611. Memorandum from Cyrus Vance to McNamara, February 51

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SUBJECT

  • Cuba Shipping Restrictions

At the EXCOM meeting on January 25, 1963, the President approved the following shipping restrictions as guidance to the Department of Agriculture with respect to PL 480 shipments.

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“Prohibit any cargo sponsored by any department of the United States from being shipped on vessels owned or controlled by persons who own or control vessels engaged in the trade between Cuba and the Soviet Bloc.”

On January 30, 1963, Alexis Johnson recommended that EXCOM approve an NSAM with the following shipping restrictions:

“. . . It was decided that such cargoes [shipments financed by the Departments of State, Defense and Agriculture, GSA and Agency for International Development] should not be shipped from the United States on a foreign flag vessel if such vessel has called at a Cuban port on or after January 1, 1963. An exception may be made as to any such vessel if the persons who control the vessel give satisfactory assurance that no ships under their control will, thenceforth, be employed in the Cuba trade so long as it remains the policy of the United States Government to discourage such trade. . . .”

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The main differences between what was approved at the EXCOM meeting and the Alexis Johnson recommendation are:

(1) The Johnson recommendation applies only to the ship carrying the cargo, not to all vessels of the same line;

(2) The Johnson recommendation permits any vessel to “purge” itself if the shipping line in control of that vessel gives assurances that all vessels under its control will stay out of Cuban trade in the future;

(3) The Johnson recommendation applies not only to Bloc-Cuban trade but to all trade with Cuba;

(4) The Johnson recommendation is directed to several Government departments; the earlier recommendation applied to any shipment of the Department of Agriculture.

The reasons given by Alexis Johnson for his recommendations are:

(1) Consistency requires that the restriction apply to several Government departments and not merely to Agriculture, and

(2) Since Poland and Yugoslavia have only one state-owned shipping line, application of the earlier recommendation would prevent all further shipments of PL 480 cargoes on any vessels of those countries and this would further add to problems in our relations with them.

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Mr. Johnson’s reason for applying the restriction to individual vessels, rather than all ships controlled by a particular line or country, is to permit Poland and Yugoslavia to carry PL 480 shipments on their vessels. However, the Johnson recommendation as now written permits any country with a state-owned shipping line or any privately-owned shipping line in a country to use certain of its ships exclusively for trade with Cuba and keep its other ships free of any of the proposed shipping restrictions. Mr. Johnson probably drafted his proposed NSAM in this manner to avoid the political problems of carving out a special exception for Poland and Yugoslavia with no comparable [Typeset Page 1596] provision for any pro-Western, Latin American, or neutral country. Thus, the judgment to be made with respect to this portion of the Johnson recommendation is whether the creation of a large loophole in the shipping restriction is justified by the need to avoid problems with Poland and Yugoslavia with respect to PL 480 shipments.

The Johnson submission to McGeorge Bundy is attached at Tab A; the papers considered by EXCOM at the January 25 meeting are attached at Tab B. The portion of those papers dealing with shipping restrictions on Cuba is marked by Tab C.

Cyrus R. Vance

Attachments

As stated

  1. Cuba shipping restrictions. Confidential. 3 pp. WNRC, RG 330, Foreign Policy History Files: FRC 330277–131, Chron File—Cuban Affairs.