A STUDY IN DECEPTION

...Appearing before a joint session of two committees of the Senate, McNamara, drawing on the on-the-spot reports that pour into his office, concluded: "I don't believe that the bombing up to the present has significantly reduced, nor any bombing that I could contemplate in the future, would significantly reduce the actual flow of men and material to the South...

...What we are demanding, as The St...

...Just almost any step" would do, he assured the world...

...The bitter truth that emerges from these developments of the past month is that when the President pleads with Hanoi for "just almost any step" toward peace, he really means "just almost any step that will result in complete military victory for the United States and enable us to dictate the peace terms...

...And he dramatized his wistful longing for any approach from the other side in this exchange with a reporter at a White House news conference: Reporter: Would you consider a mere willingness to talk peace to be enough of a step on their part to halt the bombing or would some military move be necessary...

...Halt the bombing, come and talk...

...This yearning for an offer from Hanoi—"any offer"—was echoed by Mr...

...bombing of North Vietnam, this was the first time they tied cessation of the bombing to peace talks, and the first time, indeed, they have spoken out publicly in favor of such talks...

...It is time the President took the people into his confidence...

...We've shown our good will...

...Item: U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations, returned from Rangoon, where he conferred with high officials from Hanoi, "more convinced than ever that the cessation of bombing of North Vietnam alone will bring about useful and meaningful talks...

...Moreover, in responding again to the hawks' demand for even more bombing, McNamara said: "/ don't believe any amount of bombing, within practical limits, would have substantially reduced whatever the actual infiltration was...

...The Johnson Administration reacted as though Thant were a meddlesome busybody poking his nose into its private war...

...The importation level, he said, "is about as high today as it would have been if we had never struck the Haiphong docks...

...But, if we were seeking an excuse to avoid negotiation, we would do exactly as we have done— ignore the Russians and acknowledge only the most extreme and extravagant proposals from Hanoi...

...The President: I have seen nothing that any of them have said which indicates any seriousness on their part...

...Johnson renewed his passionate professions of peace even as he escalated the war in Vietnam, and as he pleaded anew for "any" signal from Hanoi that peace talks might be possible even as he pretended not to hear the clear overtures for negotiations from the government of North Vietnam...

...Johnson's Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara...

...Well, he's had the sign...

...I am awaiting any offer they might care to make...

...The Chief Executive's self-portrait showing him waiting patiently at the White House window for a "signal" or a "step" attesting to Hanoi's readiness to negotiate is a sttudy in deception...

...If it is military "victory" he is determined to achieve in Vietnam, he is committing the nation, without its knowledge or consent, to a long, bitter, bloody, costly, and immoral conflict...

...Item : Mai Van Bo, North Vietnam's representative in Paris, flatly affirmed for the first time that North Vietnam would enter into peace negotiations if there were an unconditional end of the bombing...

...Administration spokesmen have complained that the signals from the Communist camp were imprecise, confusing, and ambiguous...

...The Administration seeks to justify its refusal to end the bombing of North Vietnam without "reciprocal military moves" by Hanoi with the persistently ballyhooed notion that the results of the bombing are too valuable to lose, that failure to continue the air raids would imperil the lives of American boys...

...This is the real thing, he said, and must not be ignored...

...While demanding that Hanoi cut off the flow of men and materials to the South, our Government insists on retaining its right to maintain the build-up of manpower and munitions on any level it chooses, despite the fact that we now command better than a three-to-one ratio in troops and a staggering advantage in firepower...

...The Johnson Administration claimed for a while that the bombing was intended to bring North Vietnam to the conference table...

...President Johnson said he was only waiting a sign...

...The basic conditions are that bombing of North Vietnam and 'other acts of war' against North Vietnam, such as coastal shelling, be permanently halted...

...Thant also urged, as The Progressive has pleaded repeatedly for several years, that the United States forthrightly agree to give the Vietcong's National Liberation Front a significant voice in the peacemaking...

...Much the same Administration "doublespeak" was on display late last year when our ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, acting on directions from the White House, appealed to Secretary-General U Thant to "take whatever steps you consider necessary to bring about the necessary discussions which could lead to a cease-fire...

...Ho Chi Minh and the troops that he is sending in from the North...

...What Rusk, like the President, declined to recognize is the fact that the Soviet Union for the first time has tied the cessation of the bombing with peace talks and has assured us this was the real thing...

...There is, therefore, no reason to believe at this time that Hanoi" is any more interested in seeking peace than it was before...

...Our Government, they concluded, seemed to regard the prospect of a negotiated settlement "more as a threat than as a promise...

...Item: Wilfred Burchett, the Australian Communist correspondent who is often used by Hanoi as its spokesman to the world, reported through the Associated Press that peace talks would follow the end of American bombing...

...Thant promptly reaffirmed his long emphasized insistence that cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam is the first and indispensable step toward peace negotiations...

...to seek a way to political settlement of the Vietnam problem...

...A halt in bombing, he predicted, would be followed by the opening of peace talks "in a few weeks...

...Johnson said at his March 2 news conference: "I think that the American people should know that this is a question between their President, their country, their troops, and Mr...

...Louis Post-Dispatch expressed it, is that "Hanoi accept,, as the price of ending the bombing, a position of static inferiority which could only end in surrender or ultimate defeat...

...Burchett, seeking further clarification from government spokesmen in Hanoi, was told: "If bombings cease completely, good and favorable conditions will be created for the talks...

...The bombing of the petroleum, oil, and lubricants system, he testified, "was carried out with as much skill, effort, and attention as we could devote to it starting on June 29, and we haven't been able to dry up those POL supplies...

...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free' A Study in Deception T^he much discussed "credibility gap in the White House" is a gentlemanly way of suggesting the President is lying...

...When some of the Senate hawks complained that self-imposed U.S...

...They are also prepared to receive President Johnson in the North Vietnamese capital if this will facilitate ending the war...

...How else does one explain why the man who prayed for "just almost any step" could not seem to hear Hanoi when it appeared to say to the world that it was dropping its four-point demands and asking only for an end of the bombing before coming to the peace table...

...The drive began with a spectacular air raid over an oil depot near Haiphong, and although there were no target restrictions, the campaign was futile...

...In The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam, published last fall, a group of historians and other scholars determined that the major American moves to escalate the war seem to have come at moments of special pressure for negotiations...

...the United States must do the same...

...Burchett's report was based on a talk with North Vietnam's Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh, who authorized him to make the following statement: "Hanoi is ready to sit down with the United States to hold preliminary talks to explore what steps can be taken to end the war in Vietnam...

...restrictions on North Vietnamese targets were hampering American efforts there, McNamara replied by citing the results of the aerial campaign to halt the flow of petroleum products into the South...

...If other voices used the fatal word," said Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "a resourceful diplomacy, thus faced with conflicting proposals, would surely have done as we did during the Cuban missile crisis...

...Ko-sygin's plea to the United States was unusually significant because, while the Soviets have long denounced U.S...

...In a crude attempt to equate the anti-bombing position with support for the Communist camp, Mr...

...What Rusk, like the President, failed to acknowledge is the fact that now, unlike the past occasions, Hanoi has explicitly proclaimed its intention to come to the conference table if the bombing ends...

...If we really wanted negotiation, we would have ended bombing as the Russians suggested, and let the burden of delivering Hanoi to the conference table fall to Moscow...

...Let's see what can be done next...

...President Johnson displayed America's good will in response to Hanoi's offer by ordering a three-fold escalation of the war: the shelling of North Vietnam with heavy land artillery, the bombardment of North Vietnam targets by warships sent close inshore, and the mining of the rivers and estuaries of North Vietnam...

...The alternative posed by the President was not only crude but dishonest—if we accept the testimony of his own Secretary of Defense...

...But even as the President and his Secretary of Defense were pleading publicly for "any offer" or "just some indication," the cables were clattering with offers and indications...

...it would have responded to the one which suited our interests best...

...But now that Hanoi has signaled its desire to negotiate, our government has raised the ante and now demands as "elementary fairness" a reciprocal military de-escalation by North Vietnam—in effect, an end to the sending of men, munitions, and supplies to South Vietnam...

...The Johnson Administration's final argument for refusing to end the bombing in exchange for peace talks is as shot through with half-truths and downright deception as are its other alibis...

...See Rabbi Abraham Feinberg's report on his journey to Hanoi on Page 19...

...Responding to Senator Robert Kennedy's appeal to cease the bombing, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said: "We have had bombing pauses of five days in 1965, thirty-seven days in December-January, 1965-66, and six days just two weeks ago—and we encountered only hostile actions in response...

...This may seem, superficially, like a fair enough proposal, but consider these facts: Official Pentagon reports show "the other side" has 275,000 troops in the field, 45,000 of whom are North Vietnamese...

...It is significant, however, that neither Premier Kosygin nor President Podgorny of the Soviet Union said anything about "permanent" cessation of the bombing...

...That gap widened measurably during the past month as Mr...

...From Hanoi, from Moscow, from London, and from Paris came the same signal, and its message was unmistakably clear: North Vietnam is prepared to begin peace talks if the United States unconditionally ends the bombing of the North...

...Item: Prince Sihanouk, chief of state of Cambodia, announced that he was authorized to state that Hanoi would enter into peace talks if the bombing of its territory ended...

...The President, indeed, has gone so far as to impugn the loyalty of those who demand an end of the bombing in the pursuit of a peaceful settlement...

...We have never received any indication that they would respond favorably...

...Everyone can take whatever side of the matter that he wants to...

...Our side commands more than 1,000,000 troops in the field, some 415,000 of whom are Americans...

...What Rusk, like the President, failed to mention is the fact that Hanoi for the first time has dropped its four-point demands as a condition for negotiations...

...How else can one interpret the mind and mood of a man who begged for "one single indication that North Vietnam was willing to negotiate or talk peace" and then turned his back and plugged his ears when that indication came...

...Thus: Item: In London, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin asserted that if the United States would stop the bombing, "the way would be cleared to the negotiating table...

...In our September, 1966, issue, Senator Vance Hartke, Indiana Democrat and once a close friend of the President, documented five instances in which U.S...

...President Johnson's war-widening response to Hanoi's newest peace feelers continues the dreary pattern of the past...

...It is true, of course, that some of the overtures stressed the "cessation of bombing," others the "permanent" end, still others the "unconditional" stopping of the bombing, and a few "the unconditional and permanent" halt to the aerial bombardment...

...If his goal is a political settlement reached through negotiations, as he insists it is, he must respond affirmatively now to the most hopeful proposal for negotiations that has come our way in the long years of this wretched war...

...Testifying before a Congressional committee, he emphasized that the United States had made it clear that it would be willing to stop the bombing of North Vietnam "without any action on their part preceding it, with no firm guarantee as to what they would do, but with just some indication of how they would act...

...Against this background, the Administration's insistence that nothing has changed and that a bombing cessation now would be no more productive than the earlier pauses takes on the appearance of sheer duplicity...

...and our own moves toward peace talks appear to have preceded, or even concealed, steps toward expansion of the conflict...

...military operations were expanded another notch "just when pressures for peaceful negotiations have reached a peak...