ANNOUNCER: (MUSIC) -- WALTER LIPPMANN IS SEVENTY-ONE YEARS OLD.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP67-00318R000100270001-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 37
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 7, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 15, 1961
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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-ANNOUNCER: (MUSIC) -- Walter Lippmann is seventy-one years old.
One year ago, America's most distinguished newspaperman,
whose column appears in the New 'fork Herald Tribune and
more than two hundred other newspapers, made his
television debut in a one-hour conversation on
Leadership. The Louisville Courier Journal called it a
television landmark, and many newspapers stated,
editorially, that Lippmann should be an annual television
event. In the past few months, Mr. Lippmann has had
private conversations with Premier Khrushchev, President
de Gaulle, Prime Minister Macmillan, and President
Kennedy, and we at CBS REPORTS are delighted to welcome
him back to what we hope has became a television
tradition. Now, from Washington, here is Mr. Lippman
and CBS Chief Washington correspondent, Howard K. Smith.
SMITH:
In a column about a year ago, you said in regard to the
qualities a good President should have, the first thing
is his ability to see through to what is permanent and
enduring. This second sight is the quality of great
leaders. Do you think that Kennedy has that second
sight?
LIPPMANN: I think he's capable of having it. And when -- if we
get into this more, perhaps we'll show where he showed
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some weaknesses in that respect. But I think it's too
early to say that he has or hasn't got them.
Well, what has President Kennedy demonstrated so far?
LIPPMANN: What he has done in the four or five months is, first,
to put -- is first of all, to carry on in all its
essentials the Eisenhower economic philosophy and the
Eisenhower international commitments, and never
explaining to the country that those can be changed.
It's like the Eisenhower administration thirty years
younger. Well, that the way he started, but in the,
meantime, he really doesn't -- that isn't the way he's
going to go. He's been -- not moving in a new
direction but changing the direction in which he's going
to move. Now, I think that in the next year, he will
make the great decision, whether he can afford to
balance the budget in the Eisenhower sense and allow the
economy to remain at a fairly quiet level; or whether
he wants to give it a real push upward by tax reduction
and measures like that. That's going to be decided in
the coming months. And a weakness of Kennedy is that ,
he never explained these things to the American people.
SMITH: Now, Mr. Nixon has said that; Senator Fulbright has
said that, and you have said that. Yet, he's one of our
most -- he's spoken more than Mr. Eisenhower did.
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LIPRIANN: I know - but he hasn't explained. He has not explained
them. He has not explained what his economic challenge
is, and what it's going to require in the way of much
stronger measures of -- in regard to tax reduction --
probably government spending and credit action. He
never explained why, if he wants to do all these things
such as fight the cold war and win it, really outdo the
Communists, it's got to be done at full blast to the
American economy, with a production of fifty billions
more than we produced this year. He needs that money
to do that. That's never been explained to our people,
so they have no sense of urgency. And he has never
explained to them the very unpleasant fact which he
didn't create - it's not his fault - that we have moral
commitments and legal commitments around -- mainly
around the rim of Asia, which were built up before he
took office and when we were the supreme military power
in the world. And coming down from being supreme to
being only equal is an awful wrench for every country,
and it makes people frustrated and angry and they don't
think it ought to be true, and so on, and it's a hard
thing to swallow, but that's what he's going to have to
do.
SMITH: Well, can you understand why he has not communicated?
He's an extremely articulate President. He seems to
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know the value of television. He's made a great many
speeches. Yet he doesn't seem to have got his case
across and there's a great deal of confusion in America
as to what we're about.
LIPPMANN: Well, I put it to this -- that he's a very quick and
intelligent man, himself. Reads very fast, understands
,very fast, and it bores him to explain things. He
hasn't got the patience. He ought to have the patience
that a teacher must have, who is willing to start where
the pupil or the hearer is, and explain it step by step
from what he -- he tells them what it is at the end,
and he likes to make decisions and announce them, but
he doesn't explain them.
SMITH: Well, Mr. Lippmann, I'd like to ask you something that
I think is basic. Is it possible that a free, loose-
jointed, easy-going society like the American democracy
can compete with a tightly concentrated, tightly
controlled, secret dictatorship like that of the Soviet
Union and Red China?
LIPPMANN: Well, that's the dream of our age. That's the question,
and that is why many of us think that the Kennedy
administration has to get going and moving rapidly,
or we won't be able to do it. I don't -- I wouldn't
like, for a moment, to underestimate how formidable this
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SMITH:
competition is and this threat. It's very formidable,
and when you see people running around this country,
and wanting to abolish the income tax and turn the
Federal government back into a Confederation of States,
you despair of the possibility of persuading them to
do what we're going to have to do, and what we're going
to have to do is going to take a lot of money, and it's
going to take a very strong gpvernment.
Well, if Mr. Kennedy set himself one main goal in the
election campaign, it was to resurrect America's fallen
prestige. Do you think that in his legislative
program he,is doing the right things necessary to that
end?
LIPTMANN: He's -- I don't believe he's really got started doing
that, because he is not sure of himself. Because he's
conscious of his small majority; because he's
conscious that he hasn't got a really effective working
majority in Congress for important measures, and because,
I take it, that he judges that the mood of the country
is not in favor of doing the things which would really
create a new sense of prestige, because in the last
analysis, American prestige depends not on arms,
although we must have arms. It depends on the example
we set to the world, and if we set the example of a very
brilliantly active economy and society, in which we were
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dealing with all our problems actively, our prestige
would rise in the world.
SMITH: Well, in the President's speech the other night, the
only thing that he appealed to the American people
about, was to give support to his program for foreign
aid. Now, judging from the mood on Capitol Hill, this
is not a good year for foreign aid. Lots of previous
supporters are criticizing it, and this is the year in
which Laos, which we heavily aided, has gone over to
the adversary, and which South Korea, which we aided
even more heavily, has abandoned democracy. Is there
a good case in favor of foreign aid that isn't being
made?
LIPPMANN: I would say that the United States can no more refuse to
contribute to foreign aid, in the world; than the
richest man in town can refuse to contribute to the
community chest. You just can't live in the world
community -- we couldn't live refusing to aid anybody.
Now, the nature of the method of aiding is very
debatable. And I hope and believe that -- that there is
a movement on foot to reform some of its worst abuses.
It is true, as some of the liberal critics in the
Congress have been saying, that a lot of this money, as
in Laos, which is a peculiarly bad case of how the
thing failed -- a'-lot of this money simply enriched the
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upper class who exploited, who flaunted their riches
all over, and increased the hatred of the poor for
the rich. And that made them very fertile ground for
Communist propaganda. In other places, we've undoubtedly
spent much too much money on armies that have no
military value whatsoever from the point of view of
our interests, but are kept there, are paid for by us,
in order to keep them loyal to the king or ruler of the
country so they won't overthrow us. Those are great
abuses. On the other hand, if we are not going -- if
the world isn't going to go into that landslide into
Communism, which Ehrushchev predicts, there have to be
anchor points in all the continents, which show that
prosperity and a certain amount of social justice can
be achieved by another way than the Communist way. And
that means that you must focus your energy, your aid on
key countries. Now, if you ask me what they are - the
key country in Asia is India. If India can be made to
work as a successful, democratic state, the influence of
that will spread all over Southeast Asia, no matter who
takes over in Laos in the next few months, and all over.
Indonesia and allover. The key country in Latin
America is not Cuba. It's Brazil. And I don't know -
I would hesitate to say just which is the key country
in Africa, but I imagine it might be Nigeria. And I
think in those cases, we ought to focus our aid, not
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necessarily stopping this other aid, which is really
a form of bribery to keep them quiet, but focus it and
do enough to do it. There's no use building half a
bridge across a river - you've got ID build a whole
bridge.
Now, you've made that point about foreign aid very
strongly, and what impresses me is, that the President,
in talking to the American people and calling on them
for action, did not make it as strongly.,
LIPPMANN: Well, I -- you've just talked about the conclusion of
the speech, which dealt with foreign aid. I would say
that that showed some of his defects as a political
leader. He talked to the American people as if they
were suffering from some terrible burden in foreign aid
where they are not suffering from any burden. He should
have told them, considering how grim the outlook is,
that that was the first installment, and a very small
one, of what they're going to have to pay, and that
they mustn't think that they can just cut it down and
have everything just the way they like it in the world.
One of the great difficulties he runs into is, that in
the public mind is what's talked about spending, and
he doesn't want to be labeled a spender, and he's quite
right. I mean, that's politically 'poison. But you see,
the public mind, it's -- they'll have to get over-it
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and learn better. If, let's say, if a man borrows
? money from a bank to build a movie house, or a dance
'hall, that is investment. If the city spends money to
build a schoolhouse, that's spending. And that's
wicked. Now, actually, we're about the only government
in the world that keeps its accounts in this way - the
only government in the world that doesn't distinguish
between public spending and public investment - and
that has to be cleared up. I don't know how to do it,
but I think ...
SMITH: Well, as long as the President fears the label "Spender"
and doesn't explain it won't we always remain with
this?
LIPPMANN: That's true. That is undoubtedly true. And he is
haunted by this thing that Eisenhower probably could
have been elected this time if he'd run again. And
that - that's what the country believes.
SMITH:
Well, some people see our salvation is not in what we
do, but what happens to the Communists. Now, Charles
Bohlen, who's probably our outstanding Soviet expert in
the State Department, made a speech a short while ago,
in which he said that if we can just hold things for
another ten years, Russian Communism may lose its
aggressive revolutionary momentum the way Islam did in
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the Middle Ages, and we may be able, then, to get along
with it. Do you find any consolation in that thought?
LIPPMANN: Well, I would think it was dangerous to find consolation
in that thought. I hope that'll be true, but that is
a little bit like Rhrushchev's inevitability doctrine
in reverse, and I don't think things are inevitable.
I think men have to act to, make the inevitable happen.
SMITH:
Now, this is the second time you've met Rhrushchev in
Russia, and I think you've met him, here, in the
United States as well. Could you give us an assessment
of him? Could you measure him against some American
public figure?
LIPPMAN: I've been asked that by a number of people, and the
only trouble is that everybody -- the man who he most
reminds me of is not known well enough to people
today - it's too long ago - but that was Governor Alfred
Smith of New York. They have these things in .common.
Smith had an enormous instinctive sense of what every
? man in his constituency - New York - New York City -
was thinking. Khrushchev has that. He's got antennae
all over the place. He has the capacity to talk to
them, and Smith had, about the most difficult subjects,
the economy, and how to do it, and make them think it's
funny and interesting. Al Smith used to go down to the
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Bowery when he was Governor of New York, and make a
speech explaining the budget of New York State, than
which there couldn't be anything more uninteresting,
and he'd have them in roars of laughter. Well, that --
Ehrushchev has that quality, and then he has -- I think
that is the key to Khrushchev - that he is a politician
and he would have been a successful politician in any
country. He's not like Stalin - a sort of oriental
despot who works in the back with cloak and dagger. The
President and he ought to came to some common feeling,
because they're both politicians.
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Well, now they've met. Do you think that these two
politioians did achieve some common feeling? It's hard
to detect any from what the President said on
television the other day.
LIPPMANN: I think thecommon feeling they've achieved is a
realization of the terrible danger that they both run.
If the -- their differences are allowed to bring them .
to the point of up some dead end street, where there's
no choice for one or the other, or both, except
surrender or a suicidal war, that's the common thing
they've got.
SMITH:
Now, the President, in his speech to the people,
afterwards, said that the most somber aspect of the
talks was the discussion about Germany and Berlin.
LIPPMANN: Oh well, I think there's no doubt at all that the
central problem is Germany and Berlin, and that all
these other things they discussed -- Laos and nuclear
testing and disarmament, and the general movement of
Communism in the uncommitted lands, are all related
to this central issue, which is the focus of the cold
war. That's the focal point where, if there's going to
be a third World War, it will come. Khrushchev said,
when I talked to him, he said, "I would agree to a
United Germany if it were Communist." He said, "But
you won't agree to that - and I won't agree to a United
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Germany if it has to give up Communism and become like
Adenauer's Germany. So "he said, "there's no
possibility of uniting them." In fact, on that there
is a curious agreement between Khrushchev and de Gaulle,
for instance. Khrushchev and Macmillan. We have always
adhered to the idea that Germany ought eventually to be
reunited. But we don't press it because we know it's
not practical. Now, at the same time, there are left
in Berlin, in West Berlin, two and a half million
Germans, who are not Communists at all; who are very
anti-Communist; whose sympathies; whose ties; whose
economic connections; whose culture; whose everything
is with the West, and who are democratic people, and we
have an absolutely unquestioned 'obligation of honor,
and to see that they are not crushed, or not enslaved,
or not starved out, or anything else.
Well, could you summarize on the basis of your
conversation with Khrushchev what he wants and what he
would be willing to negotiate about regarding Berlin?
LIPPMANN: All I can tell you is that Khrushchev says he wants to
negotiate. When it came to negotiations he might stall,
as we've had -- as we know from the experience with the
nuclear test ban and everything else. But I would not
pass up the chance to do that -- if we can negotiate
with the Soviet Union a new treaty which gparnatees the
future of Germany -- of Berlin. It specifies what roads
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shall always be open to it - what airports - what
harbors - what canals - all that spelled out in great
detail and signed by the Four Powers who occupy Germany
- by the WO Germanies, and that's one of the rubs,
because that's what the West Germans don't want - but
signed by the East Germans. I don't think the thing
would be good unless you got their signature, and
registered at the United Nations. Then, in addition to
that, there will have to remain in Berlin for some
time to come, British, French and American troops.
He does demand that if American and French and British
troops are to stay, then, Russians troops should also
be there, and that they all should be there in very
small amounts. I mean, they should be symbolic, which
is, after all, all they are anyway. And my own view is,
that the thing he wants more than anything else, and
I'd like to tell you why he wants it, I think, He wants
to give legal status to the East German state. He said
to me, "I know you wouldn't recognize the East German
state. That is, I mean, we wouldn't have an ambassador
from the East German state. We wouldn't send an
ambassador to it. But it would be allowed to sign the
document, which would give it a certain recognition and
it's what's called in diplomacy de facto recognition.
Yes. Well, if what Mr. Rusk mentioned takes place, that
is a crisis is provoked in the summer or fall, and the
Russians hand over control of our communications with
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Berlin to the East German puppets, what would you be in
favor of doing?
LIPPMANN: Well, as I understood Khrushchev, separate peace treaty
is a last resort. He doesn't want to do it. He said
that half a dozen times -- "I don't want the tension.
I know it'll create tension. I want to avoid it. But
in the last run, I've got to do it." And I'll tell you,
if you like, later why he thinks he's got to do it.
Could you tell me now?
LIPPMANN: Yes. I asked him -- I had been asked to ask him by an
American authority whom I won't identify, but a friend
of mine. He said, "See if you can find out whether he
wouldn't, at least, be willing to have a standstill -
that is, leave everything where it is for, say, five
years. In five years, we'd all be older and wiser and
a lot of things can happen, and we've cooled off, and
maybe then, we can negotiate, but it's all very difficult
to negotiate now - what with the German elections and
all these things." Well, I tried that on him, and I
said, "Why are you in such a hurry?" And he said, "I'm
in a hurry because I want the frontiers of Germany,
and the status of Berlin, and the demarcation line
between the two German states settled in a treaty. before"
- and then he said, "before Hitler's generals in West
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Germany get the atomic bomb." And he said, "They're
going to get it. They've already being trained how
to use it. They haven't got the warheads,but they're
going to get it, and they surely will get in in four or
five years. And they'll get it from you, or they'll get
it from the French, who'll be able to make them by that
time. And if that comes, then the great danger for
Europe exists, because either by their attacking East
Germany and oyerrunning East Berlin -- or the other way
around, that the East Germans rise and they go to their
defense -- either way, there'll 'be nothing to stop it.
Nobody will have any agreements. You won't intervene -
and there we'll be with a very dangerous war on our
hands. So, we must have a treaty first. And that is
what I'm pressing for. But I want to get those frontiers
fixed so that if either Germany moves, in a military
sense, in the next four or five years, it will be the
aggressor." Now, that's his argument and that's why he's
in a hurry.
SMITH: Well, what's the next step? What'do we do now?
LIPPMANN: Well, I think, of course, the next step is one which
involves a change in our basic approach to the German
problem. We have taken the line, conventionally, that
everything in Berlin is as good as it could be from our
point of view; that any change in the situation of Berlin
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would be for the worse. Therefore, we must stand firm
and stand pat. That's Dr. Adenauer's view. Change
nothing - fight - threaten to fight if anything is
changed. Don't negotiate. It can't be negotiated.
You'll only weaken it. Naw, the other view, which
is the one I share, is that the situation in Berlin
is not good - that it's -- Berlin is in a state of
chronic crisis, which means on the Russian side, Soviet
side, that any time that Khrushchev wants to put on a
little pressure, he could just turn the screw a little
bit in Berlin, and the whole world is focused on Berlin,
while something's going on in Iran or Cuba or heaven
knows where. The't is very disadvantageous to the West.
The other thing is, that I don't believe the people
of Berlin, West Berlin, or of Germany, believe the
present situation is good, because the reason -- because
they come back to us every few months, and demand that
we should again cross our hearts and swear that we will
go to war for Berlin. And if they were sure of it --
if they didn't think it was something that couldn't
last forever, they wouldn't feel -- wouldn't be doing
that. I think our position should be not that any change
in the guarantees of the rights of the people of Berlin
is a defeat and a surrender, but that those guarantees
should be improved if it's possible to improve them.
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They're not very good today. We should say -- we should
take the postion that the freedom of Berlin, in the
sense of their ability to govern themselves, to live
their own life, to keep their physical and economic and
spiritual and political gontacts with the Western world,
cannot be touched. We won't negotiate about that, but
the legal basis and the statutory rights that go with
that, are negotiable. They never were negotiated. The
thing is all a blotter of catch-can -- the things made
by generals ane, various people and we ought to say to
the -- I would like to see the position of saying to
Khrushchev, we don't like Berlin the way it is. We want
to improve it, and if you can negotiate with us an
improvement, we'll be very interested.
Well, people who say that you can't reach an agreement
with the Russians generally cite the fate of the nuclear
test ban ':.alks in Geneva. The President sounded very
pessimistic about that. Khrushchev doesn't seem, now, to
want any agreement on it. How do you explain that?
LIPPMANN: We talked quite a lot about the nuclear test, and my
explanation will have to be my guess, but the fact is
that he's clearly not terribly interested in it. Now,
there are several possible explanations', and they may,
all of them, be true. One is, part of the agreement
would have to be that China would be included and he may
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not be able to deliver China. I think I'm inclined
to think that has a large -- a good deal to do with it,
because he talks about our not being able to deliver
France. But I think that's his way of saying that
he can't deliver China, because when he talked about
France to me, he said, "Well, what's the good of an
agreement if France doesn't sign it she'll test for you?
You'll just ask her to go and test them in the Sahara
Desert." And I said, "And China will test for you." And
he sort of looked slightly amused, because he likes to
be challenged sometimes, and he said, "That's a fair
question, but China isn't able to test yet." He thinks
the weapons they've got are really good enough. And
while we seem to be very interested in developing
bigger weapons that weigh less, he has these enormous
rockets. I don't think that's a practical problem for
. him.
SMITH: Well, I'd like to talk to you now about the latest
Russian diplomatic creation, and that is what Mr.
Mikoyan called the "Troika" System of control. Well,
that is that almost everything, nuclear test bans and
the United Nations and everything else be controlled by
three people. One, a westerner, one a Communist and one
a neutral, and each of those has a veto. Now, if that is
? applied, wouldn't that stagnate all international .% .
activity?
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LIPPMANN: Yes. It's a fairly recent dogma. Troika, you know,
comes from a Russian thing where three horses pull a
cart or a sleigh, and if one horse sits down and then
the two can't move. I didn't speak to Mr. Khrushchev
about this particular point, but I did to a very close
advisor of his, a Soviet official. I said, "Why three?"
He said, "Well, we really mean two." He said, "We
really mean that everything must be done by
agreement between the United States and the U.S.S.R.
We brought in the third because they're there. They
have no power, of course, but they're there and it
looks better to include them."
SMITH: Well, does this not threaten the entire future of the
United Nations?
LIPPMANNi Yes. The future of the United Nations is very much
threatened by the fact that although Mr. Hammarskjold
has another two years I think, he couldn't be re-elected
at present, and nobody else like him could be elected,
and there's quite a good chance that if there is no
understanding reached with the Russians on this point,
which is -- I wouldn't regard it as inflexible. It's
negotiable, but I don't know how negotiable. There just
won't be a Secretary General, and if there's no
Secretary General, the U.N. will be reduced to a debating
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SMITH:
21
society, or the Security Council will meet, and -- but
it won't be able to order anything.
Well, in addition to Russian intransigence, there's
another change in the United Nations, and that is the
admission of a very great number of brand new nations,
the leaders of many of which have shown themselves to be
not very responsible and to be highly volatile. Isn't
it dangerous for the United States to leave our fate
to be decided by a body in which these people have
the balance of power?
LIPPMANN: You know, Ehrushchev pointed that out to me, and he said,
"Now you don't want a veto, because you still think
you have a majority, and you can elect the Secretary
General, and so on, and you'll -- it'll be all
favorable to you, but pretty soon you won't be able to
elect a majority, and then you'll wish you had a veto.
So, in the end, you're going to want just what we want.
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ANNOUNCER: CBS REPORTS - "Walter Lippmann 1961" - will continue
with Cuba, the C.I.A. and Laos, right after this pause
for station identification.
ANNOUNCER: OBS REPORTS - "Lippmann 1961." Here is Howard K. Smith.
SMITH: Well, Mr. Lippmann, we haven't talked yet about NATO.
Now, in a recent column you said that the basis for
our difficulties with de Gaulle is the fact that he
does not believe that America can be depended upon as
a protector of Western Europe.
LIPPMANN: His view is that with modern and nuclear weapons, are
so destructive that it's suicide even for the biggest
country to be attacked'. Therefore, no country will risk
being attacked for any other country. There'd always
be the hope, well, I will stay out of this and let it
go by me. Therefore, he says, the old idea of NATO,
which was born before the nuclear weapons, before both
sides had nuclear weapons, while we alone had it, is out
? of date. It cannot be depended upon. Now, the
situation is such that if -- which I don't think is
likely at all -- but if the Soviets were going to use a
nuclear weapon, they would have to strike the United
States first, and then they might strike other points
in Europe, where there are American nuclear bases. And
he doesn't want France to be in the line of fire. He
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23
also wants to have France able, on its own, to be
sufficiently dangerous -- too hot to handle is really
the de Gaulle policy for France. Where our hope with
de Gaulle lies, is in finding. a way to agree with him
on the fact that nothing great in the world, nothing
that might involve nuclear weapons shall be done
without full consultation in advance. That's what he
wants. He's afraid that we won't protect him. He is
also afraid that we'll start a war in which he'll be
involved. And I'm sorry to say, or maybe I should --
anyway, it is a fact that he has not got a high opinion
of American military leadership or political leadership.
SMITH:
Well now, I wonder if Mk. de Gaulle's appraisal of
American leadership is changed since he met President
Kennedy. I noticed that in one of his toasts at a
dinner, he said, "I now have more confidence in your
country."
LIPPMANN: Well, I think that there was a -- I think President
Kennedy made a strong, personal impression on him as
certainly General de Gaulle made on the President, and
the personal relationship of those two nen is better
than the personal relationship between any head of the
French government and the American government has been,
I would say, since before World War II. I would say
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24
that the utmost that any one can say, with any
reasonable certainty, is that he feels that in
President Kennedy, he has a man who is capable of
understanding his military views. I think he felt,
beforehand, that he was up against a stone wall, and
wouldn't be listened to,,
SMITH:
Now, the most mysterious of all the events that have
happened is the Cuban debacle. Now, how could a
decision like that go through our best military minds,
and be okayed by the Chiefs of our Intelligence - be
okayed by the brilliant men who surround Kennedy in the
White House and the experts in the State Department,
and get past the President, himself? That's still a
mystery to me.
LIPPMANN: I think the answer you come to is, that the advice to go
ahead, the green light for doing it, or the energy
demanding that we go ahead, all came from senior
advisors. The junior advisors, the men who've come to
Washington with Kennedy were not strong enough, perhaps
not wise enough, all of them, although some may have
been, to tell the President to overrule people with such
eminence as the people who advised him to do it. I
think, there, he didn't feel that he knew enough to
? overrule the C.I.A. - the Chiefs of Staff - what there
was of the State Department and so on.
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SMITH:
5'
Well, I suppose when you think that Abraham Lincoln,
perhaps our greatest President, took almost two years
before he dared to fire his general, whom he thought
was not doing his duty, then Kennedy's behavior is
quite understandable.
LIPPMANN: I think that he's a man who can learn. I think he'd
learned that more than any other thing from Cuba.
SMITH: Well, just after the Cuban fiasco, President Kennedy
paid a visit to General MacArthur, and General
MacArthur is said to have told the President -- a lot of
chickens are coming home to roost and you're in the
chicken coop. Do you believe it's true that most of
these problems were situations the President inherited
and has not had time, really, to correct or to change?
LIPPMANN: Laos is an inheritance. We got into that. If we
mismanaged it, which I think we did, the consequences
have come now. That's certainly not Kennedy's fault.
If he's to be criticized about that, he can be
criticized either one way or the other -- either by the
people who think we should go to war about Laos, or by
the people who say that he should never have promised to
defend it. Cuba is a -- was a wrong and a foolish thing
to do. It was wrong in itself. It was foolishly '
handled. If it had succeeded, it probably would have
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26
been worse than if -- since it failed, because if it
had succeeded, the utmost that was hoped for was that
they'd get these fourteen hundred men ashore and that
they'd be able to stay there. Then, we'd have had a
civil war which might have dragged on for weeks and
weeks, with everybody getting involved in it, and no
end to it.
SMITH: Well, now, what should we do about Cuba and Castro?
LIPPMANN: The thing that put Castro over all in right perspective
was a thing that Senator Fulbright said in the private
discussions beforehand, which is that Castro is a thorn
in our flesh but he's not a dagger in our hearts. The
question is, is Cuba a military threat to the United
States in view of the fact that it is so closely
connected with the Soviet Union? I would say to that,
that if it were, and I would call the establishment of
a missile base or a submarine base, in Cuba, as marking
a threat. I think we must keep the thing under really
close watch, and it's perfectly easy to do. It's only
fair to say, there, that up to this point, there is no
evidence of any Soviet military base in Cuba. Mr. Allen
Dulles told me, himself, not long ago, that in the
invasion there were no Russian planes; that those planes
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27
that Castro used were old American planes. There is
not a sign of a.missile base, and of course, it stands
to reason they can shoot missiles from Siberia to the
moon, why should they shoot them ninety -- Why should
they come ninety miles away? Anyway, we'd match that.
The next danger of,Castro is, that through his
embassies in Latin America, there id a funnel through
which propaganda ageats -- propaganda and agents and
money gotten from th3 Soviet Union or China, or
somewhere, can be pushed into these various countries
of South America, and the subversive propaganda'
supported. That is a problem about which we can't do
anything. We can't break up the relations between,
let's say Brazil and Cuba. That's up to Brazil.. But
there's nothing to prevent us from watching it. Our
counter-intelligence ought to be.good enough to detect
a good deal of it, and we ought to keep on supplying
the evidence to these governments of what's happening.
But the biggest danger of Castro is the one -- much the
biggest -- bigger than all these others, is that he
might succeed in.Cuba, in solving problems which have
not yet been solved in A great many South American --
Latin American countries. That's where we have to
compete with him. If he can succeed there and our
friends and other Latin Americans fail, then his example
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is a far more dangerous than anything he himself can
do.
SMITH: Do you think we're on the right path towards meeting
that threat?
LIPPMANN: I think we are. I think that President Kennedy's
alliance for progress, as he calls it, a rather fancy
name for helping, is basically right.
SMITH:
Well, now, the statements of most politicians come back
to haunt them later, and in Kennedy's case, many have
come back very quickly. He was opposed to summit
diplomacy very strongly before he was President. He
was opposed to itinerant diplomacy, and yet his own men
have been traveling quite a bit lately. He spoke
extremely firmly about us taking a stand on Laos, which
we did not take, and in fact, on Cuba. Does this
indicate a quality of impulsiveness or is it standard
for political statements and political behavior?
LIPPMANN: Well, you take them in order. On the traveling, except
for a day or two in Canada, which you really can't call
traveling, they're our close neighbors. This is the
trip that he made in June to Paris and Vienna and London
is really his first trip out of the country. When you
come to Dean Rusk, Secretary Rusk, there's a wholly
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different tale to be told, and that is a long story,
I think.
SMITH: Rusk has traveled more in the same period.of time, I
gather, than John Foster Dulles did?
LIPPMANN: Yes. And-that-has-involved-oonsequences-which-I-think
are-quite-s-ericusT--He-had-madu, --thinki-a-very-
criticai-mistake-in-the-haniling-cf-his-offiec, and-that
iz,,--Gontrary-to-a-1-1--that he believed-when-he-came-in,
-heff-become a trawling diplomat. Now, the trouble with
being a traveling:diplomat if you're Secretary of State
is, that somebody else has to run the State Department.
And he isn't such a wonderful diplomat that he, alone,
can do these things. So, I think he's lost the best
of both worlds, so to speak. Now, in the case of
John Foster Dulles - he traveled and he didn't pay
attention to the Secretary -- the State Department. He
paid very little attention to it, and he let it go its
own way, and he didn't give it any power. But then,
he -- the reason he did that was that he had another
foreign service which operated for him, and that was his
brother's Central Intelligence - C.I.A.
SMITH: Well, what about the C.I.A.? Can a democracy operate
an effective intelligence and espionage service?
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LIPPMANN: Well, Central Intelligence, you know, is a great, big
? grab bag of all kinds of things, and in general, I
would say absolutely indispensable to have intelligence
agencies - and it has to do - it has to spy - it has
to counter-spy, which is just almost as important as
spying. It has to do a lot of operations Which
wouldn't look very well in print, but which every
country does, such as occasionally slipping something
to a politician in a very backward country, or helping
an editor who'll change his mind in a backward country.
And it's all very immoral, but there's no use
pretending that it isn't going to be done. The trouble
with C.I.A. has been, I think -- I should have said,
one thing is very doubtful - whether it should ever
mount expeditions like the Cuban expedition, thats so
big you can't keep it secret, and therefore, it's
bound to fail. But really secret things are an
inevitable part of government. What they did in the
C.I.A. was to take all these things and put them in one
thing -- everything focused on the head of one man, who
never knew whether he was trying to tell the President
what was the truth about something or other, or what
ought to be done, and there ought to be no connection
between the two.
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SMITH: Well, just after the Cuban debacle, you said that the
Joint Chiefs and the head of the C.I.A. had to go.
Do you still feel that way?
LIPPMANN: I do. I think it's going to be done too - I hope with
as little bloodshed as possible, but I think the
C.I.A., itself, may disappear and be dissolved into
its parts taken over in different directions.
SMITH: Well, in all these setbacks in which the C.I.A. has been
involved, the President, in a speech, has implied, and
many of his aides have said, quite frankly to us
reporters, in private, that they consider the press to
be a limitation on our effectiveness in carrying out
policy -- a free press unrestrained. What do you think
about that? Do you agree with that?
LIPPMANN: They're very confused about all that. I think, in some
ways, the press -- there are some things the press
might do better or differently or not at all than it
does. But what they were complaining about was
something that they have -- there's no criticism being
made of it, .namely that the Cuban expedition was -- that
the news of that was published to the world before it
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happened. I consider it the duty of the press to
expose that kind of thing to the light of day,
because I don't think a democracy like this should
have a secret training camps and secret armies and
secret navies in foreign countries -- all in
violation of its treaties and its own laws.
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SMITH:
33
You once said that one of the proudest achievements of
your career was that you once exposed an incident like
that. Could you tell me what that was?
LIPPMANN: Well, that was many years ago when there was a grave
threat of the invasion of Mexico, yes, in the Twenties.
SMITH: And what did you do?
LIPPMANN: Well, I was editor of the New York World, and we
shrieked and howled about it much more than anybody
has done about Cuba, and I think we had some effect. I
think we had the effect of stopping it.
SMITH:
Well, to me, the chief paradox of the time we live in is,
that most of the resources and the skills and the wealth
of the world are with the Western nations; yet, the
Communist nations appear to be winning the competition
we call the cold war. How do you explain that?
LIFTMAN: I think that's an exaggeration, really, and somewhat of
an optical illusion. They are winning it in the most
backward and reactionary places, but I don't consider
that they're winning it in'-- they are not winning it in
Europe. In spite of Castro, don't believe they're going
to win it in Brazil, which is going to be determined
more than anything else what happens in South America.
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SMITH:
34?
They haven't won it in Mexico. I think that one
they haven't won it in Japan. The fact that the
Japanese are not -- don't love Americans doesn't mean
that they're Communists.
Well, the one question on which Khrushchev and the
President seemed less pessimistic than on other questions
was on Laos. Yet, recent events don't seem to have
borne out that relative optimism. What do you think
about that?
LIPPMANN: I think the answer is that Laos is not a primary vital
interest to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev regards it as
quite secondary, and it's not a primary interest to the
United States either. It's a country which is remote,
very difficult to get at, very unsuited to American
military type of American power military power. There
are no roads in it, no ports, no airfields, and I think
that it's a wise thing for a country to measure its --
to tailor its policy to its military powers.
SMITH:
Well, do you believe in what's called the Domino theory,
and that is that if we lose Laos, then we'll lose
Thailand, and so on, until we've lost all Southeast
Asia because of this one country?
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LIPPMANN: I remember the Domino theory first was brought up in the
Middle East, and I remember when people said Nasser made
a deal with the Soviets about arms, and they said, "Ah,
Egypt's gone" - then Syria 'was gone, and then Iraq. None
of them is gone, and I don't consider Laos gone. Laos
? is not going to be what we rather foolishly, I think,
two or three years ago, tried to make it - an American
satellite, whatever you like to call it. I mean, putting
in a government that suited MI - and that is not possible.
Well, Mr. Lippmann, in the course of our long
conversation in which we've ranged over many subjects,
you have been opposed to taking action, military,
forceful action in Laos, or unilateral action in Cuba.
You have said you're in favor of negotiations over Berlin,
which may involve making concessions to the Russians
over Berlin. What would be your answer to those who
would say that this is a policy of appeasement?
LIPPMANN: My answer to that would be that you can't decide these
questions of life and death for the world by epithets
? like appeasement. Furthermore, I think the reasons for
doing what I advocate, are based On the soundest,
strategical principle, and that is this: The Soviet
? Union is not engaged in any of these places. It hasn't
sent its troops anywhere. As long as it isn't engaged,
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we mustn't be engaged. We must always keep the central
power, which is the ultimate deterrent to the future -
to war by the Soviet Union intact, as long as they're
intact, but if we get ourselves involved in a Korean
war in Indo-China, and all our reserves begin flowing
that way, or get ourselves involved in a thing we
can't finish in Cuba, because the guerrilla war may go
on forever, then we will weaken ourselves for what is
really the issue, which is to keep the balance of power
between ourselves and the Soviet Union intact, and that's
the principle on which -- that's the principle I have
in the back of my mind in taking a position about not
intervening in Laos, for example. I don't agree with the
people who think that we have to go out and .shed a little
blood to prove we're virile men. This is too serious
a business for that kind of thinking, and in regard to
Cuba, my feeling was not only that, but also that we
had no -- it was illegal for us to do it, and we cannot
go into the business of violating treaties. We're not
that kind of country. And then behind that all, lies a
very personal and human feeling -- that I don't think
old men ought to promote wars for young men to fight.
I don't like warlike old men. I think it's their
business to try as best they can, by whatever wisdom
they can find, to avert what would be an absolutely
irreparable calamity for the world.
(MUSIC)
MO Mir
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37
ANNOUNCER: CBS REPORTS "Lippmann 1961" - was filmed and edited
by the staff of CBS REPORTS under the supervision and
control of CBS NEWS.
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