JFK and Berlin Wall

choi

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Charles McCarry, When Kennedy Blinked. Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704816604576335594159928256.html?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_Books_5
(book review on Frederick Kempe, Berlin 1961; Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the most dangerous place on earth. Putnam 2011)

Note:
(a) benighted (adj):
"1: overtaken by darkness or night
2: existing in a state of intellectual, moral, or social darkness : UNENLIGHTENED"

(b) primal (adj; Latin primus, first): "first in importance : PRIMARY"
(c) "On Tuesday, November 8, [1960] Kennedy defeated Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the twentieth century. In the national popular vote Kennedy led Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent (49.7% to 49.5%), while in the Electoral College he won 303 votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win). Another 14 electors from Mississippi and Alabama refused to support Kennedy because of his support for the civil rights movement; they voted for Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia."
John F Kennedy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

By electoral votes, JFK won by landslide.

(d) The review states, "He [Khrushchev] offered to release two U.S. Air Force officers who had been in Soviet custody since their RB-47 aircraft was shot down the summer before.

Boeing B-47 Stratojet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-47_Stratojet
("On 1 July 1960, a PVO Strany MiG-19 shot down an RB-47H (AF Serial No. 53-4281) reconnaissance aircraft in the international airspace over the Barents Sea with four of the crew killed and two captured by the Soviets but released in 1961")

R possibly represented reconnaissance. B for bomber.

(e) Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was secretary of state (1949-1953) under president Harry S Truman.
(f) nostrum (n: Latin, neuter of noster our, ours, from nos we):
"a medicine of secret composition recommended by its preparer but usually without scientific proof of its effectiveness"

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