The JFK Presidency, as reported by the New York Times, 50 years ago.
I bolded some eyebrow-raising bits.
May 1, 1962
London sources said yesterday that Secretary of State Rusk would canvass French and West German views on the status to be accorded East Germany in case his negotiations with Moscow approach a Berlin settlement. Mr. Rusk intends to raise the topic at the NATO meeting this week in Athens. Washington and London have already agreed that no trace of legality should be conferred on the East German regime, but Mr. Rusk wants to work out a full Allied position on East Germany before negotiating the subject with the Russians.
President Kennedy got a cool response when he addressed the annual meeting of the United States Chamber of Commerce and told the business men that his Administration did not want to set prices. In an effort to ease bitterness aroused by the steel price episode, he said he hoped it would mark a turn for the better in Government-business relations. But the only time he was interrupted by applause was when he said: "We in the National Government have a large stake in your profits." And the chamber's president, Richard Wagner, said pointedly that both business and labor must be free to make decisions without Government intervention.
The Atomic Energy Commission has become the first Federal unit to give its employees and job applicants the right to confront their accusers in security cases. The step could lead to revised security policies in other agencies.
The Justice Department brought its first action to have a Southern voting official held in contempt for failing to register qualified Negroes despite a court order barring discrimination.
A belief is growing within the Administration that the United States should not hold further atmospheric nuclear tests after the current series. These tests are expected to have a total explosive force equal to about one-fifth of all the nuclear energy unleashed by American blasts since 1945.
Maj. Gherman S. Titov, a man of relatively few words, directed some of them at earth-bound diplomats, frantic stockbrokers and New York traffic. The Soviet astronaut visited the United Nations, where Adlai E. Stevenson asked him whether it would be feasible for the Security Council to tour outer space. "Have you got things settled here on earth?" Major Titov countered. At the Stock Exchange (where he was both cheered and booed) he commented: "Everything was very clear in outer space. Here, nothing is clear."
May 2, 1962
The East Germans, displayed some new military equipment as their troops goose-stepped in Berlin's Marx-Engels Platz. The parade included a squad of ground-to-air missiles said to be of the type that allegedly downed Francis Gary Powers' U-2 plane. This was the first indication that Moscow had given such arms to a satellite state.
The Yugoslavs sprang a surprise, too, by parading twenty new Soviet-made T-54 tanks. Belgrade sources suggested they had been purchased in a straight commercial deal.
The West made an arms deal of its own. Britain, West Germany, and the United States will finance the development of Britain's revolutionary P-1127 strike and reconnaissance plane, which would be able to take off and land vertically.
President Kennedy's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy recommended greater Government activity, influence and power in collective bargaining. The panel proposed rewriting a section of the Taft-Hartley Act to give the President more authority and flexibility to deal with industrial conflicts that threaten national interests. Specifically, an emergency dispute board would be empowered to recommend settlement terms and the President would be allowed to require a resumption of work for eighty days without going to court.
President Kennedy's relations with the American Medical Association were less than harmonious. He and seven A.M.A. leaders discussed the best way to finance old-age medical care, but both sides agreed later that neither had made the slightest dent in the other's views.
Mr. Kennedy signed a bill authorizing $32,000,000 for expanded educational television.
Mayor Wagner called at the White House to give President Kennedy a list of suggested Democratic nominees for New York's fall election.
Thurgood Marshall finally gets Senate hearing.
May 3, 1962
India accused Communist China of creating conflict and tension among Asian nations. It was believed to be the first time in the Chinese-Indian Himalayan border dispute that India had openly criticized Chinese relations with other Asian nations. An Indian note to Peiping sharply rejected the often-repeated contention by the Chinese that they were non-aggressive.
President Kennedy's free trade proposals created a heated debate and a policy reversal at the United States Chamber of Commerce convention in Washington. A resolution on the domestic-relief provisions of the President's bill was killed by protectionist-minded delegates, but then reinstated.
The first megaton-range explosion was set off by the United States in the current Pacific nuclear tests. The Atomic Energy Commission said that a detonation in the "low megaton yield range" took place at about 2 P.M. (E.D.T.) in the vicinity of Christmas Island. A megaton is equivalent to the explosive force of 1,000,000 tons of TNT. It was believed that the explosion had the force of a few megatons. The two previous explosions were of less than a megaton.
Stahr quits Army post to head Indiana University.
Kennedy intervenes in fight over food agency.
Kennedy farm bill stalled again in committee.
Titov and Glenn to call on Kennedy today.
May 4, 1962
The dispute between the United States and West Germany over American talks with the Soviet Union appeared to be nearing a solution. Secretary of State Dean Rusk insisted at Athens, that the West Germans must agree to negotiate with East Germans. They agreed it would be "well worth exploring."
President Kennedy ordered the military to cut back orders for nuclear warheads by several thousands, according to Pentagon sources. Existing stockpiles will not be altered and the reduction will mostly affect small, battlefield-type weapons.
A Presidential emergency board recommended wage increases for 500,000 non-operating employees of the nation's railroads. It classified the increases as "non-inflationary." It also asked for a change in the spirit with which railroads and non-operating unions had been facing labor problems.
Major Gherman S. Titov and Lieut. Col. John H, Glenn, Jr. discussed their space experiences in Washington before a group of international scientists. Major Titov provided some new details of his twenty-five-hour flight.
Congressional Republican leaders called for a Congressional investigation of the Department of Agriculture. The Billie Sol Estes scandal of Texas was mentioned prominently. Senator Everett Dirksen told a news conference that the Estes scandal was only a symptom of a basic sickness in the department.
Senator John Tower of Texas gave the Peace Corps its first blast on Capitol Hill since the Nigeria post-card incident eight months ago. He charged that a 65-year-old constituent, Mrs. Janie F. Clethcer, had been subjected to abuse and dropped without justification from training in Puerto Rico.
President hears Gorbach on Austria's aims.
Kennedy moves to quiet Reserve-cut fears.
Kennedy urges stronger attack on school segregation.
May 5, 1962
The United States fired a middle-size nuclear device, its fourth in the Pacific tests.
New Orleans gave President Kennedy an enthusiastic welcome on his arrival to deliver two addresses. Almost a quarter million people cheered him. Fears that his civil rights policies might provoke hostility proved groundless.
The President chose the ceremonial opening of a huge New Orleans wharf as a dramatic setting to promote his plans for liberalized trade. He said the country was moving toward full trade partnership with all free nations. To facilitate this, he urged Congress to pass the Trade Expansion bill intact. The United States, he warned, faced an economic choice: "trade or fade."
An Agriculture Department employee confronted his superiors at a news conference and charged that officials had shown "favoritism" to the indicted Texas financier, Billie Sol Estes. To the employee's face, a key official immediately branded the story "a complete lie." The department had called the conference to let the employee speak.
United States ordered G.I.ís in Vietnam to lie.
U. S. worried by reports of India's buying MIG's.
May 6, 1962
The United States committed five fully equipped Polaris missile-firing submarines to the North Atlantic alliance yesterday. At a secret session of the NATO Council meeting in Athens, Secretary of Defense McNamara also said that the entire Atlantic Polaris force--expected to total forty-one submarines--would be pledged to NATO. The five already committed carry eighty nuclear missiles. The immediate effect of the Administration's action was to create a NATO nuclear deterrent.
American military sources supported Laotian charges that Communist Chinese troops temporarily invaded northern Laos last week to help Pathet Lao forces capture Muong Sing.
A leading House Republican said that the Administration's Trade Expansion bill must be revised "in many details" to win broad bipartisan support. Representative John W. Byrnes of Wisconsin said he believed the Ways and Means Committee--of which he is the second-ranking G.O.P. member--would go a long way toward making needed changes. President Kennedy called Friday for passage of the bill undiminished by crippling amendments in order to forge a true trade partnership among free nations.
John B. Connally, Jr., former Secretary of the Navy in the Kennedy Administration, led a field of six Democrats in the Texas gubernatorial primary. Former Major General Edwin A. Walker was running last.
Kennedy to name W.C. Battle envoy to Australia.
May 7, 1962
The United States yesterday exploded the nuclear warhead of a Polaris missile fired by a submarine in the Pacific. It was the fifth test in the current series and the first time this country had set off an atomic warhead carried by a long-range missile. Its force was not disclosed, but a regular Polaris is said to have the explosive power of 500,000 tons of TNT.
Americans at the NATO talks in Athens said France, which has been at odds with Washington on nuclear policy, would share fully in a new system of Allied consultations on the uses of American atomic forces in Europe. French acceptance of United States proposals for sharing nuclear information was called one of the meeting's major results.
At the NATO parley, it was disclosed that American World War II Victory ships loaded with tanks and other arms had been stationed off Southeast Asia, where they could give support to any United States action in South Vietnam.
In Laos, royal troops were reported quitting the provincial capital of Nam Tha after major attacks by pro-Communist units.
