ABSTRACT
Dean Rusk, the sole cabinet member President John F. Kennedy addressed as ‘Mr Secretary’, was one of the few secretaries of state who directed American foreign policy for two full administrations — only Cordell Hull served longer. Yet, Rusk remains an enigmatic figure, primarily for two reasons. First, his working methods and his deep respect for confidentiality obscured the extent of his contributions to the formation of US foreign policy. Rusk later claimed that he provided the bulk of his advice to the president during private talks. He explained that ‘the extensive documentary record cannot tell the whole story. Documents are surrounded by much discussion among those handling policy, and these discussions are, of course, nowhere in the record’. 1 Rusk was very secretive and believed that ‘there are some things that history does not deserve to know’. He never dictated memoranda of conversations with the president and he ended the practice of having someone from the State Department listening in on his telephone conversations with the president and transcribing the discussion for the record. Rusk's view was that ‘a president was entitled to have a completely private conversation with his secretary of state’ — a nightmare for archive-eating diplomatic historians! ‘I felt it was my role to stand as a buffer between the president and the bureaucracy with respect to matters of considerable controversy’, Rusk later explained. 2 During crucial meetings, Rusk often scribbled a short plea on note paper and slipped it to the man next to him. The message: ‘Don't make a decision now, Mr. President. Let me see you later.’ 3 All of this means, as Thomas Buckley states, that ‘it is not an easy task to pin down what advice Rusk gave, when he gave it, and whether it was followed’. 4
