101. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1
Mac—
Under the pertinent section of the new aid law the lawyers say we must cut off any new aid to Morocco on 14 February because two Moroccan ships are still in Cuba trade. We’ve raised this with the Moroccans innumerable times, they’ve promised they’d do something, but they never have.
State concurs and reportedly DOD. Chief worry is whether this might cloud our title to Kenitra, which as you know rests wholly on private oral agreement. I see no valid reason to hold off. But I told State this should be strictly without publicity for as long as possible, in hopes that it might shock our lethargic Moroccan friends into doing something.2
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Files of Robert W. Komer, Morocco, December 1963–March 1966. Secret.↩
- Telegram 1338 to Rabat, February 14, instructed the Embassy to inform the Moroccan Government that in the absence of a reply to previous U.S. communications stating that Section 620 (a) (3) of the Foreign Assistance Act and Section 107 (b) of the Foreign Assistance Appropriations Act prohibited continued U.S. aid to countries trading with Cuba, the United States had no choice but to end economic and military assistance to Morocco effective February 14. (Department of State, Central Files, AID (US) MOR) In telegram 1123 from Rabat, February 21, Ferguson reported that Foreign Minister Ahmed Reda Guedira had said that Morocco did not want to violate U.S. laws but that its sovereignty and traditional policy of non-alignment were in question. (Ibid.)↩
- Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩