by Gerard Colby
To Kennedy, the choice was clear: “Our nation must be told the truth about this war, in all its terrible reality.” There was a domestic price with that reality, as well: “We cannot build a Great Society there if we cannot build one in our own country.”13
Never before had the credibility of an American president been so undermined by his own policies at home and abroad.
“Declare now,” Richard Goodwin urged Kennedy clandestinely from the McCarthy campaign in New Hampshire.
On March 5, a full week before the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy decided to do just that.14 On March 7, he asked his brother Ted to inform Eugene McCarthy that he would probably enter the race after the Wisconsin primary in early April. Ted, unhappy, procrastinated until March 11 and then passed the responsibility to Richard Goodwin, who told McCarthy the next day, March 12, on the evening before the New Hampshire primary. McCarthy, anticipating a victory after weathering red-baiting by conservative Democrats, was understandably bitter.
THE IDES OF MARCH
The country was going through a sea-change in opinion. Even SIL’s board, meeting in early March, expressed reservations about the war. “We are much concerned that we could have very strong criticism even affecting the work if another tragedy occurred.”15
The next day, New Hampshire held its primary. Voters showed their disenchantment with the war by giving McCarthy 42 percent of the votes. Even at this late date, an air of unreality surrounded the Johnson administration. Dean Rusk testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on foreign aid to South Vietnam as if Tet had never happened. Kennedy made Johnson an offer he was convinced no one but Lyndon Johnson could refuse: He would not enter the race if Johnson would appoint a presidential task force, with Kennedy included, to review Vietnam policy with the intention of recommending a change. Clark Clifford reported back on March 14 that Johnson immediately rejected the proposal.
Meanwhile, Clark Clifford had more than a Kennedy candidacy or South Vietnam’s viability to worry about: When does counterinsurgency become genocide, and what was the war costing Americans? His aide, Townsend Hoopes, touched the nerve of the matter: “Anything resembling a clear-cut military victory in this appears possible only at the price of literally destroying South Vietnam, tearing apart the social and political fabric of our own country, alienating our European friends, and gravely weakening the whole free world structure of relations and alliances.”16
Clifford noted grimly that with the exception of the Marcos regime in the Philippines and the client regime in South Korea, the United States’ traditional allies had failed to back U.S. intervention in Indochina; even nearby Australia and New Zealand sent only token forces into the battlefield. Latin America, despite Johnson’s entreaties, remained aloof; only the Brazilian junta sent men, but they were medics, not troops. And Europe was becoming openly critical.
In addition, European banks and other foreign investors holding U.S. dollars were increasingly worried about what the war’s inflation was doing to the value of the dollar. Not only did the declining value of the dollar give U.S. companies’ exports a competitive advantage in Europe and other markets that they probably did not deserve, but it also undermined the dollar-based assets of European balance sheets. Not the least of these assets were dollars that had been left in Europe from Marshall Plan loans, as well as direct U.S. corporate investments and dollars brought in by U.S servicemen and tourists. All created deficits in the balance of payments that reached $40 billion by 1968. Even gold, the reference point for all noncommunist currencies, was pegged to the dollar’s value, at $35 per ounce.
In late 1967 and early 1968, as a wave of imports hit American markets, as inflation and the U.S. budget deficit grew with the Vietnam War, and as an end to the war that would be favorable to the United States looked further away than ever, European confidence in the dollar collapsed. Dollars were cashed in for gold in European money markets, and the flight of gold from the U.S. Treasury reached a crisis stage.17 This “Gold Crisis” came to the steps of the Johnson White House, in the form of a delegation of powerful bankers.
The Tet Offensive had convinced much of the international business community that the war would take too long and therefore would be too costly to win. On March 13, the day after his defeat in New Hampshire, Johnson suffered the indignity of hearing Rockefeller ally C. Douglas Dillon and other members of a presidential advisory panel warn him of “the grave consequences to the United States’ international trade and financial position” if he did not raise taxes to increase treasury revenues.18
Johnson called British Prime Minister Harold Wilson on the Hot Line that was usually reserved for nuclear threats, asking him to suspend gold payments. That night Queen Elizabeth made a proclamation that closed Britain’s stock exchanges, its foreign-exchange markets, all the foreign departments of banks, and, of course, the London Gold Exchange.
Nelson Rockefeller remained aloof, but watchful. He refused to join the chorus of budget-conscious critics of foreign aid. He was still convinced of the necessity of foreign aid for U.S. corporate investment abroad, both as the promoter of Third World development and the bulwark against revolution and Soviet infiltration. Just the previous year, his brother David had pressured congressmen against cuts in aid to Latin America and had rallied corporate leaders in the Council of the Americas to do likewise. This accord on Third World policy extended to Vietnam. The Rockefellers continued to back Johnson. George Romney’s campaign, hobbled by Rockefeller aides crafting prowar speeches for the Michigan governor, had succumbed on February 28. A bitter Romney explained privately that he withdrew because “he found out he was being used by Rockefeller as a stalking horse.”19 On March 12, a write-in campaign for Nelson gathered 11 percent of the votes in the New Hampshire Republican primary. A Gallup poll showed him beating Johnson handily.
On March 16, Robert Kennedy’s announcement, televised from the same Senate Caucus Room from which John Kennedy had announced his bid for the White House, helped Nelson make up his mind. Kennedy’s candidacy, Nelson realized, would draw from his own traditional constituency: moderates, liberals, and minorities. On March 21, after concluding that he could not win over Nixon’s supporters, he again withdrew from a race he had never formally entered.
What Rockefeller could not have known was how a small battle in the tribal highlands of Laos, even more than the massive air strikes around Khe Sanh, was playing a crucial part in the American domestic drama leading to the resignation of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson’s announcement that the United States would halt the bombing of North Vietnam and open negotiations in Paris came just three weeks after the CIA’s “Eagle’s Nest,” a mile up in the mountains of Laos, had fallen to the Pathet Lao. With the capture of Phon Pha Thi on March 11, the U.S. Command had lost its key radar guidance center for B-52s that were flying from Thailand across Laos to bomb Hanoi and the Red River Delta in the east. By the time this bombing campaign was halted, it was already electronically blind.
Johnson had mentioned not running again as early as August 1967, but few had taken him seriously. Lady Bird, always worried about his health, attributed several factors to his retreat: the Gold Crisis, the shift in sentiment against the war among Johnson’s “wise men” advisory panel, and, finally, the prospect of electoral defeat by that “pipsqueak” Robert Kennedy.
Johnson himself later confirmed the fears about his psychological state. “I felt that I was being dared on all sides by a giant stampede coming at me from all directions.”20 He had succumbed to tirades in front of both the Cabinet and the public. “Let’s get one thing clear,” he told the Cabinet on March 16. “I’m not going to stop the bombing.… I am not interested in further discussion.”21 Speeches became a tantrum against “moving the battlefield into cities where people lived.” Better to bomb Khe Sanh to keep the Montagnard hills’ “trip wire” in place, if it could still be found. By then, after forty days of siege, the jungle hills around Khe Sanh had been turned into a scorched desert, having
received more bombs, according to Townsend Hoopes, than “any target in the history of warfare, including Hiroshima.”22
But there was more discussion, strong dissent, in fact, from the very “wise men” he had chosen to advise him. When Clark Clifford finally insisted that the draft of a speech drop defiant analogies to the Alamo, the hawks were stunned. “The President cannot give that speech. It would be a disaster.” What “seems not to be understood,” he added, “is that major elements of the national constituency—the business community, the press, the churches, professional groups, college presidents, students, most of the intellectual community—have turned against the war.”23 Johnson got the message. On March 31, just before the Wisconsin primary could bring decisive embarrassment, he went on national television and told the divided nation that he would not seek a second term.
No sooner had Johnson made his announcement than he received a call from Nelson at the White House. “Tell him that Happy and I watched him,” Nelson told a White House aide. “We thought that he was fabulous. His friends are with him one hundred percent. He’s a great patriot. We’re both devoted to him and just want to reach out to him at this time.”24
At one minute to midnight, the White House received another call from Rockefeller. This time Johnson took it, though alone in his bedroom. When he emerged ten minutes later, he looked relieved, chuckling “Now Nelson Rockefeller is reassessing things.”25
THE POWER OF PERSONAL LOYALTY
Over the next few weeks, Nelson watched cautiously as events in Vietnam unfolded: Ho Chi Minh’s quick acceptance of Johnson’s offer of peace talks, Rusk and Rostow’s discord on accepting, the breaking of the siege of Khe Sanh, the continued rocket attacks on Saigon, and the persistent refusal of the alleged “dominos” surrounding South Vietnam to respond to the call for troops.
Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, infuriated by Hanoi’s obvious decision in July 1967 to launch the Tet Offensive and to take a hard line against concessions to the Ky-Thieu regime, had moved away from the peace proposal he had brought secretly to Paris on Johnson’s behalf in August 1967. In so doing, he was rejecting the very outlines of a peace plan that Clark Clifford and Johnson’s top negotiator, Averell Harriman, were now embracing: an end to bombing in the North and the strategic withdrawal of U.S. troops from the highlands to the demilitarized zone, the lowland Vietnamese cities, and the highways and the important Mekong Delta.
Nelson, for his part, had to offer some kind of peace plan if he were to become a viable candidate. He turned to Kissinger. The two worked out a proposed disengagement based on a model already discredited by Saigon and U.S. violations: the 1954 Geneva Agreement of free elections, coupled with North Vietnamese withdrawal, the NLF’s surrender of arms, and the continued reign of the Saigon regime’s deadly security forces.26
Meanwhile, as the war raged on, Nelson pondered his chances if he reentered the race. He could not break Nixon’s hold over the Republican party’s regulars. The only way to win would be, once again, to take the convention by storm through an appeal directly to the voters and the delegates. However, this was the strategy that had failed in 1960 and 1964.
Ironically, it was not Republicans who finally persuaded Rockefeller to take the plunge; it was the titular head of the Democratic party and the president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson.
After his withdrawal speech, Johnson had invited the Rockefellers for a “very secret”27 private dinner at the White House. Johnson chose April 23, when the White House would be hosting a black-tie diplomatic reception in honor of Johnson’s signing the U.S. ratification of amendments to the Charter of the Organization of American States. Nelson’s appearance at the White House would not cause undue speculation by the press. But Nelson was not a guest at that reception. The affair was already breaking up when he and Happy arrived at the White House’s basement entrance. Nelson was probably expecting a quiet evening with an old friend, perhaps to console the president confidentially as he had over the phone on March 31. Happy, at least, did not expect what came next: Johnson wanted Nelson to declare for the presidency.
“He told me he could not sleep at night if Nixon were president,” Nelson recalled years later, “and he wasn’t sure about Hubert [Humphrey] either.”
“I told him I’d made a promise to Happy that I would not run again.”
“Let me talk to Happy,” said Johnson, and he took her down the hall for a dose of his famous personal persuasion.
Happy and Johnson had a special relationship based on Happy’s ability to make men feel important. By almost all accounts, Lyndon Johnson was the kind of man who needed such stroking.
The conversation lasted half an hour. Happy was swayed by Johnson’s arguments about how important Nelson’s campaign was to the country; to the presidency; to Lyndon Johnson; and, ultimately, to Nelson.
“I’ve talked her into letting you run,” Johnson reported.28
A week later, Rockefeller once more convened reporters in the opulent Red Room of Albany’s State Capitol to announce that his candidacy was now “active.”
*The missionaries’ open admiration for AID’s Mike Benge was precarious. A tough ex-Marine, Benge’s close ties to the U.S. Embassy as a worker for the International Voluntary Service (IVS) among the 100,000 Radê Montagnards around Banmethuot had made him a special prize for his captors. In Fundamentalist accounts of the Tet Offensive, Benge never denied ties to the CIA when questioned by the Vietnamese, answering accusations instead with countercharges that his captors were really North Vietnamese soldiers. Years later, after Benge helped launch the MIA (Missing-in-Action) movement in the States, former CIA Director William Colby would reveal that a Radê-speaking IVS worker had helped the CIA set up the Green Beret and AID program among the Radê and then joined the CIA itself. See William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978).
38
NELSON’S LAST CHARGE
THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH
As early as 1964, Nelson Rockefeller had been aware of the FBI’s slander campaign against Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., having secretly been briefed by the FBI during its attempts to discourage participation in receptions held to honor King’s return from Sweden with the Nobel Peace Prize.1 By 1968, King was speaking out against the war in Vietnam, threatening to widen the civil rights movement to include those who were opposed to the war. At the same time, he began to strike at the economic inequities by allying his movement with the straggles of African American workers in the cities, further widening the movement and deepening its roots within the urban working class.
Lyndon Johnson understood the threat posed to the political establishment by King’s new emphasis on economics and the war. “That goddamn nigger preacher may drive me out of the White House,”2 he told cabinet members after King’s April 4, 1967, speech against the war. A year later to the day, in Memphis, Tennessee, to support predominantly black sanitation workers striking for collective bargaining rights supposedly guaranteed by federal law, King was assassinated. Riots erupted throughout the nation.
Nelson Rockefeller and Lyndon Johnson attended King’s funeral in Atlanta. So did their leading rival for the loyalty of African American voters, Robert Kennedy.
In the aftermath of King’s death, Rockefeller was criticized for his membership in the discriminatory Knickerbocker Club and heckled by African American students at Spelman College, long funded by his family. Kennedy, in contrast, won praise from African American students. During his tour of Washington’s riot-torn neighborhoods right after the King assassination, Kennedy was riding a swell of revulsion against injustice and death, in Vietnam and in the agrifields and ghettos of the United States. The revulsion reached even into the ranks of the normally conservative leadership of white Protestant Fundamentalism.
“Americans everywhere must be searching their hearts. I am mine,” Cam Townsend wrote to SIL’s membership the day before King’s funeral:
What have I done to help my fe
llow citizen whose complexion is darker than my own? … I maintained that I loved them, but where was the practical demonstration of that love? I lied.… Dear fellow worker, we need to search our souls. Are we living a lie?
… We have gone along with certain prevalent attitudes even though they were obnoxious to us. Another question. Are we doing all we can to get Negro members? Shouldn’t we assign someone to visit their colleges with the challenge of Bible translation work and assure them that we would welcome more Negro members. Yours in memory of Martin Luther King.3
Nevertheless, SIL would remain overwhelmingly white, even in Africa. Not even Catholics would be welcome. The board of SIL/Wycliffe Bible Translators had specifically ruled against admitting Catholics the previous year, when a young Catholic, Paul Witte, sought membership. Cam responded by arranging for Witte’s association with the Colombian branch through Bishop Canyes, for which he was rewarded with official criticism of the Colombia branch by the board and hints that perhaps Cam was getting too old for the job of general director.
Kennedy, too, came under attack from Fundamentalists who were sympathetic to Governor George Wallace’s candidacy on the American Independent party ticket. SIL backer Nelson Bunker Hunt set up a $1 million trust fund to lure General Curtis LeMay into the campaign as Wallace’s running mate.4
Rockefeller watched enviously as Kennedy crossed effortlessly from one political world to another, courting white farmers in Indiana and suburban “white-backlash” blue-collar workers with the same courage he showed among Mexican American farmworkers in California and African American workers in Washington.
And through it all, Kennedy was being monitored, like Martin Luther King, Jr., before him, by the FBI and targeted by ultrarightists. After being humbled in Oregon with second place, following victories in the Indiana and Washington, D.C., primaries, he entered southern California with the knowledge that the home of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, a hotbed of Fundamentalist reaction, would be his greatest challenge. He never conceived that it would be his doom.
