427. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Harriman) and the Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency (Wilson)0

On LAOS (WAH held backgrounder 10/4/62)1

W— I am interested that you took it so easy on your backgrounder.

H —The press have blown this up, and also CIA & the Pentagon—that this is a great event: Oct 7. This is only one of the relatively important or relatively less important steps which have not been taken—one is to open the country up—there is an iron curtain or a jungle curtain between the two parts of the country; no real amalgamation of the govt; no steps in line with integration of forces & demobilization. There are have [sic] a dozen subjects of equal importance. We expected them to cheat about this. This isn’t going to be cut and dried. We had 1600—665 are out. Thais still there. KMT still there. SVN still there. They are going to make a lot of accusations we cannot prove wrong and we are going to make a lot of accusations we can’t prove right. The real question is Khrushchev. Point is, we haven’t got any combat troops there. Our troops are in Thailand—that’s the most important thing—in Laos, not important. There’s been a lot of good news—we’ve been asked to continue to supply Phoumi, to supply the Meo—all these are good. But the point is we don’t want to blow up domestically that Oct 7 is something of importance. We are going to make a lot of noise to the ICC and the Co-Chairmen. We want to make noise to the people that count. This is not the test of their sincerity. If this blows up, it will be because fighting starts up—not because of infringement of the Agreements. The conflict is political now—not military. It is going to be difficult, there is going to be a lot of sparring. What I have said privately is “It’s going just about as badly as I expected but with some better news than I expected.”

  1. Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Harriman Papers, Telephone Conversations, June-December 1962. No classification marking. A note on this memorandum, which was transcribed in Harriman’s office, indicates that it was unread and uncleared by Harriman.
  2. Harriman held a press background briefing on Laos on October 4, no record of which has been found.