Office of the Historian

161. Electronic Message From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (McFarlane) to Robert Kimmitt of the National Security Council Staff1

Washington, April 2, 1984

SUBJECT

  • Follow Up to Debt Breakfast

Please pass to Roger Robinson the following:

Please get together with Mulford and Wallis in the next day or so to draw up a work program to include the short and long term issues [Page 411] raised at this morning’s breakfast.2 Specifically we should lay out our collective view of the near term crises which loom (e.g. Nigeria, Costa Rica and others). We should define the apparent risks of excessive internal conditionality and the possible approaches to meeting the short term arrearages. Then we should also define the agenda for long term policy elements such as the regulatory reform possibilities and notion of a conference.

I think it is important that we put this together subtly but deliberately. You obviously have brought Mulford along in a careful way and he has had an influence on Don. That’s good. We should move as fast as the traffic will bear but I think that end is facilitated by quiet work without a lot of interagency paper at the outset. Work informally for the moment and accelerate your efforts as we gain the confidence of Regan that we aren’t making a raid on Treasury’s domain. In that context I don’t think we need a formal interagency memo setting up the Cabinet body at this time. As long as it is working let’s let it be invisible (in a paper sense) but effective. As an organ for accountability let’s schedule another breakfast or meeting within two weeks so that we can review what you prepare at the working level and take another step. Many thanks.

  1. Source: Reagan Library, Robert McFarlane Files, Chronological File, Chron (Official) April 1984; NLR–362–6–29–l–1. Secret. Copies were sent to Poindexter and Martin. Printed from an email that was forwarded from Martin to George Van Eron on April 2 at 9:12 a.m. with the request “please pass to roger. thanks.”↩
  2. Monday, April 2. Shultz, Regan, and McFarlane met on April 2 to discuss international debt management. See Documents 158, 159, and 160.↩