THE WHITE HOU SE WASHING T ON December 13 1962 SECRET Last conversation with the President befor e NATO meeting of December 1962 Time Monday December 10 11 0 0 a m Participants The President Secretary of State Secretary of Defense and 11 cGeorge Bundy The two Secretaries brought to the Pres ident three questions which re quired last - minute review Sk ybolt the Azores and the multilateral deterrent On Skybolt Secretary McNamara explained that he woul d go fi r st to London for talks with Thorneycroft He intended to present the strongest possible case for the technical decision which was anticipated and he proposed to offer the United Kingdom three alternative means of meeting its requirements The British could meet the remaining devel opment cost of Skybolt themselves and buy what they wanted for their own use an adaptation of Hound Dog m i ght be developed and supplied o r there might be UK participation in a mul tilateral system of some sort Mr McNamara did not believe that the British would be pleased by any one of these three alternatives at least at first He indicated his substantial agreemen t with a suspi cion I had expressed earlier to the effect that the Bri tish might not have bought Skybolt in the end anyway What he thought we might consid er at some stage in the negotiatiOnA was a proposal to give the British access to a m o r e up-to-date weapons system on the condition that the venture become multilateral ff and when a multilateral force should be developed Such a course might concei vably be t aken for example with Polaris The Sec r etary of State while not disagreein g with Mr McNamara's presentation indicat e d his own deep concern with the difficulties that would be p osed for the British by a cancellation of Skybolt He appeared to incline toward a major effort to assist them in meeting the remaining d evelopment costs so that the cost of Skybolt to them would no t be prohibitive and they would at least have a fair shot at obtainina what they had been counting on DEotJ SSlFl D E O 1 2356 Sec 'i 4 NLl' - qO - 'il SEGRE'¥ -2 - 12 13 62 The President indicated his general approval of Secretary McNamara's proposal and said that he was not eager to join in a large share of further development costs for a weapon to be supplied only to the British On the Azores the Secretary of State reported his strong conviction that it was important now to emphasize to the Portuguese that the United States could not allow itself to become a satellite of Portugal because of any base even the Azores The Secretary intended to say to the Portuguese that H the current t-'ortugue se attirude was sustained the United States would have to begin to comment more strongly on Portuguese behavior in various ways The Secretary warned that this course of action might possibly lead to an unreasoning Portuguese decision to end the Azores agreement entirely The Secretary of Defense and Mr Bundy indicated their belief that this result was quite improbable and the Secretary of Defense said that while it would be most inconvenient for a period of time the Armed Forces could in fact survive such a blow though the Joint Chiefs would probably not agree The President approved the Secretary's planned position On the problem of the multilateral nuclear deterrent it was agreed that Secretary McNamara would begin discussions in directing the attention of Mediterranean NATO members away from the existing obsolescent missile system and toward better arrangements The Secretary of Defense planned to begin with the Italian Minister of Defense Andreotti and to continue with the Turkish Defense Minister As the discussion developed it was agreed that in the light of the uncertainties surrounding the problem of multilateral a n d seaborne deterrents it might be well to begin the conversations simply with an effort to clear up the problem of the Jupiters itself since any arrangement that would remove them would clearly be a step forward for the Alliance as a whole The Secretary planned to point out to the Italians and the Turks that the Cuban experience had brought it home to us how dangerous these soft vulnerable first-strike weapons are They are expensive as well as dangerous and all the countries concerned could better apply the resources which they require to other military or civil undertakings The Secr etary of Defense planned to offer to the Italians in this connection an opportunity to participate in the manufacture of the Ml13 armored veh cle and he proposed to discuss with the Turks the possibi lity of certain further deployments of fighter aircraft It was agreed that he would also be ready to consider the problem of a strengthened Mediterranean deterrent - - perhaps initially in terms of a rearrangement of Polaris deployments SBCRECf S EGf 'F 12 13 62 - 3 - In the course of this discussion there was also conversation about the p lanned speeches of the two Secretaries at Paris Mr Rusk and Mr McNamara indicated that comments and suggestions from the President could well be sent later in the week and so there was no detailed discussion of the draft texts The President did raise the question whether the planned argumentati on for conventional forces was really well based except in the context of Berlin He wondered whether absent the problem of Berlin there would really be a need for large -s cale conventional forces along the main lines dividing Europe He suggested that after all any incursion across this line would in fact l ead promptly to nuclear warfare and that for that reason the nuclear deterrent would be effective Mr McNamara ar swered that he himself would argue that the additional conventional forces would be needed even w ithout Berlin He thought the Soviets could find many other opportunities in Europe over a period of years which would not seem worth a thermonucl ear war to the West and against which the only safe deterrent would be adequate conventional strength The President d id not seem persuaded but he did not press his point i f a McG B SECRET