Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VII, Arms Control and Disarmament

140. Memorandum for the Record⁰

Washington, March 1, 1962.

SUBJECT

• Daily Staff Meeting, 1 March 1962

[Here follows discussion of Latin America and the timing of the President’s announcement of the resumption of nuclear testing.]

c. Disarmament. There is increasing pressure to come up with something concrete on this. Kaysen allowed as how he had been working on it. Bundy told him to look at the April draft treaty¹ (which, incidentally, is not on disarmament but is on the nuclear test ban) to see whether it is sufficiently dramatic and forthcoming to get something out of it. The British think we can do better. Kaysen, Wiesner and Harold Brown will presumably sit down over the weekend and see if they can dream up some new ideas. Bundy cautioned Kaysen that the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) is responsible for coming up with the formal papers for Presidential review, and that the White House should help them rather than steal the action from them. However, he wanted it made clear that our proposals at Geneva should be more forthcoming. I inquired as to what the purpose of this afternoon’s meeting of principals would be in this context.² Bundy said that it would cover a lot of related “junk.” However, it could be used to indicate the direction of the President’s thinking. (Major Smith tells me that Raskin, who has been doing Kaysen’s leg work in this area, really hasn’t studied the problem enough to know what he is talking about. To be more specific, neither Kaysen nor Raskin know what is in either the disarmament or the nuclear test ban proposals, and that they don’t seem to realize that the Foster Plan³ is new to some extent. As an example of this, several of their so-called new proposals really go back in the direction of the original papers. Major Smith is going to try to diplomatically put across to Kaysen that there is some confusion as to the basic elements of all these plans which should be clarified before anyone starts trying to develop so-called new proposals.)

[Here follows discussion of the remaining agenda items.]

JJE

0. Source: National Defense University, Taylor Papers, Daily Staff Meetings Jan-Apr 62. Secret. Drafted by Ewell. Bundy presided at the meeting.
1. For text of the U.S.-U.K. draft treaty, tabled at the Geneva Conference on April 18, see Documents on Disarmament, 1961, pp. 82-126.
2. See Document 141.
3. Reference presumably is to the ninth revision of the Foster Plan; see footnote 5, Document 72. A comparison of that plan with a White House disarmament plan is in a memorandum from William Y. Smith to General Maxwell D. Taylor, February 27. (National Defense University, Taylor Papers, WYS Chron (2) T-134-69) William C. Foster, Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, created an interagency Inspection Study Group in October 1961 “to define and evaluate the inspection and control implications of ACDA Plan 1, a comprehensive arms control program which had been developed by a panel earlier in the year.” (Preface to the July 1962 Report) In addition to Foster, who chaired the Inspection Study Group, other members were Bruno W. Augenstein (DOD), Lloyd K. Belt (ACDA), Eugene C. Fubini (DOD), Larry Holmes (ACDA), George M. Kavanagh (AEC), Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr. (White House), Louis Marengo (CIA), Herbert Scoville (CIA), Stanley Van Voorhis (DOD), and Captain Frederick Welden (DOD). The report of the Inspection Study Group, July 1962, is printed as Document 207.