Office of the Historian

364. Record of Agreements and Decisions of 18th Meeting of the Senior Interdepartmental Review Group1

SIG/RA #18
Washington, July 27, 1967.

PRESENT

  • The Under Secretary of State (Chairman)
  • The Deputy Secretary of Defense
  • The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • The Director, Central Intelligence Agency
  • The Administrator, Agency for International Development
  • The Director, United States Information Agency
  • The Special Assistant to the President, Mr. Walt W. Rostow
  • The Under Secretary of Treasury
  • The Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
  • The Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
  • The Staff Director
  • Mr. Covey Oliver, ARA
  • Mr. Robert R. Bowie, S/C

A) Haiti

The Senior Interdepartmental Group:

1)
Agreed to give political support, and financial support as required up to a million dollars, for the Inter-American Committee for the Alliance for Progress (CIAP) for the purpose of providing Latin American technical assistance to Haiti up to 36-man years provided that such a number of qualified French-speaking Latin Americans can be found and recruited.
2)
Agreed that Contingency Coordinating Committee plans should include domestic actions to be taken, particularly with respect to Congress and the press, as well as military and political actions outside the country.
3)
Directed ARA to compile an appropriate set of plans, prepared on past experience, for economic and technical assistance to Haiti in the event that President Duvalier is succeeded by a Government capable of governing.
4)
Noted that in the event it becomes necessary for the US to evacuate American citizens and other foreign nationals by the use of US armed forces, it would probably be necessary for those forces to take over control of the City of Port-au-Prince; that whether or not to relinquish that control after the evacuation, and the costs of doing either [Page 844] one or the other, are of such importance as to require further study at all levels of the Government.

[Omitted here are decisions related to Bolivia.]

HHS
Staff Director, SIG
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Agency File, SIG, 18th Mtg, 7/27/67. Secret. Drafted by Schwartz on July 31.↩