Kennedy's speechwriter whose pen chose 'quarantine' over airstrikes at the nuclear brink
Asked if he wrote 'ask not what your country can do for you,' his lifelong reply was: 'Ask not.'
John F. Kennedy's chief speechwriter and closest adviser, whom Kennedy called his 'intellectual blood bank.' During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he opposed the Joint Chiefs' call for airstrikes and backed the naval blockade, drafting Kennedy's October 22 televised address and choosing the word 'quarantine' over 'blockade' to avoid the legal implication of a declaration of war. He later called it 'the Kennedy speech with the greatest impact on the planet,' and also drafted the president's secret correspondence with Khrushchev. After the assassination he wrote Johnson's 'Let Us Continue' address, resigned in 1964, and spent decades as an international lawyer and author, endorsing Barack Obama in 2008.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1953–1961Chief legislative aide to Senator John F. Kennedy
- 1961–1964Special Counsel and chief speechwriter to President Kennedy
- 1964–1966Author (Kennedy, international bestseller)
- 1966–2010International lawyer, Paul, Weiss LLP
- 1977CIA Director nominee (withdrawn)
Related historical events
Policy deliberations and presidential address during the Cuban Missile Crisis
During the October 1962 crisis over Soviet missile deployments in Cuba, Sorensen was among Kennedy's advisers considering responses and helped prepare the president's public message. The Kennedy Library's account says that on October 18 Kennedy and his advisers were weighing two options, a blockade or an invasion. On October 22 Kennedy formally established the National Security Council's Executive Committee (ExComm); in a televised address that evening, he announced a naval quarantine of Cuba until the missile sites were dismantled and further missile shipments halted. Sorensen's involvement in the deliberations and in drafting the address illustrates how his policy-advisory and speechwriting work intersected during the crisis. The cited evidence does not, however, establish that Sorensen alone determined the chosen policy or coined the term "quarantine."