The Best and the Brightest (28 page)

The majority of the Vietnamese, still hungering for independence, had no side to join. They were opposed to both the Communist Vietminh and the French. As the war raged around their families and homes, they gave lip service to whichever side was locally dominant, in order to stay alive. When French Union forces ravaged the countryside trying to destroy the Vietminh guerrillas, the resentful people joined the Vietminh to get revenge. Later, when the French increased measures of Vietnamese self-rule and promised an independent Vietnam, nationalists started joining the fight against the Vietminh in ever-mounting numbers. By the time I visited Vietnam in 1953, millions of Vietnamese had taken a definite stand against the Vietminh.

In 1954, in the last dying days of the French presence in Indochina, the Lansdale group had run around Hanoi putting sugar in the gas tanks of Vietminh trucks, a gesture of no small amount of mindlessness. The war was over, an Asian nationalist army had just defeated a powerful Western nation for its independence, and here was the top American expert on guerrilla war employing the pettiest kind of sabotage—mosquito bites, they were, at a historic moment. In Saigon, Lansdale helped sponsor Ngo Dinh Diem in his search for a Vietnamese Magsaysay, and played a key role in convincing a very dubious U.S. government that Diem was worth the risk. He taught Diem some lessons in modern leadership, lessons to which Diem always carefully and faithfully paid lip service. He taught Diem how to campaign against Bao Dai, and Diem, ever the worthy student, insisted upon receiving 98 percent of the vote. Lansdale also sponsored other little gestures which seemed somehow to belong more to the past than the present: hiring soothsayers—symbols of the suspicious feudal Vietnamese past—to predict bad years ahead for Ho Chi Minh, and good years for Ngo Dinh Diem.

Lansdale would become in effect an antirevolutionary figure in Vietnam. There was to be much talk of revolution and of land reform, but the American presence effectively stopped any kind of social change. None of this affected Lansdale’s reputation in his own somewhat uncritical country; the legend of him as a semi-underground figure continued to grow, the unconventional man for the unconventional war. He himself stayed in the background, and the legend seemed to thrive on his lack of visibility. In person he sometimes appeared to be a curiously disappointing, almost simplistic man, especially in contrast to the flashing verbalism of others of the Kennedy era. He was a man who talked vague platitudes just one step away from the chamber of commerce. You had to get with the folks, he would say, it was better to let the baby learn to walk on its own rather than try and teach him too much. Part of it was his natural style, part of it was his belief that it did not help to seem too bright. His intimates could watch him speak in private with considerable insight, and then, with the arrival of an outsider, switch to his low-key, folksy approach. Friends thought part of his success (such as it was) in the Philippines and in Vietnam came about because he had always been careful not to try and overpower the Asians he was dealing with; he was the rarest of Americans overseas, a listener.

At the tail end of the Eisenhower years he returned to Vietnam. Having angered powerful figures at Defense, he had experienced trouble in finding a sponsor, but he had finally found a friend in the government who let him make the trip. He found to his dismay, as reporters there were also discovering in 1960, that the new version of the Vietminh, named the Vietcong, were near victory by fighting guerrilla style in the countryside while the American military mission continued to train the Vietnamese army for a Korean-style invasion. President Diem was almost totally isolated from his former friends and allies, and increasingly dependent on his egomaniacal brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu; Diem and the American ambassador, Elbridge Durbrow, virtually did not speak to each other.

Lansdale wrote a lengthy and very pessimistic report critical of both the Americans and of Diem, but particularly of the former. This was important, because Lansdale was one of the men who had invented Diem, and you do not knock your own invention, but more significant, it was indicative of the Lansdale approach and that of other Good Americans, those sympathetic to Asians. They did not feel that it was deeply rooted historic forces pitted against us which were causing the problems, but rather a failure to supply the right people and the right techniques. Implicit in the Lansdale position was the belief that if the right Americans influenced Diem in the right way, Diem would respond. It was a form of limited can-doism. He recommended a new antibureaucratic team in the Lansdale mold: “Our U.S. Team in Vietnam should have a hard core of experienced Americans who know and really like Asians, dedicated people who are willing to risk their lives for the ideals of freedom, and who will try to influence and guide the Vietnamese towards U.S. policy objectives with the warm friendship and affection which our close alliance deserves. We should break the rules of personnel assignment, if necessary, to get such U.S. military and civilians to Vietnam.” What Lansdale was recommending was, of course, Lansdale.

The Lansdale report was picked up by a friend, who read it in the final days of the Eisenhower Administration and passed it on to the new Administration. Within days it landed with Rostow, who had been looking for something precisely like this. (Lansdale’s effect on Rostow is interesting: in 1954 Lansdale had gone around pouring sugar in the Vietminh gas tanks; in 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, when the clock was ticking off the minutes and seconds of a massive immediate confrontation, Rostow was going around Washington talking about sabotage against the Cubans, putting sugar in their oil refineries, which would halt their production and transportation . . .) Rostow urged Kennedy to read it, but the President seemed reluctant, he always had too little time. Was it really that important? he asked. Rostow insisted. Kennedy flipped through the pages. “Walt, this is going to be the worst one yet,” Rostow recalled him saying, and then adding, “Get to work on this.” Which Rostow quickly did.

As for Lansdale, he had made a favorable impression on the President; this was the kind of man Kennedy needed. Shortly afterward Lansdale found himself awakened by a presidential call on a Sunday morning and hastily summoned to a special breakfast meeting at the White House. As he walked in, Kennedy greeted him graciously and said somewhat casually, pointing to Rusk, “Has the Secretary here mentioned that I wanted you to be ambassador to Vietnam?” Lansdale, caught by surprise, mumbled that it was a great honor and a marvelous opportunity. He was deeply touched, and even more surprised, for it was the first he heard of the idea, and also, as it happened, the last. The appointment never came through; Lansdale later thought he had been blocked by Rusk, though he also realized that Defense was less than anxious to have him in Vietnam. He would not return for five more years, and by then antiguerrilla warfare was a thing of the past. Lansdale seemed a particularly futile and failed figure; the author of how to fight guerrilla wars the right way being part of a huge American mission which used massive bombing and artillery fire against Vietnamese villages.

Lansdale’s more specific proposals were channeled through to Roswell Gilpatric, the Deputy Secretary for Defense (significantly, Vietnam was already being treated as a military problem). The suggestions were essentially antibureaucratic, with Lansdale opposing what he assumed was the inevitable Americanization of the operation, the creation of a mission based on American bureaucratic needs rather than on Vietnamese realities. In early 1961 Gilpatric was scheduled to head a task force which would oversee the operation in Washington, and Lansdale was to be its chief in Saigon; there would be a minimal increase in personnel, a few specialists in the Lansdale mold, operating of course under Lansdale. These recommendations, eventually made in late April, were soon pushed aside by bureaucratic needs; as soon as the game was opened, each competing agency began to beg for more men. It was like amoebae multiplying: every agency wanted to double itself; one would become two, two would become four. Under the revised recommendations the military mission, then totaling 685 men, would be increased to around 3,000 men in the training group; other agencies would grow proportionately.

The recommendations were brought before Kennedy, who greeted them with the greatest distaste. He was by no means anxious to send that many more Americans to Vietnam; he had just staggered through the Bay of Pigs, and if he was wary of being caught looking soft in a Cold War confrontation, he was also wary of jumping into another confrontation. Years later Gilpatric would remember, more than anything else, Kennedy’s reluctance to add anything at that time to Vietnam, particularly men. Even the small number the President finally approved was agreed to as grudgingly as possible. There would be no 3,000-men military group, although on April 29 the President did approve a 400-man Special Forces group for training missions; they were, after all, his special favorites, and they were supposed to be experts on this kind of war. But essentially his attitude was to remain conventional about it; instead of the Vietnam mission being taken over by antibureaucratic specialists, as Lansdale wanted, it would be run by regular career State and Defense officials in the conventional way. There would be no specialists and no Lansdale there.

The first move toward continuing the commitment had, however, been taken earlier without the Administration’s even being aware of how fateful a step it was taking. It was done in an attempt to avoid a real decision, but it would have long-range repercussions. This was the switching of ambassadors to Vietnam on March 15, 1961, when Elbridge Durbrow was replaced by Frederick E. Nolting, Jr. The Durbrow tour had not been a happy one; he had watched the beginning of the Vietcong pressure against Diem, and simultaneously the accelerated estrangement of Diem from friends, allies and reality. Their discussions had become longer and longer monologues, and then, as Durbrow insisted on interrupting and telling Diem how poorly things were going, their meetings became more and more infrequent. Durbrow was, if anything, a very conservative figure, but he had been told to be candid with Diem, and that candor was now becoming unpleasant; toward the end Durbrow suggested that Ngo Dinh Nhu be sent into exile as an ambassador to a foreign country. His pleas to Diem about governmental reform, about improving the quality of commanders, about broadening the base of the government, resembled nothing so much as the pleas of General Stilwell to Chiang Kai-shek to do the same thing, and they were met with the same lack of appreciation. By the end of his tour, Durbrow was virtually
persona non grata.
When the Administration decided to replace him, it did not change the policy; it did not doubt the accuracy of what Durbrow had been reporting, but it could not afford a serious re-evaluation of the policy, dependent as it was on Diem with all his faults. So the change in policy would go from being honest with Diem to being nice to him, hoping that somehow this would create a new confidence and mutuality of trust. To inspire this confidence the Administration picked Frederick Nolting.

Fritz to his friends, who were numerous. A proper man of proper credentials. He had been a college teacher at one time, he came from a good Virginia family, and he had a good war record, Navy of course. He was part of that special group of relatively conservative Democrats from Virginia who play a major role in the foreign service and control much of its apparatus from the inside, who regard the foreign service as a gentleman’s calling, and feel they produce a particularly fine brand of gentleman. He had compiled a very good record, this hard-working, straight, somewhat unquestioning man. He was steady and solid, and he had been sponsored by everyone he had ever worked for. Before coming to Vietnam, he had been at NATO, where he was head of the political section, with rank of minister, thus the first deputy to the NATO ambassador. Vietnam was his first ambassadorial post; he had never been to Asia before, and his ideas of Communism had all been fashioned through his European experience. It was axiomatic that those who knew most about Asian nationalism were not allowed to serve in their chosen area (they were contaminated by their past), and if they had not left the foreign service they had at least switched to another desk. Thus the price of the past was sending Europeanists like Nolting to Asia; the new ambassador, knowing nothing of Asia, soon asked for and received as his deputy chief of mission his prime deputy from NATO, William Trueheart, who had not been to Asia either. Trueheart was Nolting’s closest friend; they had been together at the University of Virginia, and it was Trueheart who had talked Nolting into joining the foreign service.

Coming from NATO, Nolting seemed to symbolize the continuity of an American belief that it was American policies and American arms which had held the line against the Communists; that we, with our determination, could in fact make our decisions and then implant them in foreign countries; that the world welcomed our protection and our values; and that NATO and Vietnam were one and the same thing—despite, of course, a war of independence fought in Vietnam against a NATO power. (“NATO,” Nolting said shortly after his arrival, “was formed as a barrier against overt attack and it has held up for thirteen years. We haven’t found a barrier yet against covert aggression. If we can find such a technique, we’ll have bottled up the Communists on another front.”)

No one in the Kennedy group knew very much about him; it was an appointment which seemed to slip by them at the time. Only one man seemed to be aware of its potential import, and that was Chester Bowles. He had already been arguing for a major change of policy toward Asia, and neutralization of Vietnam; he alone at that point seemed to see the inevitability of a larger conflict, and the dangers of continued support of the Diem regime. As Undersecretary of State he was responsible for most of the ambassadorial assignments, and he believed strongly that you changed policy by changing personnel. He learned of the Nolting appointment at the last minute and tried to intercede against it. He felt that Nolting was being pushed by the traditionalists and the hard-liners in the Department, which was not surprising, considering the NATO origins. Bowles had come up with what he thought was a particularly good man for Vietnam, a foreign service officer named Kenneth Todd Young who had served there in the past and had maintained a reputation for being unusually sensitive to indigenous problems and nationalism. He had felt so frustrated that he had left the State Department during the Dulles years in despair over American policies. Young had returned with the coming of the Kennedy Administration and was assigned to a task force on Laos, where he caught Bowles’s attention. At that point in early March, Young was ticketed to be ambassador to Thailand. Bowles, however, was even then convinced that Vietnam rather than Thailand was going to be the main problem in Southeast Asia, and he wanted his most sensitive man there. Besides, he thought that Young was politically more in tune with Kennedy than Nolting was, and he thought this would be very important for an ambassador whose country was teetering on the brink of survival.