Non-Offers from Hanoi

Does the Johnson Administration genuinely want a peaceful settlement in Viet Nam? The question has been asked and answered scores of times in the past year. Last week, as the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division battled North Vietnamese regulars in the fiercest, costliest fighting of the war (see THE WORLD), the issue came up again--this time with an implication that the Administration had summarily rejected a so-called "peace feeler" from Hanoi last year.

When Government officials denied that any "meaningful" offer had been made or refused, pundits and editorial writers all but accused Administration officials of lying; some went so far as to picture--from Washington--a nationwide "crisis of confidence" in President Johnson's policies.

Deep Recall. As in most press-fueled controversies, the facts were largely obscured by the furor. Last week's free-for-all started with an article in Look in which CBS Newsman Eric Sevareid described--as he had on TV last summer--a conversation that he had with Adlai Stevenson shortly before his death. In a section buried deep in the article, Sevareid recalled that Stevenson had talked of behind-the-scenes arrangements made by U.N. Secretary-General U Thant in the early fall of 1964 to have a North Vietnamese emissary and a U.S. delegate open talks in neutral Rangoon.

Stevenson is quoted as saying that "someone in Washington" had at first said such talks would have to wait until after the presidential election, but when U Thant tried again around the first of the year, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara "flatly opposed the attempt." U Thant was "furious," and "there can be no doubt," wrote Sevareid, "that Adlai Stevenson, who was working closely with U Thant in these attempts, was convinced that these opportunities should have been seized, whatever their ultimate result."

Rusk's Antenna. The essential facts of the story--minus Stevenson's posthumous opinions--were reported when they were first leaked to the press by U Thant early this year. Nonetheless, no sooner had Sevareid's piece appeared last week than reporters demanded more explicit details from the Administration. Secretary McNamara retorted angrily: "There is not one word of truth in the remarks made about me or the position attributed to me." White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers declined even to discuss the story, explaining: "I follow the President's advice of a long time ago, in not commenting on what dead men either said or might not have said."

Finally, State Department Spokesman Robert McCloskey admitted that the U.S. had indeed rejected U Thant's suggestions for a conference--through Secretary of State Dean Rusk, not McNamara. McCloskey's unfortunately worded comment was that "we saw nothing to indicate that Hanoi was prepared for peace talks, and the Secretary of State said he would recognize it when it came. His antenna is sensitive."

Such obfuscations naturally only whetted journalistic suspicions that the Administration had something to hide. After all, as New York Times Columnist James Reston pointed out, only last July, ten months after U Thant's intervention, President Johnson said categorically that Hanoi had not given "the slightest indication" of interest in peace negotiations. Chided Reston: "The imprecision--to use the polite diplomatic word--of the Administration's statements on this whole Vietnamese business is astonishing."

Nebulous Suggestions. Yet the press, also, was less than precise in its reconstruction of events.

U Thant had never received any "concrete" offer of peace talks from Hanoi. His only contacts with the North Vietnamese government had been through nonaligned or Communist go-betweens. U Thant had proposed the talks, Hanoi had not volunteered them. As U Thant should have known, the U.S. had already rejected similarly nebulous suggestions for peace conferences on the logical ground that there was no hint of good faith from North Viet Nam. Only a month before U Thant's offer, the President had said no to a suggestion from Charles de Gaulle that Viet Nam be neutralized and vacated by all major powers--including the U.S. and Red China. "If those who practice terror and murder and ambush will simply honor their existing agreements," the President said at the time, "there can easily be peace in Southeast Asia immediately. But we do not believe in conferences called to ratify terror."

Indeed, throughout all U Thant's maneuverings, Hanoi at no time gave any indication, directly or indirectly, that it seriously wanted to talk peace with the U.S. Not once did U.S. intelligence reports hint that the Communists would negotiate anything but the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from South Viet Nam. Hanoi had every reason to act tough in late 1964. From Saigon, where the shaky Khanh government was assailed on all sides, to the jungles and rice paddies where the Viet Cong were winning battle after battle--even to the Gulf of Tonkin, where North Vietnamese PT boats were harassing U.S. destroyers--it was plain that the Communists felt that victory was almost within their grasp.

Preconditioned Talks. Since then, the U.S. has notably strengthened its position--and Hanoi's intransigence has solidified. U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam began in February. The first stage of an ever-growing commitment of U.S. combat troops to South Viet Nam took place in March. In April, after everyone from French Foreign Minister Couve de Murville to Pope Paul VI had pleaded for peace talks, President Johnson made the now celebrated speech at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University in which he declared that the U.S. Government would accept any proposal for "unconditional discussions" to end the conflict in Viet Nam.

Though it was the first time that Johnson had used those exact words, he had said many times before that the U.S. would enter into discussions at any time, given North Viet Nam's willingness "to stop what it is doing against its neighbors." Yet within a week of the Johns Hopkins speech, Hanoi proceeded to lay down four hard-edged preconditions. In addition to demanding U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam, Hanoi added the impossible stipulation that South Viet Nam would have to adhere to the "program" of the Hanoi-inspired National Liberation Front--meaning, go Communist. Even French officials, who have hardly gone out of their way to support U.S. policy on Viet Nam, last week volunteered that Hanoi's "feeler" in May "could not be regarded as a valid offer of negotiation."

Eroding Resolve. If the U.S. does get to the point of negotiating peace in Viet Nam, Red China will probably call the shots, as it did for two years during the negotiations before the Korean ceasefire. The Communists are unlikely to seek a truce until they despair of military victory. And then, as Army Chief of Staff Harold Johnson pointed out last month in recalling the Korean experience, they would do their best to use negotiations to erode American resolve until finally the U.S. might accept peace on virtually any terms.

In fact, given Hanoi's intransigence, many of the Administration's top officials now reason that the war in Viet Nam may never reach the conference table. The struggle, they speculate, may go on until the Communists simply retreat in undeclared surrender--leaving U.S. and South Vietnamese troops in control of the land. However, if the day should ever come when the Communists decide that negotiations are to their advantage, the U.S. can be certain of one thing. The message will come through loud, clear and direct from Hanoi to Washington.

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