 just let him do it on his own. I think that's good. I think the weakness of the government at this stage ought to get roughs and pick all the proposals to pieces. I thought your reference in there last night that you just wheeler, you know, that you just can't take it through wheeler's glasses, your McNamara's glasses, or my glasses, and our strength is going to be based on general overall in the past, that there's no judgment on the Cuban missile crisis, what we wanted to do the first hour, and what ultimately was quite different, the same thing with the Vietnam, so I would much prefer instead of chasing rust around the room as I did yesterday. Yes, I got his thinking, which I think was very good, but on a good many things. But to what I would like to have, if I could, when I come back before the series of meetings, I'd like you to come to my bedroom and say to me, we've talked this over, and here is a preponderant weight of the evidence, is here as I see it, as we see it, and here are the objections to it. Then we go into the meeting, and you take the agenda that we used to say, these are the things on it, now let's everybody speak frankly, and then summarize it and say, now here are the pros and here are the cons, and you can take the red candia, the vanilla, whichever you want, this brother. Here I would take this, if you ask me, and then I think we get down to the nut cutting, so to speak, to the final wrap-up. As it is now, we just explore what could be, what might be, what maybe is, and we don't have that crisp, so I think that you and Wheeler and McNamara and Ruskin Ball and perhaps Clifford ought to sit around your shop or the cabinet room, day on day until say Monday, or whenever they think the time's got to come. I think that it ought to be a very serious weight ought to be given, really breaking precedent somehow on budgets. I think you should sort of look over all the budgets we've ever had, and we ought to separate the regular budget from the Vietnam increased war budget. I would like to, for instance, go on and get our supplemental out of the way and get whatever is reasonable, honest to you there, then for our next one, just maybe not included in the budget, but just say that for Vietnam, when we're not including funds, we're going to get Westmoreland in here and make our plans and put it in a separate budget and we'll send that up at a certain day. I would put the Vietnam in a separate one. Now they'll just say all that can't be done. That's never been done. It's unthinkable to do it, but we did it this last year. If we hadn't, we'd already had controls and we'd had price increase. They're trying to break through right now. Martin's calling me this morning and they're going to have an interest raise and we're just going to let these newspapers by our big microphone talk. Get us into a hell of an economic thing, but not very, very cautious. What I would do, first I don't know how many men, how much equipment, how much build up we've got to have, but I would like to take Magna Mara and Vance and Wheeler, Comer and everybody that you want in that field, Rusk and Ball and whoever he wants, his field, Clifford. I would like to get that group together in the room and keep them there until they came up with what they thought we ought to do out there. And I would give serious thought that they could, some way, our meeting at the Lodge in Westmoreland at Honolulu, so there wouldn't be a way too long. It wouldn't hurt as we do it Christmas then. I would have the peace things going all over the lodge. You got Magna Mara. I would give serious thought to letting them produce something. I talked to Rusk about him going to Poland. He's not quite sure of that. He thinks the police next week, they were just at our going zone in the East West trade and they don't know. He doesn't know whether that would offend them or not. He won't let me know, but I thought they handled it very muskier real well and I thought it tributes what we've done. Nixon can get a reception in Poland that surely shows a real thing. I would think of anything else that could. I'm not sure I wouldn't let Tony Comson take the trip. Just get him a little rest, get him a little fresh, get him a couple of assistance, maybe some of this group goes somewhere and say that he's going to pick off for three weeks and let him go and try to. You always got Chip Olin coming back and forth. You're now. No, I'm just saying that if he can do it, if he can do it, this fellow just sits up there all the time and I think that he can go out and see some of his old friends and maybe come in and say, why don't we try this? I am not happy with the fact that I said, now you've got to January the first to find me a piece of that done anymore than they have at it. So it'll do two or three things yesterday. I said, when you get up in the morning, you say your number one priority today, Mr. Secretary, is to provide the president with the final recommendation when he comes back here as to what we do in the way of troops in Vietnam and the peace efforts in Vietnam. Let's right and left, let's have the prize fighter going to illustrators I did once. So see what you can develop all your people during the day on those two things. Now, the first thing would require you and Bundy at all, McNamara and Wheeler and Bant, and I would put Clifford in the group just to say he's into the foreign intelligence. Maybe Rayburn, I'd have a meeting and then I'd spend the next few days trying to say, what are we going to recommend the president this week? Second, I would try to say what we can do and whether Mansfield comes up for anything, whether Humphrey could do anything, whether Harriman could do anything, maybe Bundy can do something. Maybe you can do something. Maybe Johnston, anybody that you've got any suggestion, maybe Bill Bundy ought to visit around and explore here. Now, I don't want to go in my hat in my hand, but I sure do want to do what we said in the last paragraph yesterday, peace is coming, we want peace, we fight for peace, we work for peace, it's coming. I just want, I don't think that we get that image over and up. So, there are your two things. Now, on Saturday mingo, I want you to try to get Munkard to stay there to relax. He had got a damn thing to do with OAS. He can come home on the weekend. Let's get Tony Solomon down there to help him and let's get anybody else we can to help him, Tom Mann, Bond, anybody that can give him any help, replies, political bias. I knew he would try it. He thought maybe he could. There are more than anybody else. I don't think that things are going terrible in the world except in Vietnam, and I think we're doing so much better there, but we are a learning group and we go to talking about what could happen in the way of inflation. Then pretty soon we talk ourselves into it. We go to talking about how terrible things are. I look at the other leaders of the world and I look at the Kennedy ratings in the world, this man that was perfect, who's perfect now as a world leader by God, when he was the leader, the polls were not good at all except for the period of immediately following the Cuban vessel crisis. Maybe in 1980, my polls will be good, but I don't see him or the one gallop takes him with Wilson, who I like and I think he's a good fella and I think he's just got answers all the time and is really plugging in everything. When I take him with him, when I take him into the process, but then he loves to go because he sees him once a year, but with the goal and the air heart and with Wilson and with Russia, I don't think we fare well in even their own countries and the French poll yesterday was unbelievable. What the hell we've done to gain five points. I don't know. Scotty Reston and our own people just beat us over the head. I read yesterday and our papers here and I just pinched myself. The New York Times are just saying that we would tolerate no other ideas and no dissent and no freshness and no other viewpoints except our own. Here we just come out of a civil rights meeting where they did nothing except just get up and raise hell and spit in your face. We just gone through your special meeting up there with your crackpots, uh, uh, Wiesner and that group and the Baltimore Sun says that Johnson wouldn't even listen to him. He said he wouldn't ask people just to, said it's just a shame that they came to have me listen to him. Well, hell, we'd listen to him for three days. I don't know any president that ever had as many people come in under his banner and cussing like the ICC and they, and they, do you? I must say that it didn't sound to be like we're fresh. I mean, do you know of any president? Do you know of any? We come, we bring in the civil rights group and they come right in and I got to take their perch on the whiteout and while they still got the order of going with getting one hand and a weenie sausage and the other, they just raise an unsure and say it's got to be a hundred billions and you say, where'd you get the figure? We don't know. We just a hundred billion. That's all we know. That's what we want before we go home tonight. And we just stay there and debated with him. I spent an hour with him. Don't you think though, the general image is that our country is, uh, from the standpoint of international affairs, I read he was cited the other day and he says we never have made a foreign policy. They have no background and have never made one. Just not whatever. I just did fine. He's a good man, an able man and he's got to mean his job in the cabinet and I didn't make any decision with him. I told him to go back and let's see if he's optimistic. These Minnesota boys of Walter Heller, Hubert, I'm free, all of Freeman. First thing you do, everything you say gets to the paper. You just got that began with. It's just I'd rather hand that transcript and admonish them because they just cannot keep it. Not one thing. They can't if they go to bed with their wife, it'll appear in the paper the next morning and they just got to tell it and they said the water, the water they drank out there. So, I tried to be careful what I said so that he couldn't truthfully coating thing I saw in Dick Wilson's column who works for Luck and the Coles is three days ago that Freeman had to rewrite his speech in Rome and all about. Well, you know, I didn't tell him that.