ASÍA AND THE PACIFIC: NATIONAL SECURITY FILES, 1963-1969 FIRST SUPPLEMENT UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA ASIA AND THE PACIFIC: National Security Files, 1963-1969 First Supplement A GUIDE TO THE MICROFILM EDITION OF The Lyndon B. Johnson National Security Files General Editor George C. Herring ASIA AND THE PACIFIC: National Security Files, 1963-1969 First Supplement Microfilmed from the Holdings of The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas Project Coordinator Robert E. Lester A microfilm project of UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA, INC. an imprint of CIS STAFF President Mark Oipaldini .S>. Vice President Richard K. Johnson Vice President and Editorial Director Susan I. Jover Director of Congressional and Legal Services Steven F. Daniel Vice President, UPA Paul Kesaris Managing Editor John R. Heffernan Indexer Mary E. Coe Production Coordinator Dorothy W. Rogers Asst. Production Coordinator Stephanie Mines Director, Information lechnology Andrew M. Ross Manager. Systems and Operations Mojtaha Anvari Computer Operators Nahid Heffernan. Marc Balthrop Director, Administrative Services Lee Maver Micropublishing Projects Production and Services: Vice President, Manufacturing William C. Smith Plant Operations Manager William Idol Administrative Assistant Donna Barrick Published by: UPA, an imprint of Congressional Information Service, Inc. 4520 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. Copyright c 1997 by University Publications of America All rights reserved. Printed and Bound in the United States of America International Standard Book Number 1-55655-642-X The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. CONTENTS General Introduction•The Lyndon B. Johnson National Security Files: "Country Files," 1963-1969 P- vii Scope and Content P- X1 User Instructions p. xni Acronyms p. xvi BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DOCUMENTS P- 1 INDEX BY SUBJECTS AND NAMES P- 123 INDEX BY DOCUMENT NUMBERS P- 185 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF DOCUMENTS P- 227 GENERAL INTRODUCTION THE LYNDON B. JOHNSON NATIONAL SECURITY FILES: "COUNTRY FILES," 1963-1969 The presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson represents a signifi- Rostow. As the title suggests, they consist of separate files, ar- cant period in the history of U.S. foreign policy. The Vietnam ranged chronologically, for various individual countries. They War was the dominant event of this period, to be sure, but it contain extensive cable traffic between the departments and is highly misleading to think of the Johnson years in terms of agencies in Washington and embassies and missions abroad; Vietnam alone. The 196()s marked the height of post-World War memoranda of conversations between U.S. and foreign officials II U.S. globalism, and Johnson inherited from his predecessors and among top U.S. officials; intelligence reports assessing worldwide obligations and a host of complex problems. In ad- critical foreign policy issues; internal memoranda, such as those dition to Vietnam, he faced major crises in Panama, the from the national security advisers to the president; and agen- Dominican Republic, and the Middle East. da for and records of top-level meetings. The "Country Files" Although the cold war shaped U.S. responses to these crises provide a clear sense of the way in which the administration and continued to influence U.S. foreign policy in general, im- perceived major foreign policy issues and framed its re- portant new developments in foreign policy occurred under sponses. Their chronological arrangement permits the re- Johnson. Responding to changes in the international system, searcher to follow on a day-to-day basis the administration's the administration began to devise new approaches toward the handling of crises and to trace the evolution of major policies. Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, the major Vietnam was Johnson's major problem•and eventually his adversaries of the United States. As tensions with these adver- undoing. The Vietnam "Country File" (Vietnam: National saries eased, ties within the Western alliance system loosened, Security Files, November 1963-June 1965) richly documents the causing strains between the United States and its major Euro- administration's escalation of the war from a commitment of pean allies. The economic burdens imposed by the Vietnam War sixteen thousand advisers in November 1963 to that of nearly and by two decades of cold war policies also forced the ad- two hundred thousand combat troops by the end of 1965. This ministration to depart from conventional approaches to the old file, which contains material through August 1965, details such issues of foreign aid and economic development in the Third controversial issues as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the initia- World. The Johnson years thus represented a transition between tion of regular bombing attacks on North Vietnam, and the the global "cold warriorism' ' of the early Kennedy presidency July 1965 decision to commit large numbers of combat troops and the policy of détente and retrenchment initiated by Richard to South Vietnam. From the documents in the file, one can Nixon and Henry Kissinger. clearly sense the growing fears of collapse in South Vietnam, The management of these crises and the groping toward new the sometimes acute divisions among Johnson's advisers on policies can be studied in depth in the "Country Files" section how to respond to the crisis, and the president's own caution. of Johnson's National Security Files. The "Country Files" were The documents offer an in-depth look at the June-July 1965 maintained in the White House by McGeorge Bundy and Walt deliberations that led to the commitment of combat troops to Rostow. national security advisers to Johnson. Bundy and Vietnam. Included are extensive memoranda from critics of Rostow monitored the daily cable traffic through the White escalation such as Undersecretary of State George W. Ball and House Situation Room and coordinated the flow of intelligence advocates such as Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and information to the president, determing what items should plus a number of key reports, among them a lengthy study be brought to his attention. They served as liaisons with the prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff that forecasts the possi- departments and agencies involved in foreign policy, reviewing ble military results of escalation. Records of top-level meetings recommendations sent to the president by these groups and show how the president painstakingly, and with consummate keeping an eye on their daily operations to ensure that policies skill, forged the consensus on which escalation was based. were coordinated and decisions implemented. From the outset, the conflict in Vietnam spilled over into Bundy and Rostow, however, were more than neutral neighboring Laos and Cambodia, and the "Country Files" on disseminators of information; they each met daily with the these nations elucidate the broader, Indochinese dimensions of president and often pushed their own recommendations. In the war. The Laos file contains material through January 1966. 1965, Bundy went to Vietnam and the Dominican Republic to Ostensibly, the United States persisted in trying to uphold the serve as Johnson's eyes and ears during the crises in those areas. tenuous 1962 Geneva Agreements on Laos. In fact, in response Rostow prepared the agenda for and informed agencies of the to growing North Vietnamese use of Laos as an infiltration results of Johnson's famous "Tuesday lunches," the administra- route for men and supplies into South Vietnam, the United tion's primary decision-making vehicle; in addition, he States mounted various military and paramilitary actions along represented the White House in the administration's Senior In- and across the Laotian border. In Cambodia, the mercurial terdepartmental Group, a top-level coordinating committee. Prince Norodom Sihanouk struggled to maintain his nation's Both Bundy and Rostow also publicly defended and explain- tenuous neutrality; to that end he severed relations with the ed administration policies by holding press conferences and giv- United States in late 1963. The Cambodia file, which contains ing "backgrounders" to journalists. material through December 1965, documents Sihanouk's The "Country Files" represent some of the most important desperate maneuvers and the U.S. response to them. foreign policy files maintained in the offices of Bundy and The Vietnam War was also the dominant factor influencing LBJ NSF^ Asia and the Pacific, 1963-1969, First Supplement relations between the United States and major Pacific allies, Europe. 1963-1969 file. Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The material on This is not the case with the other major U.S. adversary. Australia is restricted mainly to the period before December China. The "Country File" on China is one of the largest of 1965. Although it deals with a number of issues, including the entire collection, and the range of material included sug- trade and the U.S. balance-of-payments problem, it primari- gests the complexity of the China issue in the 1960s. The ly concerns the Johnson administration's efforts to get Austra- United States still recognized Chiang Kai-shek"s regime on lian troops to fight in Vietnam. The Thailand file, which con- Taiwan as the government of China, and there is abundant tains material through December 1965, covers such topics as material on the increasingly delicate relationship