[Peace-discuss] Full text of Galbraith's article on JFK and Vietnam

[ndahlhei at uiuc.edu]

http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html
(From Oct/Nov 2003 Boston Review)

Exit Strategy

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam 

James K. Galbraith 

8 Forty years have passed since November 22, 1963, yet 
painful mysteries remain. What, at the moment of his death, 
was John F. Kennedy’s policy toward Vietnam? 

It’s one of the big questions, alternately evaded and 
disputed over four decades of historical writing. It bears on 
Kennedy’s reputation, of course, though not in an unambiguous 
way. 

And today, larger issues are at stake as the United States 
faces another indefinite military commitment that might have 
been avoided and that, perhaps, also cannot be won. The story 
of Vietnam in 1963 illustrates for us the struggle with 
policy failure. More deeply, appreciating those distant 
events tests our capacity as a country to look the reality of 
our own history in the eye. 

One may usefully introduce the issue by recalling the furor 
over Robert McNamara’s 1995 memoir In Retrospect. Reaction 
then focused mainly on McNamara’s assumption of personal 
responsibility for the war, notably his declaration that his 
own actions as the Secretary of Defense responsible for it 
were “terribly, terribly wrong.” Reviewers paid little 
attention to the book’s contribution to history. In an 
editorial on April 12, 1995, the New York Times delivered a 
harsh judgment: “Perhaps the only value of “In Retrospect” is 
to remind us never to forget that these were men who in the 
full hubristic glow of their power would not listen to 
logical warning or ethical appeal.” And in the New York Times 
Book Review four days later, Max Frankel wrote that 

David Halberstam, who applied that ironic phrase [The Best 
and the Brightest] to his rendering of the tale 23 years ago, 
told it better in many ways than Mr. McNamara does now. So 
too, did the Pentagon Papers, that huge trove of documents 
assembled at Mr. McNamara’s behest when he first recognized a 
debt to history. 
In view of these criticisms, readers who actually pick up 
McNamara’s book may experience a shock when they scan the 
table of contents and sees this summary of Chapter 3, 
titled “The Fateful Fall of 1963: August 24–November 22, 
1963”: 
A pivotal period of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, punctuated 
by three important events: the overthrow and assassination of 
South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem; President Kennedy’s 
decision on October 2 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces; 
and his assassination fifty days later. (Emphasis added.) 
Kennedy’s decision on October 2, 1963, to begin the 
withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam? Contrary to 
Frankel, this is not something you will find in Halberstam. 
You will not find it in Leslie Gelb’s editorial summary in 
the Gravel edition of The Pentagon Papers, even though 
several documents that are important to establishing the case 
for a Kennedy decision to withdraw were published in that 
edition. Nor, with just three exceptions prior to last 
spring’s publication of Howard Jones’s Death of a Generation—
a milestone in the search for difficult, ferociously hidden 
truth—will you find it elsewhere in 30 years of historical 
writing on Vietnam. 
Did John F. Kennedy give the order to withdraw from Vietnam? 

*  *  *

Certainly, most Vietnam historians have said “no”—or would 
have if they considered the question worth posing. They have 
asserted continuity between Kennedy’s policy and Lyndon 
Johnson’s, while usually claiming that neither president 
liked the war and also that Kennedy especially had expressed 
to friends his desire to get out sometime after the 1964 
election. 

The view that Kennedy would have done what Johnson did—stay 
in Vietnam and gradually escalate the war in 1964 and 1965—is 
held by left, center, and right, from Noam Chomsky to Kai 
Bird to William Gibbons. It was promoted forcefully over the 
years by the late Walt Rostow, beginning in 1967 with a thick 
compilation for Johnson himself of Kennedy’s public 
statements on Vietnam policy and continuing into the 1990s. 
Gibbons’s three-volume study states it this way: “On November 
26 [1963], Johnson approved NSAM [National Security Action 
Memorandum] 273, reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Vietnam 
and the continuation of Vietnam programs and policies of the 
Kennedy administration.” 

Equally, Stanley Karnow writes in his Vietnam: A History 
(1983) that Johnson’s pledge “essentially signaled a 
continuation of Kennedy’s policy.” Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, 
while writing extensively on the Saigon coup, makes no 
mention at all of the Washington discussions following 
Johnson’s accession three weeks later. Gary Hess offers 
summary judgment on the policy that Johnson inherited: “To 
Kennedy and his fellow New Frontiersmen, it was a doctrine of 
faith that the problems of Vietnam lent themselves to an 
American solution.” 

Kai Bird’s 1998 biography of McGeorge and William Bundy 
briefly reviews the discussions of withdrawal reported to 
have occurred in late 1963 but accepts the general verdict 
that Kennedy did not intend to quit. So does Fredrik 
Logevall, whose substantial 1999 book steadfastly insists 
that the choices Kennedy faced were either escalation or 
negotiation and did not include withdrawal without 
negotiation. 

All this (and more) is in spite of evidence to the contrary, 
advanced over the years by a tiny handful of authors. In 1972 
Peter Dale Scott first made the case that Johnson’s NSAM 273—
the document that Gibbons relied on in making the case for 
continuity—was in fact a departure from Kennedy’s policy; his 
essay appeared in Gravel’s edition of The Pentagon Papers. 
Arthur M. Schlesinger’s Robert Kennedy and His Times tells in 
a few tantalizing pages of the “first application” in October 
1963 “of Kennedy’s phased withdrawal plan.” 

A more thorough treatment appeared in 1992, with the 
publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam.1 Until his 
retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an 
intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, 
headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an 
historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records—
a talent he later applied to the CIA’s long-hidden archives 
on Lee Harvey Oswald. 

Newman’s argument was not a case of “counterfactual 
historical reasoning,” as Larry Berman described it in an 
early response.2 It was not about what might have happened 
had Kennedy lived. Newman’s argument was stronger: Kennedy, 
he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from 
Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here 
is the chronology, according to Newman: 

(1) On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a 
mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, 
which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, 
were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 
and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very 
near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 
17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the 
end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary 
Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of 
McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal. 

(2) On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman 
quotes the minutes of the meeting that day: 

The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 
U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised 
formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out 
routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing 
people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.) 
The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was 
in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier 
announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 
decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms 
from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended3) 
but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or 
his reactions. 

(3) On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which 
states: 

The President approved the military recommendations contained 
in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no 
formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to 
withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. 

In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on 
October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and 
implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. 
Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be 
explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem 
or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any 
pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had 
also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK 
had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that 
the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a 
self-sufficient South Vietnam. 

The alternative would have been to withdraw the troops while 
acknowledging failure. And this, Newman argues, Kennedy was 
prepared to do if it became necessary. He saw no reason, 
however, to take this step before it became necessary. If the 
troops could be pulled while the South Vietnamese were still 
standing, so much the better.4 But from October 11 onward the 
CIA’s reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was 
replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic 
pessimism. Newman believes this pessimism, which involved 
rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a 
response to NSAM 263. It represented an effort by the CIA to 
undermine the ostensible rationale of withdrawal with 
success, and therefore to obstruct implementation of the plan 
for withdrawal. Kennedy, needless to say, did not share his 
full reasoning with the CIA. 

(4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the 
assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on 
November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. 
They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans 
out of there.” Victory, which had figured prominently in a 
similar statement on September 12, was no longer on the list. 

(5) The Honolulu Conference of senior cabinet and military 
officials on November 20–21 was called to review plans in the 
wake of the Saigon coup. The military and the CIA, however, 
planned to use that meeting to pull the rug from under the 
false optimism which some had used to rationalize NSAM 263. 
However, Kennedy did not himself believe that we were 
withdrawing with victory. It follows that the changing image 
of the military situation would not have changed JFK’s 
decision. 

(6) In Honolulu, McGeorge Bundy prepared a draft of what 
would eventually be NSAM 273. The plan was to present it to 
Kennedy after the meeting ended. Dated November 21, this 
draft reflected the change in military reporting. It speaks, 
for example, of a need to “turn the tide not only of battle 
but of belief.” Plans to intensify the struggle, however, do 
not go beyond what Kennedy would have approved: A paragraph 
calling for actions against the North underscores the role of 
Vietnamese forces: 

7. With respect to action against North Vietnam, there should 
be a detailed plan for the development of additional 
Government of Vietnam resources, especially for sea-going 
activity, and such planning should indicate the time and 
investment necessary to achieve a wholly new level of 
effectiveness in this field of action. (Emphasis added.) 
(7) At Honolulu, a preliminary plan, known as CINCPAC OPLAN 
34-63 and later implemented as OPLAN 34A, was prepared for 
presentation. This plan called for intensified sabotage raids 
against the North, employing Vietnamese commandos under U.S. 
control—a significant escalation.5 While JCS chief Taylor had 
approved preparation of this plan, it had not been shown to 
McNamara. Tab E of the meeting’s briefing book, also approved 
by Taylor and also not sent in advance to McNamara, showed 
that the withdrawal ordered by Kennedy in October was already 
being gutted, by the device of substituting for the 
withdrawal of full units that of individual soldiers who were 
being rotated out of Vietnam in any event. 
(8) The final version of NSAM 273, signed by Johnson on 
November 26, differs from the draft in several respects. Most 
are minor changes of wording. The main change is that the 
draft paragraph 7 has been struck in its entirety (there are 
two pencil slashes on the November 21 draft), and replaced 
with the following: 

Planning should include different levels of possible 
increased activity, and in each instance there be estimates 
such factors as: A. Resulting damage to North Vietnam; B. The 
plausibility denial; C. Vietnamese retaliation; D. Other 
international reaction. Plans submitted promptly for approval 
by authority. 
The new language is incomplete. It does not begin by 
declaring outright that the subject is attacks on the North. 
But the thrust is unmistakable, and the restrictive reference 
to “Government of Vietnam resources” is now missing. Newman 
concludes that this change effectively provided new authority 
for U.S.–directed combat actions against North Vietnam. 
Planning for these actions began therewith, and we now know 
that an OPLAN 34A raid in August 1964 provoked the North 
Vietnamese retaliation against the destroyer Maddox, which 
became the first Gulf of Tonkin incident. And this in turn 
led to the confused incident a few nights later aboard the 
Turner Joy, to reports that it too had been attacked, and to 
Johnson’s overnight decision to seek congressional support 
for “retaliation” against North Vietnam. From this, of 
course, the larger war then flowed. 
*  *  *

A reply to Newman’s book appeared very quickly. It came from 
Noam Chomsky, hardly an apologist for Lyndon Johnson or the 
war. 

Chomsky despises the Kennedy apologists: equally the old 
insiders and the antiwar nostalgics—Arthur Schlesinger and 
Oliver Stone—and the historical memory of “the fallen leader 
who had escalated the attack against Vietnam from terror to 
aggression.” He reviles efforts to portray Kennedy’s foreign 
policy views as different from Johnson’s. On this point he 
may well be fundamentally correct, though for reasons quite 
different from those that he offers. 

Chomsky’s Rethinking Camelot challenges Newman’s main points. 
First, did Kennedy plan to withdraw without victory? Or, were 
the plans of NSAM 263 contingent on a continued perception of 
success in battle? Second, did the change in NSAM 273 between 
the draft (which was prepared for Kennedy but never seen by 
him) and the final version (signed by Johnson) represent a 
change in policy? 

Chomsky is categorical on both issues: “Two weeks before 
Kennedy’s assassination, there is not a phrase in the 
voluminous internal record that even hints at withdrawal 
without victory.” Elsewhere he notes that “[t]he withdrawal-
without-victory thesis rests on the assumption that Kennedy 
realized that the optimistic military reports were 
incorrect. . . . Not a trace of supporting evidence appears 
in the internal record, or is suggested [by Newman].” And, as 
for the changes to NSAM 273: “There is no relevant difference 
between the two documents [draft and final], except that the 
LBJ version is weaker and more evasive.” 

Chomsky denies Newman’s claim that the new version of 
paragraph 7 in the final draft of NSAM 273 signed by Johnson 
on November 26 opened the way for OPLAN 34A and the use of 
U.S.–directed forces in covert operations against North 
Vietnam. Rather, he reads the Johnson version as applying 
only to Government of Vietnam forces, even though the 
language restricting action to those forces is no longer 
there. 

Peter Dale Scott, the former diplomat, professor of English 
at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of part 
of the Pentagon Papers, replied to Chomsky on both points 
almost immediately. 

On the first point, withdrawal without victory, Scott writes: 

Following [Leslie] Gelb, Chomsky alleges that Kennedy’s 
withdrawal planning was in response to an “optimistic mid-
1962 assessment.” . . . But in fact the planning was first 
ordered by McNamara in May 1962. This was one month after 
ambassador Kenneth Galbraith, disenchanted after a 
presidentially ordered visit to Vietnam, had proposed 
a “political solution” based in part on a proposal to the 
Soviets entertaining “phased American withdrawal.” 
Scott goes on to point out that it cannot be proven that 
Galbraith’s recommendation was responsible for McNamara’s 
order. But there is good reason to believe they were linked, 
that both reflected Kennedy’s long-term strategy on Vietnam.6 
As for the proposition that no evidence hinting at withdrawal 
without victory exists, Scott argues that Chomsky’s “internal 
planning record”—for the most part the Pentagon Papers—“is in 
fact an edited version of the primary documents.” 
Moreover, “the documentary record is conspicuously defective” 
for November 1963. “[I]n all three editions of the Pentagon 
Papers there are no complete documents between the five 
[coup] cables of October 30 and McNamara’s memorandum of 
December 21; the 600 pages of documents from the Kennedy 
Administration end on October 30.” 
On the second point, concerning NSAM 273, Scott writes that 
Chomsky reads “Johnson’s NSAM as if it were as contextless as 
a Dead Sea Scroll,” dismissing its importance and 
ignoring “early accounts of it as a ‘major decision,’ 
a ‘pledge’ that determined ‘all that would follow,’ from 
journalists as diverse as Tom Wicker, Marvin Kalb, and I. F. 
Stone.” Scott writes that Chomsky also ignores Taylor’s memo 
to President Johnson of January 22, 1964, which cites NSAM 
273 as authority to “prepare to escalate operations against 
North Vietnam.” 

In the course of this controversy, the ground had narrowed 
sharply. After Newman’s book, no one seriously disputed that 
Kennedy was contemplating withdrawal from Vietnam. Instead, 
the disagreements focused on four questions: Did the 
withdrawal plans depend on the perception of victory? Did 
Kennedy act on his plans? Were actions he may have taken 
noisy but cosmetic, a pressure tactic aimed at Diem or a ploy 
for the American public, or were they for real? And were the 
OPLAN 34A operations that got under way following Kennedy’s 
death a sharp departure from previous U.S. policy or merely 
a “Government of Vietnam” activity consonant with 
intensifying the war in the South? 

*  *  *

The publication of McNamara’s In Retrospect sharpened the 
terms of debate. Some key source materials, including the 
texts of the McNamara-Taylor report and those of NSAM 263 and 
273, have been in the public domain for years. McNamara’s 
1995 account of his September 1963 mission to Vietnam makes 
substantial use of the McNamara-Taylor report and the 
quotations presented are a study in ambiguity. He quotes 
General Maxwell Taylor’s apparent conviction that the war 
could be won by the end of 1965, but then he acknowledges 
that there were “conflicting reports about military progress 
and political stability” and describes the impressive doubts 
of those he spoke with that the South Vietnamese government 
was capable of the effective actions that military victory 
required: 

The military campaign has made great progress and continues 
to progress. . . . There are serious political tensions in 
Saigon. . . . Further repressive actions by Diem and Nhu 
could change the present favorable military trends. . . . It 
is not clear that pressures exerted by the U.S. will move 
Diem and Nhu toward moderation. . . . The prospects that a 
replacement regime would be an improvement appear to be about 
50-50. 
The drift seems clear enough: the Diem government is failing 
and there is no reason to think a replacement would be 
better. But the references to “great progress” leave room for 
doubt. Withdrawal with victory or without it? 
McNamara then reproduces the precise wording of the military 
recommendations from Section I(B) of the report: 

We recommend that: [1] General Harkins review with Diem the 
military changes necessary to complete the military campaign 
in the Northern and Central areas by the end of 1964, and in 
the Delta by the end of 1965. [2] A program be established to 
train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by 
U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by 
the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk 
of U.S. personnel by that time. [3] In accordance with the 
program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over 
military functions, the Defense Department should announce in 
the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 
1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. 
The report then went on to make a number of recommendations 
to “impress upon Diem our disapproval of his political 
program.” These matters dealt with the repression of the 
Buddhists and related issues; the recommendation to announce 
plans to withdraw 1,000 soldiers is not listed under this 
heading. 
The reason for the ambiguity over the military situation, as 
well as the vague “it should be possible” wording of the 
second recommendation, becomes clearer when McNamara 
describes the National Security Council meeting of October 2, 
1963, which revealed a “total lack of consensus” over the 
battlefield situation: 

One faction believed military progress had been good and 
training had progressed to the point where we could begin to 
withdraw. A second faction did not see the war as progressing 
well and did not see the South Vietnamese showing evidence of 
successful training. But they, too, agreed that we should 
begin to withdraw. . . . The third faction, representing the 
majority, considered the South Vietnamese trainable but 
believed our training had not been in place long enough to 
achieve results and, therefore, should continue at current 
levels. 
As McNamara’s 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon 
Baines Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), 
he was himself in the second group, who favored withdrawal 
without victory—not necessarily admitting or even predicting 
defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what would follow. 
The denouement came shortly thereafter: 
After much debate, the president endorsed our recommendation 
to withdraw 1,000 men by December 31, 1963. He did so, I 
recall, without indicating his reasoning. In any event, 
because objections had been so intense and because I 
suspected others might try to get him to reverse the 
decision, I urged him to announce it publicly. That would set 
it in concrete. . . . The president finally agreed, and the 
announcement was released by Pierre Salinger after the 
meeting. 
Before a large audience at the LBJ Library on May 1, 1995, 
McNamara restated his account of this meeting and stressed 
its importance. He confirmed that President Kennedy’s action 
had three elements: (1) complete withdrawal “by December 31, 
1965,” (2) the first 1,000 out by the end of 1963, and (3) a 
public announcement, to set these decisions “in concrete,” 
which was made. McNamara also added the critical information 
that there exists a tape of this meeting, in the John F. 
Kennedy Library in Boston, to which he had access and on 
which his account is based. 
The existence of a taping system in JFK’s oval office had 
become known over the years, particularly through the release 
of partial transcripts of the historic meeting of 
the “ExComm” during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. 
But the full extent of Kennedy’s taping was not known. And, 
according to McNamara, access to particular tapes was tightly 
controlled by representatives of the Kennedy family. When 
McNamara spoke in Austin, only he and his coauthor, Brian 
VanDeMark, had been granted the privilege of listening to the 
actual tape recordings of Kennedy’s White House meetings on 
Vietnam. 

In 1997, however, this situation changed. The Assassination 
Records Review Board (ARRB), an independent civilian body 
established under the 1992 JFK Records Act that has already 
been responsible for the release of millions of pages of 
official records deemed relevant to Kennedy’s assassination, 
ruled that his tapes relating to Vietnam decision-making 
should be released. In July the JFK Library began releasing 
key tapes, including those of the withdrawal meetings on 
October 2 and 5, 1963.7 

A careful review of the October 2 meeting makes clear that 
McNamara’s account is essentially accurate and even to some 
degree understated. One can hear McNamara—the voice is 
unmistakable—arguing for a firm timetable to withdraw all 
U.S. forces from Vietnam, whether the war can be won in 1964, 
which he doubts, or not. McNamara is emphatic: “We need a way 
to get out of Vietnam, and this is a way of doing it.” 

In Retrospect’s discussion of Kennedy’s decision to withdraw 
ends at this point. McNamara makes no mention of NSAM 263. 
However, on the tape of the meeting of October 5, 1963, one 
can clearly hear a voice—it may be Robert McNamara or 
McGeorge Bundy—asking President John F. Kennedy for “formal 
approval” of “items one, two, and three” on a paper evidently 
in front of them. It is clear that one of these items is the 
recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by the end of 1963, the 
rationale being that they are no longer needed. This short 
exchange is thus unmistakably a request for a formal 
presidential decision concerning the McNamara-Taylor 
recommendations. After a short discussion of the possible 
political effect in Vietnam of announcing this decision, the 
voice of JFK can be clearly heard: “Let’s go on ahead and do 
it,” followed by a few words deciphered by historian George 
Eliades as “without making a public statement about it.” 

Unfortunately, the last White House tape from the Kennedy 
administration is dated November 7, 1963. The archivists at 
the JFK Library have no information on why the tapings either 
ended or are unavailable for later dates. McNamara states 
that he has “no specific memory” of the Honolulu Conference 
that he was sent to chair on November 20, 1963. 

The Military Documents 

The President of the United States does not make decisions in 
a vacuum. Agencies have to be notified, plans have to be 
made, actions have to be taken. Part of the enduring doubt 
over Kennedy’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam 
surely stems from the failure of this decision to cast a 
shadow in the primary record, and particularly in the 
Pentagon Papers, on which so many historians have relied for 
so many years. Furthermore, a persistent skeptic can still 
point to the “it should be possible” language of the McNamara-
Taylor Report with respect to the final date of 1965 as 
leaving an “out” for the case where the military situation 
might turn sour. In two years and two months, much can 
happen, as events would prove. 

But as Scott already pointed out to Chomsky in 1993, the 
primary record available to date has been heavily edited. 
Documents from November 1, 1963, through early December are 
conspicuously missing. So, we now learn, are many others. 

In January 1998, again under the supervision of the ARRB, 
about 900 pages of new materials were declassified and 
released from the JCS archives. These include important 
records from May 1963, from October, and from the period 
immediately following Kennedy’s death; many had been reviewed 
for declassification in 1989 but were not declassified at 
that time. They clarify considerably the nature of 
the “presently prepared plans” referred to in the McNamara-
Taylor third recommendation, and they give the military 
leadership’s interpretation of the direction they were 
getting from JFK. Since it is well known that the Pentagon 
did not favor withdrawal, it is fair to assume that if wiggle 
room existed in the President’s instructions it would surface 
in these documents. 

Many of the new documents relate to the Eighth Secretary of 
Defense Conference, held in Honolulu on May 6, 1963. Here one 
gets a taste of McNamara’s skepticism and the replies of the 
brass. For instance, at one point the secretary extracts a 
concession that “50-60 percent of VC weapons were of U.S. 
origin.” A bit later, we read: “GEN HARKINS stated that for 
effective control the border should be defined, marked and 
cleared similar to the Greek boundary with Albania and 
Bulgaria. However, this cannot be done in the foreseeable 
future.” 

Turning to the development of a “comprehensive plan,” the 
documents immediately reflect discussions of a phase-down in 
the U.S. presence. For instance: “SEC MCNAMARA stated that 
our efforts should be directed toward turning over equipment 
now in U.S. units supporting the Vietnamese as rapidly as 
possible. He added that we must avoid creating a situation 
that now obtains in Korea where we are presently spending 
almost half a billion dollars per year in foreign aid.” A 
little later, we find a decision noted: “1. Draw up training 
plans for the RVNAF that will permit us to start an earlier 
withdrawal of U.S. personnel than proposed under the plans 
presented.” And: “d. Plan to withdraw 1000 U.S. military 
personnel from RVN by December 1963.” 

Further discussion of the 1,000 man withdrawal is recorded 
shortly: 

GEN HARKINS emphasized that he did not want to gather up 
1,000 U.S. personnel and have them depart with bands playing, 
flags flying etc. This would have a bad effect on the 
Vietnamese, to be pulling out just when it appears they are 
winning. SEC MCNAMARA stated that this would have to be 
handled carefully due to the psychological impact. However, 
there should be an intensive training program of RVNAF to 
allow removal of U.S. units rather than individuals. 
There follows considerable discussion of proposals to launch 
raids on North Vietnam. For Geneva convention reasons, it is 
agreed that these must be covert. Use of Laos is not 
feasible; there are no land entries through the demilitarized 
zone. 
As for sea entry, available boats are susceptible to weather 
and too slow. Sea is the only means of exfiltration. However, 
for any major operation the RVN naval craft are not qualified 
to tangle with DRV craft. . . . Build-up in CIA resources by 
end CY 1963 includes 40 teams in addition to 9 in country. 
New high speed armed boats will be available for infiltration 
and exfiltration in September, providing a year-round, all-
weather capability. 
Thus emerges an answer to one of the critical questions 
separating Newman and Scott from Chomsky. OPLAN 34A, when it 
emerged in November, would be a CIA operation. It could not 
be otherwise, for the Government of Vietnam did not possess 
the boats.8 
Eventually, discussion turns to projected force structures, 
and a table titled “CPSVN—FORECAST OF PHASE-OUT OF US FORCES” 
gives precise estimates, by major unit, of the projected 
American commitment through 1968. McNamara’s reaction to this 
timetable is recorded clearly: 

In connection with this presentation, made by COMUSMACV 
(attached hereto), the Secretary of Defense stated that the 
phase-out appears too slow. He directed that training plans 
be developed for the GVN by CINCPAC which will permit a more 
rapid phase-out of U.S. forces, stating specifically that we 
should review our plans for pilot training with the view to 
accelerating it materially. He made particular point of the 
desirability of speeding up training of helicopter pilots, so 
that we may give the Vietnamese our copters and thus be able 
to move our own forces out. ACTION: Joint Staff (J-3); 
message directive to CINCPAC, info COMUSMACV. (Emphasis 
added.) 
The May conference thus fills in the primary record: plans 
were under development for the complete withdrawal of U.S. 
forces from Vietnam. On October 2, 1963, as we have 
previously seen, President Kennedy made clear his 
determination to implement those plans—to withdraw 1,000 
troops by the end of 1963, and to get almost all the rest out 
by the end of 1965. There followed, on October 4, a 
memorandum titled “South Vietnam Actions” from General 
Maxwell Taylor to his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals 
May, Wheeler, Shoup, and Admiral McDonald, that reads: 
b. The program currently in progress to train Vietnamese 
forces will be reviewed and accelerated as necessary to 
insure that all essential functions visualized to be required 
for the projected operational environment, to include those 
now performed by U.S. military units and personnel, can be 
assumed properly by the Vietnamese by the end of calendar 
year 1965. All planning will be directed towards preparing 
RVN forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special assistance 
units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965. 
(Emphasis added.) 
“All planning” is an unconditional phrase. There is no 
contingency here, or elsewhere in this memorandum. The next 
paragraph reads: 

c. Execute the plan to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel 
by the end of 1963 per your DTG 212201Z July, and as approved 
for planning by JCS DTG 062042Z September. Previous guidance 
on the public affairs annex is altered to the extent that the 
action will now be treated in low key, as the initial 
increment of U.S. forces whose presence is no longer required 
because (a) Vietnamese forces have been trained to assume the 
function involved; or (b) the function for which they came to 
Vietnam has been completed. (Emphasis added.) 
This resolves the question of how the initial withdrawal was 
to be carried out. It was not to be a noisy or cosmetic 
affair, designed to please either U.S. opinion or to change 
policies in Saigon. It was rather to be a low-key, matter-of-
fact beginning to a process that would play out over the 
following two years. The final paragraph of Taylor’s 
memorandum underlines this point by directing that “specific 
checkpoints will be established now against which progress 
can be evaluated on a quarterly basis.” There is much more in 
the JCS documents to show that Kennedy was well aware of the 
evidence that South Vietnam was, in fact, losing the war. But 
it hardly matters. The withdrawal decided on was 
unconditional, and did not depend on military progress or 
lack of it. 


The Escalation at Kennedy’s Death 

Four days after Kennedy was killed, NSAM 273 incorporated the 
new president’s directives into policy. It made clear that 
the objectives of Johnson’s policy remained the same as 
Kennedy’s: “to assist the people and government of South 
Vietnam to win their contest against the externally directed 
and supported Communist conspiracy” through training support 
and without the application of overt U.S. military force. But 
Johnson had also approved intensified planning for covert 
action against North Vietnam by CIA-supported South 
Vietnamese forces. 

With this, McNamara confirms one of Newman’s central claims: 
NSAM 273 changed policy. Yes, the “central objectives” 
remained the same: a Vietnamese war with no “overt U.S. 
military force.” But covert force is still “U.S. military 
force.” And that was introduced or at least first approved, 
as McNamara writes, by NSAM 273 within four days of Kennedy’s 
assassination.Moreover, McNamara effectively supports Newman 
on the meaning of NSAM 273’s seventh paragraph, which was 
inserted in the draft (as we have seen) sometime between 
November 21 and 26—after the Honolulu meeting had adjourned 
and probably after Kennedy died. 

A final military document is relevant here. Dated December 
11, 1963, it is titled “Department of Defense Actions to 
Implement NSAM No. 273, 26 November 1963.” This document was 
prepared by Marine Lieutenant Colonel M. C. Dalby; it is from 
CINCPAC files and is labeled “Group 1—Excluded from Automatic 
Downgrading and Declassification.” The document begins 
coldly: 

“After reviewing the recent discussions of South Vietnam 
which occurred in Honolulu and after discussing the matter 
further with Ambassador Lodge, the President directed that 
certain guidance be issued to various Government Agencies. 
This was promulgated in the form of National Security Action 
Memorandum 273, 26 November 1963.” 
There is no reference to the change of commander in chief, 
which had occurred within the time frame indicated by the 
opening sentence. The particular importance of this document 
is its reference to paragraph 7 of NSAM 273. 

Planning for intensified action against North Vietnam was 
directed following the Honolulu Conference (JCS 3697, 26 Nov 
1963) in the form of a 12-month program. . . . A deadline of 
20 Dec 63 has been set for completion of the plan. 
There are then notes that these requirements were 
communicated to CINCPAC and COMUSMACV on December 2, with a 
reply from COMUSMACV on December 3. CIA station guidance, 
however, happened even more rapidly than that: 
CIA guidance to Saigon Station for intensified planning was 
dispatched following the Honolulu Conference (CAS 84972, 25 
Nov 63). (Emphasis added.) 
In other words, the CIA began developing intensified plans to 
implement OPLAN 34A, the program of seaborne raids and 
sabotage against North Vietnam that would lead to the Gulf of 
Tonkin incident and eventually to the wider war, one day 
before President Johnson signed the directive authorizing 
that action. How this happened, and its precise significance, 
remains to be determined.9 

Conclusion 

John F. Kennedy had formally decided to withdraw from 
Vietnam, whether we were winning or not. Robert McNamara, who 
did not believe we were winning, supported this decision.10 
The first stage of withdrawal had been ordered. The final 
date, two years later, had been specified. These decisions 
were taken, and even placed, in an oblique and carefully 
limited way, before the public. 

Howard Jones makes two large contributions to this tale. One 
of them is simply range, depth, and completeness. His recent 
book Death of a Generation is a full history of how the 
assassinations of Diem and then of JFK prolonged a war that 
otherwise might have ended quietly within a few years. Where 
this essay has presented the story-within-a-story of just a 
few Washington weeks, Jones goes back to the start of the 
1960s, chronicling the struggle for power and policy that 
marked the whole of Kennedy’s thousand days. And he presents 
a reasonably complete account of the archival record 
surrounding the withdrawal decisions of October 1963. 

Equally important, Jones’s reach extends to Saigon. In a long 
and fascinating section he outlines the intrigues that led to 
the murders of Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu on November 
1, 1963. Here, Kennedy’s White House appears at its worst. It 
was fractious, disorganized, preoccupied with American 
politics, ignorant of the forces it faced in Vietnam. Diem’s 
mistreatment of the Buddhists, which provoked the monk Quang 
Duc to burn himself on a Saigon street in June 1963, 
traumatized the White House. And following that incident, 
Madame Nhu and her remarks about “barbecued bonzes” were an 
irritant out of proportion to their importance. Thus, in 
part, the decision to dissociate from Diem. 

In August 1963 it was a faction of subordinates (Averell 
Harriman, Roger Hilsman, Michael Forrestal) who seized the 
opportunity to foment a Saigon coup, taking advantage of the 
absence of the most senior officials over a Washington 
weekend. Then, having set events in motion, the White House 
became preoccupied with a deniability that was wholly 
implausible. Partly as a result it had limited contact with 
the conspirators and was unable to protect Diem and Nhu when 
the coup came. Diem was indefensible in many ways. But the 
coup went forward with no alternative in view; and as the 
French ambassador to Saigon put it at the time: “any other 
government will be even more dependent on the Americans, will 
be obedient to them in all things, and so there will be no 
chance for peace.” Meanwhile, there are tantalizing 
undercurrents of what might have been. Was Nhu in discussions 
with intermediaries for Ho Chi Minh, with the possibility 
that there might have been a deal between North and South to 
boot the Americans from Vietnam? It appears that he was. And 
had he succeeded, it would have saved infinite trouble. 

U.S. policy over Vietnam changed again in late November1963. 
The main change was a decision to authorize OPLAN 34-A—minor 
but fateful commando raids against targets in the North. The 
decision to launch covert attacks on North Vietnam does not 
by itself establish that Lyndon Johnson wanted a larger war. 
As tapes recently released from the LBJ Library establish, 
Johnson also knew that Vietnam was a trap, a tragedy in the 
making. He feared that a catastrophe would follow. In this 
respect, Johnson and Kennedy were similar. 

And yet, Johnson could not muster Kennedy’s determination, 
one might say blind determination, to avoid the disaster. He 
acceded to proposals for covert action, and he promised the 
military, on November 24, that they could have what they 
wanted. And so the sequence of events that led to the Tonkin 
Gulf, to our retaliation, to the North Vietnamese decision to 
introduce their own main forces in the South, and to our 
decision to introduce main forces, played out. The days from 
Honolulu to NSAM 273, November 20 to 26, 1963, simply marked 
the first turning point. 

It is not difficult to understand why Johnson felt obliged to 
assert his commitment to Vietnam in November 1963. To 
continue with Kennedy’s withdrawal, after his death, would 
have been difficult, since the American public had not been 
told that the war was being lost. Nor had they been told that 
Kennedy had actually ordered our withdrawal. To maintain our 
commitment, therefore, was to maintain the illusion of 
continuity, and this—in the moment of trauma that followed 
the assassination—was Johnson’s paramount political 
objective. Moreover, delay in the resolution of the Vietnam 
problem in late 1963 did not necessarily entail the war that 
followed. Our commitment then was still small. Tonkin Gulf 
and its aftermath lay almost a year into the future. 
Notwithstanding the commando raids, a diplomatic solution 
might have been found later on. 

Left in charge, Lyndon Johnson temporized, agonized, and 
cursed the fates. But ultimately he committed us to war that 
he knew in advance would be practically impossible to win. 
Nothing can erase this. And yet meanwhile, alongside 
McNamara, he too prevented any steps that might lead to an 
invasion of the North, direct conflict with China, and 
nuclear confrontation. He bided his time, until the trauma of 
Tet in January of 1968 and his own departure from politics in 
March liberated him to do what Kennedy had done over Laos in 
1961: send Harriman to end it at the negotiating table. 

*  *  *

Why did Johnson do it? He was not misinformed about the 
prospects for sucess. He was not crazy. His political fate in 
1964 did not depend on a show of toughness. But one 
possibility is that the alternatives, as he saw them, were 
worse. To appreciate this possibility, one needs to grasp not 
one but two exceptionally thorny nettles: that of the 
strategic balance in the early 1960s on the one hand, and 
that of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the other. In 
contemplating Johnson’s dilemma we find ourselves poised 
between the two black holes of the modern history of the 
United States.11 

Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam was, as Jones 
writes, “unconditional, for he approved a calendar of events 
that did not necessitate a victory.” It was also part of a 
larger strategy, of a sequence that included the Laos and 
Berlin settlements in 1961, the non-invasion of Cuba in 1962, 
the Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Kennedy subordinated the timing 
of these events to politics: he was quite prepared to leave 
soldiers in harm’s way until after his own reelection. His 
larger goal after that was to settle the Cold War, without 
either victory or defeat—a strategic vision laid out in JFK’s 
commencement speech at American University on June 10, 1963. 

And that was, partly, a question of atomic survival—a subject 
that can only be said to have obsessed America’s civilian 
leadership in those days, and for very good reason. The 
Soviet Union, which had at that time only four 
intercontinental rockets capable of hitting the U.S. 
mainland, was not the danger that rational men most feared. 
The United States held an overwhelming nuclear advantage in 
late 1963. Accordingly, our nuclear plans were not actually 
about deterrence. Rather, then as evidently again now, they 
envisioned preventive war fought over a pretext.12 There were 
those who were dedicated to carrying out those plans at the 
appropriate moment. In July 1961, the nuclear planners had 
specified that the optimal moment for such an attack would 
come at the end of 1963. 

And yet, standing against them (as Daniel Ellsberg was told 
at the time), the civilian leaders of the United States were 
determined never, under any circumstances, to allow U.S. 
nuclear weapons to be used first—not in Laos or Vietnam, nor 
against China, not over Cuba or Berlin, nor against the 
Soviet Union. For political reasons, at a moment when 
Americans had been propagandized into thinking of the atomic 
bomb as their best defense, this was the deepest secret of 
the time. 

Was it also a deadly secret? Did LBJ have reason to fear, on 
the day he took office, that he was facing a nuclear coup 
d’etat?13 Similar questions have engendered scorn for 40 
years. But they are not illegitimate—no more so, let me 
venture, than the idea that Kennedy really had decided to 
quit Vietnam. Perhaps someday a historian will answer them as 
well as Howard Jones has now resolved the Vietnam puzzle. 
Meanwhile, let us hope that we might learn something about 
the need to recognize and cope with policy failure. And as 
for the truth behind the darkest state secrets, let us also 
hope that the victims of September 11, 2001, don’t have to 
wait as long. < 


James K. Galbraith, a 2003 Carnegie Scholar, holds the Lloyd 
M. Bentsen, Jr., Chair of Government/Business Relations at 
the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of 
Texas at Austin. 


Notes 

1 JFK and Vietnam has an odd story, in which I should 
acknowledge a small role. On release, it received a front-
page review by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the New York Times 
Book Review. But of some 32,000 copies printed (in two 
printings, according to Newman) only about 10,000 were sold 
before Warner Books abruptly ceased selling the hardcover—a 
fact I discovered on my own in the fall of 1993, when I 
attempted to assign it to a graduate class. I met Newman in 
November 1993, partly through the good offices of the LBJ 
Library. I carried his grievance personally to an honorable 
high official of Time Warner, whose intervention secured the 
return of his rights. Still, the hardback was never reissued, 
and no paperback has appeared. 

2 “Counterfactual Historical Reasoning: NSAM 263 and NSAM 
273,” mimeo for a conference at the LBJ Library, 14–15 
October 1993, published as “NSAM 263 and 273: Manipulating 
History” in Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, eds., 
Vietnam: The Early Decisions (University of Texas Press, 
1997). 

3 Reeves, author of President Kennedy: Profile of Power, made 
this argument in a televised lecture at the LBJ Library in 
early 1995. 

4 In a contribution to Vietnam: The Early Decisions, Newman 
adds a further reason: Kennedy had, on October 2, allowed 
McNamara and Taylor to announce, as their recommended target 
date, that the withdrawal be completed by 1965. It would have 
been awkward to follow just three days later with a 
presidential decision making clear that the timetable was, in 
fact, a firm one. 

5 The fate of these commandos surfaced in the New York Times 
of 14 April 1995, where it was reported that after 30 years 
in prison, many were denied immigration to the United States 
because of a lack of service records. 

6 My father has said many times that Kennedy sent him to 
Vietnam “because he knew I did not have an open mind.” 

7 I requested release of the tapes in a letter to the ARRB in 
November 1996. 

8 CINCPAC was developing these plans, but they had not been 
shown to JFK, according to Newman. 

9 According to Newman, LBJ took a belligerent tone at his 
first Vietnam meeting as President on November 24, and 
McGeorge Bundy attributed the escalatory language in NSAM 273 
to this. However, by any standard the CIA moved quickly, and 
by this account it relied on the discussions at Honolulu—
which occurred while JFK was still alive. 

10 I have in this narrative deliberately underplayed the role 
of my own father, who was repeatedly called upon by Kennedy 
to deliver arguments in favor of disengagement from Vietnam, 
and whose 1962 recommendation for phased withdrawal was 
probably the basis of the 1963 orders. My father did not know 
that the actual decision was taken in October 1963, but he is 
in no doubt as to Kennedy’s determination: he recalls Kennedy 
in 1962 saying to him privately and unmistakably that 
withdrawal from Vietnam, as that from Laos and the detachment 
from Cuba, was a matter of political timing. 

11 My father retains a distinct, chilling recollection of 
LBJ’s words to him, in private, on one of their last meetings 
before the Vietnam War finally drove them apart: “You may not 
like what I’m doing in Vietnam, Ken, but you would not 
believe what would happen if I were not here.” 

12 Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an 
article published in 1994 entitled “Did the U.S. Military 
Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?” It is still available 
on the website of the American Prospect. When once I asked 
the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National 
Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961 (at which these 
plans were presented), he responded with no hesitation: “Do 
you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?” 

13 There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on 
Johnson’s mind. It also explains important points about his 
behavior in those days, including his orders to Earl Warren 
and Richard Russell (the latter in a phone call, a recording 
of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to 
how they would conduct their commission. The point to 
appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have 
started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United 
States against the Soviet Union. 

© 1997–2003 by James K. Galbraith. All rights reserved. 




Originally published in the October/November 2003 issue of 
Boston Review