6
The 1964 Election and Its Aftermath:
August 8, 1964–January 27, 1965
Many people today believe President Johnson put off making decisions on Vietnam because he wanted to concentrate on winning the 1964 presidential election. Some even allege that he concealed an intention to expand vastly the war for political reasons—that he wanted to paint the Republican candidate, Sen. Barry M. Goldwater (R-Ariz.), as a warmonger and himself as a reasonable, peace-loving statesman.
If Lyndon Johnson had in mind a plan to escalate the war, he never told me. And I believe he had no such plan. He never indicated to me or to the Joint Chiefs that he wanted us to hold back in Vietnam because of the election. In fact, there was still no consensus among his advisers about what to do.
Throughout this period, military and political conditions in South Vietnam rapidly worsened, heightening the dilemma we faced between avoiding direct U.S. military involvement and preventing the loss of South Vietnam. Deepening divisions over what to do in the face of Saigon’s accelerating decline added to our uncertainty and muddled our policy. Running through our debates like a dark thread was the growing frustration and desperation we felt about a difficult and increasingly dangerous problem.
Barry Goldwater took a hard line on Vietnam throughout the 1964 campaign. In early March, he was quoted musing that ten years before, when France’s Vietnam force was under siege at Dien Bien Phu, the United States might have done well to drop a low-yield atom bomb to defoliate the trees the attackers used for cover. The next day he amplified the point. Now that America was involved, he said, we should be “carrying the war to North Vietnam—ten years ago we should have bombed North Vietnam, with no risk to our lives.” Needless to say, such bellicose talk alarmed many voters.1
President Johnson, meanwhile, seemed a model of moderation and restraint. One of his first—and, in many respects, most thoughtful—comments on Vietnam came in a speech to the American Bar Association in New York City on August 12. The phrases reflect the skill of his speechwriter (whom the record does not identify), but the beliefs were unquestionably the president’s:
Since the end of World War II,…we have patiently labored to construct a world order in which both peace and freedom could flourish.
We have lived so long with crisis and danger that we accept, almost without division, the premise of American concern for threats to [that] order….
We have done this because we have, at painful cost, learned that we can no longer wait for the tides of conflict to touch our shores. Aggression and upheaval, in any part of the world, carry the seeds of destruction to our own freedom and perhaps to civilization itself.
We have done this, lastly, for a reason that is often difficult for others to understand. We have done it because it is right that we should.
Friendly cynics and fierce enemies alike often underestimate or ignore the strong thread of moral purpose which runs through the fabric of American history.
Of course, security and welfare shape our policies. But much of the energy of our efforts has come from moral purpose.
It is right that the strong should help the weak defend their freedom….
It is right that nations should be free from the coercion of others.2
People have hotly debated whether President Johnson’s foreign policy rested on moral grounds. I have no doubt that such considerations influenced him and many of his advisers, including me. Whether they should have—or should influence administrations today—remains highly controversial. Pragmatists and political realists argue they should not. I believe they should—as, for example, in avoiding indiscriminate bombing of North Vietnam or incurring the risk of the use of nuclear weapons. This issue again merits debate as America struggles to define its proper role in the post–Cold War world.
In any event, during these months and long after the election, President Johnson feared that the American right wing would push us ever more deeply into Indochina and expose us to ever greater risks of war with China and the Soviets. To counter this pressure, he said things that would return to haunt him. In August, for example, he declared, with obvious reference to Goldwater: “Some others are eager to enlarge the conflict. They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do….Such action would offer no solution at all to the real problem of Vietnam.” He added, “The South Vietnamese have the basic responsibility for the defense of their own freedom.”3 He repeated this formulation over and over during the campaign—in New Hampshire and Oklahoma, in Kentucky and Ohio.
Was he hiding something? To us behind the scenes, Johnson had made the goal in Vietnam crystal clear. “Win the war!” he told Dean Rusk, Mac Bundy, and me in his first meeting with us as president. He never deviated from that objective. But we could never show him how to win at an acceptable cost or an acceptable risk.
There was more he could have told the American people. While we had no agreed-upon plan to send in combat forces, a plan to use American airpower at a minimum had been under debate for months, and there was growing doubt that Saigon could continue for long to defend itself. The president disclosed none of this publicly. Had he done so, he probably would have had to add something like “We’re in a helluva mess, and I don’t know what may happen.” But he did not.
Of course, total candor is not customary for politicians under such circumstances. Woodrow Wilson did not exhibit it during the 1916 presidential campaign, when he ran on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War”—only to seek a declaration of war against the kaiser’s Germany the following spring. Franklin Roosevelt did not exhibit it during the 1940 campaign, when he said he was not going to send American troops to fight in a European war—shortly before we entered World War II. President Johnson firmly believed that a Goldwater victory would endanger the United States and threaten world stability. He also believed that the end—Goldwater’s defeat—justified the means. So what he said publicly during the campaign was accurate only in a narrow sense. It was the truth, but far from the whole truth.
Still, this failure to level with the public does not mean the president had plans up his sleeve to escalate the war. Although some of the Joint Chiefs had pressed for heavier military action in Vietnam since early 1964, William Westmoreland and Max Taylor, as well as South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Khanh, had urged postponing it. When Mac and I counseled Johnson to change course in late January 1965, we were uncertain what should be done—escalate or withdraw—while Dean resisted any change at all.
Judging from President Johnson’s record during his long career, some may say that with an election hanging in the balance, he probably would have concealed a decision to go to war from the public. Perhaps so. But that is far different from saying that in 1964 he had made the decision. All the evidence indicates otherwise.
Goldwater attacked me as well as the president during the campaign. He liked to hammer at the issue of America’s readiness to fight a war, nuclear or conventional, and he repeatedly alleged that I was trying to weaken America’s defenses. On March 20, he made the “flat charge” that “Secretary of Defense McNamara and the State Department are engaged in unilateral disarmament.” On August 11, he claimed, “Under our present defense leadership, with its utter disregard for new weapons, our deliverable nuclear capacity may be cut down by 90% in the next decade.” On October 6, he toughened his allegation and accused me of “deliberately…phasing out 90% of our nuclear delivery capability.” His campaign autobiography, Where I Stand, excerpted in The Washington Post that fall, asserted:
The present Secretary of Defense has become the leading advocate—indeed the leading architect—of a so-called defense policy which, by the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s, will have turned the shield of the Republic into a Swiss-cheese wall, full of holes: a policy which will…encourage our enemies to become bolder, to risk the final, fatal step toward nuclear war….
I repeat: the architect of this policy is the present Secretary of Defense. In simplest terms, the defense policies of this Administration add up to unilateral disarmament.4
Now, the facts.
On February 3, 1964, I told Goldwater and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the number of strategic nuclear weapons in our force structure would increase over the next five years and that the number of warheads—reflecting, in part, programs initiated by President Eisenhower and my predecessor, Tom Gates—would increase 74 percent, with the total megatonnage growing by 31 percent. On September 18, I declared publicly: “A full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the USSR would kill 100 million Americans during the first hour. It would kill an even greater number of Russians, but I doubt that any sane person would call this ‘victory.’ ” It was my growing emphasis on—and public declaration of—our nuclear policy’s severe limitations, and risks, that appeared particularly to infuriate Goldwater. His statement implied that he saw no real difference between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons. He went so far as to suggest the president should instruct commanders in Vietnam to use any weapons in our arsenal. I profoundly disagreed and said so.
But because Goldwater repeated his baseless and reckless allegations so loudly and often, President Johnson feared they were having their desired political effect. He therefore asked Dean and me to make statements before the Platform Committee at the Democratic Party’s Atlantic City convention. Tradition dictates—wisely—that secretaries of state and defense stay out of partisan politics. But, to my regret, Dean and I gave in to the president and spoke at the convention.
At times it seemed like the senator from Arizona was running against me rather than Johnson. He blamed me for Ford Motor Company’s decision to introduce the Edsel, whose costly failure in 1959 had marked one of the greatest financial losses in U.S. business history. He charged that I was similarly bankrupting our national security program. Goldwater knew I bore no responsibility for the Edsel’s development. So insistent was he on this point that Ford Motor Company’s former executive vice president Ernest R. Breech, who was a major financial contributor to Goldwater’s campaign, finally wrote the senator’s campaign headquarters and explained that “Mr. McNamara…had nothing to do with the plans for the Edsel car or any part of the program.”5 Yet the senator continued to make his charge, which found its way into newspaper morgues around the world. As a result, whenever I fell subject to criticism in later years, reporters would attach the epithet “father of the Edsel” to my name.*1
Throughout the campaign, the administration struggled to balance two objectives in Vietnam: avoiding the introduction of U.S. combat forces while safeguarding South Vietnam from Communist control.
To do both became increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, conditions in South Vietnam, particularly in the political realm, worsened steadily, and in the face of what seemed like the Saigon government’s imminent collapse, we remained deeply divided—in both Washington and Saigon—over what to do. We held meeting after meeting and exchanged memo after memo. We thrashed about, frustrated by Vietnam’s complexity and our own differences and confusion. But we still failed to achieve consensus or solve the problem.
On August 13, Mac sent the president a memorandum about possible courses of action in Southeast Asia. It reflected his, Dean’s, and my views as well as those of our colleagues in the State and Defense departments. This memo and its derivatives became the focus of our attention and acrimonious debate for the next five months.
The memo began with the admission “South Vietnam is not going well.” It went on to state that Khanh’s chances of staying in power were only fifty-fifty, that Saigon’s leadership showed symptoms of defeatism, and that this, in turn, created pressure either to enlarge the war by introducing U.S. forces directly or seriously to consider a negotiated solution, which under current circumstances would be tantamount to surrender. The memo’s only clear, unqualified recommendation was this: “We must continue to oppose any Vietnam [negotiating] conference” because “negotiation without continued military action will not achieve our objectives in the foreseeable future.”
Mac listed possible military actions, from expanded covert operations to systematic U.S. air strikes against the North and its supply lines to the South. He endorsed a proposal by Max Taylor that we set January 1, 1965, as the target date for starting whatever expanded military action we might adopt.6
The Joint Chiefs agreed we should prepare plans for U.S. air strikes against North Vietnamese targets and the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the objective of destroying Hanoi’s will to fight and its ability to continue to supply the Vietcong. That, in conjunction with our later ground effort, eventually became the military strategy we followed in subsequent years. Neither then nor later did the chiefs fully assess the probability of achieving these objectives, how long it might take, or what it would cost in lives lost, resources expended, and risks incurred.7
Fleshing out the air strategy, the chiefs formulated what came to be known as the “Ninety-four Targets List.” It covered North Vietnam’s airfields, lines of communication, military installations, industrial installations, and armed reconnaissance routes. They considered attacks on these targets necessary to prevent the collapse of America’s position in Southeast Asia. The study did not mention that many of the strikes would have to be launched from airfields in South Vietnam, or that U.S. combat troops would be needed to keep the airfields safe.
When I read the recommendations, I asked the Joint Chiefs to evaluate the economic and military effects of striking the targets. Unbeknownst to me, my request touched off a sharp debate among the chiefs. In discussions on September 4, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Harold K. Johnson argued that the rationale for air strikes was gravely flawed. Although the chiefs had gone on record many times asserting that “the military course of action which offers the best chance of success remains the destruction [by air attack] of North Vietnam (DRV) will and capability as necessary to compel the DRV to cease providing support to the insurgencies in South Vietnam (RVN),” General Johnson disagreed. He pointed out that a growing body of evidence showed “the VC insurgency in the RVN could continue for a long time at its present or an increased intensity even if North Vietnam were completely destroyed [emphasis added].” For this reason, General Johnson told his colleagues that while bombing North Vietnam might dampen Vietcong operations in the South, “the war against the insurgency will be won in South Vietnam and along its frontiers.” The general went on to propose that the “Ninety-four Targets List” be shelved unless the North Vietnamese or Chinese invaded South Vietnam or Laos. He thought this recommendation followed inescapably from the chiefs’ own prediction that striking all ninety-four targets made a large-scale North Vietnamese or Chinese response “more than likely.”8
But the “talking paper” that the chiefs discussed with Max and me on September 8 made no mention of this or General Johnson’s other points.
This question of bombing’s effectiveness that General Johnson had raised became a fundamental issue between the president and me, on the one hand, and the chiefs and military commanders in Vietnam on the other, for the next three and a half years. It was also the issue that triggered two highly contentious congressional hearings in 1966–67, in which most Armed Services Committee members and military witnesses testifying endorsed the view contested by General Johnson in 1964 (and supported by the president’s and my subsequent decisions).
The division among the chiefs on this issue underscored more fundamental problems. Airpower advocates in the air force and navy accepted bombing’s effectiveness as dogma and failed to examine precisely what it could accomplish in particular situations. The army (with the exception of the Special Forces) and the Marine Corps found it comparably difficult to conceptualize and implement effective antiguerrilla operations. And all the services (and I, as well) greatly underestimated Hanoi’s determination, endurance, and ability to reinforce and expand Vietcong strength in the South.
The closest I came to getting a straight answer to my inquiry about the ninety-four targets appeared in a report of a war game, “Sigma II-64,” conducted by the Joint Staffs Joint War Games Agency in mid-September 1964. It concluded that “industrial and military bombing” of North Vietnam “would not quickly cause cessation of the insurgency in South Vietnam” and, indeed, “might have but minimal effect on the (low) living standard” of the adversary.9
The government in Saigon was unraveling faster than we could even discuss our possible courses of action with the president. On September 6, Max cabled in exasperation that “only the emergence of an exceptional leader could improve the situation and no George Washington is in sight.” Since the first days of the Kennedy administration, we had regarded political stability as a fundamental prerequisite for our Vietnam strategy. Now Max as much as said it appeared unattainable. A Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) distributed shortly afterward echoed his judgment. It concluded, “The odds are against the emergence of a stable government capable of effectively prosecuting the war in South Vietnam.”10
These two assessments should have led us to rethink our basic objective and the likelihood of ever achieving it. We did not do so, in large part because no one was willing to discuss getting out. We thought that would lead to a serious breach in the dike to contain the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia, and that we would not accept.
Because I relied heavily on SNIEs and will refer to them often in the pages ahead, let me explain what they were. In 1950 the CIA had created an independent unit called the Board of National Estimates (BNE). Its mission was to put together assessments of major political and military events, trends, and forecasts. These estimates drew on reports from the various intelligence agencies, including the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) and those in the military services. Typically, the BNE would circulate draft versions of its estimates to the other agencies, and the BNE director would accept or reject their comments as he chose. The estimates then went to a top-level review committee, the U.S. Intelligence Board (USIB), and finally to the director of the CIA. He would send the finished estimates directly to the top: the president and his senior advisers.
Sherman Kent, a former Yale history professor, headed the BNE during most of my years as secretary of defense. Sherman, who looked like the original Mr. Chips, possessed one of the sharpest and toughest geopolitical minds I ever encountered. Even when I disagreed with him, which was not often, I held him in the highest regard. The reports prepared under his direction influenced me immensely.
When we finally met to discuss possible courses of action with the president on September 9, the substantial split among his military advisers became apparent. The air force chief of staff and the Marine Corps commandant believed it necessary to launch immediate air strikes against North Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs chairman (Bus Wheeler), the army chief of staff, the chief of naval operations, General Westmoreland, and Ambassador Taylor all believed we should not overstrain the currently weak Saigon regime by taking drastic action against the North.
South Vietnam’s political instability deeply troubled President Johnson, and he wondered aloud whether it made all our efforts worthless. Max flatly stated we could not afford to let Hanoi win. Bus emphatically agreed, emphasizing the chiefs’ unanimous belief that losing South Vietnam meant losing all Southeast Asia. Dean Rusk and John McCone forcefully concurred. But no one (including me) asked whether or how we could prevent it! The president ended the meeting by instructing Bus to tell those chiefs wishing to attack the North immediately that we would not enter our fighter in a ten-round bout when he was in no shape to last the first round. “We should get him ready to last three or four rounds at least,” he grumbled. Conspicuously absent was any discussion by the president of the impact an escalation might have on the election, now just two months away.
Johnson was right to worry about South Vietnam’s fragility. Just four days later came another near coup, this time by Catholics in the army who thought General Khanh was too cozy with the Buddhists. The Catholics marched troops into Saigon and seized several government installations before younger officers loyal to Khanh turned them back.
After talking to the president about this episode, Dean cabled Max that “the picture of bickering among [South] Vietnamese leaders has created an appalling impression abroad.” He asked bitterly, “What can be the purpose of [our] commitment if South Vietnamese leaders themselves cannot declare a moratorium on personal rivalries?” Even Admiral Sharp began voicing doubts. He wired Bus Wheeler on September 25 that “the political situation in RVN is now so unstable as to raise some serious questions about our future courses of action….Conceivably the decision could be one of disengagement.” And the CIA concurred, saying, “The odds now favor a continuing decay of South Vietnamese will and effectiveness in coming weeks, sufficient to imperil the political base for present U.S. policy and objectives in South Vietnam.”11
Amid this dismal state of affairs, on October 5, 1964, George Ball sent Dean, Mac, and me a sixty-two-page memorandum challenging the assumptions of our current Vietnam policy. Its depth, breadth, and iconoclasm were remarkable, as was the man who wrote it. A bearlike figure with a fine mind, sharp wit, and gifted pen, George was an Atlanticist who firmly believed in the primacy of America’s relations with Europe. He had served as a member of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Germany at the end of World War II and as counsel to the French government during its Indochina ordeal in the 1950s. Because he was recognized as having a strong European bias, Dean, Mac, and I treated his views about Vietnam guardedly.
George began by stating the obvious: political conditions in Saigon had deteriorated markedly and there appeared little likelihood of establishing a government strong enough to vanquish the insurgency. He then posited four options for U.S. policy: (1) continue the present course of action; (2) take over the war; (3) mount an air offensive against the North; and (4) work for a political settlement. He analyzed each. He saw the present course leading to a downward spiral of political and military weakness. Taking over the war would lead to heavy loss of American lives in the jungles and rice paddies. Bombing the North would neither break its will nor significantly hurt its ability to support the Vietcong. (He also said an air offensive would do nothing to strengthen our negotiating position, but he revised this judgment early the next year).
In particular, George questioned the premise “that we can take offensive action while controlling the risks.” In pungent—and prophetic—words, he wrote: “Once on the tiger’s back we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount.”*2
That left only Option 4. Noting that we had given “almost no attention to the possible political means of finding a way out,” George concluded, “we should undertake a searching study of this question without further delay.”
He was absolutely correct on both counts. But his memo did not take us very far toward that political solution. He argued that a negotiated settlement should include
(a) The effective commitment of North Vietnam to stop the insurgency in the South;
(b) The establishment of an independent government in Saigon capable of cleaning up the remaining elements of insurgency once Hanoi has ceased its direct support;
(c) Recognition that the Saigon Government remains free to call on the United States or any other friendly power for help if it should again need assistance; and
(d) Enforceable guarantees of the continued independence of the Saigon Government by other signatory powers.12
Dean, Mac, and I strongly endorsed these objectives. But we agreed that advocating a political solution with no effective means to achieve it was tantamount to advocating unconditional withdrawal. We weighed that possibility in terms of its potential effect on America’s global security. We saw a world where the Hanoi-supported Pathet Lao continued to push forward in Laos, where Sukarno appeared to be moving Indonesia ever closer to the Communist orbit, where Malaysia faced immense pressure from Chinese-supported insurgents, where China had just detonated its first atomic device and continued to trumpet violent revolution, where Khrushchev and his successors in the Kremlin continued to make bellicose statements against the West. In light of all those threats, we viewed unconditional withdrawal as clearly unacceptable.
George shared that conclusion. It was this internal contradiction that flawed his memo. He was correct in identifying the problem we faced. He was correct in examining the risks inherent in the actions we contemplated. He was correct in urging that more attention be given to negotiations. And he was correct in spelling out the objectives of negotiation. But it was not clear that this proposed action would achieve those objectives.
Dean, Mac, and I discussed the memo with George on Saturday, November 7. I have been unable to locate a set of notes of the meeting, but I believe we made our views clear. George acknowledged there were “conspicuous lacunae” in his “very preliminary paper.” He said he offered it “to suggest areas of exploration that could lead to other options.”13
We seriously erred by not carrying out that exploration. I fault all four of us. George’s memo represented the effort of an honest man pushing a series of propositions that deserved thorough debate at the highest levels. He had our respect—but he deserved more than that. We should have immediately discussed the memo with the president; instead, Johnson did not focus on it until February 24 the next year, when George passed it to him through presidential aide Bill Moyers. And we should have returned the memo to George and insisted he quickly submit it to experts from the State Department, the CIA, the Defense Department, and the NSC for evaluation and analysis. That we did not reflected our belief that he had not found a way to achieve the objective we all sought. During the winter and spring of 1965, George’s thinking evolved toward my position, negotiations following military pressure against the North.
Watching Dean and me struggle with Vietnam, Mac Bundy made an observation I will never forget. He pointed out that the secretary of state was looking to a solution through military means and that I, the secretary of defense, was looking to negotiations. This irony said much about the deeply vexing problem we faced.
The situation in South Vietnam slipped further throughout October as Khanh’s authority diminished and calls for the return of civilian government increased. Toward the end of the month, the Joint Chiefs sent me a memorandum expressing their deep concern. They proposed a new and intensified program of military action, which included U.S. air operations over both North and South Vietnam. They premised their recommendations on the unacceptability of U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam or Southeast Asia. The chiefs felt so alarmed—and so insistent about action—that they asked me to forward their memo to the president at the earliest feasible time.14
I met with Bus Wheeler on November 1, 1964 to discuss their concerns. He said the chiefs felt so strongly that, if the president decided against additional military action, most of them believed the United States should withdraw from South Vietnam. Max Taylor had an entirely different view. Asked by me to comment on the chiefs’ proposals, he said they amounted to a departure from the long-standing principle of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations “that the Vietnamese fight their own war in South Vietnam.” Several weeks before, Westy had cabled that “unless there are reasonable prospects of a fairly effective government in South Vietnam in the immediate offing, then no amount of offensive action by the U.S. either in or outside South Vietnam has any chance by itself of reversing the deterioration now underway.”15
Faced with such sharply conflicting advice, the president on November 2 set up a working group under Bill Bundy to review the policy alternatives yet again. The next day, LBJ won the election in what was then the greatest landslide in American history.
The Working Group started from scratch.*3 It conducted an exhaustive review of assumptions, premises, and options, beginning with a reassessment of our position in South Vietnam and our objectives in Southeast Asia. The process took four weeks and yielded some alarming observations. Preparing for a meeting with the president on December 1, the team wrote a draft that said in part:
We cannot guarantee to maintain a non-Communist South Vietnam short of committing ourselves to whatever degree of military action would be required to defeat North Vietnam and probably Communist China militarily. Such a commitment would involve high risks of a major conflict in Asia, which could not be confined to air and naval action but would almost inevitably involve a Korean-scale ground action and possibly even the use of nuclear weapons at some point.
The chiefs downplayed these risks, arguing that they were “more acceptable than the alternatives of continuing the present course or withdrawal from Southeast Asia.” But it was precisely such risks that President Johnson and I were determined to avoid. Our efforts to do so greatly influenced the controversial way we managed the air campaign against North Vietnam in subsequent years.16
Above all else, we wanted to avoid the risk of nuclear war.
The president and I were shocked by the almost cavalier way in which the chiefs and their associates, on this and other occasions,*4 referred to, and accepted the risk of, the possible use of nuclear weapons. Apart from the moral issues raised by nuclear strikes, initiating such action against a nuclear-equipped opponent is almost surely an act of suicide. I do not want to exaggerate the risks associated with the chiefs’ views, but I believe that even a low risk of a catastrophic event must be avoided. That lesson had not been learned in 1964. I fear neither our nation nor the world has fully learned it to this day. (Because this issue is so vitally important to our security, I elaborate on it in the Appendix.)
The president received a progress report on November 19. Dean told him the study group had begun to focus on three options: (1) a negotiated settlement on any basis obtainable;*5 (2) a sharp increase of military pressure on North Vietnam; and (3) an “in between” course of increased pressure on North Vietnam with simultaneous efforts to keep open channels of communication in case Hanoi desired a settlement. He assured the president that we would not allow irresistible momentum to develop for any one option and, therefore, he would be free to make whatever decision he believed to be in the country’s best interests.
December 1 was sunny and cold, and the first snow of the season had covered everything with a thin layer of white. President Johnson had returned from Thanksgiving at the LBJ Ranch to make decisions with his senior Vietnam advisers on the Working Group’s recommendations. The presence of Max Taylor—who had flown in from Saigon—and Vice President Hubert Humphrey signaled the meeting’s importance. The president once again listened to laments about South Vietnam’s volatile political situation and warnings that the country’s loss would seriously undermine our containment policy.
The Working Group presented three options (the option of a negotiated settlement “on any basis obtainable” was not even referred to):
A. Continuing the present course indefinitely with little hope of avoiding defeat.
B. Undertaking a sharp, intensive bombing campaign against North Vietnam’s communication lines to the South and the ninety-four targets proposed by the chiefs, with the object of forcing Hanoi to stop supporting the Vietcong and/or enter negotiations.
C. Undertaking the same bombing campaign in a graduated manner, with the same objectives but at lesser risk of a larger war.
Deep differences existed even among the military men: the chiefs favored Option B; Max preferred Option A with gradual movement to Option C; Westy wanted to keep pursuing Option A for six more months.
To complicate matters still further, the CIA had submitted its judgment on the effectiveness of bombing shortly before the meeting. It echoed the chiefs’ view that North Vietnam’s transportation system and industrial base lay vulnerable to aerial attack. But the CIA went on to stress that because North Vietnam’s economy was overwhelmingly agricultural and largely decentralized in a myriad of villages that were essentially self-sustaining, bombing would neither create insurmountable economic problems nor inhibit Hanoi’s ability to supply enough men and materiel to continue the guerrilla war in the South. The CIA also observed that North Vietnam’s leaders saw the collapse of the Saigon government—and victory—as quite near. Therefore, they would likely endure substantial bombing without changing course.17
In retrospect, it is clear that our presentation to the president was full of holes. We failed to confront several basic questions:
• If, at the time of President Kennedy’s death, we believed only the South Vietnamese themselves could win the war (and this required political stability), what made things different now?
• What was the basis for believing that a bombing program—either “intensive” or “graduated”—would force Hanoi to stop supporting the Vietcong and/or negotiate?
• Assuming North Vietnam could be forced to negotiate, what U.S. objectives might be achieved in such negotiations?
• What U.S. ground forces might Options B and C require, both to protect air bases in the South and to prevent the collapse of the South Vietnamese army while the bombing was underway?
• What U.S. casualties might each option entail?
• How would Congress and the American public react to the course we chose?
No wonder President Johnson became totally frustrated. He confronted an intractable situation. His anxiety and desperation poured out in a stream of questions and comments: “What can we do?” “Why not say, ‘This is it!’?” “What resources do we have?” “If they need dollars, give ’em.” “The day of reckoning is coming.” “I am hesitant to sock my neighbor if my fever is 104 degrees. I want to get well first…so when we tell Wheeler to slap, we can take a slap back.”
To this last comment, Max replied, “I doubt that Hanoi will slap back.”
“Didn’t MacArthur say the same just before the Chinese poured into Korea?” Johnson snapped.
The president finally decided: “I want to give Max one last chance to achieve political stability. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll be talking to you, General Wheeler [about bombing the North].” He conditionally approved a two-phase plan. Phase One would consist of armed reconnaissance flights against infiltration routes in Laos, along with reprisal strikes against the North Vietnamese in response to any attacks on U.S. targets. In the meantime, Max would use the prospect of Phase Two—an air campaign against North Vietnam—as an incentive for South Vietnam’s leaders to put their house in order.18
So Max went back to Saigon bearing a message for the South Vietnamese generals: continued U.S. support would require political stability, and this meant the generals must stop scheming against one another and against their government. The injunction proved futile. The Saigon generals remained as fractious as ever. Shortly after Max’s return, they dissolved a major arm of the government, effectively enacting another coup. Its aim appeared to be to replace civilian with military rule.
The action infuriated Max. He took it as a personal affront and demanded that the South Vietnamese leaders meet with him, then chewed them out as a drill instructor might a squad of raw recruits. Perhaps something was wrong with his French, he said sarcastically (he spoke the language fluently), for the officers had obviously not understood his injunction for stability. “You people have broken a lot of dishes, and now we have to see how we can straighten out this mess.” The reprimand produced some shamefaced grins and considerable resentment toward Max, but no concrete results.
Partly in frustration, partly in desperation, Max sent Washington a year-end appraisal that said, among other things, “If worse comes to worst…we might seek to disengage from the present…relationship with the GVN [government of South Vietnam], withdrawing the bulk of our advisers….By this means we might…disengage ourselves from an unreliable ally and give the GVN the chance to walk on its own legs and be responsible for its own stumbles.”19
Those of us who read Max’s cable failed to focus on this passage. We (and, I believe, Max too) wished to do nothing that might lead to a break in the “containment dike” as long as there appeared to be some alternative. With hindsight, it seems painfully clear the very course Max referred to—pursuing our program to the point where the South Vietnamese asked us to leave or a chaotic situation developed that forced us to withdraw our advisers—would have cost the United States far less in lives lost, resources expended, and erosion of our containment policy. It is clear that disengagement was the course we should have chosen.
We did not.
Instead, we continued to be preoccupied by the question of what military course to follow. In a personal cable to Max on December 30, the president expressed irritation with the Joint Chiefs’ repeated pleas for permission to bomb the North. “Every time I get a military recommendation,” he pointedly reminded Max, “it calls for large-scale bombing. I have never felt that this war will be won from the air….What is much more needed and would be more effective is…appropriate military strength on the ground….I am ready to look with great favor on that kind of increased American effort.” This suggestion for large-scale deployment of U.S. ground troops came from out of the blue.20
Max responded with one of the most comprehensive and thoughtful analyses we received from Saigon during the seven years I wrestled with Vietnam:
We are faced here with a seriously deteriorating situation characterized by continued political turmoil, irresponsibility and division within the armed forces, lethargy in the pacification program, some anti-U.S. feeling which could grow, signs of mounting terrorism by VC [Vietcong] directly at U.S. personnel and deepening discouragement and loss of morale throughout SVN [South Vietnam]. Unless these conditions are somehow changed,…we are likely soon to face…installation of a hostile government which will ask us to leave while it seeks accommodation with the National Liberation Front [the Vietcong’s political wing] and Hanoi….There is a comparatively short time fuse on this situation.
He then turned to the question of ground combat, cautioning the president that, by a standard military rule of thumb, defeating the Vietcong would require a massive deployment of troops:
The lack of security for the population is the result of the continued success of the VC subversive insurgency for which the foundation was laid in 1954–55 and which has since grown to present proportions [of approximately 100,000 well-trained guerrillas]….It enjoys the priceless asset of a protected logistic sanctuary in the DRV and in Laos. I do not recall in history a successful anti-guerrilla campaign with less than a 10 to 1 numerical superiority over the guerrillas and without the elimination of assistance from outside the country.
Max stressed the ratio in South Vietnam had never exceeded five to one in the past two years, and there appeared no likelihood of achieving a satisfactory ratio at any foreseeable time in the future.
He then asked rhetorically, What should we do? We could not, he observed, “change national characteristics, create leadership where it does not exist, raise large additional GVN forces or seal porous frontiers to infiltration.” To get results, he believed, we would have to add a new element, and the “only one which offers any chance of the needed success in the available time…is the program of graduated air attacks directed against the will of the DRV” and aimed at creating “a situation favorable to talking with Hanoi.” He shared the president’s conviction that guerrilla war could not be won from the air. But that was not his goal. Rather, it was “to bring pressure on the will of the chiefs of the DRV.” Max ended his long telegram by warning that “we are presently on a losing track and must risk a change” because “to take no positive action now is to accept defeat in the fairly near future.”21
But we took no action. In early January, the Vietcong mauled two elite South Vietnamese units in major battles. Combined with intelligence reports that North Vietnamese Army regulars had begun entering the South, the defeats sharpened our fear that Hanoi and the Vietcong were preparing an all-out offensive that Saigon and its army would not be able to withstand. South Vietnam seemed on the brink of total collapse.
These events made me conclude, painfully and reluctantly, that the time had come to change course. On January 27, 1965—just one week after the inauguration—Mac and I gave President Johnson a short but explosive memorandum. We discussed it at length with him and Dean that morning in the Executive Mansion’s Treaty Room, where Abraham Lincoln had consulted his cabinet during the Civil War. Mac and I believed events were at a critical juncture, and we wanted the president to know how that affected our thinking. We told LBJ that
both of us are now pretty well convinced that our current policy can lead only to disastrous defeat. What we are doing now, essentially, is to wait and hope for a stable government. Our December directives make it very plain that wider action against the Communists will not take place unless we can get such a government. In the last six weeks that effort has been unsuccessful, and Bob and I are persuaded that there is no real hope of success in this area unless and until our own policy and priorities change.
The underlying difficulties in Saigon arise from the spreading conviction there that the future is without hope for anti-Communists. More and more the good men are covering their flanks and avoiding executive responsibility for firm anti-Communist policy. Our best friends have been somewhat discouraged by our own inactivity in the face of major attacks on our own installations. The Vietnamese know just as well as we do that the Viet Cong are gaining in the countryside. Meanwhile, they see the enormous power of the United States withheld, and they get little sense of firm and active U.S. policy. They feel that we are unwilling to take serious risks. In one sense, all of this is outrageous, in the light of all that we have done and all that we are ready to do if they will only pull up their socks. But it is a fact—or at least so McNamara and I now think.
The uncertainty and lack of direction which pervade the Vietnamese authorities are also increasingly visible among our own people, even the most loyal and determined. Overtones of this sentiment appear in our cables from Saigon, and one can feel them also among our most loyal staff officers here in Washington. The basic directive says that we will not go further until there is a stable government, and no one has much hope that there is going to be a stable government while we sit still. The result is that we are pinned into a policy of first aid for squabbling politicos and passive reaction to events we do not try to control. Or so it seems.
Bob and I believe that the worst course of action is to continue in this essentially passive role which can only lead to eventual defeat and an invitation to get out in humiliating circumstances.
We see two alternatives. The first is to use our military power in the Far East and to force a change in Communist policy. The second is to deploy all our resources along a track of negotiation, aimed at salvaging what little can be preserved with no major addition to our present military risks. Bob and I tend to favor the first course, but we believe that both should be carefully studied and that alternative programs should be argued out before you.
Both of us understand the very grave questions presented by any decision of this sort. We both recognize that the ultimate responsibility is not ours. Both of us have fully supported your unwillingness, in earlier months, to move out of the middle course. We both agree that every effort should still be made to improve our operations on the ground and to prop up the authorities in South Vietnam as best we can. But we are both convinced that none of this is enough, and that the time has come for harder choices.
You should know that Dean Rusk does not agree with us. He does not quarrel with our assertion that things are going very badly and that the situation is unraveling. He does not assert that this deterioration can be stopped. What he does say is that the consequences of both escalation and withdrawal are so bad that we simply must find a way of making our present policy work. This would be good if it was possible. Bob and I do not think it is.22
After months of uncertainty and indecision, we had reached the fork in the road.
*1 Years later, I finally asked my public affairs officer at the World Bank to distribute a copy of Breech’s letter to the press each time the charge was made The attacks eventually stopped.
*2 But he failed to note we were already in that position!
*3 In addition to Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy, the Working Group included Vice Adm. Lloyd M. Mustin, senior operations officer of the Joint Chiefs; Harold Ford, senior China-Asia officer at CIA; and John T. McNaughton, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
*4 See, for example, Chapter 4, p. Ill; Chapter 9, p. 234; and Chapter 10, p. 275.
*5 When the Joint Chiefs’ representative working on the report had been asked how badly the loss of South Vietnam would shake the faith and resolve of other non-Communist nations, he replied succinctly: “Disastrously or worse,” and added, “South Vietnam is a military keystone.”