 out of place message from from uh... think back saying forces are ready in weather forecast favorable for strikes against targets forty eight nine that's high-flying and i don't know if you're well wednesday after uh... eleven hundred hours which means eleven hundred eight hours which means eleven p.m. tonight and i'd like to go ahead and issue the authority of acceptable view all right uh... i've talked to buzzy agrees we got to anybody else that comes quicker than i thought i was hoping we could do it friday here you're quite right i told you know we've got we've got to we've got three things happening we've got ball testifying before full right thursday that's bad we've got to go leaving thursday come back to moscow wrapping up thursday leaving friday morning we got my going into the midwest on thursday those three events are pretty pretty important i'm going to talk to you about it this morning on in connection with thursday that's why i'm just thinking out loud now just to review this i don't think that we much position say anything to these they ask you this bob what do you think uh... you familiar with the historical battleship main what happens to our tanker there if we get the same proposition what's going to be their response i'm not let me say i'm not absolutely sure that there is any tanker there right at the moment and the first one didn't finish unloading within it's a lot of time of seven days that's what we can tell and it was to leave uh... early in order to let the second one in the first one leaving without finishing unloading the second one doing uh... today or last night their time i'm not absolutely positive there's one there today but if one is there now the chances of hitting it are small if we do hit it i think it's really serious i think it's serious where you're sitting there uh... let's put you in the line and their position i think it's serious mr president but i think that that we have told the russians that there clearly is that we put it in writing that we have done everything possible to avoid antagonizing them military conflict and i think while it would be serious and while we would have a very strong protest i myself doubt that uh... it would lead to any military action as a matter of fact the appraisals are that if we put a if we mind the harbor and stop Soviet ships from coming in there won't lead to military action so if we get the tanker uh... i doubt that it would lead to military action i i nonetheless recognize it as a serious action and i think that we must do everything possible to avoid it i think it extremely unlikely that we could plan the operation so that weather and no tanker would coincide as best we can tell they're having difficulties moving p o l out of my phone with the result that it takes longer to unload these vessels than it formally did and since they're sending three tankers a month in there since under best of circumstances takes about seven days per tanker you can see that the month's pretty full and uh... this third tanker doing this month apparently has been diverted to Shanghai because they didn't have enough time to unload at night so the possibility of getting a coincidence of good weather and no tanker is damn small uh... but you do feel there's a possibility today well that's what the message says no i i know i shouldn't say there's a part i just don't know for sure that at the minute there's a tanker there i could find out a few hours probably if there isn't a tanker there today it's just your coincidence it's the fact that the first one's moving out the second one moving in so i don't want to give you the wrong impression the probabilities are there's a tanker there now all right now that that is eleven hour time tonight it's eleven p.m. tonight our time do you think of any other things we ought to do no i don't think so i think we want to do what was your what significance you give rest of our yesterday i didn't put any particular significance on it i thought he was uh... more or less uh... trying to firm things up a little bit well i think i'd like to say something to us to go ahead well i thought so too but i didn't he didn't have any real doubts in his mind when he left as best i could tell he sort of wished we could put the problem behind us but he didn't know how to do that and under the circumstances though we should go ahead and i thought that was essentially the way i think now what we've got to analyze very very carefully and we have like before we before we execute i think we've got to say do we get enough out of this the price would pay the hard kids are all they're starting their campaign tomorrow on the senate floor well let me have got an article this morning on exactly that point and i think the answer is that this is just a minor incident in the war it's almost an incident you can't avoid taking i don't see how you can go on fighting out there without doing this gradually frankly i don't think you keep them rally your troops up i don't think you keep them around the people in the country support you up without doing this we're at about that point now in addition to that i myself believe it has military value although i don't for the minute put the weight on it but i don't put the cost on it that some in state do i don't put the cost on it that george ball does for example i don't believe any soviet experts including tommy thompson put the cost on it that george ball does what do you think we ought to do now with state assuming you wanted to do this uh... i'd be inclined to send out the execute order i don't like to do these on a half-assed basis and they do need some time to be absolutely sure that they have authority to do it take all the necessary precautions preparation i'd send out the execute order now if you want to do it later in the day you want to cancel we can't always cancel but it's much easier to then execute now and cancel later than it is defer a decision and then late today send out an execute so i'd send out the execute now and then maybe it at noontime or even later in the afternoon talk to george ball that the only thing that needs to be done i think that hasn't really been done thoroughly is to go over our plans for announcing this after it's done i i think that needs further work i'd like to get george and walton myself personally going to that late in the day yes i thought about that yesterday and thought we ought to spend some of the time today at lunch and i think in the light of the editorial this morning you probably ought to try to see two or three members of that board here at the post maybe bradley and yeah and wiggie and wiggie those three people because it's pretty good editorial this morning yes bob i would go ahead with this suggestion you make then we'll talk then you feel free to cancel later in the day and we can always do that what i want you to carefully weigh is uh... you gave just now when you talk about your troops i wish you'd just build two columns for us to let us just look at and think carefully because we might we might have a lot of problems in the morning we don't have to nap you're right we might have to nap early in we might have lots of places now what is going to flow from this we know that we'll we'll get some temporary approval but if things go bad that won't last very long what do we get out of it really things are going reasonably well in the south yes i think so what are these six thousand men doing they're trying to locate the enemy i see and they run them in the cave yeah i think about that but it's a small it's just so typical mr president they're relatively small enemy force we think we're we're uh... taking a heavy toll on them but it just scares me to see what we're doing there with taking six thousand u.s. soldiers god knows how many airplanes and helicopters and firepower and going after a bunch of half-starved beggars at two thousand at most and probably less than that and this is what's going on in the south and the great danger not a certainty but it's that danger we need to look at it is that that they can keep that up almost indefinitely well i'd say was there manpower resources they have they can't yeah that's the point the only thing that will prevent it president is their morale breaking and if we we've hurt them enough it isn't so much that they don't have more men as it is that they can't get the men to fight because the men know that once they get assigned to that task their chances of living are small i i myself believe that the only chance we have a winning and that's one reason i in favor of this pll because there's no question but what the troops in the south of the bc in north east of the troops in the south ultimately become aware of what's going on in the north we see this through the interrogation of the prisoner reports i've been trying to watch those carefully to see what comes through those and they know that we're bombing in the north now they know we haven't uh... destroyed the place so that uh... in a sense our bombing is fully effective but they also know that nobody is protecting our bit and we just have a free reign and we bomb this pll ultimately that will become known for the north vietnamese soldiers the vietnam in the south and it's just one more foundation brick knocked away from their support when they see they're getting killed in such high rates in the south and they see that the supplies are are less likely to come down to the north i think you'll just hurt their morale a little bit more and to me that's the only way to win because we're we're not killing enough of them make it impossible for the north to continue to fight but we are killing enough to destroy the morale of those people down there they think it's going to go on forever all right, go ahead Bob, thanks