Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (43 page)

For the next three months, from the beginning of February to the end of April, while he focused on nuclear test ban negotiations, finding some fresh approach to Cuban problems, and made plans for a European trip, Kennedy gave limited attention to Southeast Asia. Four passing mentions in his January State of the Union address, led by an optimistic assessment that the “spear point of aggression had been blunted in Vietnam,” underscored his wish to put the conflict at the bottom of his priorities. He left it to his military and civilian officials and the journalists in Saigon to argue about how the United States could defeat the communists and withdraw from Vietnam. Kennedy allowed the problem to fester rather than confront a hard decision to expand U.S. involvement or shut it down. His hope was eventually to withdraw from Vietnam with at least the appearance, if not the actuality, of victory. It was something of a pipe dream, but simply walking away from Vietnam did not strike him as a viable option—for both domestic political and national security reasons.

On March 6, when a reporter at a press conference asked his reaction to a Mansfield recommendation for a reassessment of U.S. Asian policy and a possible reduction of aid, he said, “I don’t see how we are going to be able, unless we are going to pull out of Southeast Asia and turn it over to the Communists . . . to reduce very much our economic programs and military programs in South Viet-Nam, in Cambodia, in Thailand. I think that unless you want to withdraw from the field and decide that it is in the national interest to permit the area to collapse, . . . it would be impossible to substantially change it particularly as we are in a very intensive struggle in those areas.” He asserted that if the communists controlled all of Southeast Asia, it would jeopardize India and all of the Middle East. “I don’t see any prospect of the burden being lightened for the United States in Southeast Asia in the next year if we are going to do the job and meet what I think are very clear national needs.” He said nothing, however, about what might come after 1964, signaling by his silence the hope that by then they might be able to ensure Vietnam’s autonomy or at least the appearance of it and bring home American advisers.

While Kennedy stood aside, the debate over Vietnam continued. On one side were the determined optimists: Nolting and Harkins in Saigon and the Chiefs led by Taylor in Washington, with unflinching support from Wheeler and Marine General Victor H. Krulak, special assistant to the Chiefs for counterinsurgency. They believed winning in Vietnam was an essential predicate to beating back communist insurgencies in developing countries. As important, they thought that the expanded U.S. involvement of the past year had established the conditions for victory. And the path to success was not through political reforms imposed on Diem, but through military action. As Wheeler had said in a speech at Fordham University in November 1962, “it is fashionable in some quarters to say that the problems in Southeast Asia are primarily political and economic rather than military. I do not agree. The essence of the problem in Vietnam is military.”

Civilian advisers, led by Harriman, Hilsman, and Forrestal, were no less eager to defeat the Viet Cong insurgency. But they were less certain about the outcome and were convinced that political rather than military initiatives were the key to success: Pressuring Diem and the Nhus to introduce political reforms was essential to Saigon’s long-term stability. They also believed that South Vietnam’s armed forces needed to take greater direction from U.S. military advisers in order to ensure more aggressive action.

American journalists in Saigon represented a third side in the debate. They did not think that a Diem government could outlast the communists. It was a corrupt regime sponsoring an Army led by handpicked Mandarins more committed to preserving their privileges and insulating their troops from battlefield losses than to sacrifices in the service of victory. These correspondents made every effort to expose the weaknesses in South Vietnam’s government and army. They saw their job as telling the truth about an unpopular autocratic regime and an army that wouldn’t fight. They were not, however, urging a withdrawal from Vietnam, but a change in government and military actions that could bring victory.

The argument in Washington and Saigon over how to win the war and escape from Vietnam intensified in early February when Forrestal suggested to Harriman that the United States broaden its contacts with noncommunists. Forrestal saw it giving the United States a more independent position in Vietnam and increasing our alternatives if a change of government became desirable. He thought that the embassy should make clear to Diem that U.S. interests meant “a friendly attitude towards all his people” and a full airing of differences with him.

Harriman passed Forrestal’s letter along to Nolting, who bristled at the suggestion that “we are living in cocoons here, dealing only with GVN officials and deliberately cutting ourselves off from other Vietnamese elements.” Nolting warned that encouraging oppositionists could “stimulate revolution. . . . If the idea is to try to build up an alternative to the present government . . . I am opposed.” He saw no alternative to Diem. Forrestal was scathing about Nolting’s resistance. “It’s about what I expected,” he told Harriman, “since this is more a question of attitude than of making a case one way or the other. . . . Fritz tends to be more concerned about preserving the legitimate government than keeping in touch with the opposition.” Schlesinger weighed in on Forrestal’s side, telling him that Nolting’s letter to Harriman “is one of the most dismal documents I have ever encountered.” He suggested replacing Nolting in Saigon. What no one wanted to confront was that the bureaucratic infighting signaled America’s involvement in a failing policy.

The one thing policymakers in Saigon and Washington could agree on was the destructive influence of the journalists on the war effort. When Hilsman held an informal meeting with American reporters during his January inspection trip, it turned into a shouting match. The journalists described Diem as hostile to his U.S. advisers, whom he was ignoring, and the South Vietnamese government as on the road to defeat. Hilsman, convinced that his firsthand experience with guerrilla operations in Burma during World War II gave him superior understanding, snidely dismissed the newsmen as “naïve.” The important thing, he told them, was not for Americans “to be liked, but to be tough and get things done.” The reporters had no quarrel with that prescription, but they were less accepting of Hilsman’s conviction, or at least hope, that Diem could be pressured into reforming his government and convincing his army to fight more aggressively, as the Americans were advising.

The U.S. military was angrier than Hilsman was with the journalists. When Admiral Harry Felt arrived in Vietnam after the Ap Bac debacle, Sheehan greeted him at the airport with a request for a comment. “I don’t believe what I have been reading in the papers,” he said, before hearing from subordinates in Saigon. “As I understand it, it was a Vietnamese victory—not a defeat, as the papers say.” Harkins, who was standing next to him, parroted his optimism. “Yes, that’s right. It was a Vietnamese victory. It certainly was.” Informed by an aide that his questioner was Sheehan, Felt said, “So, you’re Sheehan. . . . You ought to talk to some of the people who’ve got the facts.” Without missing a beat, Sheehan fired back, “You’re right, Admiral, and that’s why I went down there every day.”

There were also dissenting voices within the ranks of the American military and civilian managers trying to chart a winning strategy in Vietnam. Among the most informed and outspoken critics was John Paul Vann. He was thirty-seven years old, an up-through-the-ranks lieutenant colonel who had seen more combat operations in Vietnam—participating in more than two hundred helicopter assault landings—than any other American. He was a fearless warrior, frequently exposing himself to dangers in attempts to motivate aggressive action by the Vietnamese troops he accompanied on missions. His frustration at the refusal of the ARVN to take advantage of greater numbers and superior arms to attack the Viet Cong boiled over into outspoken complaints. A highly critical report he wrote on Ap Bac angered his superiors, who wanted the whole command in Saigon to speak with one voice. Completing his tour of duty in Vietnam in April 1963 and assigned to the Pentagon, Vann tried to brief his superiors on Diem’s and ARVN’s failings, but Taylor, Wheeler, and Krulak, who shared the Saigon command’s aversion to conceding Vietnamese imperviousness to U.S. advice, refused to give Vann a hearing. It was groupthink unworthy of such intelligent and competent leaders and a formula for defeat in the war.

The State Department also downplayed tensions with the Vietnamese that undermined prospects of a more stable and secure nation; it was too frustrating to concede that nation-building in Vietnam was beyond Washington’s reach. As Hilsman told Rusk at the beginning of April, “the strategic concept . . . for South Viet-Nam remains basically sound. If we can ever manage to have it implemented fully and with vigor, the result will be victory.” But no one in the department seemed to have reliable suggestions for implementing it or could even demonstrate that the overall plan would work.

In March, the General Accounting Office had circulated a draft report on aid programs for Vietnam that was severely critical of the Vietnamese government’s failure to mobilize its resources. Nolting pressed the department to bury this “public chastisement of the GVN” as likely to encourage coup plotting, raise enemy morale, and reverse recent gains in the fighting. The department arranged to have the report classified and hidden from the press and public. Similarly, when a public affairs officer in the department took issue with the conviction that the correspondents in Saigon were a menace to the U.S. mission in the conflict, arguing that the reporters were better informed and had a clearer understanding of conditions in Vietnam than most U.S. officials in the country, the department shelved his report.

Robert G. K. Thompson, a highly decorated British officer who had been a central figure in defeating guerrilla insurgents in Malaysia and had become the head of a British Advisory Group on Vietnam, encouraged American illusions about progress defeating the Viet Cong. At an April 1 meeting with Harriman, Thompson reported that when McNamara had asked about reducing U.S. forces in Vietnam, Thompson had said that continuing gains in the fighting during 1963 would allow the withdrawal of some one thousand men.

Thompson’s credentials in defeating communist insurgents in Malaysia convinced his American audience that he was an authority worth hearing. His conviction that Strategic Hamlets would make a difference in Vietnam won him an interview with Kennedy on April 4. Eager for good news that would chart out a relatively short timeline for U.S. victory, Kennedy embraced Thompson’s vision of success. The French had lost in Vietnam, Thompson replied to a Kennedy question about their failure, because they did not have the Strategic Hamlets, which were bringing the peasants to the government’s side. Morale was on the upswing, Thompson reported, and continued progress by the summer would give Kennedy the option of withdrawing a thousand advisers by the end of the year. He also told Kennedy, who had asked about the quality of the political opposition, that it was “very poor,” and that Diem was the only one who could win the war. By the close of the meeting, Kennedy was delighted to have such an upbeat assessment.

A three-and-a-half-hour meeting that night at the palace in Saigon between Nolting, who had agreed to resign at the close of his two-year tour in Saigon, and Diem gave the lie to all the optimism. Diem adamantly refused to accept American advice on funding for counterinsurgency programs that the embassy and U.S. military advisers believed were essential to winning the war. Diem’s resistance perplexed Nolting. But Diem insisted that following the U.S. lead would undermine his authority by giving the appearance of Vietnam as a U.S. protectorate. Diem was indifferent to Nolting’s warning that his resistance to U.S. advice would curtail American aid and reverse the gains made over the last eighteen months.

Still, Diem and the Nhus did not seem to care. On April 12, when Ngo Dinh Nhu spoke with an embassy official, he said that “it would be useful to reduce the numbers of Americans by anywhere from 500 to 3,000 or 4,000.” He did not think that U.S. advisers in the provinces understood the difficulties of the local officials who were complaining about unwanted pressure from the Americans. They were creating a “sense of inadequacy and inferiority” among the Vietnamese. Mrs. Nhu publicly declared that the Americans were trying to make “‘lackeys of the Vietnamese.’”

An April 17 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that it was impossible “to project the future course of the war with any confidence. . . . Despite South Vietnamese progress, the situation remains fragile.” The analysts doubted that Diem had the will or capacity to lead his country to victory. Nonetheless, the State Department’s working group on Vietnam was willing to bet on the likelihood of gains in the fighting and proposed a substantial reduction of the more than sixteen thousand U.S. advisers in Vietnam by the end of 1963. The CIA expected the Saigon government to endorse the idea of a significant reduction of U.S. personnel; the agency said “the force is too large and unmanageable.”

By the spring of 1963, Vietnam seemed to be primarily a burden with no clear solution. An evaluation of the Strategic Hamlets program described it as an “excellent” concept that was “seriously handicapped by a lack of understanding” and insufficient “will to put it into effect.” To make it work would require “a psychological revolution in the way the Vietnamese Government and its officials operate.” As for Diem, he remained resistant to reforms the embassy had been pressing on him since 1960. The State Department’s Vietnam working group proposed a fresh discussion of what economic and fiscal pressures might force him to respond. They also wanted renewed consideration of contingency plans should Diem be ousted. Despite, or perhaps because of, these uncertainties, McNamara directed Pentagon planners to discuss a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. personnel from Vietnam than the numbers projected over the next three years. In a May 7 meeting, he told the president that he hoped they could pull out one thousand troops by the end of the current year and avoid the sort of commitment the United States had faced in Korea, which he saw as excessive and feared would occur from an unchecked growth of involvement in South Vietnam.