Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume IV, Vietnam, 1966

196. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Washington, August 2, 1966.

SUBJECT

• Vietnam

PARTICIPANTS

• W. Averell Harriman, Ambassador-at-Large
• Henry A. Kissinger, Professor of International Law, Harvard
• Daniel I. Davidson, Special Assistant, FE
• Monteagle Stearns, Special Assistant, S/AH

Professor Kissinger came in at the Governorʼs request to give his impressions of the situation in Vietnam following his recent visit there.² He explained that this had been his second trip to Vietnam. His first visit was in October of 1965.

Atmosphere

Professor Kissinger emphasized the conspiratorial atmosphere which he said prevailed throughout South Vietnam. He had never visited a country which was so self-absorbed. During his two visits and countless conversations with Vietnamese he did not recall being asked a single question about problems outside Vietnam. He was also impressed by the amount of backbiting that went on among the Vietnamese and the value they attached to qualities like cleverness and cunning as opposed to attributes like probity and integrity which were esteemed in the Western World. He recalled a long conversation he had had with a Provincial Official in the First Corps area. The official had described with considerable pride the tricks and maneuvers he had employed at the time of the struggle movement crisis to avoid committing himself either to the Government or the struggle forces. To many Vietnamese, conspiracy had become a way of life making political stability that much harder to achieve.

Military Situation

Kissinger acknowledged that the influx of American troops into Vietnam had resulted in a short term improvement in the military situation. In the Spring of 1965 Hanoi and the Viet Cong had entertained real hopes of a military victory. Their prospects for achieving this in the foreseeable future had been greatly diminished. Nevertheless, Kissinger thought that the basic situation had not changed since October of ʼ65.

In his travels outside Saigon Kissinger had seen no sign that the Viet Congʼs political organization and capacity for guerrilla warfare had been seriously affected by our military operations. The pacification program had made little progress. The Viet Cong still moved with relative impunity outside the main cities and towns. Their intelligence was excellent and more often than not, despite the mobility of our forces, the Viet Cong could avoid contact when they wanted to. While our military often pointed to the heavy enemy casualties as a sign that we were winning the war, Kissinger thought that Hanoi and the VC could accept a 10–1 kill ratio almost indefinitely. Even without infiltration of an estimated 4500 men a month from the North the Viet Cong could make good their losses by recruitment in the South. Kissinger did not seem impressed by evidence that Viet Cong recruiters were finding it difficult to get able-bodied men. He thought the Viet Cong were still far from the bottom of the barrel.

Kissinger praised the morale and dedication of our military forces but asserted that our strategy was wrong. “The best way to exhaust ourselves”, he said, “is to spend our time chasing main force units near the Cambodian border.” Only the Marines had learned that the war had to be won against the guerrillas and not against the main force units. Governor Harriman said that General Krulak had told him that the Marines in the First Corps area were now starting to concentrate on small unit operations, the task of which was to break the link between the guerrillas and the villagers. Kissinger observed that this was a slow, hard job which did not appeal to the generals in Saigon. He thought that General Westmoreland still conceived of his job as the location and destruction of main force units.

Kissinger cited as evidence of the lack of progress being made in pacification the fact that 18 months after our arrival in Danang it was still impossible to go four kilometers outside of the city at night without running a real risk of being shot. The situation around Saigon was almost as bad. Kissinger described his experience of flying over main highways in a helicopter and seeing as many as five or six Viet Cong road blocks. He noted that Government officials in ostensibly pacified areas refused to sleep in their villages at night.

While praising the Marines for having understood the real problem, Kissinger said that they were just beginning to learn how to conduct anti-guerrilla operations. Our military were not well equipped by training or experience to fight this kind of war. The problem of how to establish effective civil administration in the Provinces was still unsolved. We tended to confuse charitable activities with political action. The rebuilding of schools and the distribution of emergency food supplies were useful and constructive actions which won friends for us among the villagers. Suchactivities, however, did little to break the Viet Cong stranglehold on the villages when our forces had departed.

Kissinger said that he understood that the effectiveness of South Vietnamʼs military forces continued to suffer from their lack of aggressiveness. In the First Corps area General Lam actually deployed his troops within the Marine perimeter. He cited areas in which the ARVN set up its road blocks and conducted its patrols in the same locations night after night. Consequently, the VC learned quickly how to avoid them. Kissinger agreed with Governor Harriman that the best way to increase the effectiveness of the ARVN was to encadre South Vietnamese units with the American forces. Governor Harriman observed that General Krulak had told him that this was being done by the Marines in the First Corps area. Kissinger said that encadrement was not yet extensive. (Governorʼs note—2 Vietnamese squads to 1 U.S. Marine)

GVN Attitudes Towards Negotiations with NLF-VC

Professor Kissinger said that none of the Vietnamese military officers with whom he had talked showed any flexibility about negotiations with the NLF. He thought the civilians were less rigid and singled out Tran Van Do and Bui Diem as GVN officials who could conceive of some value deriving from contacts with the NLF. He thought this was a change from October 1965 when the NLF was “unmentionable” even among civilian officials. Tran Van Do had told Kissinger and Phil Habib that he thought, personally, that it might be easier to talk to the NLF than to Hanoi. Kissinger and Habib had not reported this remark by telegram be-cause, according to Kissinger, the mere mention of negotiations with the NLF would have greatly antagonized Ambassador Lodge. They feared that Lodge might tell Ky that Do was being disloyal.

Kissinger thought that a factor strongly influencing some Vietnamese to think about the possibility of negotiations with the NLF was the increasing cost of the war. The massive influx of Americans had created a better military situation for the GVN but large numbers of Americans inevitably created frictions with the local population. Some thoughtful Vietnamese were beginning to conclude that whoever won the war in the South the Vietnamese would lose. Kissinger noted that it was generally believed in Saigon that many Vietnamese, including GVN officials, maintained discreet contacts with the NLF and VC. In some cases this was because they had relatives on the other side. In other cases they were simply hedging their bets. Few Vietnamese admitted that they maintained covert contacts of this kind because of the obvious danger of doing so. Similarly, few GVN officials were willing to advocate talks with the NLF-VC because they assumed that the Directory and the U.S. were strongly opposed to such negotiations.

The Road to Negotiations

Kissinger said that we should stop talking about “unconditional” negotiations if we wanted to convince the world that we were serious about trying to find a peaceful settlement to the Vietnam problem. He did not find that anyone in Saigon understood what the phrase meant and it was usually interpreted to mean that we did not want to talk. In Kissingerʼs view we should keep pressing for negotiations and state openly what our conditions were. This was particularly important if we wanted to persuade the GVN to think in terms of talks with the NLF-VC. At present the GVN leadership was convinced that we were completely inflexible on this question.

Kissinger argued that negotiations with the NLF-VC offered greater chance of success than negotiations with Hanoi or multilateral negotiations under the umbrella of the Geneva Agreements. Of all the methods of negotiations available to us he believed that a big Geneva-type conference was the least likely to succeed. Such a conference would involve too many people who didnʼt know the situation and who brought to the conference nothing more than their prejudices. Furthermore, the composition of a re-convened Geneva Conference would be stacked against us.

One advantage of direct negotiations between the GVN and NLF-VC was that it ducked the troublesome problem that would be posed by VC representation at an international conference. Kissinger also thought it possible that Hanoi would prefer to let the NLF-VC take the lead since their own prestige would not be directly engaged in compromises reached by southerners in the South. If agreements could be reached with the NLF they could be ratified by the Geneva powers in a large international conference.

He agreed that the central problem was to conduct negotiations in the South which would not result in a take-over by the NLF. The fragility of the GVN created real difficulties and meant that we were continually in the position of being blackmailed by the political weakness of the GVN. Despite the problems, Kissinger thought that we should direct all of our efforts, military, political and economic, to creating a situation favorable to negotiations with the NLF-VC.

In practice this would mean (a) re-orienting our military strategy to put anti-guerrilla operations before operations against main force units, (b) encouraging the development of a broader political base in Saigon through elections and increased civilian participation in the Government and (c) putting more effort into improvement of civil administration both in Saigon and the provinces.

Another step that Kissinger considered necessary was to levy a top priority requirement on CAS to obtain more and better intelligence on the composition and leadership of NLF-VC. This was vitally important if realistic negotiations were ever to be conducted with the NLF. Even if adeal could not be made we might be able to induce the defection of non-communist members of the NLF. For this reason we had to do a better job of identifying non-communists and hard-core leaders. Kissinger noted that the NLF leader, Tho, had gone over to the communists in 1962 because of his opposition to Diem. He had tried to return to Saigon in ʼ62 or ʼ63 but Diem had refused to let him. It was barely possible that Tho and others like him could still be induced to return. Kissinger emphasized that we needed not only information on the principal NLF leaders but on their provincial leadership as well.

Kissinger thought that an amnesty offer by the GVN would be useful and should precede any serious effort by the GVN to engage in talks with the NLF-VC.

Impressions of the Embassy

Kissinger said that it would be extremely difficult to bring Ambassador Lodge to accept negotiations with the NLF-VC. He thought it might be done on a step by step basis. If Lodge could be convinced, the job of convincing Ky and the GVN would be much easier. The Vietnamese were somewhat in awe of Lodgeʼs personality and his views would carry real weight with them. Lodge was completely sold on Ky and did not like twisting his arm. The Ambassador was sensitive to charges that he had pulled the rug out from under Diem and did not want the same thing to happen again.

Bill Porter was doing an excellent job under difficult circumstances. He had to spend far too much time answering questions from Washington. This was particularly unfortunate because the mission needed pulling together and Washington often asked the wrong questions.

Phil Habib was a first class professional. Kissinger regretted that he would be leaving in about 6 months. The 18 month tour of duty was a mistake since it took about a year and a half to learn the situation well enough to be able to influence it. The Department should reverse its decision not to let wives remain with their husbands and extend tours of duty to 2 to 3 years.

Kissinger had mixed impressions of Lansdale who he thought was too much of a Boy Scout. He commented that Lansdale had the great virtue of patience and was willing to spend long hours talking to Vietnamese. He was an excellent man for contacts but ineffective when it came to details. According to Kissinger, Lodge should have put Phil Habib in charge of monitoring the elections instead of Lansdale.

Kissinger did not believe that the PATs were accomplishing much. They had been recruited and trained too quickly. He said that it was admitted that they had a desertion rate of at least 15% and the rate might be significantly higher. His own observation of the PATs in operation indicatedthat they tended to stick close to their base of operations and were no match for the highly motivated VC.

1. Source: Department of State, Bundy Files: Lot 85 D 240, Kissinger, 1966. Secret; Nodis. Drafted by Stearns.
2. Kissinger visited Vietnam July 16–29.