Chapter XXII: Appendix: D

_Letter from President Kennedy to the Secretary of Defense_

_February 8, 1962_

DEAR MR. SECRETARY: You have brought to my attention the fact
that the Senate’s Special Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee
intends to ask witnesses from your department to give testimony
identifying the names of individuals who made or recommended
changes in specific speeches.

As you know, it has been and will be the consistent policy of
this administration to co-operate fully with the committees of
the Congress with respect to the furnishing of information. In
accordance with this policy, you have made available to the
subcommittee 1500 speeches with marginal notes, hundreds of
other documents and the names of the fourteen individual speech
reviewers, eleven of whom are military officers. You have also made
available the fullest possible background information about each of
these men, whose record of service and devotion to the country is
unquestioned in every case; and you have permitted the committee
staff to interview all witnesses requested and to conduct such
interviews outside the presence of any departmental representative.
Finally, you have identified the departmental source of each
suggested change, and offered to furnish in writing an explanation
of each such change, and the policy or guideline under which it was
made.

Your statement that these changes are your responsibility, that
they were made under your policies and guidelines and those of
this administration and that you would be willing to explain
them in detail, is both fitting and accurate, and offers to the
subcommittee all the information properly needed for purposes
of its current inquiry. It is equally clear that it would not
be possible for you to maintain an orderly department, and
receive the candid advice and loyal respect of your subordinates,
if they—instead of you and your senior associates—are to be
individually answerable to the Congress as well as to you for their
internal acts and advice.

For these reasons, and in accordance with the precedents on
separation of powers established by my predecessors from the
first to the last, I have concluded that it would be contrary
to the public interest to make available any information which
would enable the subcommittee to identify and hold accountable
any individual with respect to any particular speech that he has
reviewed. I therefore direct you, and all personnel under the
jurisdiction of your department, not to give any testimony or
produce any documents which would disclose such information; and I
am issuing parallel instructions to the Secretary of State.

The principle which is at stake here cannot be automatically
applied to every request for information. Each case must be judged
on its own merits. But I do not intend to permit subordinate
officials of our career services to bear the brunt of congressional
inquiry into policies which are the responsibilities of their
superiors.

Sincerely yours,
JOHN F. KENNEDY