Pentagon Papers

by Neil Sheehan

  A Pause as Pressure

  An important element in Secretary McNamara’s program of pressure against North Vietnam, the study says, was a pause in the bombing. On July 20, 1965, Mr. McNamara wrote in a memorandum to the President:

  “After the 44 U.S.-third-country battalions have been deployed and after some strong action has been taken in the program of bombing in the North, we could, as part of a diplomatic initiative, consider introducing a 6-8 week pause in the program of bombing the North.”

  He apparently felt, the Pentagon study says, that the previous pause—May 8 to May 13, 1965—had been too short and too hastily arranged to be effective. Hanoi was simply not given enough time to reply during the May pause, the study says. It also relates that President Johnson had viewed the pause “as a means of clearing the way for an increase in the tempo of the air war in the absence of a satisfactory response from Hanoi.”

  The Secretary of Defense repeated his proposal for a bombing pause several times during the fall of 1965, the account goes on. As he and Assistant Secretary of Defense McNaughton envisioned it, the pause would be used as a kind of “ratchet,”—which the analyst likens to “the device which raises the net on a tennis court, backing off tension between each phase of increasing it.”

  All the high officials who debated the pause in bombing assumed that it would be temporary, the study declares. “Throughout this discussion it was taken for granted that bombing would be resumed.”

  The officials, known in government circles as the “Vietnam principals,” believed the bombing would be resumed, the narrative adds, because they knew that the conditions they had set for a permanent halt were tougher than Hanoi could accept.

  In a confidential memorandum on Dec. 3, apparently intended only for Mr. McNamara, Assistant Secretary McNaughton outlined the conditions the United States should insist upon for a permanent halt:

  “A. The D.R.V. stops infiltration and direction of the war.

  “B. The D.R.V. moves convincingly toward withdrawal of infiltrators.

  “C. The VC stops attacks, terror and sabotage.

  “D. The VC stop significant interference with the GVN’s exercise of governmental functions over substantially all of South Vietnam.”

  After noting these conditions, Mr. McNaughton wrote that they amounted to “capitulation by a Communist force that is far from beaten.”

  The Joint Chiefs as well as Secretary of State Dean Rusk opposed any halt in bombing, the study says, because they were concerned that a pause would ease the pressure on Hanoi. [See Document #106.]

  They also feared that Hanoi might offer an opening of negotiations in exchange for a halt in bombing, without making any of the substantive concessions that Washington wanted, the study adds.

  “The available materials do not reveal the President’s response to these arguments,” the narrative relates, “but it is clear from the continuing flow of papers that he delayed positively committing himself either for or against a pause until very shortly before the actual pause began.”

  The pause was to last 37 days, from Dec. 24, 1965, to Jan. 31, 1966.

  Doubts Start to Emerge

  The ineffectiveness of Rolling Thunder and General Westmoreland’s mounting demand for troops soon began to create doubts among the “Vietnam principals,” the Pentagon study says. During the pause in the bombing, both Mr. McNaughton and Secretary McNamara wrote lengthy memorandums outlining the change in their feelings.

  In a paper titled “Some Observations About Bombing North Vietnam,” dated Jan. 18, 1966 and quoted in the narrative, Mr. McNaughton asked: “Can the program be expected to reduce (not just increase the cost of) D.R.V. aid to the South and hopefully put a ceiling on it?”

  His own answer was no. “The program so far has not successfully interdicted infiltration of men and material into South Vietnam,” he wrote. “Despite our armed reconnaissance efforts and strikes of railroads, roads, bridges, storage centers, training bases and other key links in their lines of communications, it is estimated that they are capable of generating in the North and infiltrating to the South 4,500 men a month and between 50 and 300 tons a day depending on the season.”

  This, he noted, was enough to support a major effort against the United States.

  The next day Mr. McNaughton prepared another memorandum, expanding on his first draft, in which he warned: “We have in Vietnam the ingredients of an enormous miscalculation.” [See Document #109.]

  “The ARVN is tired, passive and accommodation-prone, . . .” he wrote. “The PAVN/VC are effectively matching our deployments . . . The bombing of the North may or may not be able effectively to interdict infiltration . . . Pacification is still stalled . . . The GVN political infrastructure is moribund and weaker than the VC infrastructure . . . South Vietnam is near the edge of serious infiltration and economic chaos.

  “We are in an escalating military stalemate.”

  “The present U.S. objective in Vietnam is to avoid humiliation,” he wrote. “At each decision point we have gambled; at each point, to avoid the damage to our effectiveness of defaulting on our commitment, we have upped the ante. We have not defaulted, and the ante (and commitment) is now very high.” The words in parentheses were in the memorandum.

  Mr. McNaughton suggested that Washington ought to consider settling for something short of a military victory.

  “Some will say that we have defaulted if we end up . . . with anything less than a Western-oriented, non-Communist, independent government, exercising effective sovereignty over all of South Vietnam,” he wrote. “This is not so. As stated above, the U.S. end is solely to preserve our reputation as a guarantor.”

  He then outlined some outcomes that he felt the United States should be able to accept:

  “Coalition government including Communists.

  “A free decision by the South to succumb to the VC or to the North.

  “A neutral (or even anti-U.S.) government in SVN.

  “A live-and let-live ‘reversion to 1959.’ ”

  This presumably referred to the situation of low-level guerrilla warfare that prevailed in 1959, before either North Vietnam or the United States had committed major forces to the conflict.

  Despite the pessimism of his analysis, the study adds, Mr. McNaughton went on to recommend “more effort for pacification, more push behind the Ky government, more battalions . . . and intensive interdiction bombing.”

  On Jan. 24, Secretary McNamara wrote a revised version of his Nov. 30, 1965, memorandum to President Johnson that, the study says, echoed much of his Assistant Secretary’s pessimism.

  While Mr. McNamara, too, recommended increasing the bombing strikes against North Vietnam, he could say only that “the increased program probably will not put a tight ceiling on the enemy’s activities in South Vietnam.”

  And though he recommended raising the number of United States troops in Vietnam to more than 400,000 by the end of 1966, he told the President:

  “Deployments of the kind we have recommended will not guarantee success. Our intelligence estimate is that the present Communist policy is to continue to prosecute the war vigorously in the South. They continue to believe that the war will be a long one, that time is their ally and that their own staying power is superior to ours.

  “It follows, therefore, that the odds are about even that, even with the recommended deployments, we will be faced in early 1967 with a military standoff at a much higher level, with pacification still stalled, and with any prospect of military success marred by the chances of an active Chinese intervention and with the requirement for the deployment of still more U.S. forces.”

  The doubts among officials of the Johnson Administration grew further with a political crisis in the cities of Hue and Danang during the spring of 1966, the narrative relates, and at the White House a major debate was conducted on America’s goals in Southeast Asia.

  The South Vietnamese political crisis was touched off March 12, 1966, when Air Vice Marshal
Nguyen Cao Ky, who was Premier, removed the powerful and semiautonomous commander of the I Corps, Gen. Nguyen Chanh Thi. Buddhist monks and students quickly joined demonstrations supporting General Thi and attacking the Ky regime.

  The demonstrations stirred fears in Washington that Marshal Ky might be overthrown and replaced by a neutralist Buddhist government, the study recalls, and hurried meetings were called at the White House.

  At the first of these meetings, on April 9, the study says, four policy papers were debated: George Carver, a senior C.I.A. analyst on Vietnam, argued for what was referred to as Option A—continuing as is; Leonard Unger, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Interdepartmental Vietnam coordinating committee, presented Option B—continuing but pressing for a compromise settlement; Assistant Secretary of Defense McNaughton argued Option B-P—continuing but with a pessimistic outlook; and George W. Ball, the Under Secretary of State, took Option C—disengagement.

  Mr. Ball asserted, as he had the previous June in a memorandum for the President, that “We should concentrate our attention on cutting our losses.” The United States, he said, should “halt the deployment of additional forces, reduce the level of air attacks on the North, and maintain ground activity at the minimum level required to prevent the substantial improvement of the Vietcong position.”

  “Let us face the fact that there are no really attractive options open to us,” Secretary Ball concluded in his policy paper, as quoted in the Pentagon study.

  Other papers, including one by Walt W. Rostow, who had just replaced McGeorge Bundy as Presidential adviser on national security, were prepared and debated on April 12, 14 and 16.

  A hint of Mr. McNaughton’s state of mind during this period, the Pentagon study says, can be gathered from notes he had taken of a conversation with an official just back from Saigon. Mr. McNaughton’s notes read:

  “Place (VN) in unholy mess.

  “We control next to no territory.

  “Fears economic collapse.

  “Militarily will be same place year from now.

  “Pacification won’t get off ground for a year.”

  At the April 16 meeting, William P. Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, presented a draft entitled “Basic Choices in Vietnam.” He apparently favored the option of continuing along present lines, the narrative recounts, but he also said:

  “As we look a year or two ahead, with a military program that would require major further budget costs—with all their implications for taxes and domestic programs—and with steady or probably rising casualties, the war could well become an albatross around the Administration’s neck at least equal to what Korea was for President Truman in 1952.”

  What new decisions these meetings produced is not clear from the record, the Pentagon study says. The meetings ended around April 20 with a lull in the South Vietnamese political crisis.

  The Fuel-Depot Issue

  During the spring of 1966, the Pentagon study says, the question of bombing North Vietnam’s oil-storage tanks became a “major policy dispute.”

  “Before the question was settled,” the account goes on, “it had assumed the proportions of a strategic issue, fraught with military danger and political risk, requiring thorough examination and careful analysis.”

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff had advocated bombing North Vietnam’s oil tanks as early as the fall of 1965, the narrative says, adding:

  “The Joint Chiefs of Staff pressed throughout the autumn and winter of 1965-66 for permission to expand the bombing virtually into a program of strategic bombing aimed at all industrial and economic resources as well as at all interdiction targets.”

  “The Chiefs did so, it may be added, despite the steady stream of memoranda from the intelligence community consistently expressing skepticism that bombing of any conceivable sort (that is, any except bombing aimed primarily at the destruction of North Vietnam’s population) could either persuade Hanoi to negotiate a settlement on U.S./GVN terms or effectively limit Hanoi’s ability to infiltrate men and supplies into the South.”

  In a memorandum to Secretary McNamara on Nov. 10, 1965, the Chiefs asserted that the only reason the bombing campaign had not worked thus far was because of the “self-imposed restraints:”

  “We shall continue to achieve only limited success in air operation in D.R.V./Laos if required to operate within the constraints presently imposed,” the Joint Chiefs said. “The establishment and observance of de facto sanctuaries within the D.R.V., coupled with a denial of operations against the most important military and war supporting targets, precludes attainment of the objectives of the air campaign.”

  The Joint Chiefs added: “Now required is an immediate and sharply accelerated program which will leave no doubt that the U.S. intends to win and achieve a level of destruction which they will not be able to overcome.”

  In a separate memorandum the same day, the Joint Chiefs said that an attack on North Vietnam’s P.O.L.—petroleum, oil and lubricants, in military terminology—“would be more damaging to the D.R.V. capability to move war-supporting resources within country and along the infiltration routes to SVN than an attack against any other single target system.”

  “The flow of supplies would be greatly impeded,” the Joint Chiefs said. And they contended that “recuperability of the D.R.V. P.O.L. system from the effects of an attack is very poor.”

  “It is not surprising that the J.C.S. singled out the P.O.L. target system for special attention,” the Pentagon analyst says. “NVN had no oil fields or refineries, and had to import all of its petroleum products, in refined form. . . . Nearly all of it came from the Black Sea area of the U.S.S.R. and arrived by sea at Haiphong, the only port capable of conveniently receiving and handling bulk P.O.L. brought in by large tankers. From large tank farms at Haiphong with a capacity of about one-fourth of the annual imports, the P.O.L. was transported by road, rail and water to other large storage sites at Hanoi and elsewhere in the country. Ninety-seven per cent of the N.V.N. P.O.L. storage capacity was concentrated in 13 sites, 4 of which had already been hit. They were, of course, highly vulnerable to air attack.”

  In support of the Joint Chiefs’ view, Adm. U. S. Grant Sharp, the commander of American forces in the Pacific, in a cablegram to the Joint Chiefs in January, 1966, made the evaluation that bombing North Vietnam’s oil would “bring the enemy to the conference table or cause the insurgency to wither from lack of support.” Admiral Sharp also wanted to close North Vietnam’s ports, presumably by aerial mining.

  But from the outset of the debate over bombing North Vietnam’s oil tanks, the study discloses, the intelligence community had been skeptical that such bombing would have much effect on Hanoi.

  Replying to a query from Secretary McNamara on what the effect of oil-tank bombing would be, the Central Intelligence Agency said in November, 1965: “It is unlikely that this loss would cripple the Communist military operations in the South, though it would certainly embarrass them.”

  “We do not believe,” the agency’s evaluation added, “that the attacks in themselves would lead to a major change of policy on the Communist side, either toward negotiations or toward enlarging the war.”

  “Present Communist policy is to continue to prosecute the war vigorously in the south,” another agency estimate, on Dec. 3, 1965, said. It added:

  “The Communists recognize that the U.S. reinforcements of 1965 signify a determination to avoid defeat. They expect more U.S. troops and probably anticipate that targets in the Hanoi-Haiphong area will come under air attack. Nevertheless, they remain unwilling to damp down the conflict or move toward negotiation. They expect a long war, but they continue to believe that time is their ally and that their own staying power is superior.”

  If the United States bombed all major targets in North Vietnam, Secretary McNamara asked, how would Hanoi react? The C.I.A. replied: “The D.R.V. would not decide to quit; PAVN infiltration southward would continue.”

 
In March, 1966, after months of hesitation, Mr. McNamara accepted the Joint Chiefs’ requests and recommended bombing North Vietnam’s oil, the study relates. But President Johnson did not immediately go along with the Secretary’s recommendation.

  There were several reasons for the President’s hesitation, the account goes on.

  The continuing chaotic political situation in South Vietnam, with rumors of a change in government, made any further escalation seem unwise for the moment. There was also a widespread campaign by several world leaders during the spring to get Washington and Hanoi to the negotiating table. President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Prime Minister Harold Wilson of Britain separately traveled to Moscow to try to start negotiations.

  President Charles de Gaulle of France was in touch with President Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, and Secretary General Thant of the United Nations appealed to both sides to come to the Security Council. President Johnson could not afford to escalate the war during these peace efforts, the Pentagon record says.

  An important influence on President Johnson’s thinking, the account goes on, was a memorandum he received from Mr. Rostow on May 6. Mr. Rostow, who as a major with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II had helped plan the bombing of Germany, recalled in his memorandum the damage done to that country’s war effort through the bombing of oil-storage facilities. He then asserted:

  “With an understanding that simple analogies are dangerous, I nevertheless feel it is quite possible the military effects of systematic and sustained bombing of P.O.L. in North Vietnam may be more prompt and direct than conventional intelilgence analysis would suggest.”

  It was late in May when President Johnson decided to order the oil bombing, the narrative says, and he apparently set June 10 as the target day. But his decision “was very closely held,” the analyst writes, and not even Admiral Sharp or General Westmoreland was told.

  The Central Intelligence Agency, in a last-minute evaluation ordered by the “Vietnam principals,” reiterated its skepticism about the effects of oil-tank bombing.