John Newman’s "JFK and Vietnam" (Updated)

John F. Kennedy was very disappointed by the advice he got on the Bay of Pigs invasion and the use of atomic weapons against Laos. Naval Chief Arleigh Burke retired in August of 1961. Shortly after, Kennedy let it be known that the Army’s Lyman Lemnitzer would not retain his position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. One reason for this is that Lemnitzer made it clear in the summer of 1961 that he thought America should directly intervene in Vietnam. Chief of the Vietnam MACV, Lt. General Lionel McGarr, also thought intervention would be the smart choice. At around this time, JFK decided he needed to talk to General Maxwell Taylor for the purposes of first, being his personal military advisor, and later, to replace Lemnitzer. In May of 1961, Kennedy decided to send Lyndon B. Johnson to Saigon on a goodwill tour. He made it clear that he wanted no one to suggest to Diem that American ground troops could or should enter the theater. Prior to Johnson’s arrival, the Joint Chiefs sent a message to McGarr saying that Diem should be encouraged to request troops from LBJ. And Johnson did suggest this to Diem. At this point, Diem politely declined. Instead, he asked for funding to increase the South Vietnamese army, the ARVN.

Kennedy agreed to the increased funding for the ARVN. But he refused the military request for 16,000 combat troops. Yet in October, Diem did request American combat troops. Right after this, Deputy Defense Secretary U. Alexis Johnson also suggested the insertion of combat troops. Kennedy was so upset by these requests that he planted a story in the New York Times saying the Pentagon was not advising him to send in combat troops. Clearly, Kennedy did not like this crescendo towards direct intervention. Yet that October—after Kennedy sent Taylor, Rostow, and Lansdale to Vietnam—they returned with a recommendation to insert several thousand troops under the guise of flood control. Kennedy was shocked by this request, so much so that he recalled each copy of the report. He did not want it to get into the press. When JFK got John Kenneth Galbraith’s memo, he compared it to the official report. In the meantime, certain senior White House officials—perhaps Robert Kennedy—began leaking to the press that the president was opposed to sending combat troops into Vietnam. Kennedy rejected combat troops, allowed for no mutual defense treaty, and did not provide any commitment to save Saigon from communism. He did allow for more American intelligence advisors, military trainers, and equipment. But as both Newman and Galbraith’s son Jamie have noted, the written result of this meeting, NSAM 111, marked a dividing line, one which Kennedy never crossed: Americans could not fight the war for Saigon. It also triggered the beginning of Kennedy’s plan to begin to get out of Indochina. 

Robert McNamara attended the first of what would be called “SecDef” meetings in Hawaii on December 16, 1961. What is remarkable about all this is that, even after Kennedy issued his warning about his policy, there were still requests to escalate. Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay said atomic weapons were needed. The military put together something called the Joint Strategic Survey Council, which recommended direct American intervention. Another such recommendation followed in January of 1962 by the Joint Chiefs. This one said if America did not go to war in Vietnam, the dominos could fall all the way to Australia and New Zealand. With the hawks swirling around him, Kennedy decided to use Galbraith and his report to counter them. By early in 1962, Galbraith had filed three back-channel cables to Kennedy. All of them frowning derisively on further American involvement in Indochina. Galbraith had pointedly written Kennedy that if the USA increased its support for Diem, “there is consequent danger we shall replace the French as the colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did.” 

In early April, Galbraith met with Kennedy at his retreat in Glen Ora, Virginia. Kennedy had him write still another memorandum discouraging American involvement: 'We have a growing military commitment. This could expand step-by-step into a major, long-drawn out indecisive military involvement. We should resist all steps which commit American troops to combat action and impress upon all concerned the importance of keeping American forces out of actual combat commitment.' As Newman and others have noted in discussing Galbraith’s proposal, Kennedy made a significant comment about it. He said that he wanted the State Department to be prepared to ”seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our commitment, recognizing that the moment might yet be some time away.” That comment was recorded in a memorandum of April 6, 1962. He then had Galbraith make a personal visit to McNamara. The ambassador later reported to Kennedy that he had a long discussion with the Defense Secretary and said that they ended up being in basic agreement on most matters. 

We know that McNamara got the message, because his deputy Roswell Gilpatric said, “McNamara indicated to me that this was part of a plan the President asked him to develop to unwind the whole thing." And, as we shall see, McNamara conveyed that request to Gen. Paul Harkins at the SecDef conference of May 1962. There is an important key that John Newman now sketches in. It’s important, because it fulfilled the request Kennedy made to “seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our commitment.” As the author learned from Don Blascak, in Saigon there was a deception being perpetrated. Max Taylor appointed Harkins to lead the entire Vietnam military operation, this included intelligence gathering. Harkins made Air Force Col. James Winterbottom his chief of intelligence for MACV. This allowed Winterbottom to control the intelligence coming into CINPAC—the entire Pacific command—since that was led by another Air Force officer, General Patterson. From CINPAC it went to the Joint Chiefs and McNamara. Harkins and Winterbottom did not know about the April 1962 Galbraith/McNamara meeting. Nor did they know what Kennedy had told representatives of the State Department about seizing on a moment to reduce our commitment. So, in February of 1962, at the third SecDef conference, Harkins said that things were improving in Vietnam, based upon new equipment supplied by the Pentagon. He could say this since Winterbottom was rigging the figures. The author makes clear that this deception was deliberately aimed at McNamara, since Harkins and Winterbottom thought that the illusion of progress would keep the American commitment going. But there was one agency that actually was telling the truth about how badly the war was proceeding. 

This was the US Army Pacific Command or USAR-PAC. In May, 1962, at the Fifth SecDef meeting, McNamara was presented with another rosy picture conjured up with phony figures. By now, Winterbottom was counting civilians as dead Viet Cong. Meanwhile, the communists were finding it easier to recruit, because of Diem’s increasingly corrupt and despotic rule. After the presentation was over, McNamara met with Harkins and a couple of his assistants behind closed doors. He now passed on Kennedy’s orders about beginning to reduce the American commitment, because the Pentagon could not actually fight the war for Diem. To show how set Kennedy was on getting out, and how unaware Harkins was he was aiding him, Newman devotes another chapter to Laos. Under the cover of the June 1962 cease fire and the July settlement, the Pathet Lao and Hanoi got what they wanted: infiltration routes into Vietnam. American advisors gradually left, but Hanoi’s did not. Harkins attempted to keep the enemy advantage a secret by recalling a report on it. But the information did get to Roger Hilsman of the State Department. At the July 23, 1962, SecDef meeting, Harkins continued his faux good news. He told McNamara that the training of and transfer to the ARVN, and the phase out of the major US operational support activities were, per the secretary’s request, on schedule. At this meeting, McNamara announced a three-year deadline for withdrawal of all American forces, which matches the 1965 termination date that Kennedy would endorse the next year. Joseph Mendenhall, a State Department advisor on Vietnam and Laos, admitted that, in reality, Saigon was losing the war. He blamed it on Diem and his brother Nhu. He said the status of the war would not improve unless there was a change in leadership. There were people in the State Department who shared this accurate view. The author concludes that, by March of 1963, Kennedy understood an intelligence charade was being enacted. One of the most important ARRB disclosures—if not the most important one—was the full record of the 8th SecDef Conference. This was held in Hawaii on May 6, 1963. Harkins was still insisting Saigon was winning. McNamara now requested the withdrawal schedules he had asked for many months prior. The secretary also said that he would ask for a thousand man withdrawal by the end of the year. It was understood this would be a part of a complete withdrawal by 1965. 

The author references a famous quote from the book Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye. In that volume, Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers describe the aftermath of a meeting that Kennedy had with Senator Mike Mansfield on Vietnam: "After Mansfield left the office, the president said to me, “In 1965, I’ll become one of the most unpopular presidents in history. I’ll be damned everywhere as a communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected.” This is a revelatory comment. As Newman, Jim Douglass, and Gordon Goldstein have noted, Kennedy told several friends and acquaintances he was getting out of Vietnam. But this particular quote is important, because it delineates his conscious effort to design that withdrawal around the 1964 campaign, which is why the end date was 1965. In 1963, few could fail to see that things were not as Harkins and Winterbottom said they were. The strategic hamlet program, started by Diem and McGarr, was not working. Kennedy decided to switch ambassadors. As Jim Douglass has pointed out, Kennedy wanted to appoint his longtime friend Edmund Gullion as ambassador. Rusk objected to this and they then agreed on Henry Cabot Lodge. As Douglass points out, this was a mistake.

What I believe occurred was that Lodge and CIA officer Lucien Conein, acted in league with a cabal in the State Department—Mike Forrestal, Averill Harriman, and Roger Hilsman—in order to enable an overthrow, stop Kennedy from neutralizing it, and then the two Americans in Saigon made sure the coup plotters polished off the Nhu brothers. I also believe that Lodge and Conein moved to get rid of the CIA station chief in Saigon, John Richardson, in order to make their scheming easier to accomplish. All of this is why the president had recalled Lodge to Washington at the time of his death, in order to terminate him. While all this intrigue was going on behind the scenes, Kennedy had sent Taylor and McNamara to Saigon, not to write a report, but to present him with his report. In his book, Death of a Generation, Howard Jones writes that the Taylor/McNamara report was actually written before the plane ride over to Saigon. Newman says it was written while the mission was in progress. The chief author was Prouty’s boss General Victor Krulak who, although he is listed as a trip passenger, was really back in Washington. It was through this back channel that Kennedy meant to make the report his fulcrum for withdrawal. This is why an early sentence reads as follows: “The military campaign has made great progress and continues to progress.” What then follows is that training of the ARVN should be completed by the end of 1965 and it “should be possible to withdraw the bulk of US personnel by that time.” 

The author shows that even at this late date, the fall of 1963, there was resistance to Kennedy’s plan. William Sullivan of the State Department insisted that the ’65 withdrawal date was too optimistic, so that part was taken out. Kennedy was alerted to this upon the return from Saigon. At a private meeting with Taylor and McNamara, he ordered it put back in. Others, like the Bundy brothers and Chester Cooper of the CIA, also objected. Kennedy overrode them. There was one more tactic the opponents of withdrawal used: they began to rewrite intelligence reports from the battlefield. They now admitted Saigon was losing. In the face of all this evidence of Kennedy’s determination, it surprises me that Deb Galentine who, quite frankly I never heard of, said that Kennedy was a hard-core Cold Warrior. My eyebrows jumped up a couple of feet when I read this for the simple reason that it is pure and provable bunk. Were all these people wrong? Senator Wayne Morse, Senator Mike Mansfield, General James Gavin, Marine Corps Commander David Shoup, Journalist Charles Bartlett, Prime Minister of Canada, Lester Pearson, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Chair of the JCS Max Taylor, Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, State Department assistant Mike Forrestal, Congressman Tip O’Neill, Assistant Secretary of State Roger HIlsman, Assistant Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, Journalist Larry Newman, White House assistants Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers, Commanding General of North Vietnam Vo Nguyen Giap, etc. Galentine makes no attempt at all to explain Kennedy’s 12 refusals—as explicated by Goldstein and Newman—to send in combat troops during 1961–62.

Finally, the reason that Kennedy was reluctant to make NSAM 263 public—and to include the Taylor/McNamara Report as part of it—had nothing to do with his exit strategy. It had everything to do with the 1964 election. The problem for JFK was the political impact of a Hanoi takeover before the election—in the middle of a withdrawal. Kennedy was clear about this in conversations with Mansfield, Bartlett and O’Neill. The evidence is overwhelming. The only way to reverse a withdrawal from Vietnam was by doing so over Kennedy’s dead body. It was Max Taylor who decided on the OPLAN 34 operations against North Vietnam. He approved a design for these naval provocations in September, without showing it to McNamara. So Kennedy never saw it. It was not shown to McNamara until the November 20th Honolulu meeting. Taylor had only cleared it with the Pentagon and these were not hit-and-run operations. They clearly needed much American support. Also, at this meeting, the intelligence reports had been rewritten and the true war conditions were apparent. Therefore, Taylor also tried to reduce the withdrawal plan by having it made up of individuals instead of the whole units that JFK wanted. 

When McGeorge Bundy returned from this meeting, Johnson was in the White House. His NSAM 273, written for Kennedy, was altered by the new president. Johnson’s revised version allowed expanded operations into Laos and Cambodia. The withdrawal plan was more or less neutralized and it granted the vision of OPLAN 34 that Taylor wanted: using American assets, not just Saigon’s. Therefore, coastal raids were allowed with American speedboats and some personnel, accompanied by American destroyers fitted with high tech radar and communications gear. The American aspect is what Johnson altered in these coastline operations, as the South Vietnam navy could not have performed these any time soon. These essentially American patrols/provocations led to the Tonkin Gulf incident in August, which—misrepresented by the White House—was used for a declaration of war by the USA. The author ends his book here before NSAM 288 of March 1964, which mapped out a large—over 90 target air— campaign against Hanoi. (Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War) Something Kennedy would not countenance in three years, Johnson had done in three months. LBJ used 288 as a retaliation list for what he considered an attack on Americans on the high seas at Tonkin Gulf. As Newman noted, since LBJ was getting the genuine intel reports, he understood that our side was losing. And this is what he used to confront McNamara and turn him around on the issue. These conversations occurred in February and March of 1964. In the first one, the president said he always thought it was "foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the president thought otherwise, and I just sat silent." He then added that he could not understand how America could withdraw from a war it was losing. (James Blight, Virtual JFK) 

In the March conversation, LBJ now wanted McNamara to revise his announcement of withdrawal to say that Americans were not coming home, even though the training of the ARVN was completed. What Johnson was doing was the first swipe at creating the myth that he was not breaking with Kennedy—even though he knew he was. In a later call with McNamara in 1965, Johnson reveals that what is left of the Kennedy war cabinet understands what he is up to, which is “to put the Vietnam War on Kennedy’s tomb.” LBJ’s fabrication—that there was no breakage—was then picked up by NY Times reporters David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan and utilized in their best-selling books The Best and the Brightest and A Bright Shining Lie. By 1967, it was clear that McNamara was going through a severe mental crisis. (Tom Wells, The War Within) Johnson thought McNamara was going to have a nervous breakdown. According to his secretary, he would break out into rages about the uselessness of the bombing; and then he would end up crying into the curtains on his office window. Johnson retired him in late November of 1967. Newman’s relationship with McNamara eventually revealed the reasons for the secretary’s tears and, also, the motive behind his order to begin a classified study of the war called The Pentagon Papers—which he kept secret from Johnson. (Vietnam: The Early Decisions, edited by Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger) In those debriefs, McNamara said he and Kennedy had agreed that America could train the ARVN, advise them, and give them equipment. And that was it. When the training mission was completed, America would leave, even if the South Vietnamese forces were in a losing situation: "I believed we had done all the training we could and whether the South Vietnamese were qualified or not to turn back the North Vietnamese, I was certain that if they weren’t it wasn’t for lack of our training. More training wouldn’t strengthen them; therefore we should get out. The President agreed." Source: kennedysandking.com