171. Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and Robert McNamara 1
President: Bob?
McNamara: Good morning, Mr. President.
[Page 497]President: How’re you doing?
McNamara: I knew you’d be the only other person in town working this morning.
President: No, no, but we have been working, you know.
McNamara: I know it. I know it. I just wanted to call—I won’t take a second, but I just wanted to call and say—
President: Please do.
McNamara: Congratulations. I think it was terrific, Mr. President.2
President: Well, God knows. I don’t know what will come out of it. We might just really have shambles, but we had to try it.
McNamara: Well, I think you’re absolutely right, and it wasn’t an easy decision, and I just wanted you to know that I’ve been thinking of you and sending you my best wishes.
President: Old Abrams sure has worked out good, Bob.
McNamara: Oh, he’s terrific, Mr. President. He’s just solid as a rock.
President: He just came in here like a man, and not only said that it could be done, but urged it be done, and recommended it be done, and took the ball himself.
McNamara: Well, he’s just as solid as a rock, Mr. President. I’m sure that he’s with you all the way, and you can always depend on him there. In a time like this, that’s the kind of a man you need.
President: What we are in trouble about, you see, are these candidates. They have been playing with them. One said he would stop the bombing—no comma, no semi-colon—period.
McNamara: Yeah.
President: So they get that and they think that if they’ll wait 10 days he’ll stop the bombing everything will be over with—that’s what Hanoi thinks. Then Nixon comes along and his people tell them that I’m not stopping the bombing and I’m not selling you out and I’m not for letting them take you over and this crowd will sell you out just like they did China, and you better wait until I get in. Now you’ve got all the South Vietnamese and maybe the Koreans thinking that. The damned trouble we’re going to have. We had this thing wrapped up, signed, sealed, ready to go two weeks ago, and we got this speech of stopping the bombing, period. So [Le Duc] Tho took off for Hanoi, and we couldn’t get him back. Then we got this ready, and we found out that they’ve been playing with the South Vietnamese, and we started watching their messages. It’s the damndest mess you ever saw. It’s just almost—well, it’s [Page 498] just heresy. It’s just unbelievable. So we tried to get them aboard. We had a joint announcement that they agreed on with us. But then they all got to fighting and they wouldn’t do it. So today, the last thing I heard, I was up late, was that Thieu said that this was entirely unilateral.3
McNamara: Oh, really? I didn’t see that.
President: Yeah. So we got a—you talk about guts, it took a lot to leave them, but Korea and—we’ve been watching what Korea said to South Vietnam. Korea and Thailand and South Vietnam were ready to go if South Vietnam would go. And we cleared it with everybody. But then the damned politicians got in it and started telling them to wait awhile, they’ll do a lot better. And so they may stay aboard or not stay aboard, I don’t know.
McNamara: Oh. I think they will, Mr. President. They’re not strong enough not to stay on board.
President: That’s right. But so what. Then we all come out and we’ve lost everything we’ve fought for.
McNamara: Well, that’s right. I thought Thieu’s statement that I read in the Times this morning didn’t sound too bad. But that may have been earlier than the one you referred to.
President: Maybe, I don’t know. All I—last we heard of him, poor Bunker worked for days and nights.
McNamara: How’s he doing?
President: Just fine, he’s just a million percent, and Abrams is just right with him. And we sent Abrams back and told him to really just tell them that this was it, and then we waited 2 or 3 days until we could try to get him aboard. Then we gave him a deadline, and then he came back to me and said well, he might go if I would guarantee to him that this would bring the war an end.
McNamara: [Laughter]
President: I told him I couldn’t guarantee the Communists and I don’t know what they’d do, but I had reason to believe they would. The Russians had told me they would do this. The North Vietnamese said, “Just try us and you’ll see.” In any event, we can’t do a damned bit of good bombing now because the monsoon is on. I told him it’s like I’m running a freight line from New York to Atlanta, and have a big flood [Page 499] and wash out all the bridges in Baltimore and Pittsburgh and New Jersey, and I can’t get my trucks through, there’s no use running them up there and parking them, so I just better put them all between here and Atlanta, get some extra business. And I said that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got a lot of stuff in Laos we need to do and South Vietnam, but no use going to North Vietnam now. And, oh, he was pretty well aboard until the Nixon people got in it and I don’t know what will come out of it.
McNamara: Well, you better take care of yourself. You sound like you have a bad cold.
President: I have the worst one I’ve ever had.
McNamara: Don’t waste your time talking to me, Mr. President. I was just thinking of you and I just wanted you to know it.
President: Appreciate it, Bob. Thank you.
McNamara: Bye-bye.
- Source: Johnson Library, Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of Telephone Conversation Between Johnson and McNamara, November 1, 1968, 8:31 a.m., Tape F6810.09, PNO 6. No classification marking. This transcript was prepared specifically for this volume in the Office of the Historian. A summary of this conversation is ibid. The Daily Diary described the conversation in the following manner: “congratulating the President on his speech last night, discussion of comments made by candidates.” (Ibid., President’s Daily Diary)↩
- Reference is to the President’s announcement of the bombing halt; see Document 169.↩
- Thieu’s comment was in a communiqué issued by the GVN on November 1. A second communiqué issued by the GVN noted the lack of “any sufficiently strong reason for associating itself with the U.S. Government in this decision.” In addition, in a statement that evening to journalists, Thieu noted: “South Vietnam is not a truck to be attached to a locomotive which will pull it wherever it likes.” These statements are excerpted in Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, September 6-13, 1969, pp. 23549-23550.↩