Walt Rostow

Walt Whitman Rostow (1916-2003) was an American economist who worked in the London office of the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War, taught economic history at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and served under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as a White House adviser on national security affairs.¹ He took a Yale doctorate in economics in 1940, taught at Columbia University that year, and served as a major in the OSS from 1942 to 1945.²

Enemy Objectives Unit and bombing target selection

Rostow reached London on September 13, 1942, with Chandler Morse, who was chief of the Enemy Objectives Unit, and Roselene Honerkamp, the unit's secretary. The unit was formally part of the Economic Warfare Division of the American Embassy and was housed at 40 Berkeley Square, whose door, by Rostow's account, was barred to all but the American ambassador and a few designated Air Force officers.³ He wrote that the unit "was the child of Air Corps Col. Richard D'Oyly Hughes," and that its task was "to develop and apply criteria for the selection of one target system versus another," and, where a target was large enough and bombing precise enough, one aiming point versus another.³

Rostow described the intellectual level of development of these criteria on the unit's arrival in London as "quite primitive."³ Within the unit's first six months, he wrote, it developed concepts that "came close to constituting a general theory of strategic air bombardment," and several of its terms entered the air intelligence vocabulary: "target system, interdiction, cushion, depth, pattern of consumption, pipeline."⁴ The unit's target studies examined eleven factors for each target system, among them the importance of indirect effect, ease of repair and the possibility of substitution, the last two addressing what the unit called the cushion.⁵ In an essay on the beginnings of air targeting, written in 1963 and later released by the Central Intelligence Agency, Rostow wrote: "In strategic bombing the target is the vast structure of economic and civil life which supports the military effort."⁴

Charles Kindleberger took over from Morse as chief of the unit in February 1943 and left in May 1944, ultimately to join General Bradley's staff.³ The unit's 285 aiming point reports earned it a favorable reputation in the Eighth Air Force and the Fifteenth Air Force, and Rostow wrote that the unit "probably had its greatest operational impact through Operation Octopus."⁵ Rostow's account of the 1944 decision on bombing priorities was published as Pre-Invasion Bombing Strategy (University of Texas Press, 1981). A draft chapter sent to Richard M. Bissell Jr. in 1980 carried the title "Marshalling Yards vs. Oil: General Eisenhower's Decision of March 25, 1944."⁶

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for International Studies

Rostow was appointed professor of economic history at MIT in 1950 and in 1951 became a staff member of the Center for International Studies there, holding both posts until 1961.² A memorandum of the CIA Office of Security dated April 11, 1958 records that the agency approved him as a consultant to its Office of Research and Reports in March 1951 and extended the status to June 1953; that in May and June 1953 an Agency Employment Review Board and Loyalty Board processed his case with a favorable finding; and that his contract as a consultant was not renewed after it expired in June 1953.⁷ A letter that Max Millikan, then assistant director of the agency for research and reports, signed on November 26, 1951 says that "Walt Rostow at the Center for International Studies has sought my assistance in finding him someone to help out with some research."⁸ He gave a talk in Moscow on May 25, 1959, titled "The Stages of Economic Growth and the Problems of Peaceful Coexistence," a copy of which is in the Bissell papers.⁶

In 1953 W. W. Norton published The Dynamics of Soviet Society, a 282-page book credited to "W. W. Rostow in collaboration with Alfred Levin, and with the assistance of others at the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology," with a preface by Millikan as the center's director.⁹ A paperback edition followed from Mentor Books in 1954 under the subtitle "An Expert Analysis of the World Behind the Iron Curtain."⁹

The MIT Center for International Studies, which Millikan directed, was described by Patrick Oster of the Chicago Sun-Times in the Washington Post of September 11, 1977 as "set up in 1951 with CIA money," with Millikan, "a former assistant director of the agency," as its first director. The same report said that the agency had financed a related project on Soviet scientists through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.¹⁰ In a letter to Senator Styles Bridges in October 1957, Alfred Kohlberg criticized the agency for supporting the center and criticized Rostow in particular, as the CIA Office of Security recorded in its memorandum of April 11, 1958.⁷

A CIA memorandum of February 16, 1959 from the Assistant to the Director forwards the text of an item in the National Review Bulletin. The item names Richard Bissell and Robert Amory and reads: "Bissell and his favored CIA teammate, Robert Amory, lean ideologically on CIA's outriding auxiliary at MIT, the Center for International Studies. They have been particularly influenced by the neo-Marxian theories of W. W. Rostow, director of the Center."¹¹ The MIT President's report for 1962 to 1963 refers to "Max F. Millikan, Director of the Center for International Studies," and the center's section of the 1963 to 1964 report is signed by Millikan.¹²¹³ The 1958 to 1959 President's report lists Rostow and Elspeth Davies Rostow on leave at Cambridge, England.¹⁴

In June 1977 the Harvard Crimson, in an article on Harvard's offer to Henry Kissinger, wrote that Rostow "left MIT in the 1960s to work for former President Johnson as chairman of the Policy Planning Council during the Vietnam war and was not invited back to MIT in part because of his involvement with the war." The same article quoted an unnamed Harvard source on the invitation to Kissinger: "We didn't want a Rostow in our faculty."¹⁵

Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel and Open Skies

In June 1955 Nelson Rockefeller, then Special Assistant to the President, invited eleven experts to Quantico, Virginia, to explore methods of exploiting Communist bloc vulnerabilities. The panel met June 5 to 10. Its members were Frederick Dunn, C. D. Jackson of Time-Life, Ellis A. Johnson and George Pettee of the Operations Research Office, Paul Linebarger, Max Millikan, Philip Mosely, Stefan Possony of the Department of the Air Force, Hans Speier of the Rand Corporation, Charles A. H. Thomson of the Brookings Institution, and Rostow of the MIT Center, who was designated the chairman of the Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel. Rostow transmitted the report to Rockefeller under a letter of June 10 that he signed as panel chairman. The letter reported "the unanimous belief of the Panel members that the U.S. now enjoys a significant but transitory period of over-all strength vis-a-vis the Soviet bloc." The report included ten papers by individual members; Rostow's was titled "Asia Policy."¹⁶

The Eisenhower Library holds a folder titled "Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel 1955" in its Miscellaneous Series.¹⁷ The papers of C. D. Jackson include a 1955 log entry titled "From Quantico to Geneva" and a file on "Rostow, Walt W."¹⁸ Rostow's own draft, "President Eisenhower's Open Skies Proposal: July 21, 1955," dated March 12, 1981, is in the Bissell papers.⁶

Special Studies Project

Rostow is listed among the "Consultants and Authors" of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project in Prospect for America: The Rockefeller Panel Reports (1961). His brother Eugene V. Rostow, dean of the Yale Law School, is listed as a member of Panel IV, which dealt with the American economy.¹⁹

Kennedy administration and the Taylor mission

By January 1961 Rostow was Kennedy's deputy special assistant for national security affairs, writing memoranda to McGeorge Bundy.²⁰ In July 1961 he sent Dean Rusk a memorandum on Vietnam that said "we must know quite precisely what kind of international action we want," and on July 21 he wrote a paper titled "Evaluation of Positive and Negative Forces in Viet-Nam."²¹

On October 11, 1961, Kennedy decided to send a mission headed by Maxwell Taylor with Rostow, General Edward Lansdale, a Joint Chiefs representative, and officials from State and Defense. The memorandum for the record by Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric records that Taylor, "accompanied by Dr. Rostow from the White House," General Lansdale, a representative of the Joint Chiefs, Mr. Cottrell from State and probably someone from ISA would leave for Vietnam over the weekend. The editorial note to the document reproduces a telegram from General Lemnitzer reporting that the mission planned to leave Washington on October 15 and spend about two weeks in Vietnam.²² A paper prepared by the mission, datelined Saigon on October 18, is printed alongside, and on October 16 Rostow sent Taylor a memorandum from Honolulu.²²²³ In Taylor's letter to Kennedy of November 3, he wrote: "In addition to Dr. Rostow, the members of my party included representatives of State, ICA, Defense, JCS, and CIA."²⁴ On November 11 Rostow urged Kennedy to place "some minimal U.S. ground force in Viet Nam as part of the initial package," a step that "commits us-in our minds-to a full scale U.S. effort to save that country."²⁵

Policy Planning Council

The State Department record lists Rostow as chairman of the Policy Planning Council in December 1961, as director of the Policy Planning Staff in April 1962, and as counselor of the department in September 1962.²⁶

On February 15, 1965, Rostow sent Assistant Secretary William Bundy three points on a possible negotiation. He thought Hanoi might be driving for a settlement, that a "land grab" was likely, perhaps in the Laos corridor, and that the United States should consider a preemptive ground force move in that area and inside South Vietnam, because air and naval power would be hard to use during a negotiation.²⁷ Eight days earlier McGeorge Bundy's memorandum from Saigon had set out a "policy of sustained reprisal", described in Annex A as "graduated and continuing reprisal" against North Vietnam.²⁸

In August 1965 Rostow attended a Washington meeting on the mission to Vietnam of Edward Lansdale. Attendees included officials from State, the White House, AID, USIA and the CIA, among them William Colby. Lansdale described his aim as finding out what the Vietnamese thought, what they wanted and what they would do. Rostow suggested that Lansdale have a liaison officer who would keep other agencies and Washington advised of his efforts and thinking.²⁹

National Security Adviser, 1966 to 1969

By April 1966 Rostow was the President's special assistant, as the headings of his memoranda show.³⁰

POL strikes, June 1966

On June 14, 1966, Johnson wrote Harold Wilson that Rusk had discussed "the problem of POL in Haiphong and Hanoi" with him. POL is the standard abbreviation for petroleum, oil and lubricants.³¹ At the National Security Council meeting of June 17, Rostow argued: "Striking the POL targets is an extension of our bombing program, not a change in our policy." He added that "our bombing program is forcing the North Vietnamese to divert laborers to the repair of roads and bridges." Arthur Goldberg argued that the risk of widening the bombing to POL targets was too great. Rostow's memorandum to Johnson of the previous day said he had "marched carefully through all the considerations" with Goldberg.³² On June 28 Robert McNamara telephoned Johnson and asked for authority to strike the two major POL storage installations in the Hanoi-Haiphong area that evening.³³ On July 5 a telegram from the acting secretary of state reported that "Bob McNamara and Walt Rostow are going to the Ranch tomorrow." On July 7 Rostow wrote Johnson that the speech at Omaha on June 30 had been "a personal breakthrough, against the background of your decision to go for POL."³³³⁴

The Rostow thesis

In a memorandum of September 15, 1966, Rostow set out the case that bombing imposed a cumulative burden on Hanoi, and that without it Hanoi had no incentive to stop. He wrote that bombing "has imposed a severe but not decisive general burden on the North Vietnamese." He listed its effects: it engaged a large amount of civilian manpower for repair and air defense, caused economic stagnation or decline, imposed "a political and psychological burden and morale problems which have, on firm evidence, increased with the passage of time," limited shipping, and left most foreign aid shoring up the North rather than the South. "Put another way," he wrote, "without the bombing, Hanoi could keep the war going without any significant incentive to knock it off." He cited a 1962 interview with Hanoi leaders published in the Saturday Evening Post, whose "punch line" was: "Americans do not like long, inconclusive wars, and this is going to be a long, inconclusive war. Thus we are sure to win."³⁵

Tet, 1968

On January 31, 1968, Rostow sent Rusk an outline of headings for a presidential speech on Asia. A marginal note in an unknown hand reads "This is WWR not LBJ."³⁶ On February 5 he gave Johnson a written account of the fighting, which he said was in answer to a question from Elspeth Davies Rostow, his wife. He described the attacks on the cities and at Khe Sanh as the enemy committing a large part of its "capital," its pools of military forces and firepower, on the believed vulnerability of the South Vietnamese government and of American public opinion.³⁷ On February 6 he reported the findings from captured prisoners and documents. One prisoner captured on January 31 said that the attack "was to create conditions which would bring the U.S. Government to negotiate in order to proceed with peace."³⁷

Israel, 1967

On May 25, 1967, Rostow sent Johnson an Israeli intelligence estimate with a CIA appraisal attached. The appraisal, he noted, "throws a great deal of cold water on the Israeli estimate."³⁸ On June 5 Rostow telephoned Johnson to read him a draft statement on the outbreak of fighting.³⁹ His covering memorandum on a meeting among Meir Amit, Walworth Barbour and Harry C. McPherson Jr. said that Amit's account was consistent with Levi Eshkol's, and added: "At least that's his story."⁴⁰

Security clearance

A CIA Office of Security memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence dated April 11, 1958, furnished in case Mr. Dillon should seek the agency's opinion of "Rostow's record and security standing," states that Rostow "has twice been denied clearance for OCB employment by the NSC Security Office," that he "was also disapproved for employment by Under Secretary of State, Herbert Hoover," and that he "has been denied a security clearance by the Office of the Secretary of Defense." The memorandum adds that in 1953 a CIA employee, since resigned, had threatened to take Rostow's case to the McCarran Committee.⁷

In October 1967 Senator Strom Thurmond reported in his column in The Clinton Chronicle on a brief filed for Otto Otepka, a State Department security officer, before a departmental hearing officer. The column stated that under the Eisenhower administration Rostow had twice been denied a State Department clearance "to handle" sensitive data, that Otepka had expressed reservations in 1960 about a proposed clearance for Rostow and had indicated to Dean Rusk and Attorney General-designate Robert F. Kennedy that he would probably still evaluate the file in the same manner, and that Rostow was then given immediate clearance as a White House aide.⁴¹ Human Events of October 23, 1967 reported the brief's account that the Air Force "had previously made a security finding adverse to Mr. Rostow" and that Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr., as chairman of the Operations Coordinating Board, decided that Rostow would not be used as an employee or consultant by the State Department in connection with a psychological warfare project.⁴²

The Associated Press reported that Rostow denied the account. "From 1951 onward," he told a reporter, "I had continuous security clearance from various agencies of the federal government." The Associated Press noted that he did not say what assignment in 1951 had required clearance, and that his Who's Who entry listed him as a staff member of the Center for International Studies from 1951 to 1960.⁴³

On December 19, 1967 the CIA Director of Security, replying to an inquiry of December 15, wrote that Rostow "was granted a Special Intelligence Clearance by this Agency on 3 February 1961 based on a favorable investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1960."⁴⁴

Later career and death

Rostow taught economics at the University of Texas at Austin from 1969 until his death in Austin on February 13, 2003.¹ His official files are in the National Security File, "Memos to the President," at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, which the Foreign Relations volumes cite as "Memos to the President-Walt W. Rostow."³¹³⁷ Drafts and correspondence by and about Rostow, including drafts of his historical manuscripts, are in the Bissell papers at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.⁶

Family

His brother Eugene V. Rostow (1913-2002) became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. A 1967 letter from the Under Secretary to the Israeli ambassador was drafted by Eugene Rostow and cleared by Walt Rostow.⁴⁵ In January 1983, as director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Eugene was told by George Shultz that the President wanted his resignation. Spokesmen for the State Department and the White House, as reported by Joseph C. Harsch in the Christian Science Monitor, said that he "had not been a team player."⁴⁶ Another brother, Ralph Waldo Emerson Rostow (1920-2006), is listed in the same family memorial record.¹

His wife, Elspeth Davies Rostow (1917-2007), is listed as his spouse in the same memorial record.¹