The special subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., room 318, Old Senate Office Building.

in

Present: Senators Stennis (chairman), Symington, Thurmond, and Bartlett.

Also present: Special subcommittee staff: James T. Kendall, chief counsel.

CHAIRMAN'S OPENING REMARKS

Senator STENNIS (presiding). The subcommittee will please come to order.

Secretary Ball, we are glad to have you back today as a witness. The purpose of this meeting is to give any member of the subcommittee, and the chief counsel, Mr. Kendall, an opportunity to examine Mr. Ball further, particularly with reference to the information submitted in accordance with the understanding we had with Mr. Ball when he was here in March, that written responses would be given in explanation of the major alterations or changes in a number of the speeches that had been under review by the subcommittee.

The chairman has no special statement this morning except that brief review of the situation.

Mr. Ball, again, we are glad to have you here, sir. We have your short prepared statement, and we are going to ask you to read it, if you desire to.

I understand copies of this have been presented to the press. Gentlemen of the press, we also have the responses sent in by Mr. Ball, and they are divided, for the most part, into various periods of time. For instance, here is one group that begins with the 1961 Berlin crisis. One group is made up of miscellaneous speeches. We have some copies of these that we will be glad for the press to have, but we do not have enough for all the members of the press.

All right, may we have a general understanding for today? Mr. Ball, can you be available this afternoon, too?

2761

TESTIMONY OF GEORGE W. BALL, UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF STATE—Resumed

Mr. BALL. At the convenience of the committee, Mr. Chairman. Senator STENNIS. If it is convenient, suppose we continue until 12:30, and then have it understood that we will recess until 2:30. and come back, if that is agreeable with the subcommittee. All right, Mr. Secretary, you may proceed.

BALL STATEMENT

Mr. BALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do have a short statement which I would like to read.

On March 29 I forwarded to this subcommittee a compilation of explanations for deletions or changes recommended in draft speeches of Defense Department spokesmen. This action was taken in response to requests made by the subcommittee and Senator Thurmond.

In submitting this material we have grouped most of the speeches in five chronological periods with particular reference to the state of U.S. relations with the Communist bloc during each period. A sixth group consisting of 19 speeches, most of which were delivered early in 1960, has been treated as a miscellaneous category. The explanations as to why particular deletions or changes recommended by the Department officers, as well as the explanations given for those changes or deletions. Based upon this examination, and upon an examination of the underlying documentation, I am satisfied that, during the years in question, the State Department carried out its responsibilities for reviewing speeches of Defense Department spokesmen in a creditable and responsible manner.

When I testified last February, I pointed out that speeches made by representatives of the U.S. Government may potentially reach three audiences in addition to the American domestic audience-first, our allies; second, the peoples and governments in countries uncommitted in the struggle between the free world and the Communist bloc; and third, the Communist leadership in the Iron Curtain countries, which operates a gigantic propaganda machine.

I pointed out further that in reviewing speeches of our military officers the State Department sought particularly to guard against the use of ideas or words that might be converted to the purposes of that propaganda machine-distorted and perverted by the Communist propaganda experts to prejudice American interests not only with the peoples of the Communist countries but with the peoples and governments in the uncommitted countries and even with our allies. The State Department officers charged with the review of speeches have for the most part, I think, performed this delicate and sensitive responsibility with perception and judgment.

In offering this appraisal, I am not suggesting that this work has been without mistakes. Prior to last November, when the practice was ended by new instructions, reviewers tended to recommend not only substantive changes or deletions but minor alterations of language, some of which seem to have reflected little more than stylistic preference. Viewed in the content of the present day I find some of these changes or deletions inexplicable; in other cases the explana

tions offered seem unpersuasive. Yet this is hardly surprising in view of the fact that 966 speeches have been reviewed over the last 2 years. I should like expressly to answer the recent suggestion that the State Department has sought to discourage the use of the word "victory," and that this reflects an ideological attitude of the Department. This is definitely not the case, as is perfectly evident from excerpts taken at random from speeches made by State Department officials over the last year and a half which I ask your permission, Mr. Chairman, to have inserted in the record of this committee.

USE OF WORD "VICTORY" IN STATE DEPARTMENT SPEECHES

I have these excerpts here. I will be glad to give them to the stenographer.

Senator STENNIS. About how many pages are there?

Mr. BALL. They are typed on individual pages. I would suppose that there must be about 15 pages, but most of them cover only a small part of the page.

Senator STENNIS. Let those lie on the table for the time being, and I will rule on that when I take up the matter of putting all these explanations in the record.

Mr. BALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

(The documents referred to were officially admitted into the record on p. 2772, and they appear as follows:)

Subject: Department of State Speeches Using Word "Victory"

JUNE 4, 1962.

Attached are extracts from the texts of public statements of high Department of State officials which include the use of the word "Victory" or phrasing plainly of similar import. These are arranged by speaker.

SECRETARY RUSK'S NEWS CONFERENCE OF JUNE 27, 1961, IN CHICAGO

I think that the present issue is whether we and our Allies will take the steps both in the field of security and strength and in the field of economic and social development to encourage independent nations to be independent, to give them the confidence that they can be independent, and to help them mobilize the energies, loyalties, the interest of their own people, their own national development and make them less susceptible to penetration from the outside.

In the longer run, quite frankly, I am optimistic because I believe that freedom is on the winning side. It has been historically. It will continue to be. I believe that most people in most parts of the world are committed in their own minds to the broad notions of freedom. But in the short run we have some problems and some crises, and if we settle the ones that are immediately in front of us, we will have perhaps a few more on the agenda before we are through. But I have tremendous confidence myself that those who built the United Nations in 1945 built for the long run and built wiser perhaps than even they themselves knew, and that we are on the winning side of this great world-wide struggle.

SECRETARY RUSK, ABC RADIO AND TELEVISION PROGRAM "ISSUES AND ANSWERS," SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1961

The way to measure the cold war is to recognize it as being a contest between-again between those who are involved with the Communist revolutionary movement on the one side and those who are trying to build the kind of world set forth in the charter of the UN on the other. Wherever you see a country that is independent, secure, relaxed about managing its own affairs, there is a victory in the cold war. And I think that when you look around the world these days and you see the great constructive forces that are at work, that there is plenty of room for confidence about this long-range future, because the effort

of the Sino-Soviet bloc to impose their system upon other peoples is not going to be accepted by the peoples of the world.

SECRETARY RUSK, LUNCHEON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, SHOREHAM HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D.C., SATUrday, DecemBER 30, 1961 Finally, it is becoming clear that the same powerful forces, which are diffusing power and influence within the Free World-forces, which our own political history and instinctive methods teach us how to weave together in new patterns of interdepencence-are cooperating within the Communist world itself.

We should take no cheap comfort from the deep schisms within the Communist bloc. On the other hand, we should be aware that the concept of independent nationhood, of national interest, and of national culture are day to day asserting themselves strongly. And if we are wise, we can patiently find ways to pick up strands of overlapping national interest between Communist nations and the Free World, moving towards a cushioning of the raw clash of power.

*

*** Against the background of an enlarged and increasingly flexible military strength, we are protecting the frontiers of freedom; and with confidence, we are peering beyond, for every constructive possibility of bringing the nations now under communism towards that commonwealth which the Charter of the United Nations described in 1945.

SECRETARY RUSK, TREASURY DEPARTMENT CONFERENCE, SHERATON PARK HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D.C., FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1962

We have also to take up the challenge which Khrushchev made to the Western World for an economic and social race. I am confident that we will win. Not only is our economic potential far greater than that of the Communist bloc, but our system of economic freedom is more efficient than the coercive system of the East.

SECRETARY RUSK, INTERNATIONAL LAW DAY, SEATTLE WORLD'S FAIR, OPERA HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASH., FRIDAY, MAY 25, 1962

*** We therefore keep on, patiently and persistently, trying to make progress, through reliable and enforceable agreements, on these frontiers of danger. I have described briefly the main elements in our positive strategy. It is a strategy in which the initiative lies with us, rather than with the Communists. It is a "win" strategy because it harmonizes with the largest interests and deepest aspirations of mankind.

We have no doubt that the peoples of the Communist world will increasingly bring pressure on their leaders to grant them the benefits of the free community and the individual rights and liberties which become the dignity of man. The way of free choice, of national and personal freedom, is I submit, the real wave of the future.

ADDRESS BY THE HONORABLE George W. BALL, DETROIT, MICH., MONDAY, APRIL 30, 1962

The response to the Communist threat in Viet-Nam cannot, therefore, be limited to military measures, no matter how well conceived and conducted. The Government in Saigon is aware that in the long run, victory will be won or lost in the villages and cities and in the minds and hearts of men. * * *

The kind of war that is being waged in South Viet-Nam is the slow, relentless execution of a tried and proven plan of counter-insurgency. This is not a type of struggle congenial to the American temperament. We prefer dramatic victories, frontal attacks, the organization and mobilization of massive force and its effective employment.

What we can expect in Viet-Nam by contrast is the long, slow, arduous execution of a process. Results will not be apparent over night. For the operation is, of necessity, the patient winning back of a land to freedom, village by village *

It will take effort to defeat this insurgency in Viet-Nam. Most of all it will take the patient application of effort over a long period of time. But the Vietnamese people are sturdy and resilient and they have the will to win. That they will succeed I have no doubt-and when they do the world can count one more victory on the side of freedom and justice and a stable peace.

ADDRESS BY THE HONORABLE GEORGE W. BALL, CHICAGO, ILL., WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1962

But while we have been firm we have not been inflexible. In a series of conversations conducted in Washington, Moscow, and Geneva, we have endeavored to probe for those small areas of agreement that might furnish the basis for a modus vivendi * * *.

The object of sound foreign policy in a world of change is not to halt the vast historical forces that are shaping the future but rather to channel and direct those forces toward constructive ends. This, I think, America has done with success. From the very beginning of the drive for a united Europe we gave it our firm support. Today, as we see the emerging reality of a Europe that can speak with one voice on an ever-broadening range of issues, we can look forward hopefully to a partnership of equals that can share the great common tasks of free men in the mid-Twentieth Century * * *.

If we can work with sufficient patience and good sense and if we are mature enough to recognize that the great convulsive forces of the world today are something more complicated than a game which one wins or loses, we have, I think, a brighter chance than at any time since the war to achieve the conditions of a secure peace.

For while the Free World is changing there are also signs of change and movement within the Communist Bloc, resulting in part, no doubt, from the Free World's success in building its own economic strength. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the very technology which threatens the whole Northern Hemisphere with the danger of incineration may in the long run prove a key to peace. This paradox is not as bizarre as it sounds. The vaulting pace of that technology is imposing obsolescence at an accelerating rate on existing systems of armament, while the fantastic increase in the cost of each new generation of weapons is consuming an ever greedier share of the economic resources of the Bloc. Is it not likely, therefore, that at some point the Communist power will be forced to make the hard choice between insistent demands for a better standard of living and the spiraling costs of a continuing arms race?

ADDRESS BY THE HONORABLE George C. McGHEE, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.,

MARCH 27, 1962

"The basic strategy of American foreign policy is thus not a policy of static defense. It is a strategy of dynamic growth. Our task is to use all the means available to us to increase the strength and unity of other free nations and peoples, and thus to extend the frontiers of freedom itself.

"But the purpose of this strength and unity is not just to be able to fight and win a nuclear war, nor just to fight a more effective 'cold war'-unless the Sino-Soviet bloc chooses to continue this wasteful struggle. Rather our purpose is to offer the rulers and peoples of the Communist world powerful incentives to abandon the 'cold war' and to substitute genuine peace and cooperation for the vague and mysterious 'co-existence' they have offered."

ADDRESS BY THE HONORABLE GEORGE C. MCGHEE, WASHINGTON, D.C., MONDAY, APRIL 30, 1962

"We hear it said that our national efforts are overly devoted to coping with these crises-to reacting to initiatives taken by the Communist Bloc-and that we have no broad strategy directed toward 'winning' the cold war.

"It is true that much of our energies are consumed by issues arising out of the crisis areas. Indeed, involving as they do possibilities for shifts in the power balance between the Free World and the Bloc, or even for local 'shooting'