811.34553B/143c: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)
4730. A decision of the Combined Chiefs of Staff was communicated to you in the Department’s 4042, May 21, 3 p.m.66 The Department was anxious to proceed at once under that decision but the British Government considered it would be untimely to do so while the wolfram negotiations were in progress.
The British Embassy has now stated informally to the Department that its Government has instructed Campbell to recommend to it a convenient date for commencing staff conversations in Lisbon as contemplated under the decision. The Department inquired how Campbell would determine a suitable date and was informed “presumably in consultation with Norweb.” Norweb has furnished no indication that he has been so consulted but in a cable just received67 states that Campbell recently has spoken as though he were prepared to approach the Santa Maria matter on the basis of the Combined Chiefs of Staff decision.
The Department now wishes you to ascertain from the British Government whether in fact it is prepared without further delay to proceed under the Combined Chiefs of Staff decision. In the affirmative the Department believes that the first step should be to concert action and inform Salazar and that this step should be taken immediately.
For your background information only, we do not wish Campbell to link the Santa Maria matter with the decision but we do wish the British Government to concert action with us as soon as possible in order that our two Ambassadors in Lisbon may simultaneously communicate the Combined Chiefs’ decision to Salazar.
We expect the additional field to be for the use and control of the United States until the end of the war in the Pacific and this includes command control and operations control. We feel we can best secure this by avoiding any connection between the Santa Maria negotiations and the Anglo-Portuguese Azores agreement.
Sent to London, repeated to Lisbon.68