 Yes. Mr. Bundy calling him on 9-0. Just a moment. Thank you. Bye. I'm meeting this afternoon. One, in order to get the Canadians fully on board with as much of this message as we can get, we think it very important for someone to speak personally with Pearson. And I've tentatively nominated myself because I don't see anybody else. Would you object to my going up there tomorrow morning to give him the picture where we're going to be briefing his man and saying, giving you whatever you would authorize me to say this afternoon? Or would you rather have the department do it or Butterworth do it or would you want to do it by phone? The difficulty with a phone is it's not entirely secure. What their man is willing to carry in terms of messages to Hanoi may have a great deal to do with how we can get this thing turned off peacefully and that Mike should know that he was doing it for you and not just for a lot of other people. I think if you do it Friday, I think maybe tomorrow you ought to be here. I ought to be here. Alright, I could do it that way. I could do it that way. Second question, Stevenson, you're going to be going up to New York. I talked to him this morning and he's going to come down and see me and he's going to call me back and we finally kind of agreed we'd try to get together tomorrow night. I would have thought that was the best way to do it and I think we ought to plan that basis. I'll tell you the more I just stayed awake last night thinking about this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know what in the hell it looks like me. We're getting into another quarry. They just worry the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we're committed. I believe the Chinese Communist coming into it. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out and it's just the biggest damn mess. It is an awful mess. And we just got to think about it. I look at this sergeant of mine this morning, got sick little old kids over there and he's getting out my things and bringing me in my night reading and all that kind of stuff and I just thought about ordering those kids in there. What in the hell am I ordering him out there for? One thing that is clear to me, what is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? Now we got a treaty but still, we got a treaty but everybody else got a treaty out there and they're not doing anything about it. Now of course if you start running the Communist, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen. That's the trouble. And that is what the rest of that half of the world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. That's the dilemma. That's exactly the dilemma. But everybody I talk to, it's got any sense in here. They just say, oh my god, please give us those. Of course I was reading Mansfield stuff this morning and it's just milk toast as it can be. He's got no spine at all. But this is a terrible thing we're getting ready to do. Mr. President, I just think that the biggest is the only big decision in one sense that this one is one we're having either we either reach up and get it or we let it go by and I'm not telling you today what I'd do in your position. I just think the most we have to do is to pray with it for another while. Anybody else that we got that we can advise with that might have any judgment on this question? That might be fresh, might have some new approach. Would Bradley be any good? Would Clay be any good? No, Bradley'd be no good. I do not think Clay would add. I think you're constantly searching if I understand you correctly for some means of stiffening this thing that does not have this escalating aspect to it. And I've been up and down this with Bob McNamara and I've been up and down it again with Mike Forestall. I think there are some marginal things that we can do and I think the notion of an item, I think also Mr. President, you can do what I think Kennedy did at least once which is to make the threat without having made your own internal decision that you'd actually carry it through. Now I think the risk in that is that we have at least seemed to do it once or twice before. And there's another dilemma in here which is how difficult your own people have in, I'm not talking about Dean Roscoe, Bob McNamara or me, but people who are at second remove who just find it very hard to be firm if they're not absolutely clear what your decision is. And yet you must safeguard that decision. What does Bale think we ought to do? He's in favor of touching things up, but you ought to talk to him about it. I've got an extremely good memorandum from Forestall that I'm just getting ready for you that shows what he thinks about it. What does he think? He thinks we ought to be ready to move a little bit, a little bit. And mainly Fetnamese on the other hand readiness to do more. He believes really that that's the best way of galvanizing the self but if they feel that we are prepared to take a little action against the center of this infection that that's the best way of... What action would take though? Well, I think that we really need to do you some target folder work, Mr. President, that shows precisely what we do and don't mean here. And the main object is to kill as few people as possible while creating an environment in which the incentive to react is as low as possible. But I can't say to you this is a small matter. There's one other thing that I've thought about that I've only just thought about overnight and it's on this same matter of saying to a guy, you go to Korea or you go to Vietnam and you fight in the rice paddies. I would love to know what would happen if we were to say in this same speech. And from now on nobody goes to this task who doesn't volunteer. I think that we might turn around the atmosphere of our own people out there if it were a volunteers enterprise. I suspect Joint Chiefs won't agree to that, but I'd like to know what would happen. We really dramatize this as Americans against terror and Americans keeping their commitment and Americans who have only pieces their object and only Americans who want to go have to go, you might change the temper of it soon. Well, you wouldn't have a corp of guard, would you? I just don't know. I just don't know. If that's true, then I'm not sure where the country to do this job. I don't think it's just Morris and Russell and Greening. I think it's 90% of the people who don't want any part of it. Did you see the polls? More than 65% of them don't know anything about it. Of those that do, the majority think we're mishandling, but they don't know what to do. That's gallop. And it's damn easy to get in war, but it's going to be often hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in. I'm very sensitive to the fact that people who are having trouble with an intransigent problem find it very easy to come and say to the President of the United States, go and be tough. What does Lipman think you're doing? Well, I'm going to talk with him at greater length. What he really thinks is that you should provide a diplomatic structure within which the thing can go under the control of Hanoi and walk away from it. I don't think that's an unfair statement, but I will ask him to do it. Do you mean he thinks that Hanoi ought to take South Vietnam? Yes, sir. Diplomatically. Maybe by calling it a neutralization and removing American force and letting it slip away the way it allows to. What if we didn't do anything and will if we don't do anything? And we would guarantee the neutrality in some sort of a treaty that we would write. I'm sorry, I'm not sure I'm the best person to describe Lipman's views, because I don't agree with him. Who's he been talking to besides Jews? He talked to Russ, can he on this? He's talked to George Ball. He's talked to George Ball, and he's talked to... I don't think he's talked to Russ, and I don't think he's talked to McNamara. Wouldn't it be good for him and McNamara to sit down and... I think it'd be very good, but I don't... I think that I'll do... I had planned to have lunch with Walter on Monday because I couldn't find a workable time before that, but I can do it sooner if you'd like me to. I wish you would. I will. I'll try to get his idea a little more concrete before I leave here, and I'd like to have him talk to McNamara. I might just have the three of you in the afternoon sometime. Walter, McNamara, and him. I'd like to hear Walter and McNamara to evaluate this thing, yeah. All right. What's possible time? Well, at four o'clock time, I need that open. The damned Irishman is all over the place. All record meetings on Southeast Asia. They got you at four today. That's at four. That's to review the telegrams to lodge and other action items that we've been working on the last two days. I've got Ireland five, so why don't we just see if they can come at four? Uh, I put off the four-talk meeting? No, yeah, I'll put the... Or do you want to put Lippman at six? No, no, I've got dinner tonight. Uh, we better... We could... You and I could get to 345 and Lippman and might come in at four if they would. Yes, uh... What happens then to the working meeting is my only problem. How long do you have to have it? Uh, it might wouldn't take you 10, 15 minutes. Well, I'd say come in... I'll come in 345 with you. Try and do that business. And then have them come in at four. All right. Well, I'll make it three... It's 345 and then have Lippman standing by at 415. Or four o'clock. Yeah, bye, I see.