Pentagon Papers

by Neil Sheehan

  The objectives of the United States with respect to the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel remain as stated in the White House statement of October 2, 1963. . . .

  The President expects that all senior officers of the government will move energetically to insure the full unity of support for established U.S. policy in South Vietnam. Both in Washington and in the field, it is essential that the government be unified. It is of particular importance that express or implied criticism of officers of other branches be assiduously avoided in all contacts with the Vietnamese government and with the press. . . .

  We should concentrate our efforts, and insofar as possible we should persuade the government of South Vietnam to concentrate its effort, on the critical situation in the Mekong Delta. This concentration should include not only military but political, economic, turn the tide not only of battle but of belief, and we should seek to turn not only of battle but of belief, and we should seek to in-increase not only the controlled hamlets but the productivity of this area, especially where the proceeds can be held for the advantage of anti-Communist forces . . .

  It is a major interest of the United States government that the present provisional government of South Vietnam should be assisted in consolidating itself in holding and developing increased public support.

  . . . And in conclusion, plans were requested for clandestine operations by the GVN against the North and also for operations up to 50 kilometers into Laos; and, as a justification for such measures, State was directed to develop a strong, documented case “to demonstrate to the world the degree to which the Viet Cong is controlled, sustained and supplied from Hanoi, through Laos and other channels.” . . .

  Chapter 5

  The Covert War and Tonkin Gulf:

  February-August, 1964

  Highlights of the Period: February-August, 1964

  FEBRUARY 1964

  Operation Plan 34A, a program of clandestine military operations against North Vietnam, was started.

  MARCH 1964

  Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, urged on his return from Vietnam that plans be made for “new and significant pressures on North Vietnam” since the new government of Gen. Nguyen Khanh was considered unable to improve the outlook in South Vietnam.

  President Johnson approved, and cabled Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon, that “our planning for action against the North is on a contingency basis at the present.”

  APRIL 1964

  Scenarios for escalation were reviewed in Saigon by Lodge, William P. Bundy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Gen. Earle G. Wheeler. The plans covered details of stepping up U.S. military involvement to conform with the Administration’s conviction that Hanoi controlled the Vietcong. The extent of Hanoi’s involvement should be “proven to the satisfaction of our own public, of our allies, and of the neutralists,” according to Mr. Rusk.

  MAY 1964

  General Khanh asked the U.S. to mount attacks on the North, and told Mr. Lodge that Saigon wanted to declare war on North Vietnam. Mr. McNamara did not “rule out” the possibility of bombing attacks, but stressed that “such actions must be supplementary to and not a substitute for” success against the Vietcong in the South. Mr. Lodge cabled Mr. Rusk that the U.S. could not “expect a much better performance” from the Saigon government “unless something” in the way of U.S. action was forthcoming.

  William Bundy sent the President a 30-day scenario for graduated military pressure against the North that would culminate in full-scale bombing attacks. This included a joint Congressional resolution “authorizing whatever is necessary with respect to Vietnam.”

  JUNE 1964

  At the Honolulu strategy meeting, Ambassador Lodge urged “a selective bombing campaign against military targets in the North” to bolster shaky morale in the South. He questioned the need for the Congressional resolution; Mr. Rusk, Mr. McNamara and John McCone of the C.I.A. supported it.

  Preparatory military deployments in Southeast Asia got underway.

  J. Blair Seaborn, a Canadian diplomat, met secretly in Hanoi with Pham Van Dong, North Vietnam’s Premier, and warned him of the “greatest devastation” to the North that would result from escalation by Hanoi.

  The President resisted pressure to ask for the Congressional resolution immediately and to step up the war effort.

  Mr. Johnson queried the C.I.A. about the “domino theory.” The agency replied that only Cambodia was likely “quickly succumb to Communism” if Laos and South Vietnam fell, but said that U.S. prestige would be damaged.

  JULY 1964

  General Khanh announced a “March North” propaganda campaign.

  South Vietnamese naval commandos raided two North Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Tonkin. This was part of the “growing operational capabilities” of the 34A program, the Pentagon study says.

  AUGUST 1964

  The destroyer Maddox, on intelligence patrol duty in the Gulf of Tonkin, was attacked by two North Vietnamese PT boats seeking the South Vietnamese raiders. Joined by the C. Turner Joy, the U.S. vessels were attacked again by torpedo boats, the history reports.

  Less than 12 hours after the news of the second attack reached Washington, bombers were on the way to North Vietnam on reprisal raids from carriers.

  The Tonkin Gulf resolution, drafted by the Administration, was introduced in Congress. Administration officials testified; Mr. McNamara disclaimed knowledge of the South Vietnamese attacks on the islands. The resolution passed.

  What the study calls “an important threshhold in the war”—U.S. reprisal air strikes against the North—had been crossed with “virtually no domestic criticism.”

  Chapter 5

  The Covert War and Tonkin Gulf: February—August, 1964

  —BY NEIL SHEEHAN

  This article, the first in the series as published by The Times, appears here in chronological order, with the initial paragraphs revised.

  The Pentagon papers disclose that for six months before the Tonkin Gulf incident in August, 1964, the United States had been mounting clandestine military attacks against North Vietnam while planning to obtain a Congressional resolution that the Administration regarded as the equivalent of a declaration of war.

  When the incident occurred, the Johnson Administration did not reveal these clandestine attacks and pushed the previously prepared resolution through both houses of Congress on Aug. 7.

  Within 72 hours, the Administration, again drawing on a prepared plan, secretly sent a Canadian emissary to Hanoi. He warned Premier Pham Van Dong that the resolution meant North Vietnam must halt the Communist-led insurgencies in South Vietnam and Laos or “suffer the consequences.”

  The magnitude of this threat to Hanoi, the nature and extent of the covert military operations and the intent of the Administration to use the resolution to commit the nation to open warfare, if this later proved desirable, were all kept secret.

  The section of the Pentagon history dealing with the internal debate, planning and action in the Johnson Administration from the beginning of 1964 to the August clashes between North Vietnamese PT boats and American destroyers—portrayed as a critical period when the groundwork was laid for the wider war that followed—also makes the following disclosures:

  • The clandestine military operations had become so extensive by August, 1964, that Thai pilots flying American T–28 fighter planes apparently bombed and strafed North Vietnamese villages near the Laotian border on Aug. 1 and 2.

  • Although a firm decision to begin sustained bombing of North Vietnam was not made until months later, the Administration was able to order retaliatory air strikes on less than six hours’ notice during the Tonkin incident because planning had progressed so far that a list of targets was available for immediate choice.

  • The target list had been drawn up in May, along with a draft of the Congressional resolution, also as part of a proposed “scenario” culminating in air raids on North Vietnam.

  • During a whirlwind series of
Pentagon meetings at which the targets for the Tonkin reprisals were selected, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff also arranged for the deployment to Southeast Asia of air strike forces earmarked for the opening phases of the bombing campaign. Within hours of the retaliatory air strikes on Aug. 4, and three days before the passage of the Tonkin resolution, the squadrons began their planned moves.

  What the Pentagon papers call “an elaborate program of covert military operations against the state of North Vietnam” began on Feb. 1, 1964, under the code name Operation Plan 34A. President Johnson ordered the program, on the recommendation of Secretary McNamara, in the hope, held very faint by the intelligence community, that “progressively escalating pressure” from the clandestine attacks might eventually force Hanoi to order the Vietcong guerrillas in Vietnam and the Pathet Lao in Laos to halt their insurrections.

  In a memorandum to the President on Dec. 21, 1963, after a two-day trip to Vietnam, Mr. McNamara remarked that the plans, drawn up by the Central Intelligence Agency station and the military command in Saigon, were “an excellent job.”

  “They present a wide variety of sabotage and psychological operations against North Vietnam from which I believe we should aim to select those that provide maximum pressure with minimum risk,” Mr. McNamara wrote. [See Document 61.]

  President Johnson, in this period, showed a preference for steps that would remain “noncommitting” to combat, the study found. But weakness in South Vietnam and Communist advances kept driving the planning process. This, in turn, caused the Saigon Government and American officials in Saigon to demand ever more action.

  Through 1964, the 34A operations ranged from flights over North Vietnam by U-2 spy planes and kidnappings of North Vietnamese citizens for intelligence information, to parachuting sabotage and psychological-warfare teams into the North, commando raids from the sea to blow up rail and highway bridges and the bombardment of North Vietnamese coastal installations by PT boats.

  These “destructive undertakings,” as they were described in a report to the President on Jan. 2, 1964, from Maj. Gen. Victor H. Krulak of the Marine Corps, were designed “to result in substantial destruction, economic loss and harassment.” The tempo and magnitude of the strikes were designed to rise in three phases through 1964 to “targets identified with North Vietnam’s economic and industrial well-being.”

  The clandestine operations were directed for the President by Mr. McNamara through a section of the Joint Chiefs organization called the Office of the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities. The study says that Mr. McNamara was kept regularly informed of planned and conducted raids by memorandums from General Krulak, who first held the position of special assistant, and then from Maj. Gen. Rollen H. Anthis of the Air Force, who succeeded him in February, 1964. The Joint Chiefs themselves periodically evaluated the operations for Mr. McNamara.

  Secretary of State Dean Rusk was also informed, if in less detail.

  The attacks were given “interagency clearance” in Washington, the study says, by coordinating them with the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, including advance monthly schedules of the raids from General Anthis.

  The Pentagon account and the documents show that William P. Bundy, the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, and John T. McNaughton, head of the Pentagon’s politico-military operations as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, were the senior civilian officials who supervised the distribution of the schedules and the other aspects of interagency coordination for Mr. McNamara and Mr. Rusk.

  The analyst notes that the 34A program differed in a significant respect from the relatively low-level and unsuccessful intelligence and sabotage operations that the C.I.A. had earlier been carrying out in North Vietnam.

  The 34A attacks were a military effort under the control in Saigon of Gen. Paul D. Harkins, chief of the United States Military Assistance Command there. He ran them through a special branch of his command called the Studies and Observations Group. It drew up the advance monthly schedules for approval in Washington. Planning was done jointly with the South Vietnamese and it was they or “hired personnel,” apparently Asian mercenaries, who performed the raids, but General Harkins was in charge.

  The second major segment of the Administration’s covert war against North Vietnam consisted of air operations in Laos. A force of propeller-driven T-28 fighter-bombers, varying from about 25 to 40 aircraft, had been organized there. The planes bore Laotian Air Force markings, but only some belonged to that air force. The rest were manned by pilots of Air America (a pseudo-private airline run by the C.I.A.) and by Thai pilots under the control of Ambassador Leonard Unger. [See Document #73.]

  Reconnaissance flights by regular United States Air Force and Navy jets, code-named Yankee Team, gathered photographic intelligence for bombing raids by the T-28’s against North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops in Laos.

  The Johnson Administration gradually stepped up these air operations in Laos through the spring and summer of 1964 in what became a kind of preview of the bombing of the North. The escalation occurred both because of ground advances by the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao and because of the Administration’s desire to bring more military pressure against North Vietnam.

  As the intensity of the T-28 strikes rose, they crept closer to the North Vietnamese border. The United States Yankee Team jets moved from high-altitude reconnaissance at the beginning of the year to low-altitude reconnaissance in May. In June, armed escort jets were added to the reconnaissance missions. The escort jets began to bomb and strafe North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops and installations whenever the reconnaissance planes were fired upon.

  The destroyer patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin, code-named De Soto patrols, were the third element in the covert military pressures against North Vietnam. While the purpose of the patrols was mainly psychological, as a show of force, the destroyers collected the kind of intelligence on North Vietnamese warning radars and coastal defenses that would be useful to 34A raiding parties or, in the event of a bombing campaign, to pilots. The first patrol was conducted by the destroyer Craig without incident in February and March, in the early days of the 34A operations.

  The analyst states that before the August Tonkin incident there was no attempt to involve the destroyers with the 34A attacks or to use the ships as bait for North Vietnamese retaliation. The patrols were run through a separate naval chain of command.

  Although the highest levels of the Administration sent the destroyers into the gulf while the 34A raids were taking place, the Pentagon study, as part of its argument that a deliberate provocation was not intended, in effect says that the Administration did not believe that the North Vietnamese would dare to attack the ships.

  But the study makes it clear that the physical presence of the destroyers provided the elements for the Tonkin clash. And immediately after the reprisal air strikes, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Assistant Secretary of Defense McNaughton put forward a “provocation strategy” proposing to repeat the clash as a pretext for bombing the North.

  Of the three elements of the covert war, the analyst cites the 34A raids as the most important. The “unequivocal” American responsibility for them “carried with it an implicit symbolic and psychological intensification of the U.S. commitment,” he writes. “A firebreak had been crossed.”

  The fact that the intelligence community and even the Joint Chiefs gave the program little chance of compelling Hanoi to stop the Vietcong and the Pathet Lao, he asserts, meant that “a demand for more was stimulated and an expectation of more was aroused.”

  On Jan. 22, 1964, a week before the 34A raids started, the Joint Chiefs warned Mr. McNamara in a memorandum signed by the Chairman, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, that while “we are wholly in favor of executing the covert actions against North Vietnam . . . it would be idle to conclude that these efforts will have a decisive effect” on Hanoi’s will t
o support the Vietcong. [See Document #62.]

  The Joint Chiefs said the Administration “must make ready to conduct increasingly bolder actions,” including “aerial bombing of key North Vietnam targets, using United States resources under Vietnamese cover,” sending American ground troops to South Vietnam and employing “United States forces as necessary in direct actions against North Vietnam.”

  And after a White House strategy meeting on Feb. 20, President Johnson ordered that “contingency planning for pressures against North Vietnam should be speeded up.”

  “Particular attention should be given to shaping such pressures so as to produce the maximum credible deterrent effect on Hanoi,” the order said.

  The impelling force behind the Administration’s desire to step up the action during this period was its recognition of the steady deterioration in the positions of the pro-American governments in Laos and South Vietnam, and the corresponding weakening of the United States hold on both countries. North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao advances in Laos were seen as having a direct impact on the morale of the anti-Communist forces in South Vietnam, the primary American concern.

  This deterioration was also concealed from Congress and the public as much as possible to provide the Administration with maximum flexibility to determine its moves as it chose from behind the scenes.