109. Editorial Note

On March 25, 1963, at 12:15 p.m., Director of Central Intelligence McCone met with President Kennedy and raised a number of issues. A memorandum of conversation prepared by Bundy, who was also present, includes the following item:

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“The Director reported he was very dissatisfied with the reports of the Killian Board [i.e., the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which Killian was Chairman]. He felt that these reports and recommendations very often covered proposals or policy which he himself had earlier described to the Killian Board so that in a sense they provide a misleading record which might leak and be very damaging to the CIA. The President replied that he thought the Board’s record of discretion was excellent, that any report would be filed with the answer of the Director or the affected agency, and that he thought that in this area the advice of an independent group of observers was invaluable. He thought it best that the Board should continue. He told the Director that Dr. Killian had asked for relief, and it was agreed that we should see what happens under new leadership before making any changes.” (Memorandum of conversation with the President, March 25; Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Bundy Memoranda to President, 3/63–4/63)

McCone’s record of this conversation included the following: “The President advised McCone in confidence that Dr. Killian had submitted his resignation as Chairman of the Advisory Board for health reasons and this resignation would be accepted as soon as a replacement could be found. The President suggested, and Bundy later reaffirmed, that the recommendations should be answered by the DCI and he should feel free to point out in his answers that there are subjects upon which the Board made recommendations, which had been discussed with the Board, and the DCI in these discussions had indicated actions which the intelligence community, CIA and DCI had initiated.” In a note, McCone wrote: “Bundy later asked DCI for recommendations. McCone suggested that when the change takes place, terms of reference for the Board should be reviewed and perhaps modified so that the Board could constructively assist the intelligence community and the entire intelligence portion of the Government as they had in the past, but would not assume quite as much operational responsibility as they had in the past.” (Central Intelligence Agency, DCI (McCone) Files, Job 80–B01285A, Meetings with the President, 1/1/63–3/31/63)