The Best and the Brightest (118 page)

But the decision against the reserves was convenient, it postponed the sense of reality of war, and it perpetuated both the illusion of control and of centrism within the bureaucracy. Of moderation, of Lyndon in the center, being pushed by the military but carefully weighing the alternatives, of not giving in to the military. It also meant a delay on the realization of the scope of the war, and that was crucial.

For in all those weeks of debating about what to do, looking at options, of trying to decide what the necessary level of force was, of trying at first to stave off the inevitable, the use of combat troops, and then giving in to it, the principals never defined either the mission or the number of troops. It seems incredible in retrospect, but it is true. There was never a clear figure and clear definition of what the strategy would be. There was eventually grandiose talk of giving Westmoreland everything he needed—and Westy was told by McNamara that he could have whatever he needed; this was, after all, the richest country in the world—but even Westmoreland knew there were restraints, he had to negotiate for the troops, slice by slice with McNamara, he knew that if he asked for too much too quickly he might not get it (just as later McNamara would reluctantly give increments that he didn’t want because otherwise he would be denying a commander his necessary troops; each finally would have a deterrent against the other). The Joint Chiefs talked of a million men, but it was never really defined. And in the chambers of the President, in the days through July, it was a figure which was never defined, though there was a certain gentleman’s agreement that it would be, at a maximum, about 300,000. Anything above that was out of the question, and it was unfair on the part of Ball, for instance, to claim, as he did in June and July, that it would go higher, to half a million. There was of course a dual advantage in not defining the number of men and the mission: first, it permitted the principals themselves to keep the illusion that they were not going to war, and it permitted them not to come to terms with budget needs and the political needs. Thus, if the mission was not defined it did not exist, and if the number of troops was not set it could always be controlled. Second, if the figure was not decided upon and crystallized within the inner circle, it could not leak out to the press and to the Congress, where all kinds of enemies lurked and would seize upon it to beat him and to beat his Great Society program. If you carried the figure in your own mind, no one could pry it out; all they had were those thin, and sometimes not so thin, slices of increments that slipped out, and even those you could and would dissemble about.

So the failure to define the figure was an aid against the press and the Congress, but it was also eventually to prove a problem within, because both the size and the strategy were never defined. Westmoreland would start the war believing it was an open-ended commitment, never accurately filled in on the extent of the reservations of some of his civilian superiors; the civilians would start knowing that the military wanted big things, but believing first that the military always exaggerated its requests for manpower and for more money and that it was a bloated figure. They never came to a real agreement, and they deliberately fuzzed their mission and their objective and the price. Six years later McGeorge Bundy, whose job it was to ask questions for a President who could not always ask the right questions himself, would go before the Council on Foreign Relations and make a startling admission about the mission and the lack of precise objectives. The Administration, Bundy recounted, did not tell the military what to do and how to do it; there was in his words a “premium put on imprecision,” and the political and military leaders did not speak candidly to each other. In fact, if the military and political leaders had been totally candid with each other in 1965 about the length and cost of the war instead of coming to a consensus, as Johnson wanted, there would have been vast and perhaps unbridgeable differences, Bundy said. It was a startling admission, because it was specifically Bundy’s job to make sure that differences like these did not exist. They existed, of course, not because they could not be uncovered but because it was a deliberate policy not to surface with real figures and real estimates which might show that they were headed toward a real war. The men around Johnson served him poorly, but they served him poorly because he wanted them to.

There were brief moments when the reality seemed to flash through. Once during the early-June discussions the President turned to General Wheeler and said, “Bus, what do you think it will take to do the job?” And Wheeler answered, “It all depends on what your definition of the job is, Mr. President. If you intend to drive the last Vietcong out of Vietnam it will take seven hundred, eight hundred thousand, a million men and about seven years.” He paused to see if anyone picked him up. “But if your definition of the job is to prevent the Communists from taking over the country, that is, stopping them from doing it, then you’re talking about different gradations and different levels. So tell us what the job is and we’ll answer it.” But no one said anything; it was not the kind of thing they picked people up on, and so the conversation slipped over to the other subjects, vague discussions of strategy, the difference between an enclave strategy and a security mission, and they did not define the mission.

Later during the June discussions, again a figure came up. Clark Clifford, who sat in both as a friend of the President’s and as a member of the intelligence advisory board, and who was neither hawkish nor dovish in those days (mostly being a shrewd old lawyer, dubious; his reputation as hawk would come, when once we were committed and he opposed a bombing halt), was present at a meeting when he heard General Wheeler mention a figure and then add that with six or seven years at that figure, we could win. The figure sounded like 750,000 to Clifford, so when it was his turn to speak, he got up and began: “The way I understand it, we’re talking about a figure of seven hundred and fifty thousand troops and a war that will go on for five or six years and I’d like to ask General Wheeler a question.”

The President immediately interrupted him: “No one’s using a figure like that.”

Clifford turned to Wheeler, and Wheeler nodded his head and said yes, he had indeed used a figure like that.

Johnson, irritated, said it was ridiculous. No one envisioned a figure like that.

At which point Clifford asked to continue and said, “Even if it
is
the figure and it works, my question is, What then?”

Wheeler looked a little puzzled. “I don’t understand the question.”

So Clifford repeated it: if we won, after all that time, with all that investment, “What do we do? Are we still involved? Do we still have to stay there?”

And Wheeler answered yes, we would have to keep a major force there, for perhaps as long as twenty or thirty years. Whereupon the conversation again went in different directions and the question of the figure was dropped.

In July, during the final ten days of decision, Clifford remained dubious, and once during the final session at Camp David before the President made his decision, they went around the table one by one signing on to the inevitable. Finally they came to Clifford. It was not just his words but his manner which surprised the others there. He leaned back, thought and then seemed to pound the table as he spoke, speaking so forcefully that later one witness was not able to remember whether he had or had not hit the table. “They won’t let us do it,” he said. “Whatever you do, they will match it. The North Vietnamese and then the Chinese will not let us do it. If we send men, the North Vietnamese will send men. And then the Chinese.” He said we should negotiate with the other side if possible. And then Clifford, an old-style man who delights in almost purple oratory, paused and said, almost melodramatically, “I see catastrophe ahead for my country.”

The sense of the fragility of it all, the delicacy of what happened when American troops entered, was evident at almost the same time in Saigon. There Eugene Black was visiting, having accepted a job from Johnson to be head of Johnson’s Mekong River Redevelopment Commission, and Black had been given a long briefing by Westmoreland. The briefing was very pessimistic indeed; he told of the almost total collapse of the ARVN forces. The 173rd Airborne and the Marines were already in the country, Westmoreland said. He had asked for 100,000 more combat troops, and he thought he would get them. But even if they arrived, the important thing to remember, Westmoreland said, was that we must not take this war away from the Vietnamese. If we did, we would be in the same position as the French, and it would be hopeless. Black then asked what the cutoff point would be. Westmoreland paused for a moment and said 175,000; that would be the figure. Over that figure and they would give up the war, and it would get worse and worse.

At the end of the briefing Black thanked him for the tough-mindedness of his briefing and said that the general had been very helpful. Now was there anything that Black could do for Westmoreland back in Washington? Yes, said Westmoreland, tell everyone in Washington that if I get the troops I ask for and all the breaks that I could possibly have the right to ask for, it will take six or seven years to turn it around. It will be a slow and hard thing. It was, thought someone who was present at the Westmoreland-Black meeting, almost a Greek thing, that Westmoreland knew that 175,000 would be the cutoff figure, and yet when it didn’t work out, he was carried along by the force of the thing, demanding more and more troops.

Even while Johnson was going through what was in effect the count-down meeting with his top officials, McNamara was in Saigon during the weekend of July 17, clearing everything with Westmoreland, checking out the number of troops, trying to sense what might be needed in thefuture, and what the mission would be. Westmoreland’s request for a troop commitment which would go to 200,000 was already in, and while McNamara was in Saigon he learned in a cable from his deputy, Cy Vance, that the President was going ahead with the thirty-four battalions (which with the Korean and Australian battalions would bring it to a total of forty-four battalions). Thus at a minimum the U.S. troop level would be 175,000, and if the Koreans did not have the troops, then we would go their part too, bringing it to 200,000. (Curiously, in his memoirs Johnson does not tell the story this way; instead he makes it appear that he waited for McNamara’s return and McNamara’s request for the additional forces before going ahead, thus putting more of the burden on the Secretary of Defense.) McNamara did return to Washington on July 20 and did report immediately to the President saying that the President had three options. The first was to withdraw under conditions which would be humiliating, the second to continue at the present level of about 75,000, which would mean that the United States might be faced with equally harsh decisions in the near future, or finally a sharp increase in the U.S. military pressure against the Vietcong in the South. This last was, he said, “the course involving the best odds of the best outcome with the most acceptable cost to the United States.”

But in any real sense, that decision had already been reached. The only loose ends left were the questions of how public to go with the decisions and whether to call up the reserves (McNamara forcefully argued for a reserve call-up of 235,000 men). On his return McNamara prepared a draft press release which announced that 100,000 more Americans were going, but that was not what the President wanted and it was sidetracked. There was some talk of putting together a major speech outlining the gist of the decisions: that we were entering a major war, that it might be a long war, and that it would demand great American tenacity and endurance. At Defense some of the young civilians had been uneasy with the covert way the decision making had been going, and it was agreed that a speech should be written. The speech put the blame mostly on China for her aggressive policies, and it ended: “They are watching us to see whether we have the determination and resolution to stick with it. They are betting that we don’t have it. We are, finally, being tested. The enemy is looking for the answer to how long we will resist. We have that answer in the words of a distinguished American, who recently died, 'till hell freezes over.’ ” The author of the speech was Daniel Ellsberg.

But it was not what the President was looking for; he was afraid of being too overt with his policy of scaring the Congress and the press. Instead he decided that he would make public only 50,000 of the agreed-upon 100,000 to 125,000. (That week Ellsberg ran into Douglas Kiker of the
Herald Tribune,
who had just spent two hours with the President, and Johnson had assured Kiker that it was all a bunch of rumors, this talk of changing policy, this gossip about a new strategy and combat troops. Just filling out a few units, the President said.) It was in fact the real beginning of the credibility gap; and Johnson was a part of it and so were all his top advisers. They knew they had decided on the larger figure, that it was a quantum jump, and that they were being party to a major deception of the American people, that many more far-reaching decisions had been made than they were admitting. (In his memoirs this is a particularly tricky question for the President. He admits that they had made decisions involving up to 200,000 men, and notes briefly that the commanders said that they could get by with 50,000 for the immediate needs.)

It was all over; the only thing left was the actual notification of the bureaucracy (the charade of a National Security Council meeting) and of congressional leaders. The first came on July 27. There Johnson had McNamara, just back from Vietnam, summarize the situation, growing Communist strength, steady government deterioration. Then Johnson took over. He had five choices. One was to blast the North off the map with bombers. Another was simply to pack up and go home. The third choice was to stay the way we were, perhaps lose more territory and suffer more casualties. “You wouldn’t want your boy to be out there crying for help and not get it,” he said. The fourth was to go to the Congress for great sums of money, to call up the reserves and go on a wartime footing. But, he said, if we did that, went to that kind of a land war, then North Vietnam would turn to China and Russia and get greater aid (one thing he did not mention was that he was uncertain what treaties Hanoi had with Peking and Moscow and was afraid that an actual declaration of war might involve them immediately and directly). “For that reason I don’t want to be overly dramatic and cause tensions,” he said. “I think we can get our people to support us without having to be too provocative and warlike.”