The Best and the Brightest (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

  The issues were no longer whether to send combat troops, or essentially what mission they would be employed in (Westmoreland was asking for freedom to maneuver them as he chose, and being a commander, that would almost automatically be his prerogative). At this point the issues were whether or not to go on a wartime footing (as the Chiefs wanted), to call up the reserves, to bring the war openly into the budget on special financing, and thus in an open and honest way let the public know what was ahead. In particular the question of the reserves was one which dominated the decisions in late June and July. But in any real sense the question of combat troops on the mainland of Asia had already been answered. They had inched their way across the Rubicon without even admitting it. The job of their public spokesmen had been to avoid clarifying the changes in the policy, to misinform the public rather than inform it.

  The last days of May and the early days of June were not a time that George Reedy would later recall with very great pleasure. They were in fact a nightmare for him. He was Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary and he was caught between growing pressure from the White House correspondents to find out what was going on about Vietnam, a sense that the rules were changing, and an almost total blackout on the subject by Johnson and an almost neurotic desire by the President to keep it that way, for of course, given the nature of Johnson, the more things changed and the worse they got, the less he wanted written about them. Reedy was in fact caught directly between the clash of those two most distinct and separate forces at work in the Johnson Administration, the private men making secret decisions on Vietnam as though they were part of a closed society, and the traditional open American society, represented by the American press. The result was a constant horror for Reedy, a daily humiliation for a very sensitive man from which he would not easily recover. Each day the reporters would surge forward, not unlike picadors in a bullfight, with their prickly questions on Vietnam, and each day Reedy would try to turn them aside, and each day there would be a little more blood, primarily Reedy’s, on the White House press-room floor. Reedy, a former wire-service man, a thoughtful man (who would later write one of the era’s most reflective books on the Presidency), had prided himself on his candor. Now he watched his own reputation for honesty diminish daily. If being assaulted by twenty reporters each day was not sufficient torture, there was more: Lyndon Johnson was beating on him too, Johnson was blaming Reedy for each negative story in the press which hinted at the imperfections of Vietnam. Why couldn’t Reedy be like Pierre Salinger? Pierre got Kennedy good positive stories (Johnson forgetting his own anger with Pierre when he failed to get a Kennedy-style press for Johnson). Why couldn’t Reedy be a creative press officer? To make sure that Reedy might not be too creative, however, Johnson deliberately kept him as far as possible from any meetings and any information on Vietnam. Those were orders; neither he nor any member of his staff was to know about Vietnam. If he did not know, he could not leak, and thus he could truthfully stand before the reporters and say he knew nothing. Vietnam was a military operation, and if there was any news it would come from Arthur Sylvester at the Pentagon (who of course was under orders to say nothing). The White House reporters, playing that particularly savage game, knowing that Reedy had no access to power, treated him accordingly with mounting disrespect. He was becoming something of a joke to them, and they wrote that he was on his way to becoming the greatest “No comment” press secretary in White House history. His job seemed increasingly to be a dartboard for an angry and irritable press.

  At the State Department, similar scenes were unfolding day after day. In particular, a struggle of remarkable proportions was taking place between John Finney of the New York Times and Robert McCloskey, the State Department briefing officer. Finney was not particularly well known outside his profession, but within it he has a flawless and enviable reputation; he is the very model of what a reporter ought to be. Before covering the State Department, he was the Times’s man on science, almost a pioneer journalist covering the relationship between politics and science; to both that assignment and his subsequent covering of State he brought a kind of relentless intelligence and integrity, and he was, above all, dogged. Now in late May, with the arrival of the Marines in Vietnam, he began to question their mission, he was old enough, he would say later, to know that if the Marines were there, sooner or later they were going to fight. His antagonist was his friend McCloskey, who was a special favorite of the men who covered State. He had a reputation for being straight, honest and professional, and many reporters considered him the best briefing officer in Washington. His credibility with reporters was very high because he had a reputation for working hard to give accurate information on State Department policy, whether good policy or bad.

  For days the State Department press corps, led in large part by Finney but with other reporters chiming in, had been asking what were essentially the same questions, again and again, doggedly, knowing somehow that something was going on, determined to keep the pressure up. “Bob,” the scenario would go, “is there a new mission for the Marines?” “Bob, does this imply a change of American policy?” “Bob, will the Marines go into combat as units if the Vietnamese request them?” Back would come the answers, sounding frailer and more tired all the time: No, they were there to protect American personnel and American property; no, there was no change of mission. The pressure, the repetition, were at the heart of it, and of course it worked. The more pressure they put on, the more McCloskey felt he had to respond honestly, so while the questions kept coming, McCloskey was very quietly trying to gather information on what the policy really was (the principals were still trying to hold the new decisions as closely as possible; and most high members of the government were as poorly informed as the American public as to what was happening). McCloskey and his superior, James Greenfield, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, had been trying to get their superiors to announce as honestly as possible what the new policies were (Greenfield felt strongly that if American troops were going into combat, the American public should not learn about it after the fact from military spokesmen in Vietnam), but nothing had been decided at the higher level, though a contingency statement was drawn up at one point. Meanwhile McCloskey was on the phone a good deal, talking to friends at State and Defense, trying to find out exactly what the new rules of engagement were. He was, in effect, becoming a reporter.

  On June 7 he went before the daily briefing and fended off the questions in the normal way. Later that day he was able to put together the pieces in his own mind about what the new American policy was. The next day he decided to speak openly about it; he knew he was acting on his own and taking an enormous risk—in effect, putting his job on the line—and that his protection from above might be minimal. He knew exactly what was at stake, but he also felt very strongly that it was the right thing to do, that if there was any kind of right to know, it extended to decisions on how American troops were used. It was, on McCloskey’s part, a personal act of courage.

  Thus at the briefing on June 8, when the questions came, McCloskey was ready. The way in which the people of the United States found out that the policy had changed was instructive:

  q: Let me ask one other question. What you are saying means that the decision had been made in Washington as a matter of policy that if Westmoreland receives a request for U.S. forces in Viet-Nam to give combat support to Vietnamese forces he has the power to make the decision?

  a: That is correct.

  q: Could you give us any understanding, Bob, as to when Westmoreland got this additional authority?

  a: I couldn’t be specific but it is something that has developed over the past several weeks.

  q: Is this from a legal point of view, a delegation of the President’s authority or what is the formal point of view?

  a: Well, yes. The President as Commander in Chief in turn delegates authority to military commanders, and in this case, General Westmoreland.

  It was a very big story, and within m
inutes the wire services were carrying it. At the White House, where the AP and UPI tickers were lodged, the press corps and Lyndon Johnson saw the stories at almost the same time. Johnson went into one of his wildest rages. Perhaps in his mind he always had known this would happen, but it was as if he believed he could change things by the force of his will: if he willed them not to happen, they would not happen; if he denied that events were taking place, they would not take place. Now even that illusion had been shattered and he was shouting and screaming at Reedy, at anybody who walked near him. Who the goddamn hell leaked this? Who the hell was McCloskey? McCloskey—where the hell did he come from? Some kid at State. Well, his ass was going to be briefing people in Africa very goddamn soon. Who the hell authorized the leak? Find out if Rusk or Ball or someone at State authorized the leak, and get them over here. It was goddamn well treason. Jesus Christ, couldn’t a President of the United States make a decision in secret without some kid at State named McCloskey giving it out? Couldn’t you have secrets any more? Why had Reedy let it happen? Another White House aide, hoping to see Johnson on a domestic matter, was warned by friends: don’t bring it up today, bring it up tomorrow or next week, next month, next year, but not today, he’s murderous today.

  At State the storm was beginning to erupt, and it looked as if McCloskey would have to go. But one man protected him: he was called upstairs by Dean Rusk, who was very gentle with him. Rusk thought it was very unfortunate that McCloskey found himself in the situation that he did, but Rusk could understand it. Anyway, Rusk would try to straighten it out. And so Rusk went over to the White House, which was of course pouring out the most vehement of denials of the story, and offered his protection to McCloskey, and the next day he called McCloskey in and told him not to worry about it, that it would all take care of itself. So McCloskey remained at his job, but within the month George Reedy was replaced by Bill Moyers as White House press secretary.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Lyndon Johnson had been frenetic and irascible in the previous months, as if he had found himself suspended between his ambitions and his desires and the grim promise of Vietnam; and the more there seemed to be a possibility of a choice, the more difficult and touchy he had been. Now as he slowly made his decisions he seemed to take strength from them and from the people around him. He became quieter, less frenetic, more deliberate in his decisions. If he took sustenance from those around him who urged escalation, then similarly, as if almost by chance, he just managed to see less of those who had doubts or seemed to have doubts; he gave signals of what he wanted to hear and what he did not. (One reason why he did not seem to like McCone—they did not get on very well and McCone would make a quick exit—was that McCone, even though he was more hawkish than Johnson, more hard-line in his attitudes, had insisted in those days in February, March and April on telling the President the very blunt truth.) It was not just the very top men, McNamara, Bundy, Rusk, Wheeler, McNaughton, who reassured him, it was his other friends as well who were telling him to go ahead. These men were all liberals, committed to the good things in life, to decency and humane values. They were for civil rights and for peace; they did not talk about keeping the niggers in their place, or lobbing grenades into the Kremlin men’s room; they were good men, urbane, modern, if they were for a war, it would be a good war. So Johnson saw around him confirmation of the soundness, the wisdom and the decency of what he was doing, even among his most trusted friends, like Abe Fortas. Particularly Abe Fortas. He was a private adviser, unusually close to Johnson, making the transition from enormously successful attorney to Supreme Court Justice in those very months that Johnson was making the transition from peacetime President to wartime President. Few people were as influential with Johnson as Fortas, who was loyal to no other politician in Washington; he had been the lawyer who helped turn Congressman Johnson into Senator Johnson. If there were those on Johnson’s staff who did not think that Fortas was a man of any real political sensitivity, nonetheless he was the kind of man Johnson admired: he was a liberal without being a do-gooder, a man of force who got things done without showing softness. Johnson had autographed a photo to Fortas: “To Abe, who makes the most of the horsepower God gave him.” Which was very Johnsonian. And now during the crucial months before he went to the Supreme Court and even after, Fortas was in constant contact with the President, Johnson phoning him almost every night and replaying the day’s events, listening to Fortas’ wisdom. Fortas was a tower of strength, a pillar of hawkishness, a man of few doubts about the wisdom of going forward, and Fortas would remind Johnson that no President had ever lost a war, that the political consequences of withdrawal were terrible. Fortas was the classic hard-line liberal, though of course he knew little of Southeast Asia and little of this country as well, but that did not bother him, he was a hawk and proud of it. (When the final decisions were in and Max Frankel of the New York Times wrote a long summary story of the decision making, he would describe the fact that Justice Fortas had played a role, and the phrase he would use was that Johnson had also consulted with “Justice Fortas, who is not a dove.” Proofreaders being what they are, the story came out as “Justice Fortas, who is a dove.” The next day Fortas called Frankel to tell him the story was very good and to mention that he was a hawk, not a dove, just for future reference.)

  There was of course a special irony in this because Fortas had gone to the Court, where he was not supposed to be involved in politics or consult with the executive branch at all, and he had by means of a classic Johnsonian maneuver replaced Arthur Goldberg, who had left the Court precisely because he was somewhat restless with the judiciary and the lack of political action there. Goldberg had been making noises about his own restlessness just before the death of Stevenson, and after Stevenson’s death, John Kenneth Galbraith would return to his home to find a message to call the President. Galbraith, shrewd in the ways of both power and Lyndon Johnson, realized immediately what Johnson was after, a good Kennedy liberal name for window dressing to succeed Stevenson at the UN; it was not an assignment Galbraith sought, a forum of limitless debate where everyone else tended to speak almost as much as Galbraith, but he realized that if he turned it down, he had better have another name for the President. Thus Galbraith thought of the itchy Goldberg and passed on the name to Johnson, noting that Goldberg seemed to want more action. The President was delighted, it was even better than Galbraith, it cleared Goldberg from the Jewish seat of the Court and opened it up for Fortas, and at the same time, by sending Goldberg to New York, created a potential rival to Senator Robert Kennedy. Within minutes Goldberg was summoned to the White House. Arthur, the President said, the next man who sits in this seat is the man who brings peace in Vietnam. Goldberg nodded. It’s the most important job there is, it demands the best man available and I want you to help your President. I want you to go to the UN and make peace. Which was followed with a long and full enunciation of Goldberg’s unique qualifications to bring peace, with Goldberg still nodding.

  So he left the Court to go to the United Nations, where he did not bring peace, where he found that he had effectively pulled himself out of the action and the decision making, where he was being used to make the case for a policy about which he had constantly mounting doubts, where he would destroy much of his hard-earned and justly deserved reputation as a humane liberal, and where, most galling of all, he would watch the man who replaced him on the Court play a genuine role on the decision making in Vietnam. (However, in July, Goldberg would argue vehemently against calling up the reserves, and when Johnson decided against doing it, against going on a real wartime footing, Goldberg would take some satisfaction that he had played a role here. Probably the reverse is true, that Johnson never intended to call up the reserves, and was delighted to have the case made against the obvious signs of war, such as a reserve call-up.)

  So Johnson made his decision; it was, he thought, a personal challenge from Ho. If Ho wanted a challenge, a test of will, then he had come to the right man. Lyndon
Johnson of Texas would not be pushed around, he would not try to negotiate with Ho and those others, as he said, walking in the streets of Saigon. He was a man to stand tall when the pressure was there. To be counted. He would show Ho his mettle, show the toughness of this country, and then they could talk. Rusk agreed; this was one democracy that was not going to show itself weak, it had the right leader (later during the Glassboro meetings with the Soviet leadership, Karl Mundt, as conservative a senator as could be found, was appalled to find that the Soviet Union’s Kosygin did not have the kind of power to go to war that Johnson seemed to have). Johnson would not shirk from this test of wills. Besides, it was above all a political decision and a domestic one at that; it was a question of how he read the country, and when he found doubters on his own staff, some of the younger people, he would tell them, You boys don’t understand, you don’t know the relationship between the Congress and Asia. It was an emotional thing; they had never seen it because during their political lifetime it had been bottled up, but it was still there. He would lose his presidential possibilities, he said, if Ho were running through the streets of Saigon. Listen, he added, Truman and Acheson had never been effective from the time of the fall of China. Lyndon Johnson had a mandate for the moment. But this way if he failed on Vietnam it would be done quickly. McNamara and Bundy seemed to be saying it could be done quickly, perhaps in six months, perhaps a little more. And the test cases were also quick. The Cuban missile crisis had gone quickly and that was a dry run for it, and the Dominican Republic, hell, he had sent a few troops in there and he had put out the fire in a few days. Hardly a shot fired. Look what had happened in the Dominican, when American boys had gone ashore. So this one would be quick too. Just give him six months. Of course, six months later he would be unmovable, too deeply involved in something that was going badly to talk rationally. It was one more sad aspect of Lyndon Johnson that there was the quality of the bully, and the reverse quality as well; he was, at his best, most open, most candid, most easy to reach, most accessible when things were going well, but when things went poorly, as they were bound to on Vietnam, he became impossible to reach and talk to. His greatest flexibility and rationality on the subject came before he had dispatched the first bombers and the first troops; from then on it would all be downhill. Doubters would no longer be friendly doubters, they would be critics and soon enemies; and worse, soon after that, traitors. There was no way to reach him, to enter his chamber, to gain his ear, other than to pledge total loyalty. Only one man would be able to change him, to dissent and retain his respect—and even that was a tenuous balancing act which virtually destroyed one of his oldest friendships, and that was Clark Clifford in 1968.