Office of the Historian

2. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson1

Washington, January 17, 1964.

Here is how AID and DOD have apportioned the FY 1964 aid cuts. While we requested this report to enable you to weigh in if there were any major problems or unresolved issues, we see none and recommend you merely note it.

To summarize the report (which it does not seem essential to read), AID and DOD have spread the cuts pretty evenly among the major aid recipients, while protecting high priority programs and prior commitments. Because of carryovers, we have $3.7 billion to work with, compared with the $4.15 billion we actually committed last year.

Most of the actual reduction comes out of MAP, where we have $426 millon less than we used last year. This will cover all explicit commitments, though we’ll have to put off some force modernization which Korea, China, the Philippines, Greece, and Turkey expect. We’re also trimming a number of smaller programs, e.g. Indonesia, Burma, some Africans. Tom Mann and DOD are still discussing how much to cut Latin American MAP, but any cut would be much less than in other areas.

The $2.5 million economic aid available is about what we actually committed last year. It will cover all firm promises and priority needs. What permits this is the slowness of many clients to come up with satisfactory project terms. We’re also cutting back the more mature countries ready for conventional financing (China, Philippines, Israel, Greece, Mexico, Venezuela, Jamaica) and small marginal programs.

One problem is the lack of much cushion for emergencies or opportunities. Since an extra $40 million may be needed for more ammunition, etc. in Vietnam, Bell is already considering a $50 million transfer to MAP from our $179 million AID contingency fund. All in all, we’ll probably get by this year, but partly by pushing our problems ahead of us, which underlines the importance of the FY 1965 AID reviews.

R. W. Komer 2
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Foreign Aid, Box 16. Secret. Two attachments listed at the bottom of the source text were not found attached: a January 10 memorandum from Bell to Buddy on “Addl $20 million MAP … ,” and a January 7 memorandum from Bell to Buddy on the “Impact of Cuts in Foreign Aid Approp.” For this last memorandum, see Document 1.↩
  2. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩