132. Memorandum From the JCS Chairman’s Special Assistant (Goodpaster) to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (Nitze)0
Washington, April 20,
1963.
SUBJECT
- Major Military Issues in Basic National Security Policy
- 1.
- Attached is the document that I believe should be distributed for the
discussions between the Secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on basic
national security policy. The document consists of three parts:
- a.
- A brief covering memorandum explaining the procedures used in developing the material.
- b.
- A summary of the six major issues.
- c.
- A three-column (State, JCS, OSD/ISA) tabulation of the issues as extracted from the appropriate draft BNSP documents.1
- 2.
- With your concurrence I will have the document circulated to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- Source: National Defense University, Taylor Papers, BNSP. Top Secret. Attached to a covering note from Major Smith to Nitze.↩
- Not found attached.↩
- Printed from a copy that indicates Goodpaster signed the original.↩
- Top Secret.↩
- In his memoirs, Nitze wrote that he sent a “memorandum” summarizing six issues to McNamara “in the spring of 1963 and asked him to resolve them. He refused and sent it back with the comment that he didn’t believe there was anything to be gained by the formulation of such a document. He suggested that a reading of the President’s and his (McNamara’s) public statements was sufficient to delineate our national security policy.” (Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), p. 252)↩
- See the source note, Document 93.↩
- Document 119.↩
- Not printed. Copies are in Department of State, S/P Files: Lot 69 D 121, BNSP Drafts, and ibid., S/P Files: Lot 70 D 199, Basic National Security Policy.↩
- Concerning a meeting between McNamara and the Joint Chiefs on this issue, see Document 136.↩
- Top Secret.↩