SPA Files: Lot 428
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Associate Chief of the Division of International Security Affairs (Blaisdell)
| Participants: | Major General Gruenther |
| Major General Cabell1 | |
| Mr. Donald C. Blaisdell |
This morning I spent an hour with Generals Gruenther and Cabell and after the former left another half hour with General Cabell.
General Gruenther reviewed the principal points made in the meeting last Friday between Secretary Forrestal, Acting Secretary Lovett and Mr. Bard. (General Gruenther said that General Eisenhower was present as an observer). There was some discussion about the consensus reached regarding the Bard plan and how that could be reflected in Secretary Forrestal’s letter.2 Emphasis was placed upon the adverse effect upon the United States position on the Atomic Energy Commission if the Bard plan, with its verification feature, were to be proposed by the United States, in the CCA, either now or in the near future. General Gruenther said that Mr. Bard had agreed that this was a point the importance of which had not been drawn forcibly to his attention and he agreed that it should be given due weight.
Upon leaving the meeting at 10 o’clock, General Gruenther said that he had asked General Cabell to do the drafting on this matter. Thereupon, General Cabell and I discussed the matter further. He agreed that the best procedure to follow to identify the acceptable features of the Bard plan would be for him to undertake a close [Page 693] scrutiny of the plan RAC D–9/1a3) and to bring in the features of the idea advanced by Mr. Lovett for an exchange of information with appropriate verification, endeavoring thereby to ascertain what the Bard plan would look like if the legitimate concerns of the military as expressed in the Joint Chiefs of Staff comment and tempered by Secretary Forrestal and Mr. Lovett were taken into account. General Cabell said that while he was originally sympathetic to the Bard plan and even now did not subscribe to the Joint Chiefs of Staff views, nevertheless he proposed to examine the plan as objectively as possible and that he would not hesitate to arrive at an adverse conclusion if his analysis led to no other alternative.4 He promised to keep in touch with me and solicited any suggestions I might have for carrying forward this analysis.
With respect to the urgency of the matter, General Cabell said that he did not believe it need or could be acted on within a matter of days, whereas Mr. Bard appeared to feel that action was required by, say Wednesday of this week.5 I said that I did not feel that Mr. Bard’s estimate of the situation was correct.
- Maj. Gen. C. P. Cabell, Headquarters, United States Air Force.↩
- October 10, p. 679.↩
- July 16, p. 562.↩
- No revised draft of the Forrestal letter has been found in the files of the Department of State. For a subsequent statement of the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the Bard Plan, see Doc. RAC D–15/6, November 12, infra. ↩
- October 22.↩