OK to Lie to the American People Says Kennedy Administration Official
Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in President John Kennedy’s administration, stated on this day that it was OK for the government to lie to the American people. At a meeting with the press sponsored by the Deadline Club in New York City, he claimed that the government had an inherent right “to lie to save itself.”
It was not clear whether he was referring to saving the country or the administration.
The statement was part of an ongoing controversy over “news management” by the Kennedy administration, which began immediately after Kennedy became President (see January 25, 1961) and continued with President Kennedy’s notorious (and quickly dropped) proposal on April 27, 1961, that the press censor itself in matters of national security.
The combination of the “news management” controversy, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in the Kennedy administration, followed by the disastrous escalation of the conflict in Vietnam into a full-scale war had the effect of shattering the complacency of the Washington press corps, and by the late 1960s many reporters had become more aggressive in challenging official statements by government officials.
Read the memoirs of President Kennedy’s Press Secretary: Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (1966)
Watch Pierre Salinger discuss “The President and the Press”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FhH351wYvk
Read about the creation of the issue of “managed news” during the Kennedy administration here
Read the critical analysis of the Washington, DC press corps by the veteran reporter Helen Thomas: Helen Thomas, Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How it Has Failed the Public (2007)