The firing of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State has led me to recall the various secretaries of state I have known as a reporter and editor from roughly 1961 to 2002.

The first was Dean Rusk, who ended up being Secretary for the entire Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the longest of any secretary since Cordell Hull. Hull was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary but really played no significant role, particularly during World War 2.

I had been assigned by The Washington Star, which was where I was working fresh out of school, to write quite a bit about Kennedy in the lead-up to the Inauguration on January 20, 1961. In part this was because we both were “Harvard men/” Inauguration Day, in fact, was marked by a heavy snow storm that started the night before, and army troops had to be used with flamethrowers to help clear Pennsylvania Avenue. I covered the parade, but not Kennedy’s highly emotional speech, which included the famous words, “Ask Not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

In the weeks before taking office, Kennedy had to pick his staff, and one of the surprises was his choice of Rusk as secretary of state. Rusk, who had served in the department years before, was happily in charge of the Rockefeller Foundation when Kennedy called him for an interview. I remember that we journalists were as surprised as Rusk by his being named since most of us Washington scribes had not heard much about him. I think the correspondents who covered Rusk on the whole admired his ability to handle a very tough time in American foreign policy. He played virtually no role in the Bay of Pigs disaster which took place in April, 1961, just three months after Kennedy’s inauguration. Rusk said later in is memoirs that “I have always marveled`that the Bay of Pigs fiasco did not inflict greater damage upon the Kennedy administration than it did,”

In his memoir, written with his son, 21 years after leaving office, Rusk was critical of his own reluctance to speak out forcefully to Kennedy about his opposition to the Bay of Pigs venture. Kennedy’s next foreign policy move of any consequence was a decision to go to Europe and meet with Nikita S.Khrushchev, the colorful Soviet leader, in Vienna. At that time, the world’s focused on Berlin which had been divided since the end of the war into East and West Berlin, with the Russians controlling the East and the Western allies, the West. West Berlin in 1961 was the only Western outpost within the Soviet bloc at that time, the the Russians were continually trying to get the Western powers to give up on Berlin. They had tried a blockade of roads to West Berlin from June, 1948 to May, 1949, but an incredible airlift of supplies by aircraft from many countries kept the city of West Berlin alive.

In early 1961, Khrushchev decided to test Kennedy on Berlin. In February, the Russians told West Germany that unless a comprehensive peace treaty to end the four-power administration of Berlin was worked out by the end of the year, they would sign a separate peace peace treaty with East Germany , and the East Germans would take over control of all routes into West Berlin. In mid-May, Kennedy decided that he should meet with Khrushchev and despite Rusk’s urging against a summit, Kennedy decided to go ahead with it in Vienna.

When the talks began, the two leaders made some progress on Laos that led to an accord in 1962, but when the talks got around to Berlin, the talks became “very rough” according to Rusk. At one point, Khrushchev told Kennedy: “We are going to negotiate a new agreement with East Germany, and the access routes to Berlin will be under their control. If there is any effort by the West to interfere, there will be war.” But Kennedy went back at him, saying, according to Rusk: “Then there will be war, Mr.Chairman. It’s going to be a very cold winter.”

In the weeks following, a crisis atmosphere was created in Washington. Kennedy called for an increase in the defense budget, and many reservists were called up. That included some of my friends, who, like me, had been six months active duty reservists and were obliged to serve 5 1/2 years in the reserve.As far as I know, the reservists who were recalled were not sent overseas. Adam Clymer, a journalist friend, for instance served in a military post office in Baltimore.

The Berlin crisis seemed to reach a peak on a weekend in mid-August, but in a way, it also indicated the crisis was about over. On Sunday, August 13, the East Germans, pushed by the Russians, started to build what became known as the “Berlin Wall” to keep East Germans from leaving. But it did not bar others from going and coming. Rusk says that “we quickly decided that the wall was not an issue of war and peace between East and West.”

At the General Assembly session in New York Kennedy addressed the delegates and met with Gromyko as did Rusk.

Finally on October 17, 1961, at the start of the 22d Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev withdrew his deadline for a new German peace treaty. The Berlin crisis was over, but there still was tension. Rusk, himself, believed that Berlin might have contributed to the Soviet decision in 1962 to install missiles and other hardware in Cuba clandestinely.

Kennedy visited West Berlin in June, 1963, and he went to the Wall, and delivered a famous speech with the words “Ich Bien ein Berliner.”

(To Be Continued)