Office of the Historian

35. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow) to President Kennedy0

Washington, March 21, 1961.

SUBJECT

  • Laos

One fundamental fact failed to emerge from yesterday’s discussion of Laos,1 which you may wish to have elaborated this afternoon.2

[Page 95]

The fact is this: the basic military plan, which we are modifying for Laos, calls for the placing of our forces, in the first instance, in Thailand rather than Laos. The plan could, of course, be modified to place them directly into Vientiane; and some of them could be parachuted into the Vientiane area or anywhere else.

But the meaning of this plan is that we can move as many troops as we wish, if we have Sarit’s agreement, into Thailand; and we can move them as soon as we wish. We would then be in a position to feed them into Laos at the times and places the situation demands.

  1. Source: Kennedy Libary, National Security Files, Countries Series, Laos: General, 3/20/61–3/22/61. Secret.↩

  2. On March 20, Kennedy met with McNamara, Admiral Arleigh Burke, Nitze, Bowles, Parsons, Bohlen, Dulles, Richard Bissell, Desmond FitzGerald, McGeorge Bundy, Rostow, and Theodore Sorensen to discuss the Laos situation. The meeting, which was described as “off the record,” began at 5:30 and ended at 7:20 p.m. (Kennedy Library, President’s Appointment Book)

    Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., describes this meeting in A Thousand Days, pp. 332–333, incorrectly as an NSC meeting. Schlesinger writes that the participants discussed the possibility of moving a small number of U.S. troops into the Mekong Valley to deter the Pathet Lao and act as a bargaining chip at an international conference on Laos. According to Schlesinger, the JCS objected and warned that North Vietnam would send thousands of troops into Laos in response and war with China could be a possibility. The JCS recommended either a large-scale intervention of 60,000 troops with air cover, and even the use of nuclear weapons, or else no intervention. Roger Hilsman also discussed the JCS objections in To Move a Nation, pp. 127–132.

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  3. See Documents 36 and 38.↩