Office of the Historian

134. Memorandum From Robert Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson1

Washington, June 21, 1965, 1:45 p.m.

We have set in train the following actions to flesh out your new tactical line designed to soften up the Paks and Indians, and make them come to us:

1.

Stalling on MAP. Though matters referred to you recently have involved only economic aid and PL 480, we’re operating on the assumption that you want well-orchestrated action across the board. So we’ve told DOD that, while not suspending everything, we should delay action on certain key MAP and sales items to make both Paks and Indians come to us. In India’s case this means chiefly continued stalling on F–5s; in Pakistan’s case on F–104s, ammo, and perhaps armor.

Since there is a higher risk of a Pak/Indian flareup than any time since 1947, our stalling on MAP makes sense as a warning here too. A major risk, however, is that we’re driving the Indian military to get more from the Soviets, which doesn’t serve our longer term interest.

2.
Intelligence. Since Ayub thinks the Peshawar2 facility is his top card, we’re looking at ways and means of convincing him it isn’t all that important to us. For example, we could halt new construction. This would make the intelligence community scream, but is probably worth it. We’re also planning to use [less than 1 line of source text not [Page 282] declassified] to get across indirectly to Ayub that we’re close to giving up on the Paks.
3.

Stalling on Pak Consortium. So far our hold-up on economic aid is hurting the Indians more than the Paks (for the simple reason that more Indian matters have been pending). But the next big occasion will be the FY 1966 pledge to the Pak Consortium, due 27 July. We favor telling the Paks now that we want to postpone this a month, ostensibly for economic reasons. Our thought is to have George Woods go to London and tell Ayub. This will shake Ayub, and buy us more time to see whether our signals are getting through.3

Are we on the right track on the above? Our new tough-minded Pak/Indian tactics are causing much anguish in the town, especially from those who see their programs endangered. It would help if you’d tell Rusk in particular4 (he missed the June meeting), so that we’ll have State with us, instead of dragging its feet on such matters.

R. W. Komer 5

Yes6

No

  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. 11, June 1965. Top Secret.↩
  2. Johnson circled Peshawar and noted in the margin: “get Raborn opinion.”↩
  3. Komer added a handwritten note in the margin at this point that reads: “Too late! Woods got back today. He did say U.S. was considering this.”↩
  4. Bundy added a handwritten note in the margin at this point which reads: “(or I can)”.↩
  5. McGeorge Bundy initialed below Komer’s signature.↩
  6. Johnson checked the “Yes” option line.↩