John F. Kennedy Press Conference on the Berlin Crisis

In the wake of the Vienna Summit on June 4th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy responds to the Soviet announcement that they plan to broker a peace treaty with East Germany and have ordered the allied nations to vacate West Berlin.

He responds to Soviet "refusal to negotiate seriously on a nuclear test ban at Geneva," and calls for the President's Scientific Advisory Committee to investigate whether the Soviet Union is conducting tests. Next, Kennedy rejects Khrushchev's claim that the Soviet Union will soon surpass the United States in GNP, and compares this to a "tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the skin long before he has caught the tiger."

Questions from the press regard military response to Soviet Union threats in Berlin, a failed deal in Cuba to exchange American prisoners for agricultural tractors, textile trade with emerging countries, a maritime strike, nuclear testing, the summit meeting in Vienna with Khrushchev, criticism from Richard Nixon, economic policies, relations with Latin American countries, and Federal Housing Administration loans.

Kennedy begins the press conference by giving condolences on Edgar Turba, a reporter who was killed in a plane crash the previous night.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 150263
Municipal archives id: LT9283