Office of the Historian

179. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to the President1

Washington. May 26, 1964.

SUBJECT

  • Talking Points at 4:30 Meeting with Republican Senators2
1.
I have asked for this meeting in order to talk straight with you about the situation in Southeast Asia and to have a chance to exchange thoughts about some very serious possibilities that may lie ahead of us.
2.
I will ask Secretary Rusk to describe briefly the immediate diplomatic crisis over Laos and Cambodia and to comment generally on the political situation in South Vietnam.
3.
I will then ask Secretary McNamara to report on his own most recent visit to South Vietnam. Some of you may have heard this report, but its essentials have been brought up to date and confirmed by Mr. Michael Forrestal who returned yesterday, and it is worth hearing in outline.
4.
I will then ask Director McCone to give a brief estimate of the forecast which the intelligence community now gives of possible further weakening in the situation in Laos and South Vietnam in coming months.
5.
I hope that we can then have a general discussion.
6.
Finally, I would emphasize in opening the meeting that while in one sense these are small scale problems involving small scale countries.
  • —and while each country and even each province has a separate set of tricky questions (even the names of the actors are hard to remember and pronounce)
  • —and while the whole struggle in Laos has a comic opera aspect
  • —nevertheless what is at stake overall is whether the Communists will take over Southeast Asia—by a process of subversion and terror and general nibbling.
7.
It is in this large framework—the U.S. national interest and the future of Southeast Asia—that I hope we will all be thinking as the discussion goes on.
McG. B.
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Aides File, McGeorge Bundy, Memos to the President, Vol. 4. Top Secret.↩
  2. President Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, McCone, and McGeorge Bundy met from 4:35 to 5:23 p.m. on May 26 with the following Senators: Everett Dirkson, Thomas Kuchel, Leverett Saltonstall, Milton Young, Karl E. Mundt, J. Glenn Beall, Frank Carlson, and John J. Williams. No record of the meeting has been found.↩