Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume VIII, International Monetary and Trade Policy

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

Washington, June 12, 1965, 9:30 a.m.

The attached paper from Joe Fowler represents a real achievement by Joe and Francis Bator. What Joe is now asking is that you should instruct him to do what everyone really wants him to do—namely, take the lead in an important, quiet study of the next steps on the monetary front. A Presidential instruction is needed simply because while everyone agrees in principle that the Treasury should do this job, they will not pitch in energetically except with a Presidential summons. The paper is carefully drawn so as to commit you to nothing and yet to force a broad-gauged study of the problem as a whole. As Joe Fowler points out in his covering memorandum, this plan has so far been held between his office and mine. Before we ask for your final signature, we would like your permission to talk about it with Gardner Ackley and George Ball. Bator assures me that they would be favorable, but we would not wish to go outside the immediate White House-Treasury circle unless this is something which you think well of, at least in principle.

McG. B.

OK to check with Ball and Ackley

OK for Joe Fowler to check with the panel of consultants proposed on page 4 of the memorandum²

Attachment³

Washington, June 11, 1965.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

SUBJECT

• Forward Planning in International Finance

Attached is a proposed draft memorandum from you to me which has been worked out by Under Secretary for Monetary Affairs, Fred Deming, and Francis Bator of your staff.⁴

I would like to discuss the last paragraph on page 4 with you at some appropriate point so that the panel of outside consultants which you spoke to me about some weeks ago could be constituted officially and have the constituency and complexion that would accomplish the purposes you and I have in mind. I have some additional names to suggest in addition to those obvious ones listed and have approached only one of them that you mentioned to me when we discussed this before. With your permission, I would like to approach the remaining ones so that an appropriate announcement could be made well in advance of the visit of the Chancellor here at the end of this month.

It goes without saying that no one will have seen the attached memorandum but the two of us and Messrs. Deming and Bator. However, I would think that before transmitting it, if you approve, you would want to have Bator clear this with George Ball who, I understand, continues to be in charge of this area in State by agreement with Tom Mann and the Secretary.

Henry H. Fowler

1. Source: Johnson Library, Bator Papers, International Monetary Reform, President’s Instructions—June 1965, Box 7. No classification marking.
2. Both of these options are checked. A handwritten notation next to the options reads: “OK—good. L.”
3. Secret.
4. The draft is identical to the June 16 memorandum to Secretary Fowler, Document 64.