Word: bartlette
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...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...
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...
...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...
...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...
...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...