Office of the Historian

213. Telegram From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, in New York1

Washington, November 20, 1968, 0357Z.

CAP 82725.

Mr. President:

A second message came in from Wilson in your absence.2

The attached indicates how I handled it, after checking with Joe Barr.3

I also attached a formal copy of the message earlier received this evening from Wilson.4

Wilson is obviously pulling out all stops. If he can get the Germans to go above 4 percent on the basis of this pressure—fine.

But Wilson is wrong in treating the French problem as strictly secondary. If we can hold the French—or hold them to a modest devaluation plus big short-term loans—the pound can be protected; and I’m still not sure that’s impossible because DeGaulle has staked so much on a policy of “no devaluation,” out of simple pride.

/s/W.W. Rostow

[Page 582]

The President is in New York at the moment; but I am forwarding to you this second message from Wilson indicating his line of attack.

Again I suggest you should take counsel with Jenkins and others and tell us what you think the optimum strategy for tomorrow’s meeting should be.

Don’t hesitate to get me to the office early to receive your messages, when you have had a chance to form a judgment and wish to check it here with highest authority.

Wilson’s message follows.

[6 paragraphs of source text and 1 paragraph of text (1–1/2 pages) not declassified]

  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Monetary Crisis, November 1968, Cables and Memos, Vol. 1 [2 of 2], Box 22. Secret. Drafted on November 19. President Johnson was in New York on the evening of November 19 to address the National Urban League.↩
  2. Regarding Wilson’s first message, see Document 211. In his memoirs, Prime Minister Wilson recounted in some detail his government’s reactions to the Bonn monetary conference but nowhere mentions his messages to President Johnson about it. See Wilson, The Labour Government, 1964–1970: A Personal Record (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson and Michael Joseph, 1971), pp. 582–585. For the perspective of a senior British Treasury official on the Bonn meetings, see Alec Cairncross, The Wilson Years, pp. 341–349, 356–357.↩
  3. Reference presumably is to Rostow’s message to Fowler, the text of which appears below, after Rostow’s message to the President.↩
  4. Not printed here, but see footnote 2 above.↩