251. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between Secretary of State Rusk and the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1
TELEPHONE CALL FROM MR Mac Bundy
B told of his talks with the Pres re the pause;2 he feels he has gotten into this without making a diplomatic record except with the Hungarians. Sec said he would be inclined to go ahead; the Hungarian Charge just came in; he had a message from Foreign Minister, a question; Sec briefed B on the talk;3 Sec did not feel this affected the bombing in the north problem. B said it was not any argument for going ahead either. Sec agreed; the argument for going ahead is not to have misunderstandings; if we start now we would be under a handicap of doing a four days pause. They had a rather lengthy discussion of the problem. Sec was inclined to go ahead with the bombing and perhaps have another pause beginnning with our new year; we cannot count these four days if we expect to develop a pause from a diplomatic point of view; it also misleads Vietnamese for we have not developed with them the concept of a pause; Sec said he was with Thompson, Johnson and Wm Bundy4 and all of us feel we should resume even if we can develop another type of pause in the next few days. B will report Sec’s views; B did not think anything would be done until Pres had talked with McNamara.
- Source: Department of State, Rusk Files: Lot 72 D 192, Telephone Conversations. No classification marking.↩
- According to his diary, the President and McGeorge Bundy talked by telephone at 9:35 a.m., noon, and 1:06 p.m. (Johnson Library, President’s Daily Diary)↩
- See Document 258.↩
- Rusk was meeting with these men from 6:55 to 7:35 p.m. (Johnson Library, Rusk Appointment Book)↩