65. Telegram From the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State1
205. For the President. The only report worth your reading this week is the one which Bob McNamara is carrying back on his plane to you tonight.2 We have had a very fruitful five-day period together and the important recommendations which he will present to you have the full concurrence of Johnson, Westmoreland and me.
Two events below the level of importance of the Secretary’s report are still worth mentioning. The first is the capture and death of Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, the inveterate and skillful intriguer whose hand was behind abortive coup attempts of February 19 and May 20 of this year. Since the latter, he has been lying low in the vicinity of Saigon eluding apprehension by the police and thus avoiding the execution of the death sentence leveled on him in absentia by a military court. Although Thao was close to the extremists within the northern Catholic refugee bloc, leading clerics such as Papal Delegate Palmas have been openly expressing the hope that Thao could be removed from the country and his troublemaking activities suppressed. Although his death, presumably from wounds received at the time of his apprehension, may stir resentment in lower Catholic circles, it is doubtful that it will generate any emotional reaction among the substantial members of the church.
The Viet Cong monsoon offensive dropped off rather sharply during the week in which the guerrillas initiated only one battalion size attack.ARVN, on the other hand, executed successfully one of their most complex military operations of the war in opening the road from Qui Nhon to Pleiku for the movement of essential civilian and military cargo. Participants included 12 ARVN battalions and the B-52 SAC bombers from Guam which engaged in a close air support mission to assist Vietnamese Marines. The operation seems to have taken the Viet Cong by surprise who thus far have made no reaction, and convoys are rolling freely back and forth. They were badly needed to relieve the shortage of commodities in the highland area resulting from Viet Cong interdiction of routes.
[Page 170]The main question of the public mind is, “What will the U.S. do next as a result of the McNamara visit?”
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL 27 VIET S. Secret; Priority; Nodis. The source text does not indicate a time of transmission; the telegram was received at 8:02 a.m. and passed to the White House.↩
- Document 67.↩