Hello?

Bob?

Bob McNamara, Mr. President.

How are you getting along?

Very well, sir. I called to say that, you may remember, Dean Rusk and you and I talked briefly about the need for a Vietnam speech. We’ve prepared such a speech, and Dean and I have discussed the desirability of my giving it next Thursday night. I have to make a speech here in Washington at that time.[note 1] McNamara was scheduled to speak at the James Forrestal memorial dinner on 26 March, an occasion honoring the former Dillon Read executive, outspoken New Dealer, and defense secretary who had committed suicide in May 1949. I sent a draft over to your office last night to Mike Forrestal, who was going to give it to you.[note 2] Mike Forrestal, the son of the late James Forrestal, was an assistant to National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy.

He hasn’t given it to me. I’ll get it from him and read it over the weekend. I think it’s good. I think, if you could, that you ought to go up and sit down with [Ernest] Gruening and [Wayne] Morse.[note 3] Eleven days earlier, Gruening had delivered the first full-length Senate speech against Vietnam, urging President Johnson to withdraw American forces from “this bloody and wanton stalemate.” Morse had followed up with a similar address the next week. Ironically, while Johnson was urging McNamara to pacify the two Vietnam critics, Rusk, in the 19 March Salt Lake City speech he mentioned to Johnson above, had denounced “those who would quit the struggle by letting down our defenses, by gutting our foreign aid programs.” State Department sources privately suggested that the speech was aimed at Morse and Gruening, the former of whom responded by declaring, “If McCarthyism is the new public relations program of the State Department, the most helpful quitting the Secretary of State could do would be to just quit being Secretary of State.” New York Times, 20 March 1964; “Morse Rebukes Rusk,” New York Times, 21 March 1964.

Well, I think I should, and I think—

What I’d do is ask [Mike] Mansfield.[note 4] Mike Mansfield was a Democratic U.S. senator from Montana and the Senate majority leader. Just say, “Now, I don’t want to debate. I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to convince anybody, but I would like for them to know my viewpoint. And I’m going to make this speech, and the President asked me to ask you if you’d get Morse and Gruening in your office and let me visit with them a little bit about it.”

Very good. I’ll do that. I have got to make this speech Thursday night, and I’ll do that before I do it Thursday.

I’ll get it over the weekend. Are you going to be at home over the weekend?

Yes, sir, I will. I think I can take a lot of the heat off of you—

Yeah.

—on this Vietnam issue, Mr. President. There’s just a lot of misunderstanding on it in this country.

Uh-huh . . . uh-huh.

And that’s the real purpose for it. And it’s—

Now, what are we going to do? Are we going to do more of the same, except we’re going to firm it up and strengthen it, and what else?

Well, it’s really a—

What is a one-sentence statement of what our policy is out there?

Our policy is to help [Nguyen] Khanh—[note 5] One of three military leaders who carried out the late 1963 coup d’etat against the South Vietnamese government ofNgo Dien Diem, General Nguyen Khanh was the leader of the new South Vietnamese government established by a second coup on 30 January 1964, an action Khanh described as necessary to prevent the ruling junta under General Duong Van Minh from imposing a “neutralist” policy in their government’s war against Communist Vietcong guerrillas. Neil Sheehan, “Military Junta Ousted in South Viet-Nam Coup,” Washington Post, 30 January 1964.

Yeah?

—provide the physical security and the economic and social progress for his people that he needs in order to gain their support.

All right, well, that’s what we’ve been doing.

Well, we haven’t done it very effectively, and neither have they.

Why aren’t the Russians as interested in this as we are? Why aren’t the French and the English? Why do they want the Commies to take over all of Southeast Asia?

Well, I think the French are obviously pursuing their own national aims, and they think that we’re going to lose out there anyhow, and they might as well advance their national strength and prestige while we’re losing.

It looks like to me that the Russians would be more interested in saving Vietnam than we are.

You can’t be sure what their position is. I think we—

Doesn’t it seem logical to you? If they’re in the war with them and they’ve got a civil war going on between 800 million Chinese and the Russians, why do they want to see the Chinese Communists envelop Southeast Asia?

I think the reason that they can’t take a strong position against the Chinese Communists here is that to do so will lose them the support of Communist parties elsewhere in the world, who think the Soviets are soft on—

I thought they just thought we had an umbrella over them, like de Gaulle does, and thought we’d do it and they didn’t need to do it—

No, sir, I don’t think so. I think they are in a very sensitive position for control of Communist parties worldwide, and if they appear to be soft in opposing us in Vietnam, they’ll be charged with that and lose control.

In any event, I’ve tried to prepare a strong statement here of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and what the prospects are.

All right. Right. All right. What can I say to the press? They’re going to come in after a while and just visit with me. [Pauses.] Haven’t you got something startling over in your shop?

[Chuckles] No, I was just trying to think. If you want to, you might say that you’ve continued to emphasize, particularly to the Defense Department—which has such a high percentage of the federal budget—the need for increasing our strength and while doing so to reduce costs by increasing efficiency. And that you understand that we will have some further announcements to make on that subject in the next couple of weeks.

It looks as though, Mr. President, we could bring to you a package of base closings, which don’t appear to be too difficult politically, that would bring in savings of something on the order of 60 to 70 million [dollars] a year. And I hope within two weeks to be able to bring that to your attention.

Yeah, I asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff when I talked to them to keep riding herd over and above what you’re doing in your cost-consciousness program, and the Air Force made a report, “Bozo” McKee did, where he’d save a few million here and there.[note 6] General William F. “Bozo” McKee was the Air Force vice chief of staff.

Well, it’s just crap. It’s just showmanship.

It doesn’t amount to much, does it?

No, but I think we can pick up 60 to 70 million dollars in this set of actions, that are really not—

Where are you closing them?

Well, there are a lot of procurement offices scattered all over the country that have anywhere from, say, 100 to 200 people in them. And we can consolidate a lot of these and save about 18 million [dollars] a year there, and this is not difficult politically.

Then we have 14 bases overseas that I think we can close and save some there. Then we’ve got a handful of fairly tough ones in this country, four or five. One is in Ohio, if I remember correctly, and there are a few other places around the country.

Many in Texas?

But the overseas—

Got many in Texas?

No, sir. I don’t remember any one at this moment.

Got any in Kansas or Iowa or Nebraska?[note 7] The President was referring to three heavily Republican states in the Midwest that happened to send to Washington some of his most outspoken congressional critics.

There’s not enough in Kansas, apart from these bomber bases, which we can’t move on at the moment, to do very much with. That’s our problem there. But I’ll bring this list to your attention—

All right.

—in a couple of weeks, and I think you’d be safe in saying that you’ve put the pressure on us to do something, and we think we’ll be able to do it, and then announce it in two or three weeks. And that’ll still leave you room to maneuver in whatever we don’t want to do.

I see the Navy is giving out figures about how many they’re going to cost jobs in various places?[note 8] After speaking to Kenneth BeLieu, the assistant secretary of the Navy, Massachusetts Republican Senator Leverett Saltonstall had publicized the U.S. Navy estimates of job cuts at several East Coast Navy yards. “Transport News: Cut in Yard Jobs,” New York Times, 20 March 1964. Did you see those?

I saw that—in the shipyards. I don’t know how in the hell that got out . . .

I don’t think they ought to do that.

No, neither do I. I completely agree with you. I don’t know how it got out, either. I haven’t—

Can you think of anything else?

No, sir, I can’t.

OK. I’ll talk to you.

Thank you.