TRANSCRIPT OF JOINT NEWS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300080035-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 9, 2006
• Sequence Number: 35
• Content Type: NSPR

? Approved For Release 2006/01/30 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000300080035-9
THE NEW N URK T1i,IhS, FAIDAY, NUN
'1'ranscript of Joint News Conference, ,by PreSi
Special to The New York Times listic missile system? A. Yes. I believe
JOHNSON CITY, Tex., Nov. 10- there is considerable evidence that they;
4'ollowing is the official transcript of are.
today's news conference at the LBJ Q. Is it an effective system, sir? A.
Ranch involving the President, De- I think you would have.to ask them.
fense Secretary Robert S. McNamara Q. I mean, sir, do we believe that it
and Gen. Earle G. Wheceler, Chair- is?.
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff : A. It Is very difficult, of.course, `for
JOHNSON STATEMENT us to appraise the effectiveness of their
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. system. I think it is important that we
I asked Secretary McNamara and assume it is effective and, of course,
that will be the assumption on which we
General Wheeler to come here today. base the development and deployment of
General Wheeler had gone to South our own intercontinental ballistic mis-
Vietnam with Secretary McNamara, sites.
but did not come with him the other
day. I wanted to review with them ' 2, Supplementary Funds
together some developments in South
Vietnam that they observed when. they Q. Mr. Secretary, I know you said you
were there, some plans that we must can't go into detail with respect to the
make for the next year in connection supplemental, but is there any indica-
with our ? Defense Department budget, tion now as to whether it would be
and matters that the Joint Chiefs of larger or smaller than your earlier indi-
Staff and Secretary of Defense normally cations?
discuss with the President. A. No. We have not completed our
Mr. Christian tells me that you would review of it. The Joint Chiefs are still
like to meat with Secretary McNamara. reviewing certain aspects of the pro- 1
He will be available for questions as , gram. They have not completed their
will General Wheeler. recommendations to me? nor have I to
After you finish with them and they the President. So I am not in any posi-
are on their way back, I will be glad tion to even approximate the total
to meet with you and discuss other mat- amount of funds to be requested of the
ters that may interest you. Congress. But I think it is quite clear,
McNAMARA STATEMENT as the President said last Saturday and
as I am reporting to you now, that we
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. will have such a supplement.
As the President mentioned, General 3. Soviet Deployment
Wheeler and I have discussed 'with him
this morning our operations in Vietnam Q. Mr. Secretary, when did the Rus-
and the outlook for the defense program
and the defense budget in fiscal 1968.
General Wheeler will comment upon
our report on Vietnam, and I will spend you what we have said heretofore, that
a few minutes berore asking our ques- they have started such deployment and
tions reviewing certain of the aspects we must assume, as I have reported to
of our defense budget discussions. the Congress previously, that they will
This was the third of these discus- do so, that they will deploy an effec-
sions. We had our first with the Presi- tive system.
dent last Friday, our second on Satur- I think that is the only safe assume-
day, and the third today. We, of course, tion that we can make in planning our
are not prepared to make a statement 'own strategic force. That has been the
on the total funds to be requested, nor assumption we made as foundation for
even to review in any detail specific the fiscal 1967 budget and it will be the
details of that budget.
d same assumption that we will apply to
ov er four as ects of it
d
b
ASSESSES RESULTS OF ELECTION: President Jc
ence yesterday. Ile said he was not altogether unhapl
we r c
Su
p the 1968 program.
this morning, calls for the four months of August an Army of
First, ? we. discussed the antiballistic 4. Nike-X System through November. of between 37,000 seriously de
missile systems, the action the Soviet Q Mr. Secretary, how about our own and 50,000, and represents, therefore, force.
Union is taking to initiate deployment -it is the Nilce-X, isn't it? ' a very substantial cut. .
of such a system, the developments of The current outlook for the draft Suc
the United States antiballistic missile, A. Yes, We have the Nike-X systegt
system, starting with the Nike-Zeus sev- under development at the present time, for the next four months, which is our Today,' t]
oral years ago, and a much more ad- On that system we have spent over planning period, is to call in about Tainan Pro
vanccd system which we have under do- a half-million dollars a year for several 81,000 men, this for the months of De- ; border nortl
volopment today, and on which we have years. We believe it to be a very ad-' cember, January, February and March.: Dcpew and
spent over half a billion dollars a year vanced system of antiballistic missile For December, we lr'ave a call of 12,000, - Division, thi
in the last several years. defense. for January we have just announced the 25th Ii
We considered the possible deployment ' As' I mentioned earlier, we discussed the call at 27,000, and for the remaining engaging it
of such systems, both against the Chi- today the, possible deployment of that two months we have not yet estab- against the
nese Communist nuclear threat and system in relation to both the Chinese lished the specific allocation by month. I was ab]
against the Soviet offensive systems as Communist nuclear developments and In total, they will add to December that the wt
and January an amount sufficient to in a very
well. We concluded that it is much too those elsewhere in the world. bring the four-month total to about yVcstmorclo
early to make a decision for deploy- Q. What do you mean by `deploy- b b1ring men. That tmtotal with the in every op
ment against the Chinese threat and we ment? A. Production and location of total ,00 for the fhat c onpa of August, aged r op
have not arrived at a decision on any units in the United States. September, October and November, of mented on
other deployment. We will continue our about 162,000, a very substantial reduc- build-up %vl
discussions on this subject in the weeks 5. Chinese Threat tion. our visit to
to come. Q
How long do you think it would be logisticians,
it
t C
i
.
apac
8. Sov
e
y types, the
The Poseidon Missile before you could fully deploy it?
Secondly, we discussed the possible A: Any deployment of such a system Q. Mr. Secretary, just one more ques- arc perhap<
production of the Poseidon missile, You would take place over several years. . tion, if you please, on the ballistic particular v
may recall that this Is a new missile One point I would like to stress to you is missile system. A. Surely. I would
for deployment at sea, the development that the length of time required to Q. In layman's language, does this who would
of which we initiated as part of the deploy such a system is less than the mean that the Russians now have the visit C,unei
fiscal 1967 budget as an insurance pro- length of time required for the Chinese capacity to knock down American bal- In brit-f, ti
We estimated at the time this Communists to develop nuclear weapons listic missiles but we do not? the I'reski
ilitu x>
m
hi
s 41- A, Certainly not. 'mere is aosuiuLuiv
program was presented last, year that it that conceivably could threaten t
would require almost g2-billion. to de- tion. Therefore, it is not timely to alt - no question about our capability of
velop, and several additional billions to this time make a decision to deploy penetrating the Soviet defenses with
deploy. such a system ' to defend against the both our missiles and aircraft. There
Zve recommended, and I believe will Chinese Communist threat. has been no question about that at any
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