The Stranger on the Squad

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His speech--elaborately phrased, rich with allusions--sounds like another language amid the staccato din of the New Frontier's verbal shorthand. With his ironic, self-deprecating wit, he often appears to be some misplaced elfin uncle among the intense young men who laugh at their well-worn house jokes only rarely--and hardly ever at themselves.

A lonely man, he seems even lonelier in the forced togetherness of New Frontier society. In a group that sees conversation as a necessary delay between acts, he relishes talk for its own sake. In a group that venerates the quick decision, he is a ponderer. He remains an introspective man among the professionally outgoing, a paunchy tennis player in the midst of a touch-football squad, an elder statesman in a society whose main concession to age is to switch the oldtimer from pass-catching end to blocking back.

Adlai Ewing Stevenson, 62, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is the very antithesis of the New Frontiersman. Two years a member of a team, he was never a member of the club. And it was the difference between Stevenson and most of his colleagues, the conflict between his ways and theirs, the obvious fact that Jack Kennedy would not be exactly brokenhearted to see Adlai go home to Illinois, that last week placed Stevenson in the biggest, noisiest family fight so far during the Kennedy Administration.

A. Munich? Like so many family fights, it was over a silly issue--a three-page article in the Saturday Evening Post. Time was when the Post was known for homey cover pictures and short stories in which boy and girl always managed to meet, spat, resolve their differences and legally wed within 2,500 words. Now the Post goes in for hurry-up, behind-the-scenes exposes--such as last week's "In Time of Crisis," a panting account of the Cuban confrontation by Charles Bartlett, Washington correspondent for the Chattanooga Times, and Stewart Alsop, the Post's Washington editor.

The Bartlett-Alsop piece was notable for only one thing: it charged that Stevenson, alone among the President's advisers, dissented from the firm-action consensus on Cuba, that only Adlai was willing to trade American bases abroad for the removal of the Soviet missiles. It quoted, an anonymous source as saying that Stevenson "wanted a Munich."

In ordinary times, such an article would not have caused much of a ripple. But in Washington last week, pundits stacked theory upon theory--and the cartoonists had not had such juicy fun in months. It was promptly and widely assumed that Kennedy himself had instigated the accusation, that the President was trying to sandbag Stevenson out of the U.N. That so much importance would be attached to a magazine article was in part an outgrowth of the somewhat bizarre and distorted atmosphere that prevails in Washington. No other Administration has so single-mindedly followed the proposition that "news is a weapon" (see PRESS). No other President has maintained such close personal contacts with newsmen. Aware of the Kennedy method of the indirect nudge, the planted hint, the push by newspaper column, students of the Administration follow the work of Kennedy's favorite columnists as faithfully as Kremlinologists plod through Pravda's prose. And of all Washington newsmen, Charlie Bartlett is closest to Kennedy.

Bartlett is the old pal who introduced Jack to Jackie, who ushered at their wedding, who regularly spends weekends with the Kennedys at Glen Ora. "The President is not a source of mine," insists Bartlett. But other Washington newsmen-doubting that those weekends are spent entirely talking about old times--look at Bartlett's work as a conscious or subconscious mirror of Kennedy thinking. "If anybody else had written that piece but Bartlett," says a White House aide, "nothing would have been said."

But Bartlett did write it. Other magazines and newspapers were preparing "inside" pieces, but it was the President who urged Bartlett to compose one on his own. He also issued instructions, as he had done for several but not all other newsmen, giving Bartlett access to the White House, CIA and State Department sources.

Small wonder, then, that the Post story stirred a storm. It arose only in part about the argument whether the Bartlett-Alsop charges were accurate--or whether, as Stevenson said angrily, they were "wrong in literally every detail." Far more important was the question of whether Kennedy was trying to use his pen pals to make it impossible for Stevenson to remain at the United Nations.

The pattern has appeared before. Hardly had Chester Bowles taken office as Under Secretary of State when the observation was printed--in Charlie Bartlett's column--that he was hardly the star of the New Frontier. A few months later, with claims of coincidence on all sides, Bowles was moved to a high-sounding job of lesser importance. Similarly, Foreign Aid Director Fowler Hamilton read repeatedly in the papers of his imminent departure from the Government. Partly to find out if the rumors were true, and hoping they weren't. Hamilton went to the White House, where his resignation was swiftly accepted.

It therefore seemed more than possible that Kennedy was using leakmanship in an effort to rid his Administration of Adlai Stevenson, twice the Democratic candidate for President, leader of his own large political following--and a man whose relationship with John Kennedy has long been uneasy.

Only in the light of that relationship does last week's flap take on major political meaning. The antagonisms between Kennedy and Stevenson date back to the 1956 Democratic Convention, when Massachusetts' Senator John Kennedy placed in nomination the name of Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. Kennedy then thought he had Stevenson's backing for the vice-presidential nomination. But Stevenson threw the nomination open to all aspirants; Kennedy was forced to fight for it --and just barely lost to Estes Kefauver.

At the 1960 convention, the Kennedy forces wanted Stevenson to make the speech nominating Kennedy. Stevenson, still halfheartedly running himself, agonized over the decision. Finally, Bobby Kennedy called him with an ultimatum: make the speech--or else. Stevenson hemmed, hawed, and eventually refused. To the Kennedys, the crime was as much in the agonizing as in the refusal.

The Bone. But political protocol still demanded that the New Frontier find some kind of Administration job for the two-time Democratic presidential candidate. Stevenson was widely mentioned for Secretary of State. He was understandably disappointed when the United Nations offer came instead; and again he hesitated about accepting. Many Stevenson supporters considered the U.N. post just a bone thrown to Adlai. But to some of Kennedy's Irish Mafia outriders, it was one bone more than Adlai deserved.

From the beginning, Stevenson was refused the policymaking role he had expected; sometimes he was not even informed of major Administration plans. The great humiliation came during the Bay of Pigs disaster. At the U.N., two days before the invasion, Stevenson, unaware of what was going on, waved photos of planes that he insisted were flown by Cuban Air Force defectors who had bombed their own airfields before fleeing to Florida. On the day of the invasion, he denied any U.S. responsibility. A few days later, Kennedy took complete responsibility for the Bay of Pigs--and the planes were revealed to be U.S. bombers that had been disguised, with little flair for the art, by the CIA. Deeply hurt, Stevenson was finally soothed with promises of better future liaison.

After that, things seemed to go a bit better. Indeed, some of Stevenson's U.N. performances have won even Kennedy's admiration. On one occasion, when Adlai called the White House to urge a tough speech warning Russia to stay out of the Congo, Kennedy remarked: "In this job, he's got the nerve of a burglar."

In diplomatic business that takes patience, Stevenson has drawn on U.N. experience that goes back to the founding conference in San Francisco, steering through U.S. policy on the Congo operation, U.N. financing, and the election of U Thant--and doing it mostly in quiet, off-camera discussions. In U.N. speeches, Stevenson's eloquence has been an effective weapon. A year ago, he gave perhaps the most cogent speech to date, explaining why the U.S. opposes the seating of a Red China regime that behaves "in a fashion recalling the early authoritarian emperors of China.'' During the Angola and Goa debates, Stevenson made clear U.S. opposition to colonialism and aggression, reminded delegates that the Communist world is "the largest colonial empire which has ever existed in all history, the only imperial system which is not liquidating itself but is still trying energetically to expand in all directions."

Still Restive. Yet, only a year ago, Stevenson remained restive at the U.N., seriously considered returning to Illinois to run against Republican Senator Everett Dirksen. Viewed from the U.N.'s glass jungle in Manhattan, the Senate appeared to be a far more reasonable club--one that might allow some time for reflection instead of the grinding cycle of negotiations, speeches, parties, dinners and the problems of running a 115-man staff. Stevenson was still unhappy with his role in foreign policy--the role of advocating policies he had no part in making. Typically, Kennedy spent one session with Stevenson in which he did not discourage Adlai from running for the Senate. Then, in a second meeting, Kennedy told Stevenson he could exert more influence as U.N. ambassador than as junior Senator from Illinois. The President promised Stevenson "an expanding role in the making and execution of foreign policy."

To a certain degree, that pledge has been kept. Stevenson works mainly through regular State Department channels, reporting to Secretary of State Rusk through his old friend Harlan Cleveland, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. But he is often on the direct line to Kennedy from his U.N. mission headquarters or from his Waldorf Tower suite. He consults constantly with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.. a White House liaison man and an old Stevenson speechwriter who, however, switched allegiance to Kennedy in early 1960. At least once a week Stevenson flies to Washington to attend State Department meetings or meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.

It was ironic that Stevenson's performance during the October Cuban crisis should have occasioned last week's controversy. For, to all outward appearances, this was Adlai's finest hour as U.N. Ambassador. Acting on talk-tough instructions telephoned to him by President Kennedy, Stevenson flayed Russia's Valerian Zorin. "Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium-and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba?" he demanded. "Yes or no--don't wait for translation--yes or no?" When Zorin protested that he was not a defendant in an American court, Stevenson cut in: "You are in the court of world opinion right now."

"You will have your answer in due course," Zorin said. "I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over," snapped Stevenson. For millions of Americans watching the performance on television, it was Stevenson at his best --a reasonable man who had finally lost patience with an outrageous opponent.

Fact-Fiction. But Bartlett and Alsop cast a far different, much harsher light on Stevenson's Cuban crisis behavior. Their Post piece has much in common with the Washington fact-fiction novels that are now clogging the bestseller lists. It purports to narrate the secret deliberations of "ExComm"--an abbreviation for the National Security Council Executive Committee that was unknown even to members of the group until it was repeated paragraph after paragraph by Bartlett and Alsop. The Post story is filled with Druryisms and some language that seems to be left over from the magazine's serialization of Fail-Safe. Leaders negotiate "in the shadow of nuclear war" and make "the live-or-die decisions when the chips are down." As cliches mount, the reader half expects the next phone call to be answered by old Scab Cooley. But instead it is McGeorge Bundy who hears a CIAman's cryptic, spy-befuddling report of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. "Those things we've been worrying about"; says the CIAman cleverly, "it looks as though we've really got something." There is even room to mention a minor Russian official in Washington named Georgi Bolshakov, who is duped by his own bosses so that he can pass along to Kennedy the incorrect information that "those things" are strictly defensive.

Bartlett and Alsop say that in the days between the discovery of the missile bases and the Kennedy announcement of a blockade, Ex-Comm was split between "hawks" and "doves"--those who wanted to invade Cuba or bomb out the missile bases, and those who urged caution. The "most hawklike of the hawks," they write, was Dean Acheson. One of the doves was normally belligerent Bobby Kennedy, who, said the Post, thought that "an air attack against Cuba would be a Pearl Harbor in reverse, and contrary to all American traditions."

Although the hawks were originally in the majority, according to the Post, opinions finally merged, and everybody joined Dean Rusk as a "dawk or a hove."* The group formed a "rolling consensus" built around McNamara's plan of "maintaining options" by blockading Cuba, leaving the door open for invasion or bombing if the blockade failed to get rid of the missiles. Who was the only person who did not roll with the consensus? Why, Adlai Stevenson, of course.

"There is disagreement in retrospect about what Stevenson really wanted," admitted Bartlett and Alsop. But they were sure it was something bad. And they quote that "non-admiring official" as saying: "He wanted to trade the Turkish, Italian and British missile bases for the Cuban bases." In the post-mortem speculation about who that official might have been, many fingers were pointed at Acheson, whose dislike for Stevenson is notorious. But Acheson coolly and flatly denied it. Said he: "I do not know to this day what Adlai Stevenson's position was, and I don't care. I never bothered to find out where he stood."

In fact-fiction books about Washington, everything, as the readers know, turns out well for the good guys. Now Dean Rusk, in a line Allen Drury could never have invented, sums up the victory: "We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked." It was a statement, wrote Bartlett and Alsop, that will go down with "such immortal phrases as 'Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes.' " But the Post compensates for the lack of a surprise ending by hammering away at the villain. The Munich quote is bannered across the top of one page. Opposite is a full-page portrait of Adlai, chin in hand, looking like a man who is incapable of making up his Christmas list. "Stevenson was strong during the U.N. debate," reads the caption, "but inside the White House the hard-liners thought he was soft."

The response from Stevenson was immediate and angry. On NBC-TV's early-morning Today show--which has the advantage of catching half-dressed and partly shaved Washington officials before they leave for the office--and in later conversations, Stevenson made some telling points to support his claim that "this must be some kind of record for irresponsible journalism." Stevenson said that he:

-- "Emphatically approved the blockade on further arms shipments to Cuba" three days before the Kennedy announcement, and "opposed, equally emphatically, an invasion of Cuba at the risk of nuclear war until the peace-keeping machinery of the United Nations had been used."

-- Never advocated a swap of bases, but merely predicted correctly that Khrushchev might bring up the matter. Stevenson's suggested response: to tell Khrushchev that the matter of foreign bases was already on the agenda of disarmament talks, but that those talks could not even begin until the weapons were out of Cuba. Says a White House aide and former hawk: "Anyone who did not think about the bases as possible points that would be raised in any negotiations after the blockade would have been nutty."

Aside from some demonstrable inaccuracies in the story, the whole hawk-dove theme was a vast oversimplification. In an effort to examine all possibilities, everybody at the Executive Committee meetings offered ideas that they were not willing to live or die by. That was the advisers' function--and the final decisions were the President's. There was no doubt whatever about where he stood: during the hottest moments of the Cuba crisis he was planning in the most positive terms to invade Cuba if the Soviet Union did not forthwith promise to remove its missiles.

After the Post article was published, the White House limped to Stevenson's defense. Pierre Salinger issued a brief, flabby statement attesting that Stevenson "strongly supported the decision taken by the President on the quarantine and brilliantly developed the U.S. position at the United Nations." But it did not deny the Bartlett-Alsop charges. On the same day, Stevenson was in Washington to attend an NSC Executive Committee meeting (where, like other top Cuba advisers, he received from Kennedy a silver calendar with the 13 crucial October days deeply etched). After the session, Stevenson was ushered into Kennedy's office, assured that the President had had nothing to do with the Post article.

"Dear Adlai." White House staffers reported that Stevenson left completely satisfied. This was far from the case. Kennedy had been almost cavalier, ignoring Stevenson's arguments that presidential advisers should be protected from leaks ("Advice is of little value if it is chilled by fear of disclosure or misrepresentation"), indignant only at the notion that anyone could think he would use Charles Bartlett as a mouthpiece.

Later, Kennedy wrote Stevenson a "Dear Adlai" letter that, without undercutting Bartlett and Alsop, expressed "regret at the unfortunate stir" and "fullest confidence" in Stevenson. Toward week's end, while introducing the President at a Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation dinner, Master of Ceremonies Stevenson joked about the whole flap. Introducing Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver as an "instant peace" salesman so successful that "he makes the United Nations cry for it," Stevenson quipped: "As for me. I've been crying for it for the past week." Adlai quoted Joseph Pulitzer's observation, "Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a lady"--but added: "A newspaper can always print a retraction." Kennedy chuckled, but made no attempt to match the Stevenson wit--and no attempt to show warmth toward Adlai.

Heroes & Bums. It remained far from clear whether the President had actually tried to hurt Stevenson through Bartlett and Alsop. Most of the evidence was to the contrary. What had probably happened was that some other New Frontiersmen, knowing of the President's lack of deep affection for Adlai, had felt free to knock him. What the whole controversy really did was to highlight the huge personal and philosophical differences between Kennedy and Stevenson. "We seem to be living in an era," said Stevenson last week, "when anyone who is for war is a hero and anyone who is for peace is a bum." This was the sort of slapdash accusation from which Stevenson himself has sometimes suffered, and it was a strange formulation of the choices before U.S. policymakers. The great point Kennedy had recognized during the Cuba crisis was that there are times when the only way to achieve peace is to risk war. Again, Stevenson insisted that "it's time to stop this childish talk about hard and soft lines among the advisers of the President." The words are labels allowing of little subtlety, but they are roughly functional and are used all over Washington and by the President himself.

The President denies, both in public and in private, that he wants to pressure Stevenson out of the Administration. "It makes no sense for me to get rid of Stevenson," he says. "Where could I get anyone who could do half as good a job?" As for Stevenson, he believes that he is performing an important function at the United Nations. Says he: "The battle line is here, right here. But I would go in a minute if I thought the President wanted me to."

Although Stevenson's role on the battle line cannot have been helped by being undercut again by his own Administration, he remains an effective operator. The neutrals who greeted his appointment as a salvation have been somewhat disappointed; the Stevenson aloofness that prevents him from leaping into New Frontier society also prevents the kind of delegates' lounge chumminess that many expected of him. He has still been considered the pipeline from the smaller nations to the White House--and the line appears somewhat damaged.

The outlook is for Stevenson to stay at his post--at least for a while. But politics is not only a matter of principles, or of promises. More than anything else, politics is people--and there are few people on the political scene who seem less likely to form a smooth doubles team than Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy. It was probably with that in mind that Adlai, when asked if he really believed that some New Frontiersmen were trying to force him out of office, replied: "No, this is the first time I've ever heard this mentioned. I'm not sure it will be the last time."

* Hove presumably rhymes with love. In a burlesque entitled "Last Drippings from the Great Certified Leak," the New York Times's senior columnist Arthur Krock, never wittier or more sardonic, suggests the word might first have been pronounced when McNamara predicted that a Soviet destroyer would "heave in sight." But ExComm's presiding officer, called "Himself," corrects him with "The word is hove." Otherwise, Krock turns ExComm into MadAv. "Let's melt this ball of wax and move the hardware from the shelf," suggests Krock's McNamara. "Suppose I start batting out the fungoes." Sorenson--or somebody identified as "T. S--"--says, "You mean toss it in the well and see the kind of splash it makes; follow it into the high grass and see if it eats; get down to where the rubber meets the road." The only possible mistake in the transcript that was leaked to him, admits Krock, is the section which reports Himself saying to the one dissenter, "I'll get back to you." Concludes Krock: "This last remark could have been 'I'll get back at you.' "

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