356. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson1
RE
- Ike and Cabot Lodge
Joe Alsop has just called to tell me that Felix Belair2 swears up and down that General Eisenhower told him personally of his interest in having Cabot Lodge get into the race, and specifically said that he had let Lodge know of this interest. Joe said that General Eisenhower [Page 693] called Belair today, however, to say that Lodge was only one of many and that he (Eisenhower) could not support any one candidate over another because his travel expenses in all his Republican travels were paid by the Republican National Committee!
Mike Forrestal is just back from Saigon and reports that Cabot has indeed begun to think in terms of political possibilities. Mike’s guess is that Lodge would very much like to be honorably free of his responsibilities in Saigon and is hoping to be able to report to you in about two months that the situation is so much better that he can now fairly ask for relief.
I report all this because you may want to have it in mind in your last instructions to Bob McNamara before he goes out there. If I understand your thinking correctly, it might be desirable to have Bob say flatly to Lodge that if he can leave the situation clearly better than he found it, after six months, it will be entirely reasonable for him to ask for relief in February. (He went out in late August.)