Letter from Lewis Douglas to Secretary of State Dean Acheson

NLT 783 161 308 THE FOREIGN SERVIOE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA LONDON December 1, 1949 PERSONAL AND PRIVATE Dear Dean: Sir William Strang, Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign Office, asked to see me today. When I called upon him I found the subject to be discussed was the question of the air bases ( in the UK.) It seems that Louis Johnson when he was having breakfast wi th Sir Stafford Cripps Tuésday morning, November 29, , accord- ing to Sir Stafford, had said that Mr. Bevin thought we contemplated a program in Britain amounting to -24,000,000 but that I had subsequently been able to clear this matter up with Mr. Bevin by talking with Lord Tedder, and that it was quite clearly understood that what we were seeking would cost 18,000,000 of which, according to Sir Stafford's account of his conversation with Louis Johnson, the British burden would amount to 63,800,000, with the balance left for us to meet. Strang said that Mr. Bevin, having read Sir Stafford's account of his conversa- tion with Louis Johnson, said that it was not exactly in conformi ty with what had happened. Strang, speaking for Mr. Bevin, wanted the matter satisfactorily cleared up. any APAD I then showed Strang the substance of my cable (Embtel 4715, November 26) and amplified it by telling him that in my conversation DE with Tedder, which took place before I saw Bevin, it had appeared that in the Defense Ministry here the figure of L24,900,000 had somehow or other insinuated itself into the proposition and that this very much larger figure was related to a very much larger program. I told Sir William that I had immediately in the presence of Lord Tedder gotten in touch with General Johnson, who as you know is in command of our Air Forces in England, and had discovered, through him, that the 124,000,000 figure had its origin in a discussion in Washington between an American military planner and a British military planner. This figure I found out was not based on any accepted program of our government but merely on one which was being bandied about. This larger program, with which the DECLASSIFIED The Honorable Dean Acheson, STATE MEMO 4-18-79 The Secretary of State, PROTETT NLT 78.33 Washington, D.C., BYNLT-HC NARS, Date 4-26-79 U.S.A. 101