March 20. 1964

John McCone, 11:02 AM

President Johnson: Yes?

John McCone: Good morning, Mr. President.

President Johnson: Hi, John.

McCone: I was hoping to get in to see you, but I understand your schedule is very busy.

President Johnson: John, I’ve got a hell of a one today, but I’ll do anything if it’s important. If it’s not, let’s—

McCone: No, it isn’t.

President Johnson: I’m just walking in at 11:00 with Dick Russell and old man Vinson and them on a military authorization [bill]. Then I’ve got—it runs me up on into the late evening.

McCone: Yes. Well, I’m leaving at 1:00, and am going to get away for about 10 days.

President Johnson: Well, if you’ve got anything you want to, come by and I’ll step out. I’ve got to see Don Cook, and Jake Potofsky, and Clark Clifford and Abe Fortas, and Boy Scouts that got burned, and Dick Russell . . .

McCone: There isn’t a damn thing over here to worry you with.

President Johnson: Good.

McCone: There’s just a very interesting product of some satellite operations that I want you to see some time.

President Johnson: Well, we’ll do it when you get back. How long are you going to be gone?

McCone: I’m coming back on Easter Sunday.

President Johnson: Well, I’ll be back. I’m going home next weekend, and we’ll get together and have lunch or something right afterwards.

McCone: Yes, well, I just didn’t like to leave without checking out with you first.

President Johnson: Well, you’re wonderful. You just—

McCone: And I know you’re just busy as hell. There isn’t anything here—there’s the usual run of problems [unclear].

President Johnson: [sneezing] I don’t ever worry about your shop.

McCone: There isn’t anything to worry about.

President Johnson: OK, my friend.

McCone: OK, fine. Bye.

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October 31, 1964

LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover, 10:35 AM

President Johnson: What do you know this morning?

Hoover: I haven’t heard anything more than that rumor that we got yesterday.

President Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Hoover: I talked to Abe Fortas about it. I think he talked to you in Chicago.

President Johnson: Well, he talked to one of my men. I was speaking. I’m just getting ready to go to New York. Do you have any idea who that might be?

Hoover: No, I haven’t any idea. I would surmise it might be down the line, but they always refer to a cabinet officer. But I do know that over in the Defense Department the Navy has had under surveillance this fellow [excised material] who works for an assistant secretary by the name of Ballou.

President Johnson: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Hoover: [continuing] In connection with some deviation.

President Johnson: Yes.

Hoover: Now, Ballou’s name, you will recall, was mentioned a number of times in the Billy Sol Estes matter. But this fellow [excised material] has been working in his office, and the Navy have had him under surveillance. We took over that investigation yesterday . . .

President Johnson: Yes.

Hoover: [continuing] Because it involves the overall picture of any penetration into the security of—he was never assigned to the White House—but any security of the country.

President Johnson: Yes.

Hoover: That is the nearest one. They said that this particular man had been under surveillance, and that they were going to explode this bomb today. Now, the only person I know of who’s been under surveillance by any agency has been this man over in the Navy Department. We’ve had no one under surveillance, and I don’t know of any other intelligence agency that has had one, except the naval intelligence.

President Johnson: No, I read that. What they said was—they raised the question of the way he combed his hair, or the way he did something else, but they had no act of his, or he had done nothing—

Hoover: No. It was just the suspicion that his mannerisms and so forth were such that they were suspicious.

President Johnson: Yes. He worked for me for four or five years, but he wasn’t even suspicious to me. But I guess you’re going to have to teach me something about this stuff!

Hoover: Well, you know, I often wonder what the next crisis is going to be. [An awkward pause ensues.]

President Johnson: I’ll swear I can’t recognize them. I don’t know anything about it.

Hoover: It’s a thing that you just can’t tell. Sometimes, just like in the case of this poor fellow Jenkins . . .

Yes.

Hoover: [continuing] There was no indication in any way.

President Johnson: No.

Hoover: [continuing] And I knew him pretty well, and [Deke] DeLoach did also, and there was no suspicion, no indication. There are some people who walk kind of funny and so forth, that you might kind of think are little bit off or maybe queer. But there was no indication of that in the Jenkins case.

President Johnson: That’s right.

Hoover: I’ve never seen this fellow [unclear] but we heard so much of these things—these stories, opinions and such . . . I think [Drew] Pearson had the information for you. We got an affidavit from that source saying it was absolutely untrue; it was just said as a gag. Got that yesterday.

President Johnson: What was that?

Hoover: That was the story of this man being planted in the Republican National Committee and the frame-up of Jenkins.

President Johnson: Yes.

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February 27, 1964

President Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover, 8:53 PM

President Johnson: Edgar, I don’t hear you well. What’s the matter? You got this phone tapped?

Hoover: [Chuckles nervously.] No. I should say not. I can hear you perfectly, sir.

President Johnson: All right. Did they talk to you about this statement down here tonight?

Hoover: No, they have not.

President Johnson: Well, they talked to somebody over in your shop.

Hoover: I think they talked to [Nicholas] Katzenbach.

President Johnson: I wanted to talk to you before I say it. Here’s what I was going to say. They had this bombing this afternoon. Have you got any leads on that at all?

Hoover: No. We have been working on that case very intensively ever since these bombings got started down there. We’ve had special men. We have three offices in Florida—in Tampa, Jacksonville, and Miami—and I ordered this afternoon one of the inspectors of the Bureau to proceed to Florida and coordinate the entire operation.

President Johnson: One of who?

Hoover: One of my chief inspectors, to coordinate the entire operation of the three offices. In other words, we have been going all out on it.

President Johnson: How much can I say about that?

Hoover: You can certainly say that the FBI is giving top priority to these various bombings that have taken place.

President Johnson: Why can’t I say that I talked to Mr. Hoover, and he tells me that the FBI has its full force investigating the bombing, and some of his top men are on the spot now?

Hoover: That’s correct. You can say that.

President Johnson: OK. All right. That’s all I wanted to know. I didn’t want to get into your Bureau without talking to you.

Here’s what I’m going to say. You listen to this now. Forget the FBI, and just listen to it as my adviser.

Hoover: Yes.

President Johnson: I don’t want to say anything wrong that hurts the decent union movement, and I don’t want to say anything that does that, but at the same time I’m not going to tolerate blowing up people with bombs—whether it’s the business people or the unions or who. And I don’t think a good union ought to want to.

Hoover: No, they ought not to.

President Johnson: And it may be business. We don’t know who’s doing it.

"The continued violence against the Florida East Coast Railroad is appalling."

Hoover: It certainly is.

President Johnson: [continuing] "Without regard to who is right and who is wrong in this labor dispute, this criminal action has got to stop"—

Hoover: Exactly right.

President Johnson: [continuing] "We don’t settle things in this way in this country."

Hoover: Right.

President Johnson: [continuing] "I talked to Mr. Hoover tonight, and he informed me that one of his chief men is en route to Florida now, and the FBI has thrown its full force into investigating this bombing. In the meantime, I urge the parties to renew their efforts to find a way of settling this dispute. I’m asking the Secretary of Labor to confer with Governor [Farris] Bryant immediately, and give me their recommendations promptly."

Hoover: Good.

President Johnson: Is that all right?

Hoover: That’s all right with me, Mr. President.

President Johnson: OK.

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2-25

Vietnam

President Johnson and Robert McNamara, 11:45 AM

President Johnson: Bob, I hate to modify your speech any, because it’s been a good one, but I just wondered if we shouldn’t tonight still give our relative strengths and still give a very brief summary. I wouldn’t go into the anti-defense and stuff.

McNamara: Yeah.

President Johnson: But a very brief summary of what you’ve cut in the budget. I’d go into that a good deal. You could say that we’re not—they asked for $10 billion more than we gave them, so whenever anybody says that we’re giving something to everybody, why, we’re giving them a billion less than they’d like to use. But find two minutes in there for Vietnam.

McNamara: [Pauses.] Yeah, but the problem is what to say about it.

President Johnson: All right—I’ll tell you what I would say about it. I would say that we have a commitment to Vietnamese freedom. Now, we could pull out of there, the dominoes would fall, and that part of the world would go to the Communists. We could send our Marines in there, and we could get tied down in a third world war or another Korean action.

The other alternative is to advise them and hope that they stand up and fight. Now, we think that by training them and advising them in the period of three years, we can have them trained. And we removed some there who were guarding the establishments that didn’t need to be guarded any more, absolutely no need. We’d put in 10,000 more if they could be useful and if we needed them for training, but this 1,000 we didn’t need, because they were guarding whatever they were guarding, and that’s why we pulled them out.

Now, we estimate that with the 15,000 we’ve got left, that all the rest of this year and a large part of next year, that we can just train anybody in that period of time, and for that reason, we’ve said that we can reduce that number after they’re trained. Now, this nation has made no commitment to go in there to fight, as yet. We’re in there to train them and advise them. And that’s what we’re doing.

Nobody really understands what it is out there. They don’t know, and they’re getting to where they’re confused, and they’re asking questions, and they’re saying why don’t we do more. Well, I think this: you can have more war or you can have more appeasement. We don’t want more of either. And it’s their war and it’s their men, and we’re willing to train them. We have found that over a period of time that we kept the Communists from spreading.

We did it in Greece and Turkey with the Truman Doctrine, by sending them men. We did it in Western Europe by NATO. We’ve done it there by advice. We haven’t done it by going out and dropping bombs, and we haven’t done it by going out and sending men to fight. We have no such commitment there.

But we do have a commitment to help the Vietnamese defend themselves. We’re there for training and that’s what we’re doing. They say that the war is not going good. Well, there are days when we win, and there are days when we lose, but our purpose is to train these people. Our training is going good, and we’re trying to train them.

McNamara: All right, sir. I’ll get right on—

President Johnson: I don’t know if I’ve said anything there that I shouldn’t say.

McNamara: No, no. I think that’s—

President Johnson: But that’s the way you said it to me, and it appealed to me when I say why in the hell . . . I always thought it was foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the President thought otherwise, and I just sat silent. Now, you’ve made them, and I asked you for your explanation, and you give me a good explanation. There’s not a damn bit of use of having 1,000 people sitting around guarding something that they don’t need to guard.

McNamara: No question about that, Mr. President. The problem is—

President Johnson: All right, then the next question that comes is how in the hell does McNamara think that when he’s losing the war that he can pull men out of it? Well, McNamara’s not fighting a war. He’s training men to fight a war. When he’s got them through high school, they will have graduated from high school, and will have 12 grades behind them next year, and he hasn’t taken on any agreement to keep them for the rest of their life. He’s just made a commitment to train them to fight. And if he trains them to fight and they won’t fight, he can’t do anything about it. Then he’s got to choose whether he wants to fight, or let them have it.

McNamara: This is the problem exactly. And what I fear is that we’re right at that point. Well, anyhow, I’ll get this out to you.

President Johnson: Now, we’ve got to decide who goes with you, because they tell me that everybody in town is wanting to go, and I sure wouldn’t haul anybody out there that I just didn’t have to have.

McNamara: I feel exactly that way.

President Johnson: One man that I want to suggest—and I’m sure you can cut him right back, right quick, and I won’t hesitate and if you don’t mention him any more I’ll just know that you haven’t used him—but from the psychological standpoint, and from a political standpoint, there’s one man that I would have on that plane with me—and that’s [David] Shoup. I would put a stop to [Mike] Mansfield’s speaking up there on it every day, and Shoup would put a stop to it.

I’d have Shoup just go out there, and sit in on these meetings with [Maxwell] Taylor, just kind of ex officio. He’s out, he hasn’t got anything to do, and he’s got that medal on his breast, and Mansfield is just worshipping the Marines, and the rest of them that are raising hell do the same thing. Then I’d use Shoup to go up and tell these boys some things. He’s worth a dozen Averell Harrimans to you.

That’s my judgment, but I’m not any expert on it. I think that he’s quiet enough and humble enough that he’s not going to be bossing around and threatening any. He can sit in the back row. You don’t have to mess with him. But when he gets back here, he can take the McNamara line and sit down with Mansfield and sit down with the rest of them, and say, "Now, here’s the story." We can get him invited to come and see them. You give a little thought to that.

McNamara: I sure will.

President Johnson: All right.

McNamara: All right, sir. Thank you.