180. Notes of Meeting1
CMC … goes to Saigon situation analysis of Thieu—CMC reviews, SVN—He can’t understand why Thieu is so double-crossing & walks away from our agreement.
Nitze says it’s clear as day! Thieu is scared that Humphrey & Democrats will force a coalition on him & the Republicans won’t & he’s sure this is an LBJ plot at the dying hours of the Admins.
CMC argues at length (to convince himself) that we are right & that Thieu has no basis for double-crossing LBJ & walking away from the agreed-upon position of S.V.Nam participation at Paris.
[Page 522]Nitze keeps trying—in vain—to get CMC to see that there is a rational explanation for Thieu’s behavior.
Nitze pointed out the fact that their prior agreement probably didn’t mean anything, because they never thought Hanoi would agree to their going to Paris anyway & so it was lip service.
(The longer CMC talks the madder he gets at S.V.Nam—he’s disgusted & ready to dump SVNam. “Screw You” is all he says he’d tell them.)
CMC now gets blunt—Max Taylor & Rusk & Rostow have an enormous personal stake in seeing a “beautiful democracy” there; they’re committed so to SVNam they’d let Saigon run the whole show for us.
At Kay Graham’s house last night Reston, Geyelin, Joe Kraft, Joe Alsop2 tried to get CMC to describe the ultimate “political settlement”. He said that’s their (SVN’s) job; we’re interested only in getting war over with.
We all agree that S.V.Nam attitude will change after next Wed.3 election results are in.
CMC:
“I do not believe we ought to be in V Nam
“I think our being there is a mistake
“This demonstrates to me why I think it was a calamity”
Nitze—I thought it was a mistake in 65 & I said so, but that’s irrelevant history. But we are there & we have had 29,000 men killed & we have a military success & now I don’t want to throw it away by angry, ill-chosen reactions!
Long philosophical discourse CMC + PHN re why we’re there & what kind of an outcome.
PHN says he thinks we can negotiate North V Nam out of S.V.Nam.
CMC disgusted, he says, with it all.
[Omitted here is discussion of arms sales to Israel.]
- Source: Johnson Library, George M. Elsey Papers, Van De Mark Transcripts [1 of 2]. No classification marking. This meeting was a regular meeting of Clifford’s “0830 Group” of senior Defense Department officials. There is no list of participants.↩
- Publisher of the Washington Post Katharine Graham, The New York Times columnist James Reston, reporter Philip Geyelin of the Washington Post, syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft, and syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop.↩
- November 6.↩