95. Editorial Note
On June 26, 1962, Walt W. Rostow and George W. Ball testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with respect to their work on the Department of State drafts of “Basic National Security Policy.” This testimony was occasioned by a series of news accounts of the drafts, especially two articles by Willard Edwards that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on June 17-18. Edwards stated that the main theme of the paper was that Soviet domestic and foreign policies were “mellowing,” but that military and intelligence officials who had seen the draft believed that it adduced no evidence to support this assertion.
In his testimony, Rostow stated that “mellowing” was “not a word of my choice” and that although there were significant changes in the Soviet Union which held a long-term hope of liberalization they did “not affect current policy.” They might “in the long run, as Secretary Dulles used to point out,” but meanwhile there were dangerous confrontations in Berlin, South Vietnam, and Laos. Rostow then gave extensive testimony on his views on a wide range of foreign policy and national security topics.
Members of the Committee requested copies of the current draft, but Ball refused on the ground that it was a document “under the control of the National Security Council,” and therefore any such request would have to be made directly to the President. On July 3, Rusk stated before the Committee that he would ask the President about possible publication of Rostow’s testimony given on June 26. Edwards’ articles, the testimony of Ball and Rostow, and Rusk’s remarks are all printed in Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Together With Joint Sessions With the Senate Armed Services Committee (Historical Series), Volume XIV, Eighty-seventh Congress, Second Session, 1962 (Washington, 1986), pages 551-611, 615.
The term “a certain mellowing,” used with regard to liberalizing trends in the Soviet Union, occurs in both the March 26 and May 7 drafts of “Basic National Security Policy,” but is dropped in the draft of June 22. See Documents 70 and 93.
At his press conference on June 27, President Kennedy was asked whether he had assigned the writing of the paper to Rostow “or did he just undertake it on his own to interpret policies of the Government?” Kennedy stated that “we have in the National Security Council voluminous papers from the Fifties which are the general guide of policy lines in the United States. But there have been a good many changes since the nineteen-fifties.” He continued: “We are examining to see guerilla warfare, anti-insurgency, what should be our military policy in it, what should be our force levels. These are matters which both the State Department and the Department of Defense are examining and will [Page 332] come through to the National Security Council and to see whether there should be any changes in the policies that we laid down—were laid down in the nineteen-fifties.” He concluded: “I have not studied the paper; the Secretary of State has it. But Mr. Rostow is acting under instructions and acting very responsibly.” (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962, pages 509-517) See also Document 70 and Walt W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power: An Essay in Recent History (New York: Macmillan, 1972), pages 174-176 and 645-646.