IN HIS July 18 op-ed "Going jaw to jaw with our enemies," President Kennedy's special counsel, Ted Sorensen, writes that in our recent New York Times op-ed recounting the June 1961 summit between Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev we "defamed a dead president."
Setting emotional arguments aside, we believe Sorensen is wrong when he states that in characterizing Kennedy's performance as weak, we perpetuated a "misperception" and stretched it to "absurd length." Kennedy's own assessment of his performance attests to the inaccuracy of Sorensen's claims.
Speaking to New York Times correspondent James Reston at the end of the summit, Kennedy said the following of his adversary: "He just beat the hell out of me. I've got a terrible problem if he thinks I'm inexperienced and have no guts."
The consequences of the Vienna summit were not limited to emboldening Khrushchev; the effects on Kennedy's strategic thinking may also have been great. On the final day of the summit, Kennedy said to Reston: "We have to see what we can do that will restore a feeling in Moscow that we will defend our national interest. I'll have to increase the defense budget. And we have to confront them. The only place we can do that is in Vietnam. We have to send more people there."
In recounting Kennedy's failure at Vienna, we never argued that the United States should not negotiate with its adversaries. We stated only that Kennedy's experience demonstrates that there are serious risks to negotiation.
NATHAN THRALL
JESSE JAMES WILKINS
New York
