16. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the Director of Military Assistance, Department of Defense (Wood)1
Thanks for inviting me to your clambake yesterday. It was highly educational, though I thought the people from the field put up a rather poor case (do we really need the CINCs in the MAP business?).
For what it’s worth, I’m about convinced that a $1 billion MAP ceiling is a bit too low, if it must also accommodate such major program distortions as Laos/Vietnam. As I see it, Secretary McNamara had the right feel for the “peacetime” MAP level we could live with, even including say $65–70 million for Vietnam (the FY 60–61 level) and $10–20 million for Laos. But when almost $300 million goes into this undeclared war, it distorts the whole program. Ergo, I’d argue that we could quite honestly tell the Congress that we could still live with $1 billion if Vietnam/Laos were separately handled, but need $1.2 billion if it is to be included.
My own reservations about MAP, which I mentioned only briefly, go more to the key country programs themselves than to the global totals. I gravely question whether the existing programs for Korea, GRC, Turkey, Greece, and a few others give us the optimum military or political return for the MAP dollar. Turkey is a good case in point, as graphically demonstrated by the Haynes study.2 Nor have we yet achieved the optimum inter-relating of our MAP and economic aid programs to insure the best return per overall US aid dollar. I doubt that we need six-twelve months of intensive study to get at the most obvious weaknesses. Instead I’d urge a quick fix in time to influence the FY 66 program, while the more comprehensive studies are underway. Otherwise we’ll just compound our problems further and make a turn-around that much more difficult.