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Turning Point: The Vietnam War, Pt. 3

In Vietnam, after the 1963 overthrow of Diem, there was a period of instability and power struggle—five governments rose and fell. One of the leading figures at that time was Nguyen Cao Ky, who came up through the Air Force and was prime minister from 1965-67. One of the problems with Ky was that he was part of a drug ring carrying opium from Laotian refineries into South Vietnam. (The Great Heroin Coup, by Henrik Kruger, pp. 134-35; Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, pp. 209-222). The other problem with Ky was his flashiness and outspoken nature. He once said, “People ask me who my heroes are. I have only one: Hitler.” But he also admitted that the communists were closer to the people’s yearning for social justice and an independent life than his government was. (Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, p. 332)

I

All this made him unpalatable for presidential leadership. Lyndon Johnson decided to hold an election in 1967 with Nguyen Van Thieu as president and Ky as Vice President. The pair won in another rigged election. Soldiers showed voters how to mark their ballots, and they encircled the legislature while it recorded the electoral tally. (Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, p. 466; Washington Post, article by Richard Pearson,10/1/2001)

Lyndon Johnson wanted the illusion of a democratic state, which South Vietnam was not. Accompanying this illusory aspect were various pronouncements by both Johnson and military officers about the progress of the war. General Westmoreland even taunted Hanoi to begin an attack since the Americans were ready. (Karnow, p. 514) Joseph Alsop, a well-connected and powerful columnist, wrote that Thieu and Ky predicted the war would be over by the end of 1967. (The Myths of Tet by Edwin Moise, p. 15) At the end of July 1967, Walt Rostow told Dan Ellsberg “The other side is near collapse…victory is very near.” (ibid, p. 18). In November of 1967, President Johnson brought Westmoreland to Washington, and he said the enemy was “running out of men” and “trying desperately to win a victory.” (ibid, p. 95) At the National Press Club, he then said the communists were certainly losing the war and had not been able to win a major battle in over a year. General Bruce Palmer said the Viet Cong had been defeated from Da Nang all the way down to the populated areas. (ibid, pp. 98-99)

The film does a decent enough job in showing this political, military and press optimism, which will be shocked by the size and scope of the Tet Offensive. But it does not show the tactical maneuvering that made Tet so surprising in its effectiveness. General Giap decided to create two diversions to draw out the Americans and the ARVN to the north and west. These were at Khe Sanh, and then Loc Ninh and Dak To. (Moise, pp. 113,114) The first became a major battle, which had both Westmoreland and Johnson so worried that they considered using atomic weapons. (Erik Villard, History.net, 3/2/2022)

The second factor that the program underplays was the intelligence failure that made the attack such a surprise. To this day, there is a dispute about how many men Hanoi was sending south prior to Tet. Westmoreland’s initial claim was between 5,500 and 6,000 per month. Even he later said that was wrong. The most reliable tally today is that the number was probably about three times that or a bit more. There was an utterly massive influx in January of 1968, as high as 45,000. And this should have been a telltale indication that something was coming. (Moise, p. 121, p. 123)

But Westmoreland was so taken by surprise that he actually stated in February of 1968 that, “The units committed to this campaign, we carry on our order of battle.” He later added, ”No previously unidentified unit showed up.” That was simply wrong, and he probably knew it was so when he said it. (Moise, p. 124). In fact, it was so wrong that Pentagon headquarters in Saigon, Military Assistance Command Vietnam, later revised their pre-Tet infiltration figures upwards.

Also going unmentioned in the film is the other claim by the Army: that the Viet Cong had thrown everything they had into Tet. Or as one officer put it, the VC were scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits. This was also not true. Many Viet Cong units were simply not in position to be active in the attack at the time it happened. The initial estimates were that about 84,000 Viet Cong and infiltrated Hanoi troops participated. But Hanoi later came out with their own study saying they had used over three times that many over the whole 45-day barrage of attacks, and still had some in reserve. (Moise, p. 128)

The only man who realized how large the coming attack was going to he was the legendary CIA analyst Sam Adams, and he did not figure it out until a few days prior. Also, very late in the day, January 25^th, some DIA analysts proffered the idea that Khe Sanh might be a diversion to pull American forces away, but as this got upwards in the hierarchy, it was ignored. (ibid, p. 130) Again on January 25^th—five days before Tet—the National Security Agency warned that there might be some coordinated communist attacks coming. But the warning did not say they had targeted cities or that it would be so widespread. (Ibid)

II

It is important to elucidate the intelligence failure that made Tet possible, for the simple reason that the offensive could not have been so powerful if it had been in any way expected. But there were almost no preparations for it. The only officer who even tried to do something in advance was General Frederick Weyand. He cancelled some operations near Cambodia and moved forces closer to Saigon. This may have prevented the capture of Tan Son Nhut Airport. But the overall feeling afterwards was conveyed by General Creighton Abrams, who “wanted to fire every intelligence officer in Vietnam.” It was that bad. (p. 132)

Needless to say, the hopeful line that the Army and the White House had been feeding the public made the impact even worse. During the entire expanse of the multi-phased operation, scores of towns and cities were attacked, and it unfolded for weeks on end.

If anything, the film underplays the impact the assault had in the press and in Washington. As Clark Clifford, the designated Secretary of Defense, said, “Tet, to me, was the roof falling in.” Lyndon Johnson later said that it was a shock–he did not expect an attack that was so large and so coordinated. White House Press Secretary George Christian said it was a huge surprise. He thought the Viet Cong were under control, and it was not possible for them to rise to the offensive heights they did. (Moise, p. 152)

Because of the continuing battles at Hue and Khe Sanh, Westmoreland asked for more troops, over 200,000. This notice ended up being leaked to the press, and it created a firestorm of controversy. A New York Times editorial called it “Suicidal Escalation”. (March 11, 1968) The editorial then ridiculed the notion of a light at the end of the tunnel, which it now characterized as a bottomless pit headed nowhere: “The American people have been pushed beyond the limits of gullibility.”

The film leaves out two rather important events that occurred as a result of this request. One was a meeting of the so-called Wise Men at the White House. This included people like Robert Lovett, Averill Harriman, and Dean Acheson. The military was giving their reasons for the call-up, and Johnson followed with a speech supporting it. In the middle of the speech, Acheson got up and walked out. When he was phoned after and asked why he left, he said, “You can shove Vietnam up your ass.” Johnson got on the line, and Acheson explained that the Pentagon was giving canned briefings and he would not stand for it anymore. He would only listen to people on the ground in Vietnam and read the raw data. This is how the group turned against the war. (The Wise Men, by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, p. 687)

Shortly after this event, Clark Clifford was sent over to the Pentagon. President Johnson wanted him to get the raw data and find out how the Joint Chiefs planned on winning the war after Tet. Clifford went there day after day for over a week. He asked many pointed questions, e.g., if we sent in more troops, would not Hanoi counter by sending more of their men? The remarkable thing about these interviews is that Clifford had been on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board prior to his appointment as Secretary of Defense. At that time, he had been a hawk. He found the answers he got so unsatisfactory that it caused him to change his mind on the subject. He advised Johnson to begin to get out. (Isaacson and Thomas, pp. 683-89)

The film does show the famous editorial comments on the war by Walter Cronkite, who labeled the conflict as a stalemate. LBJ reportedly said that if he had lost Cronkite he had lost Middle America, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn2RjahTi3M) The program states that CBS president Dick Salant allowed Cronkite to do this editorial and backed the newsman after. It does not mention how, four months later, Salant allowed Warren Commissioner John McCloy to secretly have approval over the CBS four-night special endorsing the Warren Commission–and then would not admit to what he had done. (Click here for more on that https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/why-cbs-covered-up-the-jfk-assassination)

III

The film deals extensively with the battle at Hue during Tet, and it describes the massacre that took place there. Oddly, it does not go into any similar depth about Khe Sanh, which was a massive siege that lasted 77 days, beginning about a week before Tet. It resulted in 35 downed helicopters, 23 aircraft lost, and 2700 American casualties. When it was all over and the siege was lifted, the entire base was abandoned and then destroyed, rather than risk another such siege.

The film uses Ron Haeberle to tell the story of the My Lai massacre. Haeberle was a combat photographer who took many photos of My Lai. These made it simply impossible to deny what had happened. They were published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He also wrote a personal account of the episode for that newspaper. The photos were then sold to Life magazine and were published in its December 5, 1969, issue. They created an immediate sensation. As did his testimony before Congress, where he described simply wanton slaughter of everyone, including women and children. The film also relates the story of Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who did the most to halt the operation in real time and escorted many civilians away from the scene. Thompson was probably the most heroic person involved in the atrocity. (Click here for the film Four Hours in My Lai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYzb9DH7YAE&list=PL_i8Q5O9tfujtnIlaV4vmZ9lUpLcb_mtH) )

Although Turning Point does deal with some of the trials that happened after the atrocity, like those of Captain Ernest Medina and Lt. William Calley, it does not interview author Doug Valentine. In his fine book, The Phoenix Program, he made the argument that My Lai was really a CIA operation meant to eliminate Viet Cong sympathizers, and the Agency passed on lists to the military. William Peers, a former CIA officer who had served previously in the OSS, was appointed by Westmoreland to do the military inquiry into the massacre. During the Vietnam War, Peers began in special operations and then became a special assistant for counterinsurgency under the Joint Chiefs. Peers and journalist Sy Hersh—who wrote two books on the subject—more or less localized the affair. The latter largely chalked it up to incompetence and ambition. Hersh specifically wrote in his second book, “There was no conspiracy to destroy the village of My Lai 4….”(The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 367)

IV

The Tet Offensive was enough for Johnson to recall Westmoreland. The general was now made Chief of Staff of the US Army. Creighton Abrams became the commander in Vietnam.

Johnson’s betrayal of Kennedy’s Vietnam policy had dealt him a lethal political body blow. Allard Lowenstein and Curtis Gans organized a Dump Johnson movement. In the autumn of 1967, Senator Eugene McCarthy had agreed to be their candidate. In November of 1967, he announced his candidacy. He entered the Democratic primaries running as an anti-war candidate. At first, no one believed he really had a chance to defeat the incumbent Democratic president. But on March 12, 1968, in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, Johnson was held to 49% of the vote.

McCarthy had galvanized American youth against the war. They journeyed to New Hampshire to work as volunteers. On the other hand, Johnson was so confident he had not filed, and was therefore not on the ballot. McCarthy was so well organized that he captured the majority of the delegates. The political impact was shocking. As revealed in the book 85 Days, Bobby Kennedy had decided to enter the race prior to the primary. But since he had made the decision so late, he did not announce until after the results were in. Johnson was now faced with not one but two strong opponents.

The film does little with Bobby Kennedy’s criticism of Johnson about the Vietnam War. But yet, as many have observed, Bobby’s attacks really disturbed Johnson. Daniel Ellsberg worked for Bobby in 1968, and he knew that RFK understood there was no victory for America in Vietnam. We could not bomb our way to peace. (Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail, p. 477) The last thing Johnson wanted to contemplate was losing to Bobby Kennedy in the primaries. But the word was out that the president’s campaign in Wisconsin was collapsing. The film depicts Johnson on the phone, realizing that he had now been labeled a war president, and it was a highly unpopular war. Using then-Johnson employee Polly Baca as a witness, the film reveals the almost tangible antipathy between Kennedy and Johnson. With one defeat barely avoided and another staring him in the face, on March 31, 1968, Johnson went on television and made a shocking declaration: He was not going to run.

This was a political earthquake. But then, just four days later, another tremor was felt: Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. The film shows Bobby Kennedy’s famous speech that night in Indianapolis, where he announced to the crowd that King had been killed. He urged the assembly not to strike out in fury and violence. Unnoted is the fact that that was the only major city that did not erupt in rioting.

After Tet, after Johnson’s abdication, after King’s murder, what could now happen? Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. The film interviews Baca and Chic Canfora, who both worked for the RFK campaign. Canfora cannot speak; the memory of RFK’s death is too painful. With those two men dead, there was no one to represent the anti-war youth at the Chicago Democratic convention. Baca talks about being in a crowd when the police began striking the demonstrators with batons, and blood began to flow. Canfora observes that the powers that be wanted the war to continue and were willing to silence any voices that were opposed to it. (And that is as far as the film goes with that concept.)

Canfora then observes that this process eventually led to someone who was even worse than Lyndon Johnson. That was the man JFK defeated in 1960: Richard Nixon.

Click here to read part 4.

Turning Point: The Vietnam War, Part 2

All you need to know about the quality of this series is that director Brian Knappenberger gives the last word on Kennedy’s Vietnam policy to Dan Rather. This is the man who perhaps has done more to obfuscate how Kennedy was killed than any living person. (Click for one aspect https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/22/how-cbs-news-aided-the-jfk-cover-up/) And since the program does not reveal any of Kennedy’s early talks in 1951 with people like Seymour Topping, let alone his withdrawal program, Rather can give that notion the back of his hand. (Seymour Topping, On the Front Lines of the Cold War, pp. 152-56)

I

In Part 2, the series finally gets to the origins of the war. We get a brief biography of Ho Chi Minh and his letters to President Truman for support in his attempt not to be recolonized by France after World War II. I could detect nothing about how Secretary of State Dean Acheson advised Truman to begin supporting the French effort to take back Indochina. Or the unwillingness of Paris to grant any true independence through their stand in Bao Dai. Even at this early date, there were analysts in the State Department who felt that Ho’s resistance would eventually lead to a war between his followers, the Viet Minh, and France. (Pentagon Papers, Volume I, p. A-5) These same analysts found there was no proof that the Soviets had a strong influence on Ho Chi Minh as late as 1948, when the imperial war had begun in 1946. (ibid, p. A-6)

By 1950, Dean Acheson had altered the American policy of chilly neutralism. This was due to the recognition of Hanoi as a state by Moscow. That was enough for Acheson to declare Ho Chi Minh a communist, not a nationalist. (ibid, p. A-7) By the summer of 1950, Acheson and Truman were extending aid to the French puppet Bao Dai. From here on in, the USA became more and more involved in the war. Later in 1950, they initiated a Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saigon to aid Paris.

Truman and Acheson had reversed Franklin Roosevelt’s aims in Indochina. FDR was clear on this to Secretary of State Cordell Hull:

Indochina should not go back to France. France has had the country…for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning….The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that. (Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, p. 112)

In other words, Kennedy was aligned with Roosevelt in that he valued nationalism in the European colonial empires over the American alliance with France. Acheson valued his alliance with France more than he did the decolonization dictates of Roosevelt. All of this crucial history is just about absent in Turning Point, even though this in itself is a clear turning point in the conflict. But then comes something even worse, as the film literally leaps to the siege of Dien Bien Phu.

How is it possible to jump to that fateful siege without mentioning that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower had ratcheted up the aid to France exponentially when the general took office? By 1954, America was supplying almost 80% of the funding for the war. This was because Foster Dulles was even more of a dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warrior than Acheson. In 1953, twelve shiploads of arms were coming in per month, and by 1954, it totaled about a billion dollars per year. (Operation Vulture by John Prados, see Chapter One of the e-book version.)

II

But despite all this, the French strategy to lure Hanoi’s commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, into a trap in the northwest area of the country did not work. In fact, Dien Bien Phu, which cost the Americans 300 million dollars, backfired. (Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin, p. 33) About a month into the 55-day siege, it became apparent that Giap had outsmarted French General Henri Navarre. Foster Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon could not accept this impending loss. So Nixon developed an alternative scheme: sending American ground troops. (Prados, Chapter 9)

Then came something even wilder: the use of atomic weapons, code-named Operation Vulture. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 267) Incredibly, Dulles thought the use of these bombs would be simply an extension of conventional warfare. Recall, this is just nine years after Hiroshima. Nixon became the floor manager in Congress for Vulture. In keeping with his anti-colonial views, the chief outspoken opponent of this fruity scheme was Senator John Kennedy. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 268) One reason I think the film leaves out Vulture is because this Kennedy opposition would have undermined the false portrait of Part One.

Eisenhower would not approve of Vulture without British backing. But England would not go along with the project. British clearance was refused even when Foster Dulles himself went to London to lobby for it. (Prados, Chapters 6 and 8) When Eisenhower would not let it proceed unilaterally, Foster Dulles used his last card. He offered the bombs to the French foreign minister. Georges Bidault pointed out something that, in his messianic zeal, Dulles had overlooked: “If those bombs are dropped near Dien Bien Phu, our side will suffer as much as the enemy.” (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 245)

Dien Bien Phu fell in early May of 1954. In a stunning lacunae, almost all of the above concerning the attempts by Nixon and Foster Dulles, and their schemes about ground troops and Vulture is absent. Yet it is essential. Once one realizes the lengths that Foster Dulles and Nixon were willing to go to in order to save France’s Indochina empire, then, and only then, can one understand what they did next. After the defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the Eisenhower administration never intended to abide by the strictures of the peace conference, labeled the Geneva Accords.

Those Accords allowed for a division of the country between the north and south, in preparation for elections to provide for one leader under unification in 1956. The problem for Foster Dulles was that both he, Eisenhower and Nixon knew that Ho Chi Minh would win any popular election in a landslide. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 139) So Dulles had his representative make an oral pledge to abide by the accords, but instructed him not to sign them. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 268)

Now, one of the Geneva guidelines was that “the military demarcation line is provisional and should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary.” (Trapped by Success, David L. Anderson, p. 62). The area in the south was under the temporary supervision of France, which pledged not to interfere, to the point of keeping Bao Dai’s team out of the final negotiations. (ibid, p. 63) Since Foster Dulles controlled the allied side, one can conclude this is what he wanted. Dulles violated this territorial stricture fairly early.

III

As Seth Jacobs outlines in his biography of Ngo Dinh Diem, the CIA had been alerted to Diem’s anti-communist and anti-French qualities in the early fifties. Diem understood that the USA played the major role in the French imperial war by that time, and would likely take over if Paris lost. So he spent years in the USA after leaving Vietnam in order to publicize himself as being able to take over for the puppet Bao Dai if France left. He managed to attract the attention of powerful people, like Congressman John McCormack, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Supreme Court Justice William Douglas. (Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin, pp. 29-32) Diem ended up meeting with Robert Amory of the CIA in the spring of 1953 and shortly after with Senator Mike Mansfield. Mansfield sponsored a luncheon for him, which included Senator Kennedy, Cardinal Spellman and Congressman Clement Zablocki. (Jacobs, p. 31) At this luncheon, Diem criticized both the French and Ho Chi Minh, and he said he could fill the area between them and rally the population to fight for him. (ibid, p. 32) This was a sales pitch, of course. As we shall see, Diem could never balance Ho’s popularity or rally a force to defeat the Viet Cong, let alone the army of North Vietnam.

Diem then went to France, where he did not do well at all. (Jacobs, p. 32). But this did not really matter since France would be out of the equation soon. Bao Dai knew that Diem had the backing of powerful people, like Acheson, whom he had met in 1951. Bao Dai, therefore, did what Foster Dulles wanted and appointed Diem as the new leader in the south. Diem requested full powers over the state, and he got them. (Jacobs, p. 139). But when he arrived in Saigon, Colonel Edward Lansdale noticed a problem. His enclosed limousine sped by, and he did not mingle with the crowd Bao Dai had paid to greet him. Diem was never, and would never become, a man of the people. He wore Brooks Brothers suits, spoke good English, was a Catholic in a Buddhist nation, and had his hair styled like an American. In that regard, he was no match for Ho Chi Minh. The CIA and Lansdale had made a big mistake.

On top of this, Diem never planned on being a democratic leader in the south. He did not believe in civil liberties: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or assembly. He certainly never bought into free and fair elections, which Lansdale rigged for him. (Jacobs, p. 95) Viet Minh suspects at times were beaten, had their bones broken and some females were raped. Diem even authorized the use of the guillotine by mobile courts in the countryside. (Gordon Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster, p. 51) If Lansdale ever firmly protested to Washington about these abuses, they are hard to locate. But inevitably, this helped the Viet Minh.

America had broken the Geneva Accords by installing military help for what was now a new country, not just a provisional one. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 139) They had constructed a new dictatorial government led by a man who was, in reality, a fascist. Therefore, Diem now broke the Accords again by announcing he would cancel the 1956 elections. (Blum, p. 139)

To say Turning Point skimps over this crucial history gives it too much credit. For example, it says words to the effect that two states emerged out of Geneva. South Vietnam did not emerge. It was created by the USA in order to avoid the unification of the country under Ho. North Vietnam arose as a reaction to this violation of Geneva. When the film talks about the migration of the Catholics south from the north, I could not find any reference to Lansdale. But this was largely his propaganda operation to bolster Diem. (Jacobs, pp. 52-54). So the following civil war was not really such. It was an imperial war caused by the interference of the USA–through the Dulles brothers, Nixon and Eisenhower. And they had placed a man in charge of their fabricated country who was perhaps one of the worst choices they could have made. (Jacobs, pp. 38-39)

IV

From here, the film jumps to 1965. I didn’t understand why at first. But by doing that, it first leaves out a large segment of the Eisenhower administration and its propping up of Diem. For instance, Michigan State University faculty acted as consultants in police and public administration. (Anderson, p. 76) There were five CIA agents infiltrated into the program, but carried on the university payroll. They devised a policy for Diem to have anyone over the age of 15 carry an ID in South Vietnam. If you did not have such, you were considered a Viet Cong suspect and could be thrown into the infamous tiger cages. (Blum, p. 140) At the time of registration, fingerprints were recorded and information about political beliefs was taken.

Lansdale was virtually Allen Dulles’ representative in Saigon, working out of something called the Saigon Military Mission, which operated independently from the regular CIA station. It was from there that he ran “Passage to Freedom,” his great propaganda triumph of scaring the Catholics of the north into fleeing south during the two-year transfer window. (Anderson, p. 77) Lansdale also headed off an early coup attempt by sending the plotters on an all-expenses-paid vacation to Manila. (ibid, p. 62)

John Foster Dulles created the SEATO group in 1954. This was his way of establishing what he called a “no trespassing sign” against the Soviets and Chinese in Southeast Asia. Although the alliance did not include South Vietnam directly, Dulles formed an extended protocol, which Diem accepted. This was used by President Johnson when he passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was basically a declaration of war against Hanoi. (Jacobs, p. 63) Again, I detected no mention of this crucial linkage in the over six-hour series.

When I could not find this link, I began to pore over my notes. I then began to uncover something that I did not want to believe. But it explained the chopped-up chronology of the series. By skipping from 1956 to 1965, you don’t just minimize what Foster Dulles and Nixon did. You also eliminate Johnson’s actions in 1964, i.e., the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: the declaration of war against Hanoi, partly based on SEATO. This is how agenda-driven the film is against JFK. They dropped the real declaration of war by Johnson in August of 1964–and everything leading up to it and following from it. Which is a huge part of the story.

At the beginning of Part 2, the program has a Viet Cong member say that many more Americans were in Vietnam in 1965. If you skip what LBJ did both after Kennedy’s death and then during 1964, you can characterize that as some kind of mystery, or even a continuation of Kennedy’s policy. It was neither. It was not a mystery because Johnson had been planning on it for months on end. And one of the film’s talking heads, Frederick Logevall, wrote a book about that very subject, called Choosing War. Before him, Joseph Goulden wrote a similar book, called Truth is the First Casualty. Both authors prove, without any doubt, that as Johnson was saying one thing—that he was not going to send American boys to do a job Asian boys should do—he was planning to do just that. The key point was to keep that goal hidden until he got elected in 1964.

This is critical information. It is startling for the series to dismiss it. It is perhaps the most crucial part of the story since the creation of South Vietnam itself. It was under Johnson that the war reached a scope and intensity not seen before, e.g., the air war Rolling Thunder, and 540,000 combat troops in the theater. Under Kennedy, there had been no combat troops. And he was getting out.

Johnson first thwarted the intent of Kennedy’s NSAM 263, JFK’s order to begin the withdrawal at the end of 1963. It did not happen. Johnson then altered certain parts of NSAM 273, an order Kennedy had not seen but National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy had prepared for him. This alteration allowed for direct involvement by US forces in the war in naval operations. Again, this was not allowed under Kennedy. (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, pp. 447-58)

But beyond that, in December of 1963, Johnson had appointed William Sullivan–a foreign service officer who had opposed Kennedy’s withdrawal plan–to head a multi-agency task force. It was called the Vietnam Working Group. (Joseph Goulden, Truth is the First Casualty, p. 88) Sullivan understood that his job was to plan for an all-out war against Hanoi. He came back with a paper that might as well have been written by Walt Rostow, who Kennedy had kicked out of the White House because he was too hawkish.

Sullivan concluded that if the war was to be won, it needed direct American intervention. The Viet Cong were a formidable force, and it was necessary to bring the war to Hanoi in order to put pressure on them to lessen their support. That pressure would include American naval ships off the coast of North Vietnam to blockade Haiphong and use force if necessary to block shipping. Sullivan recommended 100,000 American troops in the first call-up. (Goulden, p. 90)

Remember, this is December of 1963 – February of 1964. By January 22^nd, Johnson had already let the Joint Chiefs in on advice and planning, and they recommended aerial war against critical targets in North Vietnam and the use of American ground troops. (Gordon Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster, p. 108) By March, the Pentagon was advising air and naval bombardment of targets in the north, mining of harbors, a naval blockade, and, in case of Chinese intervention, the use of atomic weapons. (Ibid) This planning continued under various personalities, including William Bundy. And it was decided that they would go to Congress for a resolution upon the occurrence of a casus belli. Any trace of any reference to withdrawal or neutralization had been buried with John Kennedy. In fact, the Chiefs had now recommended a list of 94 air targets in the north. (Goldstein, p. 108)

The casus belli, of course, was the–at least partly ersatz–Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964. Johnson had the war resolution already composed and in his suit jacket. (Eugene Windchy, Tonkin Gulf, p. 319) Once it happened, the administration went to the senate and got their resolution through by what many later termed—including Senator William Fulbright — a false presentation. On August 4^th, Johnson ordered air raids in retaliation against Hanoi, and he immediately decided to go to the Senate for his declaration. (Goldstein, p. 126). It passed overwhelmingly, and it even included allowances for American troops to enter Laos and Cambodia. (Goulden, p. 13)

These events, the exaggerated Tonkin incident, the misrepresentation of it—for example, the speedboat raids by the Vietnamese were connected to the destroyers off the coast, the passage of the war resolution—these all allowed Johnson to do what Kennedy would not do. That was to Americanize and militarize the war.

To not deal with any of this, and to not detail the rupture of policy that led to the landing of combat troops at Da Nang in March of 1965–this is both inexplicable and inexcusable. Unlike what the film tries to imply, Johnson knew what he was doing from the beginning.

From here, the film deals with the failure of the Strategic Hamlet program and General William Westmoreland’s unsuccessful attempt at what he called ‘counterinsurgency’. It also details the failed concepts of Westmoreland’s “search and destroy” missions and free fire zones. These were all parts of his attempt to win a war of attrition. It therefore became a war by body count. Except, as the film shows, the body counts were fudged, and therefore, Westmoreland was not getting or giving out the correct numbers. Meanwhile, Westmoreland asked for more and more troops, which Johnson gave him. All the way until a total of over half a million were in theater by 1968.

This troop build-up was coupled with Rolling Thunder, the largest bombing campaign since World War II. Except, in Germany and Japan, one had a surfeit of industrial and arms-building targets. You did not have anywhere near that many in Vietnam. When it was all over, as the film demonstrates, 5 million tons of bombs had been dropped over all of Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger then dropped about 2 million more over Laos and Cambodia.

Johnson was perturbed by the war coverage, especially by CBS reporter Morley Safer showing a village being burned live on camera, then asking: How will this win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese? Johnson was also much disturbed by Martin Luther King coming out against Vietnam in April of 1967, with his famous speech in New York.

By 1967, the CIA had issued a study questioning the body count thesis and whether it was valid. McNamara had shown signs of his disaffection for the war and his disagreement with Rolling Thunder. He ordered the monumental Pentagon Papers study without telling Johnson—this was a devastating secret history of the war made up from classified documents. While it was being written, he decided it was time to get out of Vietnam. Johnson disagreed. He more or less retired McNamara. Johnson then made a speech about how the enemy had never defeated our forces in battle. This was after bringing back Westmoreland, who said there was light at the end of the tunnel.

The Tet Offensive was right around the corner. Johnson was about to pay a huge price for his break from Kennedy.

Click here to read part 3.

Turning Point: The Vietnam War, Part One

Almost eight years ago, I wrote a lengthy four-part review of the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick 18-hour PBS series The Vietnam War. I concluded it was a bloated mediocrity that was, in some instances, not candid with its viewers. What it left out, especially concerning the origins of that conflict, made for a dubious presentation of history. That pretentious and bloated program tried to tell the story of American involvement in Vietnam without mentioning the names of Dean Acheson, Bao Dai, the Dulles brothers or Edward Lansdale. It was not possible to present that tragic event in such a manner. (Click here for my review https://www.kennedysandking.com/reviews/ken-burns-lynn-novick-the-vietnam-war-part-one)

I

I really did not think that anyone could make another series about Vietnam that was as intellectually shabby as what Burns and Novick produced. I was wrong. The new five-part series on Netflix, Turning Point: The Vietnam War, is just as bad. As we shall see, in some respects, it is even worse.

This show was put together by a company called Luminant, which operates out of LA, and it was directed by one Brian Knappenberger. He also served as an executive producer. There are four producers; the one who has been interviewed in the press is Doan Hoang Curtis. In going through the film credits, I could not find anyone billed as a writer, either in the front or end credits. This is a key point with this production since they bill everyone, even their “families, friends and strangers who supported us”. But no screenwriter? As we shall see, that is revealing.

The usual entry point for any Vietnam series is the French attempt to take back their colony of Indochina after World War II. (The Novick/Burns pastiche took it back further with the original attack on Indochina by France in the 19^th century.). Surprisingly, this series did not do that.

Turning Point starts with the Kennedy administration, when, in fact, the United States had been involved for almost ten years when Kennedy took office. I soon began to see that there was a methodology behind this mangling of the record. The idea was to set up the Vietnam War as a battle within the Cold War of communism vs capitalism and to deliberately begin with Kennedy. The objective being to present two things as fact which are utterly wrong: 1.) Somehow Kennedy was a Cold Warrior and 2.) It was he who started the war.

What this film does to fit those square pegs into round holes is nothing less than what I would term a hatchet job on John Kennedy. For example, there is no mention of Kennedy’s visit to Saigon in 1951 and his consultations with reporter Seymour Topping and diplomat Edmund Gullion, who both told him that France would not win the war. This is an important elision since those discussions had a large impact on how Kennedy looked at conflicts in the Third World and at Indochina afterwards. (Richard Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, pp. 14-15) As a result, Kennedy made speeches on this subject, specifically saying these conflicts were not about communism vs free enterprise; they were about nationalism and independence vs colonialism and imperialism. (Betting on the Africans, by Philip Muehlenbeck, p. 35) Which is why, for example, he took out an ad in the New York Times for the novel The Ugly American. Because the message in that book was that if all the USA had to offer in the Third World was anti-communism, we might as well fold up our tables and go home. (New York Times, article by Michael Meyer, 6/10/09)

By 1957 and his great anti-colonial Algeria speech, these declarations eventually made him the Democrats’ alternative foreign policy leader. Because he was opposed to John Foster Dulles’ view of the world as a Manichean good vs. evil, USSR vs USA constant confrontation. (John T. Shaw, JFK in the Senate, p. 110) But before that, Senator Kennedy specifically criticized the Eisenhower/Dulles American effort to back France in its futile effort to hold onto its empire in Indochina. (Mahoney, p. 16). He even addressed a letter to Foster Dulles, asking him what his goal was in backing the French effort there. (Click here for James Norwood’s overview of Kennedy’s views about this https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/edmund-gullion-jfk-and-the-shaping-of-a-foreign-policy-in-vietnam)

II

In what I think are meant to be backgrounders for their questionable portrayal, the film brings up the Bay of Pigs episode and the death of Patrice Lumumba in Congo. First, as far as Congo goes, Kennedy was going to support Lumumba, and the CIA knew that. There is evidence that the Agency sped up its assassination plots in order to get rid of Lumumba before the inauguration of Kennedy. (John Morton Blum, Years of Discord, pp. 23-24) Kennedy was not alerted to Lumumba’s death until almost a month later. There is a famous picture of his reaction to this belated knowledge, which reveals the pain he felt at that moment.

As per the Bay of Pigs invasion, anyone who knows anything about that subject, which apparently Curtis and Knappenberger do not, understands that this was a CIA operation. It began under Eisenhower and was pushed on the new president. Kennedy had no inherent inclination to go through with it. When Arthur Schlesinger asked him what he thought about the project, JFK replied that he thought about it as little as possible. CIA Director Allen Dulles also admitted this when he said that, with Kennedy, the project was a kind of an orphan child that he had no real attachment to. (Trumbull Higgins, The Perfect Failure, pp. 102-03) JFK ended up passing on the decision to a meeting of his advisors. There were about 20 people present, and 19 voted for it. (Robert McNamara, In Retrospect, pp. 25-26)

When the operation was failing, Kennedy refused to send in American Marines and Naval forces, even though Admiral Arleigh Burke strongly pushed escalation with direct American involvement on him. (David Talbot, Brothers, p. 47). It later turned out that the proponents of the operation—Allen Dulles and Dick Bissell–were banking on him acceding to this all along, because they knew the operation as planned would fail. (ibid).

We know that Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower would have done what Burke requested. (Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 288; New York Times, story by Thomas Ronan, 10/14/65). And that is an important historical distinction to make in regards to the subject at hand. Curtis and Knappenberger do not come close to making it. They also leave out the fact that Kennedy terminated the top level of the CIA—Dulles, Bissell and Deputy Director Charles Cabell—when he discovered their treachery.

Another parallel issue that Curtis and Knappenberger leave out is Kennedy’s decision on Laos. This was a country that Eisenhower advised Kennedy he should take great interest in, because it was the key to all of Southeast Asia. The president told Kennedy that if the communists took Laos, they would bring “unbelievable pressure” on Cambodia, Thailand and South Vietnam. He went so far as to say that Laos was so crucial that the USA should be willing “as a last desperate hope, to intervene unilaterally.” Further, the General said that America should not permit the communists any role in a new Laotian coalition. (Schlesinger, p. 163)

Kennedy did not heed this advice. He simply did not think that Laos was worth turning into a “pro-western redoubt.” He thought that was a bit exaggerated for a small land-locked country that had only been independent for 12 years. Kennedy wanted to achieve the neutralist solution that Eisenhower had vetoed six months previously. (Schlesinger, p. 329-30). He added that he did not think that America should fight for a people who would not fight for themselves. Which, as we shall see, is another parallel with his view of Vietnam. Kennedy was opposed on this by the Pentagon, which wanted to pour in 60,000 ground troops, air assaults and, if needed, atomic weapons. (ibid, p. 332)

Kennedy decided to forcefully make Moscow understand that he wanted a neutralist solution by bluffing on military intervention. He sailed the Seventh Fleet into the South China Sea and moved 500 Marines into Thailand. After consulting with SEATO, he got pledges from England and India to support a ceasefire. This brought Moscow around, and a neutralist solution was now agreed to with a conference later in Geneva to map out its details.

I could not find any reference to this important precedent in this over six-hour series.

III

Let us now go to the actual depiction of the Kennedy years in Vietnam. There is little discussion of the conferences centering on the first major decision in the Kennedy White House on the subject. These were the November 1961 meetings that resulted in the issuance of NSAM 111. That order stated that America would allow for more advisors, air lift and equipment– but there would be no combat troops entered into the conflict. During these meetings, Robert Kennedy made it clear to the president’s all too hawkish advisors, e.g., Walt Rostow and McGeorge Bundy, that there would be no American combat troops in Vietnam. (David Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 113, p. 116).

As historian David Kaiser notes, the constant barrage from those asking for intervention based on a need to save South Vietnam from communism, “had not moved the president at all.” Kennedy was fundamentally opposed to direct involvement because the basis of it would not be clear, since, unlike in Korea, Vietnam was a guerrilla war with Saigon fighting against the Viet Cong. Therefore, the nature of the conflict was less flagrant and more obscure. Consequently, direct American intervention invited both domestic criticism, as well as from nations abroad. Kennedy then noted that prior to the present, millions had been spent by the French and the Eisenhower administration “for years and with no success.” (Kaiser, p. 116)

There is no way to understand what Kennedy did in the next two years if these discussions are not elucidated. And they are not. The program then tries to thwart the import of Kennedy’s opposition by using one of the most desperate, insulting arguments I have ever heard: helicopter pilots were the equivalent of combat troops. Which is just silly. Units of combat troops are made up of squads, platoons, companies, battalions etc. One can also divide them around functions, like infantry, armor and artillery. They are designed to either protect territory or to conquer and hold enemy territory on the ground. The first American combat troops arrived in the form of the 3^rd Marine Division in Da Nang on March 8, 1965, 14 months after Kennedy’s assassination.

This is all bad enough, but the program also leaves out the looming figure of John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith was sent to Saigon after NSAM 111 was issued because Kennedy wanted to get a report that countered what people like Rostow and the Pentagon were saying. He knew that his former Harvard tutor would do just that—which he did. (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, second edition, pp. 234-35)

Galbraith was in town in April, and Kennedy directed him to meet with McNamara. He designated McNamara because, after the November conferences over NSAM 111, Kennedy called a meeting. He arrived late and waited for the small talk to die down. He then began with this: “When policy is decided on, people on the spot must support it or get out.” He then asked who would be implementing his policy for Vietnam. McNamara said it would be him and General Lyman Lemnitzer. Since everyone knew Lemnitzer would be leaving shortly, it would be McNamara. (Newman, p. 146) This is why Kennedy sent Galbraith to meet with him. Galbraith wrote to Kennedy that he was sure McNamara got the message. In that memo, Galbraith states that America should resist any temptation to use combat troops in Vietnam. (Virtual JFK, by James Blight, p. 370) McNamara’s Deputy Roswell Gilpatric later stated that McNamara had told him that the withdrawal program was something Kennedy wanted him to devise in order “to unwind this whole thing.” (ibid, p. 371)

Less than one month later, at the 5^th SECDEF Conference on Vietnam, McNamara ended the meeting and waited for the door to shut. He then addressed the commanding general in Vietnam, Paul Harkins, and his assistant, George Allen. He told them it was not the job of America to fight the war for Saigon. America’s job should be to develop the capability of South Vietnam to do so. He then asked Harkins when that capability could be attained. Harkins said they had not thought yet about a way to dismantle the American advisory structure. McNamara now gave the order to do just that. (Newman, p. 264)

Because he was so surprised, Harkins dragged his feet about McNamara’s order. But at the May 1963 SECDEF meeting, McNamara collected the withdrawal schedules from members of the CIA, Defense Department and State assembled at the meeting in Hawaii. After he collected them, he looked up and said the schedules were too slow. (Blight, pp. 105-06)

At this point, McNamara began to talk about a termination date for all American advisors to be out of Vietnam by 1965. That decision was then discussed in meetings at the White House in October of 1963, and then certified by the Taylor/McNamara Report and the approval of NSAM 263 on October 11, 1963. That memorandum ordered the first batch of 1,000 advisors to be out by the end of 1963. Kennedy had sent General Max Taylor and McNamara to Vietnam and wanted them to write a report that would formalize a schedule of withdrawal. (Blight, p. 295, p. 302) They did, and there is evidence the report was actually written in Washington and delivered to those two men. (Howard Jones, Death of a Generation, p. 370) Upon their return to the White House, William Sullivan tried to take out the withdrawal part of that report. Kennedy had it placed back inside. (Newman, p. 411)

The above is all historical fact. Watch the film’s Part One and tell me how much of this crucial information is in those opening 72 minutes.

IV

The capper for the first section was predictable. The film tries to somehow blame Kennedy for both the overthrow of the Nhus—Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu–and their deaths. As I have stated on more than one occasion, there are two excellent descriptions of the cause of the overthrow and the ultimate demise of the Nhus. The sending of the so-called ‘coup cable’ is dealt with in objective detail in John Newman’s JFK and Vietnam. How the brothers met their bloody end is rendered honestly in JFK and the Unspeakable.

Certain persons in the State Department, like Joseph Mendenhall, who had served as Political Counsel at the American Embassy in Saigon, understood that by the summer of 1962, the war was not going well. He asked the rhetorical question, “Why are we losing?” He blamed it on the Nhu brothers, who would not change their dictatorial rule no matter what pressure was brought. His rhetorical solution was that they had to get rid of Diem, and Mr. and Mrs. Nhu. (Newman, p. 298)

This foreboding was exacerbated by the Buddhist crisis, which started in the city of Hue in early May of 1963. What began as a local demonstration against religious discrimination was so mishandled by Nhu, chief of security forces, that it turned into a national crisis. And it gradually spread south into Saigon. Madame Nhu smeared it as being communist inspired. And as the public immolations of monks began, she referred to them as “barbecues”, adding that she would supply the gasoline for the next one. (Newman, p. 343) It was this crumbling and chaos that gave the doubters in the State Department the opening for their scheme to rid themselves of Diem and Nhu.

The cabal consisted of Averill Harriman, Roger Hilsman and Michael Forrestal. They waited for a late August ’63 weekend when the major players were out of the DC area—JFK, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary McNamara, his deputy Roswell Gilpatric, and CIA Director John McCone. Cables began coming in from the new Saigon ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the temporary CIA station leader, Lucien Conein, who was in contact with Diem’s opponents in the military. (Newman, p. 354) The generals said that if Washington agreed, they would willingly participate in an overthrow of Diem. Hilsman then prepared a memo instructing Lodge to request Diem to strip Nhu of his powers, and if he did not, then we could no longer support him. If the government broke down, Lodge should tell the generals that we would support them in the interim.

When Kennedy was contacted in Hyannis Port, he asked why this could not wait until Monday. Forrestal said it was because Harriman and Hilsman wanted to meet the problem right then and there. The president then asked that the cable be cleared by all the principals, especially John McCone. (Newman, p. 355). To make a long story short, Forrestal lied to Kennedy about McCone approving the cable, and Lodge did not go to Diem in advance; he went directly to the generals. When Kennedy got back from Hyannis Port, he was enraged, and Forrestal offered to resign. Kennedy said, “You’re not worth firing. You owe me something, so you stick around.” (Newman, p. 361)

V

As Lodge said in a TV interview, when Kennedy discovered the subterfuge, he called the ambassador and asked him to cancel the cable, which he says he did. But the cat was out of the bag. As the Buddhist crisis got worse, the Nhus realized their isolation and began tentative, indirect contacts with Hanoi; but the north demanded that Diem ask the Americans to depart. (James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 191)

Lodge publicized these contacts in the press, knowing this made the generals even more suspect about Diem. Lodge understood that once he did this, it would, in all probability, prompt a coup attempt. Kennedy tried to get Lodge to talk to Diem, but that did not work. Hilsman encouraged Lodge to continue his policy of silence with Saigon’s leader. (Douglass, p. 192) When Kennedy learned that the CIA had cut off the Commodity Import Program to Saigon without informing him, he shook his head and said, “My God, do you know what you have done?” (Ibid)

Realizing he was losing control and that Lodge was the wrong man for the job, Kennedy decided that he would try to get Diem out himself, since the writing was on the wall for his inevitable fall. He tried doing this by sending his friend Torby Macdonald to Saigon to plead with him to leave. Diem would not. (Douglass, p. 211).

The overthrow began on November 1, 1963. Diem and Nhu made a bad mistake by consulting with Lodge as it began and continuing to do so, thus relaying locations as they tried to escape. Lodge was in close communications with Conein, who was, in large part, supervising the generals. Thus, the Nhu brothers’ attempts to escape were playing right into the coup plotters’ hands. (Douglass, pp. 208-10)

When they learned of the church where they were, General Minh sent a team of five in a personnel carrier to pick them up. The brothers thought that Lodge had arranged an escort to the airport to provide them safe passage out of Saigon. Not suspecting what was planned, they entered the carrier and both were shot in the nape of the neck. Nhu was also shot in the chest and stabbed many times. (Douglass, p. 210) Lodge wrote out the report two days after the killings. He likely got the details from Conein.

When Kennedy got the news, he recalled Lodge to Washington for the purpose of firing him. (Ibid, p. 375) The Dallas assassination intervened, and Lyndon Johnson kept him as ambassador. Which tells us something about what was going to occur under LBJ. As we shall see, the series is about as poor on that subject as it is on Kennedy.

Click here to read part 2.