247. Memorandum for Record1
The following are additional notes on the discussion at the Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting with the President on March 4, 1964 on Cuba, Vietnam and various related subjects.
In the briefing, the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed the operational plans on Cuba and pointed out the various time factors involved—72 hours—7 days—18 days—and the sizes of the forces available in each of these time elements.
The Chiefs emphasized that one of the factors is shipping and that the longest time element involves getting troops from Fort Hood to the East Coast and the Marines from the West Coast through the Canal and to the East Coast for reembarkation.
In this discussion, the Chiefs reviewed the actions of October 1962. Much questioning by the President concerned the strategy involved and the various possibilities.
As an end result of this, the President directed the Joint Chiefs to give him a list, made up by themselves, of everything they think [Page 607] we can do that we are not now doing to put further pressure on Cuba.
In the discussion of Cuba there was mention of a joint resolution by Congress which would give the President a quasi-legal position for expanding the efforts. As he understood it, this joint resolution was to be based on an acknowledgment that the activities of Castro had taken on a new and different kind of threat to this hemisphere—not a security threat against the U.S. directly, but because of Castroʼs training of Cuban and Communist agitators and exporting them to other countries, he is posing a long-range threat to the stability and security of Latin America. On these grounds, he was posing a new threat which people around the world could recognize. Discussion of this resolution was not terminated precisely, but the Presidential reaction appeared to be included in his discussion and reaction to the proposal of a joint resolution by Congress concerning the war in South Vietnam.
The Cuban discussion also led to a discussion of a blockade and the difference between a quarantine which we held in October 1962 and a real blockade, including the halting of Russian shipping, and especially the stoppage of petroleum ships. It was indicated that the Joint Chiefs should discuss this possibility in conjunction with everything we can do that we are not doing.
[Omitted here is discussion of Vietnam. For a memorandum of conversation prepared by Maxwell Taylor, see Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, volume I, Document 70.]
My concluding impression of this long discussion on Cuba and South Vietnam was that the President requested urgently that the Joint Chiefs give him their very best military advice in the form of two lists of action that could be taken—one for Cuba and one for the Southeast Asia area, and from what he had heard in the discussion, he was willing to accept their judgments, and, in a sense, was now setting out upon this course of activity which they had outlined verbally.
In turn, the President expected their 100% support of the actions agreed upon and a cessation (on the part of everyone) of forecasting and discussing in public what we intend to do. He emphasized this point with the comparison to the Normandy operation, pointing out how difficult and impossible it would have been for General Eisenhower to succeed if everything we were planning had been discussed by government officials, including State Department and military officials, before they even staged the landings.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Files of C.V. Clifton, Meetings with the President, Vol. 1. Top Secret; Very Sensitive. The meeting was held in the Cabinet Room. The time and place of the meeting are from the Presidentʼs Daily Diary. (Ibid.)↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩