Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel

The Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel, known as Quantico I, was a group of eleven consultants that Nelson Rockefeller, Special Assistant to the President, convened at the Marine Corps Schools in Quantico, Virginia, from June 5 to 10, 1955, to recommend ways of exploiting Communist bloc vulnerabilities before the 1955 Geneva Summit. Its chairman was Walt Rostow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.¹ A second group, known as Quantico II, met in August and September 1955 and reported on November 29. The Foreign Relations of the United States series identifies the first panel's aerial inspection proposal as the genesis of the Open Skies offer that Dwight D. Eisenhower made at Geneva on July 21, 1955.²

Origins

Daniel Bessner describes Rockefeller's post, Special Assistant for Cold War Planning, as essentially the president's adviser on psychological warfare.³ On May 25, 1955, Rockefeller wrote to Hans Speier that he had long "looked forward to an opportunity to meet with you and others who have given so much thought to the psychological aspects of our relations with other nations and, in particular, our relations with the Soviet Union."³ The report's stated purpose was to make recommendations on operational positions and actions the United States might take toward the Soviet Union at the coming round of East-West conferences that would permit the exploitation of Soviet vulnerabilities.⁴

The panel met at the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico from June 5 to 10. Members of the Department of State and Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Operations Coordinating Board and the National Security Council attended some sessions. Henry A. Kissinger attended some sessions as well.⁵

Membership

The eleven members were Frederick Dunn, director of the Center for International Studies; C. D. Jackson of Time-Life; Ellis A. Johnson, director of the Operations Research Office; Paul Linebarger of the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University; Max Millikan of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Philip Mosely, director of the Russian Institute at Columbia University; George Pettee, deputy director of the Operations Research Office; Stefan Possony, air intelligence specialist in the Department of the Air Force; Speier of the Rand Corporation; Charles A. H. Thomson of the Brookings Institution; and Rostow, of the Center for International Studies at MIT, who was designated chairman.¹⁶ The Foreign Relations editorial note places Dunn at MIT. Bessner places him at Yale.¹⁵ The Princeton University Library's historical photograph collection captions a 1951 photograph of the Center for International Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School with Frederick S. Dunn, Percy Corbett and William Kaufmann.⁷

The Center for International Studies at MIT, where Millikan and Rostow worked, was according to Patrick Oster of the Chicago Sun-Times "set up in 1951 with CIA money and had as its first director Max F. Millikan, a former assistant director of the agency."⁸

Report and papers

The report went to Rockefeller under a letter from Rostow dated June 10, 1955. Rostow signed it as "Panel Chairman." He wrote that the one impression that stood out in his mind was "the unanimous belief of the Panel members that the U.S. now enjoys a significant but transitory period of over-all strength vis-à-vis the Soviet bloc."⁹ The next two or three years, he wrote, afforded the United States "the opportunity to negotiate from a strong position for genuine concessions by the enemy without sacrifice of essential positions of strength."⁹

The report had a summary of recommendations, four appendices and five tabs holding ten papers by individual members. The tabs were Pettee's digest of an address by a Soviet official at Yaroslavl on April 20, 1955; Johnson's paper "The Requirements for U.S.-NATO to Win in the Arms Race with the USSR," with two annexes; Dunn's "Alliance and Coalition Problems," which carried six papers by Pettee, Rostow, Linebarger, Possony and Johnson; Linebarger's "Straining the Sino-Soviet Alliance"; and Pettee's "An Institute for the Study of Peace," which proposed a "Peace College" to train experts in peace comparable to the institutions that trained experts in war.⁴

Rostow's paper, "Asia Policy," argued that "Moscow has consistently demonstrated that its world policy is a unified program in which a setting of detente in one region is used to minimize resistance to aggression in other areas." It held that Moscow was more confident of geographic gains for Communism in Asia than in Europe. It recommended large investment in Asia, enough to give Japan "a position of dignity and strength within the Free World," the prevention of a Communist takeover of South Vietnam, and a positive United States program for Formosa.⁴

On July 25, 1955, Richard Bissell, Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence for Planning and Coordination, sent the Assistant Director for National Estimates a memorandum with the report attached. Bissell called Johnson's paper on the arms race "quite fundamental to the thinking of the whole Panel" and said some of its judgments were "too sweeping." Rockefeller had earlier sent Allen Dulles copy No. 42 under a letter dated June 13, 1955.¹⁰

Recommendations

The summary grouped the proposals by timing. Before the conference, the United States would insist that the Soviets lift the Berlin toll blockade, and it would suggest to the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France that they be prepared to exchange ratifications of the Austrian State Treaty at the conference.⁴

At the conference, the United States would discuss a "mutual inspection of military installations, forces, and armaments, without limitations provisions," and a convention on the right of aircraft "to fly over the territory of any country for peaceful purposes," which the summary marked "Proposed with reservations noted in the text."⁴ The report also recommended a convention on free international communications, conditioned on an anti-jamming agreement, and an expansion of East-West trade. It proposed a sequence for German matters that ran from rearmament and elections through a peace treaty to the withdrawal of troops after a unified Germany had joined NATO. The report proposed a disarmament plan to be offered to the Soviet Union, and if the Soviets rejected it, the United States would "make every effort to win the technological armaments race as the safest way of forcing the Soviet Union to ultimately accept satisfactory arms convention."⁴

Appendix D, "A Proposal for Graduated Disarmament," called for a permanent disarmament commission and an annual revision of the basic convention. It also called for an experimental inspection system "including aerial supervision," to determine the methods and requirements of a dependable inspection system and to train personnel for it.⁴

Outside the conference, the report proposed an international scientific conference of the atomic powers on the danger of radioactive fallout. It proposed invoking the peace treaties with Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to demand inspection, and improved air defense for the European allies. It also called for the revival of Japan as a great power, a positive program for Formosa, and steps to "prevent a Communist take-over in Southern Vietnam."⁴

Open Skies

The Foreign Relations editorial note states: "Its genesis lies in the Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel which met in June." It adds that the panel had called for "free overflights of aircraft" and "for a mutual inspection of military installations."² On July 6, Rockefeller hand-delivered Eisenhower a note recommending mutual aerial inspection.¹¹ His July 11 memorandum, "Psychological Strategy at Geneva," argued that "the propaganda stakes at Geneva may prove more significant than the actual conference results."¹²

In Paris, Rockefeller, Arthur W. Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Harold Stassen, Robert B. Anderson and Alfred Gruenther discussed the overflight and mutual inspection concepts, supported them, and recommended them to Eisenhower in a telegram of July 19.² At the president's villa in Geneva on July 20, the memorandum of the meeting records "general agreement" that the president could appropriately suggest in the plenary session "consideration of a plan to permit such overflights and photographs if the Russians would do likewise." Livingston T. Merchant's account of the same meeting, printed in an editorial footnote to the memorandum, says the "forthcoming 'open skies' proposal was discussed at length."¹³ On July 21 Rockefeller cabled the panel members that they "should be reading newspapers tonight with great pride and satisfaction."¹¹

In the July 21 plenary session, Eisenhower proposed that each side give the other "a complete blueprint of our military establishments" and provide "facilities for aerial photography to the other country."² All agreed to keep the proposal secret from the rest of the American delegation and from the British and French, although hinting that such a statement might be made.² Rostow later wrote a draft titled "President Eisenhower's Open Skies Proposal: July 21, 1955," dated March 12, 1981, which is in the papers of Bissell.¹⁴

The Eisenhower Library holds a folder titled "Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel 1955" in its Miscellaneous Series.¹⁵ The papers of C. D. Jackson include a 1955 log containing a lengthy entry titled "From Quantico to Geneva," and thirty Quantico Meetings folders.¹⁶ The Ann Whitman File, Administration Series, lists a Quantico Conference among the subjects of its C. D. Jackson 1955 folders and its Nelson Rockefeller 1952-55 folders.¹⁷ The Rockefeller Archive Center holds, in the Nelson A. Rockefeller personal papers (Washington, D.C., Series O), a Special Assistant to the President for Foreign Affairs subseries (December 1954 to December 1955) with folders titled "Quantico I - Vulnerabilities Panel" (June 5-10, 1955), "Quantico II - Establishment, Membership, Meetings, and Correspondence," "Quantico II - Final Report," "Quantico II - Background Papers," and drafts of source papers 1 through 21 and of the final report, with a parallel declassified subseries. The subseries scope note states that Rockefeller "played a key role in the development of the Open Skies policy for checking on global military activities through mutual air reconnaissance."¹⁸

Quantico II

On August 16, 1955, Rockefeller invited twelve people to "a group study and review of the psychological aspects of future United States strategy."¹⁹ The members were Frederick L. Anderson, a retired major general of the Air Force, who was designated chairman; Jackson; Johnson; Kissinger of Harvard University; George A. Lincoln of the United States Military Academy; Linebarger; Stacy May, a consulting economist; Millikan; Mosely, who in the source book is listed as director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; Pettee; Possony; and William Webster of the New England Electric System.¹⁹²⁰ The panel met in Washington, D.C. in late August and at Quantico in September. Bessner dates the Quantico sessions to September 25 to 29, 1955.²¹

The panel's source book, "Psychological Aspects of United States Strategy," is dated November 1955. Its numbered individual papers include Mosely's "A Post-Geneva Estimate of Soviet Intentions" and two papers by Millikan, "Thresholds of U.S. Effort" and "Economic Policy as an Instrument of Political and Psychological Policy." Johnson wrote "Crucial Problems of Control of Armaments and Mutual Inspection." May wrote "Thresholds of Armament Effort, U.S. and USSR," and Kissinger wrote "Psychological and Pressure Aspects of Negotiations with the USSR."²⁰ An October 26, 1955 memorandum to Dr. Horace S. Craig of the Operations Coordinating Board's Special Projects Staff concerned Draft Paper No. 15, Quantico Panel, Thresholds of Armaments Efforts, U.S. and U.S.S.R., and a redraft made after Craig's comments; the memorandum carries the typed name of Stacy May of the Office of Nelson A. Rockefeller.²²

Anderson sent the panel's findings to Rockefeller on November 29, 1955. His letter listed four actions the panel deemed "urgent and vital," the first being "Explaining to the people of the United States the gravity of the world situation and spelling out what is required to overcome it."¹⁹ Rockefeller forwarded the report and the source book to Eisenhower on December 2, writing that it "comes to us at a very opportune time." On December 5 he sent the president a twenty-two-page memorandum, "Action Program for Free World Strength."¹⁹

Kissinger attended the second panel in place of Speier, who had planned a trip to Germany for RAND. Bessner describes that meeting as crucial to Kissinger's career, since Rockefeller became his patron. Soon after the second panel Rockefeller resigned his position and created a Special Studies Project, for which Kissinger became director.²¹ The Rockefeller Archive Center's description of its folder of Kissinger's 1980 interview states that Kissinger "met Nelson Rockefeller while serving on the staff of the Quantico II conference in the mid-1950s."¹⁸ The same papers hold a 1956 folder titled "Quantico III Meeting," described as a preliminary meeting to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project, with correspondence on invitations, consultant fees and arrangements.¹⁸

Reception

The Operations Coordinating Board's Special Projects Staff reviewed the first report. On June 23, 1955, P. J. Corso, writing to Craig, said that "Although the report has many good points and suggestions, they are in most cases neutralized or cancelled out by unrealistic proposals." He wrote that "The entire report reflects either a lack of knowledge or disregard of the basic principles and nature of Soviet and Chinese Communism." His memorandum listed ten points, among them the proposal to strain the Moscow-Peiping alliance and the proposal to expand East-West trade.²³