Years of Upheaval
Page 180
“U.S. TACAIR and B-52 forces will be prepared to strike designated targets in Cambodia in order to assist FANK forces when the situation so dictates. To this end a simple, rapid request-validation-execute procedure will be set up between US Ambassador Cambodia and MACV. In essence, US Ambassador will be responsible for receiving requests for air support from GKR [Government of the Khmer Republic] and validating requests consistent with his means and time available. The Ambassador will pass the requests to MACV who has the authority to validate and direct air strikes by US TACAIR or B-52’s as the situation dictates. All air strikes executed under this guidance are to counter specific hostile acts against GKR/FANK. Escort of Mekong convoys is authorized.”2
As explained to Swank on February 8, 1973, by then Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Kissinger, the purpose of these arrangements was to back up the unilateral U.S. statement on Cambodia made at the last session of the Paris Peace Talks on January 23, 1973. The U.S. had been unsuccessful in engaging the Khmer Rouge in the talks either directly or indirectly. In the absence of any agreement, the U.S. offered to suspend hostilities in Cambodia, if reciprocated. If the Khmer Rouge attacked, government forces and the Seventh Air Force would respond. The role of the Embassy, Dr. Kissinger told Swank, was to make sure the response to any such attacks was no more than required to back up the unilateral statement.
In implementing this instruction, the Embassy, according to the report prepared for Senator Stuart Symington of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Staff Members James G. Lowenstein and Richard M. Moose, performed three functions, none of which included the approval or control of air strikes:3
“A. As a communications relay point
We were shown the radio-telephone relay system, known as ‘Area Control’ located in the Air Attache’s Office in the Embassy which is manned by an augmented staff of U.S. military personnel temporarily assigned to the Defense Attache’s Office. It provides a communications link between the Cambodian General Staff, Seventh Air Force, the Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Center plane and the U.S. Forward Air Control planes.
“B. As an on-the-spot coordinator of forward air control planes and strike aircraft
U.S. Forward Air Control planes which are assigned daily to the control of the Air Attache and which regularly refuel at Phnom Penh airport are shifted by Area Control from place to place in response to requests from the Cambodian General Staff or in response to tactical emergencies; and
“C. As a screener of Cambodian or Seventh Air Force requests for strikes except in eastern Cambodia
A panel of Embassy officers, both civilian and military, validates each request for B-52 and F-111 strikes, and the Defense Attache screens tactical air requests.
The degree and nature of the Embassy’s involvement varies depending on the location of air activity and on whether strategic or tactical air is involved. The Embassy has relatively little to do with air activity in the eastern third of Cambodia where there is no Cambodian Government presence. (This area is designated for air operations purposes as ‘Freedom Deal.’) Its role in both strategic and tactical air operations is much greater in the remainder of Cambodia where Cambodian Government forces are engaged with an enemy which is now composed almost entirely of Khmer Communist insurgents and North Vietnamese.”
The first two functions — communications with and coordination of the U.S. Forward Air Controllers operating in light planes over Cambodia, who validated and authorized TACAIR strikes — were performed by the Embassy only pending construction of a Direct Air Support Center (DASC) in FANK headquarters. When the DASC was completed in late April, they were transferred from the Embassy to it.
The third function — screening of B-52 and F-111 bombing requests — was exercised by the Embassy throughout the bombing campaign. These steps were involved:4
“The Embassy validates all B-52 and F-111 strikes outside the ‘Freedom Deal’ area. When the Cambodian General Staff submits a request, it does so on a form which contains information regarding the nature of the target, its justification, and a certification that friendly forces, villages, hamlets, houses, monuments, temples, pagodas or holy places are not within certain specified distances of the target area.
“The Embassy Air Attache’s Office then plots the target and the bombing ‘box,’ the area in which the bombs will fall, on a one-to-fifty thousand map which is supposed to show the exact location of all permanent houses and buildings. The Air Attache told us that the maps being used by the Embassy were several years old and that the Embassy did not have current photography on proposed target areas which would permit the identification of new or relocated villages.
“The original Cambodian request and the map are then considered by an Embassy bombing panel which meets daily. The panel is chaired by the Deputy Chief of Mission. Its other members are the Defense Attache who is an Army Colonel, the Chief of the Military Equipment Delivery team who is an Army Brigadier General, the Counselor for Political-Military Affairs and the Embassy intelligence chief.
“The panel discusses the target in terms of consistency with the Rules of Engagement, the probable utility of the target, air safety and political factors. The final decision rests, according to the rules of the panel, with the Deputy Chief of Mission. According to him, decisions are, as a practical matter, made unanimously and approximately 40 percent of the requests are turned down. The Ambassador does not sit on the panel but is informed of decisions as they are made, and, according to the rules of the panel, before any particularly sensitive decision. [Note: Swank joined the panel in May 1973; Enders remained a member.] The panel then sends its recommendation to Seventh Air Force through Embassy communications facilities in the form of a message from the Ambassador to the Seventh Air Force Commander. Targets are again reviewed at Seventh Air Force for consistency with the Rules of Engagement. The Embassy is then informed by message from Seventh Air Force of targets scheduled for attack, and, subsequently, of the results. The Embassy then relays this information to Cambodian General Staff Headquarters.”
2. Assertion: That instructions for making the Embassy into “the command post for the new aerial war in Cambodia” were given in Bangkok to Swank directly by Dr. Kissinger on February 8, 1973. “Although the general instructions were laid out in a cable from the State Department,” Secretary of State Rogers “was not told how fully his subordinates in Phnom Penh were now involved in the bombing.”5 No source is cited by Mr. Shawcross.
Clarification: We cannot say for certain that Secretary Rogers knew of the instruction to the Embassy cited above, which laid out succinctly what the Embassy was to do. According to the file copy, two of his senior associates were involved in its preparation (Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Marshall Green as drafter, and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs U. Alexis Johnson as authorized, and two copies were distributed to the Secretary. The cable is dated January 23, 1973, two weeks before Dr. Kissinger met with Swank in Bangkok.
3. Assertion: That the bombing was not done “carefully”6 by the Embassy and was “indiscriminate,”7 because recent photography was not available and targets were plotted on large-scale, out-of-date maps that did not “show the location of new settlements in the massive forced migrations that the Khmer Rouge were now imposing on the areas they controlled.”8 Mr. Shawcross cites as the source for his comment on maps and photography the Lowenstein and Moose report.9
Clarification: All B-52 strikes were subject to detailed Rules of Engagement and executed on the basis of pre-strike photography. As noted above the Embassy never had a substantive role in tactical air operations.
Rules of Engagement prohibited use of B-52 ordnance closer than one kilometer to friendly forces, villages, hamlets, houses, monuments, temples, pagodas or holy places.10
General John W. Vogt, who as commander of the United States Support Activities Group and the Seventh Air Force had responsibility for the bombing, states:11
Mr. Shawcross appears to have been misled by the fact that the Embassy did not have available to it such photography. But it did not have to, since any FANK target the Embassy validated was re-validated or rejected by USSAG on the basis of photography. Messrs. Lowenstein and Moose did visit USSAG headquarters in April 1973. It is not known whether they were told of use of photography in USSAG target validation. In any case, they do not mention it in their report, and that omission appears to be the basis for Mr. Shawcross’s charges. General Vogt is categorical on the question: “The B-52S bombed without the need for maps at all.”12
4. Assertion: That “after the Moose and Lowenstein investigation in April [1973], control of the bombing was shifted to FANK.”13 Mr. Shawcross gives no source.
Clarification: At no point did FANK control B-52, F-111 or U.S. TACAIR strikes; only USSAG did.14
The only change in the arrangements made after April 1973 was the establishment of a direct communications link with FANK headquarters (DASC), by-passing the Embassy on TACAIR (see Point 1 above). Processing of B-52 and F-111 strikes was not involved. Throughout the war, control of U.S. TACAIR was in the hands of U.S. Forward Air Controllers, not the FANK.
5. Inference: That the bombing resulted in massive civilian casualties. Mr. Shawcross does not make an explicit statement to this effect, but he implies it in the map/photography misinterpretation cited above and in the three (and three only) pieces of evidence he cites on civilian casualties. First he quotes Embassy political officer William Harben as saying “I began to get reports of wholesale carnage. One night a mass of peasants from a village near Saang went out on a funeral procession. They walked straight into a ‘box.’ Hundreds were slaughtered.’ “15 Second, he cites the bombing of Neak Luong on August 7, 1973 (the town was held at that time by Khmer Republic forces) due to bombardier error, and writes: “The accident inevitably raised the question of how often such errors occurred in parts of the country where reporters could never penetrate.”16 Finally Cambodian generals “took a casual view of the risks to civilians.” “As one air attache, Mark Berent, recalls, ‘They never plotted anything. We could have given the coordinates of the palace and they would have said yes.’ “17
Clarification: There is no evidence of massive civilian casualties. Two major B-52 accidents are known, one at Sa’ang and the other at Neak Luong; both were reported by the Embassy as well as cited by Mr. Shawcross. The former could not have been prevented (the target, in conformance to the Rules of Engagement, was well away from an inhabited area); the latter was Seventh Air Force responsibility. No doubt there were other civilian casualties, although on a smaller scale.
Mr. Harben, who is often portrayed in Sideshow as a bitter critic of U.S. (and Embassy) policy, makes these comments on casualties:18
“In retrospect I think it likely that accidents involving TACAIR, particularly Khmer Air Force, may have been confused with B-52’s in the retelling during the heightened public awareness of the latter. . . . In the case of the Sa’ang tragedy, . . . it is clear that the rules of engagement were respected . . . (as regards my statement that) ‘I began to get reports of wholesale carnage . . .’ [Mr. Shawcross] garbled it slightly: In referring to the Sa’ang raid, I used the expression used by my informant on that raid: ‘c’était un veritable carnage.’ Shawcross seems to have written this down in such a way as to give the impression that such a description applied to all the raids about which I had heard. The context was simply a narration of events.”
Mr. Harben concludes:
“So civilian casualties were unavoidable, but far fewer, I am sure, than Shawcross and others claim. Had they been so great, the reports I received would not have been so vague. It is curious also that, although thousands of Khmers who were living in enemy-held areas at that time have fled to Thailand, and some have even gone to Europe, Shawcross seems to have made no effort to question them, although he made the effect of bombing upon them a major theme of his book. He did not even speak to So Satto, ex-chief of the Khmer Air Force, as I suggested. Nor did he contact In Tam, who was speaking to dozens of peasants every day recently arrived from the other side — and to enemy emissaries discussing defection.”
General Vogt makes this comment about the possibility of other offset bombing errors like that at Neak Luong:19
“Every accident my headquarters was aware of was made known immediately, the worst being the off-set bombing error by B-52S against Neak Luong. To set the record straight, B-52S employed this off-set technique on only a handful of missions. The beacons were there primarily for F-111 use. The latter used them successfully throughout 1973 without a single incident. Their equipment, of course, was much better as they were much later generation airplanes. After Neak Luong the B-52S stopped using this practice . . . Virtually all of the B-52 bombing was precisely controlled by Seventh Air Force control systems. They were led in by F-4 LORAN-equipped pathfinders. These lead planes had a demonstrated accuracy by photo-recon confirmation of less than 400 feet miss distance.”
Finally, since at no time did FANK control B-52 strikes (or for that matter F-111 or TACAIR strikes), Mr. Shawcross’s third and last piece of evidence — an air attache’s comment on FANK’s own concern for civilians — does not apply.
It is worth noting that all B-52 strikes were photographed afterwards, as well as before. Not only was there available to General Vogt immediate evidence of any accident, but such evidence is preserved in Air Force archives. Seventh Air Force post-strike photography on Cambodia could be examined by a photo-reconnaissance specialist to confirm the conclusions on casualties reported here.
[signed] Emory C. Swank 10/10/79 U.S. Ambassador to the Khmer Republic, 1970–73
[signed] Thomas O. Enders 10/10/79 Deputy Chief of Mission Phnom Penh, 1970–74
Tab A
IMMEDIATE
PHNOM PENH
PRIORITY
SAIGON, BANGKOK PRIORITY, VIENTIANE PRIORITY, FRANCE PRIORITY
STATE 015050
260022Z JAN 73
FOR AMBASSADOR SWANK
SUBJECT:
USAF ACTIVITIES IN CAMBODIA FOLLOWING A CEASEFIRE IN VIETNAM
REF: PHNOM PENH 634
1. USAF activities in Cambodia will be related to Lon Nol’s proposed announcement of unilateral suspension by FANK of offensive military actions while reserving the right of self-defense. Thus, we propose from the time Lon Nol takes this action that USAF will stand down TACAIR and B-52 strikes. If a FANK unit is in trouble due to enemy action, we can react locally to provide appropriate air support clearly commensurate with the defensive requirements of the units under attack. You may inform Lon Nol that USAF activities in Cambodia will be related to his proposed declaration but that US air support will be provided, as necessary, in accordance with the JCS instructions below:
2. Chief JCS has just sent CINCPAC, info COMUSMACV, following guidance:
3. Quote: At the time when the FANK suspend offensive military operation all US TACAIR and B-52 strikes in Cambodia will cease. RECCE, airlift, MEDEVAC and other U.S. air operations that a
re not ordnance delivery associated are permitted.
4. Quote: U.S. TACAIR and B-52 forces will be prepared to strike designated targets in Cambodia in order to assist FANK forces when the situation so dictates. To this end a simple, rapid request-validation-execute procedure will be set up between U.S. Ambassador Cambodia and MACV. In essence, US Ambassador will be responsible for receiving requests for air support from GKR and validating requests consistent with his means and time available. The Ambassador will pass the requests to MACV who has the authority to validate and direct air strikes by US TACAIR or B-52’s as the situation dictates. All air strikes executed under this guidance are to counter specific hostile acts against GKR/FANK. Escort of Mekong convoys is authorized. Unquote
5. MACV requested to set up procedures as outlined above as soon as possible and to inform Chief JCS of details agreed upon.
ROGERS
Tab B
Ambassador Thomas O. Enders
June 22, 1979
American Embassy
Ottawa, Canada
Dear Tom:
Recently I had an opportunity to read the Shawcross book. Your questions assume that I knew much more than I did. I knew hardly more than any literate Cambodian about the bombing — nothing, for example, of the rules of engagement, or the fact that there was an Embassy targeting committee which you chaired.
(i) Is the account of the bombing campaign given in Mr. Shawcross’ book on pages 270–272 accurate?
Answer: I know too little, even now, to assess his accuracy. The assertion that only maps of 1:50,000 were used is absurd on the face of it, but beyond that I cannot comment.
(ii) What accidents causing civilian casualties did you learn of?
Answer: As the B-52 raids began to hit near Phnom Penh foreign journalists told me they had heard of many civilian casualties. One quoted a woman refugee who said her husband had been killed “with blood coming from his eyes and ears” in what sounded from her description like a B-52 attack. Another was said to have been near Kompong Speu, and still another mentioned by a Khmer Red Cross official to a journalist. Then In Tam summoned me and said that many civilians had been killed by “B-52’s” near Skoun. You checked and said it must have been Tacair. In retrospect I think it likely that accidents involving Tacair, particularly Khmer Air Force, may have been confused with B-52’s in the retelling during the heightened public awareness of the latter. Perhaps some of the reports mentioned above applied to the same raid. About this time an airgram from one of our border posts in Vietnam quoted Cambodian refugees as saying that hundreds of peasants conscripted for work in enemy camps had been killed by B-52’s. I had this in mind when I told Shawcross that most civilian casualties were certainly due to the Communists drafting peasants for use as porters and laborers in legitimate target areas. He chose to omit this comment. Another incident was reported to me by a Democratic Party official who was a mathematics professor at the university. He said his uncle, mayor of Sa’ang, near Phnom Penh, had sent word that some hundreds of peasants had walked into a B-52 box while on a nocturnal procession some kilometers from that village to bury or burn a deceased favorite bonze. They did not go by day fearing that such a column would invite Tacair attack, he said. I reported it to you, and a few days later it was mentioned in the Khmer press.