192. Telegram From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson, in Texas1
CAP 65668. 1. After intensive discussions over the weekend, Rusk, McNamara and I continue to believe that it is highly important for us to meet with you before Rusk goes to Latin America on Friday.2
[Page 533]2. The overriding subject for discussion is Vietnam. We have at hand firm military recommendations for further deployment of more than 100,000 additional men in 1966, and heavy pressures also for strongly intensified attacks on North Vietnam. The tendency here is to accept the probable necessity of additional troop deployment and to defer decisions on bombing targets for the present. But we are divided on a number of major tactical issues. The most urgent of these is whether a substantial pause in the bombing should precede additional deployment decisions. McNamara tends to favor a pause. Rusk and I tend to be opposed until we get some signal from someone that a pause would have results in matching action by Hanoi.
3. Evidence of increasing North Vietnamese infiltration continues to come in, and at the same time there is little evidence that Hanoi is ready to negotiate—though there may well be heavy strains on “Liberation Front” in South Vietnam. We will gradually have to make a choice between the contrasting diplomatic postures recommended by Goldberg and Lodge. Goldberg would continue to emphasize need for negotiations. Lodge would soft-pedal this topic as essentially irrelevant in the light of continuing Hanoi intransigence.
4. A still deeper question upon which McNamara has focussed attention in recent discussions is the question of our underlying purpose in Vietnam. Are we seeking a negotiated solution after which the superior political skill of the Communists would eventually produce a Commie takeover? Or are we determined to do all that is necessary to establish and sustain a genuinely non-Communist South Vietnam? All three of us incline to the latter position, but it is clear that its costs continue to grow, and it is still more clear that only the President can decide it.
5. A substantial staff paper is going into second draft today. It deals with these topics in detail and presents the choices as we now see them. We hope it may lay a basis for an effective discussion with you.
6. Secondary topics are: European nuclear policy, U.S. policy at the Rio conference, progress of the review of the aid program, and tactics with Shastri and Ayub. It does not now appear that any of these will require major decisions this week, but in all of them work goes forward, and there is no substitute for a clear sense of your own concerns, with guidance both on the positions you want taken and the questions to which you want answers.
7. I therefore recommend that a meeting be set up for either Wednesday or Thursday of this week. Thursday would be a little better at this end, but either day is entirely workable, depending on your convenience.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol XV. Top Secret. President Johnson was at the LBJ Ranch. There is an indication on the source text that the President saw the telegram.↩
- November 14. Rusk attended the Second Special Inter-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro November 17-30.↩