PROGRAM: WEEK-END REPORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP65B00383R000100280072-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 17, 2004
• Sequence Number: 72
• Publication Date: January 27, 1963
• Content Type: TRANS

`;RC-Radio and the January 27, 1963
EC Radio Aopro*ad For Release 2004/03/t.1QCCI DP65BOO383ROOO1OO28OO72-4
PROGRAM: Week-end Report
ROBERT MVicCORiffCK: "Back in Congress, Republicans are still
hurting from the fact that the Cuban situation which they once
considered one of their best issues, turned around and bit them.
They're trying to revive it--the Democrats are trying to keep it
dormant. NBC's State Department correspondent, Elie Abel takes a
detached look at the scramble."
ELIE ABEL: "It's about a mile and a quarter from 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue, where the President lives, to Capitol Hill,
but there are times in every Congressional session when those
sixteen blocks seem a thousand miles long. That's how it is again
this week-end, with Congress in an uproar over reports of a Soviet
military build-up in Cuba--a build-up President Kennedy himself
says he knows nothing about. The hullabaloo has been a-building
since Senator Keating, the New York Republican charged that a
military build-up was under way in Cuba, and that it was 10 times
bigger than last July.
"Now the~gatherin~ and assessing of intelligence reports is a
function of the Executive Branch of government, specifically the
CI A, not of the Legislative Branch. But enough people remember
that last summer the same Senator Keating was either right or
lucky in dry ping attention to the presence of Soviet missiles* in
Cuba at a time when the President was either wrong or unlucky in
denying any evidence of offensive Soviet weapons there. So the
Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Latin America called
Secretary of State Rusk and CIA chief John McCone to testify
Frida
"_IAle don't know what the i's learned at that hearing;
the testimony was, of course, secret and classified, but Congress-
men are a law unto themselves. Rusk and McCone were barely out
the door of the committee room, and they s art 11eakin all over
g .+r+K+gYiNa15?s~:~ Est a x sa r
town. The trouble is the Senators can't agree on wha heJSTw'ela
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told or what it means, and it's not just party lines that divide
them.
"Consider, for example, Senators Humphrey of Minnesota and
Symington of Missouri, both Democrats, both administration men.
Humphrey came out of the briefing, told newsmen he heard nothing
to indicate there was any significant new build-up, just about
what Mr. Kennedy said Thursday at his news conference. Symington
came out, talking about a big Soviet military complex built in
Cuba over the past six months.
"On the Republican side, Senator Aiken of Vermont went
Symington one better. The Russians, he said, have built an
enormously powerful military and political base in Cuba--a base
much more powerful than it was six months ago. When in doubt,
and above all, when the administration story is somewhat contra-
dictory as it has been on Cuba since the Bay of Pigs, Congress
tends to start an investigation. It may or may not produce the
facts, because Congress has no way of sending its own spies into
Cuba. But it is found to Droduce headlines. Mississippi's John
Stennis will conduct the investigation, and it's a good bet he
will be recalling both Mr. Rusk and Mr. McCone to the witness
stand. Elie Abel, NBC News, State Department correspondent."
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