15. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1
Mac—
I think we now have the question of cutting off aid to the UAR and Algeria on the right track.2 Harriman, Bell, and I agreed yesterday (with pale acquiescence of Talbot and Soapy) that we’d stop for now any new aid projects or programs to UAR or Algeria, except for one $3000 eye clinic to Algiers. This means UAR can cool its heels waiting for $35 million PL 480 amendment (which we’d cut to $14 million anyway), and will find a blank wall when it wants to talk about other aid projects. In Algeria we will go for an administrative slow-down of wheat shipments to draw down their existing 4–6 month stock so that if we do more later, the pipeline will be less full.
Harriman and co. will try this out on Rusk this afternoon, and it should satisfy him. This is the smart way to do it, avoiding a flat confrontation which would lead to a repetition of Aswan but at the same time getting the word across.
[Here follows discussion of another subject.]
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Files of Robert W. Komer, Algeria, December 1963–March 1966. Secret.↩
- On December 18, Komer sent a memorandum to Bundy opposing CIA Director John McCone’s argument that the United States should cut off aid to countries supporting the rebels in the Congo. Komer pointed out that cutting off aid to any radical African country and using it as a political weapon would lead to a violent reaction in Asia and Africa, and probably increased aid to the rebels. Instead, he argued for “a skillful effort to shake our radical friends by quietly getting across that if they raise the ante in the Congo they’ll jeopardize US aid.” (Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Harriman Papers, Kennedy-Johnson Administration, Subject Files, Komer, Robert W.)↩
- Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩