Bundy had with him a memo that purported to represent both his and McNamara’s point of view, which would be the subject of the discussion with Johnson. It was, McNamara later said, an “explosive memorandum,” one that laid out in forceful prose what its author saw as the stark choice facing the United States: escalation or negotiation. “What we want to say to you,” Bundy began, “is that both of us are now pretty well convinced that our current policy can lead only to disastrous defeat.”
