EXCOMM

The Executive Committee of the National Security Council (commonly referred to as simply the Executive Committee or ExComm) was a body of United States government officials that convened to advise President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It was composed of the regular members of the National Security Council, along with other men whose advice the President deemed useful during the crisis. EXCOMM was formally established by National Security Action Memorandum 196 on October 22, 1962. It was made up of twelve full members in addition to the president. Advisers frequently sat in on the meetings, which were held in the Cabinet Room of the White House's West Wing and secretly recorded by tape machines activated by Kennedy. None of the other committee members knew the meetings were being recorded, save probably the president's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.[1]

Not to be confused with X-COM or X.com.
EXCOMM meeting at the White House Cabinet Room during the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 29, 1962.

Declassifying the tapes

The original tape recordings of EXCOMM's meetings are currently held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Dorchester, Boston. Great strides have been made in declassifying and publishing the tapes.[2] Excerpts from the first meeting, which took place on October 16, 1962, document the reactions of the committee members upon initially hearing the news that medium and long-range ballistic missiles might be stationed in Cuba. In the summer of 1985, McGeorge Bundy, who served as EXCOMM's Special Assistant for National Security, transcribed the tapes from the October 27, 1962 meeting. James G. Blight, while Executive Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, edited and annotated Bundy's transcriptions. Authorities in Washington and at the library granted Bundy access to the tape recordings given his role with EXCOMM.[3]

Bundy considered the October 27 meeting especially important, as it was the meeting which immediately preceded EXCOMM's resolution of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Bundy believed the tape recordings included important historical information that should be shared with the public; notably, how political decisions are carried out when involving matters pertaining to nuclear weaponry.

In the mid-1990s, the audio tapes were systematically declassified (with a modest number of excisions) and released, first as published transcripts[4][5] and later as downloadable audio files.[6]

Decision-making

The EXCOMM's deliberations are a favorite topic of social scientists. Irving Janis argued that they were relatively free of the "groupthink" that plagued discussions leading up to the Bay of Pigs. Allison and Zelikow make frequent reference to them in the second edition of Essence of Decision, in connection with the "bureaucratic politics" perspective.[7]

One political theorist, James Blight, has analyzed the behavior of EXCOMM's members in the midst of the impending crisis with the Soviet Union. He suggests that the thought of war with the Soviet Union instilled a sense of fear in the committee members so that their deliberations became more productive as they reacted to this emotion.[8] Blight argues that EXCOMM's focus of attention shifted: as the possibility of war with the Soviet Union became more probable, the committee members became less concerned with removing the missiles from Cuba and instead focused their energy on avoiding a nuclear war.

Sociologist David Gibson has explored the EXCOMM's deliberations from a discourse-analytic, or conversation-analytic, perspective. He argues that inasmuch as Kennedy's decisions were shaped by the ExComm's deliberations, they hinged on the group not talking about the dangers that awaited around every corner—such as the danger that the U.S. would have to bomb operational nuclear missiles were the blockade to fail to force Khrushchev to remove the missiles.[9]

Membership

National Security Council

Other members

Advisers

Central Intelligence Agency

Department of Defense

  • Paul Nitze, Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs

Office of Emergency Planning

  • Edward A. McDermott, Director

Department of State

Information Agency

  • Donald Wilson

White House

  • Kenneth O'Donnell, Special Assistant to the President
  • David Powers, Special Assistant to the President
  • Theodore Sorensen, Special Counsel to the President
  • Morgan Ferguson, Assistant Special Counsel to the President
  • Bromley Smith, Executive Secretary of the National Security Council
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References
  1. Welch, David A., and James Blight. “The Eleventh Hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis: An Introduction to the ExComm Transcripts.” International Security 12.3 (1987-1988): 5-29.
  2. McKeown, Timothy J. "The Cuban Missile Crisis and Politics as Usual". The Journal of Politics 62.1 (2000): 70-87.
  3. Welch, David A., and James Blight. 5-29.
  4. May, Ernest R., and Philip D. Zelikow, Eds. (1997). The Kennedy Tapes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  5. Zelikow, Philip D., and Ernest R. May, Eds. (2001). The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, the Great Crises. Vol. 2-3. New York: Norton.
  6. https://web.archive.org/web/20170124152832/https://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/presidentialrecordings/kennedy/1962/10_1962
  7. Allison, Graham and Philip Zelikow (1999). Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. ISBN 0321013492.
  8. Blight, James. The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990.
  9. Gibson, David R. (2012). Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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