418. Minutes of the Secretary of State’s Staff Meeting, Washington, April 2, 1976, 8:09 a.m.1 2
In Attendance - Friday, April 2, 1976
Secretary of State Kissinger - Chairman
P - Mr. Sisco
M - Mr. Eagleburger
AF - Mr. Schaufele
ARA -
Mr. Rogers
EA - Mr. Habib
EUR - Mr. Hartman
NEA - Mr.
Atherton
INR - Mr. Saunders
S/P - Mr. Lord
EB - Mr.
Greenwald
S/PRS - Mr. Funseth
IO - Mr. Lewis
H - Ambassador
McCloskey
L - Mr. Leigh
S/S - Mr. Springsteen
S - Mr.
Aherne
S - Mr. Passage
PROCEEDINGS
(The Secretary’s Staff Meeting was convened at 8:09 a.m., Secretary of State Kissinger presiding as Chairman.)
SECRETARY KISSINGER: It’s a distinguished group I’ve got here.
MR. EAGLEBURGER: I don’t want you to think, Mr. Secretary, that we want to stay away from you. (Laughter.)
MR. HABIB: The Philippine ex-President situation has calmed down. There will be, of course, some after-effects; but I think that everybody realized that we handled ourselves in an appropriate manner, so I don’t think we’ll get much of a kickback from the French and so on. The Philippine Government authoritatively told us that we were going to arrest him. He could leave the country if we wanted to. But I would take those assurances with some grain of salt.
We’re continuing to get out of Thailand on a proper pace, and we finally got all the agencies of Government to decide that they ought to coordinate their activities — CIA, NSA, Defense, State, and all other assorted representatives — in Bangkok.
[Page 3]The election there takes place on the 4th, but it’s quite likely that it — well, nobody knows how it will turn out, but it undoubtedly involves some kind of coalition government. Who makes the coalition, who will be able to put it together — hold it together — is not certain. Whether the military will be fed zip with the thing and take a move, I think is just due for a period of uncertainty; and it could, according to Embassy estimates, run as long as three or four weeks before you know what kind of government you have in Thailand.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, we’re staying out of it, I trust?
MR. HABIB: Oh, yes, sir. We’re staying so far out of it we probably don’t know what the hell is going on. (Laughter.)
Nobody is playing any games on that, I’m sure. We’ve told them half a dozen times; it would not work to our advantage if we played games. We’d make a bigger mess.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Certainly on this item this Embassy would have played around.
MR. HABIB: No. I say the military and the CIA [Page 4] instinctively tried to put a general in charge and it would have caused us immeasurable difficulty.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: I’m not in favor of that, but that’s the platitude I always here. Why exactly would a general in Thailand cause us immeasurable difficulty?
MR. HABIB: Because he cannot rule the government unless he did with absolute force of arms, and even then he couldn’t get away with it — let’s say a combination of what Kittikachorn did or Sarit did in the old days. This is the bunch that they have now that are venal and corrupt, a recognizably incapable group.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, the other ones were venal and corrupt.
MR. HABIB: Well, they were venal, but they weren’t incapable.
MR. EAGLEBURGER: Corrupt. (Laughter.)
MR. HABIB: Prapas was very capable, and also Tanot. And the King in this case has been holding back. And I think, in fact, his attitude has influenced me very much. He is not in favor of the military coup. I think he knows his people better than we do.
[Page 5]SECRETARY KISSINGER: I’m not saying we should favor a military coup. I’m just saying we shouldn’t use the usual platitudes about what the effect of a military coup would be or what democracy in Thailand means.
MR. HABIB: I don’t think they’re going to have democracy in Thailand, but I think we can avoid a situation where you have complete disarray. It’s either some measure of orderliness, using the stability of the Crown and the religion and the national identity as a point of cohesion — as an element of cohesion — or creating — having a situation of complete disarray, which I think would always serve the purposes of Hanoi.
[Omitted is material unrelated to Thailand.]