THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF 4 MARCH 1969

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: President's Daily Brief 1969-1977
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005976651
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 25
• Document Creation Date: August 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2016
• Publication Date: March 4, 1969

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The President's Daily Brief
4 March 1969
19
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32
Israeli-controlled areas following
June 1967 hostilities
?32?
Alelandria
?28?
Mediterranean Sea
Ismailia
Cairo
UNITED
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316
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CYPRUS
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SAUDI
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ARABIA
14
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934781.69
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I. MAJOR PROBLEMS
MIDDLE EAST
King Husayn is letting the terrorists operate more and
more openly throughout Jordan. During the recent Muslim
holidays, fedayeen groups collected funds in Amman, canvas-
sing hotels and the homes of foreigners. They have also
been harassing tourists, and Ambassador Symmes is worried
about possible incidents involving US nationals. -jorda-
nian secui'ityforces are now cooperating with the fedayeen's
own security patrols.
Husayn's new modus vivendi with the fedayeen is no
doubt based on a recognition of the terrorist movement's
growing popularity in Jordan. The King also seems to think
he can better control the fedayeen by working with them.
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It now appears that Moshe Dayan will defer his bid for
the premiership--perhaps until the Labor Party convenes in
June to decide the ranking of party leaders on the voting
lists for the fall elections. Even though Dayan and his
group abstained yesterday in the Labor Party vote approving
Mrs. Meir's nomination as interim prime minister, he said
he would stay on as defense minister. This would seem to
rule out any attempt by Dayan to challenge Mrs. Meir's con-
firmation in the Knesset.
FOR THE PRESIDENT ONLY
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ACCESS ROUTES TO BERLIN
Autobahn
- Road
Railroad
20 40M.
0 20 g0Kl4.,Oli$
BALTIC SEA ?
Lubeck elmsdorf
J Schwerin
Hamburg
FEDERAL
Lauenburg
REPUBLIC
f?
Vorsf elde
Curilosen.
annoyer
OF
GERMANY
*Kassel
Be b w
Leipzig
POLAND
74-
ic4",
j
94546 3-69
Probsfzell
Ludwigss
-s?
? ?
CZ ECHOSLOVAKIA
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FOR THE PRESIDENT ONLY
EUROPE
There is nothing significant to report.
SOVIET AFFAIRS
The East German and West Berlin negotiators met again
this afternoon on East German initiative in a last-ditch
effort to reach some meeting of the minds before the West
German presidential election tomorrow.
seems
that the East Germans offered passes for Easter and discus- 50X1
sions on passes for other holidays if the West Germans trans-
fer the election out of Berlin. This Chancellor Kiesinger
is reported unwilling to do so late in the game; hence the
meeting evidently will take place as scheduled in West Berlin
and there will be no holiday' passes for West Berliners.
The checkpoints at both ends of the Berlin-Helmstedt
autobahn were closed to all traffic for about two hours in
the afternoon. The delays were attributed to Soviet troop
movements; small British and French convoys were held up,
but no US convoys were involved. All other roads to and
from Berlin were normal.
There was some Soviet air activity in the vicinity of
the corridors. Allied air traffic continued normally, how-
ever, and the Soviet controller in the air safety center
is maintaining a business-as-usual attitude.
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CHINA
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BURMA
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93465 1-69
,Ir
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VIETNAM
The Communists may have kicked off the second phase
of their current offensive, at least in the highlands of
II Corps. Two major enemy ground attacks occurred there
in the last 24 hours. For only the second time in the
war, the Communists used tanks in an unsuccessful attack
on a special forces camp in Kontum Province. In the second
attack, a US infantry company taking part in a sweep 30
miles to the southwest suffered heavy losses. Elsewhere
in the country, action was generally low again yesterday.
3
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? rut( 1 tih I'Kh,N1DhIN 1 UNLY
II. OTHER IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS
PANAMA
The situation within the Guard
looks
shaky following the removal of Colonel Martinez. Major
personnel shifts and organizational changes could have had
a weakening effect. Although Torrijos seems to have con-
solidated his position, the loyalty and unity of the Guard
have not been tested since Martinez' ouster.
COMMUNIST CHINA
The Annex today is a discussion of the Chinese Commu-
nist leadership.
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NATIONALIST CHINA - SOUTH KOREA
ETHIOPIA
The Ethiopian government's firm response to the an-
nual student demonstrations this year probably ensures
that the situation will stay under control over the short
run. The underlying discontent, however, is deeper and
more widespread than in the past and now has even pene-
trated into the military. The Emperdr and his cabinet are
said to be aware of the trouble. They are doing almost
nothing, however, in the way of reforms to correct the
basic problems, which are not unlike student problems else-
where.
7
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The regime's foundations have been getting weaker
year by year. The kind of demonstrations which the stu-
dent radicals are determined to continue may find these
foundations even weaker than they seem.
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EFFECTS OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION ON
COMMUNIST CHINA'S LEADERSHIP
INNER CIRCLE OF POLITBURO
Mao Tse-tung
?EitrShoo-ehi
Chou En-lai
Lin Piao
-Peng-Ghen---
OTHER ACTIVE POLITBURO MEMBERS
Chen Yl Tan Chen lin
Li Fu-chun
Ho Lung Lu Ting i
Li Hsien-nien Chen Po-ta
?6i-Ghing-ekthan? Kang Sheng
? OTHER IMPORTANT OFFICIALS
LoJui ching
Tao Chu
?t_i+tstreh4 eng?(Purged,
then partly rehabilitated)
--Sung-Jen-eltittfig-
--Yeng-Shang-ktin---
? Liu Ning i
Chen?
Red lines are drawn through the names of those purged since 1965.
94543 3-69
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.? - FOR 1 HE PRE,S1DENT ONLY
THE LEADERSHIP OF COMMUNIST CHINA
The leadership of Communist China has gone through a
violent convulsion during the Cultural Revolution, one from
which it will be a long time recovering. There was a massive
purge of veteran party leaders in 1966. Since then, the sur-
vivors at the top of China's power structure--an inner circle
of six still dominated by the venerable Mao Tse-tung--have
presented a virtually unchanging public face. This appear-
ance of stability has persisted despite violent social up-
heaval, bloody factional fighting, several reversals of na-
tional policy, and the political destruction of half a dozen
men in the second echelon of the leadership.
The official voices of the regime have consciously por-
trayed the top six as a unified team. ?This is misleading.
Today's power center is not the loyal phalanx of Mao's lieu-
tenants that was projected to the outside world in the re-
gime's first 16 years. These men are, rather, a disparate
group, not natural or congenial allies.
The political elite today bears little resemblance to
the monolithic Politburo of the 1950s. In addition to Mao,
the inner circle includes four veteran leaders and Mao's
wife. Since the spring of 1967, this inner circle has been
supplemented by a frequently changing secondary elite. This
group now numbers eight, all of whom are new to the apex of
political power.
The central figure and still the authority for basic
policy is Mao Tse-tung. His role in the decision-making
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process is almost certainly decisive, but he probably does
not intervene personally except on issues of major impor-
tance.
Although arbitrary and
suspicious he has been forced., in the fluid political sit-
uation of the past several years, to arbitrate among com-
peting interest groups and, on occasion, to compromise. He
clearly feels that his time is running out, but despite dis-
appointments and reversals, he has not abandoned his romantic
vision of a communized, egalitarian China nor his sense that
the Chinese revolution is his own creation.
In the early 1960s, Mao apparently detected a growing
resistance to his policies from the entrenched party, bureauc-
racy,' and from this convinced himself that leaders ?in line
to succeed him would sell out his revolution and turn to So-
viet-style revisionism. This fear--partly paranoia, partly
justified--is the overriding factor among many which have
produced the "Cultural Revolution" which he unleashed in 1966.
In striking at his erstwhile subordinates and the bureaucracy
they controlled, Mao virtually demolished the old party ma-
chine painstakingly built up over a period of three decades.
No cohesive organization has yet risen to replace it. On the
contrary, the destructive energies of the Cultural Revolution
have torn the body politic into competing interest groups,
each striving for power--or survival--at the expense of the
others.
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During the past three years a group of leaders asso-
ciated with Mao's more radical policies rose rapidly on the
crest of the political turmoil. These men have tended to
encourage Mao to push his revolutionary ideas and to work
against the established order. In opposition to this radi-
cal group there has developed an amorphous coalition whose
chief common concerns are to restore social order, stabilize
the economy, and maintain national security. The most im-
portant components of this more moderate faction have been
the military command structure, especially in the provinces,
and the government administrators in Peking.
This basic division seems to reach into the highest ranks
of the leadership. Mao's designated successor Lin Piao, a bril-
liant military strategist who has led China's armed forces since
1959, may have lost the allegiance of some of the old-line
military commanders who have been attempting to administer
China's provinces by his unwavering support for Mao's disrup-
tive social and political policies--which have included at-
tacks on the military establishment. Lin still has followers
in the army, but his present pre-eminence derives from Mao's
faith in his loyalty.
Number three in the Peking hierarchy is the durable
premier, Chou En-lai. With his fine instinct for political
compromise and self-preservation, Chou has adroitly managed
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to serve Mao while at the same time moderating Mao's more
extreme policies. Throughout the Cultural Revolution he
has been the chief voice of reason in China and the symbolic
leader of the moderates.
The other three figures in the inner circle Mao's
longtime ghostwriter and party theoretician Chen Po-ta,
the secret police specialist Kang Sheng, and Mao's, wife
Chiang:Ching, have been the principal leaders of the "Cul-
tural Revolution Group"--the headquarters of the radicals.
Mme Mao was a political nobody before the Cultural Revolu-
tion, not even a Central Committee member. When the Red
Guards were unleashed in 1966, she quickly became the most
vociferbus spokesman for the militants'. Public adulation
accorded her has at times been exceeded only by that for
Mao and Lin.'
The next echelon of leadership has reflected the shift-
ing balance of power in the Cultural Revolution. Six of
the eight members of the secondary elite are not even mem-
bers of the party Central Committee, an index of how rapidly
they have risen to prominence. At levels just below this
group figures have risen and fallen in kaleidoscopic fashion
as the Cultural Revolution passed through phases of extreme
radicalism or relative moderation. The eight junior. members
of the top leadership have been associated together for less
than a year and are themselves split politically. Five
seem to have been identified With the radical and destructive
aspects of the past three years--two members of the Cultural
Revolution Group, the commander of the Air Force, and two
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CURRENT LEADERSHIP ELITE IN CHINA
(Real political power seems concentrated in this group)
Mao Tse-tung
Hsieh Fu-chih
Lin Piao
Huang
Yung-sheng
THE INNER CIRCLE
Chou En-lai
THE SECONDARY ELITE
Chiang Ching
Chang Chun-chiao
Wu Fa-hsien
Yeh Chun
Wang
Tung-hsing
The first six form the inner circle, which has only lost one member since January 1967. The next
seven assumed their present status after the last purge in March 1968, and Wen was added in August
1968. These additional officials appear with the inner circle .at all important public functions and
presumably also carry considerable influence in the inner councils.
MAO TSE-TUNG
LIN PIA()
CHOU EN-LAI
CHEN PO-TA
KANG SHENG
CHIANG CHING
CHANG CHUN-CHIAO
YAO WEN-YUAN
HSIEH FU-CHIH
HUANG YUNG-SHENG
WU FA-HSIEN
YEH CHUN
WANG TUNG-HSING
WEN YU-CHENG
Chairman of party and Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC)
Vice Chairman, PBSC; Minister of National Defense; First Vice
Chairman, Military Affairs Committee (MAC)
Member, PBSC; Premier
Member, PBSC; Chairman, Cultural Revolution Group (CRG)
Member, PBSC; Adviser, CRG
First Vice Chairman, CRG
Vice Chairman, CRG
Member, CRG
Member, MAC; Minister of Public Security; Chairman, Peking Munic-
ipal Revolutionary Committee
Member, MAC; Chief of Staff
Member, MAC; Deputy Chief of Staff; Commander of Air Force
Member, the CRG in the People's Liberation Army; wife of Lin Piao
Vice Minister of Public Security
Deputy Chief of Staff; Commander, Peking garrison
93599 2-69
Wen Yu-cheng
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members of a purge group within the military. The other
three--the political leader of Peking city, the army chief
of staff, and the commander of the Peking garrison--have
been more closely identified with Chou En-lai and the
military establishment.
This small group of 14 leaders is highly unstable.
It will probably be able to retain its superficial unity,
but behind the scenes its members seem to be engaged in
political fights which are eroding its cohesion and effec-
tiveness.
The problems of the top leadership have been com-
pounded because the Cultural Revolution has largely de-
stroyed the institutional framework in which political
power had been embodied since 1949. The Politburo, for
example, has been badly shaken by the purges and no longer
represents the pinnacle of power in China. The State Coun-
cil and the party Central Committee have declined even
further ?in importance, while the party secretariat has
ceased to function. As a result the top leadership has
had to rely increasingly on the army--itself strained and
perhaps split by the events of the Cultural Revolution--to
administer the country.
This certainly means that the views of the military
establishment, and particularly those commanders who are
in direct charge, of most of China's provinces, carry a
great deal of weight in policy formulation, but we are un-
clear how the military participate in the decision-making
AS
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process. At present the leadership is placing great emphasis
on rebuilding the battered party apparatus in preparation
for the long-postponed Ninth Party Congress. As this ef-
fort goes forward friction between the military, and civil-
ian party personnel is likely, further confusing lines of
authority.
We have little good information on how decisions are
reached in Peking at present, or on the relative weight of
individual members of the top leadership in the inner coun-
cils of the regime. However, some kind of consensus poli-
tics seems to be at work. In contradistinction to the sit-
uation before the Cultural Revolution when a very few top
leaders--Mao, Chou En-lai, Mao's former deputy Liu Shao-chi
and former party general secretary Teng Hsiao-ping--took
quick decisions and issued orders by fiat, most important
decisions of the top leadership seem to be the result of
wider discussion, considerable political infighting and
frequent compromise.
A good example of this process was the formation--over
a period of more than a year--of the "revolutionary commit-
tees" that now formally govern each of China's provinces.
Political patronage considerations led to an enormous amount
of bickering and pulling and hauling in the setting up of
these committees, both in Peking and in the provinces them-
selves. Complex political rivalries and alliances slowed
the process and occasionally forced the reopening of ques-
tions presumably "settled." Continued bickering has .also
led the top leadership frequently to issue vague directives
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that can be and are variously interpreted at lower levels,
and has hindered effective follow-through on seemingly
firm orders.
The political demise of the Red Guards in the summer
of 1968 has also had an effect on the formulation and im-
plementation of policy by the Peking leadership. Mao and
his radical lieutenants now lack a ready means of stirring
up mass action against the established bureaucracy. On the
other hand, military commanders, who were in 1967 and 1968
clearly opposed to the destructive activities of the Red
Guards, may now be more willing to carry out extreme Mao-
ist social policies. Provincial military leaders who in
1967 were themselves under Red Guard attack are now pushing
programs that bear a "made in Peking, by Mao" label. This
apparent accommodation may have weakened the position of
government officials associated with Chou En-lai, who have
a vested interest in careful planning and rational policies
Some of these figures have recently seemed to be losing in-
fluence.
The present leadership in Peking is in any event faced
with enormous problems, some of long standing, and some en-
gendered by the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. It is
most unlikely that the 14 leaders who at present are on top
of the political pyramid in China have a common approach to
these problems, and further political infighting involving ,
both policy questions and personal rivalries is probably
in prospect.
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CRET
LATE NOTESPOR TEM P T'S DAILY au OP
4 Aacz 1969
TOP ET
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5 March 1969
LATE NOTES FOR THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF OF
4 MARCH 1969
I, MAJOR PROBLEMS
MIDDLE EAST
The Israelis claim that there has been an upsurge of
sniping incidents in the Suez Canal area over the past few
days and that several soldiers have been wounded, one
today. The Chief of the General Staff said Israel would
take retaliatory action if the Egyptian firing continued.
(Press, 5 Mar 69)
EUROPE
There is nothing significant to report.
SOVIET AFFAIRS
The East Germans closed the Berlin-Helmstedt autobahn
again this morning for three hours, but as of 0700 EST
(1300 local), traffic was moving normally on all roads be-
tween West Germany and Berlin and in the air corridors.
One US convoy was held up on a trip from Berlin to West
Germany. The rumored closing of checkpoints between the
eastern and western sections of Berlin itself has not
occurred and all are open to traffic.
Meanwhile, the West German presidential election was
due to get under way at 1000 local time. As of 0700 EST
(1300 local) no results were in, but the decision of the 83
Free Democratic members of the Federal Assembly to join the
449 Social Democrats in backing Justice Minister Gustav
Heinemann makes him the favorite to defeat Defense Minister
Gerhard Schroeder of the CDU.
FOR THE PRESIDENT ONLY
50X1
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2016/04/27 : CIA-RDP79T00936A006900010001-0 _
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2016/04/27 : CIA-RDP79T00936A006900010001-0
PUK ltih .11KLJIDLN'1 UNLY
VIETNAM
Except for the unsuccessful attempt by assailants,
some dressed in South Vietnamese military uniforms, to
assassinate Prime Minister Tran Van Huong as he left his
office for home at the lunch hour, the situation in Viet-
nam is stable./
II. OTHER IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS
SOVIET UNION - COMMUNIST CHINA
A TASS representative in Moscow has told our embassy
that publicity was given to last Sunday's border incident
because the "numbers involved" made any other course unfeasible.
He said the Soviets regard the incident as a culmination of
and went out of his way to state
Moscow as a deliberate political
local tensions
that it is not
provocation by
in the area
regarded in
Peking.
FOR THE PRESIDENT ONLY
2
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2016/04/27 : CIA-RDP79T00936A006900010001-0