Washington D.C. June 29, 2005 - Attorney General Robert
F. Kennedy sought to lift the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to
Cuba in December 1963, according to declassified records posted
today by the National Security Archive. In a December
12, 1963, memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
Kennedy urged a quick decision "to withdraw the existing
regulation prohibiting such trips."
Kennedy's memo, written less than a month after his brother's
assassination in Dallas, communicated his position that the travel
ban imposed by the Kennedy administration was a violation of American
freedoms and impractical in terms of law enforcement. Among his
"principal arguments" for removing the restrictions
on travel to Cuba was that freedom to travel "is more consistent
with our views as a free society and would contrast with such
things as the Berlin Wall and Communist controls on such travel."
His memo prompted what senior National Security Council officials
described as "an in-house fight to permit non-subversive
Americans to travel to Cuba." Several State Department officials
supported Kennedy's position that "the present travel restrictions
are inconsistent with traditional American liberties," and
that "it would be extremely difficult to enforce the present
prohibitions on travel to Cuba without resorting to mass indictments."
But in a December
13, 1963 meeting at the State Department, with no
representatives present from the Attorney General's office, Undersecretary
of State George Ball ruled out any relaxation of regulations on
travel to Cuba.
A principal argument, as national security advisor McGeorge Bundy
informed President Johnson in a subsequent
memorandum on "Student Travel to Cuba"
was that "a relaxation of U.S. restrictions would make it
very difficult for us to urge Latin American governments to prevent
their nationals from going to Cuba-where many would receive subversive
training."
Instead of announcing a legalization of travel to Cuba, as the
Attorney General had proposed, in late December the State Department
issued a warning stating that "persons who may consider engaging
in such travel should be on notice that if they do so, their passports
will be withdrawn and they may be subject to criminal prosecution."
The ban on travel was maintained until President Jimmy Carter
lifted it in 1977; but restrictions were re-imposed during the
Reagan administration and have been tightened further under the
current administration.
According to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Cuba Documentation
Project, the documents "shed significant light on the genesis
of the travel ban to Cuba" which, he said, "was more
about not appearing hypocritical while twisting the arms of other
Latin American nations to keep their citizens from visiting Cuba
than about preventing U.S. citizens from going there and spending
money." The documents, he noted, "reflect that the debate
over travel to Cuba, both inside and outside of government, has
continued for more than 40 years."
The documents were found among the papers of State Department
advisor Averill Harriman at the Library of Congress and in declassified
NSC files at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
Documents
Note: The following documents are in PDF format.
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Document
1: Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General,
"Travel to Cuba," December 12, 1963.
In a comprehensive memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
Robert Kennedy presented the arguments for legalizing travel to
Cuba before a number of student groups traveled there at Christmas
time. There were two courses of action, he wrote: new efforts
to block increased travel to Cuba, or "to withdraw the existing
regulation prohibiting such trips. The first is unlikely to meet
the problem and I favor the second," Kennedy informed Rusk.
In his memo he presented several arguments for lifting the travel
ban: that it was a violation of American liberties to restrict
free travel; that it was impractical to arrest, indict and engage
in "distasteful prosecutions" of scores of U.S. citizens
who sought to go to Cuba; and that lifting the travel ban was
likely to diminish the attraction of leftists who were organizing
protest trips to Havana. "For all these reasons I believe
that it would be wise to remove restrictions on travel to Cuba
before we are faced with problems which are likely to be created
in the immediate future."
Document
2: State Department, "Travel Regulations," December
13, 1963.
Two State Department officers, legal advisor Abram Chayes and
Abba Schwartz summarize Kennedy's arguments that "the ban
on travel to Cuba be removed immediately," including that
"the present travel restrictions are inconsistent with traditional
American liberties." They note that lifting restrictions
to Cuba is likely to be undertaken in the context of lifting most
travel restrictions to other nations. They support Kennedy's proposal
but favor passport validation which would require those who travel
to apply for permission from the Secretary of State to go to Cuba.
Document
3: NSC, "Travel Controls-Cuba," December 18, 1963.
This memo, written by the NSC's Latin American specialist Gordon
Chase to national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, reveals that
the Attorney General's proposal has been overruled at the State
Department. At a meeting on December 13, to which Justice department
officials were not invited, State Department officials from the
Latin American division successfully argued that lifting the ban
would compromise U.S. pressures on other nations in the hemisphere
to isolate Cuba and block students from traveling there. In addition,
according to Chase, Abba Schwartz believed that Lyndon Johnson
could not politically afford to lift the ban because it would
"make him look unacceptably soft." The State Department's
attention turns to steps the government can take to prevent U.S.
students from violating the ban and traveling to Cuba.
Document
4: NSC, "Student Travel to Cuba," May 21, 1964.
In an options memorandum for President Johnson, McGeorge Bundy
informs him of the continuing debate over lifting restrictions
on travel to Cuba. As summer begins, the administration expects
about 100 students to try and travel to Cuba. Bundy lays out the
"two distinct schools of thought" on the travel issue:
Robert Kennedy's effort to end controls on the basis of "our
libertarian tradition and the difficulty of controlling travel"
and current U.S. policy which is built on a tough line toward
Cuba and efforts to enlist other Latin American nations to isolate
Cuba politically and culturally, and to "prevent their nationals
from going to Cuba." Bundy correctly assumes that President
Johnson does not want to relax controls on travel to Cuba and
informs him that an interagency group is studying ways to further
"reduce the interest in and to control student travel to
Cuba this summer."
