Word: saigon
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...sounded downright naive when, on assuming his post in Saigon, he advised the JCS: "No sophisticated psychological approach is necessary to attract the country people to the GVN [Government of Viet Nam, Saigon] at this time. The assurance of a reasonably secure life is all that is necessary." That assurance was at the core of the conflict?and has still not been wholly achieved...
...explain why he had become the first to turn publicly against the war. There was his tall, taut Assistant Secretary, John McNaughton, now dead, sweeping confident eyes across the map of the world and talking fast, very fast. Speaking ever so precisely of the potential of yet another of Saigon's revolving governments, the coatless Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy stretched out on his leather couch. Brooding over all loomed the peaked profile of Lyndon Johnson, secretive, holding his options open until the final moment, seemingly unwilling even to confide in himself what he would do next...
PESSIMISM ABOUT SAIGON. While higher officials sought to knock down persistent reports by newsmen in Saigon that the war was going badly, McNaughton in a memo on Nov. 6, 1964, offered a firm evaluation and prediction: "The situation in South Viet Nam is deteriorating. Unless new actions are taken, the new government will probably be unstable and ineffectual and the VC will probably continue to extend their hold over the population and territory. It can be expected that, soon (6 months? two years?), (a) government officials at all levels will adjust their behavior to an eventual VC takeover, (b) defections...
ORDERING ALLIES AROUND. Throughout the papers, U.S. officials indicate that the various Saigon governments, the non-Communist Laotian Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, other U.S. allies and even the U.S. Congress were too often regarded as entities to be manipulated in order to accomplish U.S. foreign policy aims. Administration officials framed a Tonkin Gulf-style resolution long before the PT-boat attacks but failed to ask Congress for concurrence on what they were doing in Viet Nam. The State Department's Bundy writes of how Canada's J. Blair Seaborn, a member of the International Control Commission in Viet Nam, could...
...first breaks in the official hard-line thinking occurred in 1966, when the imaginative McNaughton advocated a "lowering of sights from victory to compromise." He warned that this might "unhinge" Saigon and give the North "the smell of blood," and that it would require careful preparation to get in position for compromise. "We should not expect the enemy's molasses to pour any faster than ours. And we should tip the pitchers now if we want them to pour a year from now." McNamara raised the possibility of compromise with Johnson, but did not urge it, and Johnson chose...