Intellectuals and Vietnam

This memoir is at once significant in content and slightly frivolous in effect. It was written by a Columbia professor after three years of hard labor at the Fudge Factory— as the State Department is known to refugees from the Potomac. Prof. Hilsman occupied two of the key offices in the Kennedy Administration: Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. From these positions he collected clandestine notes about the various exercises in bureaucratic infighting, inter-Departmental conflict, and the fudging of strategic choices which he labels the “policy process.” His description of the closed system of Executive decision-making will be praised by professional political scientists for its shrewd observations of the functioning of government. He writes clearly and carefully about great events, such as the Cuban missile crisis, the settlement in Laos, and the avoidance of conflict with Indonesia. He is not ...