489. Memorandum of a Conversation Between the President and His Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Gray), White House, Washington, March 21, 1960, 10:30 a.m.1
[Here follows discussion of matters unrelated to Cuba.]
4. I then said to the President that I was afraid that we had had some failure of coordination with respect to Cuba for which I would have to take a major share of the responsibility. I reminded him that he had at one point asked me to see that the State Department reported to him as to exactly what we were doing in the OAS with respect to Cuba.2 I told him that it was understood with the State Department that this report would be given at the beginning of the Special Meeting with him on the afternoon of March 17,3 and he would recall that when I called upon Secretary Herter, Secretary Herter said he would deliver his report to the President, which he had in his pocket.
I then said that I had learned from Mr. Allen Dulles on the night of March 19 that he was quite upset that he had learned about Mr. Bonsal’s return to Cuba only from the newspapers. Mr. Dulles had not felt that he should have a voice in the policy of whether Mr. Bonsal should return but rather that he be fully informed in view of the fact that Mr. Bonsal’s return might have a serious impact upon matters which had been discussed with the President in that meeting.
The President said that he was not aware of any failure of coordination and that in any event we had not closed our embassy in Havana and the return of the Ambassador was perhaps not as consequential to Mr. Dulles’ purposes as the latter had thought. I said that I would not wish to make a big issue of the matter but repeated that I had been in error for not pressing Mr. Herter more fully from [for?] his point of view on the Cuba situation.
[Here follows discussion of matters unrelated to Cuba.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Project “Clean Up” Records, Meetings with the President. Top Secret.↩
- See Document 485.↩
- See Document 486.↩