Memorandum for the Record Authored by Andrew J. Goodpaster

TOP scan October 3, 1956 MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD The following met with the President today to discuss a special reconnaissance project -- Secretary Dulles, General Cabell, Mr. Bissell, Admiral Radford, Colonel Goodpaster. The President said he had become discouraged regarding the project principally because, whereas he had understood there would be a good chance of not being discovered on most, if not all, operations, just the opposite had proved true. An evaluation he had seen did not take up the question of world opinion. He recalled great ef- forts for many years we have been making to create an opinion in There the world that we are not truculent and do not want war. To the world, these operations seem provocative and unjustified as violat- ing sovereignty. Mr. Dulles said he did not dissent from the President's comment. He thought if we could get really important results by a crash operation of a week or ten days we might consider the matter further, but he questioned how permanently valuable the results would be. Assuming there will be no war (which seems correct, although we can never be sure) it would seem that the information would become obsolete if operations were not followed up. He did not think that we could afford to go on indefinitely taking the propaganda impact that has occurred. General Cabell said the results would have validity longer than the Secretary might imply. A good datum of geographic and man-made features as well as deployments would be established. In addition, we might learn of things that we do not now know exist. The President said a Russian can now buy an air ticket in New York and learn about our whole country. He questioned whether they would lay a complaint before the United Nations, although they might speak about it. Secretary Dulles thought it was possible they might make a complaint to the U N regarding "aggression, " i.e., violation of their frontiers. IAR SCALL DECLASSIFIED WITH DELETIONS E.O. 12958, SEC. 3.6(b) Agency Case E0-1996-0005/ NLE Caso 94-349#3 By BBM NLE Dato 8/24/90