HW 53217 The Days of JFK Huntington D. Sheldon has provided an account of the current intelligence relationship with the White House during the first year and a half of the administration of John F. Kennedy. Within two weeks of the inauguration in 1961, Allen Dulles invited the new President to come to the Agency and listen to its officials explain how they thought they could help him. All the members of the Director's executive group were called upon to prepare brief statements of their functions and the practical uses thereof from the standpoint of the White House. Sheldon was present to out- line the situation with respect to current intelligence. He explained what the publications were and, in general, what the strengths and weaknesses of substantive intelligence were in various areas. He asked how the President wished the Agency to serve him in this particular field. Kennedy responded that he would like to have the publt- cations available to him. He designated his military aide, Brig. Gen. Chester V. Clifton, who was present at the meeting, to be the contact for current intelligence, and said that Clifton would let the Agency kndéw in a few days just how he a3 DoclId: 327401317 Page 2?
HW 53217 would like things handled on a daily basis. It developed that the best method would be for Sheldon to take the pub- lications and other papers directly to the White House every day and maintain close contact with the President's aides. Consequently, every day at 8:30 Sheldon would present his pass at the White House and proceed to the office of Bromley Smith, who had succeeded Jimmy Lay as Executive on ch Lit flew the vest Wine Secretary of the NSC. Smith's office,was’ the central point to: which intelligence from all sources was directed. Gen. Clifton's office, as is usually the case with military aides, was in the East wing of the White House, but Clifton did not keep highly classified material there. Instead he had a safe in Bromley Smith's office, where Sheldon would meet him whether Smith was there or not. Each day Sheldon and Clifton would go over the Central Intelligence Bulletin, usually marking the most important - items with a red pencil, and Sheldon would deal with any questions Clifton had. Clifton would usually hand back the previous day's CIB with any comments he felt appropriate. Sheldon also brought ts Clifton sensitive cables and other documents he thought the President might want to see, as well as photographs, charts, and maps in some cases. This | DoclId: 327401317 Page 3
turnea out to be the sort of service Kennedy wanted. Normally, | it was. Gen. PhS materiel to the Presiceent. ishec@ an International ) Situation Rocr, equipped with nress services tickers. Tt was a) the resvensibility of the OCT Watch Office, under a Senior 1 | Intelligence Puty Officer, to call the White Fouse Situation | Rocm te make sure it was aware of major news develooments, | he White Ucuse to imoorteant classified informa- t and to-alert tion thet might have to be passed to the President. hy @ President's Snecial Assistant for Naticnal Security ty Affairs, McGeorge Bundy, also had his office next to Bromley Smith's. Frecuently Cen. Maxwell Tavlor, the President's special adviscr on rilitary affairs, would he in Smith's or Bundy's office. Cheldon useé to take at least four conies of OCI's publications so that all those interested in intellicence would be taken care of. Gen. Tavlor was also a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Poard. Eecause Fennedy did net vlace as much emphasis on the - NSC machinery as Hisenhower had, Allen Rulles had few onror- tunities tc vresent intelliaence briefines to the Council. | Uowever, when he felt that there were items af varticular Significance that the President should see, Dulles would prepare memoranda and take them versonally to the President. He would onerate in this way also when he wanted to bring >. certain estimates to the President's attenticn.- 6 F h L I i ; SECRET HW 53217 DBoclId:32401317 Page 4
sore eet meal Then came the Bay of Pigs in April. Two or three days after the fiasco, Sheldon was at the White House delivering the publications when Gen. Clifton suggested that they go back to his office in the East wing and have a private dis- cussion. He advised Sheldon of the President's reluctance to carry on receiving intelligence in the normal way. Clifton hinted that there was deep-seated resentment, not necessarily against the Agency as a whole, but against cer- tain elements in the Agency as a result of the Bay of Pigs. q Clifton said in effect that it would be necessary to come up with some entirely different ways of operating if he and CIA were to rekindle the President's interest and re- main useful in bringing intelligence to him every day. He suggested that there would have to be a publication with a completely new format for the President only. It could be more broadly based than the groundrules -had permitted in the 4 past. The implication was that the publication could carry not only intelligence, strictly defined, but things the - President might like to be reminded of and wish to take action on. Clifton stressed that whatever OCI came up with would * have to be short and punchy, and written in a sophisticated - way. Sheldon said he would go back to the office, mull this ~ ss) . Nan HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 5
HW 53217 over, and see what could be done. Clifton added he wanted this matter kept on a confidential basis. There was no point at this stage in the DCI's getting into any discussions with the President; that would be counterproductive. Sheldon said he would continue to bring down the regular publications for the benefit of those, other than the President, who had been seeing them; Gen. Clifton assented. Sheldon was obviously in a peculiar position vis a vis the Director and other senior officers in the Agency. He asked for, and obtained, a private session with Dulies and told him how things stood. Dulles reacted in a calm and helpful manner. "I think he appreciated that at least some lifeline to the White House was highly desirable from the point of view of the Agency." Dulles did not say that he wanted to review whatever Sheldon might take to the White House. In effect, he gave Sheldon a free hand to do what he could to be helpful. Sheldon expressed appreciation for the Director's confidence in him and said that he would report, any problems the Director should be aware of. With Dulles's blessing, Sheldon set out to develop a mechanism that would put the Agency back in the graces of “« the White House. He and a few senior officers in OCI put DoclId: 327401317 Page 6 PD OUTENT TA
know you could get this kind of information," because the individuals were quite sophisticated in terms of intelligence capabilities. They had a pretty good knowledge of what.could be obtained by intercept, they knew, of course, the quality of photography from overhead vehicles, they knew how difficult it was to get important information by clandestine means, so they were pretty well on the ball in terms of what they might expect to get, and what they actually got matched up pretty well. I don't think we ever bowled them over by producing something about which they would say, "My heavens, this is really a coup. 2 2: Where the dickens did you get this from?" " | - Occasionally OCI put a little humor into the PICL, a difficult thing to do. The PICL was supposed to inform and stimulate, and it served those purposes well. In Sheldon's view, the - In the early months of the PICL enterprise, Sheldon him- self went to the White House for the meeting with the - President's aides, usually at 8:30. He was accompanied by the analyst whe had come in very early in the morning to write the PICL. Eventually the analyst went alone. From the beginning he would put a brief account of the morning's transactions into the log kept by the staff. A typical entry is the following under the date of 20 July 1961: Sheldon and Lehman .to WH at 0830 (seven minutes late because of Bizerte item and general confusion). Clifton.and Taylor read book. Much interest in Brown cable. De- livered also Djakarta 111 (Pope case). JFK greatly concerned over ECM note, charged HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 12 | i 1 i
Taylor with looking into it. Taylor callee@ Sheldon, who arranged for Taylor to get same USAF briefing as Watch Com- mittee. 23% , Perusal of the log turns up points of particular interest. The 27 June issue was “fully read, generated mech policy action." For the Fourth of July holiday, the President was at his home in Hyannis Port. On the 3rd, Lehman went there to bring Gen. Clifton the PICL as well as a couple of memoranda, including a Joint Chiefs of Staff report on Kuwait. A follow-up cable arrived from Washington. The President read the material and had no further requests. Thereafter, when the President went to Hyannis Port the PICL was transmitted by cable from the White House Situation Poom. The move of the Agency in September 1961 from its down- | i i i | } town temporary buildings to the new building in Langley, Va., naturally made operations difficult and gave rise to various improvisations. OCI used the Agency's offices at 1717 H Gt. to turn out the PICL during this period of confusion. Fer the most part the usual deadlines were met. OCI soon discovered that it had to be flexible in pro- ducing the PICL. At one point it karned that "President Kennedy had not had an intelligence briefing for four days, So it put together a combined edition of the PICL, winnowing HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 13
HW 53217 out the items thet hac faded a bit. In fact, it became the practice for the PICL to repeat important items when it was known that the President had missed an issue. Pefore 1961 was out, Gen. Clifton said that the President in enjoved reading the PICL, even when it was longer than usual. Early the next vear, Clifton said the President had asked when anc how the FPICL was rroduced. Clifton had been in- structed to turn up in CCI early cne morning toc cbserve tne production process. He dic this, and was satisfied and impressed. On 9 @anuary 1962, when ®. Osborne Webb was at the - White House for ocr, Clifton said the Fresident had registered a mild protest that the PICL writers were the purveyors of gloom, imolyving that they shcvid make en effort to mix in a little more aocod news. Mr. Kennedy also theuch that the DCL should find a way to provide an occasional summary of operational successes. However, John A. McCone, who nad ee succeeded Allen Dulles as Director in Noverber 1961, apparently never chese to use the PICL for orerational ° reporting. In January 1962, the Laotian struqqie was temporarily halted by the agreement of the three princes on a coalition government. It was not leng, ,however, hefoere the truce was: broken and “Washington was again worried over the situation. 66 DoclId: 327401317 Page 14
—— = HW 53217 Kennedy held a some of chief wrote one of the itself. In the absence cf delivered by Lt. DDCr. | This was one af the OCI analvst was present at Gen. Clifton cave Oct was aware of anything that to the Presicent, anc also and activities te indicate or have time fcr. DoclId: 327401317 Page 15 Early in April series of conferences cn aos in them efficielly NSC meetinds. cf OCI's Southeast Asia Franch, attended the meeting rare occasions or and cuidance whenever he would make the PTC more nleasing ~eported on the President's workload how much inteliigence he might want 1962, Clifton revortec thet 66a q ce a a a SR EE ET TE = A SET: I FP Be oe RAL oP RN FERED OE A RS TOL TOPE, OE
things were "scramblec" in the White House and that the President's preoccupation with the steel crisis made it al- most impossible to get his attention, even "with a full-scale nuclear war." Nonetheless, Mr. Fennedy had taken nolicy actions on the basis of some PICL pieces. For one thing, he had moved to head off a visit to Cuka by Algerian leader Ben Bella. Some weeks later Clifton made several suggestions to OCI. The PICL had been using “talking captions," i.e., extremely brief headlines under the country name for each item. Clifton asked that these captions be dronned in favor of simply making the point of the piece in the opening sentence. On another cccasion OCT was asked to put a summary of tre Watch Committee report in the PICL each week. In June Clifton "reminded" James Featherstone of OCT that actions taken by US Government departments in foreign situations should be reflected in FICL items. This philosovhy harked back to President Truman's Cesire to have the whole picture. The LPICL Hstablished In reviewing support for the White House after the PICL | - . . + . : 7 s had been in operation for a year, Richard Lehman, Assistant for Special Projects in OCI, noted that though the publication ~ HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 16
HW 53217 was a more satisfactory vehicle for serving the President than anything previously attempted, it still ha@ shortcomings. One of them was that OCI received later than the White House, some material necsed to or did not receive at all,/of which the Presicent GL? be aware. It was therefore necessary for the President's staff to supplement the PICL with intelligence from other sources. 34/ Gen. Clifton said that if he found that the CIB's coverage of a story had useful details not in the PICL, he would add them into the President's report. Clifton, Bromley Smith, and McGeorge Bundy also made use of OCI's Current Intelligence Weekly Feview, as well as State's Diplomatic Summary and Staff Summary. Bromley Smith said that he regularly looked over the Weekly for good reading for the President. Occasionally, he and other staff members highly commended pieces in the CIB and the Weekly. Nothwithstanding these various sources of intelligence, Clifton remarked toward the end of August 1962 that the President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense were coming to rely more heavily on the PICL as the sum of ‘available intelligence. es (In October 1963 Secretary Rusk told Gen. Clifton that he found the Checklistea "damned useful" document. ) DoclId: 327401317 Page i7 iti Ae thatea i has dabe see a daahaeh dae canieadanaiatal aeaatiatat ee dametie dine tne tebtenie aes nachna anteetomandemaandetmmmnamemnataee mamma Rr see ne re ee me ene eee pg me
September Following a suggestion by Clifton, the PICL in/1962 made an innovation by running a review of events over the past month. . In this case it was a summary of what had heen hap- pening in Berlin, which was still under the cloud of Khrushchev's threats to sign a peace treaty with Fast Germany that would allegedly nullify Allied rights. Clifton liked the way this feature came out. eh 7 One issue of the PICL, that of 14 September 1962, ox just right with Gen. Clifton. It had half a dozen items plus some notes and a map. It also recorded at the end that OCI, as had been its habit, had taken to the White House several Documents of Interest, material that CCI thought Clifton and the President would want to read in its pristine state. Clifton said this issue (copy will be attached) was full of “good poop" and was in exactly the stvle he likes best (obviously reflecting JFK's preferénces). Clifton took a great interest in the kind of language ° OCI used and frequently nudged the PICL writers towards the style that would be most agreeable to the President. On one 4 occasion he chided James Featherstone on the slangy way a Soviet item was written. It said that the Rustov area, where es : there was rioting recently, "has been giving Moscow fits." DoclId: 327401317 Page 138
HW 53217 Another time, he said the President was "delighted with the the racy language" of, 24 September book and had remarked, "They must have got some new men on." What gave this issue its flavor were these passages: a "Souvanna laid it on the line to Souphannouvong last week..." Phoumi, rumored to be planning a coup, “may put the chestnuts in the fire.” : In Argentina, Guido "will have tc balance things . carefully, and any scissors and paste arrangement he “ comes up with in the next few weeks can easily come Q unstuck." In Nepal, King- Mahendra said he had replaced his’ foreign minister to give the council of ministers more uniformity and sclidarity. Correct, said the PICL: "The Council will now be uniformly incompetent and solidly anti-Indian.". In Fevader, "“Arosmena, breathing 100-proof fire from his stronghold in Guayaquil," may have rallied some popular support with a public harangue. : Regarding ‘Brezhnev's trip to Belgrade: "The Chinese, with Albanian accompaniment, are playing it fortissimo." Sipser eo oo Gen. Clifton told Phil Kennedy that he hoped this kind of thing would continue. Kennedy assured him that it would but added that OCI tried hard to avoid appearing flip. Clifton recalled that he had once admonished OCI for flippancy, whereupon he had noticed immediately that the writing had started flattening out. He didn't mean for OCI to roll things too flat. ~ DoclId: 327401317 Page 19 ce en en A Re
HW 53217 For a month: in 1962 the PICL varefully followed the buildup of Soviet personnel and military equipment in Cuba. However, it did not carry clandestine and refugee reports of the presence of offensive missiles in Cuba because these reports lacked confirmation from photo intelligence. 6n 15 October, the Naticnal Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) analyzed the pictures taken by Major Heyser on his mission over Cuba the day before. It found deployment of offensive missiles. After that, the facts about the missiles did not have to be conveyed in the PICL because the photograpgy was interpreted every night at NPIC, which sent reports to USIB and the Executive Committee of the NSC (FXCOMM). The Comittee was briefed each day during the crisis by DOT NcGone. The CIB, the Cuban Daily Summary and other OCT publica- tions except the PICL were barred from 6 September from re- porting anything concerning offensive missiles in Cuba. They maintained intensive reporting on all other aspects of the. Cuban situation, however. Gen. Clifton and Bromley Smith commented to OCI's Philip Kennedy that the 22 October PICL was a “really hairy" book. It led off with a run-down cf the Cuban situation, con- firming the presence of the most effective radar for SAM guidance and putting the number d confirmed SAM sites at 24. “(Nothing was said about offensive missiles, however.) It DoclId: 327401317 Page 20
also reported the arrival in Favana of a Soviet transvort plane with 140 passengers, some of them probably important. This development elicited great interest and concern. That night, using maps prenared bv OCI, President Kennedy made a TV address, announcing the discovery of of- fensive missiles and the establishment of a quarantine on shipping to Cuba. OCI set up a 24-hour task force to cover the ensuing international crisis. Eesides maintaining the regular publications, the task force turned out special memoranda for the White House every few hours. On 23 October, William Colligan took the PICL and four memos to the White House. While Gen. Clifton was reading, . McGeorge Bundy came into the room asking if the PICL was there. Clifton said yes, and commented that it had a lot of good meterial, whereupon he and Bundy headed for the President's office. President Kennedy called down asking for them and the PICL while they were on their way. - In a memorandum of §& November to R. Jack Smith, who had succeeded Huntington Sheldon as AD/CI in April, DCI McCone commended OCI for the "outstanding work" it had been per- forming. Three days before that, the President commented that the ~ day's PICL was the first "cheerful" one he had read "in months." BAG pos HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 21
HW 53217 DoclId: 327401317 Page 23 might be unknown to the PICL staff. On Saturday, 1 June 1963, after the Checklist had been Gelivered te the White Fouse, the Deputy DCI, Cen. Marshall Carter, called oCr's Waldo Pubberstein to report that Cen. Clifton felt that the lead item on Cuba in that day's PICL was teo alarming and that the President “ould be immediately disturked by it. Therefore Clifton was not calling it te his attention. Carter asked that a better rundown on Cuba be cone. The alarming item exvressed the "feeling" of "our people in Miami" that Soviet activity in Cuba had increased. Scme of this feeling could have come from exaagerated accounts of military equipment of f-loaded from a Soviet ship and from descrintions of a cruise missile site. At the same time, an exile leader was reported to ke planning military operations against Cuba within the next six weeks. A memorandum dealing with these reports in verspective was sent to the White House after the weekend. Some months earlier, the PICL reported that an Ttalian freighter, the Cannarecio, ther. in Ilavana uncer charter to the USSR, would leave with a carco of arms fer venezuela. Clifton said this item “would stand the Fresident's hair on end." The situation was not helnec by the fact that the ship eluded tracking at the beginning of its voyage. How- ever, in a few days the PICL said it doubted-that the ship was carrying arms, and soon it arrived in Venezuela, where ~it was boarded by marines. Another "hot" episode was over. Re
PICL reports could set the policy machinery in motion immediately. Some Cuban exiles, determined to make new raids on their homeland, were in Costa Rica with a 8-2€ bomber at a time when a meeting was coming up in San Jose of the presi- dents of the US, Mexico, and Central America. The PICL said on 1l March 1963 that President Orlich of Costa Rica had ruled that the bomber be held on the ground until after the meeting. However, the plane was operable and could easily he flown away because of poor security at the airport. Bromley Smith called CDDP Richard Helms and received assurances that every possible precaution was being taken to make sure the R-26€ didn't get off the qound. The President was "sent aloft" by an item ir February 1963 reporting that Haitian President Duvalier was losing his grip. A source in touch with a US gambling syndicate claimed that Duvalier was planning to flee the country with as much money as he could lay his hands on. Such an action presumably would have made Haiti easier prey to invaders. Somewhat puzzling is the case of a report on Greece in the Checklist of 5 April 1963. It said that there was a grow- ing anti-monarchical trend in the country, that and other leftists - the pro-Communists,might unite in opposition to the monarchy, and that the King might counter such a development by backing ~ HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 24
a the establishment of a military dictatershin. Bromley Smith told James OQ. Young, who had the “hite House run that dav, that he- thought the item wes pretty strong and was the kind that might "hit the circuit-breaker" when the President read it. Smith did not explain his reaction, nor is there any follow-up record of how the President took the report. y when the President was on tour abroad, the PICL was cabled to him daily, but his interests were then somewhat different than they were in Washmgton. In the late spring of 1963, President Kennedy made a Furopean tour. Gen. Clifton, who was with the Presidential party, kept in touch with the White House by phone. One night, talking to Bromley Smith, he said that the longer the President and his party were away, the more they were inclined to let those back in Washington worry about Brazilian politics and whether Kong Le went “from Mung Ba to Mung Bu." 35/ OCI's relationshis with the White House was close, in- formal and many-sided during the Kennedy administration. Although the meeting each morning was the main point of contact, more was accomplished there than the transmission of the PICL and an exchange of auestions ang answers about it. It will already be Obvious that very frequently the OCI -representatives picked up the President's own reactions, they learned of ey HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 25
« i y decisions he had made in response to intelligence, and they received requests for further information on certain cuestions. When Clifton, Smith, or Bundy mentioned that Mr. Kennedy was interested in a topic,the PICL team would bring the Agency's of a prandenev cnrenorandu. would se written, latest issuances on the subject,, All this interchange was useful in keeping OCI on the track of the President's needs. The White House meetings in the latter half of 1963 were punctuated by a few language problems, a touch of humor now and then, and cases of strong reactions from the Chief Fxrecutive. In August a group of guerillas led by a Dominican adventurer named Cantave invaded the north coast of Haiti. The PICL re- ferred to Cantave's "caver," thereby provoking a reaction from Bromley Smith. He said the word raised for him a picture of intoxicated persons jumoing in fountains, but he was not deeply disturbed. In Cuba, regulations governing aircraft flights were tightened. The PICL drew chuckles from the “hite House aides ‘with one of the reasons it offered in explanation: the ronth before, warning shots had been fired at a vlane carrying Castro and the Soviet ambassador. - ie The 12 September Checklist reported that Mme. Nhu was coming to the US and had engagements booked for one week with sed HW 53217 DBocld:32401317 Page 26
HW 53217 “the networks, and the Women's Press Club. With Gen. Clifton absent, Bromley Smith called Paul Kattenburg, the Director of the South Vietnan Special Groun at State, to get further information about Mme. Nhu's plans and was told that she would be appearing at the Mational Press Clun. This news shook €mith up. He was sure the President would hit the ceiling and he wished that Clifton were around to take the Checklist to the President. Another PICL item with a kick in Jit ran on 9 October and re Woes pe nese ot Says we march “on- the: Angb-Saxors, had | suggested | to “Indonesia that trade be developed, especially in rubber. Bromlev Smith pre- dicted, "all hell will break loose" when the President reads this. Fortunately, the OCI representatives were never in the direct line of fire when Mr. Kennedy exploded, if indeed he did. On°19 November, Gen. Clifton gave €hilip Rk. Kennedy} re- quirements for the period of the President's trip to Texas. He wanted a short cable for Friday, the 22nd; the next day the President would he at the LBJ ranch. "We will want a cable on Saturday if mly to impress Johnson with how clcsely the President DoclId: 327401317 Page 2?7
HW 53217 keeps in touch," said Clifton. That meeting ended with Clifton trying to picture the President “eyeball to eveball with one Cf those steers." On 21 November, James P. Hanrahan took the PICL to the White House. Promley €mitn read the publication; Gen. Clifton was off making preparations for the President's trio. Smith liked a Document of Interest on the febricting of Professor Barghoord, who had been held fer a while bv tne Soviets. Then he came upon a ticker item reporting that the Gani sh premier} had given a rocking chair to Khrushchev so that the Kremlin and the White House could rock in time. Smith Castee@ cff saying he had to show this to Fundy. hilin On Friday, the fatal 22nd, \R Kenneday saw Bromlev Smith and left copies of a curther Egbriesing-ot-naréhigen], which would be included in the President's reacing rackagqe keing sent to Glen Ora Sunday morning. Smith Cirected that the next dav's PICL, to be sent by wire to Texas, ke a brief, “headline-type" wrap-up, with a maximum of two sentences per item. " It was to be otherwise. The PICI of 23 November was a husky number, of five unusually long items plus six notes. It was written for the new President, Lyndon Jonnson. AD/CI R. J. Smith took this issue to DCI McCone at the Agency's ~ RS DoclId: 327401317 Page 23