Letter to Adolf Berle on Receiving Final Report of the President's Task Force on Latin America.

[ Released July 8, 1961. Dated July 7, 1961 ]

Dear Professor Eerie:

I have read with great interest and appreciation your final report as Chairman of the President's Task Force on Latin America. Helping the passage of the 500 million dollar social fund appropriation, securing critically needed financial assistance for Brazil, expediting urgent economic aid projects in Venezuela and Colombia, formulating revised hemispheric defense policies and assembling an emergency program for Bolivia, are among the many substantial accomplishments of your group. This record is one of which you and your fellow task force members should be proud.

Your group has fulfilled, in an outstanding manner, its purpose of helping to coordinate and direct the formulation and conduct of new Latin American policies during the transition period immediately following the inauguration. In addition, your pre-inauguration task force--primarily devoted to the formulation of policy--laid the groundwork for many aspects of the Alliance for Progress.

I intend to give careful and serious study to your recommendations for future policy, including the expansion of our educational information-propaganda program in Latin America.

Let me extend to you my warmest expressions of deep personal gratitude for the time, energy and talent you have devoted to the work of the task force--work which has made a lasting contribution to the cause of freedom in the hemisphere. It is another example of the devotion to public service which you have displayed throughout your long and brilliant career in government and in private life. In unhesitatingly giving up your scholarly and legal work to come to Washington you have furnished an outstanding example of dedication and sacrifice in the public interest. And I hope I can continue to feel free to call upon your services from time to time as problems arise in which your many skills can be of use.

Sincerely,

JOHN F. KENNEDY

[Honorable Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Chairman, Task Force on Latin America, Department of State, Washington 25, D.C.]