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In the U.S., the reaction to the release of Olmstead and McKone was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. But a few warning voices were raised. Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken charged that Khrushchev was merely "playing power politics." Cried New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits: "There is no thaw in the cold war, and this doesn't change anything on critical matters like Berlin, Laos or the Congo."
This was indeed a danger: that the U.S., in its gratification at the return of its airmen, might be deluded into thinking that Khrushchev had really taken a basic step toward thawing out the cold war, that the issues so long and bitterly contested between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. have somehow changed. Such a surge of popular hope could pressure the Kennedy Administration into dealing with Khrushchev in ways it had determined to avoid.
Nikita Khrushchev's desire to meet and play summitry with Jack Kennedy is no secret. Ever since Kennedy's election, "Smiling Mike" Menshikov, the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., has been urging the advantages of a Khrushchev-Kennedy meeting. Kennedy, however, had set himself against playing Nikita's game. He was backed in his resolve by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, whose low opinion of summitry was expressed in a Foreign Affairs article last April: "Summit diplomacy is to be approached with the wariness with which a prudent physician prescribes a habit-forming drug—a technique to be employed rarely and under the most exceptional circumstances, with rigorous safeguards against its becoming a debilitating or dangerous habit." Early last week Kennedy and Rusk conferred for five hours, then announced their plans for achieving U.S. international aims not through summitry but through the "quiet diplomacy" of traditional channels. It was just such quiet diplomacy that helped win freedom for Olmstead and McKone.
But in the glowing aftermath of the airmen's release, things seemed somehow different. The Administration went out of its way to prevent anything that might offend Khrushchev or otherwise cause international ill will. Jack Kennedy imposed strict controls on "tough" policy speeches by Pentagon leaders: Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke was required to rewrite a speech almost completely; Air Force Chief of Staff Thomas D. White was questioned about two paragraphs in a speech that was finally cleared. The Administration also asked for a postponement until March on a Warsaw meeting to discuss the bitter issue of five American civilians being held in Red China.
Then, at week's end, came U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Adlai Stevenson to express his personal opinion that Jack Kennedy would be "happy" to meet with Khrushchev if Nikita attends the United Nations General Assembly sessions in March—a suggestion that was greeted with cheers in the Russian press. And State Secretary Rusk followed up with a "clarification" of the statement he had made earlier in the week. "We do intend to use our ambassadors abroad fully," said Rusk, "but that does not mean that we are rejecting the possibility of other types of meetings." Thus, said Rusk, he would not "on principle" exclude summit meetings.