170. Editorial Note
In a telephone conversation with Federal Reserve Board Chairman William McChesney Martin that began at 9 a.m. on June 30, 1966, President Johnson made the following comments about the peace feeler that had been transmitted the previous day in Document 167:
“Iʼm not going to tell anybody else this, Bill, and I donʼt put much credence in it, but before the day was over yesterday I had the most realistic, the most convincing, the most persuasive peace feeler Iʼve had since Iʼve been President. That was at 3 oʼclock yesterday. I hadnʼt finished this dinner here with the Prime Minister [a luncheon for Prime Minister Holt of Australia] and they were calling me out on a very urgent call—the Secretaries of State and Defense. Now, I donʼt think it amounts to anything. Iʼm not a fellow like Adlai Stevenson that gets a drink in a bar and thinks that somebody buying for him means he wants to surrender. Iʼm too hard headed for that.”
After a brief discussion of the previous dayʼs air strike near Haiphong, the President returned to the peace feeler:
“Yesterday they had a man in Saigon and yesterday they had a man in Washington, one talking to the Secretary of State and one talking to our Ambassador, both of ʼem saying that Hanoi had said that here were conditions theyʼd never offered before. Now weʼre analyzing those, and I donʼt think much of ʼem, although the diplomats do, but I donʼt think so. I donʼt think theyʼve had enough yet.” (Johnson Library, Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of Telephone Conversation between Johnson and Martin, Tape 66.18, Side A, PNO 3)