Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume II, Vietnam, January–June 1965

86. Memorandum of Meeting¹

Washington, February 8, 1965, 9:48 a.m.

(Partial record of February 8, 1965, meeting with the President by a group which met before NSC meeting.)²

Secretary McNamara said that if we had to destroy the MIG airplanes now in North Vietnam we would have to adopt Phase II of the December program plus additional actions.

General Wheeler commented that sooner or later the MIGs would come in. As U.S. air strikes are made on targets farther north, intervention of the MIGs is to be expected.

The President asked if it were true that very quickly we would be required to take out the MIGs. Secretary McNamara and General Wheeler said yes.

Secretary McNamara said it was not necessary for us to conduct a raid a day but one raid each week would be enough to keep morale up in Saigon. He said the situation might not come to a head for three to six weeks. We need not now say that we have approved Phase II but we should explain to Ambassador Taylor that our present decisions involve actions less than those contemplated in Phase II. As soon as we tell Khanh we are going to undertake future actions, we can urge him to move forward as quickly as possible to establish a stable government in Saigon.

The President said we face a choice of going forward or running. We have chosen the first alternative. All of us agree on this but there remains some difference as to how fast we should go forward.

In response to a question as to what the Congressional leaders should be told when they joined the group for the formal NSC Meeting at 10:30, the President said he would ask Secretary McNamara to report on the South Vietnamese raid and to give any new information about the U.S. raid of the day before. The President then said he would explain that in December we had decided that the time was coming for intensified U.S. efforts which required a stable government in Saigon. Before we could undertake these efforts we had to make a new attempt to create stability in Saigon and to withdraw our dependents. We haven’t won on the stable government but unless we do something now, even the government which now exists will collapse. The dependents are coming home.

(At this point the Congressional leaders appeared at the door of the Cabinet Room and the President ended his summary.)

1. Source: Johnson Library, NSC Meetings File, Vol. III. Top Secret.
2. The President’s Daily Diary does not mention this preliminary meeting but indicates that the President went to the Cabinet Room at 9:48 a.m. and stayed there through the conclusion of the NSC meeting at 11:35 a.m. (Johnson Library) See Document 88 for information on attendance and another record of this preliminary meeting. For records of the NSC meeting, see Documents 87 and 88.