VI
The elections thus constitute the successful end of one process and the beginning of another important one, namely the successful prosecution of the war and the conclusion of an acceptable settlement.
Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker’s weekly cable to President Johnson, September 5, 1967.
In the fall of 1967, as progress on the ground churned to a halt, and with no large increments of troops on the way, bombing the North and mining the ports became the war—at least in public debate. It was understandable for the average citizen to expect that removing target restrictions would improve the military stalemate, but President Johnson recognized the tenuousness of that link. Whatever progress was attained from bombing the North needed a correlative in the political and economic aspects of pacification in the South.
The Joint Chiefs believed that bombing would create additional difficulties for North Vietnam and that the additional pain caused by such bombing would be worth the risk of hitting Soviet ships and possibly widening the war, even though this pain would not be decisive for ultimate victory in the South. Secretary McNamara, on the other hand, believed that such bombing could not prevent North Vietnam from carrying on its present level of military operations in the South and would not be worth the risk of widening the war. He also believed that in a country with a coastline 400 miles in length, bombing the port facilities would not eliminate seaborne imports. And even if seaborne imports were totally eliminated, North Vietnam would be able to import over rail, road, and by inland waterway all that it required.
Secretary McNamara continued to argue against hitting the Haiphong and Hanoi ports because foreign vessels frequented them regularly. But LBJ was now ready to expand the bombing program by removing restrictions at Cam Pha and Hong Gai. During a long private meeting of the principal advisors in the White House, LBJ asked McNamara “why he could not give a conditional order that as long as there are no ships left in either of these two harbors—they could get hit.” Secretary McNamara said “he did not know if this was feasible.” But Johnson rejected McNamara’s advice and told General Johnson (who had temporarily replaced Wheeler who was recovering from a heart ailment) to “put our best man in there to see if there are any ships, and if not, hit the ports.” General Johnson thanked the president by explaining that “theatre commanders would welcome this kind of latitude.”1
Secretary McNamara then instructed General Johnson that he needed to make it crystal clear that “if there are no ships in the port then they can be hit” and leave it to the commander to figure out how to be certain that there were no ships. But no authorization was being issued to hit Haiphong harbor because it “always has Russian ships in there.” In mid-September, Cam Pha, a target that McNamara had long argued should not be hit, was struck for the first time.
The targets represented a bone to hawks in Congress and to the Joint Chiefs; few in Johnson’s private councils really expected the expansion to improve the military situation. Several days later, during the regular Tuesday luncheon of the principals, President Johnson told General Johnson the Joint Chiefs should “search for imaginative ideas to put pressure to bring this war to a conclusion—he did not want them to just recommend more men or that we drop the Atom bomb. He could think of those ideas.”2
A New Beginning: A First Test of Democracy for South Vietnam
On September 3, 1967, South Vietnam’s Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu was elected president and Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky vice-president in South Vietnam’s first election under its new constitution. The 44-year-old Thieu was the antithesis of the flamboyant Ky. A graduate of the U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1957, Thieu, as a colonel and later as Major General, quickly became a respected military leader in Vietnam. Beneath the self-effacing exterior was the personality of a political survivor. Thieu had personally led his Fifth Infantry Division troops in the decisive coup attack against President Diem’s bodyguards in November 1963. As chief of state, Thieu had forged a number of political coalitions which had allowed him to emerge with majority support from the military council that had been ruling South Vietnam since 1965.
The Thieu-Ky slate received 35 percent of the total votes cast. The election itself was carried out under restrictive rules that barred any Communist or pro-Communist “neutralist” from appearing on the ballot. The turnout was deceptive since two-thirds of those running had been disqualified from voting as “neutralists” or “Communists.” The Armed Forces council had forced Ky to withdraw from the presidential ticket and run with Thieu as vice-president, thus consolidating their strength.
While the Thieu-Ky victory was expected, the margin was generally weaker than anticipated. Moreover, Truong Dinh Dzu, a civilian lawyer, finished second with over 800,000 votes on a platform critical of the government and favoring peace negotiations. Dzu favored ending American bombing of the North, direct negotiations with Hanoi, and private talks with the Vietcong.
In Saigon as in most South Vietnamese cities, the Thieu-Ky ticket ran well behind former premier Tran Van Huong, another civilian candidate. The Thieu-Ky ticket controlled the voting in the outer provinces where military commanders arranged with major ethnic groups to deliver their votes. One official on the scene described it as “Chicago politics, but with circumspection.”3
President Johnson had sent 22 prominent Americans to observe the Vietnam elections. Finding no ballot boxes with false bottoms, the group issued statements of praise for a fledgling democracy and its honest election. Ambassador Bunker then cabled LBJ, “When we recall that President Diem was officially recorded as having obtained 89.9 percent of the vote in the 1961 presidential election, we can see how far the government of Vietnam has come in conducting a generally fair election and in the compilation of the results.” Bunker also warned the president, “All in all, while the elections have taken a considerable step farther down the road, there are still plenty of potholes ahead.”4
The election in South Vietnam was certainly good news for LBJ, and the president now turned to his own forthcoming electoral chances. During a September 6 Cabinet meeting Johnson spoke optimistically of the political situation: “No matter what the polls show, we are still leading every Republican . . . Romney, with or without Wallace . . . Reagan, Rockefeller, Nixon. . . . Though we’re down, we’re still 40% ahead of any Republican. ...” The president told his Cabinet, “We don’t take the offensive enough. We have got to speak up and not tuck tail.”
On September 8, 1967, General Omar Bradley, who had just returned from Vietnam, provided Walt Rostow with a report that Rostow couldn’t wait to send the president: “In general, he emerged with a sense of great optimism. ... He said, in fact, we must ‘fight to keep from expressing over-optimism.’ There is not the slightest doubt in his mind that the war is not stalemated. We are moving forward. He found among senior officers—even strong Republicans—a deep appreciation for the support being given to the men in the field by the President. He emerged convinced that we were well on the way to winning the war. The only serious problem was to keep a base of public support in the United States for the effort in Viet Nam.”
SNIE 14.3-67, AGAIN
The unrestrained optimism of Rostow and Bradley could not be found at the Order-of-Battle conference, reconvened on September 9 in Saigon. All work had been suspended until the CIA’s representative George Carver arrived. After a day of meetings, Carver wrote CIA Director Helms that MACV was “stonewalling,” because of “political public relations.” MACV was sticking with 119,000 main force, 29,000 administrative services, 65,000 guerrillas, and 85,000 political cadre for a total of 298,000. CIA was insisting on 121,000 main force, 40–60,000 administrative services, 60–100,000 guerrillas, 90,000 political cadre, and 120,000 others for a minimum total of 431,000. “MACV was adamant,” wrote Carver, “that no figure or quantified estimate be given for other elements [of] VC organization such as self-defense, secret self-defense, assault youth, etc.”
Carver, identifying his frustrations in dealing with MACV, told Helms he had become aware from a “variety of circumstantial indicators” such as “tacit or oblique lunchtime corridor admissions by MACV officers,” that “all point to the inescapable conclusion that General Westmoreland (with Robert Komer’s encouragement) has given instruction tantamount to direct order that VC strength total will not exceed 300,000 ceiling. Rationale seems to be that any higher figure would not be sufficiently optimistic and would generate unacceptable level of criticism from the press.” Carver informed Helms he would see Komer and Westmoreland the next day “and will endeavor to loosen this straightjacket. Unless I can, we are wasting our time. ... If I can budge Westmoreland, the whole matter can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction in a few hours of serious discussion. If I can not, no agreement is possible.”5
During the subsequent session, Komer belittled the CIA for having analysts with little experience on the Order of Battle. “The agency’s analysis,” claimed Komer, “consequently, could not expect to compare in depth and quality to that of MACV.” Carver listened to Komer’s hour-plus monologue, which focused on “Westmoreland’s problems with the press, their frustrating inability to convince the press (hence the public) of the great progress being made, and the paramount importance of saying nothing that would detract from the image of progress or support of the thesis of stalemate.”6
MACV would never accept an OB of over 400,000 so CIA Director Richard Helms decided to accept General Westmoreland’s position on enemy strength. Helms instructed Carver to reach accommodation on MACV’s terms. Self-defense and secret self-defense forces were to be removed from the OB and the remaining categories kept in the 300,000 range.
Carver wrote Helms: “Circle now squared”; MACV had accepted the CIA’s compromise. Nevertheless in his affidavit in the CBS-Westmoreland trial, CIA Director Helms swore under oath, “I never received any instruction or pressure, either overt or covert, from President Johnson, from members of his staff, or from anyone else to present optimistic reports on the conflict in Vietnam or to present reports which were in any way inconsistent with my evaluation of the intelligence information available to me. I never was given any instructions from President Johnson or from anyone else in his Administration to ‘cave in’ or capitulate to any estimate by military intelligence analysts or to use the military’s estimates of the strength of the South Vietnamese Communists in South Vietnam in Special National Intelligence Estimate (S.N.I.E.) 14.3–67.”7
General Westmoreland was clearly elated with the compromise, and he cabled to Sharp, “The Washington representatives agree with MACV that the NIE should not quantify the categories of self defense, secret self defense and other similar VC organizations. ... I am satisfied that this is a good estimate and the best that can be derived from available intelligence.”8
The “irregulars” (self-defense, secret self-defense, assault youth) would not be quantified; instead, the issue would be treated in narrative form in both the SNIE and in MACV’s Order of Battle. From Carver’s perspective, the atmosphere had been cleared; Washington and Saigon would now be on the same wavelength, “something that will greatly benefit all aspects of our common endeavor,” Carver wrote Helms.9 A month later Ambassador Bunker, worried about questions that the press might raise, cabled Rostow, “Given the overriding need to demonstrate our progress in grinding down the enemy, it is essential that we do not drag too many red herrings across the trail.” By red herrings Bunker meant that it would be a mistake to refer to old estimates of shadowy self-defense and secret self-defense forces and to then say they were dropped from the Order of Battle.
In mid-September 1967 events seemed to be going well for the administration. The bureaucratic dispute over enemy strength had seemingly been resolved, the Joint Chiefs had received authorization to hit previously restricted ports, and the Vietnam elections were over. Rostow now provided LBJ with one of his most optimistic reports on the war. With respect to battlefield and terrorist initiatives, “their curve went to a peak in 1966, now there is sliding even on the battalion levels. . . . They are down-slope now. . . . Hanoi’s leaders are elderly men. They are living on their French Indo-Chinese memories. They’re hanging on. They lost their winning strategy between the 1964 buildup and now—now they are just hoping we cave in. Hanoi is suffering a growing manpower shortage.”10
The San Antonio Formula
During a September 29, 1967, address to the National Legislative Conference in San Antonio, Texas, President Johnson restated his administration’s position on negotiations and the conditions under which he would agree to halt bombing North Vietnam. The president certainly hoped to find the right lever which might bring both sides to the conference table before the 1968 election. LBJ now made public his proposal to North Vietnam for peace: “The United States is willing to stop all aerial and naval bombardment of North Vietnam when this will lead promptly to productive discussion. We, of course, assume that while discussions proceed, North Vietnam would not take advantage of the bombing cessation or limitation.”
The San Antonio formula had been authored by Secretary of Defense McNamara, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs Paul Warnke, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze. The proposal represented a modification in the Johnson administration’s demand that Hanoi halt infiltration into the South as a precondition for a bombing halt. Now, all Hanoi had to do was show an interest in productive discussions and the bombing would be halted. Johnson later wrote in The Vantage Point, “We were not asking him [Ho Chi Minh] to restrict his military actions before a bombing halt, and once the bombing ended we were not insisting that he immediately end his military effort, only that he not increase it.”11
The Vietnamese elections had allowed LBJ to make the overture at San Antonio. The president was almost desperately looking for a way out that would not involve humiliation for the allies and his administration. But Ho Chi Minh had nothing to gain by negotiating with an American president facing re-election, and knowing LBJ had more to lose, Ho rejected the San Antonio proposal. During a mid-September meeting with members of an Australian Broadcasting Group visiting the White House the president had openly expressed his private misgivings about how he had conducted the war:
I don’t want to be misunderstood, so I’ll measure my words. I think we may have made two mistakes in Vietnam. ... First, our posture at home and abroad may have been too moderate, too balanced, not strong or assertive enough from the first. It is possible that we may have moved into Vietnam too slowly—that we have been too restrained in our bombing policy—too gradual across the board. In retrospect, we may have been too cautious for too long. Second, we may have helped to create mistrust or misinterpretation of our peace proposals. If the sincerity of our overtures are questioned, it could be that we have crawled too often. History will record the lengthy and imaginative list of U.S. peace initiatives. It will record how they met nothing but arrogant rebukes by Hanoi ... Eisenhower may be right. If gradualism does not pay off early, then the enemy must be regarded as the enemy and fought with all resources, with no sanctuary or quarter given.”12
Selling Progress
On September 27, 1967, Rostow cabled Westmoreland, Bunker, and Komer that they now needed to “search urgently for occasions to present sound evidence of progress in Vietnam.” Press and TV reports were dominated not by the optimism that was seen by the White House, but by bad news from Vietnam. “We must somehow get hard evidence out of Saigon on steady if slow progress in population control, pacification, VC manpower problems, economic progress in the countryside, ARVN improvement, etc. All are happening. Little comes through despite what we know to be most serious efforts out our way. President’s judgment is that this is at present stage a critically important dimension of fighting the war.” Rostow created an interagency task force “to develop new ways of measuring the progress of the war in all its facets.” In the interim, however, he wrote, “We must proceed as rapidly as possible to purify existing data so that our present displays can be refined and new, more valid statistical displays can be developed. Individual new statistical series should be added to those currently in use as they become ready.”
Some advisors counseled restraint in the administration’s search for statistical evidence that would dramatize progress. Philip Habib, deputy assistant secretary of state, warned that, “Our problem is not that the public has not been exposed to this kind of material before. The problem is that they do not accept this evidence as sufficient. Better statistics will help, but not enough to meet the basic problem. The data do not explain away dismay at our own casualty figures (the level and the cumulative total). They do not answer charges of Vietnamese corruption, inefficiency, and inadequate performance. They do not answer the question of how much longer we will be required to maintain our effort. They do not answer those who doubt that it is in our national interest to do what we are doing at the price we are paying. They do not satisfy those who are not looking for military success but who are hoping for a short-run political solution.”13
In early October, the president received Saigon Report #7867, “Measurements of Progress in South Vietnam.” This massive report from the United States Embassy in Saigon sought “to demonstrate to the press and the public that we are making solid progress and are not in a stalemate.” Secretary Rusk believed that “Saigon 7867 presents powerful evidence of solid progress.” In a letter to Bunker the secretary wrote:
Precisely because it presents such powerful evidence, we anticipate that critics will seize any possible opportunity to attack its credibility. Therefore, we must be doubly sure that we are fully prepared in Washington and Saigon to back up every statement. ... The whole question of enemy strength, recruitment and infiltration will certainly be controversial on the basis of past experience. Before these figures are used any more widely, we feel that it is absolutely essential that Washington and Saigon are in agreement on Order of Battle figures and recruitment. As you know the Order of Battle statistics are in the process of coordination—Given the present exercise re Order of Battle statistics and past and present problems with infiltration and recruitment estimates plus difficulties cited above, we feel that surfacing “balance sheets” and “crossover-points” at this time would not be useful.14
But before the Saigon Report could be published the Harris opinion survey for October appeared showing that support for the Vietnam war had dropped to another all-time low of 58 percent—down from 72 percent in July and 61 percent in late August. Modest but steady military progress was no longer politically acceptable. On October 10, presidential special assistant and speech writer Harry McPherson warned LBJ that the administration had to present its case more convincingly to the public, but that “Bob McNamara thinks he and Secretary Rusk have pretty much lost their credibility on the subject and I’m afraid I agree.”
Adding to the precarious balance of the administration’s credibility, the Order of Battle debate again threatened to derail the public relations purification program. Just when it appeared that a resolution on SNIE 14.3-67 had been achieved, MACV circulated its proposed press briefing explaining the new Order-of-Battle figures. The circulation of the proposed briefing was standard operating procedure within bureaucratic channels. But when it was read by Paul Walsh, acting deputy director for economic research in the CIA, he cabled George Carver that the briefing was “one of the greatest snow jobs since Potemkin constructed his village.” Walsh believed that “this briefing and similar fictions that MACV proposes to present in the near future, present a series of vulnerable intelligence judgments that cannot be substantiated at this time and promise almost certainly to lead to even graver credibility problems than the current debate over orders of battle.” Walsh strenuously objected to the “unbelievably cavalier and shocking consignment of the thousands of militia and self-defense forces into the realm of fellow-travelers and sympathizers.” This reasoning was a “complete and wanton scuttling” of the Order of Battle process.15
Carver agreed with Walsh and quickly informed Philip Goulding, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, that the CIA had serious substantive and procedural problems with MACV’s version of the proposed briefing and hence could not support it or concur in its use. Carver argued that the press was too sophisticated to fall for the new OB statistics. “The whole proposed treatment of the old irregular and new guerrilla figure will be torn apart by the Saigon press corps.”16 The CIA feared that MACV’s intelligence judgments could not be substantiated and would compound credibility problems if presented in the proposed form.
Rostow’s preference for MACV’s new numbers was evident, and he pushed MACV’s case to President Johnson. In a memo to the president he maintained that the latest MACV estimates showed that regular and guerrilla strength of VC had been in steady decline. “The truth is that on latest MACV estimates, the VC/North Vietnamese Army regulars reached a peak strength of 127,000 in September 1966; and have declined to 118,000 regular forces now. The guerrilla strength of the VC has almost certainly declined by an even larger figure over this period of time. Further, the peak in VC/NVA incidents came as early as the end of 1965: November-December 1965–January 1966, 2,845 per month average; the average for June-July-August 1967 is 1,769. In short, the picture is of a war which has reached a peak and is beginning to decelerate slowly.”17
On October 14, 1967, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas sent LBJ a lengthy handwritten note on the subject of Vietnam, recommending that “we must get off the defensive in the propaganda battle,” and outlining an aggressive campaign for turning the tide of public opinion. Fortas had been an old friend and confidant since 1948 when he defended Johnson in legal proceedings involving irregularities in Johnson’s Texas primary election. The first phone call to LBJ following Kennedy’s assassination had come from Fortas, who was then a partner in the prestigious Washington law firm of Arnold, Fortas and Porter. When Justice Arthur Goldberg resigned from the Supreme Court in order to become ambassador to the United Nations, Fortas was nominated to fill the vacancy. Ironically, the nomination was made on July 28, 1965—the same day Johnson announced the Americanization of the war.
In his unofficial capacity as friend, counsellor, and strategist, Fortas supported an unrestrained policy for stepping up the war.
We can’t sustain a shooting war on a non-emotional basis. Our support in this country seems to be slipping with respect to the war. Young people, subject to draft, need some stirring up. We should shift emphasis as to the reasons for our involvement—away from helping South Vietnam to helping ourselves and the free world to combat the “new” Communist technique of conquest by infiltration and subversion. We should take or make an early opportunity to state, emphatically, that we’re going to see this through to a successful conclusion. Nothing, I think, is as destructive as the notion that we may quit. This is harmful inside the country and its effect on the enemy’s disposition to come to terms. We must sound this theme soon, so we can state it as collaboration with the South Vietnamese. . . . Success means an end to the overthrow of governments by infiltration and subversion from sources outside of their borders. We hope it will come quickly and at the conference table. But come it will—and come it must. We cannot and will not permit South Vietnam to be a monument to freedom’s defeat—or a franchise to infiltration and subversion. Our resistance in South Vietnam has given courage to the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America to resist the efforts of Communism to take over. Our retreat would be a mortal and savage blow to them. This country has never left the field of battle in abject surrender of cause for which it fought. We shall not do so now. We shall apply the minimum of the tremendous force available to us—the minimum necessary to protect freedom—to resist a Communist victory—to obtain the modest goal that we seek and must obtain. But obtain it, we shall.”18
Mid-October also brought a series of new proposals from the Joint Chiefs for accelerating the rate of progress in the war. Fortified by the Stennis subcommittee’s recommendation for removal of target restrictions, General Wheeler (recovered and back at the helm) charged that the rate of progress had been and continued to be slow, largely because U.S. military power had been restrained in a manner that had reduced significantly its effectiveness. The chiefs believed that U.S. objectives could still be achieved but only by removing present limitations on military operations.19
Johnson was being pushed into the hawks’ corner. The crisis brought a thoughtful memo from McGeorge Bundy, who recommended that the president distance himself from the political hawks. “They are overwhelmingly wrong, on all the evidence, and the belief that you are gradually giving in to them is the most serious single fear of reasonable men in all parts of the country.” Knowing Johnson as he did, Bundy warned that it would be a major mistake to marshall “any elaborate effort to show by new facts and figures that we are ‘winning’ the war in Vietnam.” The credibility gap was hurting LBJ politically and “we do not gain with the mass of the people by what we report of progress in Vietnam.”
Bundy returned to the distinctions he had drawn in earlier memos between tactical and strategic bombing. “Dick Helms told me solemnly today that every single member of the intelligence staff agrees with the view that bombing in the Hanoi-Haiphong area has no significant effect whatever on the level of supplies that reaches the southern battlefields. Nor does any intelligence officer of standing believe that strategic bombing will break the will of Hanoi in the foreseeable future. This strategic air war engages our pilots and the pride of our air commanders; it also has a military life of its own, with its own claimed imperatives. But it does not affect the real contest, which is in the south. Its political costs are rising every week. We have everything to gain politically and almost nothing to lose militarily if we will firmly hold our bombing to demonstrably useful target areas.”20
At the conclusion of an October 23, 1967, meeting with the Democratic leadership, LBJ asked all members of the White House staff to leave in order to hold “a confidential discussion on Vietnam.” Attending the meeting with McNamara, Rusk, and Helms were the following members of Congress: Senators Everett Dirksen, Bert Hickenlooper, Robert Byrd, Margaret Chase Smith, John Sparkman, Russell B. Long, and Mike Mansfield and Congressmen Carl Hayden, John Mahon, and Carl Albert. Discussion first focused on whether one more bombing pause might lead to negotiations. The president opened the discussion with a lengthy overview: “Unfortunately, it is my conclusion, and that of all of my principal advisers, that a total cessation of bombing at this time would not in fact lead to productive negotiations. I want to review with you the reasons why we have come to that conclusion. Hanoi has applied serious military pressure south of the DMZ. General Westmoreland’s forces beat this back in late September but the threat now seems to be building again. Several North Vietnamese in private conversations have referred to Hanoi’s expectation that it will achieve a significant military victory—probably meaning in the DMZ area—in the near future. There has even been talk by North Vietnamese representatives of ‘another Dien Bien Phu.’”
Johnson then turned to questions of military policy. He had decided that war, not peace, was what Hanoi wanted. They had outlasted the French, they would outlast the United States. “I recognize that there will continue to be people who will urge—despite the evidence—that a change in our bombing policy could lead us toward peace. But I am not prepared to act simply on hope.”
Few at the meeting voiced opposition to Johnson, but Secretary McNamara came precariously close: “We cannot win the war with bombing in the north. We need action in South Vietnam supplemented by bombing in the north with limited objectives. Bombing is a supplement to not a substitute. The great danger is to lead our people to think we can win the war overnight with bombing. We cannot.” The president shot back at McNamara: “We do have differences of opinion.”
The difficulties in maintaining the president’s congressional coalition emerged during the meeting. Congressman John Mahon urged, “You should keep the pressure on. Continue the bombing.” Senator Long added, “Don’t stop the bombing. If anything, step it up. Anytime you want to lose a war you can. If we lose Vietnam we lose influence in this entire area of the world. We must make a stand here.” Senator Robert Byrd interjected, “You can’t do more than you’ve done. If anything, you have been overly eager. . . . These people have every reason to believe they should hold out until the next election. I hope you continue to be firm. I hope you try to work through the U.N. If you feel what you are doing is right I hope you continue to do it. You may lose next year’s election because of it, but I believe that history will vindicate you.”
As the meeting drew to a close Senator Mike Mansfield took issue with the majority of those present. “I am not in accord on the matter of the effectiveness of the bombing. We could bomb North Vietnam into the stone age if we wanted to. I do not believe we have reached the objective which was stopping the flow of men and material into the South. We have lost many planes and we are flying within 24 seconds of China. We should think of contact between the NLF and Saigon to try to cut them out from North Vietnam.” But Mansfield found little support among his colleagues. Congressman Carl Albert closed the meeting by saying, “I would tell them to jump in the lake. We must continue to do what we have to do.”
“Doing what we have to” involved a dual-pronged effort in military initiatives from the field and a public-relations campaign at home. During the final week of October a blue-ribbon, non-partisan committee for Peace and Freedom in Vietnam (organized with active White House prodding and supervision) was announced. The committee, with two former presidents as members, gave strong endorsement to U.S. policy in Vietnam. Democratic Senator Paul Douglas denied charges that the committee was being formed as part of an administration counterattack against critics of Vietnam policy. “Our objective is to make sure that the voice of America is heard—loud and clear—so that Peking and Hanoi will not mistake the strident voices of some dissenters for American discouragement and a weakening of will.”
On October 27, 1967, Harry McPherson joined the growing chorus of doubters. Although he had never openly opposed bombing and “never will,” McPherson explained to Johnson, “I get the impression that a lot of Harry McPhersons out in private life—middle-road-Democrats who’ve supported American foreign policy decisions since 1948 and who believe we have to stay in Vietnam for one reason or another—have grown increasingly edgy about the bombing program. Indeed, I think it is one of the main causes of disaffection with our Vietnam policy. To a great many people, it doesn’t look as if it will get the North to the conference table or otherwise out of the south. It doesn’t look as if it is hurting the enemy much.”
Bombing had become the war in the eyes of the press and in the minds of the public. “Yet we know it is not the war,” McPherson wrote to Johnson. “The war is the tough frustrating slow struggle in the south, on the ground, in the villages, and in the Saigon government. If we can’t win that war and can bomb the North into rubble, we won’t have won a thing. The air war, in a sense, diverts our attention from the real tasks we face in Vietnam.” McPherson warned the president that as things now stood, “we are a big mechanized white nation obliterating a small agricultural brown nation.”
Bombing had become the greatest obstacle to negotiations because it was the only pressure the United States could apply, McPherson argued. But it was also the one kind of pressure the North was most effective at proving itself capable of resisting. President Johnson was very close to being forced into accepting population bombing—the kind of war that created the greatest kind of moral unease in people. McPherson urged Johnson not to cave into the political hawks and military leaders. “You are the Commander in Chief. If you think a policy is wrong, you should not follow it just to quiet the generals and admirals. Generals and admirals like to bomb. People trust their judgment when it is a question of this or that military tactic; but when it is a question of this or that policy, they mistrust the military. It appears to some people that the military are blackmailing you into following their policy toward North Vietnam.”21
The Beginning and an End
President Thieu and Vice-President Ky were inaugurated in Saigon on October 31, 1967. Representing the United States at the inauguration, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey said, “I came as a witness for those millions of Americans who trust in the steady progress being made in Vietnam as symbolized by this inauguration.”
During lunch in the White House on the same day, Secretary of Defense McNamara told President Johnson that the “continuation of our present course of action in Southeast Asia would be dangerous, costly in lives, and unsatisfactory to the American people.” As Thieu and Ky were being sworn in, Secretary McNamara spent the evening in Washington preparing a memorandum identifying the failure of U.S. policy in Vietnam.
McNamara’s position was a major break within the ranks of the best of the brightest. It had been one thing for college professors, nervous-nellies, and hippy demonstrators to challenge the war’s progress, but one of the principal architects of that policy was now confronting its inevitable contradictions. President Johnson had always feared that Hanoi could win by the breaking of American resolve what it could not achieve on the battlefield, and now, with the secretary of defense questioning policy, that resolve appeared to be weakening.