THE KENNEDY LEGACY AS THRILLER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200170002-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2004
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 12, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

C, c . LA - c~ c 9 ',I 1-
2 JUN 1971 C5, ~ V -C.,- rt-c.?--
A For Release _2004/11/01 :.CIA-RDP8801135ppmo ~Op1,70b~}2s 'is;c snip-
Approved nt . e ~r
" r i , pct of businesslike, crisis --conversation
}}, no, ( i~1 1~.
,l that could well have a1~I>ealed, but foi:
C' i,I 1,t~, ,3 necessary changes in detail, in Robert
Q
Jf.1~ Kennedy's 7 hit iced Days: r. l- -Vt -(,"I
"The great dangr," the President
-------- -- - -- " - --i - continued, "is that they might acts-?
On. Instructions I 'lons of ally believe we would launch a
pre- ventive attack."
'by Pierre Saiinge1" "There's always that risk," said
t I wouldn't read too
"B
k
u
Tras
. (Doubleday;. $6.95) much into their redeployments. I
If ],in l leIllallg had written this novel, Fu-Manchu encounters with theist. And think they're just as much a propa-?
his readers might have noted the low no matter how hard the reader may ganda response as this first broad
J le 'el of sex life and the high level of try to remind himself that Salinger's cas It don't know that I agree," said
political savvy in it, but have been characters are fictional, the old Cuban ?This is the first time they've
otherwise unsurprised; another day, reality, with its cast, moves in. Adams.
is. face joint AmericantSoviet
another nuclear-warhead melodrama. How does one talk to the enemy? In had
action' We're pushing them very
Since Pierre Salinger wrote it there is the Salinger book one moves from hard. And we pushing
have to measure the
reason to read it not as melodrama but grand platitude to small talk -.that is, _
as a showing of how White House from benign nonsense about the ulti- deterrent effect of what we're doing
people thank. My guess is that the mate destinies of nations to talk about against the possibility that they be-
proper way to read On Iiisiritciions of tennis -- and never approaches the nec- lieve we do intend to attack."
My Govcrnnicni is as both; it is an ex- essary intimacy where one mind !III- "If they do go off the deep end,"
id 1Z -d "we're ready for it."
a 1
,
presidential Press Secretary's idea of pinges on the other, where the gen- sate
what it thoughtful novel is, which is oral and particular, public and private, His words hung in the air ami
sl
y. ?
melodrama. meet. There is no significant private nou
As melodrama it keeps looking like life and thought in On Illsirl(ciiolls of "No," said the President. "We took
life, life as lived and dreamed in our My GoverninenI;. the navel is efficient, the hard line because we had no
country's highest governmental places. sticks to business, never moves beyond choice and I wouldn't countermand
The prime source of the book is not the' conditions of melodrama - which is a single order I've given. But we're
Ian Fleming but the Cuban missile era fine except for the na ggang, unliterary not going to push the Chinese into
sis; Salinger moves Robert Kennedy's questions: was it (is it) like that at the a corner where they think-even
book about that crisis, Thirteen Days, White I-louse? did (does) James Bond wrongly - that the only way out is
tap to 1976, replaces Cuba with a South rule there? - war. We have to leave them all op-
American republic named Santa Clara, it is wholly appropriate that a White tion, a very clear option, short of
and puts Red China rather than the blouse press agent's vision of our cqun- that."
Soviet Union in the role of secret plant- try shows the country's future inexor- The attractions of Jolla and Robert
Cr of intercontinental missiles within ably molded by an unfortunate news-
range-of our cities. The model is there- break (the incumbent liberal President Kennedy to. Youth and intellect have
fore government crisis-life as- lived by is overheard playing politics with the long been part of the Kennedy my
the. Kennedys, whose tragic attachment nuclear shebang, with the result that ology, and to the degree that Salinger
.to melodrama still haunts us; but the he loses the election to a Goldwater moves within the Kennedy orbit and
model is of course not merely historic. type). It is also appropriate that the has been himself an active, high-level
Democrat-politico, we may reasonably
The possibility of another missile c?i- press agent, since he is a Democrat,
sis is always resent, so Salinger may his thoughts, even if planted in
present, Y make his melodrama Democratic in thriller, some nonthriller attention.
reasonably fantasize another crisis and its politics, and have the good guys. a
run it through a 'tin. The only catch Yet if we do so now, after our Viet-
o g favor foreign aid to progressive re_, n1m bust, we are apt to be' struck by
Is that looking at the crisis as a future ginies abroad, while th e bad guys itch
possibility, rather than a current or to back fascist generals and drop the the poverty of imaginative political
historical fact, gives one time to re- Bomb. It is even appropriate that this' thought to be found behind the Ken-
flect; to imagine nigger, possibilities or press agent find villainy in the Press Wetly philosophy of international rely
at least other thoughts, conversations in the form of a conservative TV jour- tions, both as that philosophy was
and actions than those Salinger gives nalist (what would Spiro say?). Yet be- originally revealed in the affairs with
r- b 1 l where and as it is now
e
i
us - to imagine in other words a . more ? hind these- conventional assumptions u a 1 1 1 e,
spacious mental world at the White there remains the emptiness of rnelo- suggested in Salinger's reconstruction.
of minds quick on the One may wonder idly how well Jolul. }
House in crisis-tinge than the Ian Flom- drama itself
ld h
'
,
ave sur
s reputation wou
ing sort of thing. lads- s a;sorteCl draw hut" glued forever to their chosen . Kennedy
tough political prSaagmatists -- some righteousness. This is the James Boncl' vived Vietnam and the Sixties if he had
slim, some stupid - are the kind who heritage, and it emerges constantly even continued to uphold the Cold War as
say, in the best ames Lolld track~??n, 5tttll ltlatl. that underlay Ilis Cuban do-
204 talc 1Zcd Cal _lA,leprkgyY %`re4r F I~ 2bbi i`l '~~I YR~c c~1350R000200170002-4
the Cuban business .5a u.lget ]t .c
xmderstand_ them or have other than v GtitPlt IIU `i