page_title: Roswell Gilpatric
section_title: Deputy Secretary of Defense
hierarchical_section_title: Roswell Gilpatric / Deputy Secretary of Defense
caption_attribution_description: English: October 23, 1962: President Kennedy signs Proclamation 3504, authorizing the naval quarantine of Cuba.Deutsch: 23. Oktober 1962: Präsident Kennedy unterschreibt die Bekanntmachung 3504, die die Seeblockade gegen Kuba erlaubt.
context_page_description: Roswell Leavitt Gilpatric was a New York City corporate attorney and government official who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1961–64, when he played a pivotal role in the high-stake strategies of the Cuban Missile Crisis, advising President John F. Kennedy as well as Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy on dealing with the Soviet nuclear missile threat. Gilpatric later served as Chairman of the Task Force on Nuclear Proliferation in 1964.
context_section_description: Gilpatric joined the new Kennedy administration in 1961 as part of the wave of Kennedy appointments. His appointment was unusual: he was one of the few Pentagon leaders handpicked by the new President. Fearing that the new Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, was inexperienced in Washington's ways, Kennedy chose Gilpatric to add experience to his Defense team. McNamara was known as a "whiz kid", a Midwestern industrial production wunderkind. But Kennedy sensed that McNamara would need a strong lieutenant who was savvy in the ways of Washington.
  Kennedy chose Gilpatric as the Pentagon's number two, passing over Paul Nitze, Gilpatric's old classmate from Hotchkiss, who had wanted the job. It was a propitious appointment: within a few months, the dashing Eastern lawyer and his Midwestern boss were finishing each other's sentences. McNamara frequently started out with the expression: "Ros and I...."
  As the Cuban crisis began to unfold, Gilpatric was appointed to the EXCOMM team, the top-level working group appointed by President Kennedy to assess the Soviet missile threat in Cuba. At one point during the tense standoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis, McGeorge Bundy was arguing for United States bombing of Cuba to eliminate the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack. McNamara countered, arguing that there should be no bombing because the Soviet Russian response was unpredictable.
  It was at this critical moment that Gilpatric stepped in to settle the argument. "Essentially, Mr. President," Gilpatric was recorded telling Kennedy, "this is a choice between limited action and unlimited action, and most of us think it is better to start with limited action." It was Gilpatric's intervention that changed the direction of the discussion, according to Harvard professor and former Department of Defense official Graham T. Allison, who authored a book, Essence of Decision, about the crisis. Proposing the blockade was McNamara and Gilpatric's solution to providing President Kennedy with a strong response – but short of the airstrike that McGeorge Bundy and others were pushing. By crafting their solution, and with the normally reticent Gilpatric speaking up forcefully for it, the two managed to change the thrust of policy. The President followed Gilpatric and McNamara's recommendation.
  Gilpatric was not always so dovish. He often took a hard line against the Communist threat, and was not above using force in other matters of international security. In the Eisenhower administration, Gilpatric headed a secret task force charged with "preventing Communist domination of Vietnam." Gilpatric argued forcefully for U.S. commitment to halt the Communist threat in South Vietnam. In his position with the Kennedy administration, Gilpatric later signed off on the overthrow of the Diem government. Gilpatric was also a member of a special task force which hatched "Operation Mongoose", a dirty tricks campaign aimed at destabilizing the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
  At the same time, Gilpatric showed that he could be intellectually flexible on occasion. When it came to the admission of China into the United Nations, for instance, Gilpatric argued forcefully in a letter to The New York Times, written during his Eisenhower years, that the United States should stop trying to block the Communist country's admission into the international governing body. "By no longer trying to block Communist China's admission to the United Nations the United States might be able to bring about a reduction in tensions in southeast Asia that would lessen the chances of further Communist 'nibbling' or 'brush-fire' type of aggression."
  Gilpatric did not always face an easy task while acting as go-between for the Pentagon generals and the White House. For example, President Kennedy developed such an intense dislike of General Curtis Lemay  that every time his name came up, Kennedy went ballistic. 
  "I mean he just would be frantic at the end of a session with LeMay", Gilpatric recalled, "because, you know, LeMay couldn't listen or wouldn't take in, and he would make what Kennedy
caption: President Kennedy signing order authorizing naval blockade of Cuba, as urged by Roswell Gilpatric
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