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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 than by armed attack or is affected or threatened by any fact or situation which might endanger the peace of the area, the Parties shall consult immediately in order to agree on the measures which should be taken for the common defense.)

The May 1 draft also cleared up, or papered over, part of the confusion described earlier regarding the rationale for the military measures recommended in the Laos annex: the increased RVNAF force levels were attributed now both to concern over increased infiltration and to concern over overt invasion. But the US troop commitments are still described solely as for training, with no mention of the original political rationale

VII.

Lansdale circulated the May 1 draft among the Task Force, with a note that comments should be in May 2, with a final Task Force review scheduled the morning of May 3, all in anticipation of an NSC meeting on the paper May 4.

George Ball, then Deputy Under Secretary of State, asked to postpone the meeting for a day. Lansdale sent Gilpatric a memorandum opposing the postponement. "It seems to me that George Ball could appoint someone to represent him at the meeting;, and if he has personal or further comments they could come to us later in the day at his convenience." But Gilpatric delayed the meeting a day, and State produced a drastic revision of the paper. 15/

On the organizational issues, the State draft was brutally clearcut. It proposed a new version of the Gilpatric memorandum transmitting the Report, in which:

1. The paragraph (quoted earlier) describing Lansdale's special role is deleted.

2. A new paragraph is added to the end of the memorandum, in which Gilpatric is made to say: "Having completed its assignment…I recommend that the present Task Force be now dissolved."

Later sections of the paper were revised accordingly giving responsibility for coordinating Vietnam policy to a new Task Force with George Ball as chairman, (in the final version, the Task Force has a State Department director, but no longer included Presidential appointees representing their departments. The whole Task Force idea had been downgraded to a conventional interagency working group. Although it continued to function for several years, there will be little occasion to mention it again in this paper.) 16/

State's proposal on organization prevailed. From the record available, the only thing that can be said definitely is that State objected, Rh