head of executive secretariat who functions as a sort of mac bundy for the secy of state may if' 1967 The Tuesday Lunch Lasts about two hours sometimes occurs twice a week Accounts for a good share of the policy-making and decision-making on foreign affairs except for emer g en situations he members are Rusk McNamara Hostow Chris sometimes Helms and occasionally Katzenback especially if he is a tou t 4 to '00 acting Secretary for a spell c - ' c President has lots of conta c ts indi Ii dually with t he same men and sheer proximity gives Rostow the most contact tnough not nece s sarily on the most important things But i E n and out of the President's office Johnson may talk by phone to Rusk six or ten times e day or BO for a day ' twowithout talking at all -O ' ' O ' The agenda is put t o g etha r by Read al d Ros tow wi th State I1cNamara and Rostow probably provi ding -about an equal share o f the items ' McNamara the great efficiency expert is the most disorderly especially sinc_ Califano left he has nobody apparently who is in direct R gm charge of follow-up except that he pre sumably confides in and is debriefed by Vance Read debriefs R tut only on results and bits an pieces Reid doesn't k what posi tion ' Rusk takes and anybody who says he does ot than Hcl i amara Ros tow the Pres ident or Chri s t ian is tal through his hat This distinctly doesn't mean Rusk doesn' take positions -- thi-s is a bum rap It means that he doe go around town saying wha t his position is on the theory that he President iI has the responsibility in the end and his is the only position tha t matters Rusk suf fers by comparison with HcNamara who is all thin gs to all men a real Janus operation takes on protective colorization wit whomever he's talking Amazing how he gets away with it and remains the idol of people with categorially different views of the war The hawk-dove ove r-simplification distorts Rusk and I1c Naniara viewpoints which are infinitely mope complex Rusk is no more all-Hawk than Mci amara is all-Dove It's practically like the war itself a case-by-case situation where sides chan ge opinions change depending on the issu There are ve ry few yes-no black-or-whi te issues and therefore very few easy categorizatio ns Undoubtedly the present system doesn't bring in as much dissent and other-sides-of-arguments as Bundy did and r10yers Hayes Redmon did afterwards to some d e s ree They practically ran an underBround with second and third x tier disgruntleds dishing out dissents for direct relay to the Whi te Hous e the Pres id ent Read was part of this operation But Bundy of course had a q uited ifferent relat Lonship with Kennedy a nd Moyers role WHS haphazard an d not so frequent though it produced some significant contri wtions to po licy Africa is an example which can be H cited at length if needed Rostow is much more of an advocate Furthermore the policy being pursued H when he arrived at the V'hite H ' use was and is essential aD ' a Rostow poli cy 'i 'his probably accounts in large part for the Johnson-Ros tow rapport which s urpris ed everybody Betting at state was th at Rostow wouldn't amount to much as th White House But he appeals to Johnson also beca he puts the -President's programs in Grand historic perspec makes them sound like major developments in the sweep of history as part of a co nsi stent logical and i ntellectua pattern All Presi dents like this and Johnson all the more since his capacity to attract professors has always been compared with Kennedy's unfavorably Rostow works well with Rusk and they probably do have an understanding thnt Rostow will not work against Rusk's designs and intents without telling him so Nothing in writing but an understanding before Rusk went a long wi th the Rostow appointment Rusk did not w u nt a repeat of the Bundy operation when papers were slipped to the President by Bundy about which Rusk knew nothing and which sometimes collided with Rusk's view The Tuesday set-up probably works to the detrime of the President getting all the arguments It was safer when 110yers ' r Bundy were consciously trying to v iden choices keep open options But the President does make specific requests for the othe r side of proposals or arguments llowever this group is not large enough to bring in enough diversity These are tired men and they know each other so well and are so comfortable together that widening the group and the choice is an effort and a complication and they natura ly don't do it enough But the agendas are pretty broad Too many ite because of the pressure of events like an impending st te visit or a presidential trip or some development which forces a decision and not enough tha spring from an initiative within the government or from a prudent look ahead at some sitution which looks troublesome and might be improved by preventive action Usually about a dozen items but sometimes only one Not long ago a very useful long look at Indonesia took up the whole lunch This was Brom Smi th' s idea' he is the s _ _ r ' ' one man who is responsible for looking ahead trying to anticipate trou ole and he comes up wi th a good maw of the not-so-obvious agenda items Vietnam one way or the other is almost always discussed Lately ABM1s the non-proliferation treaty the kennedy round greece are some of the others that have taken up a lot of time The 7 M l' -'J r '9 Jll Harriman operatior serves up some good some bad ideas and we have tried a number of them This group meets once wee with Harriman Siscoe Gene Rostow Read Tom Huehes Chet Cooper sometimes -Mcnaughton who has an nvitation and somebody from CIA r ' ' -r System is admi tedly a 1i ttle slipshod l'iat amara serves up his c genda items by calling Rostow usually the before No 'cody takes notes Rostow and Read do not care check to see thn t they have covered everything though the do compare notes Rend has no way of knowinG how much he' ge tti n g of the whole howe ver and MMTNiiX nothing is formal put in writing unless there are operational orders or act _ x cables which are aGreed upon stuff that gets lost in the ' back on the agenda a gain a pparently a little like hay on a N N moving wa g on with a little slipping y ou go along and being thrown back on Overestimates of diplom a tic risk matched by 0 ver of military success -- maybe they baQance each othe r out p everybody that much more cautious and suspicions Bundy Thinks this system probably ideally suited both for the nature of the war and the na ture of che man it serves in wha tever priority you want to assign McNamara hates ftostow Goldberg no comparison to 3tevenson who x rath8r ineffective o Goldberg does his nomework comes do here and wrestles through thing s with assistant s ecret a rie presents reasoned well-prepared proposals and g e ts a he a ring if though the current phase of the wa r leaves Goldberg and the UN rather out of things You need a fluid system for a fluid prohlem wi options open in the sense that the war co uld end tomo spread to China or CamlDdia or Laos or begin winding down It has no cle a r and ' final objecti ve it is psycholo and political and military the e are no good parellels Rostow apparent ly sees one' in vlorld War II bombing surveys He has ' a higher view of the efficacy of bombing than most people Problems recut in Vietnam like what do you bomb whereas we only had to face the Yalu issue once Dissent is a nother unique feature Rep ularly th is t alk of a resolution in Congress --not a declaratinn of war but a n updated Tonkin But it must collapse over at the Wh i te House presun ably when the l e adership is sounded out Apparently the political problems are the argument agai nst it tha t and the dan er thc t it mi ght stir more dis s ent than it would be worth '''' ''' ' - '- ' 'f Decision to go north and land combat troops was st a ffed out me iculously where we erred w s that we did not foresee the extent of comb t involvement an d the need troops and possibly most people thought bombing wou-id eha Hanoi's mind faster But we had considered all the possib it ho w ill ever know whether Johnson wDuld' have done it if known how f t l r he wo uld have t o go But sure i ennedyw uld ha ve gone down subs tantial ly the same -road Saigon was a togo under had to do something 'l'ommy 'rhompsonstill very a ctive but not as clos _ o naturally though everything on Viet am that might effect Russians is passe d along to him for commeuts Kohler has yet to achieve m the influence Thompson had with Johnson There is danf er that success in escalatins wi t invi ting response could have ll111ing effect reduce the effectiveness of those who have ca u ti oned against it in the past and whose alarm has proved baseless But weare awar of this very danger One of my jobs Bundy is to checl out proposals deCisions pending to see if P e ent is g tting roundc t 'l ' ' Addendua to Geye lin aeao on BEN READ anc BILL BUNDY froa Marder BEN READ Mrs LBJ also drops 1 sOllletlae on tII alli Tuesday lunches Rostow does have very f1xe' pos1tlOB OR Vletnaa unllke MacBundy om aoat 1ssues who was e the tradl tl staff chlef Rostow 1s 1n pos1tion to t1lt option and ar ents and Read indicated he does Q In addition to tting debriefed by RuSk Read also gets regularly debriefed b Y Rostow on Tuesday lunches thlt Rusk very definltely intended to simnal a change at aood by his tard-line briefing of Friday Read said thls followed a lunch _ Rusk had With Bundy He said they felt 1t was tiae to cut-down line that U S was fallin over-1tself ln IrOPlng for a dlpla atic out to the war--because it looked like 1t was gettin counter-producti e In View of ai11tary Situation with heavy forces on DMZ thought it tiae to shift aood to gri er tone A ee8 AGREES that risk-crying at each s step up ladder which encountered no eat repercussion puts ax risk-cners in weakened positlon But who can be sure what aove aay be the 1'111 1 straw On reference to full session on IndoneSia Marder thinks Read was talking about NSC rather than Tuesday lunch Read was saying that NSC Ileetlngs usually were llttle ore than for al1t1es BUNDY Phrase that Bundy used in coaparin Vletnaa to Korean war was that in V1etnaa debate the l1ti tl0 con tinue tt Ileaning sge arguJlents recur Concedes that Rostow aore ca 1tted on Vietnaa than llDli MacBundy was but notes chan of problea D18a ees wlth thesiS that Rostow pores over ups and target llsts says JboI4 Mac had sue practlce wl tb runnlng crisls ACknowledged he does not see all pleces of dec1s1ons Inslsted t hat only alli tary actlon that u y have a tl crossed dlplomatlc llne without reallzatlon was happenlng was IIDl DxIxBIIdtJII Dec 1-2 boIIlbln1 ot Hanol Said he and Rusk were ttlns on plane when they recelved word of It Iaplied they were surprised by it 'because lt cut across bows of Warsaw probe operation Contended that Dec 13 boablnS of Hanol area did -not hit thea that way l1eml1n that was planned decislon to do lt despite areaw prol1 ng operatlon Sharply disagrees wi Bartlett-Welntal sequence OD Vletnaa Agrees DKts xwa with thesls that this war d1f'ferent _ fro all other wars and 13 ana d ln dlfferent way than ever before S Concedes readily that ar ent couched ln teras that ltKanol won't plck up the phone ls absolute nonsense Two sldes in fUndaaental d1sa eaent about results of any negotlatlon May 4 1967 memo ADD EBUNDY Eundy agrees that Purchett interview marked from Hanoi's standpoint an immortant shift and a tum away frog nit-picking arguz cntation over four basic mints and whether mum preconditions or not Says that he thought there was once chance in four that maybe some development alright come out of Kosygin London sequence but became apparent that Hanoi had moved as far as it intended in Burchett interview and was stonping right them                     National Security Archive    Suite 701  Gelman Library  The George Washington University    2130 H Street  NW  Washington  D C  20037    Phone  202 994‐7000  Fax  202 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