Allen Dulles: Harvard Law School Forum: December 13, 1963

Harvard Law School Forum

From a tape recording beginning at about 47:35: “There never has been a political action, or an action of a political nature – Bay of Pigs, U-2, uh, Vietnam and the security services – there never has been an operation of that kind that had not been approved from the very beginning, at its very inception at the “highest” level of government and approved. Now when there’s a failure, uh, if something blows up – whether it’s a plane or a Bay of Pigs, you’re going to have criticism. And the CIA then can’t run out and say, ‘Now look here, we were backed on this by …’ [Audience laughter] Maybe I should stop? I’m going to very soon. The CIA can’t get up and say we didn’t have anything to do with this and so forth and so on; just keep their mouth shut. In both the Bay of Pigs situation and the U-2 situation the chief executive assumed responsibility – not because I asked him to … not at all. But because he felt that not to assume responsibility for these particular actions – and I think he was right – we both were right – would have meant irresponsibility in government. If I was going to be allowed to sit around there and say ‘I ought to be allowed to sit around there and send airplanes over Russia without policy approval, I ought to be shot … or certainly dismissed.’ [Audience laughter] … or mount a Bay of Pigs operation without approval, the same thing should have happened to me. Well, it just didn’t work that way.”

The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam

Arthur Krock

New York Times

October 3, 1963 p. 34

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2—The Central Intelligence Agency is getting a very bad press dispatches from Vietnam to American newspapers and in articles originating in Washington. Like the Supreme Court when under fire, the CIA cannot defend itself in public retorts to criticisms of its activities as they occur. But, unlike the Supreme Court, the CIA has no open record of its activities on which the public can base a judgment of the validity of the criticisms. Also, the agency is precluded from using the indirect defensive tactic which is constantly employed by all other Government units under fire.

This tactic is to give information to the press, under a seal of confidence, that challenges or refutes the critics. But the CIA cannot father such inspired articles, because to do so would requires some disclosure of its activities. And not only does the effectiveness of the agency depend on the secrecy of its operations. Every President since the CIA was created has protected this secrecy from claimants—Congress or the public through the press, for example—of the right to share any part of it.

With High Frequency

This Presidential policy has not, however, always restrained other executive units from going confidentially to the press with attacks on CIA operations in their common field of responsibility. And usually it has been possible to deduce these operational details from the nature of the attacks. But the peak of the practice is revealed almost every day now in dispatches from reporters—in close touch with intra-Administration critics of the CIA—with excellent reputations for reliability.

One reporter in this category is Richard Starnes of the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Today, under a Saigon dateline, he related that, “according to a high United States source here, twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge … [and] in one instance frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.” Among the views attributed to United States officials on the scene, including one described as a “very high American official … who has spent much of his life n the service of democracy … are the following:

The CIA’s growth was “likened to a malignancy” which the “very high official was not sure even the White House could control … any longer.” If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government] it will come from the CIA, and not the Pentagon.” The agency “represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.”

Disorderly Government

Whatever else these passages disclose, they most certainly establish that representatives of other Executive branches have expanded their war against the CIA from the inner government councils to the American people via the press. And published simultaneously are details of the agency’s operations in Vietnam that can come only from the same critical official sources. This is disorderly government. And the longer the President tolerates it—the period already is considerable—the greater will grow its potentials of hampering the real war against the Vietcong and the impression of a very indecisive Administration in Washington.

The CIA may be guilty as charged. Since it cannot, or at any rate will not, openly defend its record in Vietnam, or defend it by the same confidential press “briefings” employed by its critics, the public is not in a position to judge. Nor is this department, which sought and failed to get even the outlines of this agency’s case in rebuttal. But Mr. Kennedy will have to make a judgment if the spectacle of war within the Executive branch is to be ended and the effective functioning of the CIA preserved. And when he makes this judgment, hopefully he also will make it public, as well as the appraisal of fault on which it is based.

Doubtless recommendations as to what his judgment should be were made to him today by Secretary of Defense McNamara and General Taylor on their return from their fact-finding expedition into the embattled official jungle in Saigon.

Original NYT article

 

Kennedy Had a Plan for Early Exit in Vietnam

December 23, 1997

New York Times

Pentagon documents declassified today may rekindle the still-smoldering argument over whether President John F. Kennedy would have pulled American forces out of Vietnam.

The documents show that shortly before Kennedy was assassinated, the nation's top military leaders were going forward with his plan to withdraw American advisers from Vietnam.

''All planning will be directed towards preparing Republic of Vietnam forces for the withdrawal of all United States special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965,'' reads an Oct. 4, 1963, memorandum drafted by Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and discussed that day by the Chiefs.

''Execute the plan to withdraw 1,000 United States military personnel by the end of 1963,'' the memorandum continues.

No one will ever know whether these plans would have been carried out had Kennedy lived. The United States had 16,300 advisers in South Vietnam at the time. By the end of 1968, it had more than 500,000 soldiers in the country.

Historians know that Kennedy directed the Pentagon to devise the withdrawal plans. But some believe they were a political facade erected for the 1964 elections; others think they were based on overly optimistic battlefield reports; still others see them as a device to force South Vietnam's corrupt Government to change.

And Kennedy's public pronouncements on withdrawal were utterly different from his private plans. In public, he was firmly opposed to withdrawal. ''I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw,'' he told the CBS News reporter Walter Cronkite on Sept. 2, 1963. ''That would be a deep mistake.''

The documents also show that the Joint Chiefs were unhappy with the idea. Gen. Paul D. Harkins of the Army warned that it ''would have a bad effect on the Vietnamese, to be pulling out just when it appears they are winning.''

In fact, the situation in South Vietnam was deteriorating in the fall of 1963. But South Vietnam's President, Ngo Dinh Diem, was deceiving his American patrons about the progress of the war, and United States military and political leaders were deceiving themselves and one another about the conflict, many historians say.

Members of the Joint Chiefs believed that the United States should go to war against North Vietnam. But, as one newly declassified memorandum shows, the Chiefs knew that ''proposals for overt action invited a negative Presidential decision.'' Accordingly, they pressed for covert operations run by the Central Intelligence Agency, the documents show, and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara promised C.I.A. officers ''whatever is necessary to accelerate their efforts.''

Presidents Diem and Kennedy were both assassinated in November 1963. Within days after taking power, the documents show, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered ''intensified operations against North Vietnam'' both overt and covert, covering ''the full spectrum of sabotage, psychological and raiding activity.'' Mr. McNamara told the Chiefs there was ''an urgent need'' to put ''increasing pressure on North Vietnam.''

The 800 pages of Joint Chiefs records were made public today by the Assassination Records Review Board, which by law has the power to declassify secret Government records bearing on Kennedy's death.