A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

by Neil Sheehan

  Mary Jane Allen and Vann’s courtship of her: interviews with Mary Jane; Mary Allen, her mother; and Doris Moreland, her sister; news clippings and other memorabilia of her childhood and youth; photos of Vann and Mary Jane during their courtship.

  Mary Jane’s marriage to John Vann: interviews with her and with Mollie Tosolini and Joseph Raby, Jr.; Mary Jane’s photo album of the marriage and the news clippings she had saved.

  Japan period: Mary Jane; Vann’s Army efficiency reports and other material in his record; a picture of the house on the hill near Osaka and other photos Mary Jane kept.

  Vann’s aerial resupply of the rifle companies in the Pusan Perimeter: interview with Col. Silas Gassett; recommendation to award Vann the Silver Star submitted in 1958 by Colonel Gassett. Lt. Col. Dudley Parrish, who witnessed the flights as a major and intelligence officer with the 25th Infantry Division, could not be interviewed because he was deceased, but his eyewitness account was attached to the recommendation. Roy Appleman’s superb history, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, was also of help for the general battle situation.

  Ralph Puckett’s fight on Hill 205: interview with Col. Ralph Puckett, Jr.; news clipping of the encounter found in Vann’s papers; S.L.A. Marshall’s The River and the Gauntlet. The newspaper clipping and Vann’s efficiency reports and other notations in his service record alerted me to the fact that he had not been commanding the Ranger company at the time of the fight. Puckett told me of the trouble Vann took to see that Puckett received the Distinguished Service Cross and that a number of the enlisted men were also decorated.

  Other Korean War interviews that offered particular insights: Yao Wei; Col. Carl Bernard, a friend of Vann’s who won a Distinguished Service Cross as a lieutenant with Task Force Smith, the first American unit to encounter the North Koreans; Col. Joseph Pizzi, who was in Eighth Army intelligence at the time of the Chinese intervention and more than twenty years later served as Vann’s chief of staff at II Corps; Fred Ladd, who served as an aide to Douglas MacArthur and then to Lt. Gen. Edward Almond, MacArthur’s chief of staff, before managing a transfer to an infantry unit.

  Published works consulted for Korean War period: In addition to Appleman and Marshall see Bibliography for Dean Acheson’s Present at the Creation-, Daniel Yergin’s Shattered Peace; Joseph Goulden’s Korea, the Untold Story of the War; James Schnabel’s Policy and Direction: The First Year; Trumbull Higgins’s Korea and the Fall of MacArthur; J. Robert Moskin’s The Story of the U.S. Marine Corps; and for Inchon also Krulak’s First to Fight; William Manchester’s biography of MacArthur, American Caesar; Without Parallel, The American-Korean Relationships Since 1945, edited by Frank Baldwin; and Edgar Snow’s The Other Side of the River.

  Germany period: Photos given me by Mary Jane and Patricia Vann Stromberg were again of great assistance in portraying family life.

  Statutory rape charge: the CID report that the Office of The Adjutant General located for me along with the rest of Vann’s record. The seventeen-page account Vann concocted to try to demonstrate his innocence was attached to the report. Interviews with Mary Jane; Brig. Gen. Frank Blazey, an Army friend stationed at West Point at the time in whom Vann confided; Col. Francis Bradley; Lt. Col. David Farnham, the executive secretary of Vann’s CORDS headquarters for III Corps in Vietnam to whom he also told the story.

  Peter Vann’s illness and admission to The Children’s Hospital in Boston: I owe the truth of this episode to Samuel Schuster, M.D., who performed the surgery, and Samuel Katz, M.D., then a staff pediatrician at the hospital who was assigned Peter’s case. They spoke to me and Dr. Schuster sent me, with Peter’s permission, a copy of his hospital record.

  John Vann’s decision before he went to Vietnam to retire in 1963: Colonel Bradley; Vann’s correspondence with Colonel Bradley in his papers; his employment record at Martin Marietta, which the firm kindly provided me.

  Suicide of Garland Hopkins: records of the Fairfax County Police Department; Hopkins’s will on file in Fairfax County Court House; Mary Jane, to whom Vann described the suicide; Margaret Hopkins; Rev. Robert Consolvo; Rev. William Wright, Jr.

  Exact time of John Vann’s arrival back in South Vietnam: a diary he kept upon return.

  Book VI: A Second Time Around

  Reunion dinner with Cao: the diary Vann kept intermittently, in a lined stenographer’s pad, during the first six months after his return, hereinafter referred to as Diary. Maj. Gen. Michael Healy, a brigadier general in 1972 and Vann’s successor as U.S. commander in II Corps, found the Diary in Vann’s former quarters in the advisory compound at Pleiku. He was kind enough to give it to me during my research trip to Vietnam that year.

  Embassy bombing: Diary. Account by Peer de Silva, the CIA station chief who nearly lost his eyesight, in his book Sub Rosa.

  John Vann in Hau Nghia: In addition to the Diary, the major sources of material for this period were my interview with Douglas Ramsey and a copy of an unfinished manuscript he let me have on his experiences in Vietnam and his captivity; Vann’s reports to his USOM superiors and similar records in his papers; his correspondence with General York and with Prof. Vincent Davis, Vann’s friend who was then teaching at the University of Denver and who subsequently became director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky; a tape-recorded lecture Vann gave for Davis at the University of Denver in October 1965; a twenty-nine-page memorandum by Daniel Ellsberg, entitled “Visit to an Insecure Province,” on three days he spent with Vann in Hau Nghia that October. Also helpful were a series of photographs of Vann and Ramsey living and working in Hau Nghia that were taken in 1965 by the late Mert Perry for the article in Newsweek that is mentioned in the text. The photographs were in Vann’s papers.

  Corruption: The Diary contains details and incidents, including Vann’s conversation with Hanh on the subject, and his battle with the crooked contractor and the tainting of the former AID official in Hau Nghia. Vann preserved in his papers the file of his correspondence with the crooked contractor. The graft demand levied on Hanh by the military regime presided over by Nguyen Cao Ky is described by Vann in a confidential memorandum dated July 26, 1965. Doug Ramsey was immensely informative on the workings of corruption in Hau Nghia and Ev Bumgardner and Frank Scotton provided further information and understanding on the subject in general. Sam Wilson was also of assistance on Vann’s struggle with the contractor and the graft demand placed on Hanh. The tax reportedly paid to the Viet Cong by the Hiep Hoa sugar mill is mentioned in Daniel Ellsberg’s memorandum.

  Social revolution: Doug Ramsey, Frank Scotton, Ev Bumgardner. Recollections of personal discussions with John Vann in 1965 and 1966.

  Ambush of the canary yellow pickup: Diary and an account of the ambush Vann wrote for the senior USOM police advisor in the III Corps region. He also described the ambush to me and showed me photographs of the damaged truck.

  John McNaughton’s 70%-20%-1o% memorandum; Westmoreland’s troop requests and his plan to win the war; McNamara’s memorandum to Lyndon Johnson and the president’s decisions; the Pentagon Papers.

  “Harnessing the Revolution in South Vietnam”: The drafts of Vann’s strategy proposal were among his papers. Interviews with Bumgardner, Ramsey, Scot-ton, and Gen. William Rosson. General Rosson remembered Westmoreland’s returning to MACV headquarters one day with a copy of Vann’s proposal, apparently one of those distributed by Charles Mann at a meeting of the mission council.

  The Marines meet the 1st Viet Cong Regiment: my dispatches to the New York Times; personal recollections; the official Marine history for 1965 by Jack Shulimson and Maj. Charles Johnson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Landing and the Buildup.

  Vann’s hopes for Lodge: Vann’s correspondence; Sam Wilson; personal discussions with Vann in 1965 and 1966.

  York’s recommendations to Westmoreland: Vann-York correspondence; interview with General York.

  Capture of Ramsey: Vann’s investigation of the ambush and the no
tes and report in his papers; interview with Ramsey; his unfinished manuscript; a copy, which Ramsey provided me, of his official debriefing on his captivity by the State Department after his release on February 11, 1973.

  Vann’s attempt to rescue Ramsey: his report to his USOM superior on the rescue endeavor; a copy of the handwritten note from the village chief; the original of the letter of reply from the National Liberation Front, neatly penned in black ink in a tiny Vietnamese hand on both sides of a small piece of graph paper, filed in Vann’s papers along with a translation. Also, interviews with Frank Scotton and Tom Donohue, the CIA officer who saw Vann’s face when he received the news.

  Ramsey’s argument with the sixteen-year-old guerrilla and his two older escorts: his unfinished manuscript and my interview with him.

  The Battle of the la Drang: my dispatches to the New York Times and my memories. Tim Brown told me how he noticed the red star over Chu Prong on the ARVN intelligence officer’s map during a series of interviews I also did with him and Hal Moore and others right after the battle for a proposed article for the Times’ Sunday magazine. The article was never written because of the pressure of daily news reporting. An account of Moore’s fight at “X-Ray” by Maj. John Cash, published by the U.S. Army’s Office of the Chief of Military History in Seven Firefights in Vietnam, was of great assistance. The ambush of the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry north of X-Ray was graphically described by one of the survivors, Specialist Four Jack P. Smith, a son of the television commentator Howard K. Smith, in an article in the Saturday Evening Post of January 28, 1967.

  “Masher”: I am indebted to my colleague R. W. “Johnny” Apple, Jr., for reporting the next ordeal of the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry on the Bong Son Plain. He covered that battle for the Times. I went to Bong Son afterward to do follow-up stories and have drawn on those dispatches and on my memories. Frank Scotton confirmed my memory of Vinh Loc, the ARVN II Corps commander, and his relative, the new province chief of Binh Dinh, taking advantage of Masher to run copra down to Qui Nhon.

  Book VII: John Vann Stays

  John Vann and Daniel Ellsberg: interview with Daniel Ellsberg; Vann-Ellsberg correspondence; their correspondence with others which casts light on the relationship; sundry notes and memoranda by both men; interviews with a number of acquaintances of both. The skittishness John McNaughton developed about Ellsberg shortly before his departure for Vietnam in 1965 is mentioned in a letter to Vann by a mutual acquaintance who was in the Pentagon at the time.

  Vann and “Lee”: interviews with Lee and her sister; letters and photographs Lee gave me.

  John Vann and “Annie”: interviews with Annie and her father, mother, sister. Photographs and letters Annie gave me. Vann talked to friends like Ellsberg and George Jacobson about his relationship with both women.

  Death of Myrtle and her funeral: interviews with Dorothy Lee Cadorette and Aaron Frank Vann, Jr. Frank Junior remembered his father’s remark on seeing Myrtle at the funeral home. Dorothy Lee took me to her mother’s grave during my research trip to Norfolk in 1981.

  Pacification teams dispute: interviews with Tran Ngoc Chau, Tom Donohue, Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Holbrooke, and Frank G. Wisner II. Vann’s running notebook on the dispute and a memorandum dated March 16, 1966, on his initial meeting with Ambassador Porter. Vann-Porter correspondence. Ellsberg’s memoranda to Lansdale. Early on in the dispute Vann told me and Charlie Mohr of the scandal at the training camp and his confrontation with Jorgenson. We decided he would be fired if we wrote the story then and waited until Mai was finally removed, when Mohr recounted the tale in a dispatch published in the July 18, 1966, edition of the Times.

  Key aspects of Westmoreland’s war of attrition and the creation of the killing machine:

  Civilian casualties: estimates based on a formula worked out by Thomas Thayer, director of the Southeast Asia Office of Systems Analysis at the Pentagon from 1966 to 1972. See Bibliography for his book-length statistical monograph on the war. He graciously gave me a copy. Also taken into account were figures derived through my own reporting and those compiled by the staff of Edward Kennedy’s Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees. The attempt by Maj. Gen. James Humphreys to ameliorate the lot of the civilian wounded and the effort to establish three U.S. military hospitals to care for them is also drawn from my own reporting and from testimony before Kennedy’s subcommittee.

  Firepower: Bomb tonnage figures are official ones. Lt. Gen. Jonathan Seaman remembered when I interviewed him how he had been forced to restrict the supply of artillery shells to 1st Infantry Division while General DePuy commanded it. DePuy’s call for “more bombs, more shells, more napalm” was quoted in a memorandum from Ellsberg to Ambassador Porter.

  Base building and the amenities of American civilization: details primarily from personal observation and from three book-length monographs in a series commissioned by General Westmoreland after he became Chief of Staff and published by the Department of the Army: Base Development, 1965–1970, by Lt. Gen. Carroll Dunn; Logistic Support, by Lt. Gen. Joseph Heiser, Jr.; and U.S. Army Engineers, 1965–1970, by Maj. Gen. Robert Ploger.

  Moral and social consequences for the Vietnamese and the unprecedented corruption: wide variety of sources including personal recollection and my reporting (e.g., “Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk” in the Sunday, October 9, 1966, edition of The New York Times Magazine); my talks with Vann in this period; numerous news clippings in years since; interviews with Ev Bumgardner, Frank Scotton, and others.

  Westmoreland’s neglect of the ARVN and RF and PF: Vann’s constant complaints in his correspondence; news clippings including a particularly helpful one on Westmoreland’s public relations approach to the matter by R. W. Apple, Jr., in the Times of June 1,1967. Lyndon Johnson’s admonishment of his general is in the Pentagon Papers.

  The ordeal of Victor Krulak and the Marines of Vietnam: interviews with General Krulak and with Gen. Wallace Greene, Jr.; papers and correspondence that General Krulak kindly gave me, including his October 7,1966, back-channel message to General Walt; relevant chapters from his book, First to Fight; LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, for records of his August 1,1966, meeting with Lyndon Johnson; official Marine histories for 1965, and 1967 by Shulimson et al. Also personal recollections and reporting as I was in I Corps frequently in 1965–1966, spent several days with a Marine company attempting to pacify a village south of Da Nang, and covered the minor civil war there between the pro-Ky and pro-Buddhist forces. The after-action report of the 3rd Marine Regiment, preserved in the archives of the Marine Corps Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard, was indispensable to reconstructing the “Hill Fights” at Khe Sanh. General Walt told me after his return to the United States in 1967 of flying to Khe Sanh in alarm at the casualties and ordering heavy bombs with delay fusing. The records of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing confirmed his account.

  Where Americans died in South Vietnam: The figures are Tom Thayer’s from his statistical analysis of the war. Thayer also let me interview him for the book.

  Robert Komer and CORDS: interview with Ambassador Komer. Holbrooke-Vann correspondence. Also interviews with Holbrooke; Brig. Gen. Robert Montague, Komer’s military assistant; and Lt. Gen. Samuel Wilson.

  Fred Weyand and John Vann: interview with General Weyand; news clippings and other biographical material on him. The anecdote about the aide with the flying machine came from Col. Thomas Jones, a friend and senior subordinate of Vann’s in III Corps.

  Ramsey in captivity: Ramsey gave me a typed copy of his letter to his parents. Also my interview with him; his unfinished manuscript; and his official debriefing on his captivity by the State Department.

  Ellsworth Bunker: interview with the late Ambassador Bunker and news clippings and other biographical data. I also requested, with his consent, the declassification of his Vietnam papers, a request the State Department partially fulfilled. Bunker was proud of his performance in the Dominican Republic. The anecdote of how he pressured Ky and T
hieu and the other generals into settling the 1967 election dispute among themselves came from my interview with him.

  Annie’s second pregnancy and the ceremony and arrangement with Vann: interview with Annie. The senior AID administrator mentioned here told me how Vann had approached him and why he decided to give Vann a house for Annie and the child to come.

  Awakening of Robert McNamara: McNamara’s October 14, 1966, memorandum to the president; Enthoven’s memoranda to McNamara on the absurdity of Westmoreland’s war of attrition and Thayer’s statistics to prove the contention; and the May 19, 1967, memorandum to Johnson from McNamara and John McNaughton are in the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg interview for the memorandum reading on the flight to Saigon. Interview with Jonathan Schell for the episode with McNamara in the Pentagon. (Schell’s New Yorker article was republished by Knopf in 1968 as The Military Half.) Bunker interview for McNamara’s sending the manuscript to the ambassador and the inquiry he ordered. The report of the investigation was among the Bunker papers the State Department declassified for me. LBJ Library for McNamara’s November 1, 1967, memorandum to Johnson, which the library had declassified in 1985, and the written comments on it Johnson sought from Walt Rostow, Maxwell Taylor, Justice Abe Fortas, and Clark Clifford. Interview with George Christian, who was close to the president, for Johnson’s personal assessment of the war at this time and his conclusion about the change in McNamara. What Christian had to say was confirmed by others and by the documentary record. Also personal reporting as I did a series of interviews in the fall of 1967 with friends and associates of McNamara’s after the rumors began circulating that he had turned against the war. Robert Kennedy was one of those I interviewed.