U.S. Department of State

The Foreign Relations statute requires that the published record in the Foreign Relations series include all records needed to provide comprehensive documentation on major foreign policy decisions and actions of the U.S. Government. It further requires that government agencies, departments, and other entities of the U.S. Government cooperate with the Department of State Historian by providing full and complete access to records pertinent to foreign policy decisions and actions and by providing copies of selected records. The editors believe that in terms of access this volume was prepared in accordance with the standards and mandates of this statute.

The editor had complete access to all the retired records and papers of the Department of State: the central files of the Department; the special decentralized files ("lot files") of the Department at the bureau, office, and division levels; the files of the Department's Executive Secretariat, which contain the records of international conferences and high-level official visits, correspondence with foreign leaders by the President and Secretary of State, and memoranda of conversations between the President and Secretary of State and foreign officials; and the files of overseas diplomatic posts. Certain intelligence-related files maintained in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research became available to the Department historians only after this volume was compiled. Arrangements have been made for Department historians to have full and timely access to these records for future volumes.

The editors of the Foreign Relations series also have full access to the papers of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Eisenhower and other White House foreign policy records. Presidential papers maintained and preserved at the Presidential libraries include some of the most significant foreign affairs-related documentation from other federal agencies including the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Department of State historians also have access to records of the Department of Defense, particularly the records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretaries of Defense and their major assistants.

Since 1991, the Central Intelligence Agency has provided expanded access to Department of State historians to high-level intelligence documents from those records in the custody of that Agency. This access is arranged and facilitated by the History Staff of the Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, pursuant to a May 1992 memorandum of understanding. This access arrangement was developed in connection with the research of volumes for the 1961-1963 triennium and in order to enlarge the scope of coverage as required by the 1991 law. Department of State and CIA historians continue to work out improved procedural and scholarly aspects of identifying the key portions of the intelligence record.

All of this documentation has been made available for use in the Foreign Relations series thanks to the consent of these agencies, the assistance of their staffs, and especially the cooperation and support of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Sources for Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, Volume VIII

All sources for this volume, including a few significant ones that the editor consulted but from which he made no selection, are briefly identified in the list below.

Collections in the Kennedy Library were the preeminent sources for this compilation, but the editor made use of valuable materials in the files of the Department of State, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and its subdivisions, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (including the Chairman's File), the Papers of Maxwell D. Taylor and Lyman L. Lemnitzer at the National Defense University, the Papers of Arleigh A. Burke at the Naval Historical Center, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas (for the beginning of 1961), and the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas (for the close of 1963).

Among Kennedy Library materials, the single most important collection was the National Security Files (NSF), which represent the office files of McGeorge Bundy. Within it the Department of Defense subsection of the Departments and Agencies Series was especially useful, and the subsections for the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the Central Intelligence Agency were also consulted. The few minutes or memoranda of formal National Security Council meetings are from the Meetings and Memoranda Series of the NSF, as are some of the ancillary materials to the National Security Action Memoranda (NSAMs). The latter are brief memoranda used by the President, or Bundy on his behalf, to issue policy directives or to inform leading officials of decisions taken, either by means of or without the full National Security Council. The Meetings and Memoranda Series also has folders containing papers of key members of the White House Staff: Walt W. Rostow, Carl Kaysen, Robert Komer, Lawrence J. Legere, and Chester V. Clifton. The files of Clifton, who was Military Aide to the President, include the memoranda of most of the President's meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Some of these materials are also available in Department of State files. The most valuable Department of State materials were the lot (office) files, as described below. Also consulted and listed below were several relevant files in the Department's decimal and subject-numeric indexed central files.

396.1-PA: International conferences at Paris

711.5: U.S. national defense

711.5611: Atomic weapons in the U.S.

DEF 1 US: Defense affairs, U.S. policy, plans, readiness

DEF 12: Defense affairs, armaments

INR/EAP Files: Lot 90 D 110

INR Historical Files

INR-NIE Files

S/P Files: Lot 67 D 548

Files of the Policy Planning Staff for 1961-1964

S/P Files: Lot 69 D 121

Files of the Policy Planning Staff for 1961-1964

S/P Files: Lot 70 D 199

Files of the Policy Planning Council for 1963-1964

S/P-NSC Files: Lot 62 D 1

Special Group (CI) Files: Lot 68 D 451

Special Group (CI) Files: Lot 70 D 258

S/S Files: Lot 66 D 147

Records of the Secretary of State's Staff Meetings, 1961-1964

S/S Files: Lot 70 D 328

Records of State-JCS meetings, 1959-1963

S/S-NSC Files: Lot 70 D 265

S/S-NSC Files: Lot 72 D 316

S/S-NSC (Miscellaneous) Files: Lot 66 D 95

Vietnam Working Group File: Lot 66 D 193

Files of the Vietnam Working Group, 1960-1962

Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Staff and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

JCS Records

Record Group 330, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense

OASD/ISA Files: FRC 64 A 2382

OASD/ISA Files: FRC 65 B 3501

OSD Files: FRC 65 A 2464

Subject decimal files of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 1961

OSD Files: FRC 65 A 3463

Subject decimal files of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 1961

OSD Files: FRC 65 A 3464

Subject decimal files of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 1961

OSD Files: FRC 66 A 3542

Subject decimal files of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 1962

OSD Files: FRC 66 A 3543

Subject decimal files of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 1962

OSD Files: FRC 71 A 3470

Files of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara for 1961-1968

DCI (McCone) Files: Job 80-B01285A

Files of Director John A. McCone, 1962-1965

Job 79-R0102A, ODDI Registry Files

Job 80-B01676R, DCI Executive Registry Files

Job 83-00036R, CIA History Staff Files

Taylor Papers

Lemnitzer Papers

Office of the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Records

Bromley Smith Papers

National Security Files

Carl Kaysen Series

Chester V. Clifton Series

Countries Series

Departments and Agencies Series

Meetings and Memoranda Series

Subjects Series

President's Appointment Books

President's Office Files

Roger Hilsman Papers

National Security File

Agency File

Memos to the President

National Intelligence Estimates

National Security Council Meetings File

Subject File

Vice Presidential Security File

Harriman Papers

Burke Papers

Papers of Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, 1955-1961

Jackson, Henry M., ed. The National Security Council: Jackson Subcommittee Papers on Policy-Making at the Presidential Level (New York: Praeger, 1965)

Sagan, Scott. "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy," International Security, 12 (Summer 1987), pages 22-51

U.S. Congress, Senate. Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Together with Joint Sessions with the Senate Armed Services Committee (Historical Series), Volume XIV, Eighty-seventh Congress, Second Session, 1962 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986)

--------. Organizing for National Security: Inquiry of the Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 3 vols. (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961)

U.S. Department of State. American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1961, 1962, 1963 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office)

--------. Department of State Bulletin, 1961, 1962, 1963 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office)

U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Vol. I, Organizing for Exploration (The NASA history series, NASA SP-4218) (n.p.: 1995)

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961, 1962, 1963 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office)

--------. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-64 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965)

Enthoven, Alain, and K. Wayne Smith. How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971)

Garthoff, Raymond L. Intelligence Assessment and Policymaking: A Decision Point in the Kennedy Administration (Washington: Brookings, 1984)

Kaplan, Fred. The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983)

Maechling, Charles, Jr. "Counterinsurgency: The First Ordeal by Fire," in Klare, Michael T. and Peter Kornbluh (eds.). Low-Intensity Warfare: Counterinsurgency, and Antiterrorism in the Eighties (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), pages 21-48

Millikan, Max F. and Walt W. Rostow. A Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957)

Nitze, Paul H. From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989)

Poole, Walter S. The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Vol. VIII: 1961-1964, Parts I-III (Classified study, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Staff)

Rostow, Walt W. The Diffusion of Power: An Essay in Recent History (New York: Macmillan, 1972)

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965)

Smith, Bromley K. Organizational History of the National Security Council During the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (n.p.: n.p., n.d. [1988])

Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965)

Taylor, Maxwell D. Swords and Plowshares: A Memoir (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972)