by Neil Sheehan
The Pentagon study contends that while some information about these two episodes has become public, the American people have never been told how seriously the Eisenhower inner circle debated intervening.
“The record shows plainly,” the analyst says, “that the U.S. did seriously consider intervention and advocated it to the U.K. and other allies.”
The first of these episodes, during March and April before the fall of the French fortress at Dienbienphu, was disclosed not long afterward by American journalists. But the story of the second, in May and early June while the Geneva conference was in session, has never been fully revealed. Mr. Eisenhower himself, in his 1963 book “Mandate for Change,” mentioned the second debate over intervention but gave only a sketchy account and did not report asking Secretary Dulles to draft a Congressional resolution.
The Eisenhower Administration felt intervention might be necessary, the study says, because without American help the French were likely to negotiate a “sellout” at Geneva to escape an unpopular war.
As early as August, 1953, the National Security Council decided that American policy should be that “under present conditions any negotiated settlement would mean the eventual loss to Communism not only of Indochina but of the whole of Southeast Asia. The loss of Indochina would be critical to the security of the U.S.”
The Eisenhower Administration stated its opposition to a negotiated settlement most fully in an N.S.C. paper, “United States Position on Indochina to be Taken at Geneva,” late in April in the week the conference opened.
It was at this point, according to the study, that the Council urged President Eisenhower “to inform Paris that French acquiescence in a Communist take-over of Indochina would bear on its status as one of the Big Three” and that “U.S. aid to France would automatically cease.”
In addition, the Council’s policy paper said that the United States should consider continuing the war itself, with the Indochina states, if France negotiated an unsatisfactory settlement. America’s goal should be nothing short of a “military victory,” the Council said.
The Government’s internal record shows, the study says, that while Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Adm. Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushed hard for intervention, other service chiefs, particularly Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway of the Army, were more cautious. They remembered the bitter and protracted experience in Korea and were not eager to repeat it.
President Eisenhower finally reached a decision against intervention on April 4 after a meeting of Mr. Dulles and Admiral Radford with Congressional leaders the previous day showed that the Congress would not support American action without allied help.
As journalists wrote, at the time, the President felt he must have Congressional approval before he committed American troops, and the Congressional leaders insisted on allied participation, especially by Britain.
At the very time the President was reaching this conclusion, Ambassador Douglas Dillon in Paris was cabling that the French had requested the “immediate armed intervention of U.S. carrier aircraft at Dienbienphu.” [See Document #5.]
Mr. Dillon noted that the French had been prompted to make the request because they had been told by Admiral Radford that “he would do his best to obtain such help from the U.S. Government.”
Moreover, the President’s decision of April 4, contrary to what was written at the time, was only tentative. The debate on intervention was still very much alive, the Pentagon account says.
In fact, the following day, April 5, the National Security Council, in an action paper, concluded:
“On balance, it appears that the U.S. should now reach a decision whether or not to intervene with combat forces if that is necessary to save Indochina from Communist control, and tentatively the form and conditions of any such intervention.”
On May 7, with the news that Dienbienphu had just fallen and with the delegates already in Geneva, President Eisenhower met with Mr. Dulles in the White House to again consider intervention.
According to a memorandum by Robert Cutler, the President’s executive assistant, they discussed how “the U.S. should (as a last act to save Indochina) propose to France” that if certain conditions were met “the U.S. will go to Congress for authority to intervene with combat forces.” The words in parentheses appeared in the memorandum. [See Document #8.]
Mr. Cutler noted that he explained to the President that some members of the Council’s Planning Board “felt that it had never been made clear to the French that the United States was willing to ask for Congressional authority” if the preconditions were met.
Mr. Dulles said he would mention the subject to the French Ambassador, Henry Bonnet, that afternoon, “perhaps making a more broad hint than heretofore.”
The preconditions included a call for the French to grant “genuine freedom” to the Indochina states—Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
They also stipulated that American advisers in Vietnam should “take major responsibility for training indigenous forces” and “share responsibility for military planning.” American officers in Vietnam had long chafed under the limits on the role the French allowed them, the study says.
Participation by the British, who had shown themselves extremely reluctant to get involved, was no longer cited as a condition.
The French picked up Mr. Dulles’s hint, and on May 10 Premier Joseph Laniel told Ambassador Dillon that France needed American intervention to save Indochina. That evening the President again met with Mr. Dulles, along with Admiral Radford and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, to discuss the French appeal.
During the meeting President Eisenhower directed Secretary Dulles to prepare a resolution that he could take before a joint meeting of Congress, requesting authority to commit American troops in Indochina.
From a document included in the Pentagon chronicle—the partial text of a legal commentary by a Pentagon official on the draft Congressional resolution—it is clear that such a Congressional resolution was prepared and circulated in the State Department, the Justice Department and the Defense Department.
Both the State Department and the Defense Department then undertook what the account describes as “contingency planning” for possible intervention—the State Department drawing up a hypothetical timetable of diplomatic moves and the Defense Department preparing a memorandum on the U.S. forces that would be required.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a memorandum to Secretary of Defense Wilson on May 20, recommended that the United States limit its involvement to “air and naval support directed from outside Indochina.”
“From the point of view of the United States,” the Joint Chiefs said, “Indochina is devoid of decisive military objectives and the allocation of more than token U.S. armed forces to that area would be a serious diversion of limited U.S. capabilities.”
In the debates over intervention, the study says, advocates of American action advanced several novel ideas. Admiral Radford proposed to the French, for example, that the United States help create an “International Volunteer Air Corps” for Indochina. The French in April had suggested an American air strike with the planes painted with French markings. And late in May the French suggested that the President might be able to get around Congress if he sent just a division of marines—some 15,000 men.
But all the arguments in favor of intervention came to naught. The French Cabinet felt that the war-weary National Assembly would balk at any further military action.
And the military situation in the Red River Delta near Hanoi deteriorated so badly in late May and early June that Washington felt intervention would now be useless. On June 15 Secretary Dulles informed Ambassador Bonnet that the time for intervention had run out.
The Geneva “Disaster”
When the Geneva agreements were concluded on July 21, 1954 the account says, “except for the United States, the major powers were satisfied with their handiwork.”
France, Britain, the Soviet U
nion, Communist China and to some extent North Vietnam believed that they had ended the war and had transferred the conflict to the political realm.
And, the study says, most of the governments involved “anticipated that France would remain in Vietnam.” They expected that Paris would retain a major influence over the Diem regime, train Premier Diem’s army and insure that the 1956 elections specified by the Geneva accords were carried out.
But the Eisenhower Administration took a different view, the Pentagon account relates.
In meetings Aug. 8 and 12, the National Security Council concluded that the Geneva settlement was a “disaster” that “completed a major forward stride of Communism which may lead to the loss of Southeast Asia.”
The Council’s thinking appeared consistent with its decision in April before the conference began, that the United States would not associate itself with an unsatisfactory settlement. Secretary Dulles had announced this publicly on several occasions, and in the end the United States had only taken note of the agreements.
But before the Council reached a final decision in August on exactly what programs to initiate in Indochina, several dissenting voices rose inside the Government.
The national intelligence estimate of Aug. 3 warned that even with American support it was unlikely that the French or Vietnamese would be able to establish a strong government. And the National Intelligence Board predicted that the situation would probably continue to deteriorate.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff had also objected to proposals that the United States train and equip the South Vietnamese Army.
In a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense on Aug. 4, the Joint Chiefs listed their preconditions for U.S. military aid to the Diem regime:
“It is absolutely essential that there be a reasonably strong, stable civil government in control. It is hopeless to expect a U. S. military training mission to achieve success unless the nation concerned is able effectively to perform those governmental functions essential to the successful raising and maintenance of armed forces.”
The Joint Chiefs also called for the complete “withdrawal of French forces, French officials and French advisers from Indochina in order to provide motivation and a sound basis for the establishment of national armed forces.”
Finally the Joint Chiefs expressed concern about the limits placed on American forces in Vietnam by the Geneva accords—they were restricted to 342 men, the number of American military personnel present in Vietnam when the armistice was signed.
Despite these arguments, the study says, Secretary of State Dulles felt that the need to stop Communism in Vietnam made action imperative.
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Wilson, he said that while the Diem regime “is far from strong or stable,” a military training program would be “one of the most efficient means of enabling the Vietnamese Government to become strong.”
In the end, the study recounts, Secretary Dulles’s views were persuasive.
On Aug. 20 the President approved a National Security Council paper titled “Review of U.S. Policy in the Far East.” It outlined a threefold program:
• Militarily, the United States would “work with France only so far as necessary to build up indigenous forces able to provide internal security.”
• Economically, the United States would begin giving aid directly to the Vietnamese, not as before through the French. The French were to be dissociated from the levers of command.”
• Politically, the United States would work with Premier Diem, but would encourage him to broaden his Government and establish more democratic institutions.
With these decisions, the account says “American policy toward post-Geneva Vietnam was drawn.” The commitment for the United States to assume the burden of defending South Vietnam had been made.
“The available record does not indicate any rebuttal” to the warnings of the National Intelligence Board or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the account reports. “What it does indicate is that the U.S. decided to gamble with very limited resources because the potential gains seemed well worth a limited risk.”
Although this major decision for direct American involvement in Vietnam was made in August, the Pentagon account shows that the Eisenhower Administration had already sent a team of Americans to begin secret operations against the Vietminh in June, while the Geneva conference was still in session.
The team was headed by Colonel Lansdale, the C.I.A. agent who had established a reputation as America’s leading expert in counterguerrilla warfare in the Philippines, where he had helped President Ramon Magsaysay suppress the Communist-led Hukbalahap insurgents.
So extensive were his subsequent exploits in Vietnam in the nineteen-fifties that Colonel Landsdale was widely known as the model for the leading characters in two novels of Asian intrigue—“The Quiet American,” by Graham Greene, and “The Ugly American,” by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick.
A carefully detailed 21,000-word report by members of Colonel Lansdale’s team, the Saigon Military Mission, is appended to the Pentagon chronicle. [See Document #15.]
According to that report, in the form of a diary from June, 1954, to August, 1955, the team was originally instructed “to undertake paramilitary operations against the enemy and to wage political-psychological warfare.”
“Later,” it adds, “after Geneva, the mission was modified to prepare the means for undertaking paramilitary operations in Communist areas rather than to wage unconventional warfare.”
One of Colonel Lansdale’s first worries was to get his team members into Vietnam before the Aug. 11 deadline set by the Geneva agreements for a freeze on the number of foreign military personnel. As the deadline approached, the report says, it appeared that the Saigon Military Mission “might have only two members present unless action was taken.”
It adds that Lieut. Gen. John W. O’Daniel, chief of the United States Military Assistance Advisory Group, “agreed to the addition of 10 S.M.M. members under MAAG cover, plus any others in the Defense pipeline who arrived before the deadline. A call for help went out. Ten officers in Korea, Japan and Okinawa were selected and rushed to Vietnam.”
While the report says that the team members were given cover by being listed as members of MAAG, the report also points out that they communicated with Washington through the C.I.A. station in Saigon.
Colonel Lansdale himself is identified as a member of the C.I.A. in a memorandum on the actions of the President’s Special Committee on Indochina, written Jan. 30, 1954, by Maj. Gen. Charles H. Bonesteel 3d. [See Document #3.]
The memorandum, which is appended to the Pentagon study, lists Colonel Lansdale as one of the C.I.A. representatives present at the meeting. Allen W. Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, also attended the meeting.
In the fall of 1954, after all the members had arrived in Vietnam, the report says, the team’s activities increased.
Under Colonel Lansdale, “a small English-language class [was] conducted for mistresses of important personages at their request.”
This class provided valuable contacts for Colonel Lansdale, enabling him to get to know such people as the “favorite mistress” of the army Chief of Staff, Gen. Nguyen Van Hinh, the report recounts.
When the Oct. 9 deadline for the French evacuation of Hanoi approached, the team sought to sabotage some of Hanoi’s key facilities.
“It was learned that the largest printing establishment in the north intended to remain in Hanoi and do business with the Vietminh,” the report relates. “An attempt was made by S.M.M. to destroy the modern presses, but Vietminh security agents already had moved into the plant and frustrated the attempt.”
It was the mission’s team in Hanoi that spent several nights pouring contaminant in the engines of the Hanoi bus company so the buses would gradually be wrecked after the Vietminh took over the city.
At the same time, the mission’s team carried out what the report calls “black psywar strikes”—that is, psychological warfare wi
th materials falsely attributed to the other side. The team printed what appeared to be “leaflets signed by the Vietminh instructing Tonkinese on how to behave for the Vietminh takeover of the Hanoi region in early October, including items about property, money reform and a three-day holiday of workers upon take-over.” The attempt to scare the people worked.
“The day following the distribution of these leaflets,” the report adds, “refugee registration [of those wishing to flee North Vietnam] tripled. Two days later Vietminh currency was worth half the value prior to the leaflets.
“The Vietminh took to the radio to denounce the leaflets; the leaflets were so authentic in appearance that even most of the rank-and-file Vietminh were sure that the radio denunciations were a French trick.”
In the South, the team hired Vietnamese astrologers—in whose art many Asians place great trust—to compile almanacs bearing dire predictions for the Vietminh and good omens for the new Government of Premier Diem.
To carry out clandestine operations in North Vietnam after the team evacuated Hanoi, the report adds, Maj. Lucien Conein, an officer of S.M.M., recruited a group of Vietnamese agents under the code name of Binh.
“The group was to be trained and supported by the U.S. as patriotic Vietnamese,” the report says, “to come eventually under Government control when the Government was ready for such activities. Thirteen Binhs were quietly ex-filtrated through the port of Haiphong . . . and taken on the first stage of the journey to their training area by a U.S. Navy ship.”
Until Haiphong was finally evacuated in May, 1955, Civil Air Transport, the Taiwan-based airline run by Gen. Claire Chennault, smuggled arms for the Binh team from Saigon to Haiphong.
In exchange, the report says, the Lansdale Mission got C.A.T. the lucrative contract for flying the thousands of refugees out of North Vietnam.
As the report describes the team’s actions, “Haiphong was reminiscent of our own pioneer days as it was swamped with people whom it couldn’t shelter. Living space and food were at a premium, nervous tension grew. It was a wild time for our northern team.”