183. Letter 13 from McConaughy to Johnson1
Congratulations on your achievement in bringing off the Agreed Announcement in a form so acceptable to us. It was a masterly piece of negotiation on your part. Everyone working on the subject here is full of praise for you. The imprisoned Americans and their relatives will certainly feel that they are permanently indebted to you. It is an accomplishment in which you can justly take an immense satisfaction. I wanted to tell you this over the phone on Saturday, but as you no doubt understood, we felt that if the conversation were being [Typeset Page 240] monitored we would not want the extent of our elation to be clearly apparent.
Friday and Saturday were days of furious activity. The stage was all set by the close of business on Friday. We were concerned by the extent of the press leaks here which we feared might actually jeopardize the issuance of the Agreed Announcement. John Hightower of the A.P. had practically the entire story on the ticker at noon on Friday. He obviously had been in touch with someone who had read all or virtually all of the telegrams. We are baffled and troubled by these leaks. We are taking steps to reduce the distribution of the telegrams to and from you. They have had entirely too wide distribution, up to now [Facsimile Page 2] having gone not only all over the Department but all over the Government. Henceforth I would recommend that you mark all of your telegrams other than completely non-sensitive routine factual ones “limited distribution”.
Suydam’s background briefing of the press went well. The points were effectively made and registered with the correspondents. Not all of the accounts reflected this briefing but a number of influential papers carried accounts which did.
We are meeting at 11:45 to consider instructions for your next meeting on Wednesday. This undoubtedly will be a tough one, as will succeeding ones. I doubt if Wang actually expects to get much if anything in the way of real substantive gains under Item Two from these Ambassadorial talks, but he undoubtedly is going to press very forcefully for immediate entry into Item Two. He will try hard to raise a number of subjects which are high on their priority list. He will want to get his debating points in the record and he will want to lay the groundwork for urging a later meeting at a still higher level.
The disposition here still is to refuse to enter into any discussions even of the topics which might be suitable for consideration under Item Two until all the Americans are out. As set forth in my last letter, it is the view that there is ample grist for the mill on the implementation of Item One, for the Wednesday meeting and the one after that. We will supply you with more information on the steps we have taken both as to publicity for the Agreed Announcement, measures to assist the Indian Government in discharging its function, and the movements of Chinese who have manifested a desire to return. It is true that it takes [Facsimile Page 3] two to carry on a discussion and if Wang is absolutely adamant in refusing to say or listen to anything more on Item One, we would be face to face with an impasse. How to avoid a possible breakdown of the discussions if he takes an absolute rigid negative position is a poser. We hope it will not come to this. We are relying heavily on your negotiating skill; on a probable Communist analysis that it is not in their interest to take an absolute intransigent [Typeset Page 241] position at this stage which might lead to a rupture; and on the Good Lord.
Good wishes and assurances of every support we can extend you. We know you will need both.
Sincerely,
P.S. Enclosed is a document on Charles Miner’s difficulties at Shanghai, which was left with me on September 9 by Mort Rosen. This is for your background information. I do not know that you will want to get down to such details as this in the talks, but you are free to use it in your discretion in any way you wish.
Enclosure: Memorandum re Charles Minor.
- Source: Department of State, Geneva Talks Files, Lot 72D415. Secret; Official–Informal.↩