Yet nothing gave the lie to denials of U.S. control over the fighting in Vietnam more than a seventeen-page paper prepared at the request of the president and Taylor. On February 3, Roger Hilsman, the director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, who had visited Vietnam for two weeks in January, outlined “A Strategic Concept for South Vietnam.” The plan described in precise detail the matériel and numbers of Vietnamese and American forces needed to fight the war and how they were to be used.
As a Joint Operations Center with limited Vietnamese participation began controlling air strikes and the U.S. Military Assistance Command began directing ground operations, U.S. newsmen in Saigon complained about an embassy blackout or exclusion from helicopter missions; they also objected to the “clamming up by U.S. officials” to prevent them from writing “bad stories” about “press censorship.” U.S. News & World Report described a “Curtain of Secrecy” that had descended on Saigon, “a U.S. Embassy effort to confuse and disguise the situation.” The repression had the opposite effect than intended: It attracted a large number of experienced, responsible American journalists to Vietnam to cover what they saw as the participation of U.S. military men in South Vietnam’s war and the South Vietnamese government’s attempt to conceal it from the public.
On February 14, the New York Times made the issue a subject for national discussion when it ran an editorial asserting that Washington was hiding America’s growing military involvement in Vietnam, and predicting that this could lead the country into a major conflict. In his widely read column, James Reston asserted that the United States was already “involved in an undeclared war in South Vietnam.”
At a press conference later that day, a reporter asked Kennedy to respond to an allegation in a Republican National Committee publication that he had “been less than candid with the American people as to how deeply we are involved in Vietnam.” Kennedy was prepared for the question. He launched into a lengthy explanation of American commitments to South Vietnam’s independence dating from 1950, noting a military training mission and economic assistance during the Eisenhower presidency: He described a long history of working to prevent Vietnam from falling under communist control. As the insurgency had become more aggressive, the United States had responded in kind. When a reporter asked Kennedy if he was telling the American people the full story of our involvement, he acknowledged that assistance had been increased but denied sending “combat troops in the generally understood sense of the word.” The president added that he was being as frank as he could be without jeopardizing U.S. security needs.
But the reporters in Vietnam didn’t think so. They complained that embassy regulations were making it impossible for them to do their job. They were being refused permission to travel to areas where they could report on what U.S. military men were doing. A press officer in the State Department thought the censorship would have the exact wrong effect. He warned that it was creating a hostile press, which was writing unfavorable stories criticizing Diem’s regime and describing deepening U.S. involvement in directing the war against the Viet Cong. The department’s public affairs expert predicted that a more flexible policy would make the reporters more cooperative and easier to manage. He was on the mark, but his recommendation was not seen as important enough to reach the White House.
Kennedy and his national security advisers refused to bend on allowing reporters in Vietnam to accompany U.S. advisers serving with Vietnamese units. William Shannon at the New York Post complained that “Kennedy devotes such a considerable portion of his attention to leaking news, planting rumors, and playing off one reporter against another, that it sometimes seems that his dream job is not being Chief Executive of the nation but Managing Editor of a hypothetical newspaper.”
Press officers in the State and Defense departments and in the United States Information Agency (USIA) thought that press problems in Saigon were becoming serious and recommended that a skilled public relations expert be sent to Vietnam, where he could try to foster greater cooperation with the newsmen. Kennedy grudgingly agreed to give Nolting authority to allow a limited number of journalists to monitor some U.S. air operations, but only if the reporters were willing to emphasize the U.S. support function and South Vietnam’s primary role in fighting the war. Convinced that speculative stories were doing more harm than any reporting of the facts, the White House agreed to a policy of “maximum feasible cooperation, guidance and appeal to good faith of correspondents.”
At all times, however, the embassy needed to reinforce the idea that “this is not a US war” and that participation was only in training and advising the local forces. Managing the news remained a central part of the agenda: Criticism of Diem was to be discouraged as undermining U.S. aims in the conflict, and “correspondents should not be taken on missions whose nature such that undesirable dispatches would be highly probable.” As in World War II, when the press accepted broad and effective censorship, self-restraint now was just as important. But this was not World War II, and reporters wondered whether expanded involvement in the conflict served national security interests; at the very least they believed that an open discussion of America’s growing part in the fighting was essential before any additional future commitments were made.
In February, as the U.S. effort to save Vietnam expanded, Rusk and Lansdale gave voice to the administration’s determination to combat the insurgency. Rusk reassured Nolting, who feared that divided authority between himself and Harkins might undermine the effort to save Diem and defeat the communists, that he and the president were fully committed, promising to help all they could. Lansdale met with the editors of Life magazine to convince them to get behind the war effort. Instead of “treating Vietnam as some strange and quaint place, full of peculiar little people, out at the end of nowhere where our good ‘American boys’ don’t belong anyhow,” he urged, the editors should present the Vietnamese “as real people not too unlike us, people fighting against tyranny today.” The editors needed to tell the American people that U.S. advisers in Vietnam are “good guys” and that every American should feel it when any of them suffered a casualty rather than wondering what they were doing in harm’s way. No one should think of American support as anything less than a defense of U.S. national security. Lansdale’s intimidating message: Criticism is unpatriotic.
Nothing demonstrated U.S. intentions in Vietnam more clearly than a statement to reporters by Bobby Kennedy during a refueling stop in Saigon on a return journey from Asia. Asked about America’s role in the conflict, Kennedy did not hesitate to avow the administration’s determination to defeat the communist insurgency. “We are going to win in Vietnam. We will remain here until we do win,” he declared, as defiant of the reporters as he was toward the Viet Cong. When Wayne Morse, a skeptical Oregon senator, asked the White House whether the attorney general’s statements represented administration policy, the State Department, speaking for the White House, replied that Kennedy’s remarks had not been cleared by the White House but did reflect the government’s outlook. Although Bobby’s comments could be attributed to his characteristic combativeness in his brother’s behalf, especially against the backdrop of the administration’s recent setbacks, no one could doubt that the president and his advisers were all speaking with one voice on Vietnam.
On February 27, when dissident South Vietnamese pilots unsuccessfully bombed the presidential palace in an attempt to kill Diem, Nolting and the White House sprang to Diem’s defense. The State Department approved a request to have U.S. helicopters temporarily provide close support of operations by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) while Saigon investigated its air force. In a press conference on March 1, after the press in the United States and abroad asserted that the conflict in Vietnam was rapidly becoming a U.S. war, Rusk reassured reporters that the United States would not send combat troops. He emphasized, however, that the United States remained determined to assist the South Vietnamese until the threat to their autonomy ended.
Tensions between the embassy in Saigon and U.S. reporters increased when the latter described the attack as evidence of Diem’s basic unpopularity. Nolting, by contrast, dismissed the incident as of no great consequence and predicted that the South Vietnam government was minimizing the effects.
As all too often with embassy staffs in a friendly country, Nolting identified with the existing regime. His reporting was the captive of a favorable bias or an inclination to put the best possible face on unwanted events. With the administration in Washington eager for good news or evidence that, unlike in Cuba and Berlin, it had found the right formula for success, Nolting and his military counterparts in Saigon talked themselves into believing that Diem could rally his country against the Hanoi-backed Viet Cong. The American journalists watching developments with greater detachment saw a distinctly less rosy outcome to Diem’s governance and the civil war.
While Kennedy battled the steel companies, Secretary of Defense McNamara, the U.S. military, and the embassy in Saigon were more than ready to take over the management of America’s expanding role in Vietnam. As McNamara recalled later, “I increasingly made Vietnam my personal responsibility. That was only right: it was the one place where Americans were in a shooting war, albeit as advisers. I felt a very heavy responsibility for it, and I got involved as deeply as I could and be effective. That is what ultimately led people to call Vietnam McNamara’s war.” Meetings in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor with the U.S. military commander in the Pacific, the principal officers in Vietnam, and civilian national security officials in Washington and Saigon became a monthly exercise.
Regular visits to Vietnam following the ten-hour trips to Hawaii were part of the routine that brought McNamara in repeated contact with Diem and his military and civilian advisers. It gave Diem the opportunity to persuade McNamara and his aides that he was intent on making Vietnam free and democratic. He impressed them as someone who had absorbed Western values during his studies at a Catholic seminary in New Jersey in the early 1950s. Seeing that Diem was under the influence of his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and his wife, the “bright, forceful, beautiful” Madame Nhu, who was “also diabolical and scheming—a true sorceress,” McNamara had some misgivings about the reliability of the South Vietnamese government as a partner in the conflict. But the need to get on with the war and the belief that there was no good alternative to Diem and the Nhus disarmed McNamara’s doubts.
In the first half of 1962, the Pentagon took over the complete development of an overall military strategy for South Vietnam, mapping out resources needed from the United States, organizing Vietnamese forces, and how they should be used to defeat the Viet Cong in the quickest and least costly way. Rusk told the embassy that the administration in Washington saw the program as workable and worthy of all-out support. A closed hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made clear to Oregon’s Senator Wayne Morse that U.S. military personnel were transporting South Vietnamese troops into combat, engaging in firefights with the North Vietnamese, patrolling the sea approaches to South Vietnam, and dropping propaganda leaflets over guerrilla-held areas.
By late March, Rusk had pressed to ensure that Hanoi could not resupply the Viet Cong by airdrops; he urged that hostile aircraft over South Vietnam be shot down. Kennedy wanted an assessment of progress in the conflict by April 1, with contingency planning in case current efforts to defend South Vietnam were falling short. McNamara instructed the Pentagon to plan the introduction of U.S. ground troops if the interior of South Vietnam were in danger of collapse.
Kennedy had a sense of urgency about removing the threat to South Vietnam’s autonomy and ending the national discussion about a wider U.S. role in an Asian war. During February and March, the New York Times had carried numerous front-page stories about America’s expanding role in the conflict, the prospect of a prolonged fight with increasing U.S. casualties, and Soviet warnings that American actions were jeopardizing world peace. With reporters revealing that U.S. forces were actively engaged in combat operations both in the air and on the ground, the embassy and the White House became more eager to mute the talk of America’s engagement. Kennedy approved a directive for U.S. fighter planes to intercept and destroy communist resupply aircraft over South Vietnam, but he wanted to assure that “public handling will be simply that Communist plane crashed, thus attempting avoid problem of degree to which Americans engaged in active hostilities in SVN.” The cover-up of U.S. actions in Vietnam was a clear administration aim.
The message to the field went out over George Ball’s signature—even the most critical of Kennedy’s advisers on the expanding conflict followed the party line. “We’re heading hell-bent into a mess, and there’s not a Goddamn thing I can do about it,” Ball recalled telling his chief of staff. Kennedy resisted a large, high-visibility military commitment, but a shadow war was another matter, and Ball, however great his doubts, followed the president’s lead.
On April 4, Harriman, who had become the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs and chairman of the Southeast Asia Task Force, cabled Nolting about growing concern over the flow of news stories about U.S. direction of South Vietnamese forces and American participation in the fighting. The stories could only lead people to believe that the conflict was becoming more of a U.S. than a Vietnamese war. It was essential that U.S. involvement be seen as strictly advisory. Harriman complained that U.S. military actions were too conspicuous and needed to be conducted under a greater cloak of secrecy. It gave the communists a propaganda advantage that helped their war effort—not to mention the danger of provoking a firestorm of criticism in the United States.
Kennedy’s eagerness for a solution to his Vietnam problem made him receptive to a proposal from Ken Galbraith for escaping what Galbraith saw as a losing effort. Our involvement, he had told Kennedy in a March 2 letter, is increasingly like that of the French, a “colonial military force” that stirs resentments. The Russians were delighted at the prospect of an America spending “our billions in distant jungles where it does us no good and them no harm. Incidentally, who is the man in your administration who decides what countries are strategic? . . . What is so important about this real estate in the space age? What strength do we gain from alliance with an incompetent government and a people who are so largely indifferent to their own salvation?”
Galbraith understood perfectly well that the man setting policy on Vietnam was the president. But cautious about challenging Kennedy directly and eager to move him in a different direction, Galbraith laid the blame for “the political poison” shaping policy on the military and State Department. Knowing Kennedy’s “distaste for diagnosis without remedy,” he proposed four rules for change in dealing with Vietnam: Keep up the commitment against deploying U.S. forces, ensure that U.S. civilians and not military men manage policy in Saigon, stay alert to the possibility of any kind of a political settlement, and be open to any alternative to Diem, which was bound to be an improvement. Galbraith urged Kennedy to understand that “politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. I wonder if those who talk of a ten-year war really know what they are saying in terms of American attitudes. We are not as forgiving as the French.” Was he fearful that the United States might unleash unprecedented atomic attacks on the North Vietnamese if it found itself in the sort of stalemate it had in Korea?
Skeptical of his military and State Department advisers, Kennedy invited Galbraith, during an early April visit to the United States, to spend an evening with him at Glen Ora, his four-hundred-acre estate in Middleburg, Virginia. Encouraged by Kennedy to provide a more formal policy statement that he could use in prodding his advisers to consider an alternative to the current reliance on military and economic support of Diem, Galbraith sent a memo the next day that repeated the points in his March letter. He added the suggestion that the United States initiate the search for a political solution by approaching the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam
, an agency with Canadian, Indian, and Polish representatives that was set up in 1954 to monitor the Geneva accords ending French occupation of Southeast Asia and was responsible for the election of a government for all of Vietnam. Galbraith also suggested possible talks with the Russians and Indians about an end to the Viet Cong insurgency in exchange for phased U.S. withdrawal and a goal of unifying Vietnam under a noncommunist, progressively democratic government.
The same day Galbraith sent his memo to Kennedy, Chet Bowles, back from a fact-finding tour of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, sent the president a fifty-four-page memorandum that echoed Galbraith’s advice on Vietnam. Where Galbraith punctuated his letter with witticisms and a bit of self-deprecation that amused Kennedy, Bowles was his usual intense, ponderous self. His analysis was every bit as keen as Galbraith’s: He saw our involvement in Vietnam as producing “neither total victory nor total defeat but rather the development of an uneasy fluid stalemate with the Viet Cong unable to crack the U.S.-supported government forces, yet still able to maintain an effective opposition.” He thought it provided the opportunity to reach for a permanent negotiated political settlement. He also thought it could open the way to the neutralization of all Southeast Asia.
Bowles did not discount the importance of a U.S. military presence in the region to discourage Chinese adventurism. But the length of Bowles’s report instantly reminded Kennedy of Dean Acheson’s view of him as “a garrulous windbag and an ineffectual do-gooder,” which had been confirmed for the president and Bobby by his response to the Bay of Pigs failure and had triggered his demotion from undersecretary to roving ambassador. A fifty-four-page sermon on how to set matters right in a contested Vietnam by someone consigned to the fringes of the administration did not command Kennedy’s attention. He ignored Bowles’s request for a meeting to discuss his proposals.
Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House Page 29
