First Oral History Interview
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Carl Kaysen Oral History Interview – JFK #1, 7/11/1966 Administrative Information Creator: Carl Kaysen Interviewer: Joseph E. O’Connor Date of Interview: July 11, 1966 Place of Interview: Cambridge, MA Length: 106 pp. Biographical Note Kaysen was a professor at Harvard University (1946-1966); Deputy Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1961-1963); and director at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1966-1976). In this interview Kaysen discusses his role as Deputy Special Assistant, strategic retaliatory forces and retaliatory missile defense, the Congo, Civil Defense, balance of payments, and the Basic National Security Policy [BNSP], among other issues. Access Restrictions No restrictions. Usage Restrictions According to the deed of gift signed May 5, 1992, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. Users of these materials are advised to determine the copyright status of any document from which they wish to publish. Copyright The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excesses of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. The copyright law extends its protection to unpublished works from the moment of creation in a tangible form. Direct your questions concerning copyright to the reference staff. 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 Carl Kaysen, recorded interview by Joseph E. O’Connor, July 11, 1966, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program. Carl Kaysen JFK #1 Table of Contents Page Topic 1 Kaysen’s relationship with John F. Kennedy 3 Kaysen’s role as Deputy Special Assistant 6 Russian missile strength 11 Strategic retaliatory forces 16 Central Intelligence Agency’s [CIA] relationship with the National Security staff 19 Retaliatory missile defense 27 Staff system during the Kennedy Administration 32 Preparing for press conferences 37 The President’s schedule 43 The Congo 53 The McGhee mission 61 Civil Defense 68 Balance of payments 71 C. Douglas Dillon and Robert Roosa’s role in regards to international monetary policy 96 The Clay Report 99 Basic National Security Policy [BNSP] 102 Okinawa First Oral History Interview With CARL KAYSEN July 11, 1966 By Joseph E. O’Connor For the John F. Kennedy Library O’CONNOR: Mr. Kaysen, when did you first get to know John Kennedy [John F. Kennedy]? KAYSEN: I met him several times during the period when he was a senator. Once or twice he appeared at, talked to a meeting of the ADA [Americans for Democratic Action] and I met him then. I met him around here because he was an overseer. But on none of these occasions was it more than a casual acquaintance. In ’59 when then Senator Kennedy decided he was going to start running [-1-] for president in some overt way. Ted Sorensen [Theodore C. Sorensen], among other people, started to organize discussion groups in the academic community. The purpose of these groups was to prepare papers on various subjects. I at that time got involved in a group here. The group met with Sorensen a number of times; and had telephone conversations with him; produced papers on various subjects. This group had two meetings at which Senator Kennedy came. And I do remember very vividly one of them. This took place at a luncheon at the Harvard Club on a Sunday. There were about fifteen or sixteen people present. Each of us was asked to speak for three or four minutes on what he thought was the most important problem in his area and suggestions as to what views the Senator might take on it. The group covered everything from people talking [-2-] about conservation to people talking about the nuclear test ban treaty. All of us were absolutely tremendously impressed with the speed at which Kennedy picked up whatever was said and the penetrating quality of the questions he asked. I was going to leave in ’59 or ’60 – went away, abroad – so that I didn’t get involved in the campaign effort as many of my friends and colleagues did. I really had no further contact with the Senator, president-elect and President until I went to Washington. I went to Washington primarily because Bundy [McGeorge Bundy], whom I knew very well and had known well for fifteen or sixteen years asked me to come and work with him. When I did come to Washington and as soon as I came down here in fact, I was introduced or re-introduced to the President, and we discussed a little of what I [-3-] was going to do with him. O’CONNOR: What you did, essentially, I guess was Bundy’s choice rather than the President’s. KAYSEN: Well, I think, to put it in a little perspective, I started out working on problems that Bundy thought I could do something about that were important. But as I stayed there I got into some independent relations with the President, and I would say – let’s say December ’61 when I actually go the title of Deputy Special Assistant – I was really working for Bundy. By a year later I was working for the President and there were a variety of issues on which I would deal with him directly and keep Bundy informed. This was fairly typical of the White House staff organization in that there wasn’t a strict line organization. People dealt with each other as they thought the business at hand required. It was perfectly clear that [-4-] in a variety of different ways Bundy, Sorensen, O’Brien [Lawrence F. O’Brien] were more senior than other people, but this didn’t prevent people from sort of saying what they thought. It was relatively easy to talk to the President. It was perfectly easy to give him pieces of paper which he, you know, would look at if he were interested and tell Evelyn [Evelyn N. Lincoln] to throw away if he weren’t. O’CONNOR: People have talked a number of times about the advantages of this sort of informal atmosphere and how it encourages freer discussion, freer advice. Do you see any disadvantages? I’ve heard one in particular. There was a break in the communications between the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], or at least the CIA intelligence machinery, and the National Security staff during most of 1961. Would you agree with that? KAYSEN: Well, I probably would be in a poor position [-5-] to speak about that. I didn’t have too much to do with the CIA and CIA problems during 1961 except for one area, in which I worked very deeply. And that as the question of our estimates of Russian missile strength. I got extremely deeply into that because one of the things that I did – and I did it each of the three years in which the President was in office, including the very last year – was to prepare a comment on the key items in the military budget submission. The Secretary of Defense prepared a series of memoranda for the President on the major items in the military budget. The first memorandum, usually in some ways the most important one, was on the strategic retaliatory force. In ’62 for example, there was a memorandum on the problem of the anti-missile missiles which was very important. There was a memorandum in ‘61but it didn’t have the [-6-] same significance. At one point there was a memorandum, I guess it was ’63, on carrier task forces and nuclear powered carriers. But in general these things came over. The procedure for discussion of these memoranda was something like this. Three sets of people in the White House staff dealt with it but very closely. One was Bundy, and I was the man who dealt with him. The other was Wiesner [Jerome B. Wiesner] and Wiesner and an assistant of his named Spurgeon Keeny dealt with him. The third was the Budget, and this was done first by Dave Bell [David E. Bell] and then by Kermit Gordon, and in particular by a staff man in the military – the head of the military section of the Bureau of the Budget – Willis Shapley. And when the memorandum first came over Keeny, Wiesner, Schapley – thank you – would talk about them. [-7-] And we would talk about them not only among ourselves, but with Alain Enthoven in the Pentagon, who usually was one of the major drafters of them, with Adam Yarmolinsky, with Charlie Hitch [Charles J. Hitch], occasionally, when it was relevant, with Harold Brown, from the army.