(UNTITLED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200940054-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 1999
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: May 13, 1961
• Content Type: OPEN

1 C O L EV -L J?ULLt tJ 11) I
Approved For Release 1999/09/17 : CIA-RDP75
j., r&'A (I ays.)
lotions Comntitfcc. was openly critical of the role of the
the. correct doctrine was forcefully stated at the pub.
li,hers' con,,entiun by Prc-ident hennerjy himself:
"Without debate, without criticism, no' Administration
can surcce< ---and no republic can survive.
II not be a bad idea. for if this brilliant young crowd fails,
were influential in the planning stage, -and are now even
more bontroversial than when tht'y first arrived." Their
decision, he conceded, was ruched without real staff
work, study, or perspective. So "the intellectuals who
I, arrived 'here as critics are ,now the objects of criticism
themselves." It is the very existence of this counter-
criticism, no matter how justified, that worries Mr. Res-
ton, "A moratorium on sniping at the professors might
4 new doctrine has suddenly developed to meet
the new needs of new times. When the Liberals
Aare responsible for a fiasco, there must be no
criticism. This doctrine was first adumbrated by James
Reston in the New York Times of April 28. "The sad-
dest men in Washington these days," be began, "are the
intellectuals on the White House staff -who helped deal
with the Cuban issue: McGeorge Bundy, former dean of
the faculty at Harvard; Walt Whitman Rostow of Mas-
sachusetts Institute of 'Technology and Arthur Schlesipger
Jr., the Harvard historian."
Reston admitted that "Bundy and Re stow in particular .
we might have to tolerate not only defeat but a spasm of
anti-intellectualism as well."
(Just how lack of knowledge, judgment and sense on
Cuba squares with brilliance, and just why criticism of
lack of knowledge, judgment and sense is "anti-intel-
lectualism," are mysteries that we hope the New Frontier
dialecticians will explain more fully in the next hundred
But it remained for Mr. Eisenhower to carry this
strange doctrine even further. Asked ht a news conference
v%hethcr the public was entitled to a post-mortem on Cuba,
he replied: "Don't go back and rake over the ashes." The
to orst possible development nos . he added, would be to
'-tart witch-hunting."
Nobody, of course, should ci iticize the wrung people
for the % rung things. But what Mr. Eisenhower seemed i~ `
to be saving is that we should make no public effort to i\
analyze this humiliating and catastrophic blunder, to
learn any lessons from it, or to fix responsibility for it: we
should continue to put our tlust and national destiny in
the hands of those who bungled.
Fortunately, 'then, are Democrats who do riot accept this
doctfine. Senator 1-'ulhrifht, chairman of the Foreign Re-'$
Approved For Release 1999/09/17 : CIA-
STATINTL.