HARVARD UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

OFFICE OF THE DEAN

5 UNIVERSITY HALL
CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

October 14, 1960

Dear Henry:

I very much regret that I can not come to dinner on Friday evening, October 28, to meet Mendès France. You were very nice to ask me, and I wish my schedule showed a gap on that night.

Professor Henry A. Kissinger
6 Divinity Avenue

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

Personal

February 23, 1963

Dear Henry:

I am shocked at myself that I have been so slow in acknowledging your notes enclosing memoranda of your conversations in Europe. Your conversations were most interesting, and in particular I found the Speidel interview of great interest and have most carefully protected the source of the information it contained.

Your memoranda quite properly concentrated more on what people said to you than on what you said to them, and I would have liked to have heard your response to some of the more outlandish insinuations of some of your interlocutors. As you say, you were there at a lively time, and you certainly seem to have been used as a receptacle for the type of tendentious argument that we on our side were trying to tamp down in Washington during the same period.

Now the air is clearing a little, and reports of conversations with many of the same men that you saw indicate significant improvements in balance.

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Center for International Affairs
6 Divinity Avenue
Harvard University
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

March 5, 1963

Mr. McGeorge Bundy
The White House
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mac:

Thank you for your letter of February 23rd.

It may not be too helpful now, but for whatever it is
worth, here is the line I took in my conversations in France.

I had not seen eye-to-eye on a number of occasions with
the Administration. However, I was convinced that the Nassau
offer was serious. To be sure, there would be many technical
problems to be ironed out. It seemed to me, however, that they
would prove soluble if France entered the discussions with an
open mind and on the basis of give-and-take. The choice before
France was whether to use technical imperfections in our pro-
posal as an excuse to challenge our good faith or whether to
use the opportunities for a new approach to Franco-American
relations.

In Italy, I was not well enough acquainted with our
recent discussions to do much more than listen. In my con-
versation with Andreotti, I did point out that surfact ships
did not seem to make the ideal launching platform for Polaris
missiles (I said this with respect to the Garibaldi proposal
and in the belief that our objective was a submarine force.)

With best regards.