State Secrets

To the Editor of the Summer News:

The recent installments in Life of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s A Thousand Days raise some difficult problems for the journalist or historian who serves for a short time in government, and then decides to describe his experiences and insights for the historical record. These problems are more in the realm of taste and judgment than national security, in an area, that is, whose limits are not easy to define. Where, for example, is the historian to draw the line in his use of informal remarks made to him by high officials on the basis of a personal relationship? How can he separate his own perspective and values from those of the man for whom he has worked? I suggest that while there is no easy solution to these problems, Mr. Schlesinger has egregiously overstepped the bounds of good judgment and common decency in his handling of them.

President Kennedy, despite the wit and saltiness of his conversation, was careful not to offend his subordinates or to undermine publicly their authority. It is hard to believe that he would have wanted either of these things to occur after his death through the repetition of casual and often perfunctory remarks to those in whom he thought he could confide.

In the second installment of his book, Mr. Schlesinger gives the clear impression that the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred as the result of bureaucratic momentum and bad advice. And yet the President never censured any of his advisers -- partly, no doubt, out of magnanimity, but primarily because he knew that the ultimate decision and responsibility were his alone. Mr. Schlesinger himself indicates that the New Frontier became easily exasperated at the "sentimentality" which questioned the principles and ends of American foreign policy. This may help to explain why the advice of Senator Fulbright and Ambassador Bowles was not taken, and may even throw light on why Mr. Schlesinger resorted to memoranda to record his own opposition.

It is difficult to sort out President Kennedy's views about the State Department from those of Mr. Schlesinger. Some of Mr. Schlesinger's comments, such as those concerning the morale of the Foreign Service, are clearly matters of personal opinion, and he is entitled to his own. Others are mis-statements of fact which he might have avoided by consulting the documents available to him. He states, for example, that Foreign Service assignments lack continuity, and that the President ried unsuccessfully to bring about a greater degree of specialization. Had he troubled to look at the statistics, he would have discovered that a radical shift towards greater geographical and functional specialization took place during the period of his own service in the Kennedy Administration.

One cannot but admire Mr. Schlesinger's long-suffering efforts to purge the State Department of jargon. And yet one wonders if his attitude is not indicative of something more than concern about style. A case in point is his memorandum to the Secretariat to the effect that those who use the term 'Sino-Soviet bloc' "don't know what is going on in the world." It is diverting to speculate upon the reaction at Harvard if a visiting professor were to write a memorandum to the History Department stating that he assumed every one knew that the word "charisma"--to pick a bit of academic jargon at random -- was of little analytic use, and hoped the faculty would have the kindness not to use it in the future.

Mr. Schlesinger's opinions about the Foreign Service are his own concern. What one objects to are the malicious personal attacks by a man who happened, for a brief period, to be privy to the inner councils of government. One cannot resist returning to the analogy of the visiting professor at Harvard. If, after his year had come to an end, he should write a pemphlet quoting Mr. Schlesinger's colleagues to the effect that Mr. Schlesinger was an arrogant, supercilious man who paid insufficient attention to his students (but--in order to be objective--who did write good books.) Mr. Schlesinger might consider it in poor taste. So, I should think, would these who had been quoted. Joseph P. '53

(The writer is a Foreign Service Officer currently detailed to Harvard.)