84. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bator) to Secretary of Defense McNamara1
As a way of getting a Presidential seal of approval on the revised balance of payments program, I proposed to the President (with Joe Fowler’s approval) that he authorize the release of a letter from himself to Fowler, as Chairman of Cabinet Committee, approving the recommendations of the Committee and instructing that we put them into effect. A copy of a draft which I sent to the Ranch this morning is attached.2 If you have any comments or suggestions, please have someone in your office call me.3
The tentative plan is either to have a press conference led by Joe Fowler at the White House on Thursday morning, or simply to release the President’s letter4 and a sanitized version of the Cabinet Committee report,5 with no press conference but backgrounding by appropriate [Page 238] members of the Executive Committee. We’ll know the President’s preference on this by Wednesday morning.
- Source: Johnson Library, Bator Papers, Balance of Payments, 1965 [1 of 4], Box 14. Confidential. Copies were sent to Secretary Connor, Charles Schultze, David Bell, Gardner Ackley, and Robertson.↩
- Not attached; a copy of a draft on the same subject, November 29, by Bator, is ibid., National Security File, Subject File, Balance of Payments, Vol. 3 [1 of 2], Box 2. This draft letter is identical to the version dated December 2 and released on December 5; see footnote 4, Document 83.↩
- See page 2— (on McNamara’s Memo). [Handwritten footnote in the source text. The memorandum has not been identified.]↩
- See footnotes 3 and 4, Document 83.↩
- See footnote 5, Document 83.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩