Office of the Historian

126. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson1

Washington, August 24, 1965, 8 p.m.

SUBJECT

  • The Republican “White Paper”2
1.
I have read the White Paper and discussed it with McNamara, Ball, Moyers, and my brother Bill. I also got some free advice from Phil Potter, who called on another subject. Our unanimous view is that it is a pretty feeble effort and that it does not deserve top-level reply. So I would be inclined to go right past it in the press conference tomorrow and to say simply that we maintain the closest touch with Republican leaders like President Eisenhower3 and Senator Dirksen (who has dissociated himself from the report already), and that there has never been a Republican or Democratic policy toward Southeast Asia in the last 15 years.4
2.
If you want to hit harder, it is interesting that this report omits the name of Ambassador Lodge in its discussion of the last months of Diem. It misstates your own position on Southeast Asia in 1961, in that your farsighted report5 specifically warned that we might need to make a commitment of troops if circumstances should change. The document also conveys a false impression of your views on Laos. In Bob McNamara’s judgment, it totally distorts his own record on Vietnam.
3.
In sum, this document imports into the discussion of foreign affairs the very spirit of narrow partisanship which you have been trying to exclude. We are confident that the American people prefer the attitudes of Republicans like Eisenhower, Dirksen, Lodge, and McNamara, just as it has traditionally expected a spirit that rises above party from Democratic leadership both in Congress and in the White House.
4.
I attach a copy of a memorandum done by my brother Bill6 which gives a still more detailed and comprehensive set of criticisms which could be made if one wanted to make them.
McG.B.
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. XIII. No classification marking.↩
  2. On August 24, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives issued a 33-page report on Vietnam, styled a “White Paper,” which charged President Johnson with confusing public opinion and inviting Communist miscalculations. The report was prepared by the House Republican Committee on Planning and Research, under the direction of Representatives Gerald R. Ford, Charles E. Goodell, and Melvin R. Laird. (Washington Post, August 25, 1965)↩
  3. See Document 118.↩
  4. Johnson dismissed the Republican report as misleading during a press conference on August 25. He said that the Vietnamese Communists should not entertain the illusion that the people of the United States were are not united behind the Vietnamese Government. (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, Book II, pp. 922-923)↩
  5. See United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967, Book 11, pp. 159-166, and Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. I, pp. 149–151.↩
  6. Attached but not printed.↩