JFK (23 page)

During the Eisenhower administration, the Defense Department was usually scrupulous about this note penned on NSC 10/2 by the President and was careful to limit support to that needed for the current operation. The result was that there was always close cooperation and collaboration between the agency and the Defense Department on most clandestine operations. In other words, the clandestine operations carried out during that period were usually what might be called joint operations, with the CIA being given operational control. This applied to the development of all “military” activities in Vietnam, at least until the marines landed there in March 1965.

This NSC policy applied to that request for helicopters from General Cabell of the CIA and accounts for the fact that his original request was vetoed by the Defense Department. This veto required the CIA to prepare its case more formally and to go first to the NSC with its request for the helicopters. In those days, the NSC had a subcommittee, the “5412/2 Committee,” or “Special Group,” that handled covert activities. This group consisted of the deputy undersecretary of state, the deputy secretary of defense, the President’s special assistant for national security affairs, and the director of central intelligence, the latter serving as the group’s “action officer.” In 1957, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also became a member. Approval for these helicopters was eventually obtained from this Special Group, and the secretary of defense authorized the Office of Special Operations to make all arrangements necessary with the Marine Corps to move the aircraft to Vietnam—secretly—from Udorn, Thailand, to an area south of Saigon near Camau.
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Perhaps more than any other single action of that period, this movement of a large combat-ready force in 1960 marked the beginning of the true military escalation of the war in Vietnam. From that time on, each new action under CIA operational control moved America one step closer to intervention with U.S. military units under U.S. military commanders.

By 1960-61, the CIA had become a surrogate U.S. military force, complete with the authority to develop and wage warfare during peacetime.
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In the process, the CIA was fleshed out with U.S. military personnel who had been “sheep-dipped”
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to make it appear that only civilians were involved. This process was to have a detrimental impact upon the implementation of the Vietnam War: It put CIA civilian officials in actual command of all operational forces in the fast-growing conflict, at least until 1965. As an additional factor, the concealment of military personnel in the CIA led to many of the problems that the armed forces would later delegate to the League of Families of Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia.

By the time this policy giving the CIA “operational” control over all American pseudomilitary units in Vietnam was changed, the “strategy” of warfare in Southeast Asia had become so stereotyped that such true military commanders as Generals Westmoreland and Abrams found little room to maneuver. They were required to take over a “no-win,” impossible situation without a military objective, except that of the overriding Grand Strategy of the Cold War: that is, to make war wherever possible, to keep it going, to avoid the use of H-bombs, and to remember Malthus’s and Darwin’s lessons that the fittest will survive.

Therefore, when the NSC directed a move of helicopters to Vietnam, it ordered the Marine Corps unit at Udorn to be returned, with its own helicopters, to Okinawa. New helicopters of the same type were transported from the United States—meaning, of course, that new procurement orders of considerable value were placed with the helicopter-manufacturing industry, a business that was almost bankrupt at the time.

At the same time, the CIA had to put together a large civilian helicopter unit, much larger than the original Marine Corps unit, with maintenance and flight crews who were for the most part former military personnel who had left the service to take a job at higher pay and a guarantee of direct return to their parent service without loss of seniority. This meant that overseas, combat wage scales were paid to everyone in the unit, at a cost many times that of the military unit it replaced.

As soon as the helicopters arrived and were made ready for operational activities, the CIA’s “army” began training with elite troops of the new South Vietnamese army. They were being hurried into service against those villages where the most serious “refugee-induced” rioting was under way. This operation opened an entirely new chapter of the thirty years of war in Vietnam.

Now who was the enemy? When CIA helicopters, loaded with heavily armed Vietnamese soldiers, were dispatched against “targets” in South Vietnam, who could they identify as “enemy”? It was during this period that we heard the oft-repeated reply “Anyone who runs away when we come must be the enemy.”

With the passage of time and with the incitement of low-level warfare in South Vietnam while this helicopter campaign was being prepared, the “enemy” was more and more the native population of the villages of southern Vietnam. They were indeed fighting; but they had been forced to fight to defend their homes, their food, and their way of life against the starving refugees from the north. The CIA’s Saigon Military Mission had proved its “make war” prowess. In that mixing bowl of banditry, everyone was the “insurgent,” everyone was the enemy. Additionally, Diem’s two edicts driving out the French and the Chinese exacerbated the problem across the land. As things developed, many of Diem’s newest and finest troops were members of that one-million-strong invading force of “Catholic” refugees. They had now become the “friends” of Saigon against the local and native “enemy.”

As discussed earlier, the CIA’s Saigon Military Mission had arrived in Saigon in 1954. It was now 1960. President Eisenhower was winding down his two-term administration, and the young Senator John F. Kennedy was organizing his own group of friends, relatives, and experts to gain the office of the presidency and to set in motion the historic events of those momentous days of Camelot.

We have prepared the way for the main focus of this book with a detailed discussion of the origin and activities of the CIA and with a systematized review of the buildup and early escalation of the warfare in Vietnam. These events present a significant view of the Cold War and what challenges the new President would face. Of course, they are far from the whole story. A brief look at a few other CIA-related activities will serve to broaden the scope of the scene in Washington on the threshold of the sixties.

In May 1960, President Eisenhower had planned to culminate his dream of a “Crusade for Peace” with the ultimate summit conference with Nikita Khrushchev in Paris. On May 1, 1960, a CIA spy plane, a high-flying U-2 with Capt. Francis Gary Powers at the controls, overflew the Soviet Union from Pakistan and made a crash-landing at Sverdlovsk in the heart of Russia and by so doing wrecked the hopes of the summit conference and the dreams of Eisenhower and Khrushchev, two old warriors who understood each other.

As a footnote to that important event, it was Allen W. Dulles himself, giving testimony before a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said positively that, despite Soviet claims, the Powers U-2 had not been shot down but had descended because of engine trouble. This important statement by Dulles has been little noted by the press, and little thought has been given to exactly why that aircraft had “trouble” at such a critical time.
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Later, Eisenhower confirmed that the spy plane had not been shot down by the Soviets and had indeed lost engine power and crash-landed in Russia. Its unauthorized flight was another part of the Cold War game designed to deny President Eisenhower his Crusade for Peace.

As another chapter of the Cold War, in March 1960, President Eisenhower had approved the beginnings of a clandestine campaign against Fidel Castro in Cuba. Later, during the summer of 1960, while Vice President Richard Nixon was stepping up his campaign to succeed Eisenhower, the VP secretly met with the NSC, urging more action against Castro.

At the same time, Senator Kennedy, with equal secrecy, was meeting with the eventual leaders of the Cuban exile brigade that landed on the beaches at the Bay of Pigs. Manuel Artime Buesa, the beach commander, met with Senator Kennedy at the Kennedy home in Palm Beach, Florida, and in his Senate offices on Capitol Hill
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along with Manuel Antonio de Varona and José Miro Cordona—both former premiers of Cuba—and other Cuban exile leaders of the time.

Perhaps unknown to both aspiring candidates, Eisenhower had categorically laid down the law to the CIA and to the Defense Department: There would be no acceleration of anti-Castro activity during the lame-duck period of his administration, so that the new President, whether it was Nixon or Kennedy, would not have to confront a situation that had already been decided upon and set in motion.

During the crucial TV debates between Nixon and Kennedy in late 1960, Nixon, who had been attending all the NSC meetings on the subject of Cuba, felt that he had to play down the anti-Castro rhetoric because of his personal involvement and the requisite bonds of secrecy. On the other hand, JFK, who did not benefit from that official knowledge and was not bound by secrecy but who was well aware of the subject matter because of his closeness to the Cubans, forcefully challenged Nixon and took the initiative on that subject during the debates. The edge gained from that single subject may have provided JFK with the votes that gave him his narrow victory in November 1960.

After the election, some quick moves were made by the CIA to “lock in” its projects before the new administration took over in January 1961. At Fort. Bragg, North Carolina, an all-new U.S. Army Special Forces organization was hastily increased in size, and its secret mission was enlarged to include “peacetime” covert activities.

At the same time, an international school was set up at Fort Bragg to provide training for counterpart troops from many nations through-out-the world. This school, although later called the John F. Kennedy Center, was not initiated by President Kennedy, as many believe, but was opened in late 1960 by the then deputy secretary of defense, James Douglas. The Green Berets of Vietnam fame were born there and shortly thereafter were ready to begin their long march to Saigon.

Similar clandestine camps were rushed into being in Panama, Guatemala, and Nicaragua for the brigade of Cuban exiles, along with other training sites in Miami, at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, and in the Lake Pontchartrain area near New Orleans. Aircraft of various types were brought in from CIA assets all over the world, as were CAT pilots. The old, reliable Filipino clandestine experts joined the underground teams.

Then, in December 1960, President-elect Kennedy made a surprising announcement. He had decided to keep Allen W. Dulles as his director of central intelligence and J. Edgar Hoover as head of the FBI. With this announcement, the stage was set for the 1960s—the decade in which hundreds of thousands of American fighting men would see action in the escalating war in Vietnam.

WITH THE ELECTION of John F. Kennedy to the office of the President of the United States of America, there was an influx of new men into the higher appointive echelons of the government. Nowhere was this change more pronounced than in McNamara’s Office of the Secretary of Defense and, from there, throughout the Pentagon. It was said that there were more Phi Beta Kappas in that office than ever before. True, but this did not ensure that they were the best military minds.

However, they overcame their lack of military experience and knowledge through study and dedication to their jobs. They learned from their environment, among the older and more stable bureaucrats. Most important, they brought with them new ideas, new perspectives, and new goals. Nowhere was this more evident than in their approach to the unconventional problems of the Cold War and its greatest battlefield at that time, Indochina.

One thing became quite clear before too many months had passed. They, and their young President, had come to stay the course. They laid out long-range plans through the first four years and clearly intended to be there for the second four, when their work would come to fruition. And next there was Bobby, and then Teddy. There was always the possibility of “the Dynasty.”

I had been assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 1960 when Thomas Gates, the Morgan Guaranty Trust banker from New York, was secretary. As a businessman, he ran the Pentagon and the military establishment as a businessman would. He was an excellent secretary of defense.