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

by Neil Sheehan

  Bombing of the North and the Ho Chi Minh Trail: While the analysis of the futility of the air war is my own, Col. Jack Van Loan of the Air Force, who was shot down over North Vietnam and imprisoned there, set me on the way with some observations he made when I interviewed him. Much of the material, such as Admiral Sharp’s “LOC cut program” and the POL raids in the summer of 1966, came from the Pentagon Papers. The map of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that eight years of bombing produced was provided to me by Dennis Berend of the public affairs office of the CIA. The estimate that the planes destroyed only about 20 to 25 percent of the trucks rolling to the South was originally derived from classified official figures I obtained in the fall of 1968 from Walt Rostow and one of his assistants. Rostow was then President Johnson’s special assistant for National Security Affairs. Rostow had had the Air Force and the Navy compile the figures for the president. My research indicated that the estimate held for subsequent years in the bombing of the Laos corridor of the Trail, which never ceased, and in the intermittent and then full-scale resumption of the bombing of the North by President Nixon. I am indebted to William Branigan of the Washington Post for a dispatch from Vietnam in the April 23, 1985, edition of the newspaper giving the length of the Trail as estimated by the Vietnamese and a description of the memorial cemetery to those who died for it.

  The Wise Men: LBJ Library for the records of the meetings, declassified in 1983 and 1984.

  My Lai: See Bibliography for books on the massacres and the court-martial of William Calley by Seymour Hersh and Richard Hammer. Also see the report of the investigating commission headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers.

  The eve of Tet: Vann had two extended telephone conversations about the Tet 1968 Offensive and the period preceding it with Dan Ellsberg while on home leave in the United States in July 1968. Ellsberg taped the conversations and had them transcribed at the Rand Corporation. Vann also left behind in his papers pocket notebooks with comments by Weyand as Tet drew near. The transcripts and the notebooks were useful both as a record of what occurred and as a stimulus to the memories of Fred Weyand and others whom I interviewed. Vann described his meeting with Rostow to a number of friends. Rostow did not recall details. A copy of his office record, which he generously let me have, showed the time of the meeting. Westmoreland continued to maintain in his memoirs, A Soldier Reports, published in 1976, that the Vietnamese Communists were attempting a second Dien Bien Phu at Khe Sanh. The memoirs were of great assistance in describing his attitudes and actions here and after the offensive unfolded. Also helpful was another of the book-length Department of the Army monographs he commissioned while Chief of Staff, The War in the Northern Provinces, 1966–1968, by Lt. Gen. Willard Pearson. For the siege of Khe Sanh itself I found most useful an early Marine history, The Battle for Khe Sanh, by Capt. Moyers Shore II, published by the historical branch of the Marine Corps in 1969.

  Tet, 1968: Ellsworth Bunker told me the story of his Marine guards waking him and showed me the scorched briefcase when I interviewed him. Lt. Col. Pham Van Son, the chief ARVN military historian, was the first to suspect that Khe Sanh was a lure. Examination demonstrated his suspicion was correct and the analysis that follows here is mine. In addition to the interviews with Bunker, Weyand, George Jacobson, David Farnham, Annie, Lee, and others, I also consulted a number of published works. The three most important were the official ARVN history by Colonel Son et al., The Viet Cong Tet Offensive, 1968; Don Oberdorfer’s Tet!; and The General Offensives of 1968–69, by Col. Hoang Ngoc Lung, the former J-2 of the Joint General Staff. Westmoreland’s having a cot set up in the Combined Operations Center at Pentagon East and Dutch Kerwin’s sending for Katherine Westmoreland is from the general’s memoirs. Dean Rusk’s change of heart and his initiative to suspend the bombing of the North and open negotiations is from the Pentagon Papers and from my interview with him.

  Creighton Abrams orders Vann fired: interview with Robert Komer.

  The Phoenix Program: Vann’s attitude toward the Phoenix Program is clear from letters and other documents in his papers. The Vietnamese Communists subsequently acknowledged how destructive Phoenix was to what remained of the Viet Cong organization in the post-Tet years.

  John Vann reaches the Oval Office: Copies of Nixon’s letter to Yorty thanking him for Arnett’s article and Vann’s six-and-a-half-page letter of reply meant for Nixon were in his papers. Interview with Sir Robert Thompson for his suggestion to Kissinger that the president see Vann. My gratitude to Frenchy Zois, Vann’s American secretary, for giving me a copy of his December 22, 1969 memorandum on his meeting with the president during my research trip to Vietnam in 1972. The original was missing from Vann’s papers when they reached the United States. Vann also described the meeting to his friend Vincent Davis; to his oldest son, John Allen; and to Daniel Ellsberg. Notes kept by Davis and Ellsberg and John Allen’s memory of what his father said were of further assistance.

  Chau affair: interviews with Ellsworth Bunker; Tran Ngoc Chau; Ev Bumgardner; Dr. Merrill “Bud” Shutt; George Jacobson; Tom Donohue; Theodore Shackley, the Saigon CIA station chief at the time; and Mrs. Kieu Mong Thu, another member of the lower house of the National Assembly. Richard Moose, also interviewed, heard Bunker call Chau a Communist while on a trip to Vietnam as a staff assistant to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Daniel Ellsberg supplied a file of cables between Bunker and the State Department to which he had been privy and which he had transcribed. Tran Ngoc Hien described his meetings with his brother in a written statement made public during Chau’s trial in Saigon in 1970. Shackley, as another intelligence professional, admired the cleverness with which Hien had handled himself after his arrest.

  The new John Vann’s proposed solution to Ninh: A report in Vann’s papers stated that Ninh was “the most blatantly corrupt” province chief in the Mekong Delta and gave some details. Interview with Warren Parker for much fuller details. Tess Johnston, Wilbur Wilson’s secretary, remembered the length of the corruption profile compiled on Ninh. Ev Bumgardner on supervising the anticorruption program for Colby. Hoang Due Nha told me when I interviewed him in 1972 of Vann’s proposal to make his brother a regimental commander and his brother’s reaction, of course not knowing the real motive. Warren Parker told me the motive.

  Bringing Cambodia into the war: Bunker remembered Sihanouk’s signaling that he approved the B-52 raids on the Vietnamese sanctuaries. Anthony Lake told me of Kissinger’s parting remark to him.

  Vann and Dzu: interview with Maj. Gen. Ngo Dzu; his official ARVN biographical record; observations of a wide range of American and Vietnamese acquaintances on the relationship between the two men.

  Creighton Abrams makes John Vann one of his generals: Weyand interview; a copy of the letter of instruction, the official term for a letter of authority, from Abrams to Vann and other documents relating to Vann’s appointment were in his papers.

  Vann’s complicated game with Ellsberg after the publication of the Pentagon Papers: There is firm evidence in Vann’s correspondence that he was passing tips to Kissinger on how the administration ought to proceed against Ellsberg. Gene Vann remembered his brother’s long telephone conversation with Ellsberg and Vann told him how Ellsberg had described his defense strategy. David Farnham was with Vann when he then passed the information to J. Fred Buzhardt at the Pentagon. Vann’s meeting with Buzhardt is on his Pentagon schedule for the Christmas 1971 trip.

  NVA preparations for the 1972 Offensive and its unfolding: interview with Col. Hoang Ngoc Lung, J-2 of the ARVN Joint General Staff, during my research trip to Vietnam in 1972; interview with Lt. Col. Trinh Tieu, then G-2 at ARVN II Corps headquarters at Pleiku; prisoner interrogation reports and other intelligence information kindly given me by Thomas Polgar, CIA station chief in Saigon in 1972; an early official history of the entire offensive written for the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Army declassified at my request. The section on the offensive in the Central Highlands was written by 2d Lt. Gary Swingle. Also material in
Vann’s papers.

  Vann’s rescue and resupply of Fire Base Delta: interview with Lt. Col. Peter Kama and copy of a recommendation he wrote at the time to award Vann a medal for heroism; interview with 1st Lt. Huynh Van Cai, Vann’s ARVN aide, and Cai’s diary; interviews with Maj. Frank Gall, Jr., the commander of the 57th Assault Helicopter Company who was flying that day; General Dzu; and Col. Joseph Pizzi, Vann’s chief of staff at II Corps. Colonel Kama was also of great assistance in understanding the general struggle for Rocket Ridge because he preserved a chronology of the battles, the after-action report of the fight for Fire Base Charlie, and recommendations for awards for a number of the other advisors, with graphic details of the fighting.

  Vann’s rescue of Ngo Dzu from the heroin trafficking accusation: correspondence and other material in Vann’s papers and what he told George Jacobson and a number of friends. Interviews with General Dzu and with Philip Brady, a friend and former CORDS subordinate of Vann’s who was a correspondent for NBC in 1971 and who helped Vann with the press campaign. Brady was expelled from South Vietnam for implying in one of his broadcasts that the traffic could not have continued without at least the tacit consent of Thieu.

  Binh Dinh fighting: interviews with Maj. Gary Hacker, 1st Lt. Thomas Eisenhower, Lt. Col. Jack Anderson, with a number of advisors who fought elsewhere in the province, and with Candidate Gen. Nguyen Van Chuc, and General Dzu. In addition, during my research trip in 1972, I spent a week reading and taking notes from the journal maintained by the province Tactical Operations Center in Quinhon. The courtesy was extended to me by John Swango, the PSA for Binh Dinh, and Maj. Richard Carey, the province operations advisor. I also interviewed Major Carey and he gave me further documentary information on the struggle for the province.

  Fall of Tan Canh: interviews with Colonel Pizzi, General Dzu, Col. Phillip Kaplan, Maj. Jon Wise, Capt. Richard Cassidy, Lieutenant Cai, and Sgt. First Class (formerly CWO) Robert Richards, Vann’s helicopter pilot. Colonel Kaplan, who ultimately retired from the Army as a major general, was extremely patient, giving me several days of interview time. He also drew a map overlay so that I could plot the location of each of the ARVN units involved and did map sketches to illustrate the progress of the battle and the approach route the tanks took. Captain Cassidy learned how the tanks had driven down from the North and the attack orders the NVA tankers had received from the interrogation of the captured driver. Peter Kama and Lt. Col. Trinh Tieu, the G-2 at Pleiku, and General Dzu and Lieutenant Cai were helpful in explaining Vann’s irrational skepticism about the presence of NVA tanks in II Corps. Matt Franjóla, then a correspondent for the AP, gave me a tape recording of the press conference Vann gave at Pleiku on the night of the day that Tan Canh fell. I also spent days at Pleiku in the fall of 1972, reading and taking notes from the journal of the II Corps Tactical Operations Center in order to get precise times and dates and other valuable data for the fall of Tan Canh and other major events of the offensive. The courtesy was extended to me by Major Wise, who was by this time in charge of the advisory side of the corps TOC.

  Rescue of the advisors at Tan Canh: interviews with Colonel Kaplan and SFC Richards, Vann’s pilot. A copy of the holographic will Vann wrote in the helicopter was given to me by his oldest son, John Allen Vann.

  Overturning of Vann’s helicopter by the panicked ARVN paratroopers: interview with Lieutenant Cai and his diary. Vann also told the story to Charlie Mohr, who was in Vietnam to cover the offensive. Mohr’s dispatch to the Times was not published, but I obtained a copy of it through the kindness of Robert Rosenthal, a former clerk on the foreign news desk.

  Dzu panics and schemes to abandon the Highlands: interview in 1972 with Lt. Gen. Cao Van Vien, chief of the ARVN Joint General Staff. Candidate Gen. Ly Tong Ba told me of the plot Dzu concocted to try to precipitate a withdrawal from Kontum.

  The Battle of Kontum: interviews with General Ba, Maj. Gen. John Hill, Jr., Col. R. M. Rhotenberry. Reports on the battle written by General Ba’s staff and maps and map overlays illustrating the course of the fighting. I also flew to Kontum with General Ba and Colonel Rhotenberry one day when Ba had to visit a 23rd Division regiment still stationed there. Colonel Rhotenberry took me on a tour of the battleground within and around the edges of the town.

  John Vann wields the B-52’s: Maj. Gen. Nguyen Van Toan mentioned to me when I interviewed him how he and the ARVN staff at Pleiku had nicknamed Vann “Mr. B-52.” Interview with Capt. Christopher Scudder for the number of B-52 flights the Strategic Air Command was sending to Creighton Abrams every day, the number of strikes Vann placed in the environs of Kontum, and how Vann persuaded SAC to echelon the B-52’s for better bomb coverage of the target zone. Colonel Rhotenberry and General Ba also described for me the echeloning and how the bombers were employed so close to the ARVN lines. Jacques Leslie of the Los Angeles Times, whom I interviewed and who gave me his notebooks, was one of the two reporters with Vann when he circled over the bomb craters of a B-52 strike and explained that anyone still alive below would be too dazed to pull a trigger. Vann told Gerald Hickey, the anthropologist and writer who went to Pleiku to request airlift for the evacuation of Montagnard refugees from Kontum, how he had called in Cobra gunships to finish off the forty to fifty NVA who survived on another occasion. There was also an entry in the II Corps TOC journal that seemed to refer to this incident. Interview with Laurence Stern of the Washington Post for Vann’s rage and exaltation. Vann’s remark on the stench from the battlefield is taken from Stern’s article in the June 8, 1972, edition of the Post.

  Vann’s last “Newcomers’ Briefing”: I thank Frenchy Zois and Bryan Chastain, who was on the II Corps CORDS staff at Nhatrang, for the tape recording of the briefing.

  The crash: the report of the official Army investigation. Numerous interviews, including those with General Hill; Colonel Pizzi; Lieutenant Cai; Master Sgt. Edward Black, Vann’s administrative assistant; General Ba; Colonel Rhotenberry; and Lieutenant Colonel Anderson. Capt. John Heslin, an Army aviator with the helicopter group at Holloway who had a historical bent and was of considerable help, put me in touch with Capt. Bernard Ferguson, who volunteered to fly as Anderson’s copilot that night. Capt. Robert McDonald was the Cobra gunship pilot who spotted the last flames of the wreckage under the trees.

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