—Vietnam, the question is press guidance. I’m inclined to say, when they say, “Is this one of the six we announced a week or ten days ago,” that it’s not one of the six that were identified as losing out there—even though we didn’t identify them by name—it’s not one of those six. But rather, because we need six and this was readily available, we’re landing it early. We’ll decide later when the six arrive whether it’s still required.

You just do whatever you think’s best.

All right. This doesn’t commit you to any more than 15: nine plus six. That’s the advantage of doing it.

Margaret [Chase] Smith’s got a kind of a mean speech on the ticker—says that I’m not going to give them these casualties [unclear] going to regret. And I thought we had a good meeting today. What did you think?

I thought it was excellent, just excellent.

I think we’ve got some—

We got some really frank opinion and I think we can use some of that.

And I think it’ll be helpful.

Absolutely.

I think you’ve got to sit down and talk to Bobby [Kennedy] [D–New York]. He’s getting ready to tour Latin America, and you’ve got to sell the liberal bloc on . . . you cannot run out there, and you can’t stay there without people. You got to back these men so that he doesn’t get off on a tangent again.

He called me today and I returned the call [unclear].

Well, I think you just got to have a serious talk with him. Go over the figures.

I will.

And go over the facts.

Show him [unclear]—

Tell him that [Maxwell] Taylor has gone up, that you presented with Taylor to [Dwight] Eisenhower. And you presented it to others, and that you just can’t find anybody who thinks we ought to leave these boys out there and do nothing, and . . . and we can’t give up. And I don’t see anything to do except give them what they need, Bob. [McNamara acknowledges.] Do you?

Well, I’m—Mr. President, I’m very much of that frame of mind. I must tell you, I don’t think others in your government are, however. But Cy [Vance] and I feel very strongly on that point. We want you to be sure that you see the full risk of this, and it is a very heavy risk, but that’s my [unclear].

Well, I don’t believe it’s as big a risk as walking out.

Neither do I.

Now, what are the alternative?

Neither do I.

And it looks to me like that you—your conscience wouldn’t let you just commit them and then not have adequate—

Well, if the alternative is to go in on a half-assed basis . . . I think that’s—

[speaking over McNamara] Yeah. Well, I think you could get wrecked doing that. I think you—

I went through the Bay of Pigs and I was responsible, in part, for that. And we were wrong not because we did what we did. We were wrong because we failed!

That’s right.

We went in with too little force. All right, I’ll take care of this, Mr. President.

All right.