620. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson1
Mr. President:
The attached memorandum from George Ball2 presents to you a choice between:
- a)
- permitting the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt to fuel and provide shore leave to its crew at Capetown, or
- b)
- fueling it from an oiler at sea in the same general area.
As you will note, there are two political problems: the possibility that the International Court of Justice decision on Southwest Africa may come out at about the time in July when the ship goes through; and the interpretation that might be put on the trip inside South Africa and elsewhere, in the light of Senator Robert Kennedy’s recent visit.
To explore whether this choice could be avoided, I asked Paul Nitze to give me a personal assessment of the options open to the Navy.
He reports as follows:
- a)
- The attack carrier could refuel and have most satisfactory shore leave at Rio de Janeiro; but it means keeping the carrier on fighting station off Viet Nam an extra four days.
- b)
- It could refuel from a tanker at Diego Suarez (Malagasy). The cost of sending out the tanker is between $100,000 and $200,000. Diego Suarez is a town of 4500 people, all colored. At this moment the Navy says that it would prefer to go straight through rather than have shore leave there.
Secretary Nitze concludes that you do have some flexibility here. The Navy would vastly prefer Capetown. But the ship going out contains fresh men, and shore leave is less important than it would be if they had been on battle station for some time. He says that the Navy’s willingness to forego shore leave at Diego Suarez indicates to him that the men’s situation is not desperate.
I assess the risk of an unpleasant political reaction as about 4 out of 10. The unpleasantness would be moderate, if we hit the 4.
The question is whether, to avoid that risk, you wish either to:
- —spend an extra $100,000 or so;
- —or hold the present attack carrier on station an extra four days.