TOP SECRET: NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE RIGHT TO KNOW
Halperin, Morton H. & Hoffman, Daniel N.
The Secret Bombing of Cambodia on Sunday, March 16, 1969, President Richard Nixon and about six senior national security advisers approved a proposal to bomb neutral Cambodia. Their decision,...
...House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, 93rd Congress, 2d Session, "Bombing of Cambodia," in Impeachment Investigation (Richard M. Nixon), Book XI, Statement of Information, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office [hereafter G.P.O.], 1974...
...The memorandum, once again, was stamped "Top Secret...
...The executive branch today has the capacity to conceal, for substantial periods of time, information that would significantly contribute to legitimate public debate on major issues...
...In this instance, many of those briefed were incredulous that the United States had in 1975 taken on such a commitment in secret...
...Even officials with "Top Secret" clearances, including the Secretary of the Air Force, were deceived...
...The Joint Chiefs, sensitive to the mood of the Administration and the country, did not press for a reversal of these actions nor did they then renew proposals to bomb Cambodia...
...Following Richard Nixon's resignation the political climate changed dramatically...
...The Joint Chiefs forwarded this proposal to the President through Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird...
...1, No...
...One group, the MPLA, had been receiving substantial Soviet aid for years in its struggle against Portugal...
...The legal issues raised by the tapes are largely beyond the scope of this study...
...was largely granted by President Johnson...
...The assertion that public outcry, even if embarrassing, would have forced the United States to stop the bombing was simply disingenuous...
...P.O., 1967), 3 Presidential Documents, 577...
...243 BY THIS TIME the political forces working for disclosure had reached irresistible proportions...
...A public admission of the earlier bombing would not have embarrassed the new leaders...
...2 Although the formal proposals to bomb Cambodia were all stamped "Top Secret," it was widely known in Washington that the Joint Chiefs favored this further expansion of the war...
...Thus, on February 11, 1969, General Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S...
...The military will routinely submit proposals previously rejected by civilian officials to a new president or secretary of defense...
...5 Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, op...
...After the decision to bomb Cambodia was made, the circle had to be expanded somewhat...
...The Nixon administration had asserted as much after the Pentagon Papers episode, and the Ford administration continued the argument as well...
...For no voluntary disclosure was made or ratification sought until long after any conceivable emergency had passed...
...Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activity, 94th Congress, 1st Session, Hearings, Nov...
...Certain members of the executive branch, if they learned of threats or contingency plans to escalate the conflict, might bring these to the attention of Congress and the public...
...Senate, Committee on Armed Services, 90th Congress, 1st Session, Air War Against North Vietnam: Hearings, Parts 1-5 (G...
...At the same time the North Vietnamese must be convinced that the United States would escalate the war unless it was settled on terms satisfactory to Washington...
...This rationale on diplomatic grounds was subject to numerous serious objections: • The Nixon Administration never produced solid evidence that it had negotiated with Sihanouk about the bombing...
...Knight's letter to a senator led to the successful questioning of Air Force Chief of Staff General George Brown...
...Press Conference of Melvin Laird, Jan...
...The United States was publicly bombing Cambodia at the request of the new government, which had condemned Sihanouk for collaborating with the North Vietnamese...
...93-1305, pp...
...Although the episode became public much more quickly than it might have in the past, this was not because the President or the bureaucrats volunteered the information...
...In addition, both he and Lillian Symes helped the international socialist leaderAngelicaBalabanoff write My Life as a Rebel, published in 1938...
...This was the position taken in secret congressional testimony, as well as in public speeches of the President and others...
...from 1939 to 1942 and manager of Norman Thomas's campaign for the presidency in 1940, died of heart failure May 4, 1977 in Switzerland, where he had been visiting...
...4The best discussion on the 17 wiretaps of newsmen and government officials and on the more general subject of national security wiretaps are to be found in U.S...
...The Administration's attempt to confront Congress with a fait accompli ended in great embarrassment, which could have been avoided by timely consultations...
...To the extent that these proposals were known, there was substantial congressional and public support for them...
...about the acknowledged American policy of allowing our fighter planes to cross their border while engaged in "hot pursuit...
...Initially, this consisted of a small group on the National Security Council staff and in the Pentagon and CIA...
...During his years as top executive of the Socialist party, Tray, as most friends called him, also edited the party's official weekly publication, the Call...
...Thus, there had to be military intervention, and it had to be secret...
...By then, Sihanouk had been deposed...
...2U.S...
...The President's total disregard for the constitutional values at stake prompted the House Judiciary Committee to consider an impeachment article based upon the secret bombing...
...the program lasted for 21 months...
...Covert American intervention would lead the Soviets to conclude that the operation lacked substantial backing in the United States...
...However, the Beecher article prompted suspicion that there might be a serious leak in the innermost councils of government...
...And whatever informal "consultations" occurred did not entail a meaningful accountability to the electorate for this program, either on the part of the members allegedly involved or of Congress as a whole...
...The Administration's rationale did not explain the need to deceive high U.S...
...Drawing Conclusions IN THE AFTERMATH of these episodes, many outside the executive bureaucracy have come to agree on the need to reexamine the way our government balances the public's right to know against the requirements of secrecy...
...It is true that, as required by legislation passed in 1974, six congressional committees were later notified that a small covert operation was already under way...
...The decisive step finally was taken by one Major Knight, who repented of his role in forging after-action reports to hide the Cambodian bombing...
...no debate was held in which opposing views could have been presented...
...Marvin and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974...
...House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, 93rd Congress, al Session, Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, Report (G.P.O., 1974), pp...
...Beyond this, it is unclear why our hands would have been tied by world public opinion over Cambodia when they were not in the case of North Vietnam...
...As it was, they proceeded to escalate the scale of the conflict to the point where the American military assistance could not be kept secret, and in fact it was the Ford administration that was forced to back down...
...In confining himself to the assertion that it was not possible to bomb openly, the President failed entirely to meet the contention that, therefore, he should not have bombed at all...
...National Security Adviser Kissinger telephoned FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to request an investigation...
...Even after the Vietnamese communists began to expand these sanctuaries 4 weeks ago, we counselled patience to our South Vietnamese allies and imposed restraints on our own commanders...
...The incoming President and his principal foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, were already bent upon a Vietnam strategy favorable to the Joint Chiefs...
...Hints that an agreement took shape in conversations between Sihanouk and Chester Bowles or Mike Mansfield brought prompt denials from the Americans named...
...He was 77 years old and lived in Bethel, Conn...
...this time neither testimony to Congress nor conversations with the press hinted that the military were seeking to escalate the war...
...During the fall of 1975 Senator Dick Clark, chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, learned about the covert program under way in Angola...
...Much of the opposition in Congress was based on the specifics of the Angolan situation, but it was bolstered and embittered by the secrecy of the attempted intervention...
...Intervention in Angola ANY ILLUSIONS that the problem of secrecy had been solved were shattered by the disclosure that the Ford administration had secretly intervened in a civil war in Angola...
...and the candid testimony of that officer was confirmed in writing by Defense Secretary James Schlesinger...
...Thus the Nixon-Kissinger plan was disclosed to the smallest conceivable circle of advisers...
...Congress might even pass legislation making escalation illegal and mandating a speedy withdrawal of American forces...
...Nor was there discussion of the impact of this operation on the prospects for continued detente, for normalization of relations with Cuba (now heavily involved in assisting the MPLA), and for improved relations with other African and Latin-American countries...
...These complaints received almost no press attention in the United States and were successfully ignored by the Nixon administration, suggesting that protests about B-52 bombings could also have been ignored...
...officials and congressional committees who were taking testimony in secret session or the need to engage in illegal wiretapping...
...cit., Book VII, Part I, pp...
...The new President's attitude, however, remained to be discovered...
...With his wife, the late Lillian Symes, he was co-author of a well-known book of radical political history, Rebel America, published in 1934 and reissued in paperback in 1972...
...They eagerly testified in secret before congressional committees, using the argument that from the military perspective, targets in Cambodia were part of the theater of operations...
...The "lessons of Vietnam," it would seem, are not easily learned by energetic officials, no matter how conscientious...
...218-19...
...No evidence of leaks was ever uncovered, nor has the source of the Beecher story ever been identified...
...Although other leaks were cited, these did not convincingly explain the surveillance program either in terms of their timing or magnitude...
...Moreover, the independent and neutral status of Cambodia introduced serious diplomatic and legal obstacles to an acknowledged military operation in that country...
...In well publicized hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Joint Chiefs' requests to bomb additional targets in North Vietnam were sympathetically received, and subsequently this authority This article is excerpted from the first chapter of Top Secret, by Morton H. Halperin and Daniel N. Hoffman, copyright © 1977 by Morton H. Halperin and Daniel N. Hoffman, to be published this fall by New Republic Books...
...For one thing, there remained the justification that the area under attack was entirely under North Vietnamese control and that no Cambodians lived in the area...
...The Prince had acquiesced in the bombings, White House spokesmen implied, on condition that they be kept secret...
...The Administration's strategy—persuading the public that it was ending the war—had succeeded so well that, without official confirmation of the Times story, no one was prepared to pursue its allegations...
...q Notes 'U.S...
...The lessons of these cases now seem very clear...
...217-19...
...the indicated tactic was one of quiet persuasion...
...Both were said to be unusually secretive men, whose private inclinations were reinforced by the knowledge that they were pursuing policies that lacked public support...
...Indeed, the White House rationale went well beyond the difficult if ancient proposition that, in emergencies, it is proper for a president to set aside constitutional limitations if he "throws himself upon the country" for approval at the earliest opportunity...
...When pressed to explain its actions, the Administration's reply was no more convincing than had been Richard Nixon's defense of the secret bombing of Cambodia...
...The Administration could have offered to stop the bombing as soon as Sihanouk regained control of the territory and prevented Hanoi from using it as a base camp...
...1 (Washington, D.C.: Center for National Security Studies, 1975...
...The systematic, illicit efforts to keep the MENU OPERATIONS secret were not entirely successful, but they committed the White House so fully to a course of secrecy that measures even more drastic were necessary to prevent calamitous embarrassment...
...House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, "Minority Memorandum of Facts and Law: White House Surveillance Activities and Campaign Activities," Statement of Information, Impeachment Inquiry Report, Book VII, Parts 1-4 (G.P.O., 1974...
...In the relatively trusting pre-Watergate atmosphere, the story was simply unbelievable...
...Pentagon spokesmen refused to confirm the Times report, and neither Congress nor the press' cared to pursue the matter further...
...Senate, Committee on Armed Services, 93rd Congress, 1st Session, Bombing in Cambodia: Hearings (G...
...The Secretaries of State and Defense were brought into the picture along with their personal staffs...
...The public would be led to believe that the United States was withdrawing from Vietnam...
...Still the Administration would not admit to the Cambodian bombing operations...
...U.S...
...Although some potential congressional and public support for escalation still existed, the military had reason to believe that by now the great majority of the public opposed expansion of the war...
...He also served for a time as a contributing editor of Dissent magazine...
...SECRECY WAS an essential ingredient of this strategy...
...Neither the formal secrecy system, the informal code of officialdom, nor the "new" political climate impelled this official to make public his reasons for leaving the Administration...
...A public 246 commitment might have been taken more seriously by the Soviets...
...29, 1974" (reprinted), in Impeachment Investigation (Richard M. Nixon), op...
...The Cambodian government in 1969 and 1970 had in fact frequently protested to the U.N...
...In fact, the President's argument seemed to suggest that an emergency whose very existence is secret justifies illegal measures that are also secret, and that none of this need ever be revealed...
...cit., Report, Nos...
...To account for the bombing sorties actually flown, the missions in Cambodia were reported, through classified channels, as if they had occurred in South Vietnam...
...his Administration, it was promised, would not be marred by attempts to keep important initiatives hidden...
...244 ALL IN ALL, it was difficult to escape the conclusion that the real reason for four years of deception was simply to prevent Congress and the public from performing their constitutional roles in declaring war, appropriating funds, raising and supporting armies, debating policy guidelines, and evaluating the performance of elected officials...
...Richard Nixon needed no convincing...
...Civilian officials of the Johnson administration, however, doubted that even a sustained bombing campaign would do much good...
...some other explanation for the taps was necessary...
...The results have been costly for the nation at home and abroad, as secrecy has delayed the correction of divisive and irrational policies...
...By the closing months of the Johnson administration, public opinion had shifted in 241 a dovish direction...
...Only after subsequent reports of the American operation appeared in the press to the accompaniment of a great public outcry was prohibitory legislation introduced by Senators Clark and John Tunney...
...It was the inauguration of Richard Nixon on January 20, 1969 that brought these proposals back to life...
...For example, in his nationally televised speech on April 30, 1970, announcing the American invasion, President Nixon told the American people with regard to enemy bases in Cambodia that: For 5 years, neither the United States nor South Vietnam has moved against these enemy sanctuaries because we did not wish to violate the territory of a neutral nation...
...House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, 93rd Congress, 2d Session, Hearings, March 14 and October 8, 9, 22, 1974...
...From 1947 to 1948, Clement was an editor of Modern Review, a monthly published by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs...
...This simplistic argument ignored the meaning that American secrecy would have for Soviet decision-makers...
...certain military officers in the field also had to do the detailed planning for the attacks...
...In the post Vietnam/ Watergate era, the executive branch would not dare try to keep secrets and in any case would not succeed...
...The White House, unable to join in the general round of buckpassing, finally claimed it had been protecting the then Cambodian leader, Prince Sihanouk...
...the United States would have had to halt the bombing...
...He asked for and received a full briefing on the program, but he too felt that he could not discuss the program in public or seek to stop it at this point...
...Their decision, and the 15-month bombing operation that followed, remained secret for more than three years from most officials of the executive branch, from all but a few members of Congress, and from the public...
...6 For fuller background on the Angola episode, see CIA's Secret War in Angola, Intelligence Report, Vol...
...The Senate, after a secret session and over the strong objections of the President and the Secretary of State, voted to end all American assistance to Angola...
...Recent presidents, however diverse in personal character and political circumstance, have all betrayed a disposition to use this power of secrecy in ways that are hard to justify in terms of straightforward national security concerns...
...242 Of course, those who deceived their colleagues had few qualms about misleading Congress and the public...
...The decision to give military assistance to two factions in the Angolan civil war, potentially creating a serious great-power confrontation, was made without any public 245 debate about the importance of Angola to the United States or the implications of a victory there by one faction or another...
...Travers Clement Travers Clement, national secretary of the Socialist Party, U.S.A...
...It appears here with the publisher's kind permission...
...For those reasons the skeptics sought to avoid public discussion of proposals to widen the war, fearing that pressure from hawkish elements in the public and Congress would secure implementation of those plans...
...5 Nevertheless, most members agreed that the President's conduct was indeed highly improper...
...They not only resisted efforts to liberalize the formal secrecy system, but insisted on the need to tighten it in the name of national security...
...P.O., 1973...
...The Notes for this article appear on p. 247...
...The abuses of the past were attributed in part to the personalities of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson...
...298-300...
...In some cases, moreover, the attempt to prevent or punish unwelcome disclosures has led to significant infringements of our civil liberties...
...20, 1975...
...q 247...
...This was not disclosed even after May 1. The MENU OPERATIONS were not officially acknowledged by the Administration until July 16, 1973, and even then the disclosure . was not voluntary and spontaneous, but a grudging admission of what had become known despite vigorous attempts at concealment...
...That decision came from, and served the political requirements of, the President and his White House national security adviser...
...It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Angolan intervention was kept secret, not to help the Russians get out, but to help the Americans get in...
...U.S...
...Accurate reports were transmitted through a separate, limited "black channel...
...1 The proposal to bomb Cambodia was not a new one...
...On May 9, 1969, a front-page article in the New York Times, by Pentagon correspondent William Beecher, reported that the United States had begun bombing Cambodia...
...Those who opposed the action, however, felt unable to make the operation public...
...Intensive bombing in South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and Laos had not succeeded in preventing the movement of supplies or in effectively curtailing enemy attacks...
...The outgoing President responded by curtailing and then ending the bombing of North Vietnam...
...Gerald Ford, in contrast, was considered to be "the most open president since George Washington...
...If the United States had announced its missions, Henry Kissinger explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Prince Sihanouk would have been forced to protest...
...3 BETWEEN March 18, 1969 and May 1, 1970, 3,695 B-52 sorties had in fact dropped some 105,837 tons of bombs on Cambodia...
...Prior to May 1, 1970 (when the United States publicly initiated ground and air operations in Cambodia), Congress and the public had been frequently assured that country's neutrality was being strictly respected...
...Undoubtedly, a great public outcry would signal Hanoi that Nixon could not carry through his threats...
...Short of so doing, they saw no way to stop the intervention...
...General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, later told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, had the Secretary asked him about it directly, Wheeler would have regarded it as his duty to lie about the bombing...
...4 In May 1973 the story of the wiretaps surfaced dramatically in the press, when the interception of Ellsberg on one of the taps was reported at the Pentagon Papers criminal trial...
...Few if any in Congress or the public had any idea what was being discussed before a decision was reached...
...31-106...
...On the contrary, executive officials argued vigorously that the pendulum had swung too far toward openness...
...There was some military advantage to be gained from initial surprise, but the Pentagon had not proposed or expected that an ongoing bombing program would be kept secret...
...The explanation offered by the White House did not even pretend to justify the continued secrecy and deception after May 1970...
...At this point a debate took place within the Administration—confined effectively within the President's inner circle and the bureaucratic subsystem relating to covert operations—about whether to aid the factions opposing the M PLA...
...Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, 94th Congress, 1st Session, Nomination of Nathaniel Davis: Hearings, Feb 19, 1975...
...Their directive, ordering the commencement of B-52 bombing raids under the code name of MENU OPERATIONS, provided for the strictest secrecy...
...Secrecy appeared to carry such risks, both for presidents and for the bureaucracy, that some observers thought that the problems of excessive secrecy had greatly shrunk, if not vanished altogether...
...forces in Vietnam, recommended and requested authorization to conduct B-52 strikes in Cambodia...
...It is curious that of the nine members from this list still living in 1973, only four could definitely recall having been informed, while three others firmly denied it...
...Without seeking judicial warrants, a series of wiretaps was initiated, eventually covering the phones of 17 government officials and reporters...
...Nor did disclosure occur soon enough to avert a serious embarrassment for American foreign policy' In the spring of 1975, with the Portuguese determined to withdraw from Angola and grant the African nation its independence, violence erupted among three groups competing for power...
...In January 1976 the House sustained the Senate action...
...The White House did claim in 1973 that 13 "key" members of the Senate and House—all vigorous proponents of escalation—had been apprised of the bombing as early as March 1969...
...At any rate it is certain that the established procedures for providing secret information to responsible congressional committees were not employed...
...It called for two very different messages, one to Hanoi and its allies and the other to the American people...
...To do so meant (a) maintaining a military balance of power and (b) avoiding an open confrontation, from which the Soviets would not back down...
...Ever since President Lyndon Johnson had escalated the American intervention in Vietnam in 1965, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had repeatedly recommended such an action, as well as ground operations in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam and the mining of Haiphong Harbor...
...The other two groups were being helped by pro-Western African governments...
...See also David Wise, The American Police State (New York: Random House, 1976), pp...
...Spokesmen claimed that the American objective in Angola was simply to bring about a negotiated withdrawal of Soviet and Cuban troops and the formation of a representative, indigenous government...
...Moreover, it was said, secrecy in the past had been encouraged by public indifference...
...High officials of the State and Defense Departments hastened to deny responsibility for the deception, stating that they had not recommended secrecy...
...Indeed, when Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Nathaniel Davis resigned, no one even suspected that his resignation was connected with Angola...
...That article was not accepted by the committee, because of the feeling that prior administrations, and Congress as well, were in large measure responsible for creating a climate in which such conduct may have appeared permissible...
...The North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces were using Cambodian territory as a sanctuary for base camps and supply lines...
...Knowledge of the operation was limited to those who had a "need-to-know" in order to carry out the bombing campaign, while others, including officials within the executive branch, were excluded...
...These committees—the Armed Services, Appropriations, and Foreign Relations Committees of each House—have established small subcommittees to receive CIA briefings about covert operations...
Vol. 24 • July 1977 • No. 3
