Introduction
By Lloyd C. Gardner
Lloyd Gardner is the
author or editor of more than a dozen books on American foreign policy. In the last two decades he has specialized
on the Vietnam War. His books on Vietnam
include Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu
(1988), and Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam
(1995). In addition, he has
organized three conferences at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and co-edited
with Ted Gittinger the volumes that resulted:
Vietnam: The Early Decisions (1997); International Perspectives on Vietnam (2000); Vietnam: The Search for Peace,
1964 (2005). Professor
Gardner received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1960 and is
Research Professor of History at Rutgers University, where he has taught since
1963. |
The Vietnam Watch
The papers in this volume bring
together intelligence Estimates and Memoranda covering the entire Vietnam
War. Some have been declassified here
for the first time. Although they are
but a tiny fraction of CIA input into the Vietnam War deliberations and debate,
they represent a fascinating, indeed indispensable, inside look into the
efforts of the intelligence specialists to provide decisionmakers with a
reasoned analysis of prospects for the success of American policy. One can read in them the convictions and
doubts of the Intelligence Community as they change over time. They are often ahead of the curve and
occasionally lag behind the pace of events.
While there is always a desire for a “scoreboard” conclusion,
intelligence assessments have to be evaluated in context. This introduction will attempt to provide
the context within which the Vietnam analysts worked and how they viewed developments
in South Vietnam until the fall of Saigon in 1975.
The
First Indochina War, 1945-1954
Beginning in 1948 Central
Intelligence Agency analysts produced a series of papers for policymakers on
dimming French prospects for winning the war in Indochina. The first of these, The Break-Up of the Colonial
Empires and its Implications for US Security, was published on September 3,
1948. While the Cold War had not yet
spread to Asia, the Estimate offered a sobering look at the incipient rivalry
developing with the Soviet Union—and the already evident appearance of a
“colonial bloc” in the United Nations.
Unlike most later papers in the series, moreover, it directly criticized
US policies. At risk, the paper said,
were needed raw materials and access to military bases previously controlled by
the colonial powers. “Unless the US
itself adopts a more positive and sympathetic attitude toward the national
aspirations of these areas,” it warned, “and at least partially meets their
demands for economic assistance, it will risk their becoming actively antagonistic
toward the US.”
Such criticisms reflected an
ongoing debate within the US government over the “colonial issue,” one that
continued to confront policymakers with unattractive alternatives. Before World War II Americans got little closer
to the actual struggles in Asia than reading Pearl Buck’s best-selling novels
about the poor peasants of China. All
that changed with Pearl Harbor and its aftermath. Where tradition and sentiment had been the principal factors in
the national outlook, now there were many things to consider about the
crumbling colonial system and what would emerge out of its ruins. The Japanese had been driven out, but it was
far from clear that the nationalists who rose up in their wake would be
friendly to US interests, especially if Washington aligned itself with the
colonial powers.
The colonial “question” thus burst
forth with a new immediacy, but it still took second place to concerns about
the crises of recovery and reconstruction in devastated Europe. How would France recover, for example, if
not by restoring the pre-war trade patterns?
The onset of the Cold War sharpened the dilemma, pitting the potential
short-run costs of weakening the European colonial powers against the long-term
matter of good relations with the new nations.
Indochina was a special problem
from the outset. In that restive French colony American OSS (Office of
Strategic Services, a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency) officers
attempting to rescue downed American fliers behind Japanese lines encountered
Ho Chi Minh, a venerated leader of the nationalist rebellion. One of the OSS group, Archimedes Patti, had
no illusions that Ho was anything but a dedicated Communist, but he also took
very seriously the Vietnamese leader’s assertion he would not allow any other
power to replace French rule. He
desired American support, Ho told Patti, and conveyed a desire for American
support in letters to President Truman.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as the OSS group knew, had sometimes
indicated—in pretty strong terms, actually—that France should not be allowed to
return, at least not without a commitment to eventual independence.
But how FDR proposed to implement
his avowed policy was far from clear.
When Roosevelt’s successor did not challenge the French effort to
re-occupy Indochina, Patti was left with a deep sense of foreboding:
It was for me a time of sober observation because I
remained totally convinced that no amount of opposition would deflect the
Vietnamese from pursuing their independence, whatever the cost or however long
it might take. To me it was regrettable
that our own nation was not coming to terms with that reality and charting a
course which would serve our own best interests—perhaps just staying completely
out of it and maintaining a truly neutral stance, both materially and in our
planning concepts.
By the time of the October 13, 1950
Estimate, Consequences to the US of
Communist Domination of Mainland Southeast Asia, however, any lingering
attraction for a “neutral stance” about the French war in Indochina had
completely disappeared. Instead, Washington worried the French would fail and
add to America’s woes. The post-war
rush of events—the Russian atomic bomb, the triumph of the Communists in
China’s civil war, and, above all, the Korean “conflict”—had swept the agenda
clean of smudged “what ifs” and “on the other hands.” As America’s own Indochinese involvement deepened, nevertheless,
the old debate surfaced here and there in rueful comments about “missed
opportunities” to support Indochinese nationalism.
Given this tense atmosphere, it was
surprising that the October 13, 1950 Estimate asserted that Communist
domination of mainland Southeast Asia “would not be critical to US security
interests but would have serious and immediate and direct consequences.” That statement did not go unchallenged. Both the Army and State Department entered
caveats declaring that not enough attention had been paid to the long-term
consequences of such a loss, whether considered in terms of America’s global
position or repercussions in countries surrounding the areas of conflict. The Estimate focused on the narrower
question of what such a loss would do to the ability to win a global war. It was all a matter of degree to the
intelligence agencies preparing the Estimate, but the dissents presaged the
emergence later of the “US credibility” issue and the “domino thesis.”
The October 1950 Estimate contended
that while the Soviet Union would gain “bargaining power” through control of
rice supplies in Southeast Asia, the loss might be compensated for if, relieved
of the Indochina burden, France paid more attention to Europe’s defense. There could be no trade-off, however, if
prospects for Japan’s reintegration in the world economy were damaged by the
“loss” of Southeast Asia. Japan’s
economic well-being had already become a worrisome matter for
policymakers. At the 1945 Potsdam
Conference President Truman and his advisors had made it clear they would not
divide Japan into occupation zones, as had been done with Germany. Taking sole responsibility for Japan’s
rehabilitation required finding trade outlets as well as implementing
democratic reforms. “Exclusion of Japan
from trade with Southeast Asia,” warned the October 13, 1950 paper, “would
seriously frustrate Japanese prospects for economic recovery.” After a peace treaty was signed, it went on,
and American soldiers came home, the need for alternate outlets would “impel an
unoccupied Japan toward a course of accommodation with International Communism.”
Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles soon made “international communism” the cornerstone of his ideological
foundation for American foreign policy.
The term did not appear in the original Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
protocol in 1954, but a year later at a Bangkok meeting it was included in the
communiqué. “I called attention to the
fact that it seemed rather extraordinary,” he told a press conference, “when we
were making all this effort to combat something, that we couldn’t even give it
a name. And so the words ‘international
communism.’ I think that from now on it
will be respectable in this circle to talk about international communism.”
Once the term “international
communism” became accepted usage, assertions of Ho Chi Minh’s independence from
Moscow and Beijing seemed contradictory and intelligence Estimates that called
attention to North Vietnamese resistance to Russian or Chinese domination at
odds with Cold War orthodoxy.
Occasional hints at treating Ho as an Asian Tito never matured into
anything substantial. Why that was so
is easy to understand: while it might
be useful to have a Tito around to demonstrate how the Soviets treated the
unorthodox as an enemy, two Titos would be one too many. The exception that proved the rule would
then become a challenge to the reality of the frozen monolith of international
communism.
However that may be, Estimates
continued to predict a French defeat.
Paris could not really afford to continue the war in Indochina and yet
meet its defense obligations in Europe, asserted a January 10, 1952 Memo
prepared in the Office of National Estimates.
“In the absence of either some form of internationalization of the
Indochina problem or of substantial additional US aid, public sentiment for
[French] withdrawal will gain steadily and perhaps accelerate.” Hope that the French would agree to
“internationalization” had spurred Dulles’s drive to create SEATO. Then the enemy could be called
“international communism,” by far the best way to counter charges of
neo-colonialism and put the conflict over emerging nationalism in Asia into a
global context
Unfortunately for Dulles’s plan,
the French saw a better avenue, one that might leave them with influence in
Indochinese cultural and economic affairs.
They placed their hopes for extricating themselves from the war on the
1954 Geneva Conference. No matter what
arguments the Secretary of State posed, neither the French nor the British
would agree to join in creating SEATO until after the Geneva Conference had met
and explored ways to end the fighting.
A Memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) assessed that
the Russians and the Communist Chinese—the latter making their debut as a world
power—would seek to exploit such weaknesses in the “Western façade.” On the other hand, said the Memo, neither
Communist power would back a play by Ho Chi Minh’s delegation to swallow
Vietnam whole. The likely strategy of
the Russian and Chinese Communists would be to negotiate a narrow truce,
expecting to cash in later when a coalition government emerged to hold
all-Vietnamese elections. The other
side might even settle for a simple cease-fire with no other conditions but
agreement on a future conference to settle political questions. A principal object of Communist policy was
to avoid American military intervention.
The Memorandum also drew attention
to significant differences in Soviet and Chinese reasoning about a
ceasefire. The Soviets wished to
advance their post-Stalin peace campaigns, while the Chinese feared an American
military presence in a neighboring country.
Both were anxious for a truce.
That left Ho Chi Minh either to continue waging war without blessings
from his backers or to shift from “armed liberation” to political warfare. His prestige at a high point, the Memo
concluded, Ho could feel confident about achieving a political victory.
The Dienbienphu fortress fell as
the Geneva Conference discussion of Vietnam began on May 7, 1954, ruining
French plans for V-E Day celebrations.
In one city where the parade had not been canceled, an honor guard
marched under black crepe banners instead of its regimental colors. An Estimate held, however, that the defeat
need not signal a total collapse, if only because non-Communist Indochinese
themselves hoped “that the US might intervene in Indochina.” In new Estimates a shift was underway from
talking about French prospects to possible American intervention. High-level gossip around Washington had
increased even as French outposts around Dienbienphu surrendered to the
Vietminh.
Vice President Richard M. Nixon,
for example, during a speech early in 1954 had launched a trial balloon of
sorts (though perhaps not meaning to) about putting ground troops into
Vietnam. It whooshed out over an audience
of newspaper editors, spun around crazily for a few seconds, and dropped to the
floor. But when President Eisenhower
described the situation in Southeast Asia as a row of dominoes during a press
conference on April 7, 1954, the image captivated the media. Ike’s successors were stuck with it for all
time. One after another they were
called upon to confirm its validity.
Eisenhower had talked about losing raw materials and people as country
after country toppled over behind the “Bamboo Curtain.” Like the intelligence Estimates noted above,
Eisenhower stressed Japan’s still shaky economic place in the “free
world.” Japan was the last domino; when
the others fell, that vital Asian nation would also pitch over “toward the
Communist areas in order to live.”
The Geneva Conference concluded on
July 21, 1954. Its final declaration
established a “military demarcation line” at the 17th Parallel. The line “is provisional,” it said, “and
should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial
boundary.” Negotiations should begin
for all Vietnamese elections in 1956, read the declaration, in order to reunite
the country. Under Secretary of State
Walter Bedell Smith told the conference that the United States was not prepared
to sign off on the declaration; yet, in somewhat ambiguous terms, he added that
the United States would not condone threats or the use of force to disturb the
demarcation line. As for the proposed
all-Vietnamese elections, Smith said the United States had an established
policy for nations divided against their will:
“We shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections
supervised by the United Nations to insure that they are conducted fairly.”
Reporting on the Geneva Conference,
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles mused on the “fundamental blunder” that
had allowed the situation to come to this pass where a Communist political
victory seemed imminent. “Originally,”
Dulles wrote in a private memo, “President Roosevelt was against this [a French
return to Indochina] on the ground that France did not have a good record as a
colonial power and its return would not be accepted by the people.” But his successors failed to carry out his
intentions to pressure the French to grant eventual independence, with the
result that the Communists took charge of the resistance. Dulles determined to rectify the blunder by
all-out support for a Vietnamese alternative to Ho, Ngo Dinh Diem.
As the Geneva Conference delegates
returned home, intelligence Estimates suggested that Ho’s path to power still
might come through elections, or, equally likely, when whatever regime the
French and/or the Americans put in place began to falter. “Although it is possible that the French and
Vietnamese, even with firm support from the US and other powers, may be able to
establish a strong regime in South Vietnam,” concluded the Estimate of August
3, 1954, “we believe that the chances for this development are poor and,
moreover, that the situation is more likely to continue to deteriorate progressively
over the next year.”
There was a loophole in the Geneva
Declaration, however, that might at least gain some time. “There is no provision for forcing the
parties to implement or adhere to the agreements.” Even with pressure from the supervisory team from India, Canada
and Poland, the elections could be put on hold indefinitely. With guidance and
material aid the three states that once made up French Indochina—Laos,
Cambodia, and Vietnam—“might” thus attain viability and permanence. The energy and resourcefulness required for
“building national states” would not “arise spontaneously among the
non-Communist Indochinese,” it cautioned, “but will have to be sponsored and
nurtured from without.”
Our Man
in Saigon, 1954-1963
Vietnam had been divided, of
course, and that put it in a separate category. Still, there was something to
work with here, especially since the new leader in Saigon, Ngo Dinh Diem, did
not recognize the Geneva Declaration as binding upon his government. The intelligence analysts thus foresaw a
small window for creating a viable South Vietnam in the two-year period before
all-Vietnamese elections were supposed to reunite the country. It was a small window in physical terms as
well, one that permitted only a few weapons and military replacements to
squeeze through, not nearly enough to fight a big war. Until the deadline for elections passed, the
analysts believed, there would not be a widespread resumption of guerrilla
activities, much less an attempt at an all-out military assault. Communist bloc fears of bringing on a
full-scale American intervention still ruled out such adventurism, but, equally
important, the North Vietnamese Communist leadership needed time to consolidate
their rule.
During the Geneva Conference, Bao
Dai, the puppet “emperor” of Indochina, had named Ngo Dinh Diem his Prime
Minister. Although Diem was considered
pro-American, the initial American reaction was one of wait and see. Besides being staunchly anti-Communist, he
had a virtue Dulles could appreciate:
he disliked and distrusted the French.
Diem had only one program, writes historian David Anderson: obtaining “greater and more direct U.S.
assistance.” Dulles felt he had little choice but to
gamble on Diem. “Frankly, Collins,” the
Secretary of State confided to General J. Lawton Collins, who was being sent to
Saigon as Chief of Mission, “I think our chances of saving the situation there
are not more than one in ten.”
After a few months in Saigon the
General became convinced that Diem would fail—sooner rather than later. By April 1955 when he returned home to
report to President Eisenhower, Collins and the CIA were at odds over the
capabilities of the Diem government.
“Diem stinks,” summed up his view.
“If chaos is to be averted, Diem must go.” For their part, intelligence agencies were hardly in love with
Diem’s one-man (or one family) rule, but they thought the General overlooked
some significant questions, and, even more importantly, exaggerated the
likelihood that whoever or whatever replaced him would have a better chance of
success in the volatile climate of Saigon politics, where criminal sects (in
some cases guided by French interests) controlled the police.
Estimates also pointed out that
dismissing Diem might not be so easy, as he might well manage to set up an
alternative power center leading to civil war inside South Vietnam. “We believe that the resolution of the
present impasse and the implementation of the Diem solution [building a
nationalist government] would to a critical degree depend upon firm and
substantial US and French support.” The
Estimate also suggested that if Diem thought he was about to be removed from
office, he might precipitate a fight with the Binh Xuyen sect that controlled
the police. If he won, thereby
increasing his prestige, “He would be in a better position to proceed with
proposed programs for strengthening South Vietnam.”
In the event, that is exactly what
happened. Diem initiated a “war”
against the sects and effectively ended the debate in Washington. Henceforth he would be “Our Man in
Saigon”—for almost a decade until the Buddhist crisis. The episode was notable also for bringing
out relatively strong and unambiguous views about alternatives, something that
would not usually be the case in future papers. When the time for elections came and passed, a National
Intelligence Estimate in July 1956 noted that the co-chairs of the Geneva
Conference, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, had implicitly approved an
indefinite postponement of the reunification issue.
If there was a betrayal of Geneva,
then, it might be argued, both London and Moscow were accessories after the
fact. The outlook in Vietnam now was
for a lull in the struggle as both sides strengthened their bases. In North Vietnam, the first priority was to
develop more effective controls over the people and the economy. Violence and intimidation had been employed
“selectively” but not on a scale comparable to what had occurred in China after
the Communist triumph. Between 30,000
and 100,000 landlords had been put to death in North Vietnam, said another
Estimate, and the backlash at these methods had caused the regime to lose
popularity and forced reconsiderations that slowed down socialization of
agriculture. Rice production, a key measure of success,
was slowly improving, but Hanoi had to rely on Soviet help in obtaining
supplies from Burma. Politically there
were signs that the Marxist bond with China had not eliminated traditional
distrust and that Hanoi hoped to balance Beijing’s influence with closer ties
to Moscow. Here was yet another
suggestion that North Vietnam was something of an independent actor, but with
China making threatening gestures in the Taiwan Straits and Sputnik later
orbiting the globe, such maneuvers by Hanoi made little impact on US
policymakers.
The North Vietnamese, said the July
1956 Estimate, were infiltrating the Saigon government and trying to promote
sympathy for Hanoi’s claim to be the only legitimate nationalist force in the
belief that such combinations of soft power and subversion would undermine the
Diem government and, absent a major guerrilla effort to disrupt South Vietnam,
the immediate security picture was encouraging. Moreover, one objective of America’s Vietnam policy seemed to be
working well: Japanese trade was
increasing at the expense of French imports.
It remained to be seen whether the government would prove effective over
the longer run in dealing with economic and social problems, and here the
Estimates expressed serious reservations.
By mid-1959 these reservations had
hardened into outright alarm at South Vietnam’s unwillingness or inability to
lay a foundation for future economic progress, unlike the North Vietnamese,
who, whatever their methods, now had “generally realistic” policies in
place. So far, American foreign aid, in
the form of dollar grants to pay for imports, an Estimate warned, had provided
the South Vietnamese with a relatively high standard of living. But how long could that last? Diem refused
to take any measures that might reduce that standard, code words for saying he
would not tax his wealthy supporters or inquire too closely into what was being
raked off by speculators. He hoped
American investments and Japanese war reparations would make such tough
decisions unnecessary. But he would
listen to no advice about how to run his government or the South Vietnamese
economy. “Diem has indicated that South
Vietnam expects the maintenance of large US aid and special consideration from
the US as a reward for its steadfast support.
Failure to receive such special consideration could lead Diem to assume
a stance of greater independence vis-à-vis
the US.” The analysis and judgment were
both on the money. For the moment,
however, the lull continued as the North Vietnamese appeared unlikely to go
beyond propaganda, subversion, and paramilitary action, convinced it would
“mean war with the US.” Diem would not
change, however, and therein lay the future predicament that would divide
policymakers.
American military assumptions at
this time posited the real danger to South Vietnam as a Korean-like invasion
from the North, which fit in well with Diem’s desire to keep American attention
diverted from internal domestic practices.
In August 1960 a brief Special National Intelligence Estimate questioned
those assumptions with a dire warning about the internal situation. Even within urban groups and government
circles, it said, Diem’s leadership was under mounting criticism, while out in
the countryside the Viet Cong, supported and guided by Hanoi, had stepped up
their guerrilla warfare. These adverse
trends are not irreversible, but if they remain unchecked, they will almost
certainly in time cause the collapse of Diem’s regime.”
This was an especially bad time to
hear such news. The Eisenhower
Administration was looking very old and tired.
First term successes in the Cold War were yesterday’s news, and the
headlines since the 1956 Suez Crisis were about disturbing trends. Above all there was Fidel Castro in
Havana. Democratic candidate John F.
Kennedy kept repeating at every whistle stop that the Republicans had allowed
the Communists to take power only 90 miles from Florida.
Such rhetoric was sure to bring a
challenge to JFK to prove he could do better.
Eisenhower himself challenged JFK on the day before the inaugural. Laos was critical to American security, Ike
lectured the former junior naval officer.
He had to be prepared to intervene to stop the Communist threat. Kennedy sidestepped Laos, however, and chose
a diplomatic path. The real trouble, he
knew, was brewing in Saigon. Was Diem a
friend any more, or was he just getting in the way? Inside CIA’s Saigon station, as in Washington, opinions differed
on that crucial question. When a
disaffected South Vietnamese Air Force colonel launched a coup attempt, one CIA
officer, George Carver, Jr., got caught in the middle while attempting to
report events on the scene.
The episode had multiple
consequences. Carver had to be recalled
from Saigon and became a powerful voice against Diem, but then, after the 1963
coup, a powerful voice for staying the course.
The Embassy’s “neutrality” during the short-lived 1960 coup, wrote DCI
William Colby in his memoirs, convinced Diem and his brother Nhu that they
could not absolutely rely on the Americans and that they would have to deal
with the United States as “yet another outside force” with a potential for help
but also for opposition.
The first months of the Kennedy
Administration brought the Bay of Pigs debacle and the blustery atmosphere at
the Vienna Summit. In Vienna, Kennedy
and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to try to neutralize Laos, and a
conference followed in 1962. Laos was
not the prelude to US involvement in Vietnam; instead, it was the Bay of Pigs
far away in the Caribbean that had the greatest impact on Vietnam policy. In the aftermath of the failed landing and
the subsequent humiliating capture of a Cuban exile brigade trained by the CIA
with Kennedy’s approval, Walt W. Rostow, then an assistant to National Security
Adviser McGeorge Bundy, wrote to several officials warning against involvement
in Laos, urging immediate attention to Vietnam. The first thing to consider, he argued, was the need to dispel
“any perception that we are up against a game we can’t handle.” Holding the line in Vietnam would
demonstrate to the world that we could “deal with indirect aggression.”
This variation on the credibility
theme placed great emphasis on a general issue—“a game we can’t handle”—rather
than support of any particular friend.
The distinction is an important one, and it bespoke commitment to
whoever occupied the Saigon presidential palace. In November 1961 the intelligence community responded to
“hypothetical” questions about likely North Vietnamese reactions to a much
stepped-up military presence and accompanying warnings that Hanoi must cease
support for the Viet Cong (VC) or face air attacks. The Communist bloc would launch an intense international campaign
to brand the US as an aggressor, it averred, but probably not much more would
happen. Inside South Vietnam, however,
one could expect attacks on American installations. The three Communist governments—Russia, China, and North
Vietnam—would continue to feel confident the VC held the upper hand, but they
would have to recognize such steps signaled Washington’s determination to avoid
defeat. When it came down to it, the reaction to American escalation would be
counter-escalation. The paper thus skipped
around an underlying issue: what use
were signals in the kind of war being waged in Vietnam?
Kennedy increased American forces
in Vietnam and turned for advice to British counter-insurgency expert Sir
Robert Thompson, whose methods had been credited with success in Malaya. These centered on programs at the village
level and things like the Special Forces, or “Green Berets.” Kennedy met Thompson the first time in early
April 1963 and was pleased by his reports that the war was going well in Vietnam,
the strategic hamlet program, in particular.
Indeed, if things continued to go well, the President should announce he
was reducing the number of American advisers by one thousand by the end of the
year. This would demonstrate confidence
in the Saigon government and weaken Communist propaganda.
The upbeat attitude that spring
engulfed as well the office of DCI John McCone out at CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia. The Office of
National Estimates had been at work on a new Estimate since the previous fall,
and as it went forward to interested parties, including those in the military
who claimed to “know Vietnam best,” it received heavy criticism for being too
negative. At McCone’s orders ONE
revised its original paper so that the first sentence now read: “We believe that Communist progress has been
blunted and that the situation is improving.”
The story of McCone’s dramatic
intervention is told in detail by former senior CIA analyst Harold P. Ford,
whose book, CIA and the Vietnam
Policymakers: Three Episodes 1962-1968,
explores the fundamental issue present in all Estimate writing and analysis. The analyst is the modern messenger whose
penalty for bringing bad news might not be so severe as in ancient times, but
who does risk “banishment” of sorts if his conclusions fail to serve a policymaker’s
need to appear in control of events.
Once around that corner the analyst can qualify optimistic predictions
with reference points that nudge the reader to reconsider assumptions. The danger is that no one reads beyond page
one. And even after these analytic
judgments become sharper, as they did in later years, policymakers could always
extract paragraphs where the light at the end of the tunnel shined
brightest.
In the specific case of NIE 53-63,
published on April 17, 1963, the Estimate followed the first sentence affirming
that Communist progress had been blunted with a judgment that while the North
Vietnamese would not introduce regular military units in an effort to obtain a
quick victory, the Communists hoped military pressure and political
deterioration would in time create circumstances for a coup de grâce or a political settlement that favored their
cause. The document proceeded down that
path, observing along the way “some promise” in political and security matters
and raising doubts here and there about the government’s ability to translate
military success into political stability.
It was all there in the fine print.
Within weeks the political
situation was literally set afire with the Buddhist protests and
self-immolations on street corners in the middle of the day. The Kennedy Administration and American
television audiences watched these scenes with horror, and ONE could now use
straightforward language in predicting that unless Diem addressed the Buddhist
issue, “disorders will probably flare again and the chances of a coup or
assassination attempts against him will become better than even.” At the same time, the new paper added,
Washington’s “firm line” had increased Diem’s uneasiness about US involvement
in his country. “This attitude will
almost certainly persist, and further pressure to reduce the US presence in the
country is likely.”
The story of the October coup and
the divisions over its wisdom within the Kennedy Administration is a never
ending controversy. An ONE memorandum
on “South Vietnam’s Leaders” written in late August or early September, 1963,
unfortunately has not been located. A
pointed rebuttal to that memo dated September 4, 1963 argued that the Buddhist
protest had been overblown, however, and that the war could still be won with
Diem. The what-ifs in the aftermath of
the coup and Kennedy’s assassination continue to swirl through Vietnam
literature like October leaves in the wind, never settling for long on solid
historical evidence.
Years
of Escalation
In May 1964 a Special National
Intelligence Estimate said it was impossible to set any meaningful odds about
whether Hanoi’s leaders would prefer to lower their expectations rather than
face “the destruction of their country.”
Already bruited about in Washington were a variety of escalatory steps,
including bombing attacks on North Vietnam.
In response to an American escalation, ONE did not see a strong military
reaction by China, and especially not by the Soviet Union, unless American
troops actually crossed the so-called de-militarized zone. Two weeks later, in early June, Sherman
Kent, chair of the Board of National Estimates, sent a memorandum to DCI McCone
challenging the very premise of the “Domino Effect.” If one looked at these as a pair, the first describing the likely
reactions of Beijing and Moscow and the second arguing the loss of Vietnam and
Laos would not mean Communism’s inexorable spread across Southeast Asia,
Vietnam’s fate shrank back to its territorial limits.
But the domestic political
implications of “losing” a country, any country, to “international communism”
alarmed presidents and their West Wing advisers. Lyndon Johnson was especially nervous about Vietnam in an
election year. “Using troops is the
very last thing we want to do,” LBJ told David Lilienthal, “or getting stuck
with a “sink-hole kind of ‘war’ . . . just before an election here.” Moreover, his “crisis managers,” National
Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, assured
him that the best way to show his determination not to lose Vietnam was to send
a signal. So LBJ sent planes to bomb
North Vietnamese PT-boat bases on August 4 and submitted the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution to a compliant Congress.
The signal could be seen in
America, and that satisfied Johnson’s immediate need, but it was too weak,
apparently, to impress either North Vietnam or South Vietnam. In the
post-Tonkin dawn, Johnson had to risk his footing on the slippery slope he
could see before him or pull back to reconsider his next step. He could not stand still. In October ONE produced an Estimate on the
continuing disarray of the Saigon government.
One of the gloomiest in the entire series of NIE’s during the war, it
acknowledged that things were as bad as they had ever been, even before the
November coup. “Indeed, we cannot
presently see any likely source of real leadership.” By early 1965 the political situation had
reached the point where only drastic measures would convince the South
Vietnamese to remain loyal to Saigon.
Out of that dark foreboding was launched the bombing campaign, Rolling
Thunder, the albatross that strangled diplomatic options instead of bringing
Hanoi to its knees.
The first air attacks in early
February 1965 were said to be in retaliation for a VC strike against an
American base, Pleiku, in the central highlands, killing eight Americans and
wounding many more, but planning for a sustained offensive against North
Vietnam had been in the works for some time.
What put an exclamation point on the American attack was the presence of
Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Hanoi.
Kosygin had come to repair relations with the North Vietnamese leaders,
who had criticized Moscow’s supposedly inadequate aid program and cautionary
political advice. An intelligence
Memorandum drew another darker conclusion from the visit, however. The assessment, made on February 5, 1965,
was that Kosygin was there, in effect, to be in on the kill when Vietnam fell
and steal glory from the Chinese. “We
accordingly believe that the Soviet leaders seek to share—and guide—what they
believe to be a Communist bandwagon.”
As the Russians saw the situation, it argued, the United States was not
going to intervene and a Communist victory was drawing near. They expected Washington was close to being
ready to negotiate a face-saving exit.
This Memorandum, which, in fact,
could have served as a basic rationale for the bombing campaign that ensued, is
something of an anomaly among Estimates not only for its portrayal of Russian
policy towards Vietnam but for its suggestion that Kosygin’s visit presaged a
new Soviet forward attitude in Southeast Asia, and it may have reenergized a
theoretical US concern with Soviet profit-taking from “wars of national
liberation.” But there was concern
developing with the question of whether the bombing was suitable punishment for
the “crime” of attacking Pleiku. An ONE
Estimate went to the core of the problem.
Hanoi had anticipated a “prolonged and grinding struggle.” It was bolstered not simply by material
support from Russia and China but by doctrinal belief in the inevitable success
of a “people’s war,” and recent memories of victory over the French. “Our present Estimate is that the odds are
against the postulated US attacks leading the DRV [Democratic Republic of
Vietnam] to make conciliatory gestures to secure a respite from the bombing;
rather, we believe that the DRV would persevere in supporting the insurgency in
the South.” Air Force Intelligence dissented
from this Estimate, arguing not for the last time in the Vietnam war that the
selective bombing since Rolling Thunder began “may well have led Hanoi
seriously to underestimate the extent of US determination to exert the
necessary power to force discontinuance of DRV support for the insurgency in
the south.”
Thus the argument over the way the
war should be fought and with what forces had already commenced even before the
decision to send 100,000 troops at the end of July 1965. It was a bad omen. An ONE Estimate admitted the intelligence agencies had no real
answer to questions about the impact of sending troops but feared the US might
“acquire both the responsibility for the war and the stigma of an army with
colonialist ambitions.” The outcome would
depend not on military measures but on the total “effectiveness” of the US
effort. As for the American belief that
the new troops would smash the VC in a set battle, it was more likely the VC
would adapt to American strategy and continue to seek victory through
protracted conflict without ever “letting US/GVN forces engage them in decisive
battle.”
Here again the analysis was on
target. In September 1965, however, the estimators sounded a bit more
hopeful—and “hawkish.” In the past, a
new National Intelligence Estimate said, Hanoi had reason to doubt that the
United States was willing to undertake a protracted war, feelings strengthened
by repeated “US soundings and overtures for negotiations.” Now with military successes and other
tangible evidence that Washington was willing to increase its commitment, the
Vietnamese mise en scène had
changed. And it might result in the
North Vietnamese moving toward political and diplomatic initiatives.
The Estimate seemed to confirm the
views of hardliners in Johnson’s war council.
Curiously, moreover, it followed the resignation of John McCone as DCI,
to be replaced first by Admiral William F. Raborn and then by Richard Helms a
year later. McCone’s departure has long
been a subject of some controversy.
Clearly it was connected with differences with the President over
Vietnam, but it had been assumed these extended only to the way LBJ was waging
the war. McCone was a conservative Cold
Warrior brought in by John Kennedy in the wake of the Bay of Pigs debacle to
demonstrate that the Administration was not soft on Communism in the Caribbean
or anywhere. But in retirement McCone
revealed in a series of interviews that he had had doubts about Vietnam from
the beginning and was unhappy when JFK took the first step up the escalation
ladder.
Johnson’s decision to send 100,000
troops in July 1965 made McCone “desperately unhappy,” he said, and “That is
when I parted company with them.” In
those debates, McCone had argued sending troops in such numbers without
unleashing America’s full power in air strikes was wrong. “I took the position that if you’re gonna be
in a war, you’d better win it!” But it
was the military and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara McCone blamed most
for ignoring CIA Estimates that Vietnam promised only more escalation and huge
numbers of casualties.
What do you do in such a situation,
asked the interviewer? “You have to do
your best to persuade those who are not willing to accept your analysis that
they are wrong and ought to take a second look.” What, then, should Johnson have done differently in his conduct
of the war? “In the first place, he
should not have conducted it. You see
Kennedy made a mistake when he accepted the recommendations of Walt Rostow and
General Maxwell Taylor to violate the 1954 agreement which restricted the
military assistance group provided for the South Vietnamese. . . .”
McCone’s dissent had been couched
in super-hawk terms—no troops without massive air strikes—but he never expected
the President would accept that recommendation, and it appears the DCI,
“desperately unhappy,” had used a dramatic ploy, his resignation, to force
consideration of the pitfalls of the policy LBJ had accepted from his other
advisers. By early 1966 the brief
moment of optimism within ONE had passed.
On January 19, 1966, it assessed that the North Vietnamese had judged
they could absorb “a great deal more bombing” and that they still had
“political and military advantages” that promised ultimate success or at least
a far more favorable settlement than the United States was willing to
accept. A major finding was that the
Soviet Union really did not have much influence over Hanoi’s decisions. Although Moscow would prefer that the war be
de-escalated because of its own concerns with European issues, it could do
little but persevere in supporting the North Vietnamese and wait for some
opportunity for diplomacy. Another
Estimate a few days later, one vigorously contested by the Air Force, concluded
that even with bombing the ports and other attempts to interdict the movement
of supplies into South Vietnam for the VC, Hanoi could still move
“substantially greater amounts than in 1965.”
The Air Force dissent complained
that the Estimate had excluded consideration of what bombing would do to the
“psychological fabric” of the enemy and thus to “North Vietnamese will to
continue the war.” In August the CIA corporately addressed the
question of “will” directly in a 300-page “Memorandum.” The comprehensive study had been requested
by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who would explain after the war that
he had sought this intelligence study out of unhappiness about the analysis he
received daily from his own Defense Intelligence Agency and other places. Chock full of tables and statistics—perhaps
intended to impress the Pentagon “boss” in the language he knew best—the
Memorandum covered every “measurable” aspect of the war conceivable.
The Memorandum detailed the ways
the North Vietnamese coped with interdiction as no other paper had done before
it, talking about the speed with which roads and bridges were repaired. In one section, for example, it discussed
the imaginative ways the North Vietnamese dealt with bombed out railroad
bridges by using large barges with tracks installed on the decks! In contrast to the mobilization of civilian
resources in the North, it pointed out, American military forces in the South
required a supply and support system that required up to 80 percent of their
manpower. And in another remarkable
section, almost in passing, the Memorandum talked about VC taxation of GVN
petroleum trucks in enemy-controlled territory.
The Memorandum thus covered almost
every aspect of the war, going back to the 1954 Geneva Conference. Indeed, the story of the French defeat had
rarely been told so well as in these pages.
With a sense of irony about current policy, this section noted that
ambushes of American troops were taking place in exactly the same locations
where the Vietminh had emerged out of hiding to attack the French.
Eighteen months of bombing, it said,
had not reduced North Vietnam’s ability to send supplies to the south through
alternative routes in Laos, and the number of enemy forces had very likely been
underestimated. Destruction of North
Vietnam’s small industrial base would not mean much because Russia and China
supplied the necessary war materials.
It might, in fact, make it easier to divert manpower resources to other
tasks in support of the war.
The Lao Dong (Communist) Party
controlled the war in both parts of Vietnam, it went on, and while that might
confirm Washington’s insistence that the war had begun as an “invasion,” it
also suggested that the “will to persist” could not be localized and reduced to
the leadership cadre in Hanoi. As it
happened, North Vietnamese leaders were in Moscow at the same time McNamara was
reading the report he had requested, and, while admitting their problems,
refused to listen to Russian arguments that they should show more interest in
negotiations. The Communists were no
doubt disappointed by the failure to win the war when Saigon was in disarray
but not so much as to force any revision in strategy. They were waiting also for pressures to build up in American
domestic politics just as they had in France before the end of that war. Whether that was an invalid
comparison—policymakers hated that analogy—there were ominous
similarities. Just as in the first
Vietnam war, the enemy had suffered horrendous casualties over the past year,
and now as then there was no indication of a loss of will to continue.
However devastating to arguments
that the war could be won with a little more or even a lot more bombing, the
Memorandum also gave some comfort to those who believed that the other side was
hurting and that morale had become a problem for the enemy. Like some other papers, The Vietnamese
Communists’ Will to Persist held out some hope that if American military
successes continued the enemy might feel the need to reconsider its strategy in
about a year’s time, but it was presented in the final paragraph of the summary
and not as a major theme. McNamara
certainly found little in the paper to confirm the stream of optimistic reports
from military headquarters in Saigon.
In a conversation about the study with analyst George Allen, McNamara
said he found it very interesting and asked “what we might be doing wrong in
the war.” The Memorandum had raised
fundamental questions about whether any change of strategy or tactics would
produce different results, however, and Allen’s comments did not encourage new
expectations. The Secretary of Defense
had begun to reassess the entire situation, including his past confidence that
quantitative measurements showed the war being won. It was a process that would take another year and culminate in a
famous memorandum to President Johnson on November 1, 1967, advocating changes
in the bombing policy and heavier emphasis upon seeking negotiations.
Admiral Raborn’s successor, Richard
Helms, something of an old Vietnam “hand,” ordered another memorandum meanwhile
that revisited the domino thesis one last time in the Johnson
Administration. The burden of the paper
suggested that, yes, an American withdrawal would be de-stabilizing in the
Southeast Asia area, but the impact could be managed. The greatest concern would be how to avoid a US loss of self
confidence, and that was a matter for skillful political leadership. “I believe that you will find it
interesting,” the DCI wrote in his cover letter. In his memoirs, Helms noted that he sent the
memo, Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome
in Vietnam, in a sealed envelope with a blunt warning, “The attached paper
is sensitive, particularly if its existence
[emphasis added by Helms] were to leak.”
He wanted LBJ to be responsible for any further dissemination of the
document. “The mere rumor that such a
document existed,” he added in his memoirs, “would in itself have been
political dynamite.”
Even so, Helms closed his covering
letter with an ambivalent nod to Oval Office convictions about the war. “It has no bearing on whether the present
political-military outlook within Vietnam makes acceptance of such an outcome
advisable or inadvisable.” Helms maintained as well that the memo was
not an argument for or against getting out; “We are not defeatist out here” [at
Langley]. But the author argued gradual
withdrawal could be managed to minimize damage to the nation’s position abroad
and lessen the domestic political fall-out.
And it ended, “If the analysis here advances the discussion at all, it
is in the direction of suggesting that the risks [of an unfavorable outcome]
are probably more limited and controllable than most previous argument has
indicated.”
For Lyndon Johnson, however, it
offered very little political help as the proposed timetable would work out “to
Communist advantage within a relatively brief period, say, a year or so.” The memo conceded the impossibility of
disentangling such a process from the “whole continuum of interacting
forces.” “The view forward is always
both hazy and kaleidoscopic; those who have to act on such a view can have no
certainties but must make choices on what appears [sic] at the moment to be the margin of advantage.” Helms’s “secret” memo to Johnson apparently
remained a deep secret. Robert S.
McNamara writes that he did not see it until after he left office and returned
to the Johnson Presidential Library to do research for his memoirs. That is not surprising. It is hard to imagine Lyndon Johnson
immersing himself for very long in the cloudy speculations the author had
imposed on his conclusions.
He had come to see the CIA, Johnson
told a visitor, just like a problem the farmer had milking his cow. As the pail filled up, the cow kept swishing
its muddy tail in the clean, warm milk. Comments Johnson made to Australian
journalists about the domino thesis, with the assistance of National Security
Adviser Walt Rostow, might be seen as his response to the memo. Turning to the National Security Adviser,
the President asked him to summarize the consequences of pulling out of
Vietnam. Rostow gave the domino thesis
a new spin by suggesting the first reaction would be “an immediate and profound
political crisis,” not in Vietnam, but in the United States. Out of this turmoil, he argued, the forces
behind a “powerful isolationism” would emerge triumphant. Johnson then led him on to a further
conclusion: “They would say our
character had worn out?” Rostow
replied, “Yes.” And while we were
divided and preoccupied by the debilitating debate, the USSR and China would
seize dangerous initiatives. NATO
“could never hold up” as America pursued its lost self-confidence. On and on he continued this litany of
disasters, countering any and all arguments advanced in the Helms memo.
The hopeful conclusions of the
Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) about enemy numbers in the 1967
Order of Battle (O/B) controversy with the CIA were even more speculative than
the Helms memo or Rostow’s dire predictions.
Here, indeed, was a high stakes dispute. MACV had been under intense pressure to show real progress in the
war. On September 12, 1967, as CIA
estimators were meeting with MACV counterparts, the President turned to General
Harold Johnson and made it plain what he wanted: “On balance we have not been losing, the President said, and we
will change it a lot more. The
President said we should say that the enemy cannot hold up under this
pressure.” Given the attrition strategy associated with
graduated escalation—there were eventually half a million American soldiers in
Vietnam—the only way to demonstrate progress was through body-counts. If the enemy suffered as many casualties as
MACV claimed, it was possible to imagine that the situation in Vietnam was
approaching the long-promised “cross-over” point where American reinforcements
outnumbered the ability of the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong to put new men into
the field.
Many CIA analysts doubted MACV’s
estimates about the enemy’s O/B, even those like George Carver, who normally
landed on the optimist’s side of the Vietnamese fence. The dispute raged through September to
November, 1967, and ever afterwards in books and lawsuits. CIA analysts even had some deeply worried
allies in the military concerned that MACV had underestimated the size of enemy
forces. There is no question but that
the Oval Office was also involved in the pressures that forced a “compromise”
during a meeting in Saigon, as Rostow cabled the President, “The danger is
press will latch on to previous underestimate and revive credibility gap talk.”
It was becoming harder and harder
to close the credibility gap, and everyone was expected to put a shoulder to
the castle doors. Helms’s role
continued to be an ambiguous one. He
had sent the “secret” memorandum to Johnson telling the president it
represented not the work of one man but a consensus, yet he also now agreed the
CIA must “compromise” on a lower figure, 250,000, for the O/B estimate. The DCI’s complicity in accepting MACV’s
stonewalling undercut the logic of the September Memorandum and left Helms
exposed to harsh criticism by some of his best analysts.
George Carver had led the
intelligence community delegation to Saigon that accepted the compromise and
now rejoined the group, walking down the sunny side of the street. In the works for 144 days, the “compromise” Estimate
had gone through twenty-two drafts, “the hardest-fought in agency
history.” “Our information has improved
substantially in the past year or two,” it admitted in an opening paragraph,
“but the unconventional nature of the war poses difficult intelligence
problems, the more so in a social environment where basic data is incomplete
and often untrustworthy.”
From there on it was practically
pure MACV orthodoxy, portraying a growing problem for the enemy of maintaining
force levels and increasing recruitment.
“Considering all the relevant factors, however, we believe there is a
fairly good chance that the overall strength and effectiveness of the military
forces and the political infrastructure will continue to decline.” According to a chart of the sort Rostow
treasured, infiltration had fallen off dramatically in the first eight months
of 1967, from a monthly average the previous year of between 7,000 and 8,000,
to between 4,000 and 5,000.
From such statistics it was
possible to glimpse the cross-over point just beyond the next rice paddy. But Johnson never got there. The President even brought MACV commander
General Westmoreland back to Washington to assure Congress and the public. The General made speeches, gave television
interviews, and was guided along by Johnson at a Congressional briefing. “We feel that we are somewhat like the boxer
in the ring,” Westmoreland told Congressional leaders, “where we have got our
opponent almost on the ropes. And we
hear murmurs to our rear as we look over the shoulder that the second wants to
throw in the towel.”
Johnson then urged the General to
talk about what bad shape the enemy was in.
“Tell them the story about the company that came down the other day and
over 38 years of age and 20 of them didn’t make it.” Westmoreland was eager to oblige. “I talked to the President today about this, and made the point
that North Vietnam is having manpower problems.” The General then related how his
intelligence—not those 12,000 miles away from the scene—had learned from a
captured prisoner about a company of 120 men who left North Vietnam to head
south to battle. Twenty men fell out
sick or deserted. Of the rest forty
were over 38 years old. “And 38 for a
Vietnamese is an old man, I can assure you . . . So, they are having to go now
to the young group and to the old group.”
Johnson and Rostow pinned their
hopes on such microcosms even as the enemy assembled its uncounted forces
outside the cities to prepare for a massive attack. On January 31, 1968, the Tet offensive began and with it a
re-evaluation of the American role from the beginning. Helms continued to support Johnson loyally,
but his memoirs echoed those of others who believed that the mistake was
originally made by not exploring Ho Chi Minh’s overtures to President
Truman. “Some of the Americans who
dealt closely with Ho in those early days saw him as a nationalist and
idealist, a person whom the United States might profitably have supported.”
A week before the Tet attacks
began, General Westmoreland sent the Pentagon his assessment of the enemy’s
anticipated winter-spring offensive. He
agreed with the CIA station in Saigon that the incipient offensive had already
demonstrated increased urgency and tempo, but he thought that it was really a
somewhat desperate attempt to force diplomatic negotiations for a coalition
government. It would be short-lived
because the enemy had problems maintaining force levels. George Carver had reached a similar
conclusion, but when the offensive turned out to be a broad attack on cities
across South Vietnam, he asserted Saigon had earlier sent “nothing which
appeared to be very hard” that anticipated the upcoming attacks. But then this admission:
While we may be undergoing a major multiple
harassment without lasting military significance, the ultimate import will
depend on their degree of success on the ground and the impact on American and
South Vietnamese willingness to rebound.
The boost to VC/NVA morale is in any case certain to be substantial.
Tet has been debated ever
since. In an unsigned memorandum on
February 9, 1968, probably also by Carver, the “revisionist” argument was
already developed in embryonic form.
The Communist effort to rally people to the VC cause had failed, it
began. Tet could not be considered a “final
allied ‘victory’ but certainly represents an initial Communist defeat.” No one had claimed the O/B conclusions were
absolutely accurate, it went in a more uncertain tone. “The 250,000 figure is not our estimate of total
enemy strength.” Whether the figure of
60,000 enemy casualties was also not absolutely accurate, it concluded, “Total
enemy strength (as opposed to main force strength) has indeed declined.”
“’Victory’” is a slippery,
normative word,” the memo said, “not a noun with solid content.” So it is with the argument over Tet. The North Vietnamese/VC did not win a
military victory, and they suffered very high casualties, but the victory the
United States had sought since 1954 was now much farther off than beyond the
next rice paddy or the one after that.
The financial and social costs of the struggle, former Secretary of
State Dean Acheson of the famous council of “Wisemen” told Johnson on March 26,
1968, would be as hard for the United States to sustain as the force levels for
the enemy. The Wisemen’s conclusion
that the United States had to find a new way out of Vietnam rocked Johnson as
nothing else had.
The CIA briefer for the Wisemen was
none other than George Carver. The
landscape had changed rapidly since Tet.
Martin Luther King had been assassinated, setting off riots in
Washington, D.C., and other cities.
Senator Eugene McCarthy had entered a Democratic primary in New
Hampshire on a peace ticket and done amazingly well. Robert Kennedy was ready to join the race. However that might be, Carver later related
that he had told the genro of American diplomacy, “You can’t tell the people in
Keokuk, Iowa, you want to get out and tell the North Vietnamese you’re going to
stick it out for two decades and make them believe you.” But Carver made two substantive points that
went beyond wit and clever expressions:
the pacification program was in shambles, and the enemy had been
underestimated and undercounted by half.
When Johnson heard of the defection
brewing, he demanded Carver give him the same briefing. On March 26, after sitting through the whole
thing for an hour and fifteen minutes, he got up and left the room without
saying a word. Then he came back, shook
Carver’s hand, and again left the room without saying a word. Five days later he addressed the nation and
said that he was stopping the bombing of the north except in the region of the
demilitarized zone. He also announced
that he would not seek a new term for the presidency. Escalation was over.
The Elusive
Quest
When the North Vietnamese agreed to
come to Paris to open negotiations, it was no secret that their first purpose
was to secure an unconditional end to all the bombing. After that was achieved they would move on
to negotiations, but not with an eye to compromise. “The Communists see themselves more as revolutionaries opening a
second front,” read an ONE Memorandum on what to expect at Paris, “than as
negotiators exploring the possibilities for compromise.” They saw themselves as leading from
strength, though realizing their position was not as strong as they had hoped
it would be. The Americans should be
prepared for the demand that the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front
(NLF) be represented in a new coalition government.
The question of NLF representation
as an equal party to the negotiations was, of course, the hardest thing for the
American delegation to accept.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk had long ago vowed that the NLF or VC would
not be allowed to shoot its way to the peace table. The intelligence Memorandum reminded policymakers that Hanoi’s
memory of the 1954 Geneva Conference and what happened when elections were not
held two years later made Ho’s heirs “chary” of negotiations that might fall
short of its maximum goals. There was
absolutely no chance they would back down from the demand to be an equal party
at the negotiations.
The Memorandum also predicted that
the North Vietnamese would seek to manipulate the agenda in ways designed to
exacerbate relations between Saigon and Washington. Over the long summer months of 1968, Johnson and his advisers
wrestled with these conditions as the President attempted to find a safe exit
out of the morass that had overtaken his administration and endangered his
beloved Great Society programs.
Finally, near the end of October in the election year, he thought he saw
some light. In exchange for Hanoi’s
promise to initiate serious discussions and to stop the shelling of cities, the
President declared a bombing halt over all North Vietnam.
Johnson had done so with the
concurrence of General Creighton Abrams, who had replaced Westmoreland as
commander of MACV. But that was only
the first hurdle. South Vietnam’s
President Nguyen Van Thieu balked, holding out against the terms of any
agreement that would place the NLF on an equal footing with his regime. His resistance no doubt helped to elect
Richard Nixon, but the Democratic defeat cannot be said to have resulted from a
Vietnam policy that seemed either too hawkish or too dovish. Nixon had neatly avoided talking specifics
about what he would do to extricate the nation from the unpopular war that
dragged on seemingly without end.
Taking advantage of Lyndon Johnson’s March 31 declaration that he would
devote himself to finding a peaceful solution, Nixon promised not to criticize
the President and said only that if LBJ failed he had a “plan.”
Beyond the bluff and bluster of the
“madman” theory—a variation of the old story that Eisenhower planned to use
nuclear weapons in the Korean War—the Nixon plan turned out to be a long and
torturous road to a settlement that probably was worse than what Johnson could
have obtained in 1968—but that also is speculative. In the summer of 1969 Nixon announced the first withdrawal of
25,000 troops, at the same time he was extending bombing into Cambodia. On July 17th, a Special National
Intelligence Estimate asserted that despite the Communists’ ability to maintain
the numerical strength of their forces, “the Communists are suffering an
erosion of their position in South Vietnam.”
The paper argued against itself at points, as had many other Estimates,
asserting that enemy weaknesses had been revealed by the “alacrity with which
the Communists responded to the March 1968 cutback in the bombing and the US
offer to begin talks.” A few paragraphs
later, however, the paper said that while an operation against the
administrative structure of the NLF was underway, “despite some attrition and
disruption, the infrastructure remains basically intact and capable of engaging
in roughly the same magnitude of operations as it has during the past four
years.”
To prove the strength of the enemy
was “eroding,” the paper gave huge estimates of casualties. If these were not exaggerated, at 170,000
men in 1967, nearly 300,000 in 1968, and continuing at the same level in 1969,
what the Estimate was really saying was that the will to persist had not
slackened since August 1966. It had
grown stronger. But the Estimate insisted,
as had Westmoreland two years earlier before Tet, that the quality of the enemy
troops was in decline. Yet even at this
point the Estimate twisted back again to acknowledge there were adequate human
resources within North Vietnam to make up for looming deficiencies in the south
and the logistical support system “along the infiltration pipeline” remained
sufficient. The Air Force, as it had
always done when earlier questions arose about interdiction, dissented from
this judgment. Its view was that the
bombing had cut tonnage by 25% from 80 tons to 60 tons per day, “a logistics
shortfall that should result in a reduced level of enemy activities during the
last half of 1969.”
In the end, the Estimate mirrored
positions in the debate over whether Nixon’s “plan” sought only a “decent
interval” or whether “Vietnamization” envisioned long-term survival of an
independent South Vietnam. Former
policymakers and historians continue to argue the evidence. The Air Force dissent could be seen as a
rebuttal, therefore, to those who argued that at best the war was
stalemated. Finessing Vietnam to deal
directly with Russia and China was not going to be easy, as the Air Force view
suggested to some that victory was still possible. Above all, Nixon feared he could not control the political
situation if he admitted the war had been a mistake or a tragedy of missed
signals. Little wonder he played his
cards very close to his vest.
At the same time the July 1969
Estimate was being written, Nixon was speaking at an air base on the Island of
Guam, announcing a new “doctrine” that muffled the sound of clacking
dominos. “As far as our role is
concerned,” he said of the future, “we must avoid the kind of policy that will
make countries in Asia so dependent upon us that we are dragged into conflicts
such as the one we have in Vietnam.”
One can interpret this sentence in many ways and add in his promise that
the United States would honor all its commitments, but the “Guam Doctrine” sent
a shock wave through the SEATO area, particularly so in Thailand, where
National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger attempted to draw a distinction
between internal subversion, including guerrilla war, and an international
conflict. “The general policy is that
internal subversion has to be the primary responsibility of the threatened
country.”
Along with the emerging détente policies Nixon hoped to pursue,
balancing the Soviet Union and China, the Guam Doctrine could certainly be
interpreted as removing Vietnam from the Cold War battlefront. A lessening of Soviet and Chinese anxieties
about American intentions, on the other hand, might also produce a situation
where Hanoi felt stranded from its sources of supply. The intelligence community estimated in early 1970 that Hanoi was
indeed worried about the success of Vietnamization, i.e., shifting the ground
war to the South Vietnamese. The
Estimate was probably the most upbeat assessment since those in 1965 after the
decision to send large numbers of American troops into the war. Enemy casualties “still” exceeded
infiltration and recruitment rates, it said, and their military tactics were
conservationist, aimed at avoiding heavy losses. Looked at in terms of the effort to build up South Vietnam’s
military forces, the paper seemed to be saying, indeed, that the “cross-over”
point was in sight, ironically, not with American troop numbers going up but
going down!
But—and there was always a
“but”—the North Vietnamese had other advantages. “The Communists attach considerable importance to controlling the
adjacent Laotian and Cambodian border areas, which they probably believe can
continue to serve as base areas and sanctuaries.” There is considerable evidence that Nixon had renewed hope early
in 1970 that the measured pace of American withdrawal and a National
Intelligence Estimate’s report of successes in regaining and pacifying areas
previously under enemy control led him to think in bold terms about operations
to clear out those sanctuaries and give Saigon a real chance beyond a decent
interval.
The Special Estimate put a positive
spin on the Guam Doctrine, positing that Hanoi had been forced to revise its
timetable after realizing that Nixon never intended to approach the Paris
negotiations as a “face-saver” but only intended to leave gradually in pace
with the GVN’s growing strength and ability to handle the situation with
minimum outside support. Vietnamization
had added to Hanoi’s fears that Nixon had outflanked antiwar sentiments, giving
the President a great deal more flexibility with his timetable. The Nixon advantages kept mounting up. There was the Sino-Soviet split to factor
into the equation. Indeed, the mood was
close to self-congratulatory, if not giddy, about future prospects. “In these circumstances,” the paper summed
up, “the North Vietnamese leaders might deem it prudent further to scale down
the level of military operations in the South, or even to move toward a
cease-fire.”
For all the optimism, however, the
mood in the Oval Office just before the Cambodian “incursion” at the end of
April 1970 bordered on the desperate.
Cambodian Prince Sihanouk’s government had been overturned by a rightist
general, Lon Nol, whose regime came under immediate pressure from Hanoi. A joint American/GVN move against the
supposed headquarters of the NLF/North Vietnamese would serve two purposes,
then: protect Lon Nol and demonstrate that Vietnamization really was
working. Nixon expected trouble with
the antiwar movement and “up on the Hill,” but the risks seemed worth it. On television, he told the nation that the
operation would strike at the “heart of the trouble.” It “puts the leaders of North Vietnam on notice that . . . we
will not be humiliated. We will not be
defeated.”
The explosion Nixon set off with
the Cambodian “incursion” reverberated across the political landscape from
Congress to Kent State University and back to the Lincoln Memorial, where Nixon
tried to start a pre-dawn dialogue with college students from all parts of the
country. Whatever time the incursion
may have bought for Saigon, it did not do anything to improve Lon Nol’s chances
for surviving. A special National
Intelligence Estimate in early August 1970 reported that in the four months
since Sihanouk’s ouster, half of Cambodia had been overrun by the
Communists. Without outside support in
the form of heavy military assistance, the outlook was grim. He might survive until the end of the year,
until the rainy season ended, but after that the Cambodians were in for it,
with the prospect for heavy fighting against long odds.
Hanoi would have to judge above
all, concluded the paper, how the Cambodian situation would affect the will of
the US to prosecute the struggle in Vietnam.
The tone of this conclusion was very different from the pre-incursion
Estimate as it reverted to the “test of wills” theme. Hanoi had never doubted the superior physical and material
capabilities of the US, it asserted—without saying how those capabilities could
have been used differently from Rolling Thunder to Cambodia—while North
Vietnam’s hopes had lain in its ability to out-stay the US “in a prolonged
politico-military contest carried on according to the principles of
revolutionary struggle.” The public
outcry against “the Cambodian adventure” might lead Hanoi to believe it had the
upper hand now. Dean Rusk never said it better. “But it [Hanoi] must recognize that the contest in Indochina will
continue for some time.”
Calling the incursion, “the
Cambodian adventure,” was something of a give-away, even if not precisely
intended in that way by the August 1970 Special NIE. At the least it suggested Nixon’s rash effort to test
Vietnamization had made things worse, politically at home and militarily in
Cambodia. In April 1971 a new NIE
foresaw little change in the “reasonably good” outlook for Vietnam for that
year but thought an enemy offensive was likely the following year when the US
election season opened and the troop drawdowns continued. South Vietnam would continue to require
substantial US support. It took note of
serious problems in ARVN morale, while Hanoi’s advantage was still the
“apparent durability of the communist party apparatus.” Besides the communist threat, moreover, the
GVN faced other internal problems that might well produce tensions, growing
anti-Americanism, and a government relying solely on coercive powers. Should that happen, the outlook would change
to one of increasing instability “risking political disintegration.”
Then there was this gloomy summary:
Thus, it is impossible at this time to offer a
clear-cut estimate about South Vietnam’s prospects through the mid-1970s. There are many formidable problems and no
solid assurances over this period of time.
In our view, the problems facing the GVN, the uncertainties in South
Vietnam about the magnitude, nature and duration of future US support, doubts
concerning the South Vietnamese will to persist, the resiliency of the
communist apparatus in South Vietnam, and North Vietnam’s demonstrated ability
and willingness to pay the price of perseverance are such that the longer term
survival of the GVN is by no means yet assured.
No Vietnam Estimates were produced
in 1972. This was a year of intense
diplomacy with summits in both China and the Soviet Union. The spring offensive came, as predicted, and
failed to bring down the Saigon government.
Nixon could thus boast that his diplomacy had in fact isolated North
Vietnam, at least in the sense that there were no threats from Beijing or
Moscow when the U.S. mined Haiphong harbor.
In Paris the negotiations continued.
Nixon and Kissinger had introduced the POW question into the
negotiations in early 1969, perhaps seeking to gain both moral leverage and
time for its Vietnamization policies to work.
Now, however, the tables had turned, as the North Vietnamese used the
POW issue as leverage in support of their demands that Washington agree to
dismantle the political structure it had so carefully built in Saigon and allow
it to be replaced with a coalition government.
Eventually Hanoi dropped the demand that the Thieu government be
replaced with a coalition, realizing that the United States would not insist
upon a withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces from the South.
After a peace agreement had been
negotiated in October, however, Nixon pulled back, partly because of South
Vietnamese objections but also because he had little reason to fear losing the
election. Infuriated, the North
Vietnamese broke off negotiations. This
gave Nixon the opportunity to say that the Christmas bombing forced them back
to the table. The substance of the
October draft agreement, however, was not changed by the bombing, as the final
agreement in January 1973 still provided for the complete withdrawal of
American troops and the continuing presence of North Vietnamese forces in the
South. As one American diplomat, John
Negroponte, quipped bitterly, “We bombed them into accepting our concessions.”
An October 1973 Estimate concluded
that North Vietnam did not believe it could gain power through the political
provisions of the Paris agreement and would launch a military offensive to try
to reunite Vietnam. The Estimate did not
predict success for Hanoi: ARVN’s
resolve had grown stronger, it insisted, and the US had not so far dissolved
its commitment to Saigon. The ominous build-up of military supplies suggested
it would not be longer than a year away.
The unknown factor was the political situation in the United States and
whether the President would have greater or lesser freedom of action. Obviously, Hanoi would take note of any
changes in that regard.
As had always been the pattern, the
darkest prospects were placed deep inside.
Given the balance of forces within the south, the October 1973 Estimate
said, “Preemptive offensive operations of any magnitude seem well beyond GVN
capabilities.” The Communists would
undoubtedly be aware of the preparations, as they had been in the past, and, in
any case, such operations could not be sustained without “a significant
expansion of US military aid.” And that
was not likely to happen, the paper could have continued.
With Watergate tides sloshing up
against his desk in the Oval Office, Nixon’s ability to rejoin the battle in
Vietnam—even if he had wanted to, a doubtful proposition at best —was close to
zero or below. In May 1974 an NIE gave
as its best judgment that, while the picture was not entirely clear, Hanoi
would probably not undertake a major offensive that year or in the first part
of 1975. The paper argued that
eventually the North Vietnamese would have to do so or risk that South Vietnam
would become strong enough to withstand such a blow. But once again the bad news was tucked away in the back
pages. The South Vietnamese economy, it
said, was in a serious slump and the outlook was for a worsening situation with
unemployment and rapid inflation. The
problems were caused by increasing prices of critical imports and declining
amounts of US assistance. What the
paper did not say, however, was that this problem had been identified as early
as the late 1950s, when the new Diem government in South Vietnam essentially
lived off American support rather than adopting policies designed to plant a
solid foundation for the economy out of fear of alienating his supporters.
In December an Estimate revised the
judgment about a likely attack, observing that Saigon’s combat abilities had
peaked in the first year or so following the ceasefire and were now in a
gradual decline. “Without an immediate
increase in US military assistance, the GVN’s military situation would be
parlous, and Saigon might explore the possibility of new negotiations with the
Communists.” In other words, the previous
conclusion that North Vietnam could not come to power except by military means
was now put in the questionable column, but the issue depended on
Washington. The intelligence community
still believed that an all-out offensive was not likely until 1976, when Hanoi
could regard a US presidential year “as a particularly favorable time to launch
an offensive.”
The perennial concern inside and outside the
intelligence community about the political climate in the US is reflected here,
even the idea that military victory was (or had been) within reach if the will
had been there to continue the fight.
Although ONE papers had raised questions about the war from the
beginning, expressed skepticism about the domino thesis, and deflated
assumptions that escalation and bombing would deter the North Vietnamese, as
the death agonies of the American-installed government in Saigon began, these
later National Intelligence Estimates touched more and more on supposed
deficiencies in American domestic politics.
In the postwar debate over the “Vietnam Syndrome” such arguments became
entangled in current events and later wars.
The final Special National
Intelligence Estimate in this collection, Assessment
of the Situation in South Vietnam, published on March 27, 1975, predicted
that even if the ongoing North Vietnamese attack, which had come too soon
according to previous assessments, were blunted, Thieu’s government would find
itself in control of little more than the delta and Saigon. The continuing debate in America on further
aid to South Vietnam was an unsettling factor fueling defeatism. It foresaw final defeat by early 1976, a
prediction still too generous as it turned out. Outright defeat could be avoided only if there were changes in
Saigon that opened the way “to a new settlement on near-surrender terms.”
Final
Words
The papers in this collection
generally reflect sound and realistic analysis and in some cases prescient
commentary on likely outcomes, yet they also illustrate the bedeviling problems
of reaching intelligence judgments. The
first commandment for the analyst, as gleaned from the documents themselves, is
(and has to be), “Thou Shalt Not Lose Thy Audience.” National Intelligence Estimates, of course, constitute much less
even than the tip of the iceberg of advice arriving in the Oval Office. To make an impact, the Estimate must conform
at least in some way to the other information reaching the policymakers at the
highest level. Presidential commitments
usually do not wait upon the considered judgment of intelligence specialists,
however much one might wish that were more the case. Dissents from policy assumptions appear, therefore, as in these
documents, in later pages or within careful wording that sometimes seems to
require a decoder ring.
The bane of clear thinking, the
“a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that,” is present in many of the papers,
enabling the policymaker to take only what fits today’s need to fill a
gap. We know from Harold Ford’s excellent
study, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, that
at least one crucial NIE was essentially turned upside down by DCI McCone and
that in the 1967 Order of Battle controversy the CIA leadership knuckled under
to the military and MACV. Yet, on
occasion and at key turning points, the dissent and skepticism were plain to
see, as in the 1964 estimate discussing the domino thesis, the August 1966
study of 300 pages on North Vietnam’s will to persist, and the remarkable
September 1967 “Memorandum” DCI Richard Helms sent in a sealed envelope to
President Johnson, hoping he would find it “interesting.”
The process of persuading a
policymaker to reconsider assumptions is a long one. John McCone, perhaps
recalling his own role in the 1963 Estimate, would say in retirement that
Johnson (and Kennedy before him) had acted on flawed assumptions, but in the
face of such determination intelligence analysts can only hope to set in motion
a process of reconsideration. As the
situation in Vietnam deteriorated, the analysis concentrated too much on the
supposed weakening will in the US to stand up to the Communists. That was unfortunate but hardly
surprising. Perhaps down deep at its
core, the feeling was simply the reverse side of American hyper-optimism. That energy fueled insistence there were no
limits to what American good will (and technology) could accomplish even in a
place where the Best and Brightest had very little real knowledge about the
history and dynamics of Vietnamese politics and life. The war became an endurance contest, but, it can be argued, the
Estimates observed that energy alone could not sustain the effort against such
odds. DCI William Colby, who succeeded
Helms, wrote in his memoirs about “individual decisions” that might have
changed history and where intelligence’s ability to see past errors to help
formulate future policy was not properly respected. For Vietnam, he wrote, one would start the examination with
“Truman’s turn away from Ho Chi Minh’s OSS-supported nationalism.”
So Colby, who presided as DCI when
those last estimates were written and who believed at the time that the war
could still be won, joined with John Foster Dulles, and John McCone, and
Richard Helms in seeing the origins of the war in clear hindsight. “I went to Vietnam with no reservations,
”wrote a diplomat about his youthful confidence in the Kennedy Administration’s
understanding of the need to win hearts and minds in an unconventional
war. “Conveying the mind-set of the era
was a Peanuts cartoon someone later stuck on the wall in our Saigon embassy
showing Charlie Brown marching resolutely onto the baseball field with his bat
over his shoulder and his glove slung over his bat. The caption read, ‘How can we lose when we’re so sincere?’ “
The intelligence community had
reasons, and readers can find them here.