The Edge of War

It had been a long while--eight weeks --between press conferences, and a lot had happened between times in the public life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Thus, there was a record gathering of 412 reporters and cameramen on hand when Kennedy walked into the big State Department auditorium one morning last week.

The President moved easily, showing no signs of his recent back injury, and he half-smiled his recognition to White House regulars. Yet his face appeared puffy and lined by new wrinkles, and his hands seemed to tremble slightly as he shuffled the papers before him.

No Tremor. There was no tremor in his voice when he spoke out on the dominant issue of the day: the fate of Berlin. Aiming his words over the heads of the note-taking reporters to Moscow, the President charged that "the 'crisis' over Berlin is Soviet manufactured." He admitted that there was still the "un finished business" of a peace treaty in West Germany, expressed Western willingness to discuss sensible proposals that would further guarantee the freedom of Berlin. But the Western stand on Berlin, he said, "is not just a question of technical legal rights. It involves the peace and the security of the people of West Berlin . . . It involves the peace and security of the Western world." And, he added, if that peace is disturbed, it "will be a direct Soviet responsibility."

All week long, behind closed doors, the President was preparing to meet a crisis in Berlin. There were long, unscheduled talks with White House and State Department advisers. Hoping somehow to crack Khrushchev's illusion that the West would not stand firm, the President explained his position to junketeering Journalist Aleksei Adzhubei, Khrushchev's son-in-law and editor of Izvestia. Said Kennedy: "I just want to make sure that you and your father-in-law have no doubts about our position in Berlin." Adzhubei promised to carry the message home to the Kremlin.

Reviewing Crises. For advice on Berlin, John Kennedy was relying primarily upon Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Truman. Working out of his Washington law office, Acheson has carefully reviewed every report on past Berlin crises, examined every possible way the Soviets or their East German satellites could put pressure on the city. Last week, before the National Security Council, he made his still-secret report. Acheson is convinced that a surrender in Berlin means the surrender of Europe, believes that Khrushchev really does doubt the U.S. will use its nuclear deterrent. Thus, the U.S. must go to the very edge of war, and be willing to go beyond, to convince the Soviet Premier that the U.S. will live up to its commitments.

After consultation with allies, the U.S. will present to Moscow an answer to the recent Soviet memorandum on Berlin (TIME, June 23). Since the report is still at the writing stage, the President at his press conference waived further questions on Berlin. But on other subjects he made headlines with a few specific points. He:

P: Compared Khrushchev, who recently claimed that the Soviet Union would outproduce the U.S. by 1970, to "the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin" before the prey is caught. "This tiger," said Kennedy, in a punning reference to Washington's nickname for him, "has other ideas." Putting aside his campaign complaints that the U.S. could not afford a growth rate slower than Russia's, the President argued that if both countries' present rates are maintained (3 1/2% for the U.S., 6% for the Soviet Union), then "Soviet output will not reach two-thirds of ours by 1970."

P: Ordered his Scientific Advisory Committee to convene a panel of experts that will check ways in which the Soviet Union might secretly have conducted nuclear tests without detection and what specific progress in weapons technology could have been made.

P: Asked by a Newsweek correspondent for his comment on recent criticism of omnipresent and overlapping White House policy advisers (TIME, June 30), particularly in Latin American affairs, the President said that he was sorry that the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs had gone unfilled for so long. But, he added, "my experience in Government is that when things are noncontroversial, beautifully coordinated and all the rest, it may be that there isn't much going on."*

Toward the end of the week the President, like many another American, flew off for a long Fourth of July holiday. It was a time for rest. At the family compound of summer homes on Cape Cod, only a small handful of White House aides mixed in with the gathering of Kennedys, in-laws and close friends. Yet with the Berlin crisis looming large, national policy would surely be discussed--and formed --around that ever-influential forum, the dinner table of old Joseph Kennedy.

*Day after the president spoke, New York Times Columnist Arthur Krock charged that "a little more beautiful White House coordination would have spared Mr. Kennedy at least one acutely embarrassing experience." Recently, Kennedy nominated White House Staffer Frank Reeves to be the first Negro on the Board of Commissioners for the District of Columbia. Although checking financial records of presidential nominees is routine, no White House aide noticed that eight income tax liens had been sworn out against Reeves in the last ten years--a fact that the Senate easily discovered. Last week Kennedy was forced to withdraw Reeves's nomination, as a consequence, Krock noted, of "one of the most splendid examples in history of the beauties Mr. Kennedy sees in staff undercoordination."

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