235. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Komer) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1

Mac—

Pak Gamesmanship. In addition to closing all our smaller facilities, some Paks have been up to other shenanigans of interest:

(1)
Our Pak friends have sent pictures to Turkey of the way the Karachi mob damaged our USIS installation (show Turks how to deal with US facilities?).
(2)
We know that in the hands of Karachi mob were handbills containing the Victor Anant Daily Telegraph article about how CIA started the war in an effort to get rid of Ayub.
(3)
We have at least two indications that Bhutto himself fathered the Anant story (against Ayub?).
(4)
Another report that Bhutto distributed 300 copies of The Invisible Government in the GOP.
(5)
A report that the GOP originated a newspaper story in Pakistan claiming that the State Department instructed the US press to play down Indian defeats in an effort to make Congress think India could stand up to China.

[1 paragraph (1–1/2 lines of source text) not declassified]2

McConaughy is in at long last with his evaluation of our facilities.3 It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know. McConaughy doubts whether the GOP has an exaggerated idea any longer of the importance of Peshawar to the US, since the recent record of our aid hold-ups must convince them that they can’t use Peshawar as a decisive lever on the US. McConaughy believes that the GOP will not now follow up against Peshawar though its prospects are directly linked with the outcome of the US/Pak relationship and Kashmir. He concludes that the smaller installations were apparently closed because of petty irritations, with no thought that they would strike at the heart of essential US interests in Pakistan or precipitate any Pak/US crisis.

I grant the risk that strong reaction to closure of our small facilities (actually 6 not 3) might convince the Paks that they are much more important than previously realized and that Pakistan had a larger lever than McConaughy thinks they believe. On the other hand, we are [Page 449] not going to convince the Paks to play ball unless we confront them continually with the prospect of losing all US support. Thus I see the small closings as an opportunity to drive this point home again.

However, the tactics are tricky. If we quietly clamp down on the aid pipeline, it might be some time before the Paks connected the two events. Therefore, it might be better to tell the Paks simultaneously that we felt they had committed an unfriendly act and were compelled to respond in kind.4

This could be done when Rusk sees Shoaib 5 this weekend.

RWK 6
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Name File, Komer Memos, Vol. II. Secret.
  2. [text not declassified]
  3. Telegram 727 from Karachi, October 6. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964–66, DEF 15 PAK-US)
  4. Bundy added a handwritten marginal notation at this point that reads: “I’m not very keen on this now.”
  5. Shoaib was in Washington for meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. No record of this meeting has been found.
  6. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.