Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXVIII, Laos

81. Memorandum for the Record¹

Washington, June 7, 1964.

SUBJECT

• Meeting on Sunday, June 7th, with the President, McNamara, Vance, Forrestal, Harriman, [U. Alexis] Johnson, William Bundy, Manning and McCone

After some discussion McNamara recommended:

1. Flying of a mission on June 8th involving 6 or 8 fighter bombers in advance of 2 reconnaissance planes to fly over an installation (Xieng Khouang Ville). Fighter bombers taking out the antiaircraft installation in advance. This would be a retaliatory action and it was agreed upon.

2. Press release concerning the shootdown of the F–8.²

3. The positioning of a portion of the First Fleet to join the Seventh Fleet in the Far East.

Note: This was item 13 on the courses of action.³

All attending the meeting approved. There was some discussion between State and Defense as to whether the above mission should be run June 8th or 9th. It was agreed to run on June 9th because of a meeting taking place in Vientiane on June 8th.

The President continually raised the question of what we see down the road. Harriman said we seek a government of national union and reestablishment of the terms of the 1962 accord. Johnson said our purpose was to demonstrate the U.S. determination to preserve Laos and the actions would assist the Soviets in supporting this position.

The President then said what if we do not take out the entire battery. Are we in danger, and secondly, are we violating the sovereignty of Laos.

Johnson stated, no we are not violating the sovereignty since Souvanna had requested reconnaissance flights and therefore we were responding to his request. (Johnson did not specifically refer to the fighter bomber action either in return of fire or in advance of fire as anticipated on the June 9th flight.) McNamara and the President then aired exchanges on the chances of the loss of another plane. McNamara stated that the Chiefs thought there was a very small chance and he placed the chance of losses for missions at 5%. We have run 138 missions with only 2 losses and this more or less verified his estimate. With respect to this particular operation, which was planned so the planes would go in on the safest route, take out the target and then exit by the safest possible route, he estimated the chances of a loss to be “only 1 in 500”.

The President and Harriman then discussed the 1962 Accord and Harriman stated that we wished to reestablish Kong Le’s position in the PDJ and to have the status quo established as prior to the PL offensive actions.

McCone stated we should want more than that. We should want the full terms of the 1962 Accord complied with. He noted that they had not been complied with, that Souvanna originally planned to go to every section of Laos and create political support for his government and the 1962 concept but in reality he had been able to go to Vientiane and Luang Prabang and had only travelled between the two cities by air, that the eastern part of Laos had been controlled by the Pathet Lao, it had been used as access to South Vietnam and if we agreed to merely the reestablishment of conditions prior to the PL advance, we were in effect turning over eastern Laos to the Communists for continued use in their effort against South Vietnam. I therefore strongly urged that we concentrate on the establishment of an adherence to all the conditions of the 1962 Accord. At this point Harriman said this was all very good, but he didn’t think it could be brought about and then he said that neither he nor any one else expected that the terms of the 1962 Accord would be complied with, and when it was signed it was recognized that such things as full access to all of Laos was probably unattainable, even though the agreement provided it. [1–1/2 lines of source text not declassified]

The President then asked where we were going, or was this a day-to-day affair. He seemed to be concerned that we were getting in a little deeper all the time and not really answering the problem. Harriman noted that Rusk was concerned over the practicality of our position as anti-aircraft and machine guns were scattered over the entire PDJ.

In answer to a question from the President, I stated that I felt there was grave danger of us “sliding down the slippery slope” on day-to-day decisions and that we did not have a full scenario of actions in view of the military effort that was now being made. Both McNamara and William Bundy challenged this, stating there was a scenario carefully worked out and that it was set forth in papers which had been approved and that the courses of action were designed to apply increasing pressure on Laos.

Note: I let the discussion drop at this point, but I wish to return to this issue as the papers referred to which were those considered on June 4th, specifically did not anticipate actual combat operations by U.S. air either in support of regular flights or in advance of regular flights. What is happening is that a scenario designed to bring pressure on Laos during the period of negotiations under Article 4, ICC discussion on Polish proposal, are now being considered as adequate under active military operation of a type which has taken place in the last 2 days and is anticipated for June 9th. Check with Cooper and Colby.

[Here follows a brief discussion unrelated to Laos.]

1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, DCI (McCone) Files, Job 80–B01285A, Meetings with the President, 1 May–31 Oct 1964. Secret; Eyes Only. Dictated by McCone on June 8 and transcribed by his secretary. For Forrestal’s account of this meeting, see Document 80.
2. See footnote 3, Document 80.
3. Reference is to paragraph 13, subparagraph h, of the attachment to Document 71.