Word: rusk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...President also became increasingly exasperated by the performance of Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Says Schlesinger: "At White House conferences Rusk would sit calmly by, with his Buddhalike face and his half-smile, often leaving it to Bundy or to the President himself to assert the diplomatic interest. He rarely seemed to have strong views as to what should be done beyond continuing what we were already doing, and he rarely argued a position." Kennedy, says Schlesinger, was "impressed by Rusk's capacity to define but grew increasingly depressed by his reluctance to decide...
Once, after he was urged to sack Rusk as Secretary and appoint him Ambassador to the United Nations, Kennedy said sadly, "I can't do that to Rusk; he is such a nice man." Nevertheless, writes Schlesinger, Kennedy finally decided that he would eventually have to install a more dynamic man at State. "By the autumn of 1963," says Schlesinger, "the President had reluctantly made up his mind to allow Rusk to leave after the 1964 election and to seek a new Secretary of State...
...other possible landing sites, and the Bay of Pigs was chosen. Sorensen reports that the Joint Chiefs failed to inform "either Kennedy or McNamara that they still thought Trinidad preferable," while Schlesinger recalls that the Chiefs said they still preferred Trinidad-but said it "softly." At one point Dean Rusk suggested that the operation be launched from Guantanamo, thereby providing the invaders with an opportunity for retreat; but the Joint Chiefs rejected that idea, and Rusk later complained to Schlesinger that "the Pentagon people" were willing to risk "the President's head" but not the U.S. base...
While the who-will-succeed-Rusk game went on, there was also plenty of speculation about the reason behind Reedy's departure. By any accounting, President Johnson's recent press relations have not been good, and it was all too easy to assume that he was trying to improve them by dumping George Reedy. The fact was that Reedy took leave for physical, not vocational reasons. He has long suffered from a painful hereditary condition known, rather unpleasantly, as hammertoes, in which shrinking tendons curl the toes downward and lock them into permanent cramp. He wears corrective steel...
...asked the other side on more than one occasion what else would stop if we stopped bombing," said U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk last week. "Are you going to stop attacking these villages and killing off thousands of innocent civilians? What else will stop? And we've never had any reply." Even the intentional five-day lull in U.S. bombing last May failed to draw a response from intransigent North Viet Nam. Britain's Commonwealth peace mission has not got very far either. Last week, after pondering Hanoi's rebuff of the mission, Harold Wilson gamely...