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10/11/53 - Reel 5. track 2 - Page 1 MR. JOHNSON: Just to finish my sentence: the third alternative, in terms of the Middle East - I mean the middle term defense program. It seems to me that maybe this is a lesson that is very important for students of government to grasp: that it is essential at times not to make too clear cut a decision initially, especially when you are dealing on the international planes. MR. GRAHAM: You mean not to make too clear cut a decision, or not to appear to make too clear cut a desision? MR. JOHNSON: Not to make it. And if I understand correctly, the decision was not made. DR. OPPENHEIMER: Well, I think there is at the moment a similar situation. There are a number of things that this country needs to be (warned), all of which are compatibles with a variety of outcomes, and if you were now to assert that the outcome was going to be this or that, you would fail to do part of the job which at the moment needs to be - needs to take advantage of the fact that the same action may be part of different programs w. th the same set of that actions. And I imagine thern is also just what it was in th THUMAND MR. FISHER: This is Fisher. From the point of view of the student of Richard S ARCHIVES & INATIONAL RECORDS government - I don't mean to bring in that old devil Congress ADMIN ES COVERNMENT again, but the one problem that came up: at some stage of the game you had to go through this argument in a relatively public form. In this case, it didn't really take place until March '51, but you had to go through the argument of "Well, is it big enough really to stop them?" "No, it may not be, but it's big enough to scare them; if it scares them enough they won't do it." With all the intellectual dissatisfactions that that argument involves,