Turning Point: The Vietnam War, Pt. 3
In Vietnam, after the 1963 overthrow of Diem, there was a period of instability and power struggle—five governments rose and fell. One of the leading figures at that time was Nguyen Cao Ky, who came up through the Air Force and was prime minister from 1965-67. One of the problems with Ky was that he was part of a drug ring carrying opium from Laotian refineries into South Vietnam. (The Great Heroin Coup, by Henrik Kruger, pp. 134-35; Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, pp. 209-222). The other problem with Ky was his flashiness and outspoken nature. He once said, “People ask me who my heroes are. I have only one: Hitler.” But he also admitted that the communists were closer to the people’s yearning for social justice and an independent life than his government was. (Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, p. 332)
I
All this made him unpalatable for presidential leadership. Lyndon Johnson decided to hold an election in 1967 with Nguyen Van Thieu as president and Ky as Vice President. The pair won in another rigged election. Soldiers showed voters how to mark their ballots, and they encircled the legislature while it recorded the electoral tally. (Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, p. 466; Washington Post, article by Richard Pearson,10/1/2001)
Lyndon Johnson wanted the illusion of a democratic state, which South Vietnam was not. Accompanying this illusory aspect were various pronouncements by both Johnson and military officers about the progress of the war. General Westmoreland even taunted Hanoi to begin an attack since the Americans were ready. (Karnow, p. 514) Joseph Alsop, a well-connected and powerful columnist, wrote that Thieu and Ky predicted the war would be over by the end of 1967. (The Myths of Tet by Edwin Moise, p. 15) At the end of July 1967, Walt Rostow told Dan Ellsberg “The other side is near collapse…victory is very near.” (ibid, p. 18). In November of 1967, President Johnson brought Westmoreland to Washington, and he said the enemy was “running out of men” and “trying desperately to win a victory.” (ibid, p. 95) At the National Press Club, he then said the communists were certainly losing the war and had not been able to win a major battle in over a year. General Bruce Palmer said the Viet Cong had been defeated from Da Nang all the way down to the populated areas. (ibid, pp. 98-99)
The film does a decent enough job in showing this political, military and press optimism, which will be shocked by the size and scope of the Tet Offensive. But it does not show the tactical maneuvering that made Tet so surprising in its effectiveness. General Giap decided to create two diversions to draw out the Americans and the ARVN to the north and west. These were at Khe Sanh, and then Loc Ninh and Dak To. (Moise, pp. 113,114) The first became a major battle, which had both Westmoreland and Johnson so worried that they considered using atomic weapons. (Erik Villard, History.net, 3/2/2022)
The second factor that the program underplays was the intelligence failure that made the attack such a surprise. To this day, there is a dispute about how many men Hanoi was sending south prior to Tet. Westmoreland’s initial claim was between 5,500 and 6,000 per month. Even he later said that was wrong. The most reliable tally today is that the number was probably about three times that or a bit more. There was an utterly massive influx in January of 1968, as high as 45,000. And this should have been a telltale indication that something was coming. (Moise, p. 121, p. 123)
But Westmoreland was so taken by surprise that he actually stated in February of 1968 that, “The units committed to this campaign, we carry on our order of battle.” He later added, ”No previously unidentified unit showed up.” That was simply wrong, and he probably knew it was so when he said it. (Moise, p. 124). In fact, it was so wrong that Pentagon headquarters in Saigon, Military Assistance Command Vietnam, later revised their pre-Tet infiltration figures upwards.
Also going unmentioned in the film is the other claim by the Army: that the Viet Cong had thrown everything they had into Tet. Or as one officer put it, the VC were scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits. This was also not true. Many Viet Cong units were simply not in position to be active in the attack at the time it happened. The initial estimates were that about 84,000 Viet Cong and infiltrated Hanoi troops participated. But Hanoi later came out with their own study saying they had used over three times that many over the whole 45-day barrage of attacks, and still had some in reserve. (Moise, p. 128)
The only man who realized how large the coming attack was going to he was the legendary CIA analyst Sam Adams, and he did not figure it out until a few days prior. Also, very late in the day, January 25th, some DIA analysts proffered the idea that Khe Sanh might be a diversion to pull American forces away, but as this got upwards in the hierarchy, it was ignored. (ibid, p. 130) Again on January 25th—five days before Tet—the National Security Agency warned that there might be some coordinated communist attacks coming. But the warning did not say they had targeted cities or that it would be so widespread. (Ibid)
II
It is important to elucidate the intelligence failure that made Tet possible, for the simple reason that the offensive could not have been so powerful if it had been in any way expected. But there were almost no preparations for it. The only officer who even tried to do something in advance was General Frederick Weyand. He cancelled some operations near Cambodia and moved forces closer to Saigon. This may have prevented the capture of Tan Son Nhut Airport. But the overall feeling afterwards was conveyed by General Creighton Abrams, who “wanted to fire every intelligence officer in Vietnam.” It was that bad. (p. 132)
Needless to say, the hopeful line that the Army and the White House had been feeding the public made the impact even worse. During the entire expanse of the multi-phased operation, scores of towns and cities were attacked, and it unfolded for weeks on end.
If anything, the film underplays the impact the assault had in the press and in Washington. As Clark Clifford, the designated Secretary of Defense, said, “Tet, to me, was the roof falling in.” Lyndon Johnson later said that it was a shock--he did not expect an attack that was so large and so coordinated. White House Press Secretary George Christian said it was a huge surprise. He thought the Viet Cong were under control, and it was not possible for them to rise to the offensive heights they did. (Moise, p. 152)
Because of the continuing battles at Hue and Khe Sanh, Westmoreland asked for more troops, over 200,000. This notice ended up being leaked to the press, and it created a firestorm of controversy. A New York Times editorial called it “Suicidal Escalation”. (March 11, 1968) The editorial then ridiculed the notion of a light at the end of the tunnel, which it now characterized as a bottomless pit headed nowhere: “The American people have been pushed beyond the limits of gullibility.”
The film leaves out two rather important events that occurred as a result of this request. One was a meeting of the so-called Wise Men at the White House. This included people like Robert Lovett, Averill Harriman, and Dean Acheson. The military was giving their reasons for the call-up, and Johnson followed with a speech supporting it. In the middle of the speech, Acheson got up and walked out. When he was phoned after and asked why he left, he said, “You can shove Vietnam up your ass.” Johnson got on the line, and Acheson explained that the Pentagon was giving canned briefings and he would not stand for it anymore. He would only listen to people on the ground in Vietnam and read the raw data. This is how the group turned against the war. (The Wise Men, by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, p. 687)
Shortly after this event, Clark Clifford was sent over to the Pentagon. President Johnson wanted him to get the raw data and find out how the Joint Chiefs planned on winning the war after Tet. Clifford went there day after day for over a week. He asked many pointed questions, e.g., if we sent in more troops, would not Hanoi counter by sending more of their men? The remarkable thing about these interviews is that Clifford had been on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board prior to his appointment as Secretary of Defense. At that time, he had been a hawk. He found the answers he got so unsatisfactory that it caused him to change his mind on the subject. He advised Johnson to begin to get out. (Isaacson and Thomas, pp. 683-89)
The film does show the famous editorial comments on the war by Walter Cronkite, who labeled the conflict as a stalemate. LBJ reportedly said that if he had lost Cronkite he had lost Middle America, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn2RjahTi3M) The program states that CBS president Dick Salant allowed Cronkite to do this editorial and backed the newsman after. It does not mention how, four months later, Salant allowed Warren Commissioner John McCloy to secretly have approval over the CBS four-night special endorsing the Warren Commission--and then would not admit to what he had done. (Click here for more on that https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/why-cbs-covered-up-the-jfk-assassination)
III
The film deals extensively with the battle at Hue during Tet, and it describes the massacre that took place there. Oddly, it does not go into any similar depth about Khe Sanh, which was a massive siege that lasted 77 days, beginning about a week before Tet. It resulted in 35 downed helicopters, 23 aircraft lost, and 2700 American casualties. When it was all over and the siege was lifted, the entire base was abandoned and then destroyed, rather than risk another such siege.
The film uses Ron Haeberle to tell the story of the My Lai massacre. Haeberle was a combat photographer who took many photos of My Lai. These made it simply impossible to deny what had happened. They were published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He also wrote a personal account of the episode for that newspaper. The photos were then sold to Life magazine and were published in its December 5, 1969, issue. They created an immediate sensation. As did his testimony before Congress, where he described simply wanton slaughter of everyone, including women and children. The film also relates the story of Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who did the most to halt the operation in real time and escorted many civilians away from the scene. Thompson was probably the most heroic person involved in the atrocity. (Click here for the film Four Hours in My Lai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYzb9DH7YAE&list=PL_i8Q5O9tfujtnIlaV4vmZ9lUpLcb_mtH) )
Although Turning Point does deal with some of the trials that happened after the atrocity, like those of Captain Ernest Medina and Lt. William Calley, it does not interview author Doug Valentine. In his fine book, The Phoenix Program, he made the argument that My Lai was really a CIA operation meant to eliminate Viet Cong sympathizers, and the Agency passed on lists to the military. William Peers, a former CIA officer who had served previously in the OSS, was appointed by Westmoreland to do the military inquiry into the massacre. During the Vietnam War, Peers began in special operations and then became a special assistant for counterinsurgency under the Joint Chiefs. Peers and journalist Sy Hersh—who wrote two books on the subject—more or less localized the affair. The latter largely chalked it up to incompetence and ambition. Hersh specifically wrote in his second book, “There was no conspiracy to destroy the village of My Lai 4….”(The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 367)
IV
The Tet Offensive was enough for Johnson to recall Westmoreland. The general was now made Chief of Staff of the US Army. Creighton Abrams became the commander in Vietnam.
Johnson’s betrayal of Kennedy’s Vietnam policy had dealt him a lethal political body blow. Allard Lowenstein and Curtis Gans organized a Dump Johnson movement. In the autumn of 1967, Senator Eugene McCarthy had agreed to be their candidate. In November of 1967, he announced his candidacy. He entered the Democratic primaries running as an anti-war candidate. At first, no one believed he really had a chance to defeat the incumbent Democratic president. But on March 12, 1968, in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, Johnson was held to 49% of the vote.
McCarthy had galvanized American youth against the war. They journeyed to New Hampshire to work as volunteers. On the other hand, Johnson was so confident he had not filed, and was therefore not on the ballot. McCarthy was so well organized that he captured the majority of the delegates. The political impact was shocking. As revealed in the book 85 Days, Bobby Kennedy had decided to enter the race prior to the primary. But since he had made the decision so late, he did not announce until after the results were in. Johnson was now faced with not one but two strong opponents.
The film does little with Bobby Kennedy’s criticism of Johnson about the Vietnam War. But yet, as many have observed, Bobby’s attacks really disturbed Johnson. Daniel Ellsberg worked for Bobby in 1968, and he knew that RFK understood there was no victory for America in Vietnam. We could not bomb our way to peace. (Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail, p. 477) The last thing Johnson wanted to contemplate was losing to Bobby Kennedy in the primaries. But the word was out that the president’s campaign in Wisconsin was collapsing. The film depicts Johnson on the phone, realizing that he had now been labeled a war president, and it was a highly unpopular war. Using then-Johnson employee Polly Baca as a witness, the film reveals the almost tangible antipathy between Kennedy and Johnson. With one defeat barely avoided and another staring him in the face, on March 31, 1968, Johnson went on television and made a shocking declaration: He was not going to run.
This was a political earthquake. But then, just four days later, another tremor was felt: Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. The film shows Bobby Kennedy’s famous speech that night in Indianapolis, where he announced to the crowd that King had been killed. He urged the assembly not to strike out in fury and violence. Unnoted is the fact that that was the only major city that did not erupt in rioting.
After Tet, after Johnson’s abdication, after King’s murder, what could now happen? Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. The film interviews Baca and Chic Canfora, who both worked for the RFK campaign. Canfora cannot speak; the memory of RFK’s death is too painful. With those two men dead, there was no one to represent the anti-war youth at the Chicago Democratic convention. Baca talks about being in a crowd when the police began striking the demonstrators with batons, and blood began to flow. Canfora observes that the powers that be wanted the war to continue and were willing to silence any voices that were opposed to it. (And that is as far as the film goes with that concept.)
Canfora then observes that this process eventually led to someone who was even worse than Lyndon Johnson. That was the man JFK defeated in 1960: Richard Nixon.
