Office of the Historian

134. Letter From the British Ambassador (Ormsby Gore) to Secretary of State Rusk0

Washington, February 26, 1962.

Dear Dean: I think it may be useful to you if I send you the exact wording of the telegram I sent to the Foreign Secretary on February 21, recording my telephone conversation with the President on the previous day.

Yours ever

David
[Page 326]

Attachment

February 21, 1962.

The President telephoned me yesterday to say that he had planned to hold a meeting of the National Security Council at the end of this week in order to reach a final decision on atmospheric tests. An announcement would then have been made on March 1 with the idea of starting tests on April 1.

2.
The President told me that on consideration he was not happy with this timetable and, after discussing various alternatives with me, he thought that it would be wiser to make no announcement at the present time other than confirmation that preparations were going ahead as rapidly as possible. In addition he thought that April 1 was too soon after the opening of the Disarmament Conference and that the West would inevitably be accused of not allowing sufficient time for the Soviet Union to show whether their participation in the Conference was genuinely in good faith.
3.
He therefore thought that the target date for the first atmospheric tests should now be postponed to April 15.
4.
Finally, the President told me most emphatically that the one thing he was determined to avoid was to get tied down by language which specifically linked progress in the talks with a decision on testing. This would inevitably lead to tremendous pressures on the Administration and he hoped very much that we would bear this consideration in mind in any statements we might make in Parliament or elsewhere.
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Nuclear Weapons Tests 2/17/62-4/4/62. Top Secret; Limit Distribution.↩