VII
There are ways of guiding the press to show light at the end of the tunnel.
Walt Rostow, Remarks at a meeting of the Wise Men, November 2, 1967.
On November 1, 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara forwarded President Johnson a memorandum containing his “personal views” on the direction of U.S. policy in Vietnam which “may be incompatible with your own.” (Johnson later acknowledged that McNamara’s memo raised “fundamental questions of policy with reference to the conduct of the war in Vietnam.”1) In this memorandum McNamara warned the president that “continuing our present course of action will not bring us by the end of 1968 enough closer to success, in the eyes of the American public, to prevent the continued erosion of popular support for our involvement in Vietnam.” The impending presidential election would force Johnson either to defend a stalemated policy or to escalate the war in order to avoid the politically motivated charge by Republicans and conservative Democrats that LBJ’s policy was not achieving its goal and that American soldiers had become the ante for continued stalemate. The secretary again proposed a policy of stabilization in the U.S. military effort that included a halt to increases in force levels and no further expansion of air operations against North Vietnam.
Secretary McNamara’s argument was that progress in the war had been and would continue to be so slow that “this progress will not be readily visible to the general public either in the United States or abroad.” Although Johnson’s other advisors, particularly Generals Wheeler and Westmoreland, Ambassador Bunker, and Special Assistant Walt Rostow, had repeatedly been assuring the president for months that the crossover point had been reached or was very close, McNamara argued that bombing had not interrupted the flow of supplies and men to the South, nor had it helped create conditions for stabilizing the political situation in South Vietnam. Instead, bombing had become an empty trump card for negotiations that were not going to be held. Air bombardment had not broken the will of the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong: “Nothing can be expected to break this will other than the conviction that they cannot succeed. This conviction will not be created unless and until they come to the conclusion that the US is prepared to remain in Vietnam for whatever period of time is necessary to assure the independent choice of the South Vietnamese people. The enemy cannot be expected to arrive at that conclusion in advance of the American public. And the American public, frustrated by the slow rate of progress, fearing continued escalation, and doubting that all approaches to peace have been sincerely probed, does not give the appearance of having the will to persist.”
McNamara’s argument in favor of a bombing halt was based on the premise that American air attacks on North Vietnam were what kept the war going and prevented a political settlement. McNamara believed that a bombing halt would lead to a suspension of enemy operations across the DMZ, and he recommended that during this period of stabilization, the United States should make every effort to restrict the war and not increase its forces above authorized levels, not call up Reserves, and not expand ground actions in the North. No president wanted to defend a war with no end in sight, he wrote LBJ, and while there was always the danger that Hanoi might use the talks as a propaganda tool, the internal dynamics of the situation could result in productive discussions moving toward a settlement. “No other course affords any hope of these results in the next 15 months,” he warned.
The war was indeed stalemated; 525,000 troops had not been enough. Moreover, any additional combat troops would produce an increase of between 700–1000 casualties per month without producing any significant change in the nature of military operations. “But neither the additional troops now scheduled nor augmentation of our forces by a much greater amount holds great promise of bringing the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces visibly closer to collapse during the next 15 months. Nonetheless we will be faced with requests for additional ground forces requiring an increased draft and/or a call-up of reserves.”
McNamara reminded the president that the Joint Chiefs could only counsel additional operations against North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The military’s creativity involved mining the ports and waterways, attacking shipping and aircraft, expanding bombing, and covert programs. “I do not,” McNamara urged, “think adoption of any or all of the proposals would bring us significantly closer to victory in the next 15 months.”
Progress in the “other war” of pacification revealed that “the chances of dramatic impact by any measurement of security were slim. The pacification program is moving forward but progress is slow and likely to remain slow.” Despite some encouraging advances, the political situation would not be sufficiently improved by 1968. “It is not at all clear that the image or performance of this government over the next 15 months will make it appear to the US public to be a government worthy of continued US support in blood and treasure.”
According to McNamara’s memorandum then, public opinion would force two choices on the administration for ending the stalemate in Vietnam: escalate the air war in the North and expand the ground war in the South; or, on the other hand, withdraw from Vietnam. In order to avoid this polarization in U.S. public opinion, McNamara concluded that it was necessary to stabilize the war and actively seek negotiations.2
The Wise Men
On the same night that Secretary McNamara handed LBJ his proposal for stabilizing the U.S. military program, a remarkable meeting of President Johnson’s senior foreign policy advisory group was held. Some members of this informal group of former and present government officials had played important roles in implementing the doctrine of containment in the 1940s and in shaping U.S. foreign policy ever since. As a result of their periodic visits and counsels with the president they were later dubbed “the wise men.”3
In addition to the president’s principal advisors on foreign policy, these distinguished senior advisors included: Dean Acheson, secretary of state under President Truman; George Ball, under-secretary of state in the Kennedy-Johnson period; McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; Douglas Dillon, ambassador to France under President Eisenhower and secretary of the treasury under President Kennedy; Cyrus Vance, deputy secretary of defense under McNamara and a diplomatic troubleshooter for President Johnson; Arthur Dean, chief Korean War negotiator; John J. McCloy, high commissioner to West Germany under President Truman and assistant secretary of war during World War II; General Omar Bradley, World War II commander and the first JCS chairman; General Matthew Ridgway, Korean War commander and later NATO commander; General Maxwell Taylor, JCS chairman under President Kennedy and later ambassador to Saigon; Robert Murphy, a senior career ambassador of the Truman-Eisenhower period; Henry Cabot Lodge, former U.S. senator and twice ambassador to Saigon; Abe Fortas, a sitting associate justice of the Supreme Court and a personal adviser to President Johnson; and Arthur Goldberg, ambassador to the United Nations and a former secretary of labor and Supreme Court justice.
The meeting was organized by Walt Rostow and Clark Clifford. In a recently declassified document Rostow had explained to Johnson that he and Clifford “would propose to invite them to join the President and the senior officers of the government for ‘a periodic review of our whole posture in Southeast Asia.’” In scripting the scene, Rostow suggested that the president might then come over to the State Department where the advisors would hold their primary briefing, “so that the story would be, if it came out, that Secretary Rusk had these men in for general consultation and you joined them for informal talks.” Clifford and Rostow did not “wish to develop either a sense of crisis—if the gathering should leak—or an implication that you were dissatisfied with the advice of your senior advisers.”4 The group convened for an evening session on November 1 that did not include the president, but a lengthy morning session the following day had LBJ at the helm.
During the evening session,* Secretary McNamara candidly admitted that “perhaps he and Rusk’s efforts since 1961 have been a failure.” But the wise men did not intend to dwell on failure; instead, they listened to briefings from General Wheeler and George Carver that reported great progress since 1965, but insufficient to collapse the enemy within the next fifteen months. Carver reported that Hanoi would end the war only when “they had decided the U.S. would not behave like the French did in 1954 and when a viable state structure seemed on the way to emerging in Saigon.”
All those present agreed that bombing did not prevent the present level of infiltration of men and arms from North to South but opinions varied with respect to strategy. George Ball and Dean Acheson urged that the United States “use bombing as a negotiating chip against pressure across the DMZ.” Acheson said that “bombing should be stopped only when Hanoi did not press across the DMZ.” Secretary Rusk pointed out that “the United States had tried to establish that connection but had failed.” Robert Murphy and General Bradley, in particular, said “they were sure that the bombing was having some effect on operations in the South, although it could not be precisely measured. In this discussion it emerged that while Helms agreed with McNamara that the present level of bombing would not have a demonstrable effect on flows to the South, he disagreed with the judgment that a stoppage of bombing would not result in increased flows to the South. It might.”
Arthur Dean made the point that “an excessive eagerness to negotiate or a broad humanitarian gesture to the Communists is interpreted as a sign of weakness by Communists.” At the close Secretary Rusk urged the advisors to put their minds to this question: “In the face of the situation, as it was outlined to them, what would they do if they were President?”5
With the evening session behind them, Rostow composed a “thinking agenda” for the next day’s meeting with the president. Rostow also suggested that deputy press secretary Tom Johnson be present and keep a tally sheet on each man with respect to each question.
President Johnson opened the November 2 morning meeting with the excessively flattering statement, “I have a peculiar confidence in you as patriots and that is why I have picked you.” The president then asked, “Is our course in Vietnam right?” If so, what could be done about “the deterioration of public support and the lack of editorial support for our policies. . . . How do we unite the country?” Johnson placed five questions on the table. (1) What could we do that we are not doing in South Vietnam? (2) Concerning the North, should we continue what we are doing, or should we mine the ports and take out the dikes, or should we eliminate the bombing of the North? (3) On negotiations—should we adopt a passive policy of willingness to negotiate, or should we be more aggressive, or should we bow out? (4) Should we get out of Vietnam? (5) What positive steps should the administration take to unite the American people and to communicate with the nation better?
Secretary of State Dean Rusk responded to the president’s agenda by reading Ambassador Bunker’s cable summarizing his first six months in Saigon. The cable emphasized that “steady progress is being made.” Admitting that “in the past we have been overly optimistic and have become prisoners of this optimism,” Bunker was now “enthusiastic about the progress being made.” Bunker reported that “the civil side of the war is proceeding well with the constitutional process and the pacification process equalling in importance the military improvements. . . . The newly elected government, especially Thieu and Ky, know that they must show progress in order to gain the support of the people. Steady progress is being made. Much still needs to be done, however, such as a vigorous processing of the war, elimination of corruption, improvement of the standard of living, especially in the rural areas.”
The frustrations of those who had helped shape U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam were evident in this meeting. The president described himself as feeling “like the steering wheel of a car out of control”; McNamara and Rusk felt “worthless about their efforts since 1961.” When Robert Murphy said that the bombing should be left in the hands of the Joint Chiefs, LBJ (showing immediate recall of McNamara’s memo) responded, “The JCS came up with 10 proposals, all of which involved the North. I sent it back to them to focus on the South and they reported we can’t do anything more than we are doing in the South now.”
Douglas Dillon believed that both the doves and hawks viewed the situation as hopeless. “We must show some progress. To talk of 15 years seems like forever.” General Omar Bradley charged that “our troubles can be blamed on the communications media. ... If it wasn’t for all the protesters, the North Vietnamese would give up. ...” When the president asked General Bradley (who had just returned from Vietnam) to review the competence of allied troops, Bradley replied, “They get ice cream about three times a week. Only two out of a thousand that I and my wife visited disliked being there or did not understand why they were there.” General Bradley concluded, “We need to raise patriotism. We never had a war without patriotic slogans. ‘Patience,’ 100 years means nothing to a Chinaman, but we do not have their same patience.” Robert Murphy recommended that the administration orchestrate “a hate complex directed at Ho Chi Minh similar to Hitler.”
Dean Acheson soothed Johnson with the observation, “The cross you have to bear is a lousy Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You have a dilettante fool [J. William Fulbright] at the head of the committee.” Acheson also warned President Johnson that negotiations were not going to happen. “The bombing has no effect on negotiations. When these fellows decide they can’t defeat the South, then they will give up. This is the way it was in Korea. This is the way the Communists operate.”
McGeorge Bundy urged LBJ, “Don’t let communications people in New York set the tone of the debate. Emphasize the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ instead of the battles, deaths and danger.” Bundy shared Acheson’s view that negotiations were no longer viable. “I suppose we can’t say that publicly because the judges of public opinion in the nation won’t believe it, But I think it is logical to say that we in the Administration do not expect negotiations in the next year. Public support is eroded because people see dying with no picture of result in sight. If we can permeate to the public that we are seeing the results at the end of the road, this will be helpful.” Walt Rostow added that while the war was not popular, it was necessary to show progress. “There are ways of guiding the press to show light at the end of the tunnel,” Rostow insisted.
Johnson then called on Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe Fortas who repeated the strident thoughts of his earlier memo to the president. “I believe there is a good deal of over-reaction to what appears to be the public attitude of the United States. This opposition exists in only a small group of the community, primarily the intellectuals or so-called intellectuals and the press.” Fortas shared Dean Acheson’s view that “negotiations are symbolic rather than a real thing. . . . We’ve been fortunate so far that NVN has rejected our offer. ... To continue to talk about negotiations only signals to the communists that they are succeeding in winning over American public opinion.”
Clark Clifford (who would soon replace McNamara at the Pentagon and then lead a searching reexamination of policy) followed Fortas and encouraged President Johnson not to cave in to public opinion. “One of the measures of the success that history will look very favorably upon is that both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson didn’t wait for public opinion to catch up with them. They went ahead with what was right, and because of that the war is a success today.”
Perhaps the most absurd aspect of the meeting occurred at 1:45 when the president’s daughter brought Patrick Lyndon Nugent into the meeting. Grandson “Lyn” stayed in his grandpa’s arms for the remainder of the luncheon, while the president of the United States reviewed the consensus of opinions given at the meeting.
As the meeting moved to a close, Secretary McNamara thanked the group for their support. LBJ interjected that “no nation has been more enlightenedly served than under Secretaries Rusk and McNamara.” He went on to say that they represented the “highest type of manhood that this country can produce” and “their only test is what is good for their country.” The president concluded by saying that he, Rusk, and McNamara could hold out, “but he didn’t know about the resoluteness of the American people.”
The meeting ended with almost unanimous agreement amongst the senior advisors on the question of getting out of Vietnam. “Absolutely not,” said Acheson. “As impossible as it is undesirable,” said Bundy. “Definitely not,” said Dillon. “Unthinkable,” said Lodge, “we are trying to divert a change in the balance of power.” “The public would be outraged if we got out,” said Fortas. As the advisors were leaving the room, George Ball, who had been unusually quiet during the dialogue, confronted Acheson and his colleagues: “I’ve been watching you across the table. You’re like a flock of buzzards sitting on a fence, sending the young men off to be killed. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”6
But Ball was out of tune with this meeting. Shame belonged with those opposing the war, not with these patriots. Yet, within a day, dissent within the group manifested itself. Averill Harriman wrote privately to the president concerning his disagreement with certain opinions made by members of the senior advisory group during the November 2 meeting. Appointed by President Johnson in 1965 as ambassador-at-large with primary responsibility for Southeast Asian Affairs, Harriman disagreed with the opinion that proposals for negotiation by the United States only encouraged Hanoi to hold out. “There is no evidence whatever supporting this contention. On the other hand, it seems clear that the President’s position has been materially strengthened both at home and abroad by the statements and efforts he has made or authorized to bring about talks.”7 (Johnson later named Harriman to lead the U.S. negotiation in the Paris Peace talks.)
McGeorge Bundy also wrote to LBJ that the November 1–2 discussions were “enormously interesting and [I] have found my own mind stretched to some new thoughts as a result.” Johnson’s former national security advisor reaffirmed the group’s “strong and unanimous negative” on pulling out of Vietnam. “I suspect that George Ball would be inclined to settle for a deal which might eventually turn sour in the South. I think the rest of us would wish to stay there until there is a viable non-Communist South Vietnam. This difference is not currently critical.”
Bundy noted that bombing North Vietnam had dominated discussion at the meeting, just as the differences between McNamara and the Joint Chiefs had dominated public discussion. The president needed to get his advisory team harmonized for the long haul: “There is no doubt that the public airing of differences between McNamara and the top brass has created some confusion, especially when followed by air operations which seemed inconsistent with one or another of the McNamara arguments. And on their side, the top brass have given the impression that they could have done things much better if they had been allowed to do them their own way. This pulling and hauling has been natural, and to some degree inevitable, but the discussion of November 2 suggests that we may be reaching a point where you can find a solid position from which to put a stop to it.”
Bundy urged Johnson to draw on his account of straight loyalty from the top military men. “My impression is that they still feel cut off from you and somehow think they really do not get your ear as much as they should. (Naturally it never occurs to them that their real trouble may be simply that they have not got a very good case, and that you may find them as tiresome as any other powerful but narrow-minded pressure group.)” Bundy recommended that a compromise be forged between McNamara and the chiefs and that McNamara be required to join in a rationale for the bombing that would be broader than what he had told the Stennis subcommittee.
Bundy also warned Johnson that few advisors were really knowledgeable about events in South Vietnam. The two men who knew the most, Lodge and Taylor, had raised the toughest questions about the military tactics now being followed. General Taylor had questioned Westmoreland’s strategy of digging in and holding ground with forces in the DMZ and in the highlands; Ambassador Lodge questioned the wisdom of large-scale, search-and-destroy operations. It seemed evident, Bundy argued, that increased casualties should be expected from these strategies. Moreover, “the prospect of endless inconclusive fighting is the most serious single cause of domestic disquiet about the war.”
Bundy urged Johnson to question General Westmoreland’s military strategy. Questioning the tactical judgment of the commander in the field was obviously a highly sensitive matter, but the president had every reason to satisfy himself about questions as important as those raised by Lodge and Taylor. Bundy urged the president to do something which had not yet been done in this war: “For extremely good reasons the top men in Washington have kept their hands off the tactical conduct of the war, and most discussions have been directed rather to questions of force levels in the South and bombing limits in the North. (Even in Saigon the successive Ambassadors have been careful to keep out of military matters.) But now that the principal battleground is in domestic opinion, I believe the Commander-in-Chief has both the right and the duty to go further.”
This war was more political than any in U.S. history except the Civil War, Bundy argued, and the visible exercise of presidential authority was necessary for the war and public opinion, but “also best for the internal confidence of the Government. Briefings which cite the latest statistics have lost their power to persuade. So have spectacular summits. These things are not worth one-quarter of what would be gained by the gradual emergence of the fact that the President himself—in his capacity as political leader and Commander-in-Chief—is shaping a campaign which is gradually increasing in its success and gradually decreasing in its cost in American lives and money.”
Bundy concluded with a warning that the administration’s preoccupation with statistical demonstrations of progress had backfired on them. “I think we have tried too hard to convert public opinion by statistics and by spectacular visits of all sorts. I do have to say also that I think public discontent with the war is now wide and deep. One of the few things that helps us right now is public distaste for the violent doves—but I think people are getting fed up with the endlessness of the fighting. What really hurts, then, is not the arguments of the doves but the cost of the war in lives and money, coupled with the lack of light at the end of the tunnel.”8
Johnson instructed Rostow to compare the McNamara and Bundy positions. In a “Literally Eyes Only for The President,” Rostow explained that where Secretary McNamara favored an announced new policy of stabilization, Bundy accepted the new posture outlined within the president’s San Antonio speech. On bombing, McNamara was ready to move ahead with a unilateral stand-down and await Hanoi’s reaction; Bundy was against any unconditional pause, any extended pause for sake of appearances, and any major headline-making intensification of bombing. Neither Bundy nor McNamara supported troop reinforcements beyond those already approved.
Rostow informed Johnson that Bundy had not explicitly addressed other issues but presumably he would agree that there would be no Call-up of Reserves; no expansion of ground action into North Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia; no attempt to deny sea imports into North Vietnam; no effort to break the will of the North by an air campaign on the dikes, locks, or populated targets; and that the United States would gradually transfer the major burden of the fighting to the South Vietnamese forces.9
The Debate on Stabilization
The McNamara proposal for a stabilized military program became the lightening rod for private debate among the advisors. President Johnson seemed determined to give McNamara’s memorandum a complete airing, and it was circulated amongst his principal advisors. Walt Rostow was the first to respond to the memorandum, writing the next day to President Johnson that any cessation of bombing would push the president off his “middle ground at home.” Citing a Gallup poll that showed that 67 percent of the American people favored continuing the bombing of the North, Rostow warned LBJ that the Republicans would use a bombing halt against the president during the upcoming campaign. “Acknowledging my limitations as a judge of domestic politics, I am extremely skeptical of any change in strategy that would take you away from your present middle position; that is, using rationally all the power available, but avoiding actions likely to engage the Soviet Union and Communist China. If we shift unilaterally towards de-escalation, the Republicans will move in and crystallize a majority around a stronger policy.”
Rostow remained optimistic in regards to U.S. military prospects. “If I felt Bob’s strategy would measurably increase the chances of a true settlement, I believe the risk might be worth taking. But both a unilateral bombing cessation and an announced policy of ‘stabilization’ would, in my view, be judged in Hanoi as a mark of weakness rather than evidence of increased U.S. capacity to sweat out the war. ... Although I certainly will not predict for you an early end for the war, I believe that, with a little luck and reasonable performance by the South Vietnamese under the new government, the evidence of solid progress will become increasingly clear to one and all.”
Rostow argued that McNamara’s strategy would actually ease the Communists’ negotiating position at a time when intelligence showed an increase in Soviet influence in Hanoi and a shift in Hanoi “to the view that they cannot directly take over the South now” and “within this framework, a probing for what the status of the Communists would be within South Vietnam in a time of peace.” The next day Rostow buttressed this point by sending LBJ data from Long An province in South Vietnam that showed “the process of erosion which, for old professional guerrilla warriors, indicates the clock is ticking slowly against them.”10
Rostow speculated that the war had already entered a stage during which Communist military operations were designed merely to improve their negotiating position. Increasing pressure on the North was necessary for preserving future U.S. negotiating options. Distinguishing his position from McNamara’s, Rostow said, “I believe Bob’s strategy would ease their problem and permit them rationally to protract the negotiation—unless Bob is correct on domestic politics and I am wrong. That is, if the country settled down for the long pull comfortably with Bob’s program, he could be right. If his policy opened up a debate between united Republicans claiming he had gone soft and a Democratic Administration, with the JCS in disagreement if not open revolt, then my view is correct.”
Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker’s first cable of November contrasted sharply with McNamara’s perspective. Bunker acknowledged the difficult road ahead, but thought it was one worth traveling. “It is obvious, I think, that the effort to establish a functioning representative democracy in Vietnam will encounter many problems. Some of them will be difficult for us to live with. ... Yet, I think we can take considerable pride in the fact that a functioning constitutional government is being established, especially in what seems to me to be a new feeling of confidence and pride on the part of the Vietnamese, and in their determination to increase their efforts and to do more than they have been doing in carrying their share of the burden.”11
General Maxwell Taylor weighed in strongly against the proposed stabilization policy. “Of the alternatives (pull-out, pull-back, all-out, stick-it-out), this is one form of the pull-back alternative which would probably degenerate into pull-out.” While the proposal might allay the fears of those concerned over an expansion of the conflict, it would “provide fresh ammunition for the numerically larger number of critics who say that we are embarked on an endless and hopeless struggle or that we are really not trying to win.” Curtailment of the bombing would discourage the South Vietnamese as well as our allies, jeopardize our in-country forces, and mobilize “the large majority of our citizens who believe in the bombing but who thus far have been silent.” The enemy would undoubtedly interpret any such move as a retreat and a sign of weakness.
Writing directly to the president, Justice Abe Fortas derided McNamara’s proposal, describing it as “an invitation to slaughter.” McNamara’s analysis and recommendations were based “almost entirely, upon an assessment of U.S. public opinion and an unspoken assumption as to the effect that should be given to it.” Fortas rejected the premise that the American people were “unwilling to sustain an indefinitely prolonged war.” Moreover, “our duty is to do what we consider right . . . not what we consider (on a highly dubious basis with which I do not agree) the ‘American people’ want.” Military decisions could not be made in response to a volatile public opinion that could not define the national interest.
McNamara’s program of stabilization would, according to Fortas, produce demands in this country to withdraw from Vietnam—and, in fact, “it must be appraised for what it is: a step in the process of withdrawal.” Fortas rephrased the issue for LBJ: “The American people ... do not want us to achieve less than our objectives—namely, to prevent North Vietnamese domination of South Vietnam by military force or subversion; and to continue to exert such influence as we reasonably can in Asia to prevent an ultimate Communist take-over.” Fortas endorsed a strategy that included increasing pressure on the North Vietnamese and destruction of the Viet Cong. Negotiation should not be considered an objective or a target. “It is a propaganda symbol that we should keep alive.”
Fortas then suggested that perhaps it was time to clean house. “I must frankly state again that I am not convinced that our military program in South Vietnam is as flexible or ingenious as it could be. I know that new proposals have been sought from our military. Perhaps a new and fresh look, including new people—civilian as well as military—might be warranted.”12
Clark Clifford’s critical response to McNamara’s memorandum echoed Fortas’s. Clifford disagreed with the recommendations and believed that stabilization would “retard the possibility of concluding the conflict rather than accelerating it.” The proposed policy would play directly into Hanoi’s hands because it validated Hanoi’s strategy for weakening the will of the United States to carry on the war. “Their previous experience with the French has convinced them that the same result will occur again insofar as the UnitedStates is concerned. It is my opinion that Hanoi will never seek a cessation of the conflict if they think our determination is lessening. On the one hand, if our pressure is unremitting and their losses continue to grow, and hope fades for any sign of weakening on our part, then some day they will conclude that the game is not worth the candle.”
Clifford rejected the very premise for a bombing halt. “I am at a loss to understand this logic. Would the unconditional suspension of the bombing, without any effort to extract a quid pro quo persuade Hanoi that we were firm and unyielding in our conviction to force them to desist from their aggressive designs? The answer is a loud and resounding ‘no.’” Hanoi would interpret the action as (a) evidence of discouragement and frustration, (b) an admission of the wrongness and immorality of bombing the North, and (c) the first step in ultimate total disengagement from the conflict. “It would give an enormous lift to the spirits and morale of the North, and an equally grave setback to the will and determination of the South Vietnamese and our other allies fighting with us.”
With respect to stabilizing the military effort in the South, Clifford asked, “Can there be any doubt as to the North Vietnamese reaction to such an announcement? The chortles of unholy glee issuing from Hanoi would be audible in every capital in the world. Is this evidence of our zeal and courage to stay the course? Of course not! It would be interpreted to be exactly what it is. A resigned and discouraged effort to find a way out of a conflict for which we had lost our will and dedication. And what of our bargaining position? It would have been utterly destroyed. Hanoi would be secure in the comforting thought that we had informed the world that we would refrain from practically all activities that would be damaging to North Vietnam. It would be tantamount to turning over our hole card and showing Hanoi that it was a deuce.”
No war had ever been successfully terminated by such a program, Clifford argued. Pressure needed to be constantly increased until the enemy found it intolerable and capitulated. “The President and every man around him wants to end the war. But the future of our children and grandchildren require that it be ended by accomplishing our purpose, i.e., the thwarting of the aggression by North Vietnam, aided by China and Russia. ... Because of the unique position we occupy in the world today, we cannot expect other countries and other peoples to love us, but with courage and determination, and the help of God, we can make them respect us. It is clear to me that the course of action offered in the memorandum does not accomplish this purpose.”13
Bunker and Westmoreland each responded to Secretary McNamara’s memorandum. Westmoreland opposed any bombing halt in North Vietnam and believed it would be “foolish” to announce a stabilized policy. Ambassador Bunker also weighed in against a bombing stand-down but was attracted to announcing a troop ceiling. “We are fighting a limited war for limited objectives and ... we will not need more than 525,000 U.S. forces.”14
Secretary of State Rusk also forwarded LBJ “a digest of my personal reactions to Secretary McNamara’s memorandum of November 1 on Vietnam.” Rusk said he possessed a fundamental disagreement with McNamara’s forecast: “I accept, as realistic, the prospect that U.S. forces will reach 525,000, other free world forces will reach 59–75,000, and that South Vietnamese forces can be increased by 60,000. I do not agree that these increased forces cannot bring the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces visibly closer to collapse during the next 15 months. The indicators point in the other direction.”
Rusk sided with Ambassador Bunker in the opinion that progress “will accelerate,” but he warned LBJ that “we must resist pressures to take direct action against foreign shipping entering Haiphong or to bomb irrigation dikes.” The secretary strongly supported intensive bombing of infiltration routes in North Vietnam and Laos and sectors of the battlefield such as the DMZ and areas north of the DMZ. But Rusk recognized the fallacy inherent in those who argued that “continuous escalation of the bombing will break the will of Hanoi.”
Rusk concluded with the assessment, “I am more optimistic than Secretary McNamara about whether progress will be Visible to the general public in the months ahead.’ General Westmoreland’s estimate that only 60% of enemy battalions are combat effective is significant. Success is cumulative—and so is failure. The enemy has problems which are growing.”
Rusk did strongly agree with McNamara that ground operations should not be extended into North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. “There are large forces in North Vietnam which have not been committed to South Vietnam. If we cannot deal satisfactorily with forces now in South Vietnam, I do not see how we could improve the position by taking on more than 300,000 additional forces in North Vietnam. No one knows just where the “flash point” is which would change the present rules insofar as Peking and Moscow are concerned. There is a very high risk that ground action against North Vietnam would cross the ‘flash point.’”
With respect to stabilization of the military effort, Rusk said he “generally agreed with the concept of stabilization—but I would not announce it.” Over time, stabilization would become apparent, and it would come without giving guarantees to Hanoi. “I would use the bombing of the North as a central card to play in connection with some interest on the part of Hanoi in a peaceful settlement. It would take some of the drama, and the losses, out of our present bombing effort in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. I would be prepared to build upon cease fires at Christmas, New Year’s, and Tet if the enemy shows any interest.”15
Special National Intelligence Estimate 14.3–67 Is Submitted
On November 13 CIA Director Helms finally submitted to President Johnson SNIE 14.3–67, “Capabilities of the Vietnamese Communists for Fighting in South Vietnam.” Helms wrote to LBJ that the SNIE “is sensitive and potentially controversial primarily because the new strength figures are at variance with our former holdings.” Helms had considered not issuing the SNIE but decided that “too many people are aware that the exercise to get agreed figures has been going on. In short, the charge of bad faith or unwillingness to face the facts would be more generally damaging than the issuance of this document which can stand on its own feet.”
In a covering memorandum to Helms’s memo, Rostow distilled the SNIE for President Johnson. “It comes to this,” wrote Rostow. “Manpower is the major problem confronting the Communists; there has been a substantial reduction in guerrillas since an estimated peak in early 1966; there has been a slight reduction in main force units in the past year, but this has been possible only by using more North Vietnamese replacements in Viet Cong units; there is a ‘fairly good chance’ that the Communist military strength and political infrastructure will continue to decline; Communist strategy is to sustain protracted war of attrition and to persuade the United States that it must pull out or settle on Hanoi’s terms. Their judgment is that the ‘Communists still retain adequate capabilities to support this strategy for at least another year.’”
Rostow informed Johnson that “the memo to you and the introductory note reflect a considerable debate in the intelligence community. The debate centers on the fact that they now know more from captured documents than they did about guerrillas, village defense forces, etc. What they know indicates that guerrilla strength was probably underestimated last year, but has declined substantially since. ... In general, this is a conservative estimate; but it is not a bad thing to build our plans on conservative estimates.”16
A special Cabinet meeting was called in order to brief the president’s team on the new data charted from figures supplied by Ambassador Bunker and General Westmoreland. Rostow began the briefing by recalling CIA Director Helms’s previous statements bearing on “the complexity of any statistical analysis on ‘who is doing what to whom in Vietnam.’” The president interjected, “Nevertheless, Bunker and Westmoreland have stayed up nights working up these figures and I would like to keep them all off the record for now.”
CIA Director Helms reviewed the new intelligence findings. Alluding to the difficulty involved in answering questions like “How is the war going?” Helms emphasized, “It has always been difficult to answer with any statistical certainty.” The new study addressed “the perplexing question of force levels and the numbers of people involved. ... The new intelligence estimate allows for these and other variables. But statistical uncertainties remain. The findings must be closely held. . . . ‘We can’t let the press in on this. We must still be careful in talking about the number of people in the game.’”
The Cabinet meeting was filled with restrained optimism. Helms explained that, “The war is in no sense over. ... There won’t be any collapse. . . . But U.S. and South Vietnamese forces are doing well ... the war is going in our favor.” The president said that he needed “to see things in perspective. I can see that our curve is better than the first hundred days of President Kennedy, or Eisenhower’s eight years and the way it is going now, better than our first three years.” Following the meeting, Rostow told those assembled, “Statistics can’t give you everything 100%, but they can and do confirm progress.”
Did Westmoreland Deceive Anyone?
Was General Westmoreland conspiring against President Johnson by altering the categories, and thus the numbers, used in the SNIE and MACV’s Order of Battle? Was Johnson the victim of mendacious intelligence? If so, MACV, not the president, bore responsibility for America’s failure in Vietnam. As New Yorker writer Reneta Adler explained in her analysis of the CBS-Westmoreland trial some twenty years later, “If CBS was right, for example, and Westmoreland had lost the war by deceiving his military superiors and his civilian Commander-in-Chief, then the Commander-in-Chief, President Johnson, was inescapably exonerated from responsibility both for the escalation of the war and for its loss.”17
The CBS documentary “The Uncounted Enemy” charged that intelligence estimates were dishonest rather than incorrect. By accepting General Westmoreland’s reduced OB as presented in the CIA’s estimate, the unsuspecting president was led to believe that the crossover point had been reached—enemy losses could not be replaced at their rate of attrition. Having been lulled into this false sense of security, LBJ and the nation were unprepared for the size of the enemy onslaught during the Tet offensive of January 31, 1968.
Could MACV intelligence officers have deliberately downgraded and then successfully hid from the president and his advisors the strength of enemy forces? Could the CIA actually “cave in” to MACV’s official estimates? And could this conspiracy have been kept from the Lyndon Johnson who has been described by the director of the White House military office, William Gulley, as “big ears”?18
Johnson’s preoccupation with gathering information was legendary. His White House office resembled an information command center—three television sets ran simultaneously, their channels changed by the click of a presidential remote control, their only competing sound was the tickers spewing forth information from Vietnam. All of this reflected Lyndon Johnson’s commitment to the dictum that a man’s judgement was no better than his information.
The available documents show that LBJ was receiving a voluminous amount of statistical material on Vietnam. It is inconceivable that MACV could have hidden something of this magnitude from the president. Moreover, both sides of the debate had bureaucratic advocates who were in the business of slanting data towards their perspective. The raw intelligence from which MACV derived its estimates was disseminated throughout the intelligence community. A conspiracy would have had to involve Admiral Sharp, General Wheeler, the State Department, and even the White House Situation Room. Westmoreland would have needed literally hundreds of accomplices in the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, and the White House in order to suppress reports of North Vietnamese regular army infiltration of 25,000 a month between August and January 1968.
Nor could there have been a conspiracy when it was in the national news. During a November 22 MACV press briefing, Westmoreland told reporters that over the past six months the “fighting efficiency” of the VC/NVA had “progressively deteriorated.” Since May 1967 the enemy had lost 40,000 troops killed-in-action. That this 40,000 could not be replaced was evidenced in MACV’s new Order of Battle which now dropped enemy strength from 285,000 to 242,000. Westmoreland then admitted to the press that the new figures “do not include the political infrastructure.” The Order of Battle debate was well known and well worn amongst decision makers and the press. On November 30, 1967, Jack Anderson’s syndicated column titled “Vietnam Intelligence Experts Disagree” had even focused on the great OB debate.
Why would Westmoreland conspire against his president? The dictionary defines conspiracy as “an evil, unlawful plot.” CBS explained that Westmoreland was under extraordinary pressure to show progress in the war because attrition had been his only strategy. How could he have gone to LBJ with news that the enemy was twice as large as currently reported? The press would crucify the administration once it learned that 525,000 U.S. troops were not nearly enough strength to force the enemy to the conference table. Thus, CBS claimed, when confronted with a disintegrating military strategy, and sensitive to its domestic repercussions, Westmoreland cooked the books.
Westmoreland was certainly under pressure to show progress; attriting the enemy was MACV’s only strategy for winning the war, and LBJ wanted results. Nevertheless, Westmoreland did not try to deceive his Commander in Chief. The National Intelligence Estimate was an honest one and it was only a single input into LBJ’s daily intelligence menu.
The problem of defining who was and was not an enemy soldier was part of the problem of the war itself. Counting the size of the enemy forces and the rate of infiltration was an inexact process. That’s why an NIE is called an estimate! Estimating guerrilla forces was tantamount to “trying to estimate roaches in your kitchen,” as General Westmoreland testified in the libel trial. While the CIA believed that every Vietnamese who stuck a pungi stake (a bambo stake used as a booby trap) in the ground belonged on the Order of Battle, Westmoreland did not, even though two percent of U.S. combat wounds occurred from these traps.
In retrospect, the intelligence process was corrupted from above by an excessively paranoid president. It was Lyndon Johnson’s war. Yes, the numbers were often contrived, but not by Westmoreland on an unsuspecting president, but by the White House on an unsuspecting public. By the end of 1967, virtually every unit of American government was involved in selling the war’s progress. The documents show that LBJ was briefed on the bureaucratic dispute between CIA-MACV concerning the size of enemy forces. LBJ placed extraordinary pressure on MACV for demonstrations of military progress in order to buttress Johnson’s political fortunes at home. That pressure might have made Westmoreland feel uncomfortable, but he could hardly have led a bureaucratic conspiracy.
Why would LBJ act as he did? Politics did not stop at the water’s edge for Johnson. General Westmoreland was a pawn of a president fighting for his political life. November 1967 was a few months prior to the first presidential primary and only a year before the 1968 presidential election. President Johnson needed to get his house in order before proceeding with the campaign. When Westmoreland spoke optimistically of progress in Vietnam, he did so at the president’s urging.
*The quotes from these meetings are from notes taken by Tom Johnson, Jim Jones, and Walt Rostow, each of whom kept a record of the meetings.