Office of the Historian

113. Memorandum for the Record1

Washington, December 7, 1963.

SUBJECT

  • Discussion with the President on Saturday, December 7th, 12:00 for about one half hour
1.
The President confirmed that he thought I should go to Saigon to meet McNamara, that he wished our new Chief of Station to be in place by that time, that he wished to meet the Chief of Station personally before he went to Saigon and again expressed apprehension over the situation in South Vietnam.
2.
Reviewed with the President, modified, and apparently approved draft of a cable to Ambassador Lodge on the above subject.
3.
I reviewed briefly my discussion with Robert Kennedy on Saturday morning, details of which are covered in another memorandum.
4.
Reviewed my practice of briefing General Eisenhower. The President asked that I continue and he expressed the greatest of confidence in and friendship for General Eisenhower.
5.
Discussed the organizational plan for the Alliance for Progress which was submitted in a memorandum last week. The President said that Robert Anderson flatly refused the President’s personal appeal. He said he was turning towards placing Ambassador Thomas Mann as an Undersecretary of State for Latin American affairs, responsible not only for the Alliance for Progress but for all Latin American activities.
6.
I told the President that I was dissatisfied with the “image” of the DCI. It has been created because Allen Dulles and also a number of men in the Administration had built up the operational side of the Agency and had not emphasized the activities of CIA and DCI which were first and carefully outlined in the law and were most important. I said the result of this had been that the DCI was now considered strictly a “cloak and dagger” operator and that this image had developed to a point that my contribution to him and to the Department was impaired, travel is difficult, visiting foreign countries is practically an impossibility all to the end neither the DCI nor the Agency were serving the President as effectively as they could in view of the vast resources of talent existing in CIA. In saying this I did not diminish the very great importance of the operational side as well as the technical side but indicated that our real contribution was to take all intelligence, [Page 222] including clandestine and technical intelligence, and meld it into a proper and thoughtful analysis estimate of any given situation. The President agreed and asked that I prepare a memorandum of a few paragraphs which he could use from time to time in talking with the press or in press conferences or even in speeches.2
  1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, DCI (McCone) Files, Job 80–B01285A, Meetings with the President, 11/23/63–12/31/63. Secret; Eyes Only. Drafted by McCone on December 9.↩
  2. See Document 115.↩