What We Know Now
Knoll, Erwin
WHAT WE KNOW NOW by ERWIN KNOLL The Reverend Will Campbell of Nashville, Tennessee, and points South, who carries his Christian min- istry with equal and unalloyed love to black revolution-...
...In the Eisenhower Administration, when the attempt had collapsed, America entered into a "com- mitment" to the government it had hand-picked for South Vietnam and connived with it to cancel the Vietnamese unification elections that had been called for by the 1954 Geneva Accords...
...The CIA had reported, back in the Eisenhower Ad- ministration, that the American-backed Diem regime "almost certainly would not be able to defeat the Com- munists in countrywide elections...
...They planned "an orchestration of communications" and "a crescendo of additional military moves against infiltration targets...
...We seek no wider war...
...In National Security Council Paper Number 5809, dated April 2, 1958, President Eisenhower directed the Government to "work toward the weakening of the Communists of North and South Vietnam in order to bring about the eventual peaceful reunification of a free and independent Vietnam under anti-Communist leadership...
...on April 18 that "the South Vietnamese themselves are fight- ing their own battle, fighting well...
...Walt W. Rostow, who succeeded McGeorge Bundy as Johnson's principal adviser on national security affairs, was not dismissed...
...Rusk dismissed his analysis as "spec- ulative...
...A persistent advocate of "compromise solu- tions" in Vietnam, he was installed in the Johnson Administration as the "devil's advocate" in residence -—a sort of latter-day court jester whose dissents were tolerated and even encouraged to demonstrate the Administration's willingness to hear—and ignore—all points of view...
...There should, how- ever, be urgent covert effort with closest security under broad guidance of ambassador to identify and build contacts with alternative leadership as and when it appears...
...While embassy cables from Saigon predicted imminent disas- ter, Secretary of State Dean Rusk proclaimed on February 1 that "there are some definitely encourag- ing elements...
...Its fun- damental premise was that "Communist domination, by whatever means, of all Southeast Asia would seri- ously endanger in the short term, and critically en- danger in the longer term, United States security in- terests...
...Nor did President Kennedy mention that he had under consideration even then a proposal from General Maxwell Taylor, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the first substantial contingent of Amer- ican ground forces—8,000 men—be dispatched to South Vietnam...
...Months before the Gulf of Tonkin inci- dent, the document that would become the Tonkin Resolution was drafted to confer on the President vir- tually unchecked power to wage hostilities...
...Its White Book that year declared that while "the U.S...
...It knew when it began encountering American troops in combat...
...When Washington set out its terms for negotiations, the Pentagon his- torians observed, the conditions were "tantamount to unconditional surrender" for the other side...
...We didn't know!' And the Lord will look down over the edge of Glory and he'll say, 'Waaal, you know now!' and he'll slam down the lid...
...It was—it had to be—obvious that the insurgents in black pajamas were no more than tools of Hanoi, of Peking, of Moscow...
...I believe in duty above all...
...imperialists to improve the critical situation of the puppet government and forces and to concentrate their forces on pacifying the main areas under the Front's control...
...He was dismissed...
...When McNamara, deeply disillusioned with the fail- ure of the war he had programmed with the latest scientific management techniques, began in 1966 and 1967 to disavow the views he had formerly espoused, there was no choice for him but to depart...
...From time to time, questions about the inherent logic of U.S...
...He will retire this month as an instructor at the Foreign Serv- ice Institute in Arlington, Virginia...
...The actions themselves should be taken as rapidly as practicable, but in ways that should minimize any appearance of sudden changes in policy, and official statements on these troop movements will be made only with the ap- proval of the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of State...
...When the National Security Council met on August 26, 1963, Paul H. Kattenburg, a career Foreign Serv- ice Officer with ten years of direct experience with Vietnam, tried to tell President Kennedy's advisers that they were embarked on a disastrous course...
...military support" forces in Vietnam (which already numbered 27,000), and approved a change of mission—from defense to offense—for the Marine bat- talions stationed in Vietnam...
...Ten weeks lat- er, Assistant Secretary of Defense McNaughton, writ- ing in the best style of the Pentagon systems analysts, offered a more accurate appraisal of "U.S...
...To the utter astonishment of those who heard [Jorden's] briefing, and Attorney General Kennedy's cross-examination of him, this supposedly honest observer found nothing to indicate that the insurgency was anything but home- grown," Maechling wrote...
...help and en- couragement to those plotting a coup against Ngo Dinh Diem on grounds that Diem might move to- ward "neutralization negotiations" with the Commu- nists...
...The basic considerations that govern American pol- icy toward Southeast Asia were articulated by the Na- tional Security Council as early as January, 1954, in a statement approved by President Eisenhower...
...Only one major ques- tion remains unanswered, and the answer will not be found in further Pentagon disclosures, or in court proceedings, or even in Congressional investigations...
...Such statements by North Vietnam or the Vietcong received scant attention in the American media...
...As in the case of the North Vietnamese at- tacks in the Gulf of Tonkin last August, the response [bombing of the North] is appropriate and fitting...
...In a way we are lucky, for we have come to know before the final judgment day...
...Erwin Knoll is Washington Editor of The Progressive...
...We know now how and why and by whom a million people or more were destroyed...
...We know now that the enemy knew all about what we were not permitted to know...
...bombing cam- paign directed at the North...
...not just our material help—they need that—but our sympathetic understanding and comradeship...
...Air Force...
...According to the Pentagon archives, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge had proposed at Hon- olulu a "selective bombing campaign against military targets in the North," and had won the backing of McNamara and Rusk...
...The strategists of the U.S...
...We know that even those of us who opposed the adventure from the beginning—as The Progressive did —were unable to explore the depths of official duplic- ity...
...White House and Pentagon have worked out many plans on this ques- tion, of which Plan Number 6 of Walt W. Rostow, the chairman of the policy planning staff of the U.S...
...The United States would seek to control any negotiations and would op- pose any independent South Vietnamese efforts to ne- gotiate...
...Under Secretary of State George W. Ball was luckier...
...mission's efforts to support pacification . . . continued to be hampered by political instability...
...There appears to have been, in fact, remarkably little latitude for reopening the basic question about U.S...
...Kennedy, "is that we should put in a task force consisting largely of logistical troops for the purpose of participating in flood relief and at the same time providing a U.S...
...Ellsberg's former chief in Vietnam, Major General Edward G. Lansdale, the original "Quiet American" who headed the pacification program, confirms the recollection...
...It knew when its territory was invaded by infiltration teams and when its coast was harassed by South Vietnamese torpedo boats under American direction...
...imperialists took new and very cynical and dangerous steps in their policy of war adventure...
...The President's desire is that these movements and changes should be under- stood as being gradual and wholly consistent with ex- isting policy...
...In 1967, McNamara concluded that the "Sigma" forecast had been correct...
...policy, power, resolve, and competence to deal with their problems...
...in Washington and the U.S...
...We know now that America spurned every oppor- tunity to recognize the struggle in South Vietnam for what it was—a civil war waged by insurgents who were determined, first of all, to attain national sovereignty and independence...
...But President Johnson told the press and the people at his next news conference, "It does not imply any change in policy whatever...
...policy "to prepare immediately to be in a position on seventy-two hours' notice to initiate the 'Retaliatory Actions' against North Vietnam, and to be in a posi- tion on thirty days' notice to initiate the program of 'Graduated Overt Military Pressure' against North Vietnam...
...And though our lords did their best to try to slam down the lid, their ef- forts were repulsed by the U.S...
...Taylor was careful, as the national security bureaucrats were always careful, to submit a "cover story" with his proposal...
...Assistant Defense Secretary, and now bear the name of the McNaughton Plan, calling for bombing and strafing raids on North Vietnam by the U.S...
...On its strength, the National Security Council went on to contemplate the possibility that the United States might "become involved in an all-out war with Communist China, and possibly with the USSR and the rest of the Soviet bloc, and should therefore proceed to take large-scale mobilization measures...
...Later we might retaliate against the assassination of a prov- ince chief...
...Sihanouk would preserve Cambodia by a straddling effort...
...As you know, in times of war and hostilities the first casualty is truth...
...Taylor impatiently complained that "there was a danger of reasoning ourselves into in- action," the Pentagon historians recall...
...Government that it should succeed...
...The change "had mo- mentous implications," the Pentagon historians noted, but the President "was greatly concerned that the step be given as little prominence as possible...
...In 1963, William Jorden, the Vietnam expert who had written the 1961 White Paper, was dispatched on a three-month fact-finding trip to prove the thesis of major aggression directed by North Vietnam against the South...
...At a press conference on February 14, 1962, President Kennedy announced that at the request of the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem, "we have increased our assistance there...
...It charged that American policy planners had decided at Honolulu in June, 1964, "to extend the war to North Vietnam in the form of destruction by air and naval forces...
...Charles Maechling Jr., staff manager of the Special Group, recalled the April 5, 1963, meeting last year in an arti- cle for the Foreign Service Journal...
...We know that the elaborate secrecy precautions, the carefully contrived subterfuges, were intended not to deceive "the other side" but us...
...On October 2, Washington advised our embassy in Saigon: ". . . President today approved recommendations that no initiative should now be taken to give any active, overt encouragement to a coup...
...Their game was power, and it was the only game worth playing...
...As I told you this morning, I admire your courage and your great contributions to your country...
...Johnson and McNamara agreed with Rusk, and Kattenburg was on his way out of responsibility for Vietnam planning...
...on April 22 that "there is good basis for encouragement...
...Hanoi knew it as long ago as 1965...
...Lodge: You have certainly done your duty...
...And we are supplying logistical assistance, transportation assistance, training, and we have a number of Amer- icans who are taking part in that effort...
...That vision of the future, we know now, did not suffice for a President determined to keep America from becom- ing "a pitiful, helpless giant...
...Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy asserted that "basic doubts of the value of Southeast Asia and the importance of our stake there" could be disposed of by mounting an "ur- gent" public relations campaign...
...As early as 1954—and as late as 1964—they seriously (and calmly) contem- plated the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Indo- china...
...defeat (to our reputation as guarantor...
...All of Southeast Asia would remain just as it is at least for another generation...
...I have heard the shooting, but I am not acquainted with all the facts...
...The enemy knew all about it...
...Meanwhile, covert "34A Operations" against North Vietnam were intensified, and U.S...
...On August 18, 1964, a cable from the U.S...
...destroyers were dispatched on "DeSoto Patrols" to gather intelli- gence and intimidate Hanoi...
...The loss of that struggle, it warned, "would have the most serious repercussions on the U.S...
...We know now that it was absurd to suggest, as each of our recent Presidents has suggested, that if-we-only- knew-what-they-knew we would cheerfully endorse their policies...
...We don't want to get involved in a nation with 700 mil- lion people and get tied down in a land war in Asia...
...combat support" personnel...
...The Pen- tagon papers show such planning was constant and intense, and that Rostow submitted memoranda to McNamara and Rusk calling for increasing commit- ments of airpower and ground forces...
...A statement issued in December, 1965, by Nguyen Huu Tho, the chairman of the National Liberation Front, asserted that the United States had been oper- ating under a "McNamara Plan" which was "aimed at pacifying the South within the two years of 1964 and 1965...
...policy has clung tenaciously to the goal of establishing a "free world bastion"—that is, an outpost of Empire—in In- dochina...
...We were wrong...
...From a mil- itary point of view," Taylor said, "the United States could function in Southeast Asia about as well as any- where in the world except Cuba...
...The statement emphasized that "in the conflict in Indochina, the Communist and non-Communist worlds clearly confront one another in the field of bat- tle...
...But President Johnson's was not the first Adminis- tration to fear that peace might break out in Viet- nam...
...It was, as it turns out, a remarkably accurate document...
...And we know that the men who held these views and acted in accord with them fiercely resisted any suggestion that they might have been mistaken...
...action are the Communists (who must feel strong pres- sures), the South Vietnamese (whose morale must be buoyed), our allies (who must trust us as 'under- writers'), and the U.S...
...We know now that the pious affirmations of Amer- ica's commitment to "the Vietnamese people and their right to self-determination" were hypocritical cant...
...ruling circles have many times dis- cussed the policy of extending the war to North Viet- nam...
...They issued "signals" and conducted "limited external ac- tions" which carried a promise of "assured destruction...
...On the same day the White House issued a state- ment about the enemy's "deliberate surprise attacks" on two U.S...
...After all, I am a chief of state...
...Part of behaving like it, we know now, was to trans- form the language into something unrecognizable and unrelated to human beings...
...The Nuremberg Charter—our Nuremberg Charter—outlaws the "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances...
...He did not mention that almost a year previously he had or- dered a program of covert hostilities against North Vietnam, including infiltration of agents and their aerial resupply, overflights for the purpose of dropping leaflets, and the formation of "networks of resistance, covert bases, and teams for sabotage and light harass- ment" inside North Vietnam...
...While U.S...
...The results of "Sig- ma" were dismissed...
...His duties in the past eight years have included a stint as second in command of the American mission in Georgetown, Guyana...
...deployments to follow...
...During the next two months, because of the lack of 'rebuttal time' before elections to justify particular actions which may be distorted to the U.S...
...Yet the United States assumed—and continues to assume—that the insurrection had no popular base in the South and could not survive if Hanoi were forced, in Dean Rusk's memorable phrase, "to stop doing what she is doing...
...We must avoid harmful appear- ances which will affect judgments by, and provide pretexts to, other nations regarding how the United States will behave in future cases of particular inter- est to those nations—regarding U.S...
...Such major decisions as the landing of U.S...
...We know that over more than two decades, through five Administrations, we have been embarked on an in- exorable pursuit of Empire, conceived, planned, and executed in our name by a small band of willful men whose disdain for mankind is matched only by their contempt for their fellow Americans...
...If I can do anything for your physical safety, please call me...
...involvement in the Vietnam struggle," the Penta- gon's historians pointed out...
...Until 1964 all the mil- itary advisers back from Vietnam made the same re- port: There was plenty of instigation from the North —but hardly 'massive aggression.' " The Pentagon itself concluded that "the vast ma- jority of Vietcong troops are of local origin," and found "little evidence of major supplies from outside sources...
...I heard him once, many years ago, describe to members of a rural flock the damnation that awaited them on Judgment Day unless they mended their racist ways...
...Three years later, when General William C. Westmoreland relinquished his Vietnam command, he recalled that the strategy for 1964-1965 had been first to halt a "losing trend" and pacify populated areas...
...In March, 1964, President Johnson wasted no words in disposing of the idea of peace negotiations looking toward a neutralized Vietnam—an idea that had been advanced by French President Charles de Gaulle and the Secretary General of the United Nations, U Thant, among others...
...public (which must support our risk-taking with U.S...
...We know now that peace has never been on the American agenda...
...We know that the presence of a Communist regime in Indochina has been viewed as a threat to the "national security" of the world's foremost power —a threat so formidable that all means short of total annihilation could be invoked in the attempt to ex- tirpate it...
...The coup was consummated on November 1. The great leap forward into the credibility chasm occurred in the Johnson years, as America plunged deeper and deeper into a war it was determined to conceal...
...They coined a thesaurus of synonyms for death...
...It is a question we must answer for ourselves...
...On September 3, Assistant Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton drew up a memorandum headed Plan of Action for South Vietnam, which included this list of "special considerations during1 next two months": "The relevant 'audiences' of U.S...
...In 1964, the Pentagon's "Sigma" war games had indicated that a bombing campaign directed at North Vietnam would not bring the enemy to its knees...
...Marines at Danang in March, 1965—a "pivotal" move that set the stage for a U.S...
...mission in Saigon (which called for "a posture of maximum readiness for a deliberate escalation of pressure against North Vietnam") still referred to the basic problem in the South as "the VC insurgency...
...That CIA analysis—a categorical rejection of the domino doctrine—was part of the agency's pessimis- tic assessment of the results likely to be attained by the bombing program that was about to win the Ad- ministration's approval...
...Charter —provides that parties to an international dispute must seek a solution by negotiation or other peaceful means, refraining from force or the threat of force...
...Support for the Saigon regime was dwindling rapidly, he maintained, and America was wasting its prestige and staining its honor in a losing cause...
...You'll look up from the Bottomless Pit," he thundered, "and you'll cry, 'Lord, Lord, we didn't know...
...We don't know all of it yet, and perhaps we never will, but we know enough...
...This exchange followed: Diem: But you must have some general ideas...
...There was too much to do every day with immediate problems...
...He is co-editor, with Judith Nies McFadden, of American Militarism 1970 and War Crimes and the American Conscience...
...This was the domino doctrine in its most primitive form, but American policy makers found it powerfully persuasive...
...We know that monstrous arrogance accrues to those who wield the vast power of the State without being held accountable to the people...
...Not—To 'help a friend,' although it would be hard to stay in if asked out...
...As a fledgling empire experiment- ing with the techniques of international manipulation and intrigue, we could not conceive our enemies were not equally subject to manipulation...
...The more he talks about peace, the more he steps up the war...
...Throughout 1963, as resistance to the corrupt and despotic Diem regime carried America's client govern- ment in Saigon to the brink of collapse, the Kennedy Administration issued a steady stream of encourag- ing progress reports to the American people...
...public, we must act with special care—signaling to the DRV [North Vietnam] that initiatives are being taken, to the GVN [South Vietnam] that we are behaving energetically despite the restraints of our political season, and to the U.S...
...we know now that Washington wasn't telling them that at all—it was merely telling them what was good for us...
...It knew when its bases and plants and homes and pagodas were being bombed...
...Now that we know what we know, what are we going to do...
...Ten weeks later, when the President was asked at a news conference about charges (by Melvin R. Laird, then a Republican Representative from Wis- consin) that the Administration was "preparing to move the Vietnam war into the North," Mr...
...Diem had once been celebrated by Lyndon Johnson as "the Churchill of Asia," but Hilsman's memo calling for his overthrow proposed that the United States "en- courage the coup group to fight the battle to the end and to destroy the palace if necessary to gain victory...
...We know now that it was no "mistake," no "acci- dent," no "quagmire" into which America was inad- vertently drawn, one reluctant footstep at a time...
...I want to do now what duty and good sense require...
...Most of the time, however, they simply ignored that possibility...
...State Department, is the most noteworthy...
...In 1961, when the Kennedy Administration initiated covert hostilities against the North, a State Depart- ment White Paper cited "ominous" evidence of in- creasing infiltration of fighting men and supplies into the South, though it acknowledged that many of these were Southerners who had gone North after Diem had canceled the 1956 elections provided for by the Geneva Accords...
...If President Nixon had pulled U.S...
...In June, 1964, President Johnson asked the CIA whether "the rest of Southeast Asia necessarily [would] fall if Laos and South Vietnam came under North Vietnamese control...
...destroyers were in the Gulf...
...emerge as a 'good doctor.' We must have kept prom- ises, been tough, taken risks, gotten bloodied, and hurt the enemy very badly...
...If Only They Knew . . . I am sure that the great American people, if only they knew the true facts and the background to the developments in South Vietnam, will agree with me that further bloodshed is unnecessary...
...In 1965, McNamara proposed diplomatic overtures "laying the groundwork for a settlement when the time is ripe," but the Pentagon historians note that this "amounted to little more than saying that the United States should provide channels for the enemy's discreet and relative- ly face-saving surrender when he decided that the game had grown too costly...
...The attitude of American bureaucrats toward their official clients in Saigon was the lace curtain counter- part of the treatment dealt out to "dinks" and "slopes" and "gooks" by American soldiers in the field...
...When we accused our Government of being se- cretive, we hardly imagined the enormity of the secrets it held...
...At this juncture," Kattenburg told Vice President John- son, Rusk, McNamara, Taylor, and the others there assembled, "it would be better for us to make the decision to get out honorably...
...On March 17, 1964, National Security Action Memorandum Number 288 declared that it was U.S...
...On November 1, 1963, when Diem's palace was under siege, he placed a pathetic last call to Ambassador Lodge, who preserved the icy dignity appropriate to a proconsul of Empire dealing with lesser breeds with- out the law...
...When we declared that our reputation, our ideals, our wealth, our young men's limbs and lives were being squandered in a criminal enterprise, we thought that the men who made decisions in our behalf did not understand the nature of the crime...
...On the same day, according to National Security Action Memorandum Number 328, the President "ap- proved the urgent exploration of twelve suggestions for covert and other actions" submitted by the CIA, ap- proved the addition of 18,000 to 20,000 men to the U.S...
...troops out of Vietnam at the beginning of his Administration and opened the way for Communist rule in Saigon, the CIA found, "We would lose Laos immediately...
...Five years later it was repeated, almost verba- tim, for the benefit of the Nixon Administration, and again it was ignored...
...We know that from the beginning of American intervention, U.S...
...land war in Asia—were made "without much fanfare —and without much planning...
...We know now that war crimes were committed in our names—not little war crimes of the kind for which we prosecute Lieutenant Calley and Captain Medina, but big war crimes like those for which we executed our fascist enemies only a quarter of a cen- tury ago...
...President was prattling about his hoax of uncon- ditional discussions, the U.S...
...propagan- dists told the world—and their own people—that the Communist North would not permit free elections, the Central Intelligence Agency told President Eisenhower that any election would be an overwhelming popular triumph for Ho Chi Minh, in the South as well as in the North...
...The Viet- namese are on their way to success and need our help...
...They were merely "Communist propaganda," and our Gov- ernment, which knew better, hardly bothered to issue rebuttals...
...In 1962, however, a close Ken- nedy adviser, Michael Forestal, reported that "the vast bulk of both recruits and supplies come from in- side South Vietnam itself...
...Essential that this effort be totally secure and fully deniable and separated entirely from normal political analysis and reporting and other activities of the country team...
...It does not imply any change of objective...
...On February 7, 1965, as Lyndon Johnson settled in for a full term, McGeorge Bundy wrote in a mem- orandum to him: "We believe that the best available way of increasing our chance of success in Vietnam is the development and execution of a policy of sustained reprisal against North Vietnam...
...The conflict was seen to be long, with further U.S...
...Johnson replied: "I know of no plans that have been made to that effect...
...We must continue to oppose any Vietnam confer- ence," William Bundy wrote in a memorandum on August 11, 1964, and America did...
...We don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys...
...troops to combat "was perceived as a threshold—en- trance into an Asian land war," the Pentagon study pointed out...
...When we charged that our Government was lying, we did not fathom the dimension of the lies...
...Walt Rostow, ever the effervescent optimist, assured Dean Rusk: "I know well the anxieties and complications on our side of the line...
...In the draft of his Plan of Action for South Vietnam on March 24, 1965, McNaughton wrote: "It is essential—however badly SEA [Southeast Asia] may go over the next one to 3 years—that U.S...
...We thought at the time that Washington had no busi- ness telling the Vietnamese what was good for them...
...Once a pro- gram of reprisals is clearly under way, it should not be necessary to connect each specific act against North Vietnam to a particular outrage in the South...
...In 1965, Westmoreland said, "the U.S...
...It ought to be possible to explain in Saigon," Mr...
...No one can take away from you the credit for all you have...
...public that we are behaving with good purpose and restraint...
...Supreme Court...
...By the late summer, when it was plain that Diem could no longer be counted on as America's viceroy in Vietnam, the United States began conspiring with the South Vietnamese military for his overthrow...
...They called their "conventional" bombing cam- paign "Rolling Thunder" and said it was "cheap...
...They "interdicted" and "defoliated" and carried out "surgical strikes" against "targets of opportunity...
...WHAT WE KNOW NOW by ERWIN KNOLL The Reverend Will Campbell of Nashville, Tennessee, and points South, who carries his Christian min- istry with equal and unalloyed love to black revolution- aries and white Klansmen, knows how to preach a fearsome fire-and-brimstone sermon...
...For years he maintained that "calculated doses" of American airpower directed at North Vietnam would bring a halt to the insurrec- tion in the South...
...On October 30, McGeorge Bundy, the President's special assistant for national security, cabled Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge: "Once a coup under responsible leadership has begun, and within these restrictions, it is in the interest of the U.S...
...on February 13 that "the momentum of the Communist drive has been stopped...
...and free world interests," might lead to Communist takeover of all of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and India, and "en- danger the stability and security of Europe...
...Johnson chided reporters for being "too dramatic about our prophecies and predictions and I might say too irresponsible sometimes...
...But there may be a tendency to underestimate both the anxieties and complica- tions on the other side and also to underestimate that limited but real margin of influence on the outcome that flows from the single fact that we are the great- est power in the world—if we behave like it...
...They disposed of mere mortals in the manner of Olym- pian gods...
...Johnson cabled Ambassador Lodge, "that your mission is precisely for the purpose of knocking down the idea of neutralizaton wherever it rears its ugly head and on this point I think that nothing is more important than to stop neutralist talk wherever we can by whatever means we can...
...When one such patrol produced the Tonkin incident early in August, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara was asked why U.S...
...Waaal, we know now...
...We know, thanks to the 7,700 pages of history and documentation compiled in the Pentagon, thanks to the newspapers that seized the op- portunity to make the record public, how we were en- ticed, frightened, cajoled, deceived, seduced into wag- ing aggressive and brutal war in Indochina...
...The CIA assessment was ig- nored...
...policy were raised even within the national security establishment...
...It is a routine patrol," he replied, "of the type we carry out in international waters all over the world...
...Ten per cent—To permit the people of SVN to en- joy a better, freer way of life...
...My view," he told Mr...
...We know now how little they really knew, and how often what they thought they knew bore no relation to reality...
...Diem asked what was "the attitude of the United States" toward the coup, and Lodge, who had been urging its support for many months, replied: "I do not feel well enough informed to be able to tell you...
...Furthermore, a continuation of the spread of Communism in the area would not be inexorable, and any spread which did occur would take time—time in which the total situation might change in any number of ways unfavorable to the Communist cause...
...I have tried to do my duty...
...When President Johnson decided to widen the war in April, 1965, all members of the National Security Council received written instructions to this effect: "The President desires that . . . premature publicity be avoided by all possible precautions...
...The decision in mid-July to commit 200,000 U.S...
...There was, he assured them, "no far-reaching strategy that is being suggested or promulgated" for escalating the war...
...Daniel Ellsberg, the former Vietnam planner whose act of conscience has made it possible for us to know what we now know, recalls no instance when consider- ations of morality entered into the planning process...
...And also that the political and diplomatic method of discussions and negotiations alone can create conditions which will enable the United States to withdraw gracefully from that part of the world...
...Three months later, however, a Draft Position Paper on South- east Asia circulated by Assistant Secretary of State William P. Bundy set out his plan to "publicize the evi- dence of increased infiltration" from North Vietnam along with explanations of "the differences between the present estimates and those given in the past...
...For all we know, he still maintains, down in Austin, Texas, that it will...
...Ball enjoyed a monopoly in that role...
...Most arms being captured or stolen from GVN [South Vietnamese] forces or from the French during the Indochina war...
...Rostow's proposals, according to the White Book, were "replenished and amended by John McNaughton, U.S...
...The Charter of the United Nations—our U.N...
...On April 1, Mr...
...We may wish at the outset to relate our reprisals to those acts of rel- ative high visibility such as the Pleiku incident...
...North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong said in September, 1965: "President Johnson talks about peace in an attempt to cover up his war schemes...
...objectives in an acceptable manner...
...military presence in Vietnam capable of assuring Diem of our readiness to join him in a mil- itary showdown with the Vietcong or Vietminh...
...He returned with the news that "we are unable to document and develop any hard evidence of infiltration...
...it needed only an opportune pretext for presentation to the Con- gress...
...But two weeks later, President Johnson told the American people: "There are those who say, you ought to go North and drop bombs, to try to wipe out the supply lines, and they think that would escalate the war...
...We know that on the few occasions when those who did know tried to break through with the facts, their efforts were frustrated and even punished...
...While President Johnson was proclaiming periodic bombing pauses and avowing his eagerness to "go any- where, any time" for peace, the State Department prudently cautioned embassies abroad: "Insofar as our announcement [of a bombing pause] foreshadows any possibility of a complete bombing stoppage, in the event Hanoi really exercises reciprocal restraints, we regard this as unlikely...
...We know now that there has never been any change of policy, any change of objective...
...Invariably, such challenges were brushed aside...
...By September 7, according to the Pentagon's his- torians, the planners had reached a "general con- sensus" in favor of a systematic U.S...
...We really didn't get into that type of dis- cussion," Lansdale told The New York Times...
...U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, at a news confer- ence on February 25, 1965, after a fruitless five-month effort to per- suade the United States to enter ne- gotiations with North Vietnam...
...Twenty per cent—To keep SVN (and the adja- cent) territory from Chinese hands...
...American involvement intensified during the Ken- nedy years, and so did the resort to secrecy and de- ceit...
...Was this designed to throw the enemy off guard...
...lives and prestige...
...Also—To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used...
...Jorden's report caused consternation in the Special Group Counter-Insurgency, which President Kennedy had established under the direction of his brother, Robert, and General Maxwell Taylor...
...The Pentagon archive includes McNaughton's draft of a "proposed course of action" on March 24, 1965, calling for increased air assaults on the North as well as an expanded role for U.S...
...It knew, but the American people didn't...
...On July 10, 1965, the North Vietnamese Foreign Office produced—and Radio Hanoi broadcast to the world—a White Book on the Vietnam war...
...Government cannot possibly have a view...
...More than twenty years ago, when the Truman Administration discovered and proclaimed America's new role as "leader of the Free World," it simultaneously began overt and surreptitious financial and military aid to the doddering French colonial em- pire to help it hold the peoples of Indochina in sub- jugation...
...We are there, first, because a friendly nation has asked us for help against the Communist aggression," President Johnson solemnly declared in his State of the Union address on January 4, 1965...
...The CIA memoranda, it should be understood, were rare examples of fundamental dissent in what was nor- mally a monolithic planning process pursued by men who quarreled over tactics, usually agreed on strat- egy, and rarely indulged in introspection over basic goals...
...Through the summer and fall of 1964, as President Johnson ran for election as a moderate, a man of peace, against the reckless saber-rattling of Republican Senator Barry M. Gold water of Arizona, the crisis managers in the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council were making detailed preparations for a wider war—one which they understood would have to be deferred until after Election Day...
...The same draft paper proposed a system of "grad- uated military pressures against North Vietnam" and declared that the United States "would be alert to any sign of yielding by Hanoi, and would be pre- pared to explore negotiated solutions that attain U.S...
...Since the beginning of 1964," Hanoi's White Book declared, "the U.S...
...Again, the emphasis was on secrecy and deceit...
...They wrote "scenarios" for "carrot-and-stick approaches" and for "progres- sive squeeze-and-talk" techniques...
...The agency replied: "With the possible exception of Cambodia, it is likely that no nation in the area would quickly suc- cumb to Communism as a result of the fall of Laos and South Vietnam...
...This evolved, Tho added, into "a defen- sive strategic plan but also representing a new and greater effort by the U.S...
...Also it is 4:30 a.m...
...In the Kennedy Administration, in a memoran- dum to Rusk on August 30, 1963, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman urged U.S...
...we might retaliate against a grenade thrown into a crowded cafe in Saigon...
...they understood...
...aims": "Seventy per cent—To avoid a humiliating U.S...
...We know now that we have been fed a steady diet of deception...
...barracks areas near Pleiku, South Viet- nam: ". . . . These attacks were made possible by the continuing infiltration of personnel from North Viet- nam...
Vol. 35 • August 1971 • No. 8
