Office of the Historian

482. Memorandum From Secretary of State Vance to President Carter1

Washington, October 9, 1979

SUBJECT

  • Central America and the Caribbean

Last Friday2 at breakfast you expressed the desire to know more about the situation in the Central American and Caribbean regions and suggested that our Ambassadors might be brought back for a briefing session. I would like to suggest that instead we structure a briefing session around Phil Habib for the Caribbean, Bill Bowdler for Central America, and Pete Vaky for overall Latin America. Habib and Bowdler have recently made separate surveys of the respective regions and all three have an overview of the trends and dynamics. As you suggested, we would also have a CIA briefing on the countries involved.

I believe this would be preferable to bringing up the Ambassadors. A series of briefings by five or more Ambassadors is likely to be country-centered and less cohesive and integrated than a specially structured overview by Habib, Bowdler, and Vaky.

I recommend that you agree to set aside a suitable period, perhaps an evening session,3 for such a briefing, at an early date.4

  1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, North/South, Pastor Files, Country Files, Box 7, Central America: CACAR: 11/1/78–11/6/79. Secret. Carter wrote at the top of the page: “Zbig, OK. J.” Hutcheson sent a copy of the memorandum to Brzezinski under an October 10 note, indicating that the memorandum was to be returned to Brzezinski. Brzezinski added the following to the note: “RG—to CV. RP—implement. ZB.”↩
  2. October 5.↩
  3. Carter drew a line from the comma and wrote: “breakfast or late afternoon.”↩
  4. See Document 487.↩