For the second time in a month, LBJ talked of a supposed leak of a letter from the Joint Chiefs to Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis that found its way to Khrushchev. In his previous conversation, he relayed the story to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had not been there. This time, he discussed it in more detail–and explains where he got the story from–with someone who was there: National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy.

Not for the first or last time, LBJ was frustrated with Senator J. William Fulbright’s anti-Vietnam War stance. In televised committee hearings, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman criticized the administration’s Vietnam policy and pointed to the example of the Cuban missile crisis as a case when a moderate approach was successful. Arguing that a withdrawal from Vietnam would not have the dire consequences the administration claimed, Fulbright said:

This country is much too strong, in my opinion, that it would suffer any great setback. We are much stronger than Russia was when she withdrew from Cuba. Within a week maybe people said she had had a rebuff and within a month everyone was complimenting them for having contributed to the maintenance of peace.

We are certainly strong enough and decent enough and good enough in every respect to withstand any kind of compromise that is at all reasonable.{{1}}

Another person who irritated LBJ–even more than Fulbright did–had also weighed in on the Cuban missile crisis analogy in recent days. Robert Kennedy pointed to his brother’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis as a model for what should be done in Vietnam. That crisis was solved, Kennedy said at a press conference on February 20, 1966, because his brother focused on removing the missiles, not humiliating the adversary. That approach, Kennedy argued, should be applied to Vietnam to create a compromise Saigon government in which Communists shared power.{{2}}

In terms of the “leak” LBJ mentions, and his implication that it was both unauthorized and undesirable, he may have been missing the point. As Bundy seems to try to point out, the Kennedy administration had used the threat of invasion directly with the Soviets precisely in the hope they would back down before it became necessary. Robert Kennedy, in his secret meetings with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, had even explicitly told Dobrynin that the President was finding it increasingly difficult to resist the pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for military action against Cuba.

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In characterizing Fulbright’s views during the Cuban missile crisis, LBJ was quite correct. LBJ had been present at an October 22, 1962, meeting, convened just 90 minutes before President Kennedy’s speech to the nation announcing the blockade of Cuba, when Fulbright had argued emphatically against a blockade and for a military invasion. (That exchange was caught on tape, and you can listen to it here.)

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Source Tape: WH6602-07-9655, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

[[1]]John A. Goldsmith, “Rusk Rejects Limit on War Involvement,” Washington Post, 19 February 1966, p.A1.[[1]]
[[2]]Robert E. Thompson, “Bob Kennedy Urges Share for Reds in Saigon Regime,” Los Angeles Times, 20 February 1966, p.1.[[2]]