277. Editorial Note
Under Secretary of State Ball, McGeorge Bundy, and Ralph Dungan of the NSC Staff discussed the Congo in a telephone conversation on August 14. According to a memorandum of the conversation, Ball said he was “very concerned about the Congo” and thought “we had a bankrupt policy.” Bundy and Dungan agreed.
The memorandum of conversation continues as follows:
“Ball continued he thought we were going to have to do some very careful and adroit disengaging from this, shift the courses of it into something that is much more feasible as far as acceptability in Katanga is concerned, and resume some direct connections with these people. He thought that what happened here was that this has become a kind of religious war and it is on both ends. He thought Gullion’s wires were hysterical. Bundy said it was most uncalled for.
“Ball said the situation was that this end hasn’t a single tough-minded fellow working on it. Dungan said their analysis of the difficulty is identical with Ball’s and they leave it to Ball to talk with the Secretary.”
Ball said he was going to discuss the matter with the Secretary whose views he thought were not much different from his own. Bundy said “he thought they would all feel better if Ball or the Secretary were running the Congo,” and Ball replied he was going to do it.
After further discussion, the memorandum continues:
“Ball continued we had two problems of which he is aware. We have to have someone tough-minded in the AF bureau. We are getting a lot of mush out of there, and it is based on assumptions which he is not sure we are going to like very much when we pull them out and look at them. It is the assumption that we have to play the major role in every effort; we have to beautify the greens for them; we have to produce regional agreements; we have to arrange for better understanding of the white settlers problem. This thing is way over-due. Bundy said to put it another way it is one sector of the Department which is being run by the preceding Under Secretary. Ball agreed the spirit certainly hovered.
[Page 552]“Bundy said they would tell the President that Ball is talking with the Secretary on this whole matter.” (Memorandum of telephone conversation, August 14, 9:40 a.m.; Kennedy Library, Ball Papers)
In a telephone conversation with Rusk later that day, Ball told Rusk that he would like to “get a reading” from Lewis Hoffacker, who had just been transferred from Elisabethville to the position of First Secretary at the Embassy in Léopoldville, but that he did not want to offend Gullion. Rusk asked “if they would be suspicious,” and Ball replied that he didn’t know but that it was “not an unreasonable request,” since Hoffacker could give a first-hand report on the situation in Elisabethville. (Memorandum of telephone conversation, August 14, 1:50 p.m.; ibid.)
Telegram 262 to Léopoldville, August 14, transmitted a message from Rusk to Gullion requesting that he arrange for Hoffacker to return to Washington for consultation as soon as possible. (Department of State, Central Files, 123– Hoffacker, Lewis) Ball told Dungan in a telephone conversation the next day that he had “discovered as a result of sending the wire that Hoffacker had expressed quite violent reservations to our policy some time ago which was never communicated to us.” (Memorandum of telephone conversation, August 15, 5:25 p.m.; Kennedy Library, Ball Papers)