Office of the Historian

84. National Security Action Memorandum No. 3351

Washington, June 28, 1965.

TO

  • Secretary of State
  • Secretary of Defense
  • Director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
  • Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • Chairman, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
  • Director of Central Intelligence
  • Director, United States Information Agency
  • Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Agency
  • Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology

SUBJECT

  • Preparation of Arms Control Program

In his speech at the Twentieth Anniversary of the United Nations, President Johnson stated:

“We of the United States would hope that others will join with us in coming to our next negotiations with proposals for effective attack upon these deadly dangers to mankind.”2

The President has directed the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to prepare for submission to him a proposed new program of arms control and disarmament, including a proposed program for preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons. The initiative in preparing this program should be with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Its proposals should be presented to the President together with preliminary comments from other interested agencies of government. The purpose of this procedure is to assure that the issues and the points of view of the interested agencies of the Government are [Page 217] brought to the attention of the President in a timely and orderly manner in order to permit a decision by him at the appropriate time.

The timing of this procedure will be determined by this office, in consultation with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, in the light of the prospects for international negotiations.

McGeorge Bundy
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Disarmament, Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee, Vol. I, Box 13. Confidential.↩
  2. The text of the address by President Johnson at the 20th Anniversary Commemorative Session of the United Nations in San Francisco, June 25, 1965, is in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, Book II, pp. 703-706.↩