Fanfani covered the events of the day in this journal entry, noting that he told Kennedy he would make no commitment on the Jupiter-Polaris replacement until he spoke with McNamara. With McNamara, Fanfani emphasized the point about using the Jupiter base for space launches. Both Kennedy and McNamara denied that there was a trade with the USSR, with McNamara emphasizing the risks posed by the Jupiters during the Missile Crisis.

Seymour Weiss would push back against any efforts to remove the Jupiters, but he and others realized that President Kennedy had a “keen interest” in the matter and that Secretary of Defense McNamara had ordered that action be taken (assigning his General Counsel John McNaughton to take the lead). Nevertheless Weiss and Assistant Secretary of State William Tyler presented Secretary of State Rusk with a memorandum making the case against action on the Jupiters or at least postponing their removal until a “later time.” Paralleling arguments made during the crisis by Ambassadors Hare and Reinhardt, Tyler pointed to the “symbolic and psychological importance” of the Jupiter deployments. While Tyler noted parenthetically that the Italians had “given indications of a disposition to work toward the eventual removal of the Jupiters,” the U.S. could not phase them out “without general Alliance agreement,” including Italy and Turkey’s consent, “unless we are prepared to lay ourselves open to the charge of abrogation of specific or implied agreements.” Rusk was in the know on the secret deal, but his reference to a “later time” was consistent with it and signing the memo would have placated Tyler and Weiss.

This document includes accounts of several conversations between Soviet officials and US diplomats, including Andrei Gromyko for the Soviets, and Dean Rusk and Arthur Goldberg for the Americans. The most pressing topic discussed during these meetings was figuring out mutually acceptable language to mollify Soviet demands that the NPT contain explicit prohibitions on the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear countries not just directly but through a military alliance, namely, NATO, remembering previous US attempts to nuclearize NATO through the Multilateral Force (MLF). Some attention is paid to fears not just of the Soviet Union but the US and other NATO allies as well about the FRG acquiring nuclear weapons. In addition to the focus on the semantic differences in the Soviet and American drafts of the NPT, the document emphasizes that one key area of common ground between the Soviets and Americans is the importance that an agreement be reached sooner rather than later before more countries acquire nuclear capabilities.