WHO SAYS AUGUST IS A QUIET MONTH?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350010-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: August 26, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350010-1
ARTICLE APPirARE:0_,
ON PAGE
Philip Geyetin
Who Says
August Is
A Quiet
Month?
August has been getting a bum rap.
This isn't at all a slow and somnolent
time of year. Just because a lot of folks
are sitting around some lakeside at
building sand castles or otherwise
gaging off doesn't mean that nothing
is going on.
On the wail just above my type-
writer hangs a calendar, courtesy of
Foreign Policy Magazine, which tells
you the anniversaries TA interesting
things that happened in international
affairs day-by-day. Consider some of
these entries for August:
First, of course, it cannot have es-
caped your notice by now that the 6th,
9th and 14th of August this year were
the 40th anniversaries of Hiroshima.
Nagasaki and V-J Day, which some
would say is proof enough that August,-
is no slow month.
But how many recall that on. Aug. 2;
1939, Albert Einstein wasn't goofing
off. He was writing a letter to Franklie
D. Roosevelt saying, "It may become
possible to set up a nuclear chain reac-
tion in a large mass of uranium."
That's where the Manhattan projct
and the Alamogordo first test shot?
and, indeed, the first use of nuclear
weapons in war?began.
On that same day in August 1964,
North Vietnamese torpedo. boats at-
tacked the destroyer U.S.S. Maddox
in the Guff of Tonkin. Two days later,
even as American bombers were strik-
ing back against North Vienm
, President Johnson said: "We still 'eel
no wider war."
Three days after that, Congress
passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
giving Johnson a license to do pretty
much anything he wanted in pursuit. cd
' whatever policy 'caught Iles fancy in
Vietnam. You could.argnet-wit-are in
safer hands when Clionresk as is. tie
case this year, closes down.forrAugust....
On Aug. 9, 1974, President Nixon
WASHINGTON POST
26 August 1985
closed down his presidency by resign-
ing the office and brought an end to a
threatening constitutional crisis called
Watergate. Nixon pleaded not guilty, .
,an exercise in semantics that was
matched by the next day (Aug. 10) in
1949, when the War Department offi-
cially became the Defense Depart-
ment.
American imperialism has had its
flings in August. On the 12th, in 1896,
we formally annexed Hawaii. On the
15th, in 1914, the Panama Canal
opened for business. And on the 27th,
the president of the United States
made the following statement: "We
are not making war on Nicaragua any
more than a policeman on the street is
making war on passersby."
In case you have wondered why Cal-
vin Coolidge is said to be one of Ron-
ald Reagan's favorite presidents, that
was Coolidge commenting, in 1926, on
the landing of U.S. Marines' in Nicara-
gua.
Sneaking of ininerialism. the shah st
Iran was restored to his throne on
Aug. 19. 1953.. with a crucial belting
hand from the CIA. Historians will .he
a long time contemplating whether the
re411_1/e he replaced would not have
been a better way for Iran to go than
the way it has been going since the,
Ayatollah Khomeini replaced the shah
and gave us. among other things, the
year-long hostage crisis in 1980.
August has been particularly big on
good intentions. On the first of this
month 10 years ago we got .the final
act of the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, at Helsinki. On
Aug. 27,. 1928, we got the Kellogg-
Briand Pact, which was supposed to be
an agreement banning war. On Aug.
30, 1963, a "hot line" was established
between .Washington and Moscow for
the purpose of providing a quick way
to cool off a superpower confrontation
and reduce the risk of accidental war.
On Aug. 21, 1944, the United
States, British, Chinese and Soviet
representatives met at Dumbarton
Oaks here to try to devise an interna-
tional organization for the purpose of
promoting, according to my calendar,
"peaceful and legal solutions to world
problems."
The British are notorious for
swarming off to their own (or conti-
nental) beaches in August, leaving
London (as is also the case with Paris)
to the tourists until the heat and the
humidity subside. But not in August of
1812, when on the 16th. U.S. Gen.
William Hull aurrendeAd Detroit to
the British. Two rears later, in 1814,
the British outdid themselves right
here in Washington. When the tem-
perature must have already been rea-
sonably close to unbearable, British
troops burned the Capitol and the
White House as well.
I could go on, but it gets grimmer.
On' the last day of August in 1983,
Squth Korea's KAL 007 was shot
down by a Soviet fighter. And on V-J
Day in 1969, North Koreans shot
down an American reconnaissance
Plane over international MIAMI off the .
North Korean coast, killing 31 Amer-
icans.
Finally, again on Aug. 14, Ronald
Reagan's national security adviser
William Clark, gave me a good reason
for bringing this recital to a close (and
taking what's left of the month off). "I
have never felt inhibited by a lack of
background," Clark said, adding: "We
have too many facts."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350010-1