Office of the Historian

393. Memorandum of Conversation1

Washington, May 9, 1968, 5 p.m.

SUBJECT

  • Thai Troop Deployment (Part IV of IV)

PARTICIPANTS

  • U.S.
    • The President
    • Mr. Walt Rostow, Special Assistant to the President
    • Assistant Secretary William P. Bundy
    • Ambassador Leonard Unger
    • Mr. Moncrieff J. Spear, Country Director, Thailand
    • Mr. David Edminister, Department of State—interpreter
  • Thai
    • Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn
    • Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman
    • Minister of National Development and Economics Pote Sarasin
    • Lt. General Sawaeng Senanarong, Secretary General of Government House
    • Ambassador Bunchana Atthakor
[Page 873]

The President said he considered the deployment of 11,000 Thai troops to Viet-Nam to be of the highest priority. He referred to increased Korean deployments and our own dispatch of additional troops. Noting that the enemy lost around 100,000 men since the beginning of the Tet offensive, he said that our own losses in this period were 6,000. It was necessary to strike while the iron was hot, i.e. deploy the Thai troops by June, or certainly no later than the first of July. It was important that we “keep moving out” so we can “get somewhere in the talks.” The Prime Minister promised that the first increment of the Thai division would be in Viet-Nam in July and that the second would deploy about the turn of the year.

  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Thailand, Vol. VII, 8/67–7/68. Secret; Exdis. Drafted by Spear and cleared by Bundy.↩