What Would He Have Done?

JFK AND VIETNAM Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power. By John M. Newman. Illustrated. 506 pp. New York: Warner Books. $22.95.

By Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

OULD President John F. Kennedy have finally sent in combat units and thereby Americanized the war in Vietnam? Or was Whe planning to withdraw the 16,000 United ments. I should add, however, that though Oliver Stone States military advisers he had sent to the South Viet- helped find Mr. Newman a publisher, and though some- namese armed forces? These questions, long debated one (the publisher?) has added a sensational subtitle, both by scholars and by former members of the Ken- "Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power," Mr. nedy and Johnson Administrations, have now been Newman rigorously avoids conspiracy theorizing about thrust into public controversy by Oliver Stone's cine- Kennedy's murder. matic fantasy "J.F.K." In recent weeks, for example, two former Government officials deeply involved in • • • • Vietnam policy, Roger Hilsman, the Assistant Secre- His book's thesis is that Kennedy "would never tary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1963-64, and have placed American combat troops in Vietnam" and Walt W. Rostow, then head of the State Department's that he was preparing for the withdrawal of the mili- Policy Planning Council and later President Lyndon B. tary advisers by the end of 1965. The Joint Chiefs of Johnson's national security adviser, have given the Staff began urging the commitment of combat units, questions diametrically opposed answers in forceful Mr. Newman shows, as early as three months after letters to The New York Times. Kennedy's inauguration. The Chiefs' wretched per- Both Mr. Hilsman, who thinks Kennedy would have formance in endorsing the Bay of Pigs invasion and in withdrawn from Vietnam, and Mr. Rostow, who feels proposing military intervention in Laos had fortunately Kennedy would have expanded American involvement, disillusioned the President, and he rejected this advice agree, I believe, that it is impossible to say with assur- then and thereafter. In the autumn of 1961, when Gen. ance what a President might have done about problems Maxwell Taylor, a White House military adviser, and that perhaps took new shape and intensity after his Walt Rostow returned from Vietnam recommending a death.. It is hard enough, Heaven knows, to tell what living Presidents are likely to do about anything. More- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a former special assistant over, astute Presidents are careful not to make critical to President John F. Kennedy, is a writer and historian. decisions until they absolutely have to. Prudence calls, His most recent book is "The Disuniting of America." in the bureaucratic phrase, for "keeping options open." Still, conceding all the above, I think it is of more than academic interest to speculate whether, had Kennedy lived, American history might have taken a different course. "JFK and Vietnam" is the most solid contribution yet to such speculation. Its author is John M. Newman, a retired Army officer with years of service in East Asia, now teaching East Asian history at the University of Maryland. His book is based on a meticulous and exhaustive examination of documents, many •newly declassified — internal memorandums, cables, tran- scripts of phone conversations, minutes of meetings, intelligence reports — supplemented by oral histories in Presidential libraries and by interviews with people involved with Vietnam policy at the time. The narrative is straightforward and workmanlike, rather military in organization, tone and style. The analysis is occasional- ly oversubtle, sometimes reading a little too much into the hasty drafting and redrafting of Government docu- U47E0141E53 IN,ERNAllONAL An American military adviser giving bayonet training in South Vietnam in 1962.

General MacArthur, then I'll be convinced.' " Kenne- commitment of 8,000 combat troops, Kennedy again dy's private remarks to Senator Mike Mansfield, the rejected the proposal. As Mr. Newman writes: "There majority leader, to Senator Wayne Morse, to Roger Kennedy drew the line. He would not go beyond it at any Hilsman, to Michael Forrestal, the National Security time during the rest of his Presidency." Council man on Vietnam, to Kenneth O'Donnell, his I must declare an interest in this argument. I well appointments secretary, and to Lester Pearson, the remember the President's reaction to the Taylor-Ros- Canadian Prime Minister, further confirm his desire to tow report. "They want a force of American troops," he withdraw. told me. "The troops will march in; the bands will play; For all the rhetoric of his inaugural address about the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will paying any price, bearing any burden, meeting any have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in hardship, Kennedy was an eminently rational man, not more troops. It's like taking a drink. The effect wears inclined to heavy investments in lost causes. He was off and you have to take another." prepared to be as tough as necessary when vital inter- Mr. Newman is, I think, essentially right about ests were involved, but he was no war lover. His foreign Kennedy. Whether Kennedy was right is a question Mr. Newman does not face. Would the outcome have been better had the President sent an American expedition- ary force in 1961? I doubt it — for reasons much on policy displayed a characteristic capacity to refuse Kennedy's mind. Mr. Newman does not mention Kenne- escalation when it made no sense — as in Laos, the Bay dy's reaction, when he visited Vietnam as a young of Pigs, the Berlin wall confrontation, the missile crisis. Congressman in 1951, to the French colonial army; but He believed from the start that the United States this was crucial in his skepticism about American was, as he often said (privately), "overcommitted" in military intervention. The war in Vietnam, he used to Indochina. As Mr. Newman reports, on April 6, 1962, he say, could be won only so long as it was a Vietnamese told Averell Harriman, then Assistant Secretary for war. If we converted it into a white man's war, we Far Eastern Affairs, and Michael Forrestal to be pre- would lose as the French had lost a decade earlier. pared to "seize upon any favorable moment to reduce (This is not latter-day recollection; I wrote it all nearly our commitment." But the Joint Chiefs kept up their 30 years ago in "A Thousand Days.") clamor for military intervention. In a hysterical Janu- Nor does Mr. Newman mention Kennedy's relish in ary 1962 memorandum cited by Mr. Newman, they citing Gen. Douglas MacArthur's statement to him that predicted that "the fall of South Vietnam to Communist it would be "a mistake" to fight in Southeast Asia. control would mean the eventual Communist domina- tion of all of the Southeast Asian mainland" and that Kennedy recorded this statement in an aide-memoire, something he rarely did, and, as General Taylor later most of Asia would capitulate to what the military still recalled, "whenever he'd get this military advice from stubbornly called the "Sino-Soviet Bloc." Secretary of the Joint Chiefs or from me or anyone else, he'd say, Defense Robert McNamara declined to endorse this 'Well, now, you gentlemen, you go back and convince extravagance, and such hyperbole confirmed Kenne-

dy's low opinion of the military.

NNEDY made concessions about advisers, but he held the line against troops. The com- mitment of combat units, he observed in March 1962 with a deference to the Constitu- tion not notable among his successors, "calls for a constitutional decision, [and] of course I would go to the Congress." In July 1962 he directed the Pentagon to come up with a plan for the withdrawal of the advisers by the end of .1965. The plan was approved in May 1963, with the first 1,000 men to be returned at the end of that year. But the military clamor persisted; the situation in coup but did not order or contem- South Vietnam continued to deteriorate; the number of plate the assassination of Diem. advisers sent to Vietnam increased; their participation "JFK and Vietnam" is by no in combat, especially in the air, increased too. The first means, however, an apologia for American fatalities, Mr. Newman tells us, created a new Kennedy. Beyond demonstrating problem. Kennedy wanted to play down American in- that Kennedy was opposed at ev- volvement, and the military collaborated enthusiastical- ery point to the dispatch of corn- ly in the production of cover stories, false claims of bat units, Mr. Newman is contin- battlefield success and other forms of press control. But ually critical of him for his lack what started as deception of the press the military soon of "clear understanding of the extended to deception of its civilian Masters — the nature of the Vietnamese soci- Secretary of Defense and the President. "Deception ety," for his failure to undertake within the deception," Mr. Newman calls it, and he a systematic examination of fun- impressively documents the effort by top commanders damental questions, for the con- — not by officers in the field — to persuade Kennedy and,.- sequent corruption of policy by McNamara through phony estimates of enemy strength, competing bureaucracies in Continued on page 31 Washington and Saigon, and for a policy he describes as haphaz- : ar ard, nearsighted, incoherent, 3 :. "more of a reaction against us- THE NEW Y9RK TIMES BOOK REVIEW t ing combat troops than a well- coordinated political, economic a A-0 0v and social response to the prob- lems in Vietnam." Continued from page 3 In extenuation, Mr. Newman body counts and other manipulat- observes that the situation was ed statistics that South Vietnam "well out of hand" by the time was winning the war. Kennedy became President and In the end, of course, facts that "the hope, enthusiasm and were more powerful than cooked vigor he symbolized only helped top-secret reports, and Saigon's to forestall serious consideration troubles could not forever be dis- of the true nature of the problem guised, especially from the alert and the long odds America American press corps. Buddhist faced." He might have added protests in the summer of 1963 that Kennedy had other things on compelled the Administration to his mind. Vietnam in the early confront the problem of Ngo • 1960's was a marginal issue com- Dinh Diem, the increasingly un- pared with problems regarding popular and repressive Presi- Berlin, Cuba, Mississippi, the nu- dent of South Vietnam. The Ken- clear test ban treaty and Capitol nedy Administration divided an- Hill. Even Lyndon Johnson hard- grily, some wishing to encourage ly mentioned Vietnam in his 1964 State of the Union Message and Vietnamese generals planning a coup against Diem, others favor- gave it little more than a hun- ing (in a phrase of the day) "sink dred Words a year later. Mr, Newman is most critical of or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem." the disconcerting gap between Kennedy's private doubts and his R. NEWMAN explaini public: statements in support of Kennedy's disapprov- the domino theory and in opposi- al of American par- tion to withdrawal from Viet- ticipation in an anti- Diem coup on the ground that success would have forced the United States into greater re- sponsibility for the fate of Viet- nam. "JFK and Vietnam" makes it clear that, despite anti-Ken- nedy mythology, the Administra- tion ultimately accepted the the public about his intentions ' with respect to war? With re- spect to anything? Is .there a nam. In this "public duplicity," higher end that justifies these he writes, Kennedy "besmirched means? If one President may his own reputation and that of deceive to stay out of a war, the office he held." cannot another do likewise to go 4 It seemed more complicated at into one?" Kennedy, he argues, the time. Kennedy wanted to give would have done better to take the Saigon Government a chance his case forthrightly to the peo- to succeed. Little would have ple. That is an understandable more quickly undermined that retrospective judgment, perhaps Government than going public about withdrawal. Moreover, the a correct one. Still, Mr. New- man's course might have result- American mood in 1963 was over- ed in the election in 1964 of a whelmingly hawkish, , as ex- Presidential candidate who pressed in such influential organs agreed with Gen. Curtis LeMay of opinion as The New York of the Air Force that North Viet- Times and The Washington Post. nam should be bombed back to According to a Louis Harris poll the Stone Age. Unfortunately, that summer, Americans by a 2- Kennedy's contradictory legacy to-1 margin favored sending in on Vietnam permitted Lyndon troops "on a large scale" if the Johnson to plunge into the esca- Communist threat grew worse. lation and Americanization of Americans still believed, in those the war honestly believing that faraway days, that they could he was doing what Kennedy work their will around the planet. would have done. Eleven years before, the Re- This important book deserved publicans had made "Who lost China?" a powerful issue in a better treatment from its pub- lisher„The very first sentence Presidential election. No Demo- contains a grammatical error. crat wanted to run in 1964 4 The copy editing is abysmal: the against "Who lost Indochina?" Assistant Secretary of State for Kennedy told Kenneth O'Don- Public Affairs is John Manning nell, "0 I tried to pull out com- on page 428 and Robert Manning pletely now from Vietnam, we On page 438; Adm. Harry D. would have another Joe McCar- Felt's political adviser is Edwin thy scare on our hands, but I can Martin on page 158 and Edward do it after I'm re-elected." This course, Mr. Newman Martin on page 177; on page 416 properly observes, raises basic one encounters "Ed" Sorensen of Kennedy's White House. What questions about American de- mocracy. "When is it permissi- has happened to the editorial process at our publishing❑ ble for the President to mislead houses? •