Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

2 autograph letters signed ("Jackie"), totalling 5 pages (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.; 250 x 197 mm) on 3 sheets of blue stationery embossed with the Kennedy family crest, [New York?, 16 September 1968], to Robert McNamara, accompanied by a sheet with a brief summary of the Foreign Service record of Stacy Lloyd in Mrs. Kennedy's hand, the letters docketed in pencil by McNamara "9/16/68."

" [W]e will have another Vietnam." Mrs. Kennedy offers a critical assessment of the State Department while writing to McNamara to request assistance for a young member of the foreign service. "Thank you for sending me the letter the man wrote you after seeing you speak for the Carrier—It nearly made me cry—I wonder if you know how many lives you have saved—starting with mine. Can I ask you about saving another? It is Bunny Mellon's son, Stacy Lloyd." Mrs. Kennedy explains that Lloyd is back in the State Department after five years with the USIS in Laos, and that he was given the Harriman Award for outstanding service by a panel of Judges that included Douglas Dillon, who told her "he was the outstanding candidate of all those considered—and that the award was a double edged one because it really meant that you had gone against your superiors."

Lloyd, Mrs. Kennedy writes, wanted to pursue Chinese training, but the State Department did not approve his application because of the results of his language aptitude test. Lloyd—and Mrs. Kennedy—believe that high language marks without experience is meaningless. She continues: "They should take the man who knows the problem at a calculated risk, and if they don't start training men in the field right now for China—when we recognize it they will have a crash program of students in language with no ideas of the problems—and we will have another Vietnam. They will be green—and the State Dept will be back following its old rut. He says the top people know this—but they don't dare meddle—the same old State Dept problem that used to drive JFK to despair, and which he had hoped you could change."

Mrs. Kennedy confides that she believes that McNamara is the only person who can assist Lloyd, although she herself is willing to do anything McNamara suggests, "because I think of what Bobby said about JFK—he believed that 'one man can make a difference and every man should try'—and Stacy could make a difference."

The second letter, of the same date, covers an enclosure (not present) sent by Mrs. Mellon and is significantly less earnest in tone. Mrs. Kennedy explains that she had asked Mrs. Mellon "to send me something about Stacy for you to see rather than my exuberant prose—this is beginning to sound like drivel to me—he wears glasses like you so he must be nice." Mrs. Kennedy includes a separate sheet with a brief summary of Lloyd's career."