360. Editorial Note
At the 287th meeting of the National Security Council, June 7, Allen Dulles noted in the course of a discussion on Vietnam that the intelligence community believed that the “soft position of Laos and the weakness of Cambodia” was at the moment the greatest threat to “Free Vietnam”. He went on to comment that there had been no Ambassador in Laos for some time and one should be assigned there as soon as possible. After a brief discussion on the unsanitary conditions of Vientiane and its undesirability as a diplomatic post, John Foster Dulles indicated that the Department of State would have an “able Foreign Service Officer” in Vientiane no later than mid-July 1956. For text of the memorandum of discussion at this meeting, see volume I, page 695.