402. Memorandum From Roger Morris of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)1
W.W.R.
SUBJECT
- Nigeria at Tuesday Lunch
Secretary Rusk may raise Nigerian relief at lunch today, recommending that we provide 8 Globemaster transports (1948-vintage) to the international relief effort. Here are the facts:
- 1.
- We have a formal request from the church voluntary agencies—Catholics, Protestants and Jews—for 6 of these aircraft. Their application has political clout behind it, including Senators Kennedy, McCarthy, Mondale, Pearson; Speaker McCormack, and several other Congressmen.
- 2.
-
Excess Globemasters are available, and Defense is ready to turn them over to anybody who can use them. The relief agencies have people to fly these planes. The airfields they are now using can easily accommodate Globemasters (where C–130’s are a problem); and these planes would roughly double their current transport capacity per flight.
The voluntary agencies and their champions on the Hill are quite aware of all these facts.
- 3.
- Providing the planes would be a straight transfer of ownership. (Defense would “sell” the aircraft to the agencies at scrap prices, and we would juggle relief contributions, in effect, to pay ourselves.) No U.S. military personnel would be involved in any part of the relief operation of the aircraft in or around Nigeria. The transaction would be entirely routine on the grounds that these aircraft are available to any reputable buyer. Our sales contract would stipulate pro forma that the planes would not be used for military purposes.
- 4.
-
The only real problem here is with the Federal Military Government. They are bound to object to our giving planes, if only because they regard the voluntary agencies as pro-Biafran and sometime gun runners. But everyone agrees that this is manageable:
- (a)
- We have come up with 8 planes rather than 6 and can afford to split the contribution between the voluntary agencies and Red Cross, which puts a better face on it for the Feds.
- (b)
- The voluntary agencies are ready to accept reasonable inspection arrangements to ensure that their Globemasters are flying strictly relief.
In any case, we are persuaded that it is much easier to justify Globemasters to the Feds than to explain the refusal to Kennedy, McCormack et al. [Page 690] And it’s certainly preferable to explain to anybody a simple transaction now of old airplanes rather than U.S.-manned C–130’s a month from now.
This deal makes eminent good sense. It will cost us nothing, can save lives, and will, for the time being at least, lessen the Congressional heat here at home. Having nursed this thing personally through the bureaucracy, I recommend you add a strong second to the Secretary, if he raises it.2
Where We Stand Otherwise
Our first priority is to try to get some food in during this Christmas truce. But the prospects are bleak. The Feds have flatly turned down the Emperor’s appeal, and Gowon is “too busy” to see our man today in Lagos. I’ll be huddling again today with Katzenbach and his people to go over ways to break (or publicly condemn) this logjam in Lagos. Meanwhile, there is also the following:
—Haile Selassie has asked us for our advice and help in following up his cease-fire plea. We are telling him today (i) he should lean hard once more on Gowon to reciprocate Biafra’s de facto acceptance of the truce; (ii) the Emperor should push both sides on the opening of daylight relief flights and a land corridor (there are up to 2–3,000 tons of food we might get in overland in a matter of hours if both sides cooperate); and (iii) the Emperor might consider calling a conference of interested powers—the U.S., U.K., France, Soviet Union, relief agencies, the Feds and Biafrans—to get more resources and more coordination for the relief problem. The idea of a conference is just a long shot, but it has the advantage of putting some parties—the Soviets and in part the Feds—on the hook.
The Emperor can’t do much, of course, so long as the Feds are absolutely inflexible on the cease-fire question.
The Biafrans have come to us quietly about outfitting an airfield to be used exclusively for relief, in addition to the one they now have, which takes both relief and arms flights. There are manifold problems with this. But we’re quietly offering to send in an expert from one of the relief agencies to see what they have in mind. We’re telling the Biafrans, as we tell everybody, that we are closing no options on saving lives.
If the situation goes true to form, everything above will be over-taken by events 24 hours from now. But I’ll keep you informed as sensibly as possible over the next few days.