Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume III, Vietnam, June–December 1965

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

Washington, September 12, 1965, 11:45 a.m.

SUBJECT

• 11 AM Meeting on Monday with Rusk, McNamara, Ball, Raborn and Bundy²

There are several important topics that are ripe for discussion at this meeting. Most of them grow out of a long session on Saturday afternoon of Rusk, McNamara, Ball and myself.³

I. Vietnam

1. Bombing policy. Bob McNamara is eager to get general guidance for the next few weeks on bombing in North Vietnam. As you know, he is engaged in a running discussion with the Chiefs on this subject. His own view is that we should continue with carefully measured attacks on clearly defined military targets that do not take us into the Hanoi-Haiphong area, or into direct engagement of Migs, IL-28s, or the SAM-site systems as a whole. (SAM sites outside the Hanoi-Haiphong area would remain targets of opportunity, as I understand it.) The wider recommendations of the Chiefs have been referred back for additional study.⁴

Yesterday Dean Rusk felt that while the present pattern of bombing should certainly continue, we should not extend it, as Bob initially suggested, into the part of North Vietnam which is northeast of Hanoi. Bob accepted this advice, and I think the targets he will put forward will be acceptable to Dean. It was also agreed that there would be a further study of target systems in North Vietnam, with the thought that a more sophisticated analysis may permit selection of target systems that would hurt the DRV a lot more, without increasing civilian casualties. It was agreed that the target selection so far has not had this level of sophistication.

2. Diplomatic situation. We had an extended discussion also of the diplomatic situation. On this you must be psychic. I told you yesterday that the Ruppert discussions⁵ were continuing. But the fact is that Ruppert cancelled a meeting scheduled for last Tuesday, and X has come home. X got the feeling at his last meeting that Ruppert had been called up short, and that there might even be someone watching from behind a curtain which had been drawn for the first time across a doorway in the meeting room. Ruppert carefully drew back from one or two marginal positions taken in earlier talks, and even insisted that he had never taken those positions.

In this situation, there is general agreement that we ought not now to look as if we were very eager for more talks, and we are inclined to keep X at home and show no eagerness for further probes in the next few weeks. We will need your judgment on this also.

(Discussion of this matter on Monday will be indirect and fuzzy because Red Raborn is not currently a member of the Ruppert club—and I doubt if he should be cut in right now unless for some reason you want him to be.)

At the same time that we suspend private diplomatic probing, we think that we should adopt a public posture that our position on negotiations is now totally clear and that the next move is up to the Communists. While we do not like Lodge’s leaks to Reston and Nixon, we are inclined to agree with his assessment and to feel that we now have a perfectly good public posture which does not need to be regilded every day. I take it from our phone conversation yesterday that this is your own general view.

Our most difficult and inconclusive discussions turned on the actual program within Vietnam. Our common guess is that the Viet Cong will try to avoid major engagements with our forces and that they will be quite successful in doing so. In this situation, Rusk raised the question whether we really need to move up toward 200,000 men. McNamaracontinues to feel that we do, and I agree. The problem is to make sure that the role of our troops is so understood that neither the country nor the troops themselves get frustrated if the scene of major action shifts toward smaller terrorist activities in which our troops cannot play the dominant role.

We finally agreed that we should ask Lodge and Westmoreland for a general assessment of the prospects for the next few months in this area. We seem to have got past the big monsoon dangers, and we need to be sure that we have an agreed program for the continuing contest of pacification. We will not have anything sharp to report tomorrow morning, but you should know that all of us feel that this is the most important area of effort for the coming weeks and months.

[Here follows discussion of South Asia and Europe.]

McG. B.

1. Source: Johnson Library, President’s Appointment File, September 13, 1965. Top Secret; Sensitive.
2. See Document 140.
3. According to Rusk’s Appointment Book, the Secretary met with McNamara, Ball, and McGeorge and William Bundy from 2:30 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, September 11. (Johnson Library) No other record of this meeting has been found.
4. See footnote 3, Document 136.
5. Reference is to the informal conversations between Mai Van Bo and Edmund Gullion; see Document 112.