by Neil Sheehan
Ambassador Taylor cabled: “Current feverish diplomatic activity particularly by French and British” was interfering with the ability of the United States to “progressively turn the screws on D.R.V.”
“It appears to me evident that to date D.R.V. leaders believe air strikes at present levels on their territory are meaningless and that we are more susceptible to international pressure for negotiations than they are,” the Ambassador said. He cited as evidence a report from J. Blair Seaborn, the Canadian member of the International Control Commission, who, in Hanoi earlier that month, had performed one of the series of secret diplomatic missions for the United States.
Mr. Seaborn had been sent back to convey directly to the Hanoi leaders an American policy statement on Vietnam that had been delivered to China on Feb. 24 through its embassy in Warsaw.
In essence, the Pentagon study reports, the policy statement said that while the United States was determined to take whatever measures were necessary to maintain South Vietnam, it “had no designs on the territory of North Vietnam, nor any desire to destroy the D.R.V.”
The delivery of the message to the Chinese was apparently aimed at helping to stave off any Chinese intervention as a result of the forthcoming bombing campaign.
But the purpose in sending Mr. Seaborn back, the study makes clear, was to convey the obvious threat that Hanoi now faced “extensive future destruction of . . . military and economic investments” if it did not call off the Vietcong guerrillas and accept a separate, non-Communist South.
Premier Pham Van Dong of North Vietnam, who had seen Mr. Seaborn on two earlier visits, declined this time, and the Canadian had to settle for the chief North Vietnamese liaison officer for the commission, to whom he read Washington’s statement.
The North Vietnamese officer, the account says, commented that the message “contained nothing new and that the North Vietnamese had already received a briefing on the Warsaw meeting” from the Chinese Communists.
This treatment led the Canadian to sense “a mood of confidence” among the Hanoi leaders, Ambassador Taylor told Washington in a cablegram, and Mr. Seaborn felt “that Hanoi has the impression that our air strikes are a limited attempt to improve our bargaining position and hence are no great cause for immediate concern.”
“Our objective should be to induce in D.R.V. leadership an attitude favorable to U.S. objectives in as short a time as possible in order to avoid a build-up of international pressure to negotiate,” the Ambassador said.
Therefore, he went on, it was necessary to “begin at once a progression of U.S. strikes north of 19th Parallel in a slow but steadily ascending movement” to dispel any illusions in Hanoi.
“If we tarry too long in the south [below the 19th Parallel], we will give Hanoi a weak and misleading signal which will work against our ultimate purpose,” he said.
The next Rolling Thunder strikes, on March 14 and 15, were the heaviest of the air war so far, involving 100 American and 24 South Vietnamese planes against barracks and depots on Tiger Island off the North Vietnamese coast and the ammunition dump near Phuqui, 100 miles southwest of Hanoi.
For the first time, the planes used napalm against the North, a measure approved by Mr. Johnson on March 9 to achieve the more efficient destruction of the targets that Mr. McNamara was seeking and to give the pilots protection from antiaircraft batteries.
But the Ambassador regarded these, too, as an “isolated, stage-managed joint U.S./GVN operation,” the Pentagon study says. He sent Washington another cable, saying that “through repeated delays we are failing to give the mounting crescendo to Rolling Thunder which is necessary to get the desired results.”
Meanwhile, Admiral Sharp in Honolulu and the Joint Chiefs in Washington were quickly devising a number of other programs to broaden and intensify the air war now that it had begun.
On March 21, Admiral Sharp proposed a “radar busting day” to knock out the North Vietnamese early-warning system, and a program “to attrite harass and interdict the D.R.V. south” of the 20th Parallel by cutting lines of communication, “LOC” in official terminology.
The “LOC cut program” would choke off traffic along all roads and rail lines through southern North Vietnam by bombing strikes and would thus squeeze the flow of supplies into the South.
“All targets selected are extremely difficult or impossible to bypass,” the admiral said in a cable to the Joint Chiefs. “LOC network cutting in this depth will degrade tonnage arrivals at the main ‘funnels’ and will develop a broad series of new targets such as backed-up convoys, offloaded matériel dumps and personnel staging areas at one or both sides of cuts.”
These probable effects might in turn “force major D.R.V. log flow to seacarry and into surveillance and attack by our SVN [South Vietnamese] coastal sanitization forces,” the admiral added.
In Washington at this time, the narrative goes on, the Joint Chiefs were engaged in an “interservice division” over potential ground-troop deployments to Vietnam and over the air war itself.
Gen. John P. McConnell, Chief of Staff of the Air Force adopted a “maverick position” and was arguing for a short and violent 28-day bombing campaign. All of the targets on the original 94-target list drawn up in May, 1964, from bridges to industries, would be progressively destroyed.
“He proposed beginning the air strikes in the southern part of North Vietnam and continuing at two-to six-day intervals until Hanoi was attacked,” the study continues.
The raids would be along the lines of the mighty strikes, including the use of B-52 bombers, that the Joint Chiefs had proposed in retaliation for the Vietcong mortar attack in Beinhoa airfield on Nov. 1, 1964, the narrative says. General McConnell contended that his plan was consistent with previous bombing proposals by the Joint Chiefs.
The general abandoned his proposal, however, when the other members of the Joint Chiefs decided to incorporate Admiral Sharp’s “LOC cut program” and some of General McConnell’s individual target concepts into a bombing program of several weeks. They proposed this to Mr. McNamara on March 27.
This plan proposed an intense bombing campaign that would start on road and rail lines south of the 20th Parallel and then “march north” week by week to isolate North Vietnam from China gradually by cutting road and rail lines above Hanoi. In later phases upon which the Joint Chiefs had not yet fully decided, the port facilities were to be destroyed to isolate North Vietnam from the sea. Then industries outside populated areas would be attacked “leading up to a situation where the enemy will realize that the Hanoi and Haiphong areas will be the next logical targets in our continued air campaign.”
But the President and Mr. McNamara declined to approve any multiweek program, the study relates. “They clearly preferred to retain continual personal control over attack concepts and individual target selection.”
In mid-March, after a Presidential fact-finding trip to Vietnam by Gen. Harold K. Johnson, the Army Chief of Staff, the President did regularize the bombing campaign and relaxed some of the restrictions. Among the innovations was the selection of the targets in weekly packages with the precise timing of the individual attacks left to the commanders on the scene. Also, “the strikes were no longer to be specifically related to VC atrocities” and “publicity on the strikes was to be progressively reduced,” the study says.
The President did not accept two recommendations from General Johnson relating to a possible ground war. They were to dispatch a division of American troops to South Vietnam to hold coastal enclaves or defend the Central Highlands in order to free Saigon Government forces for offensive action against the Vietcong. The second proposal was to create a four-division force of American and Southeast Asia Treaty Organization troops, who, to interdict infiltration, would patrol both the demilitarized zone along the border separating North and South Vietnam and the Laotian border region.
Better organization for the air war meant that concepts such as Admiral Sharp’s “LOC cut program” and his “radar
busting” were now incorporated into the weekly target packages. But President Johnson and Secretary McNamara continued to select the targets and to communicate them to the Joint Chiefs—and thus, eventually, to the operating strike forces—in weekly Rolling Thunder planning messages issued by the Secretary of Defense.
Operation Rolling Thunder was thus being shifted from an exercise in air power “dominated by political and psychological considerations” to a “militarily more significant, sustained bombing program” aimed at destroying the capabilities of North Vietnam to support a war in the South.
But the shift also meant that “early hopes that Rolling Thunder could succeed by itself” in persuading Hanoi to call off the Vietcong were also waning.
“The underlying question that was being posed for the Administration at this time was well formulated,” the study says, by Mr. McNaughton in a memorandum drafted on March 24 for Secretary McNamara in preparation for the April 1-2 National Security Council meetings.
“Can the situation inside SVN be bottomed out (a) without extreme measures against the DRV and/or (b) without deployment of large numbers of U.S. (and other) combat troops inside SVN?”
Mr. McNaughton’s answer was “perhaps, but probably no.” [See Document #96.]
General Westmoreland stated his conclusions in a half-inch-thick report labeled “Commander’s Estimate of the situation in SVN.” The document, “a classic Leavenworth-style analysis,” the analyst remarks, referring to the Command and General Staff College, was completed in Saigon on March 26 and delivered to Washington in time for the April 1-2 strategy meeting.
The Saigon military commander and his staff had begun working on this voluminous report on March 13, the day after General Johnson left Vietnam with his ground war proposals of an American division to hold enclaves and a four-division American and SEATO force along the borders, the study notes.
General Westmoreland predicted that the bombing campaign against the North would not show tangible results until June at the earliest, and that in the meantime the South Vietnamese Army needed American reinforcements to hold the line against growing Vietcong strength and to carry out an “orderly” expansion of its own ranks.
And, paraphrasing the report, the study says that the general warned that the Saigon troops, “although at the moment performing fairly well, would not be able in the face of a VC summer offensive to hold in the South long enough for the bombing to become effective.”
General Westmoreland asked for reinforcements equivalent to two American divisions, a total of about 70,000 troops, counting those already in Vietnam.
They included 17 maneuver battalions. The general proposed adding two more Marine battalion landing teams to the two battalions already at Danang in order to establish another base at the airfield at Phubai to the north; putting an Army brigade into the Bienhoa-Vungtau area near Saigon, and using two more Army battalions to garrison the central coastal ports of Quinhon and Nhatrang as logistics bases. These bases would sustain an army division that General Westmoreland proposed to send into active combat in the strategic central highlands inland to “defeat” the Vietcong who were seizing control there.
General Westmoreland said that he wanted the 17 battalions and their initial supporting elements in South Vietnam by June and indicated that more troops might be required thereafter if the bombing failed to achieve results.
The Saigon military commander and General Johnson were not alone in pressing for American ground combat troops to forestall a Vietcong victory, the study points out.
On March 20, the Joint Chiefs as a body had proposed sending two American divisions and one South Korean division to South Vietnam for offensive combat operations against the guerrillas.
Secretary McNamara, the Joint Chiefs and Ambassador Taylor all discussed the three-division proposal on March 29, the study relates, while the Ambassador was in Washington for the forthcoming White House strategy conference.
The Ambassador opposed the plan, the study says, because he felt the South Vietnamese might resent the presence of so many foreign troops—upwards of 100,000 men—and also because he believed there was still no military necessity for them.
The Joint Chiefs “had the qualified support of McNamara,” however, the study continues, and was one of the topics discussed at the national security council meeting.
Thus, the study says, at the White House strategy session of April 1-2, “the principal concern of Administration policy makers at this time was with the prospect of major deployment of U.S. and third-country combat forces to SVN.”
A memorandum written by McGeorge Bundy before the meeting, which set forth the key issues for discussion and decision by the President, “gave only the most superficial treatment to the complex matter of future air pressure policy,” the Pentagon analyst remarks.
The morning that Ambassador Taylor left Saigon to attend the meeting, March 29, the Vietcong guerrillas blew up the American Embassy in Saigon in what the study calls “the boldest and most direct Communist action against the U.S. since the attacks at Pleiku and Quinhon which had precipitated the Flaming Dart reprisal airstrikes.”
Admiral Sharp requested permission to launch a “spectacular” air raid on North Vietnam in retaliation, the narrative continues, but the “plea . . . did not fall on responsive ears” at the White House.
“At this point, the President preferred to maneuver quietly to help the nation get used to living with the Vietnam crisis. He played down any drama intrinsic in Taylor’s arrival” and refused to permit a retaliation raid for the embassy bombing.
After his first meeting with Taylor and other officials on March 31, the President responded to press inquiries concerning dramatic new developments by saying: “I know of no far-reaching strategy that is being suggested or promulgated.”
“But the President was being less than candid,” the study observes. “The proposals that were at that moment being promulgated, and on which he reached significant decision the following day, did involve a far-reaching strategy change: acceptance of the concept of U.S. troops engaged in offensive ground operations against Asian insurgents. This issue greatly overshadowed all other Vietnam questions then being reconsidered.”
The analyst is referring to the President’s decision at the White House strategy conference on April 1-2 to change the mission of the Marine battalions at Danang from defense to offense.
McGeorge Bundy embodied the decision in National Security Action Memorandum 328, which he drafted and signed on behalf of the President on April 6. The analyst says that this “pivotal document” followed almost “verbatim” the text of another memorandum that Mr. Bundy had written before the N.S.C. meeting to outline the proposals for discussion and decision by the President.
The Pentagon study notes that the actual landing of 3,500 marines at Danang the previous month had “caused surprisingly little outcry.”
Secretary of State Rusk had explained on a television program the day before the marines came ashore that their mission was solely to provide security for the air base and “not to kill the Vietcong,” in the words of the study. This initial mission for the marines was later to be referred to as the short-lived strategy of security that would apply only to this American troop movement into South Vietnam.
The President’s decision to change their mission to offense now made the strategy of base security “a dead letter,” the study says, when it was less than a month old.
At the April 1-2 meeting, Mr. Johnson had also decided to send ashore two more Marine battalions, which General Westmoreland had asked for in a separate request on March 17. Mr. Johnson further decided to increase support forces in South Vietnam by 18,000 to 20,000 men.
The President was “doubtless aware” of the general’s additional request for the equivalent of two divisions, and of the Joint Chiefs’ for three divisions, the Pentagon account says, but Mr. Johnson took no action on them.
“The initial steps in ground build-up appear to have been
grudgingly taken,” the study says, “indicating that the President . . . and his advisers recognized the tremendous inertial complications of ground troop deployments. Halting ground involvement was seen to be a manifestly greater problem than halting air or naval activity.
“It is pretty clear, then, that the President intended, after the early April N.S.C. meetings, to cautiously and carefully experiment with the U.S. forces in offensive roles,” the analyst concludes.
National Security Action Memorandum 328 did not precisely define or limit the offensive role it authorized, and Ambassador Taylor, who had attended the National Security Council meeting during his visit to Washington, was not satisfied with the guidance he received from the State Department. Therefore, on his way back to Saigon on April 4, the Ambassador, formerly President John F. Kennedy’s military adviser and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sent a cable from the Honolulu headquarters of the Commander of Pacific forces to the State Department, saying:
“I propose to describe the new mission to [Premier Pham Huy] Quat as the use of marines in a mobile counter-insurgency role in the vicinity of Danang for the improved protection of that base and also in a strike role as a reserve in support of ARVN operations anywhere within 50 miles of the base. This latter employment would follow acquisition of experience on local counter-insurgency missions.”
Ambassador Taylor’s 50-mile limit apparently became an accepted rule-of-thumb boundary for counterinsurgency strikes.
And so, the analyst sums up, with the promulgation of National Security Action Memorandum 328, “the strategy of security effectively becomes a dead letter on the first of April,” and the strategy of enclave begins.
Confusion and Suspicion
There was some confusion, suspicion and controversy about the President’s approval of an 18,000-20,000 increase in support troops, which, he explained, was meant “to fill out existing units and supply needed logistic personnel.”