Office of the Historian

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

Washington, June 30, 1965, 7:15 p.m.

RE

  • Contingency Planning on Vietnam

We have had two long meetings on the planning of the political and military alternatives that grew out of our meeting with you last week.2 Jack Valenti has given us time at 11:30 on Friday for a meeting with you, and your night reading for tomorrow will have the papers for Friday’s discussion.3 Meanwhile, I have one further thought that you may wish to be turning over in your mind between now and then.

During this week I have had a review made of the economic and informational situation in Vietnam and around the world. It is extraordinarily clear that any further action turns on what we can get the Ky government to do.

In this situation, the quality and energy of our team in Saigon becomes decisive. Max Taylor is heavily preoccupied with the military situation, and the rest of his team is not geared to a full-steam operation with the new cabinet.

So I begin to wonder if it would not be wise to settle hard on the plan for a Lodge-Sullivan team, and plan to get them out there together as soon as Lodge is briefed and Sullivan’s successor is chosen. I have already told my brother Bill that Sullivan is the generally preferred choice for this job, and that he should accordingly find the right man quickly for Vientiane. But the decision on the timing of the Taylor-Lodge change is obviously one which only you can make. The more I think about it, the more I think the time of Lodge’s takeover should be nearer 1 August than 1 September.

McG. B.
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. XI. Secret.↩
  2. The meeting “last week” was presumably the meeting held at 5:50 p.m. on June 23; see Documents 15 and 16. The two “long meetings” have not been identified with certainty, but one may have been a meeting held at 3:10 p.m. on June 29 in the Department of State, which is described in Secretary Rusk’s Appointment Book as “with Sec. McNamara et al. (re Ball-McNamara paper).” (Johnson Library)↩
  3. See Documents 43 and 44.↩