154. Editorial Note
On January 6, 1965, Assistant Secretary William Bundy sent Secretary Rusk a memorandum entitled “Notes on the South Vietnamese Situation and Alternatives.” The memorandum was in anticipation of a meeting with President Johnson that afternoon at the White House. Most of Bundy’s memorandum concerned Vietnam, but he did discuss Laos, noting that North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union “have called for a Laos Conference without preconditions but have refrained from mentioning a conference on Vietnam.” Bundy suggested that the explanation was simple: the three were “not too happy with the way things have gone in Laos, but that they see Vietnam falling into their laps in the fairly near future.” Bundy added than no one at the Department of State believed that the Pathet Lao/North Vietnamese would concede in any meaningful way on the preconditions demanded by Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma. Bundy suggested that the Pathet Lao/North Vietnamese hoped that Souvanna and the United States would abandon these preconditions, thus drastically weakening, if not destroying, Souvanna’s position in Vientiane. With the exception of the situation in Laos, Bundy stated that in the rest of Southeast Asia, U.S. posture was weak, especially [Page 313] in South Vietnam and Thailand. He suggested consideration of specific actions to remedy this problem. One of these actions was intensified air operations in Laos. Bundy noted “they may have some use, but they will not meet the problem of Saigon morale and, if they continue at a high level, may raise significant possibilities of Communist intervention in Laos with some plausible justification.” Bundy stated that the United States had “gone about as far as we can go in Laos by the existing limited actions,” apart from cutting Route 7, intensified military actions would not accomplish much. He concluded that “this form of action thus has little further to gain in the Laos context, and has no real bearing at this point on the South Vietnamese context.” Bundy’s memorandum is in Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, volume II, pages 30–33.
The meeting with the President was held in the Cabinet Room of the White House from 5:03 to 6:44 p.m. In addition to President Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, Ball, and McGeorge Bundy attended. (Johnson Library, President’s Daily Diary) Bundy’s personal notes of this meeting, the only record found, are printed in Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, volume II, pages 37–38. As a result of the meeting a cable was sent from the President to Taylor concerning policy toward Vietnam. (Telegram 1419 to Saigon, January 7; ibid., pages 40–41)