Office of the Historian

167. Memorandum From Harold H. Saunders of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)1

Washington, October 13, 1966.

SUBJECT

  • Tunisian Military Assistance

It would help greatly if you could clear up the misunderstanding with Secretary Rusk over what the President has approved. AF is putting together the paperwork, and neither we nor the Budget Bureau know whether we should be fighting to keep the President’s options open or whether everything from here out is pro forma.

The Secretary told Bourguiba, Jr., that (a) we’d transmit our survey team’s report; (b) we’re ready to go ahead with a “rather significant one-year program”; and (c) we’ll put the “most urgent items” (i.e. F–86’s and AA guns) into the first year.2 Implicitly, the Secretary is talking about a $5.2 million program—a one-year slice of the 5-year program recommended by the survey report.

Whether the President approved or not, the Secretary has committed us. So maybe all we can do is lie down and roll over. However, if there is still room for choice, the alternatives are these:

1.
Go all-out with this year’s program. The argument is that Tunisians will be disappointed that we’re not promising the whole 5 years the survey team recommended and putting the fancy hardware into the first year of the program does our best to make it as politically palatable as possible. This is the Secretary’s current approach.
2.
Go slow. Don’t jump into a splashy program that will look like our share in an arms race with Algeria and will move us into rather than out of Tunisia. Concentrate on training this year and move only simple pieces of equipment. This was the Secretary’s line before he reversed himself.

We don’t want to fight a useless battle to keep option #2 open for the President if you decide, after talking to the Secretary, that the decision is [Page 252] made. But if you feel there’s room for maneuver, we’d like to see what option #2 might look like.

Hal

Give up

Push for option #23

  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Tunisia, Vol. I, Memos & Miscellaneous, 12/63–9/68. Secret.↩
  2. A memorandum of Secretary Rusk’s conversation with Foreign Minister Bourguiba at the United Nations on October 5 is in Department of State, Central Files, DEF 19–8 US–TUN.↩
  3. Neither of these options is checked.↩