How John F Kennedy turned to CIA to plug leak

The unsealing by the CIA last week of the documents it called its “family jewels” was an only-in-America moment.

The unsealing by the CIA last week of the documents it called its “family jewels” was an only-in-America moment. Americans were reminded of a piece of living history: the time in the 1960s and 1970s when presidents turned the spying powers on the US itself.

This web of intrigue began in the Kennedy White House. Another treasure trove, however, was already in public view — tapes that President John F Kennedy himself recorded in the Oval Office. Here are edited transcripts of two August 1962 conversations in which Kennedy took steps to spy on the national security reporter for The New York Times, Hanson Baldwin.

Chief characters in the transcripts: President John F Kennedy; John A McCone, Director of Central Intelligence; James Killian, chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; Clark Clifford, adviser to Democrats since the Truman administration, and a member of the intelligence advisory board; Hanson Baldwin, NYT military analyst since 1937. He had infuriated the President with an article on the Soviets’ efforts to protect their intercontinental ballistic missile launch sites with concrete bunkers.

August 1, 1962

President John F Kennedy meets with his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Present : Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, Clark Clifford, Dr James Killian, Dr Edwin H Land, a physicist, and Gen Maxwell D Taylor, the military representative and soon-to-be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

JFK: What I find incomprehensible is that someone of Baldwin’s experience and stature and the status of The Times would do it.

Killian: The FBI may not be the best agency to conduct investigations of leaks to this kind. We would suggest, therefore, that the Director of Central Intelligence be encouraged to develop an expert group that would be available at all times to follow up on security leaks.

Clifford: I think this is the most effective recommendation that the group makes: that there be a full-time small group, devoting themselves to this all the time. That group could become knowledgeable about the pieces that these various men write, like Baldwin.

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Killian: There are many things such a group could do. They could follow the press and see evidence of …

Taylor: We’d know the trends, their contacts…

JFK: That’s a very good idea. We’ll do that.

Clifford: They can find out Hanson Baldwin’s contacts. When he goes to the Pentagon, who does he see.

August 22, 1962

Meeting on intelligence matters. Present: The president, McCone, Taylor.

JFK: How are we doing on the Baldwin business?

McCone: I’ve got a plan which CIA is in agreement with. It does a number of things, including setting up this task force, which would be a continuing investigative group reporting to me.

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JFK: Would you have supervision over leakage from the Defense Department?

McCone: As far as intelligence information is concerned.