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

by Sheehan, Neil

  The Source Notes for “The Funeral” and Books I-VII that now follow are by no means an exhaustive listing. They are simply an attempt to indicate the principal interviews, correspondence and documents, and published works consulted for the sections cited.

  SOURCE NOTES

  The Funeral

  The experience of going to John Vann’s funeral led me to write this book. I drew for this section on my interviews with the members of the Vann family and with the principal public figures who attended the funeral. Col. Samuel Loboda, the commander of the U.S. Army Band in 1972, was extremely helpful in explaining details of the ceremony. Mark Murray, the Department of the Army civilian official in charge of Vann’s funeral as operations officer for ceremonies for the Military District of Washington, was equally helpful in this regard. Maj. Charles Ingram, ceremonial officer on the Military District of Washington staff at the time, was of further assistance. Mr. Murray also provided details on the confrontation in the Roosevelt Room at the White House and Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft was kind enough to let me interview him on Jesse Vann’s attempt to give Richard Nixon half of his draft card.

  In this section and elsewhere in the book, conversations are rendered in quotation marks where there is a written record or the memory of the person or persons interviewed seemed precise enough to justify placing the words in quotes.

  Book I: Going to War

  The most significant interviews for Book I were those with Lt. Col. Le Nguyen Binh, Maj. Gen. Frank Clay, Col. James Drummond, Col. Elmer Faust, Col. Jonathan F. Ladd, Col. Daniel Porter, Jr., Col. Herbert Prevost, and Lt. Col. Richard Ziegler. I am especially grateful to Colonels Drummond, Porter, and Ziegler for the breadth of information they provided and I thank Colonel Porter for speaking with such candor on subjects that were painful to him.

  John Vann’s papers were the most important source of written material. It was possible to reconstruct much of this period from the reports he wrote while at 7th Division, notes, letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, and an occasional item of surpassing value like the invitation to the September 11, 1962, lunch for Maxwell Taylor and the results of the lunch Vann penned on the back. The transcript of Vann’s tape-recorded top-secret interview with an Army historian, Charles von Luttichau, on July 22, 1963, after his return to the United States was also helpful.

  Colonel Ziegler provided me with an additional source of written material that supplemented Vann’s papers. He had kept copies, complete with map overlays, of a number of the after-action reports, including the report on the July 20, 1962, action on the Plain of Reeds. These reports were missing from Vann’s papers and the copies in the official Army records had also been lost. Furthermore, Colonel Ziegler turned his operations journal, one of those old-fashioned cloth-bound eight-by-fourteen-inch ledgers the Army used to issue for record keeping, into a diary of his year at 7th Division, Scotch taping photographs of people and events onto the pages. The diary, and related documents he preserved, was a mine of information on this period with many insights into Vann’s thinking.

  The carbons of my UPI dispatches proved another valuable archive. David Halberstam’s The Making of a Quagmire was a useful published source. Here, as elsewhere in the book, I also drew on my memory and my talks with John Vann.

  While the behavior of Generals Harkins and Anthis speaks for them on the bombing and shelling of peasant hamlets, the generals did admit in secret that they were aware of what they were doing. The admission came after W. Averell Harriman, then assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs, attacked the bombing policy in a position paper in March 1963. Ambassador Frederick Nolting replied at the end of April 1963 with a lengthy letter, classified Top Secret, attaching to it a still lengthier top-secret memorandum from Harkins and Anthis. Both had been drafted by Anthis’s 2nd Air Division staff. The central argument of the letter and the memorandum was a World War II-derived rationale that any peasant hamlet was fair game if it was in an area believed to be dominated by the Viet Cong. The ambassador said in the letter that the peasants were more likely to blame the Viet Cong for occurrence of the air strikes than the Saigon regime and the Americans for making them. The generals also argued that the strikes would help win the war by putting fear into the peasants. “The common man in the Orient has an inordinate respect for power,” they said.

  Book II: Antecedents to a Confrontation

  Everet Bumgardner, Lt. Col. Lucien Conein, and Col. Alfred Kitts provided the key interviews for Book II.

  Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale’s secret history of his mission to Vietnam, which came to me through the Pentagon Papers, was the basic documentary source on his role. Lansdale’s book, In the Midst of Wars: An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia, was also helpful, as were my talks with him over the years.

  The Pentagon Papers repeatedly proved to be a valuable archive: on the return of the French in 1945, on Ho Chi Minh’s vain appeals for American help, on the so-called Bao Dai solution, and on the origins of the second Indochina war in the birth of the Viet Cong.

  I am grateful to Prof. Walter LaFeber for clarifying, in an important monograph, the role of Franklin Roosevelt in the Indochina tragedy. See “Roosevelt, Churchill, and Indochina: 1942–45,” American Historical Review, December 1975.

  Vietnam: The Origins of Revolution, by John McAlister, Jr., is a fine published source on the genesis of the Viet Minh and France’s return in 1945. The official history of the U.S. Navy in Vietnam in these early years, The United States Navy and the Vietnam Conflict, Volume I: The Setting of the Stage to 1959, by Dean Allard and Edwin Hooper, is another source on the circumstances of the French return.

  Lucien Bodard, in his The Quicksand War: Prelude to Vietnam, is eloquent on the French debacle along Route Coloniale 4 in October 1950, and Bernard Fall provides details in his The Two Viet-Nams.

  Denis Warner’s The Last Confucian and Robert Shaplen’s writings on Ngo Dinh Diem and his family were a supplement to my own research and my personal experience.

  My greatest debt is to Alexander Woodside for discerning the nature of the Vietnamese Communist leadership and much more in his pathfinding book on Vietnamese history and culture: Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam. Professor Woodside placed me further in his debt by reading Book II in manuscript and suggesting a number of changes.

  The source for Diem’s desecration of the Viet Minh cemeteries and war memorials in the South is Bernard Fall’s account of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Hell in a Very Small Place.

  Figures on the growth of the Viet Cong from the start of the insurrection in 1957 until John Kennedy’s decision to intervene in November 1961 are taken from U.S. military intelligence reports.

  Book III: The Battle of Ap Bac

  To write this account of the Battle of Ap Bac, I compared John Vann’s exhaustive after-action report with the equally thorough Viet Cong report that was later captured. I expanded on the information in both documents with interviews and with my own observations of the battlefield at the time. My UPI dispatches on Ap Bac stimulated memory as well as adding more material. Vann’s report and the Viet Cong document tended to corroborate each other, a fact of which Vann was proud.

  Some nitty-gritty, such as Vann’s radio call sign, “Topper Six,” and that of the advisors to the M-113 company, “Walrus,” again came from the marvelous record keeping of Colonel Ziegler. He saved his pocket notebooks with the jottings he had made during Ap Bac and other actions.

  Information on the home areas of the men of the 1st Company of the 261st Main Force Viet Cong Battalion comes from a personnel roster of the unit that was also captured after the battle. Unfortunately, the original copy of the roster, with the names of the ordinary guerrillas and the aliases of the ranking cadres, has been lost and all that remains is an American analysis of it which mentions the places of origin.

  The principal interviews for Book HI were those with Candidate Gen. Ly Tong Ba, Sgt. Major Arnold Bowers, Lt. Col. Robert Mays, Colonel Porter, Colonel P
revost, Lt. Col. James Scanlon, and Colonel Ziegler.

  Book IV: Taking On the System

  “Friendly” shelling at Bac and background on General York: personal recollections, carbons of my UPI dispatches, Vann’s after-action report on Ap Bac, and interview with Lt. Gen. Robert York.

  Harkins wanting to fire Vann right after Ap Bac and subsequently relenting: interview with Maj. Gen. Charles Timmes. The clipping of the Bill Mauldin cartoon with the note by Harkins was in Vann’s papers.

  Porter’s memorandum to Harkins on Ap Bac: Vann preserved a copy of Porter’s indorsement on his Ap Bac after-action report by attaching it to the copy of the report in his papers.

  July 23, 1962, Honolulu Conference: Where the official documents, such as the record of the conference, are mentioned in the text, I will not cite them again here.

  Joint Chiefs’ mission to South Vietnam provoked by Ap Bac: The Joint Chiefs’ instructions to the team were repeated in the team’s subsequent report. The remark by the head of the team summing up its mission—to answer the question “Are we winning or are we losing?”—was made during the “debrief” at the Hawaii headquarters of Commander in Chief Pacific when the team was on its way back to Washington.

  “Brute” Krulak’s pre-Vietnam career: interview with Lt. Gen. Victor Krulak; sundry Marine Corps sources, including the official history of Marine helicopter development, which recounts Krulak’s contribution; and the general’s 1984 book on the history of the Corps and his career: First to Fight.

  Conduct of the JCS investigating team in South Vietnam and the writing of its report: interviews with Colonels Porter and Ladd, General York, General Krulak, and Lt. Gen. George Forsythe, then a colonel and the senior aide to the four-star Army general who led the team. In addition, I questioned Lt. Gen. Theodore Parker, on the team as the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, and Vice Adm. Andrew Jackson, the senior Navy representative.

  Premier Pham Van Dong’s skepticism: Ambassador Maneli told me of his exchange with the Hanoi prime minister when I first met Maneli in Saigon in 1963.

  The U.S. arms the Viet Cong: The figures on American weapons supplied to the Saigon side, and thus available for capture by the guerrillas, are taken from the records of the Honolulu strategy conferences and other official U.S. documents of the period.

  Viet Cong recruiting after Ap Bac: The discovery that the guerrillas recruited 2,500 young farmers in Kien Hoa in the spring of 1963, most right out of the strategic hamlets, was made by Lt. Col. J. Lapsley Smith, then a captain and intelligence advisor for the province.

  Smuggling of heavy weapons by sea: Vann and Drummond received information in early 1963 of weapons being landed along the coast of the Mekong Delta by seagoing vessels, but the reports were not taken with sufficient seriousness in Saigon. The details of how the trawlers made their smuggling runs became known later in the war when several were intercepted by U.S. forces.

  Halberstam-Vann relationship: interview with David Halberstam; Halberstam-Vann correspondence in Vann papers; personal recollections.

  Vann’s February 8, 1963, memorandum on the Viet Cong units Cao and Dam refused to attack: Drummond and Ziegler interviews; Vann’s tape-recorded interview with the U.S. Army historian Charles von Luttichau; and correspondence in Vann’s papers.

  Porter’s final report: Although Harkins suppressed the report, Porter remembered its general contents. Fred Ladd was also of assistance.

  Vann’s canceled briefing for the Joint Chiefs: The correspondence and documents in Vann’s papers supported his version of the briefing incident. Col. Francis Kelly, Vann’s immediate superior in the Directorate of Special Warfare, and Maj. Gen. Frank Clay, who was stationed at the Pentagon at the time and in touch with Vann, remembered Krulak’s role. Clay also had friends on the staff of the Joint Chiefs and his brother, Lucius, an Air Force general, was in the Pentagon then and privy to JCS affairs.

  The overthrow of the Ngo Dinhs: interviews with the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.; Lucien Conein; and Maj. Gen. John M. Dunn, then a lieutenant colonel and Lodge’s executive assistant in Saigon; my UPI carbons; a memorandum written at the time with information from Col. (subsequently ARVN Brig. Gen.) Pham Van Dong, who was privy to the plot; the Pentagon Papers and particularly the secret cable traffic between Lodge and President Kennedy and others in Washington.

  Clandestine warfare against the North—”Operation Plan 34A”: Krulak interview; the Pentagon Papers and separate official documents. Colby admits the failure of his own smaller program and discusses his opposition to Krulak’s scheme and McNamara’s rejection of his arguments in his memoirs, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA.

  The creation of the second Viet Minh: The strength and level of organization of the Viet Cong army at the end of 1964 is based on retrospective U.S. military intelligence reports. The intelligence officers achieved a realistic estimate by reevaluating the data and utilizing subsequent information. A copy of a captured Viet Cong after-action report on the destruction of the entire company of M-113’s on December 9, 1964, was in Vann’s papers.

  Book V: Antecedents to the Man

  John Vann’s ancestry: interviews with Mollie Tosolini and William Arthur “Buddie” Tripp; for the Spry side with Lorraine Layne, a younger sister of Johnny Spry, and with John Paul Spry, Jr., Johnny Spry’s oldest son. Commonwealth of Virginia, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics for birth, marriage, and death information. For published works consulted see in Bibliography: Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, by Douglas Hay et al.; Convicts and the Colonies, by A.G.L. Shaw; The Encyclopedia of Southern History; The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash; Night Comes to the Cumberlands, by Harry Caudill; Beaufort County [North Carolina], Two Centuries of Its History, by C. Wingate Reid; Sketches of Pitt County [North Carolina], 1704–1910, by Henry T. King; “Some Colonial History of Beaufort County, North Carolina,” by Francis H. Cooper; North Carolina: An Economic and Social Profile, by S. Huntington Hobbs, Jr.; A Sketch of North Carolina; Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, by C. Vann Woodward.

  Character of Myrtle: Mollie Tosolini, Buddie Tripp, Lillian and George Dillard, Dorothy Lee Vann Cadorette, Aaron Frank Vann, Jr.

  Character of Johnny Spry and his affair with Myrtle: Mollie Tosolini and John Paul Spry, Jr., the son to whom Johnny Spry talked most freely about his early life. John Paul Spry, Jr., also lent me photographs of his father in his younger years. Two other sons, retired CWO Clifford “Kirby” Spry and Col. Alfred Earl Spry, provided further insights into their father’s character and personality.

  John Vann’s birth and infancy: Mollie Tosolini and Lillian Dillard.

  Background of Aaron Frank Vann: Myrtle Felton, one of his sisters.

  John Vann’s childhood and youth in Norfolk: Dorothy Lee Cadorette and Aaron Frank Vann, Jr., were vital to this section because of the extent of their memories as the older siblings and their willingness to be honest with me. Gene Vann also made valuable contributions. During a research trip to Norfolk in 1981, Dorothy Lee took me on a tour of the Lamberts Point neighborhood which, unlike Atlantic City, had not been torn down for urban renewal. We found houses in which the Vanns had lived, including the house described in the book. Dorothy Lee lent me her mother’s photo album, which she had preserved. Frank Junior had kept what few documents his father left behind. Among them were a birth certificate in the original name of John Paul LeGay and the 1943 adoption order by the Circuit Court of Norfolk. Vann’s cousins, George Dillard, Joseph Raby, Jr., and Melvin Raby, provided memories of their summer vacations in Norfolk. Rev. Robert Consolvo, a retired Methodist minister whom I originally interviewed because he was a friend of the late Garland Hopkins, had grown up in the Atlantic City neighborhood and was an extremely knowledgeable source on it and the Norfolk of Vann’s youth. Reverend Consolvo performed numerous follow-up research tasks for me, such as finding the records of the Boy Scout troops to which Vann had belonged and the news story o
f the raid on Johnny Spry’s bootleg whiskey still on the microfilm of the defunct Portsmouth Star in the Portsmouth library. John Paul Spry, Jr., had told me of the raid. Lloyd Miller, a retired police officer who was a contemporary of John Vann in the Atlantic City neighborhood, was another source on life there and on the Vann family. I am indebted to him for leading me to Edward “Gene” Crutchfield. For published works on historic Norfolk and the city of Vann’s youth see in the Bibliography: Through the Years in Norfolk; Norfolk: Historic Southern Port, by Thomas J. Wertenbaker; The City by the Sea; and Norfolk: A Tricentennial Pictorial History, by Carroll Walker.

  Garland Hopkins: Margaret Hopkins, his former wife; Rev. Robert Consolvo; Rev. William Wright, Jr.; Lloyd Miller; Gene Crutchfield; Who’s Who in America, 1964–65 edition.

  John Vann at Ferrum: Margaret Clark, the assistant registrar in 1981, found Vann’s record there for me. When I drove to Ferrum after my research trip to Norfolk she also put me in touch with Nora Bowling Martin, a classmate of Vann’s. Mrs. Martin gave me her recollections of Johnny Vann and called a number of classmates to pass along their recollections too.

  Vann joins the Army Air Corps: Vann’s Army enlisted record, which the Office of The Adjutant General provided me, supplemented by interviews with Melvin Raby and others. Frank Junior discovered Vann’s application for flight training with the letters from the teachers at Ferrum among his father’s documents.