242. Editorial Note
On September 29, 1962, Under Secretary of State Ball forwarded Talking Points on the Congo to President Kennedy for use at a luncheon meeting the next day with British Foreign Secretary Lord Home. Ballʼs paper expressed concern over the possibility that prolonged civil war in the Congo would “create a power vacuum into which the USSR would almost certainly try to move.” Similarly, in an October 2 meeting with the President, Representative to the United Nations Stevenson warned that the consequence of failure in the Congo “would be extremely serious,” resulting in “continuous civil war, and a golden opportunity for the Soviets.” For text of Ballʼs paper and the memorandum of Stevensonʼs conversation with the President, see Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, volume XX, pages 594–597 and 599–600.
On December 10 during a long discussion about the Congo at a White House staff meeting, Presidentʼs Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs Kaysen said, according to a memorandum for the record, “that the threat of a ‘Soviet presence or menace’ in the Congo was the gut issue—i.e., if we were certain that the Soviets would not rush in to replace us, we would probably try to leave and convince everybody else to do likewise.” For text, see ibid., page 716.