Tag: VIETNAM

Turning Point, Part 5

The peace talks on ending the war began under Lyndon Johnson. As we have seen, Richard Nixon covertly sandbagged Johnson’s negotiations through the Chennault Affair. So the talks continued under Nixon’s presidency. As with Johnson, there were two sets of talks, one open and observed, the other secret. Under Johnson, the secret negotiator was Averill Harriman. (No Peace, No Honor by Larry Berman, p. 25) Under Nixon, it was Henry Kissinger.

I

As many have commented, North Vietnam handled these negotiations adroitly. And it was all in keeping with their strategy that the long run was important. In other words, the longer they could delay any kind of truce or ceasefire, the more time they would have to attack and infiltrate their men into the south. I could not find anywhere in Turning Point, Parts 4 or 5, where this important issue was delineated. To me it is crucial to understanding how the war was decided. Hanoi also understood that the longer the war dragged on, the more that both Congress and the public would grow simply sick of all the violence. These tactics turned out to be effective.

On the other hand, Richard Nixon had told the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, “I will not be the first president to lose a war.” (Berman, p. 48). But, as we also have seen, Nixon understood that the war itself was lost. Therefore, with a war that was becoming more unpopular as it proceeded, Nixon decided to turn over the actual fighting of the war to Saigon. And he would incrementally withdraw American combat troops. Nixon’s term for this was Vietnamization. By expanding the war into Laos and Cambodia, and dropping much bomb tonnage, Nixon hoped to make Hanoi understand that he would drive a hard bargain. What he first proposed was a mutual withdrawal of forces and no coalition government in the south. (ibid, p. 53)

The first meant that all American military forces and PAVN forces would leave the south. The second meant that President Thieu would stay on until there were free elections there. In the opening rounds of the 1969 negotiations, it became clear that Hanoi was dead set against the first request and was almost as firm against Thieu staying. It was also clear that they understood that public and political opinion would provide pressure on Nixon. (Berman, p. 66)

Let us explain–which the film does not–why the North would not agree to the first request. Hanoi was well aware that they had defeated the French on the battlefield in 1954. Dien Bien Phu was a terrible blow to not just France, but the concept of European colonialism. But they also realized that they lost the treaty at Geneva. They never should have agreed to an artificial separation of the country at the 17^th parallel, and then reunification under free elections two years later. American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had committed hundreds of millions in aid to the French struggle, and he even offered the use of atomic weapons to Paris. With that kind of investment, America was not going to go away easily. Or as he said, it was “best to let the French get out of Indochina entirely and then to try to rebuild from the foundation” ourselves. (Michael Swanson, Why the Vietnam War?, p. 114) Dulles thus subverted the Geneva Accords, and through a series of covert and overt actions, he exchanged French colonialism for American imperialism. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, pp. 137-39)

Ho Chi Minh, and later Hanoi leader Le Duan and his chief negotiator Le Duc Tho, were not going to let that happen again. They were not going to settle for less than they had won on the battlefield. So they were not going to agree to remove their soldiers in the south. In fact, they were going to present Nixon and Kissinger with a surprise in that regard.

II

The Easter Offensive took place in March of 1972. Turning Point glances over it and ignores the real importance of the action. The three-pronged attack ended up being a military failure. But it only failed because Nixon had to use an extensive amount of both Air Force bombing and Navy shelling to stop it. In just six months, Operation Linebacker dropped over 155,000 tons of explosives on North Vietnam. This was the first instance of the usage of laser-guided missiles. (Berman, p. 132)

There are two points to be made about this attack. Without American air power, in all probability, it would have succeeded in winning the war. Which meant that Vietnamization was not going to work. Secondly, Kissinger told the Russians that Nixon would now accept a cease-fire in place, and this included leaving PAVN troops in the south–even those from the Easter Offensive. (Berman, p. 125) The film does note the second point; I could not find the first.

There is also an outright clear deception that the film should have noted by Nixon. It is important not just because of the lie, but because it reveals how worried he was that the war was about to be lost. In his pathetic apologia of a book, titled No More Vietnams, he said that he never seriously contemplated either bombing the dikes or using atomic weapons in Vietnam. This was false. As Jeffrey Kimball discovered, Nixon considered doing both at the same meeting with Henry Kissinger. This was during the Easter Offensive when General Giap’s attack was threatening to take Saigon. (Jeffrey Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, pp. 214-19; Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, p. 386) All of this because Kissinger refused “to believe that a little fourth rate power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point.” (Stone and Kuznick, p. 363)

I could not detect that crucial quote in the film. But Kissinger turned out to be wrong about it. What happened of course was that the USA had a breaking point. It was the same breaking point that Edmund Gullion warned JFK about back in 1951 in Saigon. And like Gullion warned about France, America could not win a war of attrition in Indochina since the home front would not support it.

After the Easter Offensive, Congress was much opposed to extending more funding for the war. Nixon and Kissinger were very aware of this issue. Because soon, about two months after it was over, the Democratic caucuses were to vote overwhelmingly against more funding. (Berman, p. 221) After the near success of the Easter Offensive, the writing was on the wall. The Saigon regime could not survive without massive and indefinite American intervention. And the Democrats were not going to go along with the continued financing of an endless and futile war.

III

Nixon’s admission to leaving PAVN troops in the south was a tell-tale sign about what he and Kissinger had really planned.

Nixon and Kissinger now began to design their infamous “decent interval”. Knowing that Nixon’s Vietnamization plan would never defeat Giap’s PAVN and the Viet Cong, they began to plan the withdrawal of all United States forces–leaving only a bare bones maintenance mission behind. They only wanted assurances from China that the fall of Saigon would take place at what they termed a “decent interval”, after a peace treaty had been signed–they suggested something like two years. (Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, p. 187) To show how complete Nixon’s abandonment of Saigon and President Thieu was, the South was not represented at the secret Paris Peace talks. President Thieu was not told about them in advance, but only given brief summaries after the fact. (Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, pp. 43-44, 69) Nixon’s abandonment was so inclusive that, at the end, he allowed over approximately 150,000 PAVN troops to stay in the south. Combined with the Viet Cong, there were well over 200,000 total enemy troops there after the peace treaty was signed. Many of these were in places Hanoi had secured during the Easter Offensive. This whole “decent interval” strategy is not at all adequately dealt with in the film. Even though Frank Snepp, a former Saigon CIA officer who wrote a book with that title, is in the film.

How badly did Nixon throw over Thieu? As we have seen, in 1968 Nixon had conveyed to President Thieu that if he would boycott Johnson’s peace talks, he would get a better deal from him than he would from LBJ. Nixon gave him many pledges of support. For instance, he gave him his personal assurances that the USA would react very strongly and rapidly to any Hanoi violation of the peace agreement—which he did not. (Berman, p. 187) At Midway Island in 1969, Nixon promised Thieu he would provide 8 more years of support, four as military and four more as economic aid. (Jerrold Schecter, The Palace File, p. 34)

It did not take long for all that to go up in smoke. In fact, when Kissinger handed him a copy of the final agreement, Thieu noted the fact that it did not even mention a separate country of South Vietnam. There were only three countries in Indochina: Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. To rub salt in the wounds, when Thieu was handed the agreement, it was in English. (Berman, p. 163) Quite naturally, he did not want to sign the treaty. In fact, he actually began to speak out in public against it. (Ibid, p. 148) Nixon threatened to enact the agreement without his signature, but he was bluffing.

Thieu had over 60 objections to the proposed ceasefire. Nixon and Kissinger decided to be as fair as they could with him so he would sign. So they actually presented these to Hanoi in Paris. (Berman, 189) Thus began the notorious Christmas Bombing of late 1972. It was due to the demands made by Thieu. When Hanoi’s chief negotiator, Le Duc Tho, said he had to journey back home to get approval, the bombing began. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this did not bring Le Duc Tho back; Nixon had to ask him to return. (Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, pp. 279-80) But even then, he was reluctant to do so. The Chinese convinced him to return. They told him that Nixon had spent his last dollar on this bombing, and his political problems with Watergate were not going to disappear. They told Tho to return, sign the agreement, and they would get everything they wanted in the long run. (Berman, p. 221) The agreement was signed on January 27, 1973; and the Chinese were correct about the long run.

IV

Nixon hailed the signed agreement as one which would determine the future of South Vietnam without outside interference. Secondly, that it was a peace with honor for America. And third, that it had the full support of President Thieu. These were all either extreme hyperbole or knowingly false.

Like President Diem, President Thieu never had any real legitimacy in Vietnam. In fact, Ellsworth Bunker, the next-to-last ambassador in South Vietnam, admitted that his re-election was rigged. (Berman, p. 145) One of the problems he had was the literally tens of thousands of political and military prisoners he held in indefinite detention. How could America be supporting democracy if we were rigging elections and holding that many people in prisons?

Nixon kept Thieu for two reasons. First, he owed him something for the cooperation Thieu rendered in the October Surprise of 1968, the Chennault Affair. Without that subterfuge, it is highly likely that Hubert Humphrey would have won the 1968 election. (Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, p. 60) Secondly, he also understood that Thieu would allow him to apply air power if need be to enforce the peace. Because Thieu had no legitimacy, the two men needed each other. This problem was made even worse because Le Duc Tho was fully cognizant of it—which is another very notable fact that Turning Point severely discounts. Le Duc Tho quite candidly said to Kissinger that Vietnamization was not working; that Nixon’s assault in Laos had been forlorn; that Rolling Thunder had not achieved its objective. He concluded, correctly, that America had failed in Vietnam.

He then delivered his left hook about Vietnamization:

Before, there were over a million US and puppet troops and you failed. How can you succeed when you let the puppet troops do the fighting? Now, with only US support how can you win? (Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, p. 127)

This, of course, was an accurate observation. And Kissinger knew it was so. It is why he and Nixon decided on the decent interval strategy as an endgame. But the absolute necessity was that Saigon had to fall after the 1972 election. In fact, Kissinger had said this to Nixon in August of 1972. All they needed was a way to keep the country together for a year or two beyond the agreement. He then added that afterwards, “Mr. President Vietnam will be a backwater, no one will give a damn.” (Ken Hughes, Fatal Politics, pp. 84-85). In fact, Kissinger had made this agenda clear with the Chinese. (Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, p. 187) It is notable that Ken Hughes is a commentator, but I did not hear him use that rather pungent quote in the film. Hughes also could have stated that both Nixon and Kissinger denied the decent interval strategy in their books, No More Vietnams and The White House Years. But yet it is proven out by the declassified record.

Years later, Alexander Haig, who worked directly with Kissinger on the agreement, explicitly stated that it was all a sham peace. It was designed to deceive the public with the hollow motto that Nixon had gained a peace with honor. Which he had not. As Kissinger wanted, Saigon fell in 1975, two years after the agreement had been signed. The final American evacuation was a disaster, symbolic of the whole experience there. Kissinger had performed poorly at planning the whole exodus, and his ambassador, Graham Martin, was utterly hapless in executing it. The film uses a lot of screen time depicting this debacle and trying to explain Martin’s incomprehensible actions. But I don’t think anyone will ever chronicle this better than Rory Kennedy did in her fine film, Last Days in Vietnam.

V

Although Nixon always used Watergate as his excuse for not enforcing the peace treaty, that was not really the case. Both Congress and the American public had turned against the war by 1973. (Berman, p. 265) For example, the Case-Church amendment effectively cut off funding for combat activities in Indochina in 1973. Thieu was so hapless toward the end that the CIA actually tried to start a coup against him in order to set up a coalition government. Even Martin favored a coup. It was scheduled for April 23, 1975, but Thieu resigned two days before. Like everything else about Vietnam, it came too late since Saigon fell on April 30^th. Martin had to be ordered to leave. As the last helicopter departed, about 420 Vietnamese were in the courtyard of the embassy looking skyward. Someone had scrawled on the wall, “Turn off the light at the end of the tunnel when you leave.” (ibid)

This segment gave short shrift to the Holocaust that happened in Cambodia as a result of the Nixon/Kissinger decision to invade that country with a combined USA/ARVN force in mid-1970. This was allowed to occur because Prince Sihanouk had been deposed by General Lon Nol in an overthrow just previously, which incidentally, Le Duc Tho accused Kissinger and Nixon of orchestrating. (Berman, p. 73) In fact there is some evidence that the CIA at least encouraged the overthrow. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, pp. 152-53)

Lon Nol allowed the invasion, something Sihanouk would not have done. (William Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 390) In their almost mad objective of weakening Hanoi by going after strongholds in Cambodia, Nixon and Kissinger actually added to the chaos in that country and strengthened Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The chaos began in 1969 with something called Operation Menu. This was the Nixon/Kissinger secret bombing of Cambodia to disrupt the movement of supplies, arms and men through the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which cut through both Laos and Cambodia. Nixon decided that this mission should be utterly secret and disguised in every way. The pilots were not to talk about it; there would be a second set of papers to disguise what they were doing as missions over Vietnam, and there would only be one raid in order to knock out a North Vietnamese headquarters that was allegedly commandeering the entire war effort. (Shawcross, pp. 22-26)

The one raid, in March of 1969, turned into a 14-month air campaign that included 3,630 sorties by B-52 bombers. The idea was to pulverize all of Hanoi’s troops and bases along the border between Cambodia and South Vietnam. Collectively known as Menu, the differing campaigns were called Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Dessert, among other meal titles. (Shawcross, p. 28) As noted, this was then supplemented by a land invasion. That air/land invasion reduced villages to rubble, killed hundreds of innocent civilians, and the refugees now began a long march away from the B-52s into the countryside. The Cambodian economy had been all but destroyed. (Blum, p. 154)

In 1973, the air war was increased into an operation called Freedom Deal. (Shawcross, p. 215) The Pentagon ended up dropping 500,000 tons of explosives on Cambodia from 1969-73. Due to this, many Cambodians grew disillusioned with Lon Nol and joined the Khmer Rouge. The membership rose from about 4,000 to 60,000 by 1973. (Shawcross, p. 296) Two years later, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh.

I won’t go into the horrors that now befell Cambodia under Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge machine. Once the city was secured, the mad tyrant ordered everyone out and a march to the countryside. It did not matter if you were in the hospital or a woman who was pregnant. If you stopped, you were shot. The latest estimates from judicial hearings place the total number killed at about 1.7 to 2 million. The killing fields in Cambodia were mass graves, sometimes consisting of 20,00 dead bodies. Sihanouk later stated that “There are only two men responsible for the tragedy in Cambodia today, Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger.” He then added that those two spent 4 billion on the Cambodian campaign, and they achieved the opposite of what they tried to do, including losing all of Indochina. He then added, “…and they created the Khmer Rouge.” (Shawcross, p. 391)

Richard Nixon did all he could to keep his tapes and papers secret until he died. We now fully understand why. Nixon was a very bad president, and what he did in Indochina was even worse than what Johnson did. Johnson did not invade and destabilize two neighboring countries, thus killing over 2 million people.

The Turning Point series is actually worse than mediocre. Any program that is going to comment at length on what Richard Nixon did in Vietnam should feature the work of the foremost scholar on that topic, namely Jeff Kimball. Bill Moyers would have been a very good commentator about LBJ and Vietnam. He is quite old, but there are many tapes of him on this subject. Gordon Goldstein interviewed McGeorge Bundy at length before he passed on, and he would have been good on Johnson also. The two best commentators on Kennedy and Vietnam would have been John Newman and Jamie Galbraith.

But this was not going to be. Luminant Media and director Brian Knappenberger seem to have an agenda from the start. It was first to skimp and to blur how America got into Vietnam in the fifties, which was through Nixon, Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. Second, to smear Kennedy by blaming him for the war and to eliminate all the evidence of his withdrawal. Third, to then skip over 1964 and how Johnson reversed Kennedy and got the combat troops into Indochina. Finally, if anything, to be kind of soft on Nixon and Kissinger.

With all we know today about Vietnam, there is really no excuse for this. There is almost no doubt today that if Kennedy had lived, Johnson and Nixon would never have been able to do the incredibly evil things they accomplished in Indochina. Even the Pentagon Papers admitted this. In the Gravel edition, there is a chapter entitled Phased Withdrawal 1962-64. One of the aims of that withdrawal was “ to avoid an open-ended Asian mainland land war.” (Part 4 B-4, p. ii) For any program to avoid that historical fact today is rather incomprehensible.

Click here to read part 1.

Turning Point: The Vietnam War, Part 4

Part 4 of Turning Point begins with the Nixon Administration. It will end with the huge controversy over the release of the Pentagon Papers. As we shall see, the program is not inclusive or completely accurate about the latter issue.

As Defense Secretary Robert McNamara tried to tell President Johnson, Rolling Thunder—the bombing campaign over Vietnam—was not working. But Johnson thought it could be used as a bargaining chip to begin talks with Hanoi. During the 1968 campaign, GOP candidate Richard Nixon said that he would find an honorable way to end the war in Indochina–although he was not specific about how he would do it. In October, Nixon had a comfortable lead of about 15 points. Mainly because Vice President Hubert Humphrey was reluctant to separate himself from LBJ on Vietnam, an issue the film does not articulate. But when Johnson announced a bombing halt over the north, the peace talks—which began in May—would gain traction. And, as the film shows, Humphrey began to cut into Nixon’s lead significantly.

To thwart this, the Nixon campaign now set out to start the original October Surprise scheme. This maneuver worked mainly through GOP power broker Anna Chennault. The object was to subvert the cease fire negotiations before one could be announced. The Nixon campaign, through intelligence passed to it from Henry Kissinger, conveyed to the government of Saigon that if they held out, they would get better terms from Nixon. (The Nation, story by Greg Grandin, 11/02/16)

It is important to recall that, by this point, there were 500,000 combat troops in Vietnam, over a million Vietnamese had been killed, and about 30,000 Americans had died. (Robert Parry, Consortium News, 3/3/12; 1/18/13). The original tip about the Chennault sabotage came into the White House from a Wall Street financier to National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. At this same time, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker relayed the message that Saigon’s President Thieu was now balking at a cease-fire. On November 2, 1968, Thieu made a highly publicized speech boycotting his government from the peace talks.

Smelling a rat, Johnson ordered FBI, CIA, and NSA investigations. The inquiry discovered the roles of Chennault and Washington’s Saigon ambassador Bui Diem, who acted as a middleman. The president complained about it to GOP Senator Everett Dirksen: “They oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.” On a phone call, Johnson confronted Nixon and threatened to go public. Nixon lied to him about it.

But Beverly Deepe, from the Saigon office of the Christian Science Monitor, had heard of the subterfuge through local sources. She handed her story to her editor, Saville Davis, in Washington. Ambassador Bui Diem denied it all, and after a conference with his top advisors, Johnson decided not to confirm the story for Davis—even though the president knew it was true. (ibid, Parry) Thus Nixon’s subterfuge remained hidden. And he lied about it until the end. In his interviews with David Frost, he said 1.) He did nothing to undercut Johnson’s negotiations, and 2.) He did not authorize Chennault’s attempts at subterfuge.

I have gone into more detail about this than the film does, but Turning Point misses the true denouement to Nixon’s interference. Many MSM writers have attributed the origins of Nixon’s Plumbers Unit, and therefore Watergate, to the leaking of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg. Robert Parry discovered that such was not really the case. The new president was told by J. Edgar Hoover about Johnson’s surveillance of the Chennault affair. As revealed on the Watergate tapes, Nixon thought Johnson and Walt Rostow had stored their evidence on his subversion at the Brookings Institute. Nixon instructed Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman to break into Brookings and even advised him to use someone like E. Howard Hunt to do so.

Nixon was wrong about the location. Walt Rostow sealed the materials and sent them to the LBJ Library. In an accompanying note, he labeled the papers as Top Secret, not to be opened until June of 2023. We are lucky that the late Bob Parry found out about them much earlier. (ibid)

II

In addition to the above, it is important to know that, as historian Jeffrey Kimball wrote, Nixon knew about the Wise Men meeting I discussed in Part 3. In March of 1968, he told three of his speechwriters:

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no way to win the war. But we can’t say that, of course. In fact, we have to seem to say the opposite, just to keep some degree of bargaining leverage. (Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, p. 52)

In other words, before he took office, Nixon knew that the war could not be won by Saigon. But he decided to continue the conflict for political reasons. It is important to recall that Nixon was instrumental in getting America directly involved in Vietnam, and he was the first politician to ever recommend the use of American combat troops. This was during the siege of Dien Bien Phu. At that time, he also pushed for the use of atomic weapons. (John Prados, Operation Vulture, Chapter 9, JFK Revisited, by James DiEugenio, p. 131). Anyone who knows anything about Nixon understands that he was tutored in foreign policy by John Foster Dulles. It was Dulles who so memorably said after the collapse of the French empire, “We have a clean slate there now, without a taint of colonialism. Dien Bien Phu was a blessing in disguise.” (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 139)

As I noted earlier, one of the many problems with the series is that it skimps over the origins of the American involvement in the fifties. Because of that, one cannot really understand Nixon’s near schizophrenic mania about the war. And if you do not delineate his role at the start, it is not possible to explain the fruity extremes he went to– knowing Saigon could not win.

For example, Nixon ended up dropping more bomb tonnage over Indochina than Johnson did. This is because he greatly expanded the air war over Laos and Cambodia. (Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, p. 21; William Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 70-71) Again, in my view, the series seriously underplays this aspect; it is a significant expansion from what Johnson did. And Nixon ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia the first week he was in office. (Shawcross, p. 91) It began in March of 1969 and continued for 14 months, entailing 3,630 B-52 sorties. This campaign had horrific political effects. It began to undermine the neutralist government of Prince Sihanouk and allowed the beginning of the growth of the Khmer Rouge. To protect himself, Sihanouk appointed General Lon Nol as prime minister. Lon Nol then deposed Sihanouk, and he allowed Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to supplement the air war with a land invasion of Cambodia—by American and ARVN troops– in the spring of 1970. For all intents and purposes, this was the beginning of the end of Cambodia.

In 1971, Nixon authorized an invasion of Laos by the ARVN. By most objective accounts, this ended in failure; so much so that Nixon later relieved General Creighton Abrams, who supervised American support of the operation. Even though Operation Lam Son 719 was a failure, the bombing did not stop. This bombing was even more pointless in Laos, since that was even a more backward country than Vietnam or Cambodia. (Blum, p. 160) As one commentator noted, Laos was a fledgling society the USA was trying to make extinct, to strangle in its crib, so to speak. They were so senselessly desperate in this aim, they created phony invasions from North Vietnam, not once but twice—all in order to boost military aid to a country that was landlocked and poor. (Blum, p. 159) But with the announcement of a ceasefire in Vietnam in 1973, another coalition government was announced. It would last until 1975. Up until then, due to the bombing and the incursion, “Laos had become a land of nomads without villages, without farms, a generation of refugees, hundreds of thousands dead, many more maimed.” It might not have been as bad as Cambodia, or what was to happen in Cambodia, but it was pretty much inexcusable. Eisenhower was simply wrong when he told Kennedy that Laos was worth going to the mat over. Khrushchev also wondered why Washington even bothered so much about the country, since it bored him. (Blum p. 159). But Nixon thought it was worth invading.

III

The expansion of the war through the invasions—Nixon called them incursions—into Cambodia and Laos brought the peace protests to a pinnacle of scope and fury. And these created tragedy at Kent State and Jackson State. At Kent State, four were killed and nine wounded by the National Guard. Chic Canfora, one of the program’s commentators, was at Kent State with her brother—who was wounded—and she does a helpful commentary on how it happened. She states in the film that the ROTC building, which was set on fire, had been scheduled to be taken down already. But further, a presidential commission concluded that the blaze was not started by Kent State students. (Commission on Campus Unrest, p. 251)

There can be little doubt that Nixon and Governor James Rhodes despised the demonstrators and egged on the reaction to them. On the day the campus protests began, May 1, 1970, Nixon called the students bums who were burning up books and blowing up campuses. And he contrasted them with the bravery of the troops in the field abroad. (New York Times, May 2, 1970, story by Juan de Onis) Reporter Bob Woodward later stated that a year later, Nixon compared the Kent State demonstrators to the prison rioters at Attica and said Kent State might have been beneficial to his administration. On the tape, Woodward said Nixon tells Bob Haldeman, “You know what stops them? Stops them? Kill a few. Remember Kent State….” (WCBE Radio, Ohio Public Radio, May 6, 2019)

The day before the shooting, Rhodes held a press conference in the town of Kent, and he called the demonstrators un-American revolutionaries who were trying to destroy higher education in Ohio. He said he would use law enforcement “to drive them out of Kent. We are going to eradicate the problem.” Rhodes compared the students to Hitler’s paramilitary Brownshirts who helped bring him to power. (Cleveland.com, May 3, 2020, story by Thomas Suddes; Kent State/May 4, edited by Scott Bills, p. 13)

At Jackson State in Mississippi, two students were killed and 12 wounded. The shootings were by the Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol and the Jackson police force. As more than one commentator has stated, unlike Kent State, there was an element of racism in this shooting. (Nancy Bristow, The Nation, May 4, 2020) All told, the demonstrations against the Cambodian attack generated protests at more than 700 college campuses. More than 200 Foreign Service employees issued a petition against the expansion of the war. Four of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s aides registered their disagreement with their resignations. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 370)

In his half-mad pursuit of a war he knew could not be won, Nixon had brought forth submerged demonic forces amid the American populace. He was intent on polarizing the country over Vietnam. In his April 30, 1970 speech revealing the Cambodian action, he said that in the USA ”‘great universities are being systematically destroyed.” Previously, he had appealed to what he called the great Silent Majority that could not abide by America looking “like a pitiful helpless giant” in Vietnam, as opposed to the bums who wanted to burn books and try to impose their will on the country by demonstrations in the streets. RMN was consciously pitting idealistic students against lunchpail factory workers and trying to split the Democratic party on cultural grounds. With Malcolm, both Kennedys and King gone, it worked.

IV

Even this does not show just how unhinged Nixon was on Vietnam and how effective and heroic the anti-war movement was. In 1969, Nixon designed an above top-secret plan code-named Operation Duck Hook. It included direct American infantry attacks on the north, air strikes on bridges along the Chinese border, and the mining of three seaports. (Jeffrey Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, p. 101. Other sources say that it included saturation bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong and possible use of atomic weapons–see Stone and Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, pp. 362-64) Nixon held it so close to his vest that even his Defense Secretary, Melvin Laird, was ignorant of it. The president called it off when he saw the immense scope and intensity of the October/November Moratorium. (ibid, Kimball, p. 105; Stone and Kuznick, p. 362) It was then that he decided to give his Silent Majority speech, facing off the demonstrators against his perceived constituency.

I could not detect Duck Hook in this series.

At the Nixon Library in 2014, there was discovered—or some say rediscovered– evidence that Nixon and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman intervened in the court-martial of Lt. William Calley over the My Lai Massacre. (CBS News, March 23, 2014, story by Evie Salomon) The notes made by Haldeman indicate there was a task force for My Lai, and they should employ dirty tricks that did not go to a high level. They should also use the atrocity at Hue for countering purposes, “discredit one witness”, “use a senator or two”, and to “keep working on the problem.” According to author Trent Angers, Nixon and Haldeman were going to target Hugh Thompson and Larry Colburn, who actively tried to halt the massacre. In fact, two congressmen working with Nixon managed to seal Thompson’s testimony, hurting the cases against others who were accused. When Calley was convicted, almost immediately, Nixon had his prison sentence turned into house arrest. (NY Times, 4/2/71, story by Linda Charlton) He was paroled after a bit more than three years.

I mentioned in the last section that the film does an above-average job on the My Lai Massacre through Ron Haeberle, the military photographer. But I could not detect any examination of Nixon’s role in the Calley trial and aftermath.

V

As a result of My Lai and the following cover-up, people like Jane Fonda, Mark Lane and Vietnam veteran Donald Duncan originally helped organize a public tribunal on other atrocities that had taken place in Vietnam. Eventually, this went on for three days in Detroit, January 31-February 2, 1971. It was called the Winter Soldier Investigation. The film briefly shows some of the hearings but does not go into Nixon’s reaction to them, which was to try to discredit the proceedings. (Washington Post, 12/17/17, story by Michael Dobbs) Nixon and Haldeman tried to smear the organizers as being “Kennedy supporters.” They also tried to mobilize veterans of Vietnam who were still for the war against the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War. (Andrew Hunt, The Turning, p. 73, p. 84) Nixon’s ploys worked to a degree. The film made from the hearings was not successful. Only when it was re-released in 2005 did it meet with acclaim. (Click here for a segment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9KI0BUzr70)

John Kerry became a national figure at this time when he began speaking out against the futility of the Vietnam War. His testimony before the Fulbright Committee is not included. In fact, I did not see any of those hearings on the war in the series. Yet these lasted until 1971. They were well reported on, some were even broadcast, and they were effective in ultimately cutting off funds for the conflict. Ken Hughes, one of the interview subjects, understands all this, as he wrote about it in his book, Fatal Politics.

This segment ends with the leakage and publication of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. There have been several books written about that whole, long, celebrated episode, and how it rocked the MSM and Washington. I have read up on it, and interviewed some of the principals involved, e.g., the late Daniel Ellsberg, and attorney James Goodale of the New York Times. Some background is in order.

Ellsberg was working at the Rand Corporation offices in Santa Monica when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara commissioned a study on the entire expanse of the Vietnam War, from its beginnings to the end of the Johnson administration. In other words, it did not include what Nixon had done in that regard. But Nixon decided to take action due to the (poor) advice of two people: Henry Kissinger and Attorney General John Mitchell. (Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous, p. 221; James Goodale, Fighting for the Press, p. 73).

When the Times and then the Washington Post published the classified material, a legal battle broke out on three fronts. One was in court in Washington to stop publication. The administration lost 6-3 on a decision that went up to the Supreme Court. They then tried to convict Ellsberg and his friend Anthony Russo in California. That case was dismissed when the judge found out that, among other things, the White House had burglarized the offices of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. (Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets, pp. 444-49) Third, the White House opened grand jury proceedings in Massachusetts against Beacon Press for their efforts to publish a more complete version of the Pentagon Papers than the Times did. That did not succeed because Beacon’s version was based on the papers given to Senator Mike Gravel, and he recited them into the congressional record and then submitted the rest. One should add that it was that version of the papers which included a subject called Phased Withdrawal 1962-64. For whatever reason, the Times version did not.

Nixon had begun the so-called Plumbers Unit over his fear of being caught for his sabotage of the 1968 election. He wanted a break-in at the Brookings Institution, where he (mistakenly) thought those papers were. Both acts, the subterfuge and the break-in, were illegal. But as the reader can see from the above, that was just the beginning of a record of perfidy on Indochina that is both incredulous and horrifying. This film is too kind to the criminal.

Click here to read part 5.

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.