Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume I, Vietnam, 1964

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

Washington, February 4, 1964.

SUBJECT

• South Vietnam

Herewith my overnight thoughts for your lunch today:²

1. If Lodge must remain, the military commander must be changed. The President might publicly load Lodge with full responsibility for the whole U.S. effort in South Vietnam, giving him as deputy the ablest, most modern-minded 3-star general we can find. General Westmoreland might fill the bill. He doesn’t have to have an extra star, if he is acting as Lodge’s deputy.

2. Here in Washington we should get a Manager for South Vietnam. He should be in the Department of Defense at a level which would permit him to deal with the Under Secretaries and the Assistant Secretaries of State and the Aid Agency Administrator. He should be McNamara’s man. He should concern himself with operations in South Vietnam and on policy matters he should report to McNamara, Rusk and Harriman. I have in mind someone like Vance, your brother Bill, or possibly Solbert.

3. We should set up immediately a group of about 10 people who would meet together for approximately two weeks, completely free from all other responsibilities, preferably not in Washington but possibly in Honolulu or some reasonably secluded place, to think of specific things which we should do to improve our effort inside South Vietnam. Since we really do not have all of the best people for this job in Washington, we should draw from the following sources: one or two of the best people from MACV; one or two from USOM in Saigon; one or two from the Embassy in Saigon and/or State; one from the CIA; one each from Krulak’s shop and ISA; and possibly one from the academic world like Fishel or Lucian Pye.³ Solbert could be the Chairman of such a group; and we should be ruthless in providing him the time and resources of the best people, regardless of their duties or rank.

4. There should be another group assembled entirely from Washington which should be working at the same time on diplomatic and military plans for U.S. initiatives in the SEA area as a whole, principally outside South Vietnam. Believe it or not, I would not be averse to having Walt Rostow handling this one, provided he had tough representation from all the schools of thought.

Michael V. Forrestal⁴

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Vietnam Country File, Vol. 11, Memos and Misc. Secret and Personal. Published in part in Declassified Documents, 1975, 175B.
2. Reference is to a luncheon meeting at the White House at 1:04 p.m. among the President, Secretaries Rusk and McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy. The meeting ended at 2:45 p.m. Johnson Library, President’s Daily Diary) No record of the meeting has been found, but see Document 34 and Document 35.
3. Wesley R. Fishel, Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, and Lucian W. Pye, Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
4. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.