Office of the Historian

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

Washington, November 17, 1965, 6:15 p.m.

I think you will want to look at this memorandum from George Ball2 on the subject you charged us to study in our meeting last week.3 It may help you to decide whether you need a meeting on this subject tomorrow or Friday.

As you will see on pages 8 and 9,4 the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State come out on opposite sides, and for very good reasons. The man who has to present next year’s defense budget will want to have made a last full try. The man who has to cope with an effort by the Communists to embarrass us by ambiguous responses to a pause tends to be against it. (Schoenbrun’s story today about the North Vietnamese feelers to the French is an example of what we could expect in spades in a new pause.)

[Page 572]

My own judgment is marginally against the pause, perhaps because I am more concerned with the diplomatic aspects than with the military budget. But I also have some feeling that if we pause, we may seem to admit that our bombing is the cause of the trouble, and this is simply not so. This is a matter which we can brood over without a meeting for another few days—if you wish—but it is of such importance that I feel an obligation to submit it to you now.

McG.B.5
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Vietnam, 6AA, High Level Comments re Bombing Pauses. No classification marking.↩
  2. The Top Secret attachment was not seen by Johnson until November 28, after it was resubmitted by McGeorge Bundy on November 27; see Document 208.↩
  3. See Document 198.↩
  4. Pages 8 and 9 of Tab A to Document 208 comprise Section IV.↩
  5. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩