Calmness Under Crisis

The historic news was buried in a routine Tass broadcast servicing newspapers in Central Asia. Picked up by an alert U.S. monitor in the Middle East, it was flashed to Washington, arrived at the White House just as President John Kennedy was leaving for a press conference in the auditorium of the new

State Department Building. At 4:50 o'clock that afternoon. President Kennedy was back in his oval office, talking to aides, when Foreign Policy Adviser McGeorge Bundy walked in with a yellow-slip of Teletype paper bearing the report, which had just been verified by the Central Intelligence Agency. Then, still two hours before the Soviet Union officially announced that it planned to resume atomic testing. John F. Kennedy began to plan about meeting Russia's latest brazen threat in the cold war.

Both before and after dinner, Kennedy met with State Secretary Dean Rusk, CIA Director Allen Dulles and Bundy. The men were as yet uncertain about the precise reasons behind the Soviet move, but two points seemed clear. First, the Russians had lost a war of nerves and suffered a considerable propaganda defeat, particularly in the eyes of the neutral nations, by unilaterally breaking the atomic test moratorium. Second, the U.S. would have to resume its own tests.

Open Question. To exploit the U.S.'s propaganda advantage. Kennedy decided to make no mention of his plans to resume tests until some time after the Russians exploded their first bomb, an event he expected momentarily. In the meantime. Russia would stand revealed to the world as the atomic aggressor. Thus, Kennedy's first public statement, issued Wednesday night at 9:50, declared that the Soviet Union's decision "presents a threat to the entire world by increasing the dangers of a thermonuclear holocaust.'' But the statement left Kennedy's own plans purposefully vague; it said merely that the Soviet move made it necessary for the U.S. to decide "what its own national interests require."

All day Thursday ranking officials arrived at the White House--Rusk. Dulles, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, AEC Chairman Glenn Seaborg, Cold War Adviser Maxwell Taylor, U.S. Information Agency Chief Edward R. Murrow. At 12:45 p.m., Kennedy issued a second statement calling the Soviet announcement "atomic blackmail." Declared the President: "What the Soviet Union is obviously testing is not only nuclear devices but the will and determination of the free world to resist such tactics and to defend freedom.'' The President stated he was confident that the present U.S. nuclear stockpile was capable of defending the free world, once again pointedly left open the question of resumed U.S. testing.

"Blackmail & Terror." The U.S. Sen ate convened in a mood of icy anger. California Republican Thomas Kuchel accused Khrushchev of "sham and hypocrisy." Cried Missouri Democrat Stuart Symington: "It has never been clear to me why we should take for granted the fact the Soviets ever stopped testing. Why should we assume they are not testing? . . . Our Allies are watching what we do, not what we say." Backed by a dozen other Senators,* Connecticut Democrat Thomas Dodd introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. to resume nuclear tests immediately. Stopping the tests in 1958, said Dodd, "was the most fatuous blunder in all our history."

Bright and early Friday morning, the White House conferences began again, although President Kennedy did get away briefly to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Jim Rowley, longtime guardian of Presidents, as head of the Secret Service.

Recalled from Geneva by the President, Test-Ban Negotiator Arthur Dean emerged from White House talks to charge that the Soviet Union "rests its future policy on the terrorization of humanity," then added: "But the Soviet government underestimates the people of the world if it thinks they will capitulate to a strategy of blackmail and terror."

During the day, President Kennedy made a special point of filling in congressional leaders of both parties on U.S. might, power and strategy. "Don't kid yourself," said Minnesota's Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey. "We're still a long way ahead of those fellows. I never was sure of it until this morning, but we are." The Soviet threat, said Washington's Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, member of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, fits "the same old pattern of Soviet blackmail which has been apparent since they developed the ICBM back in 1956."

A Free Hand. Across the U.S., press reaction to Khrushchev's announcement was swift and resolute. The Soviet move, warned the Chicago Tribune, "is designed to scare Russia's opponents out of their wits, set the scene for Allied surrender at Berlin and break the NATO alliance to bits." The New York Times stated that "the Soviet action gives the Western powers a free hand to resume their own tests," urged President Kennedy to make a personal appearance before the United Nations to submit the Soviet threat to "ur gent consideration."

Calling for a resumption of U.S. tests, the Los Angeles Times made a key point by declaring that "it would be dangerously foolish to assume that the 'weight of world opinion,' including U.N. censure, will have any significant effect upon Russian intentions.1 Neither should the praise and pleasure of the nonaligned nations be allowed to turn our heads from the essen tial course that we must now take."

Changed Minds. The week's news abruptly changed the minds of many U.S. scientists who had been opposing tests, but failed to sway Caltech's Dr. Linus Pauling, controversial crusader against any tests by any nation, and a Nobel prizewinner in chemistry. Said Pauling: "I feel we have enough bombs to wipe Russia off the face of the map now, and that there is no military necessity for us to initiate testing."

As a group, U.S. scientists reacted to the Soviet announcement with sober concern. Dr. Willard F. Libby, former AEC commissioner and another Nobel prize-winning chemist, squinted as if in disbelief as he read the news, then wryly told a reporter: "You'd better tell your readers to build bomb shelters now."

Libby urged prompt resumption of U.S. tests, as did Georgia Tech President Edwin Harrison and the University of California's Harold C. Urey, a third chemist who has won the Nobel Prize. Summed up Urey: "I do not see any reason why we should not resume testing in any way that we feel would be to our benefit."

Physicist Edward Teller, long an impassioned advocate of U.S. testing, brusquely dismissed the dangers of radioactive fallout from nuclear experiments. "Let's keep the record straight." said Teller. "Fallout from tests is not a danger."

Scarcely 50 minutes after the White House had announced the Soviet nuclear test, President Kennedy flew off to his. summer home at Hyannisport. There, over the Labor Day weekend, he relaxed with his family, loaded 18 of the clan's small fry onto a golf cart and drove off to the candy store. Obviously, if Nikita Khrushchev had tried to panic John Kennedy, he had missed the mark.

*Democrats: Nevada's Howard W. Cannon, Wyoming's J. J. Hickey, Florida's George Smathers, Georgia's Herman Talmadge, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. Republicans: Colorado's Gordon Allott. New Hampshire's Styles Bridges, Maryland's John Marshall Butler, Hawaii's Hiram Fong, Kansas' Andrew Schoeppel, Pennsylvania's Hugh Scott, Texas' John Tower.

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