Office of the Historian

148. Memorandum From the Director of the U.S. Information Agency (Murrow) to the Administrator of the Agency for International Development (Bell)1

Washington, April 23, 1963.

SUBJECT

  • The Bokaro Steel Plant

Construction of a steel plant at Bokaro either serves the U.S. national interest or it does not. My understanding is that it does, not only in [Page 279] narrow economic terms but also for political and propaganda purposes as well.

Therefore I strongly endorse Ambassador Galbraith’s warning (New Delhi telegram 4009, April 17) that we not throw the baby out with the bath water by applying the Clay Report formula here.2

All things being equal, we favor aid to private rather than public enterprise. But all things are not equal here.

Ambassador Galbraith has accurately described the consequences for us in India if we accept the Clay dictum. I want to warn of the consequences elsewhere.

We will fuel Communist propaganda fires in Asia, Africa and Latin America. We will undermine our posture of seeking a world of free choice as against a world of coercion. Worst of all, we will make mockery of the goal set for the U.S. by the President in his first State of the Union message—“a peaceful world community of free and independent states, free to choose their own future and their own system so long as it does not threaten the freedom of others.”

Edward R. Murrow3
  1. Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 306, USIA Files: FRC 72 A 5121, Field-Near East/63. Official Use Only. Drafted by Tom Sorensen. Copies were sent to McGeorge Bundy, Chester Bowles, and W. H. Weathersby.↩
  2. In telegram 4009 from New Delhi, Ambassador Galbraith recommended U.S. support for a state-supported enterprise in India as a means of demonstrating a commitment to political pluralism. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1960–63, AID (US) INDIA) Regarding the Committee To Strengthen the Security of the Free World (Clay Committee), see Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. IX, Documents 158, 160, 164, and 166.↩
  3. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩