Office of the Historian

270. Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and George Ball1

Washington, February 7, 1968, 9:59 a.m.

Ball: I think we’re going to complete this report we’re making this morning, finish preparation of it. I went over it with Bob and with Dean2 last night, and we’re classifying it very highly, so it will be in the nature of a report to you, and we’re also putting a special classification on it to keep it quite secret, so that you can use it as you want. But, on the whole, I think that we’ve come out with an agreed report that indicates that we ought to perform these missions in a somewhat different fashion in the future, that we probably shouldn’t send them into waters of this kind without protection, and so forth. I wondered if you would like me to come over for five or ten minutes and just run through it before we finally put it to bed.

President: I sure would. I had two folks that I kind of wanted to—’cause they’ll have to live with it some—to talk to you before you all really got it down finally, because I’m afraid that it’ll be like the Gaither Report,3 somebody in some department looks at it, will leak it. I thought that these folks would be my best defense, if you’re in Europe or some other place when we call you for help. And I wondered if you would mind spending ten minutes with Taylor and Clark together—

Ball: Sure.

President: —because they had gone out and done a lot of things for us. They’ll both be here. Max is testifying from time to time. He was on the Bay of Pigs thing. He has a background. He’s on that intelligence board. Clark is chairman of it, and Clark has to kind of do what you used to do—oppose, put in the no vote sometimes, so I don’t think everything’s love and peaches-and-cream. If you would do that, then come right on in. Marvin Watson will open the door any time you’re ready. You can bring them—bring them or you can just come by yourself and just tell ’em I’d like to have a little reaction from them [Page 614] and any suggestions they have, because Rivers4 is already refusing to hear Bob up there on his valedictory, and we’ve got the Thurmonds5 and the Rivers and these wild men that want to blow up a city, and I’ve just got to have Clark handle some of those and Taylor will have to give them a little touch. So, if you’ll talk to them, I’ll tell Marvin now to give me an hour or two’s notice and we’ll bust up what we’re doing and receive you any time. And I thank the Lord you’re living.

Ball: Fine, Mr. President.

  1. Source: Johnson Library, Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of Telephone Conversation between President Johnson and George Ball, February 7, 1968, 9:59 a.m., Tape F68.02, PNO 3. Secret. This transcript was prepared by the Office of the Historian specifically for this volume.↩
  2. Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk.↩
  3. The Gaither Report, which examined U.S. defense capabilities to respond to a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, was given to President Eisenhower in November 1957. The Top Secret report was later declassified and published in U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Defense Production, Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age (The “Gaither Report” of 1957), (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976).↩
  4. Representative Mendel L. Rivers, Chairman, House Armed Services Committee.↩
  5. Senator Strom Thurmond.↩