299. Letter 13 from Johnson to McConaughy1
Your letter of October 14 was here when I returned yesterday afternoon. Your letter of October 17 arrived today. As always they are tremendously helpful and appreciated.
With the pouch going out tomorrow noon and my having a meeting at the same time, there is not much that I can write at this time. I have been steadily at work all day on my material for tomorrow’s meeting on the basis of Deptel 914. I very much hope that you agree with me on the use of the New York Times editorial on which I sent you a message this morning as soon as I had read the instructions. Otherwise I felt the instructions were excellent and very helpful.
I am bothered by the absence of any word whatever from O’Neill and hope that something will arrive before tomorrow morning’s meeting so that I do not go out on any limbs.
I thought the Secretary’s press conference statement yesterday was excellent. I am glad that he brought out the extent to which we are actually on Item 2 although it has necessitated my doing a little explaining to correspondents here with whom I have thus far been less forthcoming in this regard.
I do not expect anything dramatic in tomorrow’s meeting and will try to write you more fully on Friday. [Facsimile Page 2] With the Foreign Ministers’ Conference opening, we will be able to take advantage of much more frequent pouch service.
I will probably return again to Prague on Saturday, again coming back here on Tuesday with the expectation of remaining here steadily during all or most of the Foreign Ministers’ Conference.
Sincerely,
American Ambassador
Oct. 20
P.S. Have just come back from today’s meeting & this must go into pouch. Think meeting went as well as could be expected & think I made some progress on [illegible in the original] with which we [illegible in the original] with implementation problem. Would not be surprised if we got a few out before opening Fonmin conference next Thursday. Suggested to UN they take initiative in moving our meetings [Typeset Page 415] to another area in same building so that we are entirely out of Fonmin area where we are now meeting.
- Source: Department of State, Geneva Talks Files, Lot 72D415. Secret; Official–Informal. Johnson signed the original “Alex.”↩