Source: U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-68, Volume XXVII, Mainland Southeast Asia: Regional Affairs, Washington, DC, Document Number 53
Original Source: Johnson Library, Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of a telephone conversation between the President and McGeorge Bundy, Tape 64.28 PNO 111. No classification marking. This transcript was prepared by the Office of the Historian specifically for this volume.
[Here follows discussion of the Seaborn mission to Hanoi and plans for Ambassador
Stevenson to meet with the President.]
Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of
this thing, and the more that I think of it I don't know what in the hell, it
looks like to me that we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the
hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once
we're committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don't
think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere
in that area. I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can
get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.
Bundy: It is an awful mess.
Johnson: And we just got to think about it. I'm looking at this Sergeant of
mine this morning and he's got 6 little old kids over there, and he's getting
out my things, and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff,
and I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell
am I ordering them out there for? What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What
is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? We've got a treaty but
hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and they're not doing a thing
about it.
Bundy: Yeah, yeah.
Johnson: Of course, if you start running from the Communists, they may just
chase you right into your own kitchen.
Bundy: Yeah, that's the trouble. And that is what the rest of that half of the
world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. That's the dilemma,
that's exactly the dilemma.
Johnson: But everybody that I talk to that's got any sense now they just says
Oh, my God, please give us thought. Of course I was reading Mansfield's stuff
this morning, and it is just Milquetoast as it can be. He's got no spine at
all.
Bundy: Yeah.
Johnson: But this is a terrible thing that we're getting ready to do.
Bundy: Mr. President, I just think it figure it is really the only big decision
in one sense, this is the one that we have to either reach up and get it, or
we let it go by. And I'm not telling you today what I'd do in your position.
I just think that the most that we have to do with it is pray with it for another
while.
Johnson: Anybody else that we got that can advise with, that might have any
judgement on this question, that might be fresh, that might have some new approach.
Would Bradley be any good? Would Clay be any good?
Bundy: No, Bradley would be no good. I do not think Clay would add. I think
you're constantly searching, if I understand you correctly, for some means of
stiffening this thing that does not have this escalating aspect to it, and I've
been up and down this with Bob McNamara, and I have up and down it again with
Mike Forrestal. And I think that there are some marginal things that we can
do, . . . but I think, also, Mr. President, you can do, what I think Kennedy
did at least once which is to make the threat without having made your own internal
decision that you would actually carry it through. Now I think that the risk
in that is that we have, at least, it seemed to do it about once or twice before.
And there's another dilemma in here, which is the difficulty your own people
have in. I'm not talking about Dean Rusk or Bob McNamara or me, but people who
are at second removed, who just find it very hard to be firm, if they're not
absolutely clear what your decision is. And yet you must safeguard that decision
and keep your . . .
.Johnson: What does Bill think that we ought to do?
Bundy: He's in favor of touching things up, but you ought to talk to him about
it. I've got an extremely good memorandum from Forrestal/2/ that I'm just getting
ready for you that shows what he thinks about it.
/2/Apparent reference to a memorandum from Forrestal to Bundy, May 26, printed
in Foreign Relations, 1964-1968, vol. I, Document 178.
Johnson: What does he think?
Bundy: He thinks that we ought to be ready to move a little bit, a little bit.
And mainly the Vietnamese. On the other hand, a readiness to do more. He believes
really that's the best way of galvanizing the South, that if they feel that
we are prepared to take a little action against the center of this infection,
that that's the best way . . .
Johnson: What action do we take, though?
Bundy: Well, I think that we really do need to do some target fodder work, Mr.
President, that shows precisely what we do and don't mean here. The main object
is to kill as few people as possible, while creating an environment in which
the incentive to react is as low as possible. But I can't say to you that this
is a small matter. There's one other thing that I've thought about, I've only
just thought overnight, and it's on this same matter of saying to a guy, you
go to Korea, or you go to Vietnam, and you fight in the rice paddies. I would
love to know what happened if we were to say in this same speech, and from now
on, nobody goes on this task who doesn't volunteer. I think that we might turn
around the atmosphere of our own people out there, if it were a volunteer enterprise.
I suspect that the Joints Chiefs won't agree to that, but I'd like to know what
would happen. If we really dramatized this as Americans against terror and Americans
keeping their commitment, and Americans who have only peace as their object,
and only Americans who want to go have to go, you might change the temper of
it some.
Johnson: Well, you wouldn't have a Corporals' Guard would you?
Bundy: I just don't know, I just don't know. If that's true, then I'm not sure
that we're the country to do this job.
Johnson: I don't think that it's just Morse and Russell, and Gruening, I think
it's . . .
Bundy: I know it isn't. I know it Mr. President, it is 90% of the people that
don't want any part of it.
Johnson: Did you see the poll this morning? 65% of them don't know anything
about it, and of those that do, the majority think that we're mishandling it.
But they don't know what to do, that Gallup.
Bundy: Yeah, yeah.
Johnson: It's damn easy to get into a war, but if it's going to be awful hard
to ever extricate yourself if you get in.
Bundy: Very easy. I'm very sensitive to the fact that the people who are having
trouble with the intransigent problem find it very easy to come and say to the
President of the United States, go and be tough.
Johnson: What does Lippmann think that you ought to do?
Bundy: Well, I'm going to talk with him at greater length, but what he really
thinks is that you should provide a diplomatic structure within which the thing
can go under the control of Hanoi, and walk away from it. I don't think that's
an unfair statement, but I will ask him.
Johnson: You mean that he thinks that Hanoi ought to take South Vietnam?
Bundy: Yes sir, diplomatically.
Johnson: Uh, huh.
Bundy: Maybe by calling it a neutralization and removing American force and
letting it slip away the way that Laos did, would if we didn't do anything,
and will if we don't do anything. We would guarantee the neutrality in some
sort of a treaty that we would write. I think, I'm sorry, I'm not sure that
I'm the best person to describe Lippmann's views, because I don't agree with
them.
Johnson: Who, who, who, who has he been talking to besides you? Has he talked
to Rusk on any of this? Has he talked to McNamara?
Bundy: He's talked to George Ball. And he's talked to, I don't think that he's
talked to Rusk, and I don't think he's talked to McNamara.
Johnson: Wouldn't it be good for he and McNamara to sit down?
Bundy: I think that it would be very good, but I don't think, I think, I had
planned to have lunch with Walter on Monday, because I couldn't find a workable
time before for that, but I can do it sooner, if you'd like me to.
Johnson: I wish you would.
Bundy: I will.
Johnson: I'd try to get his ideas a little more concrete before I leave here.
And I'd like to have him talk to McNamara. I might, I might just have the three
of you in this afternoon sometime.
Bundy: All right.
Johnson: Walter, McNamara and him [Ball?]. I'd like to hear Walter and McNamara
debate.
Bundy: Debate it?/3/
/3/According to the President's Daily Diary, the President met with McNamara,
McGeorge Bundy, Ball, and Lippmann from 4:30 p.m. to approximately 5 p.m. (Johnson
Library) Ball wrote Rusk an account of the meeting, noting that Lippmann "made
his usual argument for neutralization." Ball reported that when he pressed,
Lippmann admitted that he assumed Southeast Asia was "destined inevitably to
become a zone of Chinese Communist control" and the best U.S. course was to
slow that expansionism and "make it less brutal." Ball did not think the President
"bought Lippmann's thesis," but Johnson was impressed with Lippmann's view that
the United States was losing the battle of international public relations. After
the President left, the group debated Southeast Asia and Vietnam for another
hour. (Letter from Ball to Rusk, May 31; Department of State, Ball Files: Lot
74 D 272, Vietnam (Ball's Memos))
Johnson: Yeah.
[Here follows discussion of a possible time that afternoon for the President
to meet with McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Ball, and Walter Lippmann.]