Office of the Historian

272. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson1

Washington, April 23, 1965.

The following suggestions emerged from our conversations yesterday:2

1.
That we should accept the Cambodia Conference3 and transmit to Hanoi privately the word that we come prepared to discuss larger issues. The latter, of course, should not be said publicly. We do feel it important to let Hanoi know we are serious. Some key intelligence people believe your Easter statement4 flatly rejected the possibility of talks.
2.
At the same time, and after clearance with Saigon, we should slow down our bombing. We should do this without announcing it simply by suspending raids for two or three days a week in some sort of pattern. We should also let Hanoi know that we are doing this in order to improve the atmosphere for talks.
3.
We should then prepare for talks in Geneva—which should begin as soon as possible—with a detailed negotiating strategy. The beginning of this is in the George Ball paper.5

The basic assumption is that we want to get the war to the Conference table. We do not know if Hanoi is willing to negotiate, but we want to make it as easy for them to do so as possible.

By slowing down the bombing you are allowing them to talk without looking as if they are being bombed into submission. By not making a public announcement of the bombing let up, you do not get into the position of having to admit the failure of a peace effort if you resume raids. Hanoi will get the message anyway. If it fails we can always leak stories that we tried it and it didn’t work.

We also agree that the present steady escalation, in the North, will get less and less result for more and more noise. The best way to stop it is to slow down for a while. Then you can buildup again, and have considerable impact without going above the present level.

After all, our political message—that we are going to stay—is pretty well understood. Therefore the real purpose of a continuing buildup would be to smash North Vietnam into submission. This kind of an [Page 605] approach will bring with it a substantial chance of Chinese intervention. Even Ho Chi Minh will probably prefer Chinese intervention to surrender.

We should also make a real peace effort before putting in many more ground troops. It is a lot easier to disengage planes than ground troops.

It is possible they don’t want to negotiate. It may even be probable. But we should give this a try, and in a direct and low key way.

  1. Source: Johnson Library, White House Central Files, EX CO 312. No classification marking. Marked with an indication that the President saw it.↩
  2. See Document 269 and footnote 8 thereto.↩
  3. See Document 263.↩
  4. Apparently a reference to the statement read by the President to news correspondents at the LBJ Ranch on April 17. (American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1965, pp. 857–859)↩
  5. Document 267.↩