Lincoln Gordon

Lincoln Gordon (September 10, 1913 - December 19, 2009) served as US Ambassador to Brazil from 1961 to 1966 and was the central American official coordinating the April 1964 military coup that overthrew President Joao Goulart. A Harvard economist who had worked under Averell Harriman on the Marshall Plan and consulted for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Special Studies Project, Gordon arrived in Rio having been briefed by Nelson Rockefeller's network on Brazilian political conditions. His secret cables to Washington in the weeks before the coup requested and received authorization for covert support to coup-planning military officers, and his denials of any US role in the coup were subsequently contradicted by declassified documents.

Early Career and Appointment

Lincoln Gordon was born in New York City and graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in 1933 at age nineteen, then received a doctorate from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1936. He joined the Harvard faculty that same year, taught government and international economics for the next two decades, and served as program vice-chairman of the War Production Board during World War II. After the war he directed the Marshall Plan mission in London under Averell Harriman and served as Minister for Economic Affairs at the US Embassy there from 1952 to 1955. By the late 1950s he was a professor of international economic relations at Harvard and had been a consultant to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Special Studies Project.

When President John F. Kennedy appointed him ambassador to Rio de Janeiro in October 1961, Gordon had been completing a major book on U.S. manufacturing investment's impact on postwar Brazilian government policies. Before leaving Washington, Gordon was briefed on AIA operations in Brazil by Nelson Rockefeller's aide Berent Friele, who also arranged briefings from AIA's Brazil director and from the governor of Minas Gerais.¹

October 1963: Kennedy Raises Military Intervention

On October 7, 1963, Gordon attended a White House meeting with President Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Deputy CIA Director Marshall Carter, CIA covert operations director Richard Helms, USAID administrator David Bell, Undersecretary of State W. Averell Harriman, Assistant Secretary of State Edwin Martin, and Special Assistant Ralph Dungan. The participants discussed Goulart's popularity, possible successors, and the Brazilian military's role. Kennedy asked Gordon directly: "What about the ... Do you see a situation coming where we might be, find desirable, to intervene militarily ourselves?" Gordon replied that a US invasion would require six divisions and a "massive military operation," framed the possibility as a "Dangerous Contingency possibly requiring rapid action," and argued it was premature without clear evidence that Brazil was adopting the "Fidel Castro model." The recordings of this meeting are archived at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library as Tape 114/A50 and were released by the National Security Archive as Document 9 of NSAEBB No. 465.²

Earlier that year, on March 7, 1963, Gordon had sent a memorandum to McGeorge Bundy titled "Political Considerations Affecting U.S. Assistance to Brazil," in which he recommended preparing "the most promising possible environment for his replacement by a more desirable regime."³

Coordination of the 1964 Coup

Gordon was the central U.S. Embassy figure in the intelligence and diplomatic preparation for the April 1964 military coup against President Joao Goulart. His role included:

As early as March 16, 1964, he was approached by Army Chief of Staff Humberto Castelo Branco with a "white paper" rationale for a military uprising. Gordon allegedly replied that President Lyndon Johnson was prepared to recognize any rebel government on Brazilian territory that proclaimed itself in opposition to Goulart and communism and could hold out for forty-eight hours. He suggested Minas Gerais, home of the Fourth Army, as the best locale from which to launch such a rebellion.⁴

On March 27, 1964, Gordon sent a top-secret cable (received in the Department that evening; logged in FRUS as Document 187 with a dateline of March 28) to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, CIA Director John McCone, and General Maxwell Taylor. In it he assessed that Goulart was "definitely engaged on campaign to seize dictatorial power, accepting the active collaboration of the Brazilian Communist Party," and characterized Castelo Branco as leading organized democratic resistance "with strong loyalty to legal and constitutional principles." He warned that without U.S. backing, Brazil might become "the China of the 1960s" and urged that "no loss of time can be afforded in preparing for such action." Gordon recommended "that measures be taken soonest to prepare for a clandestine delivery of arms of non-US origin, to be made available to Castello Branco supporters in Sao Paulo," with delivery via "unmarked submarine to be off-loaded at night in isolated shore spots in the state of Sao Paulo south of Santos." He also recommended positioning a US naval task force off the Brazilian coast and arranging petroleum supplies for rebel military units.⁵

The following morning, March 28, 1964, McGeorge Bundy transmitted Gordon's cable to President Johnson (in Texas) under the heading "a very disquieting message," describing the situation as "a standby problem that might explode, he says, anytime in the next month or so." Bundy outlined six response measures Washington was considering: clarifying the submarine-versus-carrier question with Gordon, developing "covert capability" to address logistics for potential Army action, reviewing economic and financial leverage, maintaining security while communicating with anti-Goulart elements, generating "active press comment against Goulart" without a direct US public posture, and assuring Gordon of US readiness for "effective action if worst comes to worst." The presidential copy of Bundy's memo (FRUS Document 189) was noted as "retrieved and destroyed" after transmission. Washington's response told Gordon that "neither submarine landing nor carrier task force sounds right to us" and asked for further elaboration.⁶

On March 29, 1964, Gordon sent a second top-secret cable (NSAEBB No. 118, Document 3) reiterating the need for weapons "pre-positioned prior any outbreak of violence" for "paramilitary units working with Democratic Military groups" and again proposing submarine delivery to isolated Sao Paulo shore locations.⁷

On March 31, 1964, Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent a cable to Gordon (FRUS Document 194, dated 9:52 p.m.) authorizing the White House decisions: naval tankers with petroleum from Aruba, assembly of 110 tons of ammunition in New Jersey, and dispatch of a naval task force to the Brazilian coast. The Joint Chiefs of Staff assigned the code name Operation Brother Sam to this contingency. The task force, including an aircraft carrier, helicopter carrier, six destroyers, and eleven tankers, moved secretly toward Brazil beginning at 1:50 A.M. on March 31, waiting off Santos for orders from Gordon's embassy.⁸

After the coup succeeded within hours, Gordon signaled triumph and advised the Johnson administration to avoid "a jubilant posture," urging instead that Johnson send a congratulatory telegram to the new acting president. Johnson's recognition came so fast it shocked even veteran observers of U.S. Latin American policy. Gordon later acknowledged that Operation Brother Sam "proved unnecessary to set in motion" once the coup succeeded without direct US military action.⁹

Post-Coup Role

Gordon met with President Humberto Castelo Branco with Hanna Mining's John J. McCloy in November 1964 to press for restoration of Hanna's iron-ore concessions, canceled under Goulart. Gordon outlined the U.S. "financial and economic mission to Brazil" at that meeting as a framework for the subsequent flood of American aid and loans to the new military government.¹⁰

Denials and Senate Hearings

Both Gordon and Vernon Walters later denied any U.S. involvement in the 1964 coup. Under oath before skeptical senators during his 1966 confirmation hearings as Johnson's new assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, Gordon testified: "Neither the American Embassy nor I personally played any part in the process whatsoever." He characterized the coup as "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century." In 1966 Gordon also claimed to have had "far more solid evidence than accusations in the anti-government Brazilian press" for his characterization of Goulart's intentions; in 2005 he acknowledged he had no more evidence for this than what appeared in the press at the time. In 1977 Gordon admitted that the United States had funded opposition groups during the period. Former CIA officer Philip Agee and documents declassified beginning in 2004 subsequently contradicted the full scope of the earlier denials.¹¹

Amazon Policy

As assistant secretary of state, Gordon was involved in the Johnson administration's endorsement of the Castelo Branco government's July 1964 decision to end a ten-year suspension of plans by the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct aerial mapping of the Amazon to detect mineral deposits. Under his oversight, the U.S. Air Force was invited into the Brazilian Amazon for reconnaissance operations that preceded major American corporate mining concessions.¹²

Later Career

Gordon served as President of Johns Hopkins University from 1967 to 1971, then as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center from 1972 to 1975, and from 1984 onward as a scholar at the Brookings Institution's Economic Studies program and as a director of the Atlantic Council. He died on December 19, 2009, at age 96, at Collington Episcopal Life Care in Mitchellville, Maryland.¹³