by Neil Sheehan
In one of the study’s few discussions of domestic politics, the analyst declares: “It was clear that Lyndon Johnson, the master politician, had been successfully challenged, not by an attractive and appealing vote-getter, but by a candidate who had been able to mobilize and focus all the discontent and disillusionment about the war.”
At a White House meeting on March 13, the President decided that, in addition to the 10,500-man emergency reinforcement already made, 30,000 more soldiers should be deployed to South Vietnam, an increase over the 22,000 men recommended by the Clifford Group. There would be two reserve call-ups to meet and sustain these deployments, one in March and one in May. The first would support the 30,000 deployment; the second would reconstitute the strategic reserve at seven active Army divisions.
Secretary of the Army Stanley R. Resor demurred, arguing that no reserve call-up had been provided to sustain the 10,500 deployed by Secretary McNamara in February. He urged that 13,500 more be called up for this purpose. This plan was approved by the President.
The troop deployment plan agreed upon brought the new ceiling to 579,000 men. To meet these requirements and fill out the strategic reserve, there would be a total reserve call-up of 98,451 men.
But in the fast-moving pace of the internal struggle over Vietnam policy, even this plan would soon be abandoned. “The President was troubled,” the study declares. “In public he continued to indicate firmness and resoluteness, but press leaks and continued public criticism continued to compound his problem.”
On March 16, Senator Robert F. Kennedy announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.
On March 17, The New York Times, in a dispatch from Washington that the Pentagon study terms “again amazingly accurate,” reported that the President would approve sending 35,000 to 50,000 more men to South Vietnam during the next six months.
The next day, in the House of Representatives, 139 members—98 Republicans and 41 Democrats—sponsored a resolution calling for an immediate Congressional review of policy in Southeast Asia.
That same day, in a speech at the convention of the National Farmers Union in Minneapolis, President Johnson said that Hanoi was seeking to “win something in Washington that they can’t win in Hue, in the I Corps or in Khesanh.” He pledged not to “tuck our tail and violate our commitments.”
“Those of you who think that you can save lives by moving the battlefield in from the mountains to the cities where the people live have another think coming,” he said.
Despite this explosion against his critics, there were indications—some public, some known only to insiders—that the President was weighing what the critics had been saying and was also pondering the mood of the country.
On March 20, for example, he had a meeting—now a matter of public record but not dealt with in the Pentagon study—with Arthur J. Goldberg in the White House. Only five days earlier, Mr. Goldberg, the United States representative at the United Nations, had sent a memorandum to Mr. Johnson recommending a halt in the bombing. It had infuriated the President. The next day, at a meeting with his advisers, Mr. Johnson was quoted by the press as having said: “Let’s get one thing clear. I’m telling you now I am not going to stop the bombing. Now is there anybody here who doesn’t understand that?”
But now he asked Mr. Goldberg to go through his arguments once more, and when Mr. Goldberg had finished, the President asked him to join a meeting on March 25 of his Senior Informal Advisory Group—familiarly known in Washington as the Wise Men.
Then suddenly, on March 22, the President recalled General Westmoreland and announced that he would become Chief of Staff of the Army. The transfer of General Westmoreland, the Pentagon analyst says, was a signal that the President had decided against any major escalation of the ground war.
On March 25, Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, General Westmoreland’s deputy, flew to Washington unannounced. The next day he and the President were closeted, and—the Pentagon study speculates—“Mr. Johnson probably informed him of his intentions, both with respect to force augmentations and the bombing restraint, and his intention to designate Abrams” as General Westmoreland’s successor.
Precisely when the President decided to reduce the bombing, the Pentagon study does not say. But it inclines to the view that, if he was still wavering at this time, the decisive advice was given by the Wise Men, who assembled in Washington on March 25 and 26.
The members of the Senior Informal Advisory Group had served in high Government posts or had been Presidential advisers during the last 20 years. They gathered at the State Department on March 25, six days before the President was due to address the nation on television.
Those present were Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman; George W. Ball, Under Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, now in private business; General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, World War II commander and later Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; McGeorge Bundy, special assistant for national security under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, now president of the Ford Foundation; Arthur H. Dean, lawyer and negotiator of the armstice in Korea, and Douglas Dillon, banker, Under Secretary of State under President Eisenhower and Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
Also present were Associate Justice Abe Fortas of the Supreme Court; Mr. Goldberg; Henry Cabot Lodge, twice Ambassador to South Vietnam and former representative at the United Nations; John J. McCloy, High Commissioner in West Germany under President Truman; Robert D. Murphy, a top-ranking career diplomat, now in private business; General Taylor; Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, retired commander in the Korean war, and Cyrus R. Vance, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and trouble shooter for President Johnson.
With the exception of Mr. Ball and Mr. Goldberg, all had been accounted hawks. Only the previous fall, with Mr. Clifford then a participant, they had approved the President’s escalation of the air war.
The Pentagon study does not give a version of the discussions over the two days, but simply reprints verbatim the first public account of the meetings, by Stuart H. Loory of The Los Angeles Times, published late in May, which the study says “has been generally considered to be a reliable account.”
That dispatch told how the turnabout on the war by most of the Wise Men left the President “deeply shaken.”
Nor does the Pentagon account relate the story—now well known—of how the drafts of the President’s March 31 speech, at the hands of Harry C. McPherson, who had become a doubter of war policy, grew progressively less hawkish almost up to the hour when Mr. Johnson spoke on television.
What is new in the Pentagon account is a cablegram from the State Department that was sent the night before the speech to the United States Ambassadors in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Laos, the Philippines and South Korea. It instructed them to inform the heads of governments in those countries that the President’s speech would include announcement of a bombing cutback.
The cablegram also instructed the ambassadors to “make clear that Hanoi is most likely to denounce the project and thus free our hand after a short period.” [See Document #134.]
The analyst comments that it is “significant” that the cablegram reflected Secretary Rusk’s draft statement on March 5.
“It is important to note that the Administration did not expect the bombing restraint to produce a positive Hanoi reply,” the study comments. “The fact that the President was willing to go beyond the San Antonio formula and curtail the air raids at a time when few responsible advisers were suggesting that such action would produce peace talks is strong evidence of the major shift in thinking that took place in Washington about the war and the bombing after Tet, 1968.”
In his speech, the President did not specifically set the bombing limit at the 20th Parallel. This had been altered in a final draft. Instead, he said:
“Tonight I have ordered our aircraft and our naval vessels to make no attacks on North Vietnam, except in the area north of the
demilitarized zone where the continuing enemy build-up directly threatens allied forward positions and where the movements of their troops and supplies are clearly related to that threat.
“The area in which we are stopping our attacks includes almost 90 per cent of North Vietnam’s population, and most of its territory. Thus there will be no attacks around the principal populated areas, or in the food-producing areas of North Vietnam.”
In the excitement over the bombing restrictions and his astonishing epilogue—“I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party”—little attention was paid to his announcement of a token troop increase—13,500 support troops for the 10,500 February emergency contingent. Only those privy to the internal debate would realize that the President had reversed his decision of two weeks earlier to send 30,000 more men.
“None of the some 200,000 troops requested by General Westmoreland on 27 February were to be deployed,” the Pentagon study says, underscoring the turn that policy had taken.
Contrary to the expectations of the policy makers, Hanoi responded positively to the offer of negotiations. On April 3, President Johnson announced that North Vietnam had declared readiness for its representatives to meet with those of the United States.
In an epilogue to the narrative of the events of February and March, the study sums up the lesson of the Tet offensive, which, the analyst believes, imposed itself finally upon President Johnson and led him to accept the view of those civilian advisers and the intelligence community that he had so long resisted in his search for “victory.” The analyst writes:
“In March of 1968, the choice had become clear cut. The price for military victory had increased vastly, and there was no assurance that it would not grow again in the future. There were also strong indications that large and growing elements of the American public had begun to believe the cost had already reached unacceptable levels and would strongly protest a large increase in that cost.
“The political reality which faced President Johnson was that ‘more of the same’ in South Vietnam, with an increased commitment of American lives and money and its consequent impact on the country, accompanied by no guarantee of military victory in the near future, had become unacceptable to these elements of the American public. The optimistic military reports of progress in the war no longer rang true after the shock of the Tet offensive.
“Thus, the President’s decision to seek a new strategy and a new road to peace was based upon two major considerations:
“(1) The conviction of his principal civilian advisers, particularly Secretary of Defense Clifford, that the troops requested by General Westmoreland would not make a military victory any more likely; and
“(2) A deeply felt conviction of the need to restore unity to the American nation.”
KEY DOCUMENTS
Following are texts of key documents accompanying the Pentagon’s study of the Vietnam war, covering the period in early 1968 surrounding the Vietcong’s Tet offensive. Except where excerpting is specified, the documents are printed verbatim, with only unmistakable typographical errors corrected.
# 131
Adm. Sharp’s Progress Report on War at End of 1967
Excerpts from cablegram from Adm. U. S. Grant Sharp, commander in chief of Pacific forces, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dated Jan. 1, 1968, and headed “Year-End Wrap-Up Cable,” as provided in the body of the Pentagon study. Paragraphs in italics are the study’s paraphrase or explanation.
Admiral Sharp outlined three objectives which the air campaign was seeking to achieve: disruption of the flow of external assistance into North Vietnam, curtailment of the flow of supplies from North Vietnam into Laos and South Vietnam, and destruction “in depth” of North Vietnamese resources that contributed to the support of the war. Acknowledging that the flow of fraternal communist aid into the North had grown every year of the war, CINCPAC noted the stepped up effort in 1967 to neutralize this assistance by logistically isolating its primary port of entry—Haiphong. The net results, he felt, had been encouraging:
The overall effect of our effort to reduce external assistance has resulted not only in destruction and damage to the transportation systems and goods being transported thereon but has created additional management, distribution and manpower problems. In addition, the attacks have created a bottleneck at Haiphong where inability effectively to move goods inland from the port has resulted in congestion on the docks and a slowdown in offlloading ships as they arrive. By October, road and rail interdictions had reduced the transportation clearance capacity at Haiphong to about 2700 short tons per day. An average of 4400 short tons per day had arrived in Haiphong during the year.
The assault against the continuing traffic of men and material through North Vietnam toward Laos and South Vietnam, however, had produced only marginal results. Success here was measured in the totals of destroyed transport, not the constriction of the flow of personnel and goods.
Although men and material needed for the level of combat now prevailing in South Vietnam continue to flow despite our attacks on LOCs, we have made it very costly to the enemy in terms of material, manpower, management, and distribution. From 1 January through 15 December 1967, 122,960 attack sorties were flown in Rolling Thunder route packages I through V and in Laos, SEA Dragon offensive operations involved 1,384 ship-days on station and contributed materially in reducing enemy seaborne infiltration in southern NVN and in the vicinity of the DMZ. Attacks against the NVN transport system during the past 12 months resulted in destruction of carriers, cargo carried, and personnel casualties. Air attacks throughout North Vietnam and Laos destroyed or damaged 5,261 motor vehicles, 2,475 railroad rolling stock, and 11,425 watercraft from 1 January through 20 December 1967. SEA DRAGON accounted for another 1,473 WBLC destroyed or damaged from 1 January-30 November. There were destroyed rail-lines, bridges, ferries, railroad yards and shops, storage areas, and truck parks. Some 3,685 land targets were struck by Sea Dragon forces, including the destruction or damage of 303 coastal defense and radar sites. Through external assistance, the enemy has been able to replace or rehabilitate many of the items damaged or destroyed, and transport inventories are roughly at the same level they were at the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, construction problems have caused interruptions in the flow of men and supplies, caused a great loss of work-hours, and restricted movement particularly during daylight hours.
The admission that transport inventories were the same at year’s end as when it began must have been a painful one indeed for CINCPAC in view of the enormous cost of the air campaign against the transport system in money, aircraft, and lives. As a consolation for this signal failure, CINCPAC pointed to the extensive diversion of civilian manpower to war related activities as a result of the bombing.
A primary effect of our efforts to impede movement of the enemy has been to force Hanoi to engage from 500,000 to 600,000 civilians in full-time and part-time war-related activities, in particular for air defense and repair of the LOCs. This diversion of manpower from other pursuits, particularly from the agricultural sector, has caused a drawdown on manpower. The estimated lower food production yields, coupled with an increase in food imports in 1967 (some six times that of 1966), indicate that agriculture is having great difficulty in adjusting to this changed composition of the work force. The cost and difficulties of the war to Hanoi have sharply increased, and only through the willingness of other communist countries to provide maximum replacement of goods and material has NVN managed to sustain its war effort.
To these manpower diversions C1NCPAC added the cost to North Vietnam in 1967 of the destruction of vital resources—the third of his air war objectives:
C. Destroying vital resources:
Air attacks were authorized and executed by target systems for the first time in 1967, although the attacks were limited to specific targets within each system. A total of 9,740 sorties was flown against targets on the ROLLING THUNDER target list from 1 January-15 December 1967. The
campaign against the power system resulted in reduction of power generating capability to approximately 15 percent of original capacity. Successful strikes against the Thau Nguyen iron and steel plant and the Haiphong cement plant resulted in practically total destruction of these two installations. NVN adjustments to these losses have had to be made by relying on additional imports from China, the USSR or the Eastern European countries. The requirement for additional imports reduces available shipping space for war supporting supplies and adds to the congestion at the ports. Interruptions in raw material supplies and the requirement to turn to less efficient means of power and distribution has degraded overall production.
Economic losses to North Vietnam amounted to more than $130 million dollars in 1967, representing over one-half of the total economic losses since the war began.
# 132
Wheeler’s ’68 Report to Johnson after the Tet Offensive
Excerpts from memorandum from Gen. Earle G. Wheeler to President Johnson, dated Feb. 27, 1968, and headed “Report of Chairman, J.C.S., on Situation in Vietnam and MACV Requirements.”
1. The Chairman, JCS and party visited SVN on 23, 24 and 25 February. This report summarizes the impressions and facts developed through conversations and briefings at MACV and with senior commanders throughout the country.
2. SUMMARY
—The current situation in Vietnam is still developing and fraught with opportunities as well as dangers.