48. Memorandum From the Presidentʼs Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson1
I talked to McCloy and Lovett. Acheson is in Antigua and Art Dean was on his way to the West coast by air. I have asked for him to call me early in the morning. Though they differ from each other in important ways, McCloy and Lovett are in favor of prompt resumption and a prompt Presidential statement thereafter.
McCloy thinks the pause has been good and useful on political and military grounds, but it has had no response. It makes no sense now to let the highways and bridges be repaired and put in use again after we have spent so much time bombing them. He thinks the risk of escalation is low and cites a recent conversation with Dobrynin to indicate that the Russians would also try to keep things cool.
McCloy favors a low key statement but thinks that it should come from here. If it came from anywhere else the people would think the President was ducking it.
Lovett wishes we had never got into Vietnam because he has such a painful memory of Korea. He says he was a charter member of the Never Again Club. But now that we are in he would go a long way. He was against the pause in the first place, and he wold favor a prompt and fairly massive air action in the North. He thinks we simply must give adequate support to the massive forces we have placed in Vietnam. In addition to air activity he would consider what he calls “a friendly blockade” of North Vietnam. He thinks keeping the pressure on is a kind of negotiation. He thinks the risk of escalation is low but he does report that his French contacts think the top ChiCom leadership is getting a little edgy. (This conflicts with what the French Ambassador Chauvel reported from his trip to Peking and may reflect Couveʼs stern instruction to Chauvel to say nothing in public that would give any comfort to the Americans.)
Both Lovett and McCloy would find it extremely difficult to come down here tomorrow because each of them has an important board meeting. But they agreed to telephone me in the morning if they have any second sober thoughts and of course they will come if you want them to. Rusk and McNamara are pretty well pinned down with the British all day tomorrow from 10:00 until about 5:30 but could be pulled out for about half and hour about 12:30 if you want them.
I myself see no need for a meeting until 6:00, when we ought to issue orders subject to a later confirming execute message on Friday afternoon.2 [Page 159] At that time I will try to have necessary diplomatic messages and a preliminary outline of the content of a statement for use on Saturday3 if you choose.4
I have also talked to Clark Clifford and he feels that the pause has now clearly failed with Hanoi as we all thought it would. He concedes that it has been helpful here and abroad. He says he wants to get out of Vietnam more than any other man he knows but the only way to do it is to use enough force and show enough determination to persuade Hanoi that a political contest is better than a military one. He would resume promptly with carefully measured attacks at first, and he would keep up the pressure until the other people decide that we are not the French. Clifford thinks the French experience is overwhelmingly important to the thinking in Hanoi.
I have not reviewed with any of these gentlemen the delicate problem of day-to-day timing that relates to Vientiane and the level of VC activity in the South.
- Source: Johnson Library, Confidential File, ND 19/CO 312. Secret.↩
- January 28. Bundy added “or later” in handwriting.↩
- Bundy added “or later” in handwriting.↩
- Bundy added a handwritten note: “I still notice that we have only ‘incidents,’ not ‘attacks’ in South Viet Nam—Mortars and sabotage, not attacks by military units on military units. And Vientiane is still loose, in N.Y. Times terms.” Regarding the Vientiane contact, see Document 51.↩