February 19, 1951
At the end of a meeting which the Secretary had with Messrs. Rusk, Matthews, Nitze, Jessup re the memorandum on the subject of Rashin which had been addressed by General Marshall to the President, through the Secretary of State for his approval, the Secretary telephoned Mr. Lovett to ask him whether he was familiar with the memorandum. Mr. Lovett said he was familiar with the subject but had not seen the memorandum since he had been on the Hill.
The Secretary said he wondered whether the matter had been thought completely through. He was particularly concerned about the alternative of naval gunfire, which the Secretary thought would be most dangerous. Mr. Lovett agreed, and said this alternative had not been in the previous draft, and that General Bradley had been inclined to rule it out in earlier considerations.
The Secretary pointed out that this whole matter had received a great deal of most careful consideration last summer, and, he said, in reading over the present memorandum and attachments, he did not think that a strong case is made for changing the decisions made then.
Mr. Lovett seemed inclined to agree, and pointed out that this place was not a marshalling yard in the strict sense, it was more of a depot. If we had blown the tunnels, the rail service should be useless. If we have not blown them, we should do so. If it is a dump and there are ships off- loading, those ships will belong to other countries, and the chances of "slippage" and damage to such ships is great. He did not think the photographs he had seen were sufficiently clear to identify the character of the target.
Mr. Lovett said he thought that a very powerful case should be made out for the bombing. He did not think from what he
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had seen that a strong enough affirmative case had so far been made. Mr. Lovett said his hunch was the Air Force had run out of targets and is looking around for something to hit. He thought, if they wanted targets, they could go on blowing up behind the lines.
The Secretary said he hesitated to send the memorandum to the President when there were conflicting views and if the whole matter was not carefully thought out. On the other hand he did not want to hold it up if it should go.
He mentioned the fact that the place in question was only seven or eight minutes by air from a certain other place. He did not think the people at the other place would sit calmly by. Mr. Lovett agreed that it was a worrying matter. If any such operation were undertaken, it should be done by B-29's visually; but that he did not think the fleet ought to be involved. The whole coastline looked so much alike. He would want to be 100% sure that the bombers had the target nailed down.
The Secretary reiterated the fact that his feeling was that the dangers were very great. He thought that "these fellows" would react against the operation itself; and that the action would give a false idea of what our intentions really are.
Mr. Lovett said he thought the Secretary should talk to General Marshall. He repeated that he himself had not seen the memorandum and mentioned that General Bradley had not been present when the JCS first talked about the action.
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