125. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson1
SUBJECT
- Your Meeting with Ambassador Jones and Green (Indonesia) at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 302
Green leaves for Indonesia July 8. Jones becomes Chancellor of the East-West Center later in July.
The purpose of this meeting is to give Jones a word of deserved thanks and to give Djakarta a signal of your confidence in Green. The Indonesians, and Sukarno in particular, had a particularly high regard for Jones.
As you know, our policy toward Indonesia is cool and correct at the moment. We are keeping the door open to friendly relations, but we have removed the Peace Corps and other targets of Communist agitation. [Page 270] We are really playing for the breaks in a situation in which the Communists are gaining in influence, but the prospect of a reaction by the military is strong.
I attach a letter (Tab 1) for Green to deliver to Sukarno.3 Sukarno being the highly personalistic type he is, a message of this kind will increase Green’s standing and give some additional weight to whatever he may have to say as our relations develop. I have redrafted the State Department version to make it cool, but courteous, and I think it will be a help to Green. On the other hand, we have not made any promise of such a letter and you can give it a pocket veto if you prefer.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. 11. No classification marking.↩
- According to the President’s Daily Diary, the meeting took place from 12:45 to 12:48 p.m. (Ibid.)↩
- Not attached, it introduced Green as “one of our most able and experienced officials in the affairs of Asia,” fully attuned to the President’s own thinking. (Ibid., National Security File, Special Head of State Correspondence, Indonesia Presidential Correspondence)↩
- Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩