And so we did not do it obviously. I thought we should have. But we could not do it without his permission.

The point here is he was an elected President. The other government was not elected. He was the man who went in with 60 percent of the vote. It is a different situation.

It would have been, I think, a mistake to bring a carrier in after it had gone too far. It is a question of timing. If you do not do it before things get bad, it is very difficult to do it very late in the game. If you are not prepared to back it up, you better not do it, because it won't work.

Senator MORSE. I would like to say this, Mr. Chairman.

ECONOMIC SANCTIONS

Again, I will change in the next minute if somebody can show me that this line of approach would not be sound.

You are going to have to lose a country or two to save many. I am very much worried about the attitude if we do not do this something worse is going to happen. I am not so sure it may not be a good thing to have something worse happen in country X in order to save countries, A, B, and C.

And I do not know of a better setup than the Dominican Republic, because they did have an election, they have got constitutional processes to correct the inefficiencies or the wrongs of the Bosch administration. And by George, if we are going to go ahead now and let them go through a lot of face saving and set up what they claim is a civilian administration, but not elected, and obviously is controlled by the military, I am afraid you are going to encourage that all over Latin America.

Therefore, I am inclined to have pretty strong economic sanctions at the present time. I never said anything about a blockade. I am talking about an embargo of American goods. After all, the civilians in the Dominican Republic have got to be tought that they have some responsibility in this.

There is a question I am going to send down to you for a memorandum on how pro-civilian participation was in this coup and what civilian groups were behind it and so on, connecting it up with the information I seek on the American businessman.

But at the present time I am turning over in my head the idea that I am not so sure we should not say to the Dominicans, "If this is the grave you want to dig, bury yourself. When you are ready to come back to constitutionalism, we will be there with a helping hand."

It is going to cost us a lot of prestige abroad, and I think it is going to cause us a lot of confusion and opposition here at home among many groups in our own country. We have our own political system that we have to pay some attention to also, the rights of our own people.

I think you are going to lose a lot if you make any compromise with these people. I think you ought to say "We are through from now on until you are ready to come back to a constitutional form of government.'

DO NOT CUT PROGRAMS THAT HELP PEOPLE

Mr. EDWIN MARTIN. Mr. Chairman, I want to confess quite frankly, Senator, that the line of argument you just put forward of losing 1 to save 2 or 3 is one which has attracted me a number of times. I think it is a defensible line of policy. So far on balance, considering all the risks, we have not chosen that line of policy in any particular case. But I do not think it can be ruled out in any

case.

The other thing I wanted to say that has not been said here but I think ought to be on the record, because I do not want to conceal it from anybody-is tht while we have suspended aid we have not suspended Peace Corps operations. We have not suspended the CARE or CARITAS feeding programs; or the Public Law 480 program-and this is the same position we took in the case of Peru. We feel this helps people at the bottom fringe, said they were not responsible, and we should not punish them.

Senator MORSE. I don't call that economic aid, Mr. Martin. I never have. I would help my worst enemy if he were bleeding to death. I am talking about economic aid in a sense that you are helping the economy.

Mr. EDWIN MARTIN. I understand.

Senator MORSE. The whole people have to pay the price it seems to me of not being willing to take civilian action against what has happened down there.

Senator SPARKMAN. Anything else?

Senator MORSE. I may not get this material to you, Mr. Ambassador and Mr. Secretary until tomorrow morning.

Mr. EDWIN MARTIN. We will do our best to provide you answers.

EFFORTS TO PROMOTE BOSCH

Mr. JOHN MARTIN. I feel that I have imposed on this committee, and taken too much time this morning, but I would like permission to say about 5 minutes more on the basic that I put 2 years of my life into this thing. I would like to just inform the committee of a few things.

I don't want the committee to have the impression that we only pay lip service to Bosch in our support for him. I worked to get support for him very hard. I did things like bringing him together with members of the oligarchy who had voted against him, and with American businessmen, I gave a series of dinners in my embassy trying to get support among them for him. I spoke to many, and hundreds privately.

In July I came up here and I went to considerable effort to get President Kennedy to associate himself with me in my visit, had a photograph taken, and then went back and made a statement publicly reiterating our support for President Bosch and his government, and had this photograph locally, so there wasn't any mistake about that. Everybody knew where we stood.

Furthermore, I made it very clear, all the time I was there, both publicly and privately-and some speeches I think I made are in the Congressional Record on this point-that we supported Bosch. I instructed my staff at least twice they must follow this line. And my staff and the collateral missions-and it was their respon

sibility to make sure all of the people under them followed this line. And specifically, for example, I said it was not enough to stand silent when you hear this man criticized-you must speak up affirmatively and say that the United States Government nevertheless supports this government, because it is the elected government of the Dominican people.

In the face of obvious failings and ineffectiveness of Borsch at various times, I continued this support personally to a point where I was losing the support of some of the members of the American community, and some of my Dominican friends.

I believe, also, that the thing that knocked Bosch over-we have to take these things country by country.

THE OLIGARCHY OVERTHREW BOSCH

In the Dominican Republic, I don't think anybody should conclude that the oligarchy so-called as a whole is what overthrew Bosch.

In fact, some of the so-called oligarchy in Santiago ended up being Bosch's best friends and most staunch supporters. The civilians that overthrew Bosch were the defeated political leaders, some political adventurers, some large land owners, and in the final analysis a politically naive military that was persuaded of the danger of communism, which, I think, at that moment has exaggerated.

Senator SPARKMAN. I have been called to the floor.

Senator Morse, will you keep going? And some of these newspaper people want to talk with you after you get through. Senator HICKENLOOPER. I have to go to the floor, too.

STATE DEPARTMENT SUPPORT FOR THE AMBASSADOR

Mr. JOHN MARTIN. Finally, if I may just for the record say so, it has been said in the American press that I at the embassy did not keep the White House and the Department fully informed of the Dominican situation. I feel that I did. The best judges of this, of course, would be the Department and the White House. And I would welcome any inquiry, and encourage any inquiry this committee would like to make on this point.

Mr. EDWIN MARTIN. I would just like to say for the record that I had not heard this charge. I would deny it flatly. I think the reporting has been of unusually penetrating and high quality.

Senator MORSE. Mr. Amabssador, if you had heard Secretary Martin before us the other day you would have no reason to doubt that you had the complete support of Secretary Martin and the State Department. He made very clear, and the record will show, that they were thoroughly informed.

But I want to say to both of you gentleman that this has been exceedingly helpful to this committee. It has been one of our best briefings. It has been very helpful to me.

There are some policy questions here we are going to try to work out, and I am sure we can.

ALL IN THIS BOAT TOGETHER

I think one of the worst things that could develop is a strong divergence of opinion between any substantial segment of this committee and the State Department.

We are all in this boat together. If you sat here yesterday morning, when we started to go back to marking up the foreign aid bill-we were going to consider the amendment we left off with 3 or 4 weeks ago-we never got to the amendment. The rest of the morning was devoted to a general discussion of a matter of policy, as to whether or not we should not advise the President informally and unofficially through the chairman of this committee that the foreign aid bill was in a serious situation in this committee and in the Senate. All the rest of the morning was taken up with that discussion.

And the Latin American situation can create a very serious crises in connection with this foreign aid bill.

I want to do everything I can in my capacity here to try to get these things worked up. I may end up voting against foreign aid, but I will do everything I can to save everything best in foreign aid, as I see it.

I think this briefing this morning has meant a great deal to everyone of us.

[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the committee recessed, subject to the call of the Chair.]

SITUATION IN VIETNAM

[EDITOR'S NOTE.-As the domestic turmoil in South Vietnam worsened, President Kennedy dispatched Defense Secretary McNamara and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Taylor on a factfinding mission in September, 1962. On October 2, they submitted their report to the President, concluding that the military campaign was making great progress but that the "Diem-Nhu government had become increasingly unpopular. They warned that the government's further repressive actions might reverse the favorable military trends, and that moderation of domestic controls might mitigate the political crisis. However, McNamara and Taylor saw no solid evidence of the possibility of a successful coup, "although assassination of Diem or Nhu is always a possibility.'

[The McNamara-Taylor report recommended that certain U.S. aid be withheld as a means of pressuring the South Vietnamese Government to reduce repressive practices and improve the effectiveness of its military effort. "At this time, no initiative should be taken to encourage actively a change in government," they wrote. "Our policy should be to seek urgently to identify and build contacts with an alternative leadership if and when it appears."

[The report concluded with a suggested position for presentation in Congressional testimony and in public statements: "(a) The security of South Vietnam remains vital to United States security... (b) The military program in Vietnam has made progress and is sound in principle. (c) The political situation in Vietnam remains deeply serious.. (d) The U.S. has expressed its disapproval of certain actions of the Diem-Nhu regime [and] will do so again if required. Our policy is to seek to bring about the abandonment of repression because of its effect on the popular will to resist. Our means consist of expressions of disapproval and the withholding of support from the GVN activities that are not clearly contributing to the war effort. We will use these means as required to assure an effective military program."]

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1963

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,
Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room S-116, U.S. Capitol Building, Senator J.W. Fulbright (chairman) presiding.

Present: Chairman Fulbright and Senators Sparkman, Mansfield, Long, Morse, Gore, Lausche, Church, Hickenlooper, Aiken, and Carlson.

Also present: Mr. Holt, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Newhouse, Mr. Tillman, Mr. Yingling, and Mr. Pincus of the committee staff. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

We have a great deal of competition this morning, I may say to our witnesses. Senator Byrd is holding hearings, as you probably know on the tax bill, several of our members are on that committee, but I think we will proceed. There are several others who will come in a little later.

The committee is here to hear this morning the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have just returned from a visit to South Vietnam to report on the situation there.

Mr. Secretary, we are very pleased to have you, and you may proceed in your own way. I understand you have no formal written statement but you will make a statement and then answer questions.