Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume IX, International Development and Economic Defense Policy; Commodities

74. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistants (Califano and Rostow) and the Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget (Zwick) to President Johnson¹

Washington, February 16, 1968, 6:30 p.m.

SUBJECT

• Thinking about Foreign Aid

You will recall that Jim Perkins told Bill Gaud he would be writing you to acknowledge your decision against a general study of foreign aid and to ask you what you would like the Perkins Committee to do next. His letter has now arrived (Tab A). He puts the alternatives quite clearly: the Committee can disband, or it can proceed to study whatever you want it to.

We need to decide (1) how to answer Perkins’ letter, and (2) how to do some serious thinking about a 1969 foreign aid package.

We believe that there should be a hard, quiet look at foreign aid in preparation for the campaign and your 1969 legislative program. But we also think it important to keep the Perkins Committee in existence and relatively happy. This combination will require both a reasonably interesting assignment for the Perkins Group and careful camouflage of any quiet general study you authorize.

Reply to Perkins

At Tab B, for your signature, is a reply to Perkins’ letter.² Besides pleasantries, it suggests that the Committee address itself to one or two major questions in the foreign aid area and that Perkins and Gaud work out the precise issues to be chosen.

The real question is what you want to authorize Gaud to offer. Perkins’ own preference would be to study the administration of technical assistance. This is a worthy enterprise, but there is a good chance that (a) he won’t be able to convince people like Eugene Black and David Rockefeller that it is worth their time; and (b) he would emerge recommending that technical assistance be split off from AID and operated by a new government corporation. What Black and the others would probably most like to study are possibilities for faster movement toward multilateral aid. Here again, there is the risk that the Committee might recommend something radical, e.g., elimination of bilateral lending in favor of a much-expanded IDA.

We have examined alternative topics and we can find none which is likely to satisfy the Committee which does not present some risk. On balance, we would recommend that you authorize Gaud to offer the study of technical assistance that Perkins prefers. Gaud would emphasize that the Committee’s deliberations must be absolutely confidential and that their report should go to you and no one else. This offer would also give us the strongest basis on which to argue that you don’t want the Committee to disband.

How to Put Together a Real Study

Our review of the possible alternatives suggests that we should set up a very small (4–5 members) task force to study foreign aid, headed by somebody like Mac Bundy. (It might include such people as Francis Bator and Charlie Schultze.) Each member would be absolutely dependable from the standpoint of security.

The group should be assigned to study the full range of foreign aid issues—philosophy, techniques, Congressional tactics, and public relations—with a preliminary report to you by June 1 and a final report by December 1. It would be staffed by a hand-picked group installed in the Budget Bureau under cover of the Bureau’s Program Evaluation Staff. If the press noticed, we could say that these people were working on stand-ard program analysis, which is the ongoing job of that staff. The operation would be covered very much in the way the wage-price task force was handled. We think there is an excellent chance we could manage the study without publicity.

The question remains whether we could do this job without the knowledge of the Perkins Committee. We think Buddy—or whoever is Chairman of the study group—might handle this by quietly seeking the advice and counsel of the individuals on the Perkins group who care most and have the most to offer. But this will take a very delicate touch.

I have signed Perkins letter; go ahead and sound out Buddy

I have signed Perkins letter; come back to me with list of names for quiet study group

Califano call me³

Tab A⁴

Ithaca, New York, January 31, 1968.

Letter From the Chairman of the President’s General Advisory Committee on Foreign Assistance Programs (Perkins) to President Johnson

Dear Mr. President:

I have, of course, been informed that you did not wish to proceed with the full-dress critique of our foreign assistance programs. In the circumstances, I am not completely clear as to how your advisory committee can be of help to you.

As an interim measure, I have asked Mr. Tyler Wood of the AID agency to prepare a synopsis of our deliberations to date. This summary will be the basis for our next meeting on Monday, March 4.⁵ At that time the committee must decide its future course.

We can disband. Or we can await further instructions. Or we can proceed on a limited basis to round out our recommendations calling on private sources of funds where necessary.

If you have any advice to me as the chairman of this committee, I would surely welcome it.

Very respectfully,

James A. Perkins

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Foreign Assistance Programs—President’s Advisory Committee on [Perkins Committee], [2 of 3], Box 17. Confidential.
2. Not found.
3. None of the options is checked.
4. No classification marking.
5. No record of this meeting has been found.