Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Leslie H. Gelb, 1982

The Defense Department and I would say Washington and as a whole was in a kind of twilight zone beginning in 1966 67 about the Vietnam War. In that process of reconciling their private kind official views with the official and public views the official public views was still that we were very much in this war. Things were getting better. There was some positive end in sight. The private view was for the most part most places already pessimistic. There was already this sense of stalemate not victory in the Pentagon itself. There was this growing split between the civilians on the one side and the military on the other. The military was still sticking to the assessment the basic assessment that if they could get more they could do better. They

weren't really promising a specific point where there would be victory but they said you give us more firepower we'll produce better results. You lead us through more and pacification will pacify more villages and civilians beginning to say even more won't do it and more will only mean stalemate at a higher level not victory. So this was the the basic kind of schizophrenia that was developing at that time. Well they are very very. The military I think basically felt that more firepower would mean

better results because that was their their ethos. That's what they were trained to believe if they believed otherwise that they really couldn't be military men anymore the civilians on the on the other hand could step back from it. They weren't involved in in a military career they weren't involved in proving that military force could could solve the problem. And they were able to step back from the experience and say just what have we achieved. We've added doses of firepower What has it brought us. We've changed rather Gee nothing is really work. Is anything going to work. They began here and so to learn something about Vietnam itself. Up until a point had been the United States against the Phantom. Now it was the United States against the Vietnamese enemy that took on some flesh and blood and a great deal of determination.

Yes. Well he had been optimistic Macnamara about the war but my sense is that that optimism faded fairly quickly and that already by 19 and of 1962 1963 McNamara himself began to have doubts. Now he's a mystery man in all this. And people always speculate when did McNamara really change his mind. What changed his mind. And I don't think we really know the answers to it and he hasn't unlocked this mystery for us either. But if you look at the memos that he was preparing in the

Pentagon sent to the president they already took on the somber cast in 63 64 for sure. He was still arguing that the effort was a noble one but it was very important to stop communism in Vietnam. But he wasn't quite sure how to do it anymore. The public face of McNamara was still positive. The private face was beginning to have doubts and these doubts emerged very strongly in 1966 and unambiguously in 1967 in the spring of 67. McNamara went and testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. This was the Stennis the subcommittee of preparedness yesterday. Him in the was it August. This thing

in the middle of 1967 McNamara crossed the line when he went to testify before the US Senate Committee on the effectiveness of the bombing. Now the testimony was in closed session. But when you go and testify before Congress you are in effect speaking publicly. So McNamara was crossing his Rubicon at that point and he went there and he said to the senators that the bombing of North Vietnam is not working. That we are not bringing in the North Vietnamese to their knees. And he didn't draw the conclusion from that he didn't go the next step and say. And therefore it's not clear that our basic strategy for the war can work and that we've got to think whether or not we want to be in there in the first place he didn't go to that light. But he did say the bombing there the linchpin of the war wasn't working and would not work.

And for the first time in effect he separated himself from the position of the military and from the former public. Bob McNamara. We want to get to what. The. Military was very upset by McNamara's testimony and it started a great deal of tension inside the building between the military and the civilians because we knew we were breaking ranks at that point and it was attention that was to be maintained right up to the break point at the time of Tet. And in March 1968 when this when the divisions at that point were just so deep that it was very hard to work with one another.

The perspectives on the war had a revocable we parted with that. I'll tell you there was a story. Coming out of the home of the Tet offensive I think that show is coming out of the Tet offensive in the beginning of negotiations in Paris. You could feel the tension in the in the Pentagon. And I remember one one instance where we were all there in a general's office working on an interagency study about our negotiating objectives. And the word would come down from Dean Rusk to this working group in framing American negotiating objectives of the Paris peace talks

do not in any way consider fallback positions state only the true maximum American goals. And when these instructions were read to us at this meeting I bridled at them saying well that's that's not a serious way to go. Sure let's start the negotiations. But our maximum position but let's talk here realistically among ourselves at which point an admiral who was sitting next to me popped up out of his seat and stuck his finger in my nose and says who you are negotiating for the Americans or the Communists. You know this is what's been going on with you civilians for the last two years now. It was that kind of tension it was palpable. That's right. Thank you very much.

The report that. You couldn't do a day's work in the Pentagon without thinking about Lyndon Johnson and beginning in late 66 67 the battle was on for Lyndon Johnson's mind. And from our perspective from the civilians in the Pentagon it was a question of Bob McNamara against all the rest of the president's advisors and that it was up to McNamara to make this case and if he couldn't get inside no one could. But it was very clear that there was one man to convince. It was Lyndon Johnson and he wasn't thinking the same way about the war that we were. Well these were vibrations because at that point in my life I was far

from the inner circle or just looking in through the keyholes and hearing the gossip about the meetings of the senior people. But from all accounts that we got inside the Pentagon Lyndon Johnson was not about to give and give up the American commitment to the war. Nor was he about to do anything that appeared weak. He didn't want to even stop the bombing because it would appear weak. He didn't want to make forthcoming offers about negotiations because it might look like we wanted to find an easy exit to the war. He had become convinced that it was critical to the pursuit of the war to convince the North Vietnamese that the United States was not about to cut and run and he didn't want to give any signal in that direction whatsoever. So as McNamara in the civilian part of the Pentagon and the press began to move into opposition of the war

Lyndon Johnson became even more resistant to any talk about the UN winnability of the war. And McNamara his role at that point the role of the civilians in the Pentagon became much more tenuous much more treacherous. You know it this way. Well one of the most important phenomena in the mid 60s was Washington coming to terms with the Vietnamese and with a country called Vietnam. Because up until that point we knew nothing about Vietnam Southeast Asia. It was all

landscape not people. It was a place on the chessboard of the center. This is just a game of strategic power politics not a place where there were care how dya why how the North Vietnamese South Vietnamese. It had no wife to it. Up to that boy Americans are peculiarly an educated and insensitive to other cultures. Americans are peculiarly undereducated and insensitive to foreign cultures particularly Asia. The word foreign couldn't be stronger in the American vocabulary. We knew nothing about that place and now we were beginning to see it. People were coming back from Vietnam. The

soldiers the Foreign Service officers the news men and beginning to tell stories about what it was really like. To take away the abstraction to make it real you know to me. And I think I was absolutely typical of the foreign policy expert out of the Harvard establishment. I was a supporter of the war up until 1966 the Munich analogy the domino theory are very real to me. When I first came to Washington and went to work in the Senate I got a letter from an Army officer who was commanding a battalion in Vietnam and he said in the letter that his troops were fighting valiantly he was proud of the American soldier but he was now convinced we could not win the war because he has not he had never seen an adversary fight as hard as the North Vietnamese were fighting and

he believed that could wholly spring from the deepest sense of nationalism. And if that were the case we could never beat it with tales like that being told by the wandering journeymen would now learn something. Finally we're bringing Washington to terms with the realities of Vietnam. No one says so. The bombing of North Vietnam was considered a lynchpin of the whole war strategy for two reasons. First it was the way you applied pressure and caused pain in North Vietnam itself. Secondly it was supposedly the way you cut

off the necessary flow of supplies from North Vietnam to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops fighting in South Vietnam interdiction was the key term and it looked to us that even though we were stepping up the bombing almost month by month that there was no impact on North Vietnamese and Vietcong military activities in the south. So we had to ask the question was the interdiction campaign working at all. Was the bombing strategy sensible. So we started to make the calculations. How much supplies would have to come from north to south to keep one hundred and fifty thousand troops in the field and fighting producing as much devastation as they were and we had a pretty good fix on how many trucks the North Vietnamese were sending.

And we had a lot of sensors throughout the whole trail. From Laos into into Vietnam. And we figured that if they sent over the course of a week let's say something on the order of 50 trucks 50 to 100 trucks that they only had to get through 10 to 20 of those trucks to provide enough materiel to support the level of fighting that the Vietcong the North Korean marines were carrying out in the south. And we further estimated. That the question was to figure out why the interdiction campaign wasn't working. And to do that we had to make a calculation about how many trucks ne mes was sending into the south each week

and how many they actually needed to get through in order to maintain a certain level of military activity. And we estimated as I remember it something like 50 to 100 trucks a week and that they only needed to get through 10 or 20 of those trucks to maintain just that level of military activity that they they had been carrying out. And we estimated that based on past experience there was no way we could eliminate those that 20 percent no matter how bombing the effective was they were going to get at least that through for supplies as far as food was concerned. We estimated that they were in effect living off the land and that the people in the South were providing them with the food or they were requisitioning with requisitioning. In other words the internet interdiction campaign was not working and would not work. But this was not a battle or an argument that was won with

one memo. We wrote that memo. Making that point virtually every month for two years. A cable would come in from Westmoreland general mast Norman or General Abrams from Vietnam. Very highly classified cable showing how the bombing was making a difference. And that memo was to be forwarded to President Johnson. We would have to do one to go on top of it saying it really wasn't working and the argument never ended. For us. Vietnamese politics I think was factored in even before the military situation it was something people became cognizant of. With the start of the Kennedy administration. And there was always the

search to find the ideal Vietnamese-American. The president of Vietnam who could run the country like we run the United States and we and the Vietnamese started to play this game of musical chairs. They really didn't end until President was elected he had some reasonable longevity. But up to that point there was no one who satisfied us enough. And therefore no one who could satisfy the Vietnamese military. So there was this political knowledge. In the course a sense that is just find me the right man and we can begin to turn things around. There was this illusion of the conquering hero waiting offstage. There wasn't until later a deeper sense of Vietnamese politics the sense that maybe there would be nobody who could really hold the south together. Into a war effort that would work. That the

country was too fractionalized. That we had taken over the war to such a degree that there would be no one who could come to power in the South who could escape our taint. You could be other than America an American puppet. But the war had been so Americanised that we couldn't find a Vietnamese hero. One. Was. Just like you. Mary you wrote that you heard right. But. It was only stories. I think in in 66 67 there was

already the clear sense that it was our war. They had we had taken it over and that the South Vietnamese were merely an adjunct. Yeah we wanted to make them better. But you really couldn't count on them. Only after the Tet Offensive in 68. Does the push come on to de Americanize the war and begin to turn it over to the South Vietnamese. But for the three years or so preceding there was no thought of doing that seriously. Yes yes yes. Let me use. Raise When we shows this question. It was important I think from 65 Hoenn

to show progress. Because it was generally understood in the government that unless we did show progress that the American people would begin to question the war and tire of the war very quickly. As I said before it was clearly understood especially in the White House that the only chance you had of winning was to convince the North Vietnamese that we had staying power that we were prepared that to outlast them unlike the French in the 1950s. So if the American people got a glimmer of the war's fundamental on winnability then there would be very little hope of our staying the course. Yes

well on a spectrum of pessimist to optimists Westmoreland and maybe Walt Rostow were at that extreme. Optimists who really felt that things were working out that every day in every way things were getting better and better. There weren't many like them. Especially by 1967 when it came to official memoranda. Yes the official Westmoreland position was represented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and by the military. But when it came to those small meetings or lunches where you'd have serious honest conversations the military people showed virtually the same kind of pessimism as the civilians. Yes.

Yes well they did share the pessimism about about the situation in the military. Share the civilians pessimism about the situation in Vietnam. In private conversations not of the official memos but they also backed their boss's prescription for that namely to do more which was different from our prescription which was to do last and de Americanize the war. Our argument at that time beginning at the end of 67 68 was in effect that the only way to maintain American support for the war the only way we have any chance of keeping any American troops there was to begin to get them out to begin to turn the war over to the Vietnamese to show in fact by deeds not just by words that there was an end in sight for American involvement that there was an end to the tremendous

high cost of the war for the United States in lives and dollars. Yes 40 cents. This is something I always had the feeling that Westmoreland was a true believer a genuine optimist and that he was not doing this simply to be Lyndon Johnson's Boy Scout. So what is there for you.

There was no group in the Pentagon in 1967 68 that simply said get out that the war is lost and we've got to bring our troops home. I don't know whether people felt that in their hearts whether they secretly believe we just ought to get out. I suspect not. I think that came much later 69 70 thereafter. In making the calculations about the interdiction campaign it wasn't that we knew better than Westmoreland or we knew some secrets he didn't know we had information he didn't have. We used his own figures to prove that he was wrong. In making calculations about the interdiction campaign. It wasn't that we had

secrets and information that Westmoreland didn't have. We used his own information to prove that he was wrong. A major battle inside the U.S. government in 67 and 68 was over the enemy order of battle and that was tied to two things. One how many we thought we were killing in the south and to how many we thought we were killing on their way down from the north to the south and by everyone's calculations back in Washington the figures being sent in from Saigon could not be right.

And that if they were right if Westmoreland's figures were correct we should have faced no enemy in the south they should have been all dead a long time ago. But the fact was they weren't dead and the Order of Battle enemy order of battle remained fairly constant throughout. That meant that something was wrong seriously wrong in Westmoreland's calculations and we all assume that. And every month I think it was the Systems Analysis section of the Pentagon in conjunction with one of the offices where I worked would produce a single sheet of paper. That said across the top North Vietnamese regular forces Vietcong regular forces via current irregulars going down the sides would say

Westmoreland's asked them at CIA asked them IT Systems Analysis estimate. So we were well aware of the different calculations from the beginning and I think also agreed that Westmoreland's figures could not be correct. What I hear greatly overestimated Westmoreland's figures greatly overestimated the number of North Vietnamese being killed on the way down and the number of North Vietnamese and Vietcong being killed in South Asia. Yes this says. That your thoughts on

that. Well there were two principal measures one was body carrot and the other was Village pacification Hamlet pacification on the body count the military services never really let go of it long after the civilians stopped paying much attention to it. When we began to get the after action reports the detailed reports of the commanders It was very clear that they a lot of them were trying to be honest and that the official counts were much higher than what these guys actually found when they went to the scene afterwards and saw exactly what damage had been done. So the the body count I think faded as a major public indicator. In

1967 68 lost credibility. The pacification program. Was in part to pacified Vietnam and part to pacify American critics of Vietnam because the American critics at that point in time was still not saying get out. There are very few people saying get out of Vietnam. They were saying we're fighting the war the wrong way that we have to win the hearts and minds of the people in the best way to do this is through an effective pacification program. So the CIA in conjunction with the State Department and others worked up this elaborate grading system for hamlets and villages in South Vietnam. And one of the major games began and became to show that more and more Hamlets were passing from the half

D and C categories the low grades into the BNA categories hamlets where we felt the American position position of the Saigon government was secure. You know from what you say you say. Say your your house. Well sure. The more troops we had in Vietnam the greater the bureaucracy to keep track of them and we found that there was a very difficult thing to do at any given point in time as I recollect. We could

not estimate the number of American troops actually in Vietnam to within twenty five thousand of the real figure who just so many comings and goings all the time. So yeah there was a bureaucracy to the keep chart of that war in Vietnam every bit as elaborate every bit as fucked up as a patient in a emergency heart unit.