Office of the Historian

41. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Task Force on Latin America (Berle) to Secretary of State Rusk0

Washington, February 9, 1961.

This refers to the White House discussion yesterday.1

CIA are preparing and sending over a paper indicating the danger that a number of countries will go over the watershed, in case the operation we discussed yesterday is abandoned. This will come to you, and if they are right, we shall have some stiff decisions to make early next week.

Iʼm assuming that the White House meeting authorized taking soundings to ascertain the possibility of OAS or Rio Pact Ministersʼ action. We are working on and will have an outline of the scope of such explorations. The CIA paper may suggest an enlargement of the meas-ures which we may want to ask the other American countries to authorize.

  1. Source: Department of State, ARA/CCA Files: Lot 66 D 501, Inter-Agency Staff Study. Secret.↩
  2. See Document 40.↩