Round 3: More Pentagon Disclosures

"The dilemma of the U.S. involvement dating from the Kennedy era," wrote the authors of the Pentagon study on the Viet Nam War in 1967, was to apply "only limited means to achieve excessive ends." Last week, as additional parts of the Pentagon papers were published, the new documents continued to show a disturbing pattern of inexperience and ignorance at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, cynicism about America's Vietnamese "allies," and an unwillingness in Washington to abandon official policies even after they had proved to be failures. Examples:

NAIVETE ABOUT DIEM. The Pentagon papers reflect Washington's shallow perception of the complexity of South Viet Nam's problems and the U.S.'s limited ability to deal with them. Shortly before the 1963 coup that overthrew President Ngo Dinh Diem, the White House cabled to then Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge a lengthy set of instructions. Tidily organized under points A through M, the missive loftily proposed solutions for a country riven by political and religious strife and on the verge of military collapse. According to the cable's ungainly prose, Lodge was directed to impress on Diem that, among other things, he should: "A. Clear the air. Diem should get everyone back to work and get them to focus on winning the war. B. Buddhists and students. Let them out and leave them unmolested. C. The press should be allowed full latitude of expression. While tendentious reporting is irritating," the White House cable continued, "suppression of news leads to much more serious trouble." Lodge demurred that it was hopeless to talk with Diem since he and his brother, Secret Police Chief Ngo Dinh Nhu, believed that such reforms would under mine their power. But the White House replied: "We ourselves can see much virtue in an effort to reason with an unreasonable man when he is on a collision course."

U.S. FEARS OF NEUTRALITY. During the early 1960s, the U.S. feared that South Viet Nam might choose neutrality, which Washington believed would open the way to an eventual Communist takeover. American fears increased sharply in late 1963 when in quick succession 1) Ho Chi Minh suggested a cease-fire in the war, 2) Charles de Gaulle called for the neutralization of all of Viet Nam, and 3) President Diem reportedly conferred secretly in Saigon with a French diplomat from the embassy in Hanoi. In retrospect, neutralization would have been a more attractive alternative for the U.S. than escalation. Nonetheless, some U.S. officials at the time felt that the U.S. was the victim of a giant French plot to unseat American power in Southeast Asia. This suspicion was a factor in the ultimate U.S. decision to back Lieut. General Duong Van Minh's coup against Diem and his brother Nhu, who was suspected of harboring a desire for direct peace negotiations with the North. Similarly, when Minh was overthrown after only three months in power, the new strongman, General Nguyen Khanh, told the American embassy that his action had been necessary to head off a coup by pro-French neutralist generals. "Your mission," President Johnson cabled Lodge, "is precisely for the purpose of knocking down the idea of neutralization wherever it rears its ugly head." FAULTY FORECASTS. General William C. Westmoreland continually shifted his forecast of the number of American troops that would be required to win the war in South Viet Nam. At first,

Westmoreland asked for 175,000 troops, then he increased that figure by 100,000 in July 1965. Within five months, he upped to 443,000, and to 542,000 in January 1966. According to the Pentagon analysts, Westmoreland had failed to realize that the Communists would match the U.S. buildup. Westmoreland predicted in 1965 that within two years the U.S. would win the war. USING MUSCLE ON KY. After Diem's overthrow, the U.S. was frustrated by governmental instability and continued political factionalism in Saigon. The breaking point came in May 1966 when Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, then the country's military strongman, provoked another Buddhist outburst by saying that he would remain in office another year, postponing the scheduled elections. After dissident South Vietnamese soldiers and Buddhists seized control of Danang and Hue, Ky moved in troops of his own without consulting the U.S. Reacting with what the Pentagon analysts called "unrestrained fury," the State Department cabled the embassy to stop the fighting. "This may require tough talk," read the dispatch, "but the U.S. cannot accept this insane bickering." Marine General Lewis W. Walt threatened to use U.S. jets to shoot down any South Vietnamese plane that tried to attack the dissidents, and Deputy Ambassador William J. Porter withdrew U.S. airlift and advisers from the Saigon government until Thieu, who was a member of Ky's ruling coterie of generals, gave assurances that elections would be held as promised in 1967. It was those that led to Thieu's elevation to South Vietnamese President with Ky as No. 2. The holding of elections was a worthwhile objective, but the U.S.'s treatment of Ky, while undoubtedly deserved, illustrates Washington's desire to manipulate its Saigon allies. FUTILITY OF BOMBING. After the bombing of military installations and transportation facilities in North Viet Nam failed to cripple the Communist war effort, President Johnson acceded to the military's request to knock out the country's oil supplies. Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp Jr. had predicted that such action "would either bring the enemy to the conference table or cause the insurgency to wither." During the summer of 1966, U.S. warplanes destroyed at least 70% of North Viet Nam's stationary oil-storage capacity, but the destruction had no discernible effect on Communist morale or war effort. Meanwhile, a distinguished group of 47 U.S. scientists met in a seminar at Wellesley, Mass., under the auspices of the private Institute for Defense Analyses' Jason division (so named for the leader of the Argonauts in Greek mythology).

The scholars concluded that bombing of North Viet Nam was ineffective. NUCLEAR THREAT. According to the Pentagon papers, the U.S. was considering the use of nuclear weapons in the event of Chinese intervention in Viet Nam. In a conversation with South Viet Nam's then Premier Nguyen Khanh, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said that if the planned U.S. military buildup triggered Chinese intervention, "we would not allow ourselves to be bled white while fighting them with conventional weapons." Rusk, however, was relatively restrained in comparison with many other ranking U.S. officials. Time and again, the Pentagon papers show that Washington's instinctive reaction was to resort to military force when faced with difficult problems in Asia. Fortunately, less hawkish options were usually adopted, but the initial responses of U.S. leaders were uniformly militaristic and sometimes downright bellicose.

WARNINGS OF DOMESTIC CRISIS. In March 1968, as President Johnson pondered Westmoreland's request for an additional 205,000 troops, which would have brought U.S. force levels in South Viet Nam to more than 700,000, one Pentagon official warned the White House that continued escalation of the war would result in "a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions." Contended Paul Warnke, then Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs: "It will be difficult to convince critics that we are not destroying South Viet Nam in order to 'save it' and that we genuinely want peace talks." By contrast, other Pentagon officials enthusiastically backed Westmoreland's request for more troops. Phil G. Goulding, then Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, even argued in part that the additional troop commitments would help unite the country and still criticism of the conduct of the war.

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