The Best and the Brightest (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

  In May and June things began to look better and better for the President. In the past, Johnson had not particularly liked polls, partly because he did not like what they told about himself, but now some of his staff began to do some testing for the President among the citizenry. The first results were very good: though George Wallace had run well in the Indiana primary, the impression was that the white backlash against Negro progress was not yet a real issue (in addition, some of the President’s staff told him that Goldwater, an economic conservative as well as a racial one, would have trouble moving in on the blue-collar people, who felt an immediate empathy with Wallace). The polls showed Johnson running well among people who had never liked him before, and cutting in on large segments of Republican voters (one poll taken by Oliver Quayle in the spring of 1964 showed that half of the people who had voted for Nixon in 1960 were now for Johnson). The message confirmed his own intuition; it was going very well, and he did not need Robert Kennedy on the ticket; if anything, given the restlessness in the South over civil rights, Robert Kennedy, who as Attorney General had been the Cabinet officer most deeply involved, might even hurt him. Now he moved to end the Kennedy threat.

  Jack Kennedy had never taken Lyndon Johnson’s attacks upon his youth and his family seriously, but Robert Kennedy had; Jack Kennedy had always treated Vice-President Johnson courteously and with great sensitivity; Robert Kennedy had not. The antagonism between the two men was very real. Friends thought the origins went back to the 1960 convention, when Johnson had attacked Jack Kennedy in a personal way, and even more important, had attacked Joseph Kennedy personally at a press conference, saying, “My father never carried an umbrella for Chamberlain.” John Seigenthaler, Bobby’s closest aide, who was at the press conference, had reported back to Kennedy that he was sure now that Johnson knew he was going to lose, that he was desperate. Robert Kennedy remembered the incident, as had Johnson, and a year later at a dinner party Johnson, the Vice-President and outsider, took Bobby, the Attorney General and insider, aside and said, “I know why you don’t like me. The reason you don’t like me is because I made those remarks about your father at the press conference and they were taken out of context and I was misquoted.” Kennedy denied that he knew what Johnson was talking about. “Yes, you do,” Johnson said, “you know what I’m talking about and that’s why you don’t like me.” The next day Kennedy called Seigenthaler and repeated the conversation to him, and Seigenthaler dredged up copies of the quotes from four different newspapers; it had, after all, stayed in both of their minds a long time. None of the tensions had eased after Johnson became President, and Robert Kennedy and the people closest to him felt that Johnson was somehow a usurper. Johnson, sensitive to Robert Kennedy’s feelings, had worked hard to ease the pain, but he had met little success.

  Now in the early summer of 1964 he knew that Robert Kennedy was promoting himself for the Vice-Presidency. He tried to head it off, using McGeorge Bundy, among others, as an emissary (the fact that Bundy, nominally a Republican, was willing to run this kind of errand for Johnson particularly infuriated Robert Kennedy, and Bundy’s connections with the inner Kennedy group were badly shattered). All of this failed. In late July the President called Robert Kennedy in and told him he would not be on the ticket, that he had a bright future in politics but this was not his year. Johnson would be pleased to have him run the campaign. Their talk seemed to have gone very well, but later Johnson called in three White House correspondents for a leisurely lunch. He described the meeting with Kennedy and could not restrain his talents as a mimic; he demonstrated how Bobby had gulped when the news was broken. Within a few hours the story was all over Washington, complete with Johnsonian embellishments; Robert Kennedy was furious. Johnson soon went on television to say that he had decided against naming any members of his Cabinet to the Vice-Presidency. Thus Johnson took care of Robert Kennedy, and the way was clearer to his own Presidency, but he had paid a price; the tension between the Kennedy people and the Johnson Presidency was more real than ever.

  But he still had to deal with the question of the Congress as far as Vietnam was concerned. He wanted that extra protection before he went into the campaign. At the end of July he got his way; an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin provided the factor of patriotism that he had sought for his congressional resolution. It was to be called the Tonkin Gulf incident, and in reality it had begun back in January, when the President and his top advisers gave permission to General Krulak and the restless JCS to go ahead and plan a series of covert activities against the North under the general code name of 34A. These would be run from Saigon under the command of General Harkins (though of course the Vietnamese would be nominally in command), and the purpose would be to make Hanoi pay a little for its pressure on the South, to hit back at the enemy, to raise morale in the South, to show Hanoi we were just as tough as they were, that we understood the game of dirty tricks and could play it just as well as they did. (Which, of course, we could not.)

  In that sense the origins of the Tonkin Gulf went back even farther, to the height of the Cold War tension in the late forties, which had seen the growth and acceptance of a certain part of the Cold War mentality: the idea that force justified force. The other side did it and so we would do it; reality called for meeting dirty tricks with dirty tricks. Since covert operations were part of the game, over a period of time there was in the high levels of the bureaucracy, particularly as the CIA became more powerful, a gradual acceptance of covert operations and dirty tricks as part of normal diplomatic-political maneuvering; higher and higher government officials became co-opted (as the President’s personal assistant, McGeorge Bundy would oversee the covert operations for both Kennedy and Johnson, thus bringing, in a sense, presidential approval). It was a reflection of the frustration which the national security people, private men all, felt in matching the foreign policy of a totalitarian society, which gave so much more freedom to its officials and seemingly provided so few checks on its own leaders. To be on the inside and oppose or question covert operations was considered a sign of weakness. (In 1964 a well-bred young CIA official, wondering whether we had the right to try some of the black activities on the North, was told by Desmond FitzGerald, the number-three man in the Agency, “Don’t be so wet”—the classic old-school putdown of someone who knows the real rules of the game to someone softer, questioning the rectitude of the rules.) It was this acceptance of covert operations by the Kennedy Administration which had brought Adlai Stevenson to the lowest moment of his career during the Bay of Pigs, a special shame as he had stood and lied at the UN about things that he did not know, but which, of course, the Cubans knew. Covert operations often got ahead of the Administration itself and pulled the Administration along with them, as the Bay of Pigs had shown—since the planning and training were all done, we couldn’t tell those freedom-loving Cubans that it was all off, could we, argued Allen Dulles. He had pulled public men like the President with him into that particular disaster. At the time, Fulbright had argued against it, had not only argued that it would fail, which was easy enough to say, but he had gone beyond this, and being a public man, entered the rarest of arguments, an argument against it on moral grounds, that it was precisely our reluctance to do things like this which differentiated us from the Soviet Union and made us special, made it worth being a democracy. “One further point must be made about even covert support of a Castro overthrow; it is in violation of the spirit and probably the letter as well, of treaties to which the United States is a party and of U.S. domestic legislation. . . . To give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world—nor on our own consciences for that matter,” he wrote Kennedy.

  But arguments like this found little acceptance in those days; instead the Kennedy Administration had been particularly aggressive in wanting to match the Communists at n
ew modern guerrilla and covert activities, and the lines between what a democracy could and could not do were more blurred in those years than others. These men, largely private, were functioning on a level different from the public policy of the United States, and years later when New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan read through the entire documentary history of the war, that history known as the Pentagon Papers, he would come away with one impression above all, which was that the government of the United States was not what he had thought it was; it was as if there were an inner U.S. government, what he called “a centralized state, far more powerful than anything else, for whom the enemy is not simply the Communists but everything else, its own press, its own judiciary, its own Congress, foreign and friendly governments—all these are potentially antagonistic. It had survived and perpetuated itself,” Sheehan continued, “often using the issue of anti-Communism as a weapon against the other branches of government and the press, and finally, it does not function necessarily for the benefit of the Republic but rather for its own ends, its own perpetuation; it has its own codes which are quite different from public codes. Secrecy was a way of protecting itself, not so much from threats by foreign governments, but from detection from its own population on charges of its own competence and wisdom.” Each succeeding Administration, Sheehan noted, was careful, once in office, not to expose the weaknesses of its predecessor. After all, essentially the same people were running the governments, they had continuity to each other, and each succeeding Administration found itself faced with virtually the same enemies. Thus the national security apparatus kept its continuity, and every outgoing President tended to rally to the side of each incumbent President.

  Out of this of course came a willingness to use covert operations; it was a necessity of the times, to match the Communists, and what your own population and your own Congress did not know was not particularly important; it was almost better if they did not know—it made it easier for them to accept the privileges and superiority of being a democracy; thus it was better for Stevenson to go before the United Nations and lie, he was more convincing that way; thus it was better for the citizens, the editorial writers, the high school graduation speakers to believe that we were different as a country. And a few chosen citizens working discreetly in Washington would do the dirty work for them. A public service.

  So the people of the United States did not know about 34A, nor did the Congress, but that was of no importance. Of course Hanoi knew, it was not fooled, and by and large, slowly, the rest of the world would know, but the Congress of the United States would not know what the United States was up to. Thus in terms of the central state’s attempt to lead and manipulate a potentially resistant society, the covert operations were doubly handy; if no one knew about them, then it bothered no one; if they did become public, if there was a Communist challenge to them, the public and the Congress would be forced between choosing their own side or the Communist side. A question of patriotism, then.

  The idea of subversion, of dropping in teams to blow up bridges, create harassment, be they frogmen or men parachuted in, was doomed from the beginning. The North Vietnamese government was both forceful and popular, and it was particularly invulnerable to exterior subversion (at one time there had been a base for subversion, the large Catholic minority which might have been a problem for Ho in its dissidence, and might have been a major source of espionage for Western powers. The United States had, however, helped remove this possibility in 1954 by encouraging the Catholics to go South—using loudspeakers which claimed, in Vietnamese, that the Virgin Mary had gone South and it was time to join her. This had created a somewhat more anti-Communist society in the South, perpetuating an illusion of anti-Communism there, essentially a transplanted anti-Communism, but it had also removed from the North any real possibility of internal subversion). So in 1964, when frogmen swam ashore or Vietnamese commandos were parachuted in, almost invariably they were picked up immediately by the North Vietnamese security teams.

  In the early summer of 1964 the operations under 34A were intensified. The war in the South was not going well, and this was a way of slapping back at the North and also warning Hanoi surreptitiously that its attacks were not going unnoticed, that there was a payment inherent in its war. The subversion attempts proved predictably futile; at the same time, more annoying to the North Vietnamese, though hardly damaging, was the use of unannounced bombing raids along the Laotian border, and the use of South Vietnamese PT boats in hit-and-run commando raids against North Vietnamese naval installations on the coast. Although the latter did not cause much harm, the pressure in the North for some retaliation was building up. The PT raids, though involving Vietnamese crews, had been planned and initiated by the command of MACV, under General Harkins and Mac Bundy. McNamara and Rusk had full knowledge and control of them. In the real sense, these were American operations.

  On July 30, South Vietnamese patrol boats based in Danang had taken off for a raid on two North Vietnamese bases; the attack took place on July 31. At almost the same time an American destroyer named the Maddox was on its way toward the same coast, its mission to play games with the North Vietnamese radar, to provoke the radar system. Using highly expensive and sophisticated equipment, the Maddox could simulate an attack on the North, thus forcing the Chinese Communists and the North Vietnamese to turn on their radar. At this time the Americans could pinpoint more accurately where the other side’s radar installations were located, just in case there was ever a need to have them charted. As the Maddox headed toward its mission on July 31, it passed the returning South Vietnamese PT boats; unaware of the other mission, it thought at first they were Soviet boats. On August 1 the Maddox began her mission, which was, in North Vietnamese eyes, a provocative act and seemed to be part of the overall assault which had begun on July 31. On August 2 the Maddox sighted three North Vietnamese PT boats, was attacked by them, and destroyed one. Aboard the Maddox, radio intercepts of North Vietnamese traffic made clear that it considered the Maddox patrol part of the overall 34A operation, and this information was cabled back to the Pentagon (McNamara would soon testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it “was clear” that the North Vietnamese knew these were separate missions; similarly, on August 6, McNamara would claim that the Maddox was attacked when she was thirty miles from the North Vietnamese coast. In truth the attack began when the Maddox was thirteen miles from a North Vietnamese island, and earlier in the day the ship had been much closer to the mainland). Out of this, and a subsequent incident on the following days, was to come the Tonkin Gulf incident, the first bombing of the North, and almost immediately the Tonkin Resolution. But in particular, out of all of this would come the sense that we had been attacked, and we were the victims.

  Johnson’s first reaction was that whatever else, we had been fired on in an area where we had a right to be; thus our ships, the Maddox and a companion ship, the C. Turner Joy, should continue their activities, otherwise we would be pushed farther and farther back. Meeting with Rusk, McNamara and Bundy, Johnson discussed retaliatory measures. For the moment the President was unwilling to bomb the North; he wanted to know more about what was happening, and he didn’t think this episode in itself was worth it. We didn’t, he told them, lose anybody in this fight, we had sunk one of their boats. Now we would just show them that we weren’t going to move, they couldn’t run us out of those waters, and we would kick the hell out of anyone who tried. At the same time Johnson used the hot line to reassure the Soviet Union that we intended to continue naval operations in that area, but that we did not intend to widen the war. Meanwhile Rusk told his subordinates to go ahead with the drafting of a congressional resolution backing the President in eventualities like this.

  Captain John Herrick, who was the commander of the Tonkin Gulf patrol, was cabling back that he thought continuance of the patrol “an unacceptable risk” because of the North Vietnamese sensitivity to the Maddox foray; since Herrick was privy to the radio intercepts, he knew
what the North Vietnamese were thinking, which was that this and the 34A activity were all one raid. His warning cable had little effect; Washington was in no need to pull back or be cautious. If anything, quite the reverse was true; the Chiefs and some civilians in the Pentagon had been pushing for acts against the North which were at the very least provocative, such as sending low-flying jets over Hanoi in order to create sonic booms, which would push the North to some kind of reaction. Johnson had held the line on that, but he had given permission to go ahead with the radar harassment patrols as well as the 34A missions, and now that had in fact created just the provocation that some of the Joint Chiefs wanted.

  The next day, August 3, both the C. Turner Joy and the Maddox were ordered back into the same dangerous waters as a sign that the United States would not back down. Almost immediately the North Vietnamese appeared to challenge them, in what would become the second Tonkin incident. Whether there had been an attack was somewhat unclear (in fact, much of the Tonkin Gulf controversy centered around whether or not an attack really took place, or whether the two destroyers were firing at each other, or whether in fact the military deliberately faked an incident in order to create the retaliation). The evidence on Tonkin is still clouded, in part because McNamara’s story was so filled with old-fashioned lies, but the evidence, clear or not, is peripheral to the real question of what had taken place in the days immediately prior to the incident, and what kind of U.S. and South Vietnamese provocation had taken place. Because of the secrecy and the covert nature of the operation, because of Administration lies, both the Congress and the public were seriously misled. That was the central issue, not whether or not there was a second Tonkin episode.