Taped conversation between LBJ and Senate Majority leader Mike Mansfield, June 8, 1965: “LBJ: I don’t exactly see the medium for pulling out [of Vietnam]. … [But] I want to talk to you. … Rusk doesn’t know that I’m thinking this. McNamara doesn’t know I’m thinking this. Bundy doesn’t. I haven’t talked to a human. I’m over here in bed. I just tried to take a nap and get going with my second day, and I couldn’t. I just decided I’d call you. But I think I’ll say to Congress that General Eisenhower thought we ought to go in there and do here what we … did in Greece and Turkey, and … and President Kennedy thought we ought to do this. … But all of my military people tell me … that we cannot do this [with] the commitment [of American forces] we have now. It’s got to be materially increased. And the outcome is not really predictable at the moment. … I would say … that … our seventy-five thousand men are going to be in great danger unless they have seventy-five thousand more … I’m no military man at all. But … if they get a hundred and fifty [thousand Americans], they’ll have to have another hundred and fifty. So, the big question then is: What does Congress want to do about it ? … I think I know what the country wants to do now. But I’m not sure that they want to do that six months from now. … We have … some very bad news on the government [of General Nguyen Cao Ky in Saigon] … Westmoreland says that the offensive that he has anticipated, that he’s been fearful of, is now on. And he wants people as quickly as he can get them. … We seem to have tried everything that we know to do. I stayed here for over a year when they were urging us to bomb before I’d go beyond the line. I have stayed away from [bombing] their industrial targets and their civilian population, although they [the Joint Chiefs] urge you to do it.” (M. Beschloss, Reaching for Glory [New York 2001], p. 345-347)