Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (51 page)

In the meantime, Kennedy, who knew that his advisers could not agree, wished to keep the argument about Vietnam out of the headlines. At the morning meeting on the tenth, he described himself as “disturbed at the tendency both in Washington and Saigon to fight out our own battles via the newspapers. . . . He wanted these different views fought out at this table and not indirectly through the newspapers.” At the White House daily staff meeting the next day, the same day
New York Times
columnist James Reston published an article decrying the censorship of U.S. journalists in Saigon, Bundy raised the administration’s press problem. He seemed “at a loss about what to do” about Vietnam in general and the press in particular. When told that Madame Nhu was coming to the United States, a visit Kennedy had made clear he opposed, Bundy, who was “already wobbly” and, according to the note taker, “close to the last blow,” said, “This was the first time the world had been faced with collective madness in a ruling family since the days of the czars.”

The continuing daily conversations about Vietnam at the State Department and the White House left everyone discouraged. Lodge kept pushing for a commitment to remove Nhu and Diem, while Rusk, McNamara, and Taylor maintained hopes of spurring Diem onto a fresh course. Rusk directed Lodge to have “frequent conversations” with Diem, but Lodge resisted, complaining that he had nothing new to bring up and saw “many better ways in which I can use my waking hours.” Instead, he wanted Kennedy to send Lansdale to Saigon at once “to take charge, under my supervision, of all U.S. relationships with a change of government.” But as Harriman explained to Lodge, differences of opinion were a deterrent to action.

On September 16, eighteen national security advisers debated the right course in Vietnam yet again. Rusk instructed Hilsman to draft two cables, one reflecting a “conciliatory approach” and the other the “pressure approach.” The pressure policy aimed to force Diem into dropping Nhu and reforming his government, while the conciliation track assumed no change in the government and the rehabilitation of its leaders. “I think we have come to a position of stall in our attempts to develop a Washington consensus” on Vietnam, Forrestal told Bundy. The divide among the president’s advisers was stimulating a war of leaks. “The longer we continue in an attitude of semi-public fluidity, the worse the leak problem becomes,” he added. The only sure step Kennedy favored was putting a lid on the negative press stories on Vietnam. He wanted Lodge “to hush up the press in Saigon.” Since he and his advisers had no good idea of how to ensure a victory in the fighting and end U.S. involvement in an unwanted war, Kennedy seemed to hope that matters would resolve themselves, but that would happen only if the press did not agitate the issue and pressure him into actions he was reluctant to take.

Because Kennedy saw no likelihood that Diem would be gone soon, he instructed Lodge to implement the pressure policy. In addition, he directed McNamara and Taylor to visit Vietnam once again to assess the state of the war and Diem’s ability to defeat the communists. Advocates of dumping Diem were incensed at Kennedy’s decision to send two of the most outspoken supporters of continued cooperation with Diem. Lodge immediately cabled his objection to a visit that “will be taken here as a sign that we have decided to forgive and forget and will be regarded as marking the end of our period of disapproval of oppressive measures.” Lodge was furious. Why wasn’t the White House listening to him? He was on the ground and believed he knew exactly what should be done. To appease him, Kennedy agreed to include Forrestal in the visiting team. Hilsman weighed in with a letter to Lodge asserting that “more and more of the town is coming around to our view and that if you in Saigon and we in the Department stick to our guns the rest will also come around. . . . A determined group here will back you all the way.”

It was clear, however, that Kennedy simply didn’t want to encourage a coup that would deepen U.S. commitments and increase the possibility of sending combat troops. To persuade Diem to follow America’s lead, he directed McNamara and Taylor to shun any contact with coup generals and emphasize “the positive accomplishments of the last decade” that had resulted from U.S.-Vietnamese cooperation.

Predictably, the McNamara-Taylor visit solved nothing. A meeting with Diem was an exercise in futility. Having perfected the technique of speaking at length so as to limit what unwelcome visitors might say, Diem did most of the talking during the first two hours. It was a “virtual monologue” in which Diem simply repeated familiar observations about the fighting and the actions of his government. In the third hour, McNamara and Taylor made the case for reforms that could enhance the war effort and blunt criticism in the United States that threatened to reduce backing for Vietnam. Diem dismissed their complaints as unwarranted and generated by a hostile press corps attacking his government, him, and his family. McNamara and Taylor concluded that Diem was unmovable; he was indifferent to what they said.

In a report to Kennedy on their return to Washington, McNamara and Taylor reported significant progress in the fighting. They saw little likelihood of a successful coup and little prospect for government reforms. Nonetheless, they favored continuing pressure on Diem and Nhu and contacts with generals who might one day rise to the challenge and carry off a successful coup. They also predicted that “the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965” and recommended that one thousand U.S. military advisers be withdrawn by the end of 1963. They gave no explanation for why the United States could leave Vietnam in a little over two years. In everything to do with Vietnam, wishful thinking won the day.

The White House then issued a press release that declared “the security of South Viet-Nam a major interest of the United States” and the determination of the administration to defeat the communist insurgency. The military support for the South Vietnamese was showing good progress and would be provided until the insurgency has been suppressed. “Secretary McNamara and General Taylor reported their judgment that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965,” and one thousand U.S. military personnel could be withdrawn by the end of this year. Political tensions in Vietnam were “deeply serious,” and the White House had “made clear its continuing opposition to any repressive actions in South Viet-Nam.”

The public pronouncement was more an exercise in political posturing than a realistic assessment of current and future conditions in Vietnam. McNamara and Taylor understood that Kennedy opposed any expansion of U.S. military involvement in the war, and they were predicting communist defeat in the next two years that would allow the United States to withdraw its advisers. William H. Sullivan, an assistant to Averell Harriman who was part of the visiting group, told Taylor that the commitment to withdraw U.S. forces at the end of 1965 “would be considered a phony and a fraud and an effort to mollify the American public and just not be considered honest.” But Kennedy was insisting on an end date to U.S. involvement in the war. When Bundy and members of the NSC questioned the wisdom of the announcement, McNamara and Taylor replied that they were “under orders.” William Bundy thought “the words of the release on the military situation were extraordinarily unwise.” Mindful of the questionable realism in placing limits on America’s role in the fighting, Kennedy instructed that no formal announcement accompany the implementation of this decision. He did not wish to test the limits of public credulity.

Above all, now, he wanted to repress negative press accounts that he continued to think would make it difficult for him to limit, if not end, U.S. involvement in the conflict. Newspaper stories describing hostile State Department views of Diem, as well as Defense Department complaints that “inept diplomacy” was putting American interests at risk in Vietnam, angered him. As the White House prepared to release the statement summarizing the McNamara-Taylor findings, Kennedy told advisers, “Reports of disagreement do not help the war effort in Vietnam and do no good to the government as a whole. We must all sign on and with good heart set out to implement the actions decided upon.” He insisted “that no one discuss with the press any measures that he may decide to undertake” on Vietnam. Bundy proposed that Kennedy instruct everyone not to say anything to the press that implied differences among policymakers. Bundy cabled Lodge: The president thinks it essential that the White House rather than the press inform the public about Vietnam. It was impermissible for the newspapers to describe the pressure Washington was putting on Diem. It would be better for the “press to consider us inactive than to trumpet a posture of ‘major sanctions’ and ‘sweeping demands.’”

But Kennedy couldn’t plug leaks or halt the flow of discouraging news coming from Saigon. In September and October,
New York Times
reports by Halberstam as well as critical columns and other negative headlines about American problems in Vietnam continued to irritate him. Despite a conscious effort by McNamara and Taylor to shun the press during their visit, Halberstam reported that the “U.S. mission is finding no easy solutions in Vietnam.” Their tour underscored the “difficulty in assessing the impact of the political climate on the U.S.–aided war effort.” On October 3,
New York Times
columnist Arthur Krock described “The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam.” CIA operatives in Saigon were portrayed as at odds with Lodge, refusing on two occasions to carry out his orders. Halberstam also depicted Lodge as in disagreement with Harkins. “As you can appreciate, the story has caused concern in Washington,” George Ball cabled Lodge, “since we have been making a serious effort in conjunction with McNamara-Taylor mission to achieve actual and visible unity” within the U.S. government. On the eighth, despite Kennedy’s insistence on repressing news accounts of significant pressure on Saigon, Halberstam reported that the United States was halting some aid to Vietnam in hopes of forcing changes in Diem’s government. On the seventeenth the
Times
reported that Nhu saw his country as losing faith in the United States.

Kennedy made Halberstam the focus of his campaign to restrain the press. It was not simply that Halberstam produced day-to-day headlines describing the vulnerabilities of Diem’s government and its stumbling war effort; it was also that he had become an unspoken advocate of replacing the current leadership and winning the war. Halberstam did not think that the introduction of U.S. ground forces was the answer to the guerrilla insurgency. He had already concluded that it would trap the United States in a colonial war that would “parallel the French experience.” So Kennedy and Halberstam partly agreed on the limits of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. But Kennedy did not want policy made or forced on him by unelected journalists. Specifically, he feared that Halberstam’s hectoring was pressuring him into support of a coup that could further destabilize Vietnam and bring irresistible demands for intervention with American combat troops.

Three weeks into October, with conditions growing more uncertain in Saigon, Kennedy used a lunch meeting with Arthur Sulzberger, who had recently become the publisher of the
New York Times
, to ask that Halberstam be withdrawn from Saigon. Sulzberger refused Kennedy’s assault on press freedom. The fact that the president didn’t like Halberstam’s reports was insufficient to compel his recall. Halberstam’s reporting was a model of truth telling. The
Times
had no desire to make policy with its lead stories, however much Kennedy may have seen it that way. Halberstam was providing an accurate portrait of an unpopular government and a faltering civil war. It was up to Kennedy to face these realities and not try to alter them by repressing the news out of Saigon.

But Kennedy could no more control press accounts than he could his own advisers and events in Saigon. On October 9, after renewed indications of coup planning reached Kennedy, he told Lodge not to help “stimulate” a coup, but also not to discourage one if it appeared likely to succeed and increase the effectiveness of the military effort. While Lodge remained entirely supportive of the generals now promising to oust Diem within a week after October 26, Harkins continued to advise the generals against toppling the government and risking recent gains in the war. When Lodge and Harkins conferred on the afternoon of October 23, they argued about what the White House wanted them to do and the different signals they were giving the generals. Speaking for the president, Bundy instructed Lodge and Harkins to “stand back from any non-essential involvement in these matters”—meaning that if there were a coup, the White House wanted plausible deniability. When Lodge responded that anything the United States did to thwart a coup would be a mistake, Kennedy reiterated his concern that a coup not “be laid at our door.”

On the twenty-seventh, the divide among the advisers in Washington and Saigon grew more pronounced. Harriman and Hilsman convinced Ball, who was acting secretary of state while Rusk was out of the country, to sign a “green light” cable to Lodge telling the generals that Washington approved a coup. U. Alexis Johnson, who was excluded from their three-way exchange, believed that he was purposely kept out of the conversation because he opposed any such instruction. In telling Lodge to facilitate the coup, Harriman and Hilsman were taking advantage of Kennedy’s ambivalence. He had neither approved nor opposed a coup, but simply said he didn’t want it blamed on the United States. Kennedy’s uncertainty about what to do about Vietnam allowed advisers to fill the policy vacuum.

On October 29, in an apparent reaction to the “green light” cable, Bundy told Kennedy that “all important separate instructions and reports made on any channel—State, CIA, DOD, USIA, and JCS—be sent over here during this next period for your personal information. . . . There is just no doubt at all that a good deal of our trouble in the last three months has come from difference of emphasis, at least in what we have said to the field.” The instruction would allow him and Forrestal “to call to your attention any serious divergences. . . . I do not underestimate the sensitivity of this order.” The Joint Chiefs, Defense Department, and CIA might object, “but your interest is not served by the uncritical acceptance” of their right to send unmonitored cables. It reflected Kennedy’s feeling that he had lost control of policy.