JFK: A President Betrayed

1960s, many Americans feared that the Soviet union was

planning a surprise nuclear attack on the United States.

What they didn't know was that their own government

was considering launching nuclear weapons against

nuclear weapons against the Soviet union first.

High-ranking officials including

the chairman of the joint chiefs

of staff presented a plan for a nuclear first strike

for a nuclear first strike to President John F. Kennedy.

No official record of its content was found

of its content was found until 1993.

Held at a time when Kennedy was receiving very belligerent

advice from some senior advisors.

A memorandum was prepared for vice president Johnson

summarizing the sequence of discussion at the meeting

and that memorandum was declassified in 1993.

Until we had the burris memorandum, we didn't have

a narrative account of what was said.

President Kennedy was being presented with a scenario for

launching a pre-emptive surprise

attack by the United States on the Soviet union.

The Soviets were lagging behind in the nuclear

arms race, and top U.S. military officials

suggested a nuclear first strike might be the best option

before they caught up. The United States had b-52s

circling the Soviet union in the air on a rotation basis.

Each one of the bombs that one b-52 carried had many

times the firepower of one Hiroshima.

You also have to remember there were fixed missiles,

and there were missiles in submarines.

The plan suggested a surprise

attack in late 1963. The cost would be catastrophic.

In a full-scale nuclear exchange

an estimated 300 million people would die.

Faced with the horror of nuclear

fallout including cancer, leukemia, and birth defects,

the survivors would envy the dead.

It's very hard to imagine that any significant

organized human society would have survived.

This is a question of whether human life, in any civilized

form, is going to survive at all.

Secretary of state Dean rusk wrote in his memoir that

as they left the meeting, Kennedy said to him in

disparaging tones, "and we call ourselves"

the human race". Kennedy had an entirely

different view about the strategic future.

It's, I think, very clear that this meeting intensified

for him the sense of danger that a war might be unleashed

in circumstances that he might not be fully in

might not be fully in control of.

Lives under a nuclear sort of damocles, hanging by the

slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any

moment, by action, or miscalculation,

or by madness. The weapons of war must be

abolished, before they abolish us.

In 1961, the United States was engaged in a protracted

cold war with the Soviet union, red China,

red China, and the communist bloc.

Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight d. Eisenhower

had tried to contain communism then roll it back.

But Soviet premiere nikita khrushchev

nikita khrushchev remained defiant.

Escalating the production of nuclear weapons,

confrontation between the superpowers in Cuba, Berlin,

and Vietnam threatened to turn the cold war hot.

It was into these circumstances that John F. Kennedy,

at the age of 43, was elected the 35th president

was elected the 35th president of the United States.

January 19, 1961 was a remarkable one.

There was the oldest president in the history of the.

United States, age 70, Dwight d. Eisenhower,

sitting down with the youngest president ever

to be elected, John F. Kennedy, the day before

his inauguration, and sharing with him the most

intimate conversation a president those days

could have, which is:

What do you do if it comes to making a decision about

nuclear use? He opens up the satchel

in which the computer-like device is in that's known

device is in that's known as a "nuclear football".

U.S. strategic air command, has started round-the-clock

bomber protection of the United States against

a potential nuclear attack by the Soviets.

Eisenhower says what he wants Kennedy to know about

khrushchev is, "he's brutal, incalculable;

he's gonna run hot and cold on you."

It struck Kennedy that eisenhower was referring

to the Soviets more as animals to be tamed rather than

to be tamed rather than negotiating partners.

There at inauguration day. Oh, boy, it was cold.

I remember he said, "we must never negotiate out of fear."

Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never

fear to negotiate.

But then he went on to say, "but we must never fear

to negotiate, " and I said, " uh oh.

There's something new. We've just turned,

"we've just turned, turned the page."

President born in the 20th century, inspired a youthful

generation eager for fresh leadership.

There was a feeling at the beginning of the Kennedy

administration that a new era had begun.

John F. Kennedy came promising a new frontier.

It was going to be a time of endless opportunity.

And to be part of that era was one of the great honors

of one's life. I'll never forget the first

time I walked into the white house to see my old

friend Ken O'Donnell, who was president Kennedy's

appointment secretary. We just looked at each other

and burst out laughing. You know, what are people like

you know, what are people like us doing in a place like this?

Of the Kennedy white house. I had graduated from college...

Last. Everybody was very excited.

We knew we were making history. We were ready to go.

I traveled everywhere with him.

He was such an exciting man, but also one

but also one of great principle.

Council, and I was assistant special council.

It was just perfectly obvious the guy had a first-rate mind,

and he knew how to use it. For example taking

Arthur schlesinger, the most renowned

historian in the country and making him a special

assistant to the president in the white house so that

the president had reference to a historian who could put

events in perspective. Jfk pulled dad aside

and said, "Bobby tells me that you're gonna come work"

in the white house." And dad said, "well, obviously

as a historian it's a great opportunity, I'm very excited

"about it, but I really don't know what I'll be doing."

And Kennedy said, "well, I don't know what I will be doing"

either, but I'm sure there will be plenty of work

for both of us." During the Kennedy years,

I was a correspondent assigned to John Kennedy for the

1960 campaign. I went with him into the

white house because I had already been covering

eisenhower at the white house. Kennedy was a force

in this town... Well-versed on foreign policy

well-versed on foreign policy and very articulate.

Presidency, Kennedy knew it was important to fully

assess his cold war adversary, nikita khrushchev.

Advisers had warned him that the

hot-tempered Soviet leader would use threats and

intimidation to impose his will.

To impose his will.

Khrushchev's words and actions, Kennedy hoped to gain a true

Kennedy hoped to gain a true measure of the man.

Wasn't even home from his inaugural day

parties when khrushchev decided to shower him

to shower him with conciliation.

He decided to publish the entire inaugural speech.

Then he was ready to release two captured airmen from the

reconnaissance plane that had been shot down the previous

August. He'd been holding these airmen

so as not to help vice president

Nixon in his campaign against Kennedy.

And this was now going to be his inaugural gift.

Thereafter, he also made known that 500 elderly Soviets

would be able to reunite with their families in the U.S.

Khrushchev is essentially saying,

"we want a new start. We have great hopes in

this relationship. We really are going to work

very early in your administration for some

administration for some breakthroughs."

Weltgeschichte mit seinem schuh eingegangen.

Improve relations

with United States. First of all,

he was a reformer because he really started reformation

of Russia when he came to the power after the Stalin day.

And secondly, my father was in two wars,

and he even could not watch movie about the war because

it came back in his memory what really happened,

and he could not sleep after this, so he want to show

to the new president his positive feelings

his positive feelings toward the United States.

Gestures appeared to signal a desire for a new beginning,

Kennedy placed greater emphasis on an inflammatory speech

the Soviet leader had given only a few weeks earlier.

In it, khrushchev had said he intended to beat

the United States with "small wars of liberation"

all over the world. Chairman khrushchev threw

world by essentially arguing

policy now increasingly

would be to support national independence movements where

the super powers both essentially tried to gain

influence. Kennedy was really quite upset

about this speech, and he gave the text of this speech to all

of his advisors and said, "you need to read this."

Kennedy ends up carrying this

speech around in his pocket, and he pulls it out

with experts in his new administration, and

he reads from the speech he's so obsessed with the

message that khrushchev is trying to send him.

In a dramatic shift in tone, Kennedy used tough language

to confront the Soviet threat, and at his first

state of the union address, he announced his intention

to accelerate U.S. missile and submarine production.

Each day, we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger

as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger.

I feel I must inform the congress that our analysis

over the last ten days make it clear that in each

of the principle areas of crisis, the tide of events