Are going to take hostile military action in Cuba against these sites— What we’ve been thinking about—the thing that he’s saying is, ‘If you’ll Get yours out of Turkey, we’ll get ours out of Cuba… We can’t very well invade Cuba with all its toll when we could have gotten the missiles out by making a deal on the same missiles in Turkey. If that’s part of the record I don’t see how we’ll have a very good war.
On the same day another supply ship was found headed straight for the blockade and work on the missile sites had not stopped. Also, a low-flying U-2 plane was shot down over Cuba; the first American casualty of the crisis. Later, another U-2 plane flying over Maletta 19
Alaska got off course and flew into Soviet airspace by accident. The plane quickly left the Soviet airspace without being shot at, but he was seen flying over Russian airspace which made Russians suspicious.
Back at the White House, Robert Kennedy came up with a response to the
Khrushchev letters. R. Kennedy decided that ExComm should simply ignore the second letter concerning the missiles in Turkey, and agree to the terms outlined in the first letter
Khrushchev sent (See Appendix II). ExComm was adjourned and the next morning there came a telegram stating that Russia had accepted the U.S.’s terms. During the day and under the UN inspection, the missiles were dismantled and withdrawn from Cuba. The sense of threat on both sides subsided, and the Cuban Missile Crisis drew to a close. In a
New York Times article, President Kennedy congratulated Premier Khrushchev on his
“…statesmanlike decision” on an “important and constructive contribution to peace”
(New York Times 29). Although the crisis ended, tensions between the two countries were still high, and the United States still felt a threat from Soviet Russia.
When historians look back on the Cuban Missile Crisis, there is always one question that seems to be most discussed: How well did President Kennedy deal with the situation at hand? Thomas Paterson believes that Kennedy took the Cuban Missile Crisis as a personalized issue and then converted it into a test of will. He believes that Kennedy rejected diplomacy in favor of public confrontation. Kennedy gave Khrushchev “…no chance to withdraw his mistake or save face…” (Medland); Kennedy was determined to get the missiles out of Cuba and was willing to destroy millions in the process. Still others, such as Berstein, Horowitx, and Miroff, take the Revisionist Perspective coming to the conclusion that the president ultimately rejected diplomacy via private negotiation Maletta 20 for a policy of public confrontation. President Kennedy rejected a political solution to a political problem, instead instituting a military response to the crisis. Kennedy’s actions won no victory for the United States but instead instituted the beginning of a new arms race (Medland 473). However, many other historians believe that Kennedy did what he could to the best of his ability and ultimately chose the best way to handle the problem.
Historians such as Garthoff believed that the both the short term and the long term consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis were beneficial to the struggle for peace. The short term affects of the Cuban Missile Crisis were its leading in to détente and arms control and ending the threat of an American invasion in Cuba. The long term consequence of the crisis was initiated in Washington with the belief that the United
States had to accept the fact that Castro and communism would remain in Cuba
(Garthoff).
The Cuban Missile Crisis is a prime example of the United States foreign policy during the Cold War. The events of the Crisis adequately show the tensions and threats between the two protagonist countries and their fear of each other. The Cuban Missile
Crisis is the closest the world has ever gotten to a nuclear World War III. Maletta 21
Interview Transcription Interviewer: Amalia Maletta Interviewee: Amb. Philip M. Kaiser Date of Interview: December 17, 2005 This interview was reviewed and edited by Amalia Maletta
Amalia Maletta: This is Amalia Maletta and I am interviewing Ambassador Philip
Kaiser as part of the American Century Oral History Project. The interview took place on December 17th, 2005 at Ambassador Kaiser’s home in Washington, D.C. I’m just going to start with some background information. Can you describe your childhood, specifically growing up as the child of immigrants?
Philip Kaiser: I was the ninth of ten children.
AM: That’s a lot of kids!
PK: And I indicated in the opening chapter in my book, I was the son of Jewish immigrants from the old Russia, the Ukraine. I it was a very lively household, full of interesting people-- brothers and sisters. Four brothers and two sisters and four brothers.
The two girls came in between. And I indicated the older brothers were very fraternal, very interested in us youngsters. Particularly one of them—all this is mentioned in the book1. And I went to the local public school for two years, and I went to a school where we spent four hours in the morning studying Hebrew and Hebrew Literature. It wasn’t particularly religious; it was more intellectual and academic. In the afternoon we had
1 Kaiser, Philip. Journeying Far and Wide: A Political and Diplomatic Memoir. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1992. Maletta 22 regular studies; the institute met the requirements of the English regular academic education. So I had eight hours a day of studies. And I seem to have survived it.
AM: So your household wasn’t particularly religious, or…
PK: It was.
AM: It was?!
PK: My mother in particular. My father went along. She was very religious; a very moral and ethical person, tied into one religion. She was the most ethical person I ever knew. She would stand for nothing; she was enormously hard, almost too hard, but she maintained… she was also loving, she was a loving mother. She took care of her nine children. My oldest brother was a half brother. And interestingly enough, he married my mother’s sister. And his son, my oldest nephew, he’s had a brilliant career, very wonderful person. He was more of a brother. Another fact in our growing up was the summer camps. And we went, beginning in 1922 right into the thirties. Later on I became a counselor. We spent every summer at the camp. And we grew up and met in that camp some famous people and we became friends for life, like Howard Wolfe. You know Howard Wolfe, the novelist?
AM: The novelist? Yes. Maletta 23
PK: And Morse Hogg, the playwright, who co-wrote (___+) You Can’t Take It With
You. And we became friends for the rest of my life. There were others as well. The camps were full of athletic activities—I was a pretty good athlete. I was a very good tennis player and a good baseball player and not bad as a basketball player.
AM: I play tennis at my school.
PK: Good, I’m glad, stay with it [laughs]. And you’re on the team?
AM: Yes.
PK: Singles or Doubles?
AM: Singles.
PK: Good for you. I played when I was at Oxford. I played on the college tennis team, not the university, but the college, and I played on my high school tennis team.
AM: So you were pretty good then?
PK: Oh, yes.
AM: So, what made you decide to enter to foreign services? Maletta 24
PK: That’s a good question. ___+. I served briefly in the State Department towards the end of the war. I then moved to the International Division of the Labor Department.
About 1946 or 47. And then I became, after Truman was elected in the remarkable 1948 election, he appointed me assistant Secretary of Labor of International Affairs. That was in 1949. It was a position he asked to be established in recognition of the important role labor was playing in the world at that time, at home and abroad. With particular concern for the fact that the communists controlled the major trade unions in France and in Italy.
And they would pledge-- both of them would, to frustrate the Marshall Plan. So I had this background as the assistant Secretary of Labor and I was an American member of the governing body of the International Labor Organization. And so I traveled to Europe at least three times a year to cover the meetings of the government body, and to chair the
American delegation in the annual conference. It was a mixed delegation of government people, labor people, and employers.
AM: What are the two accomplishments of your career of which you are most proud?
PK: The two most important things I was involved in were firstly, the Cuban Missile
Crisis, and secondly, the return of the Crown of St. Stephen to Hungary. In the first case, after President Kennedy had made a blockade, ___ we discovered that the blockade could be broken by air. Soviets could fly technical equipment from Moscow to Havana, but they had to stop over in an airport in West Africa. And the best place was in Senegal, in
Dakar, where I was then the Kennedy ambassador. And we had a cable from the Maletta 25 president, a ___ cable, in which he gave me a copy of the speech he was going to make to the American people. He instructed me to take it to the president of Senegal, who was the brilliant Leopold Senghor (See Appendix III). The most intelligent president I ever dealt with including four or five American presidents I dealt with and the Prime Minister of London, Austria, and Hungary. He was the most brilliant of them all. Highly cultured
—African, black African—he was considered brilliant by the French, he was an outstanding student in the French language. And a very able poet, who in addition to his own poetry, translated all of our black poems into French. He was nominated for the
Nobel Prize but never won it.
AM: The Nobel Prize?
PK: He never received it. I had a very personal relationship with him. I called his secretary and said “I have a very important message from President Kennedy and I must see your President immediately.” So he said, “Come up in 15 minutes and the President will be waiting for you.” So I went over and I hand him the text of the speech, and there was a personal message. He read the message, and he said, “Excellence, c’est tres serious ne’pas?” And I said, “Oui, Monsieur President.” And I then said “It’s time we thought for you to deny the Soviets the use of your airport.” And he had a left-wing
Prime Minister.
AM: I read about that in your book. Maletta 26
PK: And people were saying, “Well, what argument did you use?” We had come to visit Kennedy, and they hit it off and they became very close. And I said to him, “Mr.
President, President Kennedy will never forgive you if you don’t deny your airport.”
And he said, “Send me a memorandum tomorrow morning at eight o’clock before the cabinet meeting. I should like to tell him that I have no problems in denying the airport to the Soviets.” ___+ All of my officers, we all spoke French, and we drafted a letter.
And a member of the council delivered the letter personally to the president, ____+. And later that morning, the president informed President Kennedy that he wouldn’t allow it.
Now, you wanted two examples, didn’t you?
AM: Yes.
PK: The other one was the return of the crown of St. Stephen to the Hungarians. The crown had been given to the first king of Hungary, in the year 1000, given by the pope; I think the name was Sylvester II... I’m not sure. It was a symbol of independence and it was a much cherished symbol. In the war, when the Soviets penetrated into Hungary, a couple Hungarians took the crown, crossed the border into Germany, and buried it there.
But we found it, and took it to Fort Knox and it was there from 1945 to 1979. And we were very anxious to give it back. But they were communist at the time, so American-
Hungarians—most of them had emigrated after the terrible revolt in 1956 vigorously opposed it because it would generalize the communist government. So I used my sensibility particularly with the president—I convinced him that this would be a very important step in his policy of weakening the grip that Moscow had on its southern Maletta 27 countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary. In fact, Hungary was the most, quote, liberal of the communist controlled countries.
AM: I did not know that.
PK: It was a long and complicated process where Carter, in spite of demonstrations against it, very wisely decided to return the crown. And it had a tremendous impact. He very cleverly, when he returned it, said, “It wasn’t the American government returning it to the Communist government, it was the American people returning it to the Hungarian people.” And in a sense, our toughest assignment was how to get it into Washington.
We had __+ the head of the Communist party and consequently the head of the
Hungarian government, to guarantee that he would not be president when the crown was returned.
AM: How did you do that?
PK: Well, it took a lot of… [Interrupted]
AM: Persuasion?
PK: Talking, stipulations I had. And the president was pretty smart guy. He was ___ and he was prepared to pay almost any price to give it back. But it was a very delicate piece of negotiation. Maletta 28
AM: I can imagine so…
PK: So you have two examples. Now, after the crown was returned, there was a tremendous improvement in our relations with the Communist government and with the
Hungarian communists who were getting closer and closer with their European neighbors. And-- when did the Berlin Wall come down? Was it ’81?
AM: I thought it was later than that.
PK: ’92 or ’93. Anyway, the year the year the Berlin Wall came down.
AM: I thought it came down in ’89.
PK: ’89. In 1986 or seven, when the Hungarian government was still communist, a whole new generation of young communist leaders were anxious to develop their relationship with us and with the rest of Europe. In East Germany, the favorite holiday place was Hungary, a lake in Hungary, a beautiful lake—what the hell was it called? I can’t remember what it’s called. Thousands would come, because it was the only place in the communist world where they could go without any trouble. In 1989, several thousands of them wanted to go back to West Germany in time for New Year’s so they appealed to the Hungarian Government that they might leave via Austria. And in
Moscow and the East German Government vigorously opposed that, but the new Maletta 29
Hungarian Government finally opened its border to Austria. And it sort of anticipated the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
AM: Going back to the Cuban Missile Crisis… [Interrupted]
PK: You read Robert Kennedy’s book2?
AM: I read most of his book. I did.
PK: Because he mentions my relationship with… [Interrupted]
AM: President Senghor?
PK: Senghor.
AM: Yes. What were your first impressions of President Kennedy when you first met him?
PK: That’s a good question. How did I meet him? The first time I met him was when he was a senator. And two distinguished itinerants, one was Governor of Puerto Rico, and the other was the President of __+. I knew them both, and they came here to visit and I introduced them to Kennedy as a senator. And I really got to know him through
2 Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1969. Maletta 30
Byron White, who later became Justice White. We met in Oxford; he was a Rhodes
Scholar too. And we became very good friends. And he was a great friend of Kennedy’s and he helped save Kennedy during the war when Kennedy had an accident, ___+. He was a very powerful fellow, a brilliant, brilliant person-- brilliant athlete too. And
Kennedy picked him __+ as the head of Citizens for Kennedy. Then White asked me to join his bureau as a deputy. And I did. And he introduced me to Kennedy, and I saw a lot of him and a lot of Bobby too. And that’s how I first got to know him.
AM: What were your impressions of him?
PK: Oh, he was very bright, very lively, and very ___. I got to see a lot of him while I was his ambassador. He knew the ambassadors-- he was the best president. Everyone since Carter, have cheapened ambassadorships. The ambassadorships are for sale. None of his ambassadors were like that. They all knew the country they were ambassador of.
Kennedy made it clear to the countries to which the ambassadors were assigned that the ambassadors were his individual representatives and that they spoke on his behalf. And this is indicated in the Cuban Crisis, he did call up __+.
AM: Before the Cuban Missile Crisis there was the Bay of Pigs invasion. How do you think President Kennedy handled the Invasion of the Bay of Pigs? Obviously, it didn’t go as planned. Maletta 31
PK: He made a mistake and he knew it, he admitted it, and he made a wonderful remark,
“Defeat is an orphan, and victory has a thousand fathers.” Have you ever heard that before?
AM: No, I’ve never heard it before, but it’s… [Interrupted]
PK: After, the staff checked to see where it came from, they couldn’t find it. He made it up there, but it’s a wonderful remark. “Defeat is an orphan, and victory has a thousand fathers.” And he was brilliant in the Crisis, the Missile Crisis, and didn’t use the military—he wasn’t seduced by the military… very important. The military wanted to go in immediately and blow up Cuba.
AM: Probably not a good idea.
PK: No.
AM: Where were you when you heard about the Soviet Missiles in Cuba?
PK: I was in Africa.
AM: You were in Senegal? Maletta 32
PK: I remember wondering what it would be like if we were in Africa while the rest of the world was pulverized by nuclear weapons.
AM: How did you react when you first heard the news?
PK: Troubled, but sort of very engaged in achieving the President’s objective. I was very troubled.
AM: I can imagine. What was your most vivid memory of the Crisis?
PK: Well, the cable from the president, and his speech. I got to see the speech before he even read it to the American people. He very smartly sent the text to Senghor, needless to say I read it very carefully.
AM: So, as an ambassador… [Interrupted]
PK: I had some other dramatic moments, more personal.
AM: Oh. As an ambassador, what do you think of both Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s diplomacy during the crisis?
PK: I thought it was brilliant. And just imagine: you are dealing with the possibility that the world could be blown up—literally, with nuclear missiles. Maletta 33
END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE
BEGIN SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE
PK: Based on a book by one of my sons—our three sons3 have written fifteen books, and, based on the latest book by middle son called American Tragedy: JFK, LBJ, and the
Origins of the Vietnam War, he concluded that chances are Kennedy would never have gotten so involved. He believed this for several reasons, but one of the main reasons was his healthy skepticism about the military. I think most of his skepticism was reinforced by the Bay of Pigs disaster. And he didn’t take whatever they told him as gospel, which
LBJ unfortunately did. And we then avoided the disaster of Vietnam while Kennedy was president.
AM: Because he was so skeptical of the military?
PK: He had a healthy skepticism.
AM: Given your experience in foreign policy, are there any general observations you have about Kennedy’s foreign policy?
PK: Well, aside from the Bay of Pigs, it was pretty successful in the Missile Crisis, and a success in the testing agreement, where my old boss, Averell Harriman was a negotiator—wonderful guy. May I digress for a moment, about Harriman?
3 Philip Kaiser has three sons: Robert, David, and Charles Kaiser Maletta 34
AM: Of course.
PK: We owe Harriman a great, great debt, and he’s never gotten enough credit. This is a digression but, during the war against the Nazis, he was special ambassador to Prime
Minister Churchill. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, their armies were practically unopposed. They marched right through Poland, right through Western
Russia. And I remember I would say a majority of the people had in fact written them off, ___+ they were going to take over Russia. Roosevelt asked Harriman to fly to
Moscow to look around to give them an account of what the situation was really like. He went, on a mosquito airplane—that’s an airplane made entirely of wood that could fly very high above the battlefields. And he had to lie on his stomach, and he looked around and checked it out and said to the president, “If we give them land aid, I think, the Soviet army could stop them before they take Moscow.” And Roosevelt listened to him. And they put together that famous shipment, dozens of ships around to Mamoske, way up north, and there’s a memorial…you’ve never been to Moscow?
AM: No.
PK: There’s a memorial in Moscow at the furthest point that the Nazi army penetrated.
It was just at the entrance to the city of Moscow. And Harriman has never gotten enough credit. That’s a little aside. But getting back to Kennedy. I was very fond of Kennedy.
__+ he was loved by the third world. Africans adored him and Latinos adored him, and Maletta 35 for good reasons. He was very _, he related very well to them, probably an inspiration to him, so I saw a lot of young Africans he used to __+, unbeatable. Just very considerate, very interested in their views, sought their advice, just masterful, and genuine! I remember once, when I was home, he always received me, and I __ the day with politicians. And he said to me, “Tell me, Ambassador,” -- we always call one another ambassador. He said, “Tell me, Ambassador, what’s it like to be an ambassador in
Africa?” And he really meant it.
AM: Yes, you said in your book that he had a special fascination with Africa.
PK: No president since, to whom the third world felt that way. Truman was very good, but don’t let me get started on Truman [laughs], unless you want…
AM: I was doing a bunch of research on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and one thing that I found interesting while researching was that many historians believed that Kennedy’s choices during the Crisis were not made with American National Security in mind, but more with his own political image in mind. What do you make of that?
PK: The only thing I can tell you is the way he behaved during the Crisis. Who did he go to? He went to Dean Acheson4, he went to people of that type of character and quality, who really knew what foreign affairs is all about. There’s nobody more than
Acheson,—we were great friends. When you see my gallery, it’s the only picture I have
4 Dean Acheson was Secretary of State from 1949-1953 Maletta 36 of somebody I didn’t work for, was Dean Acheson. But he turned to experts; he had no ego problems about going to people. I don’t want to make any comparisons…
AM: [laughs]
PK: I don’t want to get you into trouble, maybe your teacher’s a Republican. I am not a
Republican!
AM: [laughs] Okay! I was researching historiography of the Cuban Missile Crisis and, I think his name is Thomas Sorenson, who was part of ExComm during the Cuban Missile
Crisis, and he and several other historians, such as Schlesinger and Hilsman, believed that
President Kennedy’s leadership in the crisis quote “led to a reduction in the tensions in the Cold War.”
PK: That’s right. That’s absolutely right. You should read the latest biography of
Kennedy, it’s very interesting. I have a copy of it here somewhere. He was a very high- powered historian. He’s written a very good biography of Lynden Johnson and it’s the first book that reveals Kennedy’s medical problems. He got access to the medical files.
AM: Who knew?
PK: I was briefing him once… Maletta 37
AM: Kennedy?
PK: Yes. I was ambassador of two countries; Senegal and Mauritania. Before the visit of the President of Mauritania, I had a briefing with Kennedy up in his living quarters. In the middle of the briefing, the pain was so great—he was sitting on a regular chair, he called for the butler and asked him to bring a rocking chair—it was more comfortable.
AM: I never knew that. The question that many historians argue over now is how well
President Kennedy handled the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I think you stated before that you believe that he was… [Interrupted]
PK: Oh, he was masterful. And with a big help from his brother. Bobby helped. He back-channeled with the Soviet Ambassador…
AM: Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?
PK: Just as I was saying. We had a, sort of informal line of communication. Bobby was a very interesting character. It was a great loss, he would have made a very good president. In my view—In my not-so-humble view.
AM: How would he have made a good president? Maletta 38
PK: Well, he was committed substantively. Kennedy was getting the president more and more involved in Civil Rights and so on. Bobby was really committed and passionate about what government could and should do. Functionally and ___+. Then he died. He had a flare; he had a wonderful flare that you couldn’t miss. We were very good friends, and it was a great loss, a very personal loss—a terrible tragedy. Although, Hubert
Humphrey was a great friend and he would have made a great president.
AM: Who is he?
PK: Hubert Humphrey? You don’t know who Hubert Humphrey is? He was a senator from Minnesota, and he was LBJ’s vice-president, and he was a great liberal. And at the
1948 convention, he made the famous speech about Civil Rights, and the southern delegation walked out. And there wasn’t a southern candidate in that election, 1948.
Hubert was vice-president to…
AM: Johnson.
PK: Right. Very brilliant, very articulate, a lovely, lovely guy. Should have been president, but lost to Nixon by…
AM: By a little bit? Maletta 39
PK: Very little. Died 1957—great tragedy. He was very smart, very knowledgeable, he wrote me a letter the day before he died. It said, “Phil, I owe you an apology on two accounts: one, I asked you to do me a favor, you did it, and I never thanked you. And number two, I never congratulated you on the return of the crown of St. Stephen.” But we’re getting far a-field.
AM: That’s alright. In retrospect, in U.S. foreign policy, do you feel that there were any missed opportunities?
PK: That’s a good question. You know I was Minister in London, in the embassy. And they were close, very, very, close—the relationship between Washington and London was very close, very congenial. The really missed opportunity was Vietnam.
AM: How so?
PK: And we almost had a deal with Vietnam. David Harman and Cyrus Vance negotiated—this was 1968, before the election—with the North Vietnamese, and they had whipped up as good a deal, if not better, than Kissinger worked out four years later, after thousands of lives were lost. And that really, was sabotaged. There was the Dragon
Lady. They got Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam, to let go all of the deal.
That was the most serious missed opportunity. It had to do with the election. Bush was involved, and Nixon was involved with the Dragon Lady in preventing ___+ incorporating the negotiation was right before the election. Maletta 40
AM: Who exactly is the Dragon Lady? I’ve never heard that term before.
PK: Who was she? She was a very sophisticated Chinese lady. She was a woman who had ties with the South Vietnamese government—.
AM: The South Vietnamese government?
PK: Yes. She plugged into the Nixon entourage. Good question, and, pardon my immodesty, a good answer [laughs]. We’re talking about tens of thousands of lives…
AM: Completely ruined. What do you think would have been different in the Cuban
Missile Crisis—how do you think the world would have played out… [Interrupted]
PK: Well, we were on the verge of dropping the atomic bomb. And you know what that means, what that symbolizes. We know from our own experience, what it did to those two cities. Around the time of the Missile Crisis, the bomb was more sophisticated. The first time I ever thought ___+ somebody has to appreciate it.
AM: What advice would you give our current foreign policy makers?
PK: I’d give them a very low grade! Maletta 41
AM: [laughs] Why so?
PK: Well, it was a result largely of Kennedy, that American world wide reputation was quite high. It’s never been more, in my lifetime—in the post World War II period. I wrote about it in my book. Have you read the whole book?
AM: Not the whole book.
PK: How far have you gotten? London?
AM: I’ve gotten to London, yes.
PK: Nowadays, we have never been more disliked around the world! We’ve destroyed our whole history of post relations. The Europeans can’t stand us! The British—Oh!
My friends in Britain, they’re appalled at the Labor Party declares in their relationship.
The Italians, Spaniards, all of them all over, the French. And look what’s going on in
Latin America. In my lifetime, it’s at the lowest that I ever saw the position of America, with respect of course, how the rest of the world feels about us. It’s a great tragedy. One of our great assets, used up.
AM: What would you do to change our foreign policy? Maletta 42
PK: That’s easy—I would elect another president! In the short-run, it would help if we then gained control of the Congress and get new chairmen of the committee’s __+.
AM: I know that you’ve written a lot of books, but if you were to write a high-school history book that included the Cuban Missile Crisis, what would you write about? What do you feel is most important, that people should know?
PK: Nothing that’s very complicated—Have you seen the movie about it?
AM: No, I have not.
PK: You should get it, I’m sure it’s on DVD. It doesn’t include me, but it’s a good movie, you should get it. The facts are very clear; very plain. We were on the verge of a nuclear disaster. But thanks to Kennedy’s confident statesmanship, it was avoided.
That’s not complicated. The story itself is complicated, but the issue itself isn’t, and the resolutions…thank God.
AM: Well, is there anything else you would like to mention that we haven’t talked about?
I would love to see some of your books and pictures if you have any.
PK: And I have pictures in the book, and some interesting letters there too. There’s one from Kennedy—I have one letter from Kennedy that I can’t find he wrote when the last Maletta 43 child died shortly after birth. --My favorite American… was not a president, he was
Adlai Stevenson5.
AM: Oh. Why was he your favorite?
PK: Well, he would always tell me, “I love Truman, __+.” And I could agree with him.
And he was very fond of Kennedy. There was something very nifty about Harry. You don’t use that word anymore; we used to use it a lot. There was no one more authentic than Harry Truman. Then, in the foreign policy, at its best, was under Truman, particularly the Marshall Plan and NATO. And the third world—he was very interested in Africa and the Marshall Plan. Changed the course of history. Before he took power, we were isolationists, until Truman. What are you, a junior now?
AM: I am a junior.
PK: Where do you want to go to college? Where are you thinking of?
AM: I’m thinking of New England colleges.
PK: Which ones?
AM: well, I want to apply to Bowdoin, Bates….
5 Adlai Stevenson was the Governor of Illinois from 1949-1953, and the Democratic Presidential candidate in the elections of 1952 and 1956. While in office, Kennedy elected him as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Maletta 44
END SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE
BEGIN SIDE ONE TAPE TWO
AM: Where did you go to school, and why was it such a good thing that you were turned down from Harvard?
PK: Well, I went to Wisconsin, met my wife there. I got a Rhodes scholarship from
Wisconsin. I’m not sure I could have gotten in if they didn’t. It’s very competitive.
AM: Yes, it is.
PK: We had Wisconsin, Northwestern—it was a tough league. And Wisconsin was ten times more interesting than Harvard. It was the most liberal university in America. It was a very, very exciting place.
AM: How did you transfer from Wisconsin to Oxford?
PK: I got a Rhodes scholarship. And luckily I was admitted. Most scholars list the colleges they were accepted by. Oxford had a collegic system. Each college had its own
__ and were brought together by one exam at the end. And I fortunately was admitted to the outstanding Oxford College. Maletta 45
AM: Well, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
PK: You’re welcome. I hope it was helpful. Maletta 46
Interview Analysis
As oral historian Studs Terkel writes, “Oral history brings alive a past that the written word fails to capture”. Oral history is the purest form of documenting the past; it is the study of the past through a witness who had a first-hand experience with history in the making. According to the author Donald A. Ritchie, an oral history interview, such as that of Ambassador Philip M. Kaiser, “collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews…memory is the core of oral history” (17). An interviewee’s memory is the key to this type of history, whereas other types do not rely on direct witnesses. Oral history gives specific detail and emotion that cannot be found in a textbook; it gives a first hand account of the event in specific detail and with emotion that makes it more personal than a book. However, sometimes the interviewee may give uncertain details because his or her memory has become altered in some way. The interviewee may also have biases or other generalizations that he or she incorporated into the interview, which alters the information given. Nevertheless, oral history gives a more personal insight into the past and gives a more accurate description of events. Therefore, in spite of some faults in oral history as a whole, the oral history interview of Mr. Philip Kaiser reveals an important perspective of an American ambassador outside the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis and his views about American foreign policy during the Cold War period.
Through Mr. Kaiser’s memories and perspectives, historians will be better able to reevaluate the occurrences and the truths about the Cuban Missile Crisis. After discussing his childhood, Mr. Kaiser spoke about his relationship with Mr. Senghor who was president of Senegal during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as explaining the idea Maletta 47 that if Senegal had allowed Soviet planes to refuel in their airport, the Soviets would have been able to send missiles to Cuba much more easily and efficiently. When he heard about the Soviet missiles in Cuba, Mr. Kaiser remembered, “wondering what it would be like if we were in Africa while the rest of the world was pulverized by nuclear weapons…I was very troubled” (Maletta 32). Mr. Kaiser did indeed have a close relationship with both President Kennedy and President Senghor and was the chief correspondent between the two during the Crisis. He told President Senghor, while he was debating letting the Soviets use the Senegalese airport that, “President Kennedy will never forgive you if you…don’t deny your airport (Maletta 26). As seen through his memories of his relationships with the two presidents, Mr. Kaiser played a key role in preventing more Soviet missiles from being shipped to Cuba. He also discussed why he thought the Bay of Pigs invasion was a failure and how he felt President Kennedy handled the foreign policy during that time. Mr. Kaiser, having had personal experience in the foreign policy, thought that president Kennedy handled the situation the best way possible, therefore giving historians an insight on the effectiveness of Kennedy’s foreign policy and diplomacy during his administration.
Mr. Kaiser also provided context on the return of the crown of St. Stephen to the
Hungarian government during the Kennedy administration. Although not directly linked to the Cuban Missile Crisis, his account of the event displayed how important Mr. Kaiser believed foreign policy was and still is. Through his personal relationship with President
Kennedy as well as Kennedy’s brother, Robert, Mr. Kaiser gave an inside perspective on who the men actually were as people, not politicians. He talked about their personalities outside of the White House and outside of the Crisis. He described what Kennedy was Maletta 48 like as a person, not just a president. Through the oral history interview of Mr. Kaiser, historians can re-examine both the Cuban Missile Crisis as a whole as well as President
Kennedy as a person and how he dealt with the situation at hand.
Although Mr. Kaiser gave only a one-sided perspective on the Cuban Missile
Crisis, his interview gave a valuable personal account of the events leading up to and within the Cuban Missile Crisis that took place outside of the United States as well as inside. His information helped to explain why the United States government chose the decisions they did and why the Cuban Missile Crisis led the world so close to a nuclear war.
Looking back on the Cuban Missile Crisis, historians still debate on how well
President Kennedy handled the Cuban Missile Crisis and how his foreign policy affected it. Some historians such as Medland and Berstein, believe that Kennedy rejected diplomacy, choosing rather personal confrontation through private negotiation (Medland
473). However, other historians such as Garthoff, believed that Kennedy managed the situation to the best of his ability and ultimately decreased Cold War tensions with the
Soviet Russia (Garthoff). As he indicated in his interview, Mr. Kaiser agrees with
Garthoff and believes that Kennedy was “masterful” (Maletta 37). He disagreed with the idea that Kennedy made decisions with his own interests in mind and stated, “The only thing I can tell you is the way he behaved during the Crisis. Who did he go to? He went to Dean Acheson, he went to people of that type of character and quality, who really knew what foreign affairs is all about… he turned to experts; he had no ego problems about going to people” (Maletta 36-37). Mr. Kaiser, due to his personal relationship with
President Kennedy, believed that his decisions were with the country’s wellbeing in Maletta 49 mind. Mr. Kaiser’s oral history interview provided important information as to how the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis developed and provided an opinion from an ambassador as to how well Kennedy’s foreign policy and diplomacy were managed during the stressful thirteen days. Mr. Kaiser’s memories and opinions shed light on who the people involved in the crisis really were, and what actually happened during the
Cuban Missile Crisis.
Despite the weaknesses within the oral history of Philip Kaiser, this oral history used as a source can teach valuable lessons and offer information and perspectives on the
Cuban Missile Crisis and the people involved in it. The creation and documentation of
Mr. Kaiser’s oral history can educate its readers on the importance of analyzing an oral history the same way one would analyze traditional forms of history. The most significant contribution that this oral history makes to the education of readers is that Mr.
Kaiser provides an in-depth view of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the political leaders behind it. Through his ideas and perspectives, Mr. Kaiser demonstrates the importance that oral history can make in discovering the truth about a historical event. Maletta 50
Time Index Log
Recording Format: Cassette
Minute Mark:
Side One, Tape One
0min: Childhood, school
5min: Childhood, summer camps
10min: Entering the State Department
15min: President Leopold Senghor and President Kennedy
20min: the return of the Crown of St. Stephen
25min: Meeting President Kennedy
30min: The Bay of Pigs Invasion
Side Two, Tape One
35min: Kennedy’s Diplomacy
40min: W. Averell Harriman
45min: Kennedy and Africa
50min: Historiography of Kennedy’s Diplomacy
55min: Robert Kennedy
60min: Vietnam: The Missed Opportunity
65min: Current Foreign Policy Makers and Dean Acheson
Side One, Tape Two
70min: College Maletta 51
Appendix I
The Bay of Pigs Invasion Plan www.parascope.com/ articles/1296/invasmap.gif Maletta 52
Appendix II
Kennedy’s Letter To Khrushchev Maletta 53
Appendix III
Leopold Senghor; President of Senegal Maletta 54
Appendix IV
Russia’s Sputnik; the first satellite to orbit the earth Maletta 55
Works Consulted
Baldwin, Hanson W. “The Soviet Challenge: Khrushchev’s Build-Up of Missile Bases in Cuba Is An Attempt to Neutralize Our Superior Power.” The New York Times, 1962.
Baldwin, Hanson W. “The U.S. Response: Kennedy’s Blockade of Cuba Is an Effort to Show Khrushchev That Status Quo Can’t be Altered.” The New York Times, 1962.
Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Kaiser, Philip M. Journeying Far and Wide: A Political and Diplomatic Memoir. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1992.
Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1969.
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