IT WAS IRONIC (and wrong) that the last word on Dean Rusk on National Public Radio was David Halberstam's.
Rusk didn't have a lot of use for journalists, and Halberstam was probably his least favorite. I'll tell you why in a minute, but first:
Rusk will be remembered for many things, not least his remark, "We are eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked."
Rusk was secretary of state during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The Soviet Union had constructed a missile launching site in Cuba, and Soviet ships believed to be carrying missiles were en route.
President John Kennedy, on the advice of Rusk and others, imposed a naval blockade around Cuba. No one knew how the Soviets would react to that, and there were real fears that nuclear war might result.
At a meeting of top officials, a report came in that Soviet ships suspected of carrying missiles had turned back in mid-Atlantic. That's when Rusk uttered his remark, "based on a childhood game we used to play in Georgia, where we would stand two feet apart and stare into each other's eyes. Whoever blinked first lost the game," he later explained. When he saw the quote in print in 1962, he was aghast. "That someone in that room leaked that remark to the press really infuriated me, the only leak in my eight years as secretary that could have been calamitous. Here in the middle of the crisis, where any consideration of face or prestige might make a considerable difference, I thought it incredibly stupid that a colleague leak that remark," he said.
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A remark he never uttered infuriated him when he saw it in print. In his book about Kennedy-Lyndon Johnson foreign policy, "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam wrote that once Rusk called Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1965 to relay concerns of State Department officials about massive B-52 raids on Vietnam. McNamara counter-argued. To which Rusk tamely replied, "Okay, Bob, in for a dime, in for a dollar."
I interviewed Rusk at the University of Georgia in 1973. He went there to teach after leaving Washington in 1969. I made the mistake of saying I thought he came out better than anyone else in Halberstam's book. He replied with a flash of resentment. He said Halberstam never interviewed him (though the book implies he did) or attempted to. He said he "psychoanalyzed me" and "put words in my mouth" -- and cited "in for a dime. . ." as example.
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Rusk's name sometimes caused an amusing confusion. More than one very young, very low-level bureaucrat or political aide on the New Frontier mistook his first name for an academic title and called him "Dean" in meetings. (In today's Washington, everybody seems to be on a first name basis, but things were more formal, gentlemanly in the 1960s.) Rusk never corrected them, it was said, in order not to embarrass them.