38. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Mann) and President Johnson1
The President said he had been talking with Abe Fortas.2 According to him, Bosch was saying that our Embassy was directing the thing for the other side and that we were responsible for it and everything and that we had furnished them with equipment and he didnʼt know what else. The President said he did not tell him anything about what we had done. Bosch said that he wanted to go back but he would not go back until after elections, if we could get them to agree, cease fire, etc. Mr. Fortas said he would be standing by to do anything we wanted him to. The President said he thought Mr. Mann should have this information.
Mr. Mann said he thought we would know tomorrow. He said it seems that we have two or three possibilities. He said that the consensus was that the presence of the Marines would calm everyone down. He added that this would have been true before the commies came but what we donʼt know is what difference the commies will make. He said if it all quiets down the anti-communist forces will get control and we can guide it. If, on the other hand, we have to fight or go in and clean up it is possible that we will be in trouble, in terms of international organizations. He said we had been giving thought to which one of the various routes we should take if we go get in trouble. He explained about the Rio Treaty3 and a confrontation between two countries vs the situation if someone else invokes it. He said we therefore had to balance off the advantage of taking the initiative against the advantage of winning the battle. He said we do not know if they will attack US in the UN but they could. He said we are losing a little bit by not taking the initiative in the OAS because we could say that they had already “seized” but if we take the initiative we lose a lot of our freedom of action.
[Page 87]Mr. Mann said that as far as Bosch is concerned, he did not see that he would help US a bit. He said he is against us, he is criticizing us, saying we were supporting the other side which is not true. Mr. Mann added that he thought Bosch had been heated up ever since he was thrown out and he thought we would have to play it by ear. The President said Mr. Mann should have time to think about it. Mr. Mann said he would like to think about it over night and then see what has happened in the morning.
The President asked how many they thought they would evacuate tonight. Mr. Mann said he did not know whether they would be able to carry on in the dark. He said he assumed that since the number is up to 4,000 now it is going on during the dark and he would say they have evacuated 700 to a thousand. He said we were not sure.
Mr. Mann said that the real trouble would come when we are finished with the evacuation—when we have to find a reason to stay on and he thought we would probably have to say that there are 2,000 Americans in the country—outside of Santo Domingo, and begin to stall a bit some time tomorrow. Mr. Mann said we would have a lot of decisions to make tomorrow.
The President asked Mr. Mann what he thought would happen between the two competing forces. Mr. Mann said he did not know what had happened between noon yesterday and noon today because when he talked to the Ambassador last night around 10:30 or 11:00,4 the Ambassador thought it would be all over within five hours. Mr. Mann said the only thing he could figure was that the troops themselves must have become fed up with the shooting at Dominicans and just sort of refused to carry out orders—maybe there have even been mass defections.
The President said that Bosch claimed he had 17,000 troops in the Army that would back him up, and that would be ready to fight. Mr. Mann said that the figures he had seen were closer to 7 or 8,000. He said AP had an item saying 10,000—and this was composed of all the rag-tags, scum, riff-raff and commies, everybody they could fool. He said he would not be surprised if he had 2,000 but he would be surprised if he had 10.
The President asked what the population was and Mr. Mann said he would guess around 4 million.
Mr. Mann said he was a little worried. He said the Ambassador had asked that the Marines be landed and Mr. Mann felt that perhaps the anti-communist troops were not as weak as the Ambassador thought. However, the Ambassador had said they were necessary and [Page 88] we had no alternative. Mr. Mann said it was one of those situations where you have to rely on the people in the field. He said it was not only the Ambassadorʼs recommendation—the Country Team recommended it and that includes the three military attachés, political section chief, economic section chief, agriculture, [less than 1 line of source text not declassified], etc. Mr. Mann mentioned that [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] were ahead of US on this all the way. They were sending in memos predicting doom if we did not send in the Marines. The President said he did not know that. Mr. Mann said it was true, even when things appeared to be going pretty good.
The President asked about the Ambassadorʼs background and Mr. Mann said he was a Georgia boy, in the service twenty years, fine record, solid, level-headed, believes as the President believes.
The President asked Mr. Mann who did the talking on the back-grounder. Mr. Mann said that Mr. Ball had led off but he supposed that he himself did most of the talking. He said there were no hard questions. It was the White House group. He said we would have had a hard time if some of the leftwing Latin correspondents had been there. He said it was easy and we made all the points. We told them we did not know all the details because the fighting was still going on and had been violent. We painted a picture of the thousand people being loaded on the boat and how the commies had come before this to the hotel, separated the men and women, sent the women back into the hotel and then lined the men up (we took a change on that because we were going by reports we had received and these people were now in Puerto Rico). Without mentioning the commie side we said that the insurgent movement was more anti-government than it was pro-anything.
Mr. Mann told the President that all of Boschʼs people went into asylum today—they thought it was all over. The President asked who kept the fire going and Mr. Mann said he thought it was the commies. He said he thought they had been building up strong points in the poorer sections of town. He said however that we do not know because no one can circulate around without getting shot. He told the President that we had informed the press about the Embassy Residence being sprayed with machine-gun bullets. He added that we had not gone into detail about the notes we had been sending but that we had stressed the safety angle and stressed that this was an evacuation. We said we were not in there to help or hurt any particular group but were there to evacuate Americans and printed a pretty clear picture of what actually went on. Mr. Mann told the President they had given them a good background.
The President said he had better not plan on going home tomorrow. Mr. Mann said he did not think he should. He said tomorrow will be the day. The decisions that will be made tomorrow will be much more important than the ones he made today.
- Source: Johnson Library, Papers of Thomas C. Mann, Telephone Conversations with LBJ, Jan. 14, 1964–April 30, 1965.↩
- Reference is to a April 28, 10:20 p.m., telephone call from Abe Fortas to President Johnson, which lasted approximately 9 minutes. (Ibid., Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of telephone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Tape F65.11, Side A, PNO 4)↩
- The Rio Treaty, or Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, signed at Rio de Janeiro, September 2, 1947. (4 Bevans 559)↩
- Not further identified.↩