The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam

  Taylor would in the ensuing weeks prove a formidable bureaucratic player, as some, like John Vann, had already learned. As the debate over information mounted he was determined to keep as much control as possible over military assessments. In September, with the bureaucracy as divided as ever, Kennedy decided to try and get information from both Lodge and Harkins on a long list of specific questions. The request was very much the President’s and he asked that Hilsman compose it. The cable itself reflected a vast amount of doubt about the progress of the war. Eventually the answers from both men came in: the Lodge report was thoroughly pessimistic, while the Harkins report was markedly upbeat, filled with assurance, but also bewildering because it seemed to be based on the debate in Washington rather than the situation in Saigon. In it, the puzzled White House aides found a reference by Harkins to an outgoing cable of Taylor’s. They checked out the number of the Taylor cable, but could find no record of it in the White House. Sensing that something was wrong, one of the White House aides called over to the Pentagon for a copy of the Taylor cable, giving the number, though being careful to call a low-ranking clerk, not someone in the Chairman’s office who might have understood the play. The young corporal was very co-operative and came up with the answer the aides wanted, a remarkably revealing cable from Taylor to Harkins explaining just how divided the bureaucracy was, what the struggle was about, saying that the Hilsman cable did not reflect what Kennedy wanted, that it was more Hilsmanish than Kennedyish, and then outlining which questions to answer and precisely how to answer them.

  The cable had been unearthed just before a key National Security Council meeting. The White House staff was very angry and felt that Taylor had been completely disloyal, although Kennedy himself was more fatalistic than upset, being perhaps more aware of the conflicting pulls on Taylor’s loyalty. At the end of the meeting, however, Kennedy asked Taylor to come in to a private office, like, thought some of the others, a little boy summoned to the principal’s office. (If Kennedy’s respect for Taylor slipped a little, it went up for Harriman, who, not knowing of the secret Taylor cable, had nonetheless not liked the Harkins response and had told Kennedy before the meeting that there was something funny about it, somebody was playing games on him. “Harriman really is a shrewd old SOB,” Kennedy said later.) In the intensity of the debate the incident quickly passed, although it did convince some of the White House staff members of what they had suspected all along, that Harkins’ response and attitudes were being almost completely controlled by Taylor, with Krulak acting as something of a messenger between them, and with McNamara’s own position thus limited by his necessity of going along with what were deemed to be military facts. Later the civilians asked to have a set of cable machines in the White House so this sort of thing could be monitored, and the military readily agreed. The next day some fourteen machines were moved into the White House basement, grinding out millions of routine words per day, and the civilians knew that they were beaten by the sheer volume, that it was impossible to monitor it all. They surrendered and the machines were moved out, almost as quickly as they had been moved in. As for Taylor, there were those in the White House who thought him disloyal to the President, though it was clear that he felt he was acting for the President’s own good, protecting Kennedy from himself and the people around him. He, Taylor, was civilized, there were far worse people waiting in the wings if it didn’t work out, and so all of this was being done for Kennedy’s own sake.

  Now suddenly, under crisis conditions, the Kennedy Administration was finding itself confronted with the questions it should have faced and resolved almost two years earlier, when it slipped into the larger commitment. The political problems of Vietnam now seemed very real because they had acquired greater American potential, and they did not go away. For the first time the State Department people were making something of a case for the basically political nature of the war. The things that so many, like Durbrow and Ken Young, had said in the past about the Nhus seemed only too true, and now in the glare of international publicity the Administration had to come up with answers. The Administration’s hopes that there might be an easy coup had dimmed. There was that old illusion, the separation of the Nhus from the government. On September 2 the President himself went on television with Walter Cronkite and tried to disassociate the United States from the harshness of the regime and talk about the limits of the American role in a guerilla war—it was, he said, “in the final analysis . . . their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it.” Then he talked about possible changes in policy and personnel which might help the war effort. In Saigon at the exact same time, Lodge was with Nhu, trying to get him out of the government, and perhaps out of the country. There seemed to be some progress—there would perhaps be an announcement saying that the progress against the Vietcong was so great that Nhu could now retire. However, four days later Nhu went into a tirade and said that he would not leave the country, though he might leave the government. Experienced Americans in Saigon and Washington realized that this too was a fraud, that there was no such thing as Nhu out of the government as long as he stayed in the country. With this in mind, the National Security Council met again on September 6, and heard the same two factions, ending in the same negated view of policy. The civilians said it was hopeless with Diem, and the military said that it was equally hopeless without him. McNamara, pressing the military side, said this was a good time for Lodge to start talking with Diem again and restore relations to normal. Sitting in on the meeting and listening to both sides cancel each other’s arguments was Robert Kennedy, and he asked the questions that should have been asked two years earlier.

  Perhaps no one person reflected the embryonic change in Administration and in American attitudes toward the Cold War as did Robert Kennedy, the change from tough and aggressive anti-Communism toward a more modest view of the American role, and a sense of the limits and dangers of American power. He was, in mid-1963, in the middle of his personal journey, his own attitudes very much in flux. He had entered the Administration as perhaps the most hard-line member of the entire inner group, and in fact, the job he had really wanted was not at Justice but at Defense, where he wanted to be the number-two man, specifically in charge of ending what he and others in the Kennedy group believed was a missile gap. If he were at Defense, he told friends, he could serve as the ramrod, pushing through newer, tougher programs, and be a watchdog for his brother. At the same time he would be gaining valuable experience in foreign affairs, which he wanted, and similarly, escape going to Justice, where he feared his reputation as the cop of the family would become more permanent.

  He was already being haunted by this idea, that no matter what he did or how he served his brother and his country, the public would think of him as the ruthless cop. So he had pleaded with his brother, and Jack Kennedy did take the matter up with McNamara, suggesting that if he needed a deputy at Defense there happened to be a very good one in the Kennedy family. McNamara smiled and the President-elect quickly protested that Robert Kennedy was very able indeed. McNamara nodded and said that he had never doubted that, but if the President would think for a minute—suppose he were a senator and wanted something done at Defense, would he call the Secretary of Defense or would he call the President’s brother? The President understood. The next day Robert Kennedy was talking with a friend and the subject of the job at Defense came up. “Well,” he said, “that’s out. If you were Bob McNamara, would you want the President’s little brother always there spying over your shoulder?”

  So he had entered the Administration, against his will, at Justice, but he had played a major role in foreign affairs. It was Robert Kennedy who had been primarily responsible for the counterinsurgency enthusiasm. Toughness fascinated him; he was not at ease with an America which had flabby waistlines. The enemy both at home and abroad was determined; we had to match that determination. If he worked until midnight, and on driving home saw the lights on in the offices of Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters Union, th
en he turned around and drove back to his office. The standard by which he judged men was how tough they were. Early in the Administration, when he was overwhelmed with speaking requests and was turning almost all of them down, he had received one from a Polish group. He immediately seized on it: “Let’s do this one. I like the Poles, they’re tough.” He had been a major force in promoting the career of Maxwell Taylor and diminishing that of Chester Bowles; his relationship with Taylor was different from his relationship with other men in the Administration. With almost everyone else his questioning was hard and relentless; he did not really respect age or title. But with Taylor he was markedly uncritical; whatever Taylor said went through almost unchallenged. He was genuinely in awe of Taylor’s war record, the fact that he had dropped by parachute into Normandy and that he had run a special mission for Eisenhower behind the Italian lines. For Bobby Kennedy those were real credentials.

  There were several qualities which set him apart from others in office. The first was total confidence in his relationship with the President. The second was an almost absolute insistence on being well and honestly briefed. The third was a capacity, indeed an instinct, to see world events not so much in terms of a great global chess game, but in human terms. As such he retained his common sense, it was at least as strong as his ideology (when others were talking about a surgical air strike against Cuba during the missile crisis, he said very simply that he did not want his brother to be the Tojo of the 1960s). Out of all of this came the final characteristic, the capacity to grow and change and to admit error.

  In 1962 he had stopped at the Saigon airport long enough to say that we would stay in Vietnam until we won, but he had also learned a very important lesson: that most of the official reporting was mythological. He was supposed to be briefed at the airport terminal by the top members of the mission, all of whom, in one another’s presence, assured him that everything was just fine, everything was on target. “Do you have any problems?” he asked. No, said everyone in unison, there were no problems. He looked at them somewhat shocked by the response. “No problems,” he said, “you’ve really got no problems? Does anyone here want to speak to me in private about his problems?” And then one by one they talked to him at length and it all came pouring out, a brief and instructive lesson in what people would say for the record and what they would say in private.

  By 1963, as his perceptions had developed, he was no longer just the President’s little ramrod brother with a simplistic, hard-line view of the world, but now he had a new reputation, as the best man in government to bring an unconventional idea to. Some of the people working under Harriman, like Forrestal and Hilsman, felt themselves encouraged in their doubts by Robert Kennedy and felt that he more than anyone else in the upper level of government regarded the war as a war and in particular a war where civilians might be paying a particularly high price. His questions at meetings always centered around the people of Vietnam: What is all of this doing to the people? As his skepticism grew about how well the war was going he would ask, “Do you think those people really want us there? Maybe we’re trying to do the wrong thing?” His common sense, among other sensibilities, was offended by it.

  Now in the early fall of 1963, sitting in these meetings, listening to one side say that it could not be done with Diem, and the other side say that there was no one but Diem, he was appalled. Perhaps, he said, this was the time to consider withdrawing. It was a brief moment, but he was focusing on the central question, which everyone else, for a variety of reasons, had avoided. Up to now the debate had always been on the peripheral questions, in large part because it was safer that way. By concentrating on Diem, the liberals could attack the policy without being necessarily accused of softness on Communism. Diem had proved himself illiberal, and that was why the policy was failing; going further than that was a tenuous thing and might arouse considerable opposition. A bureaucratic doubter could keep his bona fides only by saying that he was for the war and for South Vietnam; it was only Diem he was against. Perhaps it was symbolic that the first senior official who questioned the overall policy was Robert Kennedy, totally secure in his place in the Administration, and also secure in his credentials as an anti-Communist. The question he raised was not discussed; it was still too sensitive a point. Perhaps that was how he intended it, as a beginning, an airing of a new idea, and giving it just a little respectability.

  Thus with both sides still negating each other, with everyone in Washington still committed, they decided at the September 6 meeting of the National Security Council to try one more special report from Saigon. Each side pushed for representatives from Saigon to report back to Washington, and for its Washington people to visit Saigon and report back. McNamara wanted Krulak, and Harriman, equally tough in the infighting, made sure that a foreign service officer of comparable rank went along. Joseph A. Mendenhall, a senior officer who had had experience in Vietnam and who was fed up with Diem, was chosen. In addition Harriman, notified that two key members of the American mission in Saigon had changed their views, lobbied for them to come back with Krulak and Mendenhall to brief the White House. They were Rufus Phillips, who ran the crucial strategic hamlet program, which was part political and part military, and John Mecklin, head of the USIA in Saigon. Phillips was an ace in the hole for Harriman and his group. Whenever there had been pessimistic civilian appraisals in the past, the top figures in the mission had always used the strategic hamlet program as their counterargument: how could anyone say the political situation was bad when the hamlet program, which was the key to the rural success of the commitment, was going so well, was way ahead of schedule? But if Phillips was willing to discuss the failures of the hamlet program—which would reflect on military failures as well—then this would be significant, far more important than anything Mendenhall could say. Harriman had come upon some of Phillips’ quite pessimistic reporting in recent weeks, and he had taken great delight in having it shown around Washington. He had told Forrestal to make sure McNamara saw it, and on September 1 the report was sent to McNamara. There was no immediate response from the Secretary, but Harriman was ready to play for bigger game.

  To the military, Krulak was the most important figure. He was the military’s most skilled bureaucratic player in Washington at the time, a figure of immense import in the constant struggle over Vietnam. He was the special assistant to the JCS for counterinsurgency, though of course he had no background on guerrilla warfare. What he really did was serve as a messenger between Saigon and the Pentagon, and represent the military at intergovernmental meetings, where his special assignment was to destroy any civilian pessimism about the war and to challenge the civilian right to even discuss military progress, or lack thereof.

  He was the shortest Marine in the Corps’ history, which had earned him the nickname Brute, and his toughness, reputation and nickname appealed to the Kennedy sense of vigor and drive. He was a very good briefer, not falling back on clichés but expressing his points in powerful, cogent terms. This fascinated and delighted McNamara, who hated briefings by most of the generals, and he remained a McNamara favorite long after it became clear that Krulak had participated in serious misrepresentations to the President. He was charming and sophisticated, and he did his staff work well; if anyone needed a paper on Vietnam, Krulak’s office could cough it up much faster than those bumblers at State. He did not neglect the social end of it; he drove by Justice and picked up Bobby Kennedy on the way to meetings, courting him assiduously; he played golf with John McCone at Chevy Chase. He was strong and aggressive, and yet for all of that, quite subtle. Doubters on the policy like Michael Forrestal were always impressed how subtle Krulak could be in private, sharing their doubts—yes, he, Krulak, wasn’t blind, he knew these problems existed—though of course speaking differently in meetings. He was, for all the intelligence and charm, a proponent of the straight MACV-Harkins line, as the official minutes of the special counterinsurgency group reveal for that crucial period (“February 7, 1963 Krulak says
real progress is being made in the struggle. Vietcong morale is deteriorating . . . March 14, 1963 Krulak says Vietcong activity is at a level 50 percent below last year . . . May 9, 1963 Krulak, back from a Honolulu meeting with Harkins, says that all trends are favorable . . . May 23 Colonel Francis Serong, Australian guerrilla fighting expert, expresses doubt on the Strategic Hamlet Program saying it is overextended, and that it has left vast areas from which the Vietcong can operate freely. Krulak immediately and violently challenges him . . .”).

  Now Krulak would travel with Mendenhall, for what was to be a special report for the President. He was to use his eyes and ears to represent the President of the United States. He did nothing of the sort. He and Mendenhall spent some time together in Saigon; then they went different ways. Mendenhall had his doubts confirmed and Krulak went out into the field. Before he did, however, he picked up a voluminous report specifically prepared for him by Harkins and Stilwell, filled with all the good indices. The report would now become not a Harkins report, but a Krulak report. When they were at the airport, ready to leave for Washington after their four-day whirlwind tour, David Shepard, Saigon deputy head of the USIA, asked Mendenhall what he thought. “What you people have been reporting, only worse, and I’m going to tell the President that,” Mendenhall answered, “but I think I’m going to have trouble bringing Krulak along.”

  It was an understatement; the reports they gave at the next National Security Council meeting could not have been more different. For Krulak the important thing, the shooting war, was fine, it was going according to schedule, particularly out there in the countryside. If there was any dissent about the regime, it was aimed at the Nhus, not at Diem. Diem was good. Our man. Respectable. All we had to do was stay with the program. Since Mendenhall was not allowed to challenge the military reporting, he described the collapse of the civilian morale, the atmosphere of fear and hatred in every city, and he said that yes, the government had finally succeeded in unifying the population—though against itself. The war in the countryside, he said, was now secondary to the opposition to the regime.