JFK, April 27, 1961 - Address, "The President and the Press", given before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, NYC:
I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger.
The events of recent weeks may have helped illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimension of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years.
The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.
It is a system which as conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, tightly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, no headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope of wish to match.
