Office of the Historian

51. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Under Secretary of State (Ball) and the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Bundy)1

Washington, May 19, 1964, 9:40 a.m.

Ball asked Bundy the general reaction to the idea of Americans in T–28s. Bundy said they just had a telecon with Lynn [Leon Unger] and he does not need them as of now.2 He says if he is going to maintain the tempo he will need to use the civilians. Bundy said that the use of civilians [Page 91] in Laos is less desirable than in others because of the fact that the civilians have always been under propaganda attack. Bundy said he was going to check with CIA and see if they had some in Thailand who could do it. Ball said that when Bundy had a few minutes during the course of the day he would like to talk to him.

Bundy said he had just talked to Rusk and Harriman and they wanted to get out a message to Khrushchev. The other question is troops to Thailand and what we might do there.

[Here follows a paragraph unrelated to Laos.]

  1. Source: Johnson Library, Ball Papers, Telephone Conversations, Vietnam. No classification marking.↩
  2. Dated May 19. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 27 LAOS)↩