Office of the Historian

117. Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1

Washington, April 16, 1964.

SUBJECT

  • Vietnam Planning

Herewith a brief status report on the progress of planning for pressures against the North.

The political scenario which I developed with Bill Sullivan’s help2 has been turned over to John McNaughton for further refinement before it is presented to the JCS. Sullivan and I have tried to press John to get something simple into the hands of the JCS as rapidly as possible. We are afraid that they are going off on two politically unproductive tracks. First, they may be spending most of their time planning for [Page 243] cross border raids and aircraft incursions into Laos and Cambodia; and second, they may be ginning up a variety of “tit-for-tat” actions against the North. Planning on both of these tracks has been largely stimulated, I think, by General LeMay.3 In order to get the Chiefs something more politically useful to work on, we are pressing McNaughton and McNamara to get something like our paper officially into their mill before we are faced with a mass of ineffective and politically explosive planning.

I think that there is some fear at the Pentagon, among the more reasonable military as well as the civilians, that since the President will never authorize anything like the actions proposed in the political scenario, it is better to concentrate on the cross border and “tit-for-tat” approach. In short, they suspect us of putting up a straw man. There may also be an underlying worry that what we have proposed might get the U.S. involved in an unmanageable, large-scale war.

As matters stand now, John McNaughton has agreed to prepare a simple memo for the Chiefs based upon our scenario but adding some elements of cross border operations and “tit-for-tat” actions as one of several tactics we might use. McNaughton, Sullivan and I will discuss this with Bob McNamara on Saturday afternoon,4 at which time we will press him to put it to the Chiefs officially, so that we stop the growing criticism that no formal political proposal has been made to them.

What would be helpful now is a very delicate hint from the President that he has not excluded actions directed against the North before the election. I realize how dangerous this could be if any such hint got out of control; and consequently I have perhaps been overcautious in not repeating any of our conversation with the President several weeks ago, except in a very oblique way to Bill Sullivan.

We should have a chat about this and other aspects of Vietnam when you get a minute.

Mike
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Vietnam Country File, Vol. VII, Cables and Memos. Top Secret.↩
  2. See the attachment to Document 102.↩

  3. An example of such planning is JCSM–298–64, April 14, in which General LeMay and General Greene advised Secretary McNamara that they were “convinced that operations in Vietnam should be extended and expanded immediately.” They recommended a plan for a series of overt and covert actions against North Vietnam and across the Lao and Cambodian borders in order to force the North to cease its support for the insurgency in the South. The other members of the Joint Chiefs dissented on the grounds that the plan was premature. (Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OASD/ISA Files: FRC 69 A 926, 092 Vietnam)

    Since a majority of the Joint Chiefs dissented, McNamara took no action on JCSM–298–64. (Memorandum from the Administrative Secretary, OSD, to the Secretary of the JCS, May 5, enclosure to JCS 2343/345–4, May 7, as quoted in Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, JCS, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1960–1968, Part 1, Chapter 9, p. 22)

    ↩
  4. April 18; no record of a meeting has been found.↩