322. Telephone Conversation, April 8, between Heller and Ball1
WH: I got a kick-back from Dillon on this memo of ours. I told him, by the way, that you, I thought, were signing onto it too but that I wasn’t committing you. He says it is terrible for two reasons. One, these things were not brought up Friday in the Executive Committee meeting, and that is just his staff lying to him. They had a pitch-battle at the meeting in which every one of these points that’s in the supplementary statement was brought up. I didn’t say they were lying, but I said that Gardiner tells me that these points were fought over and made strongly in the meeting Friday. Secondly, he thought it would be terrible to have two separate memos go to the President. I said of course we addressed it to him and not to the President, and he said he wanted to open up the report and adjust the report for these points and not have a separate statement go to the President.
GB: Well, if he wants to do that, let’s do it.
WH: That’s what I thought, so the procedure will be that his boys are going to suggest language to amend the report to put these points in, and then they will phone these to Gardiner. I suggested Gardiner could then convene the little group that’s involved, and Dillon said he didn’t think he needed to convene any group—that if I and he agree the others would accept, he was sure. I said “Well, you make us sound [Typeset Page 1437] like the ring-leaders. I can assure you this was a group movement. There was as much initiative on this from others as there was from us.”
GB: That’s right.
WH: I know that. And I said “for that matter (that’s where I brought you in) the State Department wasn’t in this, and it looks as if they want to sign on.” That was why I was initially calling you, to find out whether you wanted to associate yourself with this.
GB: I do, very definitely. We are in a position, it seems to me, where we never had a meeting on the final version of the report at all.
[Facsimile Page 2]WH: Yes, and had I really reminded myself at the time of how devious Douglas can be about these matters, I would have pressed our points more, but I thought that our alternative draft spoke for us, so I was just trying to conserve the time of the group. But I raised enough points without wanting to . . . . . but I guess sometimes one should be a little more of an SOB about these things.
GB: I am learning that. One thing which occurred to me is we really did omit any serious reference to long-range revision of the payments system, didn’t we?
WH: Well, it got in. We didn’t put it in our supplementary statement, but at least it got in in pretty decent form into the basic report.
GB: I guess that’s right.
WH: I raised that question too before I signed the supplementary statement. It’s not too bad. Of course you know one other thing on which we get the hip from Treasury is that the British team is here right now meeting with Roosa, and we are invited to come in and present the picture on the domestic economy tomorrow morning, but in spite of the fact that I talked explicitly to Roosa about representation at all these meetings, nothing came through except this invitation to meet tomorrow morning. It’s true it’s not the top team, but even so those are supposed to be . . . originally we were supposed to be equal partners; then we let the Treasury serve as host; now they just have us there by suffrance. Were you planning to go over tomorrow morning?
GB: I haven’t even heard anything about it. It may be down the line.
WH: A notice went out from Whidman inviting us to come over. In any event this is the same old story. I agree with you on the long-range thing. I just don’t think we should . . . in effect, you see, it was your findings in Europe that chalked that off.
GB: That’s right. But I want to make clear that that is a temporary thing.
WH: Yes. The wording of the report isn’t too bad.
GB: No, it was all right.
WH: Of course Doug was saying these various things should be emphasized at the meeting with the President tomorrow, and indeed [Typeset Page 1438] they should. The way this thing is going now I’ll make it clear when I have the opportunity that you are associating yourself with us on these things.
GB: Yes, that’s right.
WH: And, Gardiner is now reviewing the document to make sure as to what changes he feels would be necessary to eliminate a supplementary statement; and then he will see whether the Treasury suggestions measure up to that.
GB: Good.
- State views on a Treasury meeting and report (no subject mentioned). No classification marking. 3 pp. Kennedy Library, Ball Papers, Ball Telephone Conversations, Balance of Payments, 1963, Box 1.↩