Office of the Historian

19. Memorandum From the Presidentʼs Military Representative (Taylor) to President Kennedy1

Washington, January 13, 1962.

SUBJECT

  • Visit of Secretary McNamara at 10:30 a.m., 13 January2

It is my understanding that Secretary McNamara will discuss the following points with you during his visit this morning:

a.
Actions in the Department of Defense to further the counter-guerrilla program. I delivered your memorandum3 (copy attached) to him last night and discussed your feeling of the need to mobilize all of our resources behind this program. He understands and shares this feeling of urgency, and would like to indicate some of the actions he has set in motion.
b.
Trip to Honolulu. He will discuss what he intends to do over the week end in his visit to Honolulu with General Lemnitzer.
c.
The directive to the U.S. Military Commander in South Vietnam. After Ambassador Noltingʼs visit to you I went into the issue which Nolting raised. I found that Noltingʼs paper which you read4 was a complete rewrite of a carefully drawn agreement worked out personally by Secretaries Rusk and McNamara.5 Secretary McNamara considers that it is not feasible to re-open this issue in its entirety in the short time remaining before McNamara and Nolting depart for Honolulu. I think that Secretary McNamara will recommend to you, with Ruskʼs concurrence, that the agreed directive be promulgated with the understanding that it will be reviewed after a short test period. Personally, I do not think there are any great issues at stake, provided Ambassador Nolting and General Harkins behave like the sensible people I believe them to be.

M.D.T.6
  1. Source: National Defense University, Taylor Papers, T-026-69. Secret. At the top are written the words: “Read by HA.” “HA” stands for “Higher Authority” and was regularly used in referring to President Kennedy.↩
  2. No record of this meeting has been found. According to the Presidentʼs log, McNamara and Taylor met with the President on an “Off the Record” basis from 10:50 to 11:20 a.m., January 13.↩
  3. Not attached to the source text; presumably a reference to a memorandum of January 11 from the President to McNamara on the importance of counterinsurgency operations. (JCS Files)↩
  4. Possibly a reference to Document 17.↩
  5. See Document 9.↩
  6. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩