INSIDE SEVEN CRISES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200110011-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2004
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: July 13, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

meet the guerrilla threat in South Vietnam
are needed "reformers to reorganize mass
parties and social and political. programs
that could become the basis of moderniza-
nedy personally supported counterinsur-
gency training and planning. Thus far the
Pentagon policy of bombing the north and
enemy bases' in the south seems to have
cost the lives of Americo. :lots and planes
these recitals could easily stand up as a,',uithout bringing "vict.ory" nearer. Anyone
book in itself. The actors in his foreign who wants' further documentation of Mr.)
policy sub-system comprise two heroes, Hilsman's thesis ought to read Robert Shap-
President Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. ; len's valuable boc'4.c, "The Lost Revolution."
His "villains" are, first and foremost, Secre- Mr. Hilsman is at his best in his conspec-
tary of State Rusk and, second,. Defense tus of "secret intelligence in a free society,"
Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs the title of one of his chapters. He quickly
of Staff. `disposes of several popular arguments
It is difficult to fault Mr. Hilsman who, ',.against Rrti lligence and its operating arm,
far more than most critics of foreign policy, I the CIA, with this statement: "So long as ~t
has highly authoritative credentials as a !the Communists themely..~s...sle _41Jenly__a
West Pointer, a combat officer in World tagonistic. to the ret of the world, as they,
War II, and leader of an OSS guerrilla team ,..-openly and avuwed'y are, and so long as'
operating behind enemy lines in Burma. .-they use the techniques of subversion to,
88-01350R00020011 @?:M -0
_k1. .i~ 411.i App ~1 ~1` 20`" ~- ~
To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign
Policy in the Administration of John F.
Kennedy, by Roger Hilsman. New York:
Doubleday & Co. $6.95.'
By Arnold Beichman~
To s,, -e it simply, Roger Hilsman's book
is inc,.spensable to an understanding of
American foreign policy, as it was, as it is, ~fense Department approach which sees the
and as will be. It is a work of solid schol- Vietnam war as overridingly military. To
ai.>n, p. So as not to put off any potential
re-' er., the book is fascinating reading and
superb reporting of events we have lived
through this past decade.
As a high-ranking State Department exec-
utive during the Kennedy and for part of the
Johnson administration, Mr. Hilsman de-
scribes in extraordinary and vivid I-was-
there detail seven foreign policy. crises -
the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis,
Laos, Congo, Indonesia and Malaysia, China
.Onetime scholar at Princeton's Center of bring down governments, which they do and;
International Studies, he became director , which they openly and avowedly advocate,
of the State Department'?s Bureau of Intelli- . doing, then the countries to which they arel
gence and Research in 1961, and- in 1963.suc so hostile have both a right and a duty to
seeded Averell Harriman as Assistant Sec-~ use the methods of secret intelligence to pro-,
:etary of State for Far Eastern -Affairs.'He test and defend themselves - where those
has written widely on foreign policy. Follow- methods are effective and appropriate and.,
ing his resignation from the State ?epart- for which there.i;; r?.o effective and appropri-~
ment, he became a professor at Cdlumbia ate alternative."
University's School of International Affairs. The qualifical.ioir is in.the clause beginning
Such is his overtelescoped curriculum vitae.
after the dash, for, as Mr. Hilsman says, mi
`Neither hawk itor dawk' the past we have too often used secret Intel
ligence methods when they were not of-'1
The author's world view emphasizes the festive and appropriate or when there were;
urgency of supporting Third World nation- ? effective and appropriate alternative's." The'
alist and anticolonial movements regardless result, he states, of overreliance on these;
of their politically distasteful paths and covert methods "so corroded one of our
given at the risk of estrangement from our. major political assets, the belief in Ameri-?
European allies. From such a view arises can intentions' and integrity, as to nullify
the need for policymaking officials who much of the gain."
can grasp the political significance of Com-
munist-directed guerrilla movements, and ~i+Th.e China problem. make the appropriate political response, the I, have avoided, listing the now-it-can-be
Vetter to overcome them. told episodes which are strewn in profusion
"Mr. Hilsman is neither hawk nor dawk, throughout the book because to tell them
neither dove nor hove. He wants to win, to badly would risk distortion of their meaning.
stanch the Communist tide in Southeast Asia.. 1 One stoa?y, however, is worth recounting
but.such vigtgry is. unachievable.wtith ?a,De, . sins it tells a good deal about Secretary
Approved For Release:
,.Rusk, with whom Mr. Hilsman disagrees
i strongly on almost every substantive issue
of for. eign policy as well as management of
the State Department. Mr. Rusk was once
tasked if he wanted to go down in history as ,
,the Secretary of State who had solved the I
'Berlin crisis. He replied: "No, I'm not that
v_ain..But.Ldo-wanLt,o-gQ-dawA l ,itory_as i ___ _ _ _
seeded in passing the Berlin crisis on to his
successor."
ROSTQ14, }:ASS..T
I O1..ITOR
JUL7i 199-7
STAT