Final_Judgment

500 Quid Pro Quo? [403]
"The information that Rusk recommended the project be killed comes
from an official within the Central Intelligence Agency who was assigned to
help draft the plans. He states that the contingency planning group was told
that Rusk was against the project from the time Kennedy first initiated it in
September, 1963 . . .
"The great significance that Kennedy attached to the highly secret
project was indicated by an account of how it started written by Stewart
Alsop following Kennedy's death. 'Shortly before he died,' Alsop related,
`President Kennedy called one of the government's leading experts on the
Far East into his office for a talk.
"'The conversation concerned a subject which . . . troubled the late
President more deeply than any other—the developing Chinese nuclear
capability. He asked if there was any chance for 'accommodation' with the
Chinese communists. When the Far East expert said no, the President
appeared to agree. He asked the expert what should be done.
"'I've given a lot of thought to that question,' the expert replied. 'It
should be technically possible at this stage in their nuclear development to
destroy the Chinese nuclear plants in such a way that it will seem an atomic
accident. The thing could be done as a surgical operation, without nuclear
weapons, using high explosives,' the official continued. 'We could have
plans for you, with various operational means for taking out the plants in
the near future.' The official told Alsop that Kennedy pointed at him
meaningfully and said, 'You do that. '"
"Immediately following this White House meeting, a contingency
planning group was organized within the Kennedy administration to
undertake the super-secret project. At their first meeting, the group was told
that President Kennedy had decided in principle that China must be
prevented, by whatever means, from becoming a nuclear power.
"According to one of the group, the planning went ahead without a
hitch during September, October, and November of 1963 . . . White House
records show that shortly after Kennedy's death, President Johnson was
briefed about the project by Rusk. It was shortly after this briefing that the
project was canceled." 991
JFK assassination researcher Dick Russell, who has written in passing
of JFK's plans regarding China's nuclear facilities, reports that "the Soviets
were said to be privately urging the United States to go ahead with the
proposed attack." 992
Among those Americans urging Johnson to go ahead with the attack
and to stand in the way of China's nuclear development was CIA Director
John McCone. According to Seymour Hersh, writing in The Samson Option
(his study of Israel's secret nuclear development program): "McCone sorely
felt the loss of John Kennedy; his relationship with Lyndon Johnson was
much less intimate and his advice not always welcome.
"McCone's solution to the Chinese bomb . . . was to send in the Air
Force. 'McCone just raised hell' about the Chinese bomb, recalled [his