Bill Rogers and Mel Laird opposed this recommendation. They feared the fury of Congress and the media if I expanded the war into Cambodia. But Kissinger argued, “What do we care if the New York Times clobbers us now if it helps us end the war sooner?” I agreed with him, but I decided to postpone a final decision about the bombing until I returned from the European trip, because a leak of plans to bomb Cambodia might have triggered serious antiwar demonstrations abroad. I directed that a cable be sent to Bunker through regular channels saying that all discussions of bombing should be suspended. I simultaneously sent a top secret “back-channel” message—a routing outside the official system—to General Abrams telling him to ignore the message to Bunker and to continue planning the B-52 strikes on a contingency basis even though I would have to withhold approval until after my trip.
While I was in Europe, the Communist offensive intensified. At a press conference two days after my return I was asked what our reaction would be. “We have not moved in a precipitate fashion,” I said, “but the fact that we have shown patience and forbearance should not be considered as a sign of weakness. . . . An appropriate response to these attacks will be made if they continue.”
Ten days later, on the morning of my next press conference, the North Vietnamese mounted a new attack across the DMZ. In reply to a question about whether my patience was growing thin with this kind of provocation, I said, “You may recall that on March 4, when I received a similar question, at an earlier stage in the attacks, I issued what was interpreted widely as a warning. It will be my policy as President to issue a warning only once, and I will not repeat it now. Anything in the future that is done will be done.”
On Sunday, March 16, I met for two hours with Rogers, Laird, Kissinger, and General Earle Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to review the military and diplomatic situation in Vietnam.
I asked for the latest casualty figures. Because of the Communist offensive, they were high. Three hundred fifty-one Americans had died during the past week, 453 the week before, and 336 the week before that.
Our intelligence reports indicated that over 40,000 Communist troops had secretly been amassed in a zone ten to fifteen miles wide just inside the Cambodian border. Cambodia was a neutral country. We respected that neutrality, but the Communists were blatantly violating it by launching raids across the Cambodian border into South Vietnam and then retreating to the safety of their jungle sanctuaries.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “we have reached the point where a decision is required: to bomb or not to bomb.”
I assured everyone that I understood the problems and recognized the risks involved in bombing the sanctuaries, no matter how justified such action might be.
“But we have to look at what we’re up against,” I continued. “The state of play in Paris is completely sterile. I am convinced that the only way to move the negotiations off dead center is to do something on the military front. That is something they will understand.”
I said that short of resuming the bombing of North Vietnam, this was the only military action we could take that might succeed in saving American lives and getting the peace negotiations moving.
I concluded, “I have decided to order the bombing to begin as soon as possible. Tomorrow, if the weather is good enough.”
The weather was good, and on March 17, B-52 bombers struck the Communist sanctuaries inside the Cambodian border. The Pentagon gave the secret bombing the codename Menu, and the various target areas were designated by different mealtimes. The attack on the first area was called Operation Breakfast. It was the first turning point in my administration’s conduct of the Vietnam war.
Maximum precautions were taken to keep the bombing secret, for several reasons. We knew that Prince Sihanouk, the head of the Cambodian government, strongly objected to the presence of the North Vietnamese army in his country. As early as 1968, he had asked the United States to retaliate against the North Vietnamese, either with “hot pursuit” on the ground or by bombing the sanctuaries. We also knew that because of Cambodia’s neutral status, Sihanouk could not afford to endorse our actions officially. Therefore, as long as we bombed secretly, we knew that Sihanouk would be silent; if the bombing became known publicly, however, he would be forced to protest it publicly.
We also anticipated that as long as the bombing remained secret, the North Vietnamese would find it difficult to protest since they were officially denying that they had any troops in Cambodia.
Another reason for secrecy was the problem of domestic antiwar protest. My administration was only two months old, and I wanted to provoke as little public outcry as possible at the outset.
In order to preserve the secrecy of the bombing, we informed only Richard Russell and John Stennis, the Chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Although Russell was beginning to have doubts about the war in general, both men thought that the bombing was the right decision, and both said that they would back me up in the event that it became public.
Soon after Operation Breakfast began, there was a steady decline in American casualties in South Vietnam.
EC-121
Less than a month after the secret bombing of the Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia began, we were suddenly confronted with a major crisis from a completely unexpected quarter of the Communist world.
Just before seven in the morning on April 15, my bedside phone began ringing. It was Kissinger. He informed me of reliable but as yet unconfirmed reports that North Korean jets had shot down one of our Navy reconnaissance planes with thirty-one men aboard.
As soon as I got to the Oval Office, I read the fragmentary intelligence reports. The North Koreans had shot down a four-engine propeller-driven EC-121 Navy aircraft which was on a regular reconnaissance mission off the North Korean coast. Such flights had been made for almost twenty years under standing orders that the aircraft not approach closer than forty nautical miles to the coast of North Korea, well outside the international territorial limit.
It was remotely possible that the men aboard the EC-121 had been taken captive in North Korea as the Pueblo crew had been fifteen months earlier. All during the day we assumed the worst—that the men were dead—but hoped for the best.
I reacted in the same way and with the same instincts that I had felt when the North Vietnamese offensive began: we were being tested, and therefore force must be met with force.
At ten the next morning, Washington time, I met with the NSC in the Cabinet Room to consider how we would respond to our first international crisis.
Both Rogers and Laird urged restraint. They reasoned that this might be a completely isolated incident, and thought we should stay our hand until we were completely sure what had happened and why. Ted Agnew disagreed. With obvious frustration he asked, “Why do we always take the other guy’s position?”
Nothing was decided that morning, but two serious options emerged. Option One involved retaliation by sending a military strike against a North Korean airfield. Option Two involved continuing the EC-121 reconnaissance flights but sending combat escorts with them to ward off any future incidents.
Neither option was ideal. The North Koreans were well armed, and if we chose Option One we would have to be prepared to suffer further losses and to confront the possibility of reopening the fighting in Korea. And Option Two, while it would clearly establish the principle of our right to fly reconnaissance missions in international airspace, was admittedly a very weak protest against what appeared to be the murder of thirty-one men and a deliberate affront to American honor. Americans would rightly wonder about the value of our costly overseas commitments if we could not adequately protect our men and our honor in a situation that was as clear-cut as this one.
In midafternoon we received word that two bodies had been recovered from the water, along with some of the debris of the plane, ninety miles from the coast. There could be no more hope that there had been any survivors nor could there be any doubt that the incident was a calculated and
cold-blooded challenge.
Intelligence reports indicated that shooting down the EC-121 was an isolated provocation like the seizure of the Pueblo. One of them pointed out that April 14 was the birthday of North Korea’s leader, Kim Il-sung, and it was even possible that this was his macabre birthday present to himself. The case against retaliation was strongly supported in an urgent cable from Ambassador William Porter in Seoul, warning that any major military action we took would end up playing into the hands of North Korea’s extremist leadership.
On the other hand, Kissinger and I continued to feel that retaliation was important. As he put it, a strong reaction from the United States would be a signal that for the first time in years the United States was sure of itself. It would shore up the morale of our allies and give pause to our enemies. We discussed the possibility that the North Koreans would respond with an attack on South Korea. Kissinger said that he did not believe that would happen, but, if it did, we had to be prepared to take whatever steps were necessary to bring the North Koreans to their knees.
I said that plans should be initiated for Option One. And since Option Two, the immediate resumption of the intelligence flights with fighter escorts, did not preclude the subsequent use of Option One, I decided to go ahead and announce its implementation at a press conference the next morning.
At the press conference, on April 18, I announced: “I have today ordered that these flights be continued. They will be protected. This is not a threat; it is simply a statement of fact.”
In the meantime, we began to discuss a third possibility: Option Two backed up with a second round of bombing of the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. This would avoid the risks of a direct retaliation against North Korea, and still would be an effective way to impress the Communist leaders of both North Korea and North Vietnam with our resolve to support our allies and resist aggression.
Before we reached the go stage of the Option One bombing plan, I decided to call it off and adopt this combination of Option Two and a renewal of the secret Menu bombing in Cambodia. This second round, aimed at the next target area, would be called Operation Lunch.
Kissinger still felt that our credibility vis-à-vis the Communist world was at stake in our response to this deliberate challenge. The Soviets, the North Vietnamese, and the Chinese would all be watching. “If we strike back, even though it’s risky,” he said, “they will say, ‘This guy is becoming irrational—we’d better settle with him.’ But if we back down, they’ll say, ‘This guy is the same as his predecessor, and if we wait he’ll come to the same end.’ ”
I still agreed that we had to act boldly; I was just not convinced that this was the time to do it. It was a calculated risk that the North Koreans would not escalate the situation any further if we retaliated with a single strike against one of their airfields. But what if they did and we suddenly found ourselves at war in Korea? As long as we were involved in Vietnam, we simply did not have the resources or public support for another war in another place.
I also had to consider the fact that except for Agnew and Mitchell, most of my top national security advisers, particularly Rogers and Laird, were strongly opposed to Option One. Kissinger agreed that we could ill afford a Cabinet insurrection at such an early date in the administration. He also agreed that congressional and public opinion were not ready for the shock of a strong retaliation against the Communists in North Korea.
Making my decision in favor of Option Two turned out to be easier than getting it carried out. Despite my April 18 directive—and the public announcement of it—we were faced with a series of postponements, excuses, and delays from the Pentagon, and it was nearly three weeks before my order was implemented. Even worse, we discovered that without informing the White House, the Pentagon had also canceled reconnaissance flights in the Mediterranean. Thus from April 14 to May 8, the United States had not conducted its scheduled aerial reconnaissance in the Mediterranean and the North Pacific—two of the most sensitive areas of the globe.
I was surprised and angered by this situation. The North Koreans would undoubtedly think that they had succeeded in making us back off the reconnaissance flights. Thanks to this incident I learned early in my administration that a President must keep a constant check not just on the way his orders are being followed, but on whether they are being followed at all.
Before long, other issues absorbed us and the EC-121 incident was largely forgotten. Yet I remained troubled by the response we had made—or, as I saw it, that we had failed to make. I told Kissinger, “They got away with it this time, but they’ll never get away with it again.”
On April 28, de Gaulle resigned as President of France. He had staked his political future on the outcome of a plebiscite involving Senate and regional reforms.
In addition to the public statement wishing de Gaulle well, I wrote him a personal letter. I said, “The message I sent to you through official channels could not convey adequately my deep sense of personal loss when you announced your retirement,” and that “I believe history will record that your resignation was a great loss to France and to the cause of freedom and decency in the world.”
I extended an open invitation to him and Madame de Gaulle to visit the United States, and at the end I wrote, “Putting it in blunt terms—in this age of mediocre leaders in most of the world—America’s spirit needs your presence.”
When this letter was personally delivered to him at Colombey, de Gaulle read it and said, “He is a true comrade.” Then he sat down at his desk and wrote a reply to be sent back the same day:
Dear Mr. President:
Your gracious official message and your very warm personal letter touched me deeply. Not only because you occupy the high office of President of the United States, but also because they are from you, Richard Nixon, and I have for you—with good reason—esteem, confidence, and friendship as great and as sincere as it is possible to have.
Perhaps one day I will have the occasion and the honor to see you again; in the meantime, I send you from the bottom of my heart all my best wishes for the successful accomplishment of your immense national and international task.
Would you please give Mrs. Nixon my most respectful regards, to which my wife adds her warm wishes. For you, my dear Mr. President, the assurance of my feeling of faithful and devoted friendship.
Charles de Gaulle
De Gaulle died a year and a half later. I went to Paris for the funeral service in Notre Dame Cathedral, and afterward paid my respects to Georges Pompidou, once de Gaulle’s deputy, and now his successor.
Pompidou was rightly known as a rather unemotional man, and he had had his differences with de Gaulle over the years. But after waiting a moment for him to begin the conversation, I looked over and saw that he was choked up and could not speak.
Remembering how I felt after Eisenhower’s death, I waited silently until he had composed himself. The two of us had lived and worked for so many of our public years in the shadows of two giants, Eisenhower and de Gaulle. Now both were dead.
Pompidou sighed, and looking at me, said, “Enfin seuls.” He too must have been thinking about this bond we had shared; now we were alone.
LEAKS AND WIRETAPS
Leaks about the Vietnam war had plagued Lyndon Johnson during the last years of his presidency. At first he was frustrated, then angered, and, finally, nearly obsessed by the need to stop them. He tried to circumvent leaks by working with fewer and fewer people, until he was making national security policy in private Tuesday afternoon luncheon meetings with a tight circle of trusted advisers. I have already described how, when he heard that I had decided to reactivate the NSC system, he told me about his experiences with leaks and predicted that it would be a decision I would regret.
I soon learned that his concerns were fully justified. The leaks began almost with the start of my administration, and before long I experienced firsthand the anger, worry, and frustration that Johnson had described. In the first five months of my preside
ncy, at least twenty-one major stories based on leaks from materials in the NSC files appeared in New York and Washington newspapers. A CIA report listed forty-five newspaper articles in 1969 that contained serious breaches of secrecy.
Within a matter of days after the NSC held its first meeting on the Middle East on February 1, the details of the discussion that had taken place were leaked to the press. Eisenhower, whom I had personally briefed on this meeting, considered any leak of classified foreign policy information whether in war or peace, treasonable. When he saw the news story he telephoned Kissinger and warned him in no uncertain terms. “Tighten your shop,” he said. “Get rid of people if you have to, but don’t let this go on.”
On April 4 the New York Times carried a story about Soviet missile deployment based on highly classified information gathered in secret intelligence surveys.
On April 1 an NSC directive was issued that called for a comprehensive new study of alternative policies for Vietnam, including, for the sake of completeness, the radical option of unilateral withdrawal. On April 6, five days after the study was submitted, the New York Times reported that the United States was considering a unilateral withdrawal. This came as a shock to our allies and undoubtedly gave encouragement to our enemies.
On April 22 the Times ran a story based on our planning sessions for the coming disarmament talks with the Soviets. Two days later the Times had a detailed report of our deliberations on whether to post an intelligence ship off North Korea. The next day the Times reported a leak from “reliable sources” on our negotiations for arms sales to King Hussein.
I talked with Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell about this problem. Hoover’s three suggestions were to conduct background checks on those suspected as possible sources of leaked information, to have them tailed, or to place wiretaps on their telephones. Tapping, he said was the only really effective means of uncovering leakers. He told me that tapping had been authorized by every President starting with FDR.
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