Nation: Carter Defuses a Crisis

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Over the weekend the President and his top aides repeatedly consulted the veteran advisers, who were, inevitably, dubbed the wise men. Taking nothing for granted, and drawing on their own experience in Washington, they peppered Administration officials with questions, expressed their doubts and reservations and argued among themselves. Opinion ranged from hawkish to dovish, with most of the group falling somewhere in between. On Saturday morning they attended a meeting in the White House with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Though he had been on vacation when the Cuban uproar began, he agreed with Vance that it had been overblown. But Brzezinski wanted to use the troop issue as the occasion for initiating broader talks with the Soviets about their activities around the world, while the more lawyerly Vance wished to focus on the brigade alone.

Brzezinski asked the wise men to comment on four issues involved in the crisis: the brigade, Caribbean stability, Soviet-Cuban actions in general and SALT. Then he rushed upstairs and dictated a summary of each man's position to his secretary and took a copy to the President.

By the time that Carter met the group for lunch, he was ready to outline the moderate course that he planned to follow. Said a participant: "It was a concise, brilliant exposition. It was better than his Monday speech." Afterward some of the wise men urged using the troop issue to force a confrontation with the Kremlin over Soviet expansionist policies; others advised playing down the matter because it was too trivial. The majority supported the President. Said one of the moderates: "It was a wise choice diplomatically but tough politically."

After the session, Carter left for Camp David with his wife Rosalynn, who has become increasingly involved in the drafting of his speeches. Described by an aide as "feisty and fierce" these days, she feels that the professional speechwriters are not helping Jimmy get across his simple populist message. Acting as an editor, she put some of the finishing touches on Jimmy's Cuban speech.

The military moves that Carter pledged were not much more menacing than the brigade, a response that indeed fits the provocation. He promised to increase surveillance over Cuba, which he had cut back when he took office in an effort to prepare the way for normalizing relations with Fidel Castro. Carter said he would establish a Caribbean military headquarters in Key West, which a Pentagon official said would be a largely symbolic gesture intended to "show the flag 90 miles north of Cuba." Military maneuvers would be expanded in the Caribbean (including amphibious landings of Marines on the beaches at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba). Finally, Carter gave assurances that he would speed up development of rapid deployment forces, a group of 100,000 servicemen that will be equipped to fly to any crisis spot in the world on short notice.