156. Editorial Note
In a 13-minute telephone conversation on February 20, 1965, President Johnson discussed the question of arms sales to Jordan with New York banker Abraham Feinberg, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Trust Company. Feinberg said that McGeorge Bundy had suggested he call because the President was on the horns of a dilemma with respect to the Jordan situation and felt he had not heard a clear expression of Israeli views. (Johnson indicated later in the conversation [Page 342] that he had received indirect reports that Ambassador Harman was expressing opposition to arms sales to Jordan.) Feinberg told Johnson that he had given Bundy a rundown of the Israeli point of view as he had received it in a conversation that morning. He said the way to get a clear expression of Israeli views was to let Prime Minister Eshkol send Foreign Minister Golda Meir to Washington and meet with her. Johnson said they had reviewed this proposal a couple of days earlier and he thought it would be “about the worst thing that could happen” because it would attract worldwide attention. He said he had asked Averell Harriman and Robert Komer to go to Israel to talk to Eshkol, tell him the importance that Johnson’s advisers attached to responding to King Hussein’s request for arms, and obtain his views.
Johnson told Feinberg: “We can go one of two ways, and I’m willing to go either way. If the Israel friends in this country want to substitute their judgment about the consequences of Soviet planes and don’t think it makes much difference, kind of like Mike Feldman argued in the meetings up here, I’m prepared to tell my advisers that that is the course. I’d be perfectly willing. I don’t look with much approval on becoming a munitions maker.” He continued in this vein, telling Feinberg that he would leave the decision to Eshkol but making it clear that he thought failure to provide arms to Jordan would lead to disastrous results. He indicated that if the United States did not sell arms to Jordan, it would not sell arms to Israel. His judgment and that of his advisers, he told Feinberg, was that they should not let King Hussein “go down the river,” but “if you want to turn him over and have a complete Soviet bloc—well, we’ll just have to, and we’ll get out of the arms business.” He would let the Israelis make the decision, he told Feinberg, “but it’s got to be in or out. If we go in, of course we’ve got to be of some help to Israel. If we get out, then we’ve just got to say, well, we’re not taking part, we’re not going to supply arms to one side or the other, we’re just not going to be in here to sell a lot of munitions.”
Feinberg said one of Israel’s major concerns was that the United States would reach an agreement with Jordan without further discussion with Israel. He again raised the question of a Meir visit. Johnson again rejected it. He repeated his view of the importance of selling arms to Jordan but said again that the decision was up to Israel: “What I want is, I want Eshkol to tell me what he wants to do. And I don’t want him to just tell me, I want him to tell the people over here what he wants to do.” He repeated that “we’ll furnish both of you” but if Israel did not want that, “we’ll furnish nobody.” (Johnson Library, Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of Telephone Conversation Between Johnson and Feinberg, February 20, 1965, 11 a.m., Tape F65.08, PNO 1–2)