How the Troop Decision Was Made

Even before he won the Republican nomination for President in 1968, Richard Nixon proposed "a fuller enlistment of our Vietnamese allies in their own defense." TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey traces the evolution of the Nixon Administration's efforts to carry out that aim through the Midway meeting.

IN January, when he acquired both the responsibility and the information to deal with the war's intricacies, Nixon felt that he should not meet with South Viet Nam's Nguyen Van Thieu until well after he had publicly outlined his own ideas on ending the war. Then, early in May, the Viet Cong proposed its ten-point plan in Paris, and less than a week later the President responded with his own eight-point proposal (TIME, May 23). The prospect for movement was growing faster than Nixon had anticipated. The meeting with Thieu, first planned for July, was moved up to June 8.

The U.S. military had already been long at work on upgrading South Vietnamese forces. But the enemy's winter offensive was soon in progress. When the attacks abated somewhat, firm plans could be made to begin supplanting American troops with South Vietnamese.

In Saigon, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker worked with the Thieu government; two days before the Midway meeting, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger flew to the summer White House in San Clemente, Calif., with a draft of the troop-reduction statement.

From the start, roughly 25,000 was the target figure. The President could have rounded up every cook and clerk and made a more dramatic gesture, recalling as many as 100,000. He rejected that idea: to act responsibly in his view meant pulling out a maximum of 70,000 troops this year, and to remove them all at once would have looked too much like what White House insiders call "an elegant bugout." In any event, there would be opportunity later to take out more support personnel. To underline his seriousness, Nixon felt that most of the men to be replaced initially must be combat troops.

When Nixon and Thieu met in the modest house of the U.S. base commander at Midway, Nixon moved quickly to the troop question. "We have claimed for years that we were getting stronger," Thieu replied. "If it is so, we have to be willing to see some Americans leave." Thieu agreed that the announcement might help the Paris negotiations. Said Nixon: "We do not want to break the umbilical cord to your people." The troop replacement would not, said Thieu.

After an hour of detailed discussion, Nixon was satisfied that Thieu was in genuine agreement. He brought out the U.S. draft statement and asked: "Is it agreeable then that when we go out for pictures I read this statement?" A Thieu aide, Nguyen Phu Due, wrote a companion statement for Thieu. There was more discussion and some minor changes in each draft.

Nixon asked his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, to type the Thieu text. Because there was no typewriter in the house, Miss Woods went outside and picked her way through the island's ubiquitous gooney birds in search of one. After 45 minutes, she returned. While they waited, the two Presidents talked of problems of military leadership and negotiating strategy. Later in the day they would discuss political conditions and economic reform in South Viet Nam. But the main business at hand was that of troop replacement and they took a break to go into the bright sunlight and face the press. Nixon began what may some day be viewed as an historic statement: "I have decided to order the immediate redeployment from Viet Nam of the divisional equivalent of approximately 25,000 men . . ."

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