Office of the Historian

49. Memorandum for the Record by Director of Central Intelligence McCone1

Washington, September 1, 1964.

SUBJECT

  • Discussion with the President—1 September 1964

Following the NSC meeting (memorandum of the meeting prepared by Dr. Cline and attached),2 I had a private meeting with the [Page 149] President. This meeting was in lieu of my attendance at the regular Tuesday luncheon which was to involve political matters and therefore my presence was not required.

[Here follows discussion of items 1–4.]

5. The President asked about the Patman article3 and the consequences. I said the article was due to aggressiveness on the part of the Committee Staff and that great damage had been done. I felt that certain inquisitive writers such as Ross and Wise4 would now attempt to find out what the Foundation did with the money, [1–½ lines of source text not declassified]and I thought the consequences would be very serious. Furthermore [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] would become involved. I hoped this would not occur but I thought it would. The President asked what we intended to do about it. I said there was little we could do except keep quiet [2 lines of source text not declassified].

  1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, DCI (McCone) Files, Memo for the Record, 7/9/64–10/10/64, Box 2. Top Secret. Drafted by McCone on September 2.↩
  2. Not found.↩
  3. Reference is to the disclosure by Congressman Wright Patman (D-Texas) at a public hearing of his House Small Business Subcommittee on August 31 that the Central Intelligence Agency had secretly given money to the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a private foundation in New York City. See The New York Times, September 1, 1964, pp. 1, 19.↩
  4. Reference is to David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random House, 1964).↩