The Best and the Brightest (56 page)

Perhaps no one person reflected the embryonic change in Administration and in American attitudes toward the Cold War as did Robert Kennedy, the change from tough and aggressive anti-Communism toward a more modest view of the American role, and a sense of the limits and dangers of American power. He was, in mid-1963, in the middle of his personal journey, his own attitudes very much in flux. He had entered the Administration as perhaps the most hard-line member of the entire inner group, and in fact, the job he had really wanted was not at Justice but at Defense, where he wanted to be the number-two man, specifically in charge of ending what he and others in the Kennedy group believed was a missile gap. If he were at Defense, he told friends, he could serve as the ramrod, pushing through newer, tougher programs, and be a watchdog for his brother. At the same time he would be gaining valuable experience in foreign affairs, which he wanted, and similarly, escape going to Justice, where he feared his reputation as the cop of the family would become more permanent.

He was already being haunted by this idea, that no matter what he did or how he served his brother and his country, the public would think of him as the ruthless cop. So he had pleaded with his brother, and Jack Kennedy did take the matter up with McNamara, suggesting that if he needed a deputy at Defense there happened to be a very good one in the Kennedy family. McNamara smiled and the President-elect quickly protested that Robert Kennedy was very able indeed. McNamara nodded and said that he had never doubted that, but if the President would think for a minute—suppose he were a senator and wanted something done at Defense, would he call the Secretary of Defense or would he call the President’s brother? The President understood. The next day Robert Kennedy was talking with a friend and the subject of the job at Defense came up. “Well,” he said, “that’s out. If you were Bob McNamara, would you want the President’s little brother always there spying over your shoulder?”

So he had entered the Administration, against his will, at Justice, but he had played a major role in foreign affairs. It was Robert Kennedy who had been primarily responsible for the counterinsurgency enthusiasm. Toughness fascinated him; he was not at ease with an America which had flabby waistlines. The enemy both at home and abroad was determined; we had to match that determination. If he worked until midnight, and on driving home saw the lights on in the offices of Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters Union, then he turned around and drove back to his office. The standard by which he judged men was how
tough
they were. Early in the Administration, when he was overwhelmed with speaking requests and was turning almost all of them down, he had received one from a Polish group. He immediately seized on it: “Let’s do this one. I like the Poles, they’re tough.” He had been a major force in promoting the career of Maxwell Taylor and diminishing that of Chester Bowles; his relationship with Taylor was different from his relationship with other men in the Administration. With almost everyone else his questioning was hard and relentless; he did not really respect age or title. But with Taylor he was markedly uncritical; whatever Taylor said went through almost unchallenged. He was genuinely in awe of Taylor’s war record, the fact that he had dropped by parachute into Normandy and that he had run a special mission for Eisenhower behind the Italian lines. For Bobby Kennedy those were real credentials.

There were several qualities which set him apart from others in office. The first was total confidence in his relationship with the President. The second was an almost absolute insistence on being well and honestly briefed. The third was a capacity, indeed an instinct, to see world events not so much in terms of a great global chess game, but in human terms. As such he retained his common sense, it was at least as strong as his ideology (when others were talking about a surgical air strike against Cuba during the missile crisis, he said very simply that he did not want his brother to be the Tojo of the 1960s). Out of all of this came the final characteristic, the capacity to grow and change and to admit error.

In 1962 he had stopped at the Saigon airport long enough to say that we would stay in Vietnam until we won, but he had also learned a very important lesson: that most of the official reporting was mythological. He was supposed to be briefed at the airport terminal by the top members of the mission, all of whom, in one another’s presence, assured him that everything was just fine, everything was on target. “Do you have any problems?” he asked. No, said everyone in unison, there were no problems. He looked at them somewhat shocked by the response. “No problems,” he said, “you’ve really got no problems? Does anyone here want to speak to me in private about his problems?” And then one by one they talked to him at length and it all came pouring out, a brief and instructive lesson in what people would say for the record and what they would say in private.

By 1963, as his perceptions had developed, he was no longer just the President’s little ramrod brother with a simplistic, hard-line view of the world, but now he had a new reputation, as the best man in government to bring an unconventional idea to. Some of the people working under Harriman, like Forrestal and Hilsman, felt themselves encouraged in their doubts by Robert Kennedy and felt that he more than anyone else in the upper level of government regarded the war as a
war
and in particular a war where civilians might be paying a particularly high price. His questions at meetings always centered around the people of Vietnam: What is all of this doing to the people? As his skepticism grew about how well the war was going he would ask, “Do you think those people really want us there? Maybe we’re trying to do the wrong thing?” His common sense, among other sensibilities, was offended by it.

Now in the early fall of 1963, sitting in these meetings, listening to one side say that it could not be done with Diem, and the other side say that there was no one but Diem, he was appalled. Perhaps, he said, this was the time to consider withdrawing. It was a brief moment, but he was focusing on the central question, which everyone else, for a variety of reasons, had avoided. Up to now the debate had always been on the peripheral questions, in large part because it was safer that way. By concentrating on Diem, the liberals could attack the policy without being necessarily accused of softness on Communism. Diem had proved himself illiberal, and that was why the policy was failing; going further than that was a tenuous thing and might arouse considerable opposition. A bureaucratic doubter could keep his
bona fides
only by saying that he was for the war and for South Vietnam; it was only Diem he was against. Perhaps it was symbolic that the first senior official who questioned the overall policy was Robert Kennedy, totally secure in his place in the Administration, and also secure in his credentials as an anti-Communist. The question he raised was not discussed; it was still too sensitive a point. Perhaps that was how he intended it, as a beginning, an airing of a new idea, and giving it just a little respectability.

Thus with both sides still negating each other, with everyone in Washington still committed, they decided at the September 6 meeting of the National Security Council to try one more special report from Saigon. Each side pushed for representatives from Saigon to report back to Washington, and for its Washington people to visit Saigon and report back. McNamara wanted Krulak, and Harriman, equally tough in the infighting, made sure that a foreign service officer of comparable rank went along. Joseph A. Mendenhall, a senior officer who had had experience in Vietnam and who was fed up with Diem, was chosen. In addition Harriman, notified that two key members of the American mission in Saigon had changed their views, lobbied for them to come back with Krulak and Mendenhall to brief the White House. They were Rufus Phillips, who ran the crucial strategic hamlet program, which was part political and part military, and John Mecklin, head of the USIA in Saigon. Phillips was an ace in the hole for Harriman and his group. Whenever there had been pessimistic civilian appraisals in the past, the top figures in the mission had always used the strategic hamlet program as their counterargument: how could anyone say the political situation was bad when the hamlet program, which was the key to the rural success of the commitment, was going so well, was way ahead of schedule? But if Phillips was willing to discuss the failures of the hamlet program—which would reflect on
military
failures as well—then this would be significant, far more important than anything Mendenhall could say. Harriman had come upon some of Phillips’ quite pessimistic reporting in recent weeks, and he had taken great delight in having it shown around Washington. He had told Forrestal to make sure McNamara saw it, and on September 1 the report was sent to McNamara. There was no immediate response from the Secretary, but Harriman was ready to play for bigger game.

To the military, Krulak was the most important figure. He was the military’s most skilled bureaucratic player in Washington at the time, a figure of immense import in the constant struggle over Vietnam. He was the special assistant to the JCS for counterinsurgency, though of course he had no background on guerrilla warfare. What he really did was serve as a messenger between Saigon and the Pentagon, and represent the military at intergovernmental meetings, where his special assignment was to destroy any civilian pessimism about the war and to challenge the civilian right to even discuss military progress, or lack thereof.

He was the shortest Marine in the Corps’ history, which had earned him the nickname Brute, and his toughness, reputation and nickname appealed to the Kennedy sense of vigor and drive. He was a very good briefer, not falling back on clichés but expressing his points in powerful, cogent terms. This fascinated and delighted McNamara, who hated briefings by most of the generals, and he remained a McNamara favorite long after it became clear that Krulak had participated in serious misrepresentations to the President. He was charming and sophisticated, and he did his staff work well; if anyone needed a paper on Vietnam, Krulak’s office could cough it up much faster than those bumblers at State. He did not neglect the social end of it; he drove by Justice and picked up Bobby Kennedy on the way to meetings, courting him assiduously; he played golf with John McCone at Chevy Chase. He was strong and aggressive, and yet for all of that, quite subtle. Doubters on the policy like Michael Forrestal were always impressed how subtle Krulak could be in private, sharing their doubts—yes, he, Krulak, wasn’t blind, he knew these problems existed—though of course speaking differently in meetings. He was, for all the intelligence and charm, a proponent of the straight MACV-Harkins line, as the official minutes of the special counterinsurgency group reveal for that crucial period (“February 7, 1963 Krulak says real progress is being made in the struggle. Vietcong morale is deteriorating . . . March 14, 1963 Krulak says Vietcong activity is at a level 50 percent below last year . . . May 9, 1963 Krulak, back from a Honolulu meeting with Harkins, says that all trends are favorable . . . May 23 Colonel Francis Serong, Australian guerrilla fighting expert, expresses doubt on the Strategic Hamlet Program saying it is overextended, and that it has left vast areas from which the Vietcong can operate freely. Krulak immediately and violently challenges him . . .”).

Now Krulak would travel with Mendenhall, for what was to be a special report for the President. He was to use his eyes and ears to represent the President of the United States. He did nothing of the sort. He and Mendenhall spent some time together in Saigon; then they went different ways. Mendenhall had his doubts confirmed and Krulak went out into the field. Before he did, however, he picked up a voluminous report specifically prepared for him by Harkins and Stilwell, filled with all the good indices. The report would now become not a Harkins report, but a Krulak report. When they were at the airport, ready to leave for Washington after their four-day whirlwind tour, David Shepard, Saigon deputy head of the USIA, asked Mendenhall what he thought. “What you people have been reporting, only worse, and I’m going to tell the President that,” Mendenhall answered, “but I think I’m going to have trouble bringing Krulak along.”

It was an understatement; the reports they gave at the next National Security Council meeting could not have been more different. For Krulak the important thing, the shooting war, was fine, it was going according to schedule, particularly out there in the countryside. If there was any dissent about the regime, it was aimed at the Nhus, not at Diem. Diem was good. Our man. Respectable. All we had to do was stay with the program. Since Mendenhall was not allowed to challenge the military reporting, he described the collapse of the civilian morale, the atmosphere of fear and hatred in every city, and he said that yes, the government had finally succeeded in unifying the population—though against itself. The war in the countryside, he said, was now secondary to the opposition to the regime.

When Mendenhall had finished, the President looked at both and said, “You two did visit the same country, didn’t you?” Well, said Krulak, it was easy to explain; he had been out in the countryside among the troops where the war was taking place, while Mendenhall had been among the students and the intellectuals. Whereupon Nolting challenged Mendenhall: everyone knew that Mendenhall was against Diem, and had been for several years. As for the paralysis in government now, we had had paralysis in government before, in 1961, and we had overcome that. We could overcome the problems if we put our minds to it, Nolting said, if we didn’t get caught in the side issues.

Well, said McGeorge Bundy (who had become increasingly disenchanted with the entire situation, the messiness and self-defeating quality of the regime, an American-supported government turning American weapons on its own population), in 1961 the fear and paralysis had been caused by the Vietcong and we had overcome it by strengthening the war against them; now it was the government itself which was causing the fear and the paralysis, and it was a little difficult to strengthen a war against a government.