BRIGADIER GENERAL SAM GRIFFITHS, USMC (RET.)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R003100300015-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 22, 2002
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: June 14, 1961
• Content Type: MF

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14+ June 1961
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central %telligence
SUBJECT : Brigadier General\ \ f(ths, USMC (Ret.)
Executive Rogistxy
1. I ran into Griffiths today at" lunch. He mentioned that
he wanted very much to call on you to pay his respects, if only
for a minute, also to General Cabell. In view of what he told me
about himself, I offered to try to arrange this. He arrived back
in the United States from Spain at the beginning of this week and
is leaving for Maine early Friday morning, 16 June.
2. After retiring from the Marine Corps (and receiving his
honorary B.G.) in 1956
he spent four years reading Chinese history at x or University
where he received a D. Phil. His thesis, "Chinese Military History",
is to be published this year, after he rewrites it a bit, by Oxford
University Press.
3. Last winter, while on the island of Isbiza, he received a
letter from Walt W. Rostow, whom he has never met, saying that he
had just read with interest Griffiths' 1956 translation of Mao Tse
Tung's Guerrilla Warfare pamphlet and that he would like to meet
Griffiths whenever the latter should come to Washington. Griffiths
said to me that he did not know whether he would have time to phone
Rostov this visit, but that tomorrow he is dining with his friend,
Stewart Alsop, and a friend of the latter who is interested in
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guerrilla warfare. Griffiths wondered whether this would turn out
to be Rostow. I commented that I thought he ought to phone Rostov
directly; as requested. You will recall that the press recently
reported that the President had been reading the Mao Tse Tung
translations.
4. Just before leaving Spain, Griffiths had a cable from his
agent in New York saying that Prager wanted to publish the transla-
tion this fall, together with an introduction to be written by
Griffiths. Griffiths has made a firm deal to write the introduction.
The translation itself is now in the public domain and Prager is
anxious to get the jump on other publishers. Prager asked Griffiths
whether he could get General Maxwell Taylor to write a review of
the book, which Prager would then see got a good spot in the
New York Times or New York Herald Tribune and Griffiths is going
to phone General Taylor, whom he knows from General Taylor's
language-training days, this afternoon.
5. Griffiths has also undertaken to write a third book, a
history of Guadalcanal. He has been at the Pentagon today getting
material. He will do all this writing this summer in Maine.
6. While at the Pentagon, his friends introduced him to a
scientist who has just been brought in to work on pieces of
equipment for guerrilla warfare. Upon the scientist asking for
his comments on what gadgets are needed, Griffiths commented forcibly
on the need to work out first a politico-social policy for obtaining
the essential support of the peasants, cane-cutters, etc.
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7. Griffiths is staying with his friend, Colonel S. T. Clark,
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have given the above information. Griffiths will phone your
secretary tomorrow morning to learn whether the appointment she
has tentatively set up for 12:30 that day has been confirmed by
you.
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Assistant to the Inspector General
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