[CTRL] [3] How the U.S. Got Involved In Vietnam

[Kris Millegan]

 -Caveat Lector-

from:
http://www.vietvet.org/jeffviet.htm
<A HREF="http://www.vietvet.org/jeffviet.htm">How the U.S. Got Involved In
Vietnam
</A>
--[3]--
Two Vietnams

During the two year break in military action secured by the Geneva
Agreements, a separate state was created out of the temporary
regroupment zone in the southern half of Vietnam. This transformed the
17th parallel into the political, territorial boundary explicitly
forbidden under the terms of the agreements. And as the French withdrew
from the South, the American attempts to build up an anti-Communist
state were no longer impeded by a colonial intermediary. By early 1955,
the US could deal directly with the new Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem,
rather than the French.(46)

In the struggle for power that began almost immediately in Saigon, the
US backed Ngo Dinh Diem -- at first cautiously, but increasingly without
limit or qualification. When Diem returned from the United States to be
Prime Minister, he was greeted at the airport by non other than...
Colonel Edward Lansdale, the CIA's man in South Vietnam who was at the
time, head of the Agency's Saigon Military Mission (SMM). Diem was
opposed by almost everyone - Bao Dai's followers, the pro-French
religious groups, the Buddhists, the remnant nationalist organizations,
and of course, the followers of Ho Chi Minh.(47)

To help create Diem's government, Lansdale's men offered the Vietnamese
peasants in the north, now frightened from all the anti-Communist
propaganda Lansdale and his group had disseminated earlier, free
transportation to the South in Civil Air Transport (CAT) aircraft (owned
by the CIA) and on ships of the US Navy. Nearly a million Vietnamese had
been frightened into fleeing to the south.(48) (This was a major
disinformation campaign - that worked.)

Lieutenant Tom Dooley (won't you come home?), who operated with the US
Navy out of Haiphong, helped stimulate the flow of refugees to the
south. As a medical doctor, Dooley was a fantastic propagandist whose
primary audience seemed to be the US public. He himself wrote three
books and numerous articles were also written about him. He concocted
tales of the Vietminh disemboweling 1,000 pregnant women, beating a
naked priest on the testicles with a bamboo club, and jamming chopsticks
into the ears of children to keep them from hearing the word of God (a
story repeated at the church I attended as a child in an effort to get
donations and create anti-Communist fervor). The purpose of these lies
was to get the American public angered and moved to action.(49) Dr. Doo
ley's reputation remained spotless until 1979, when his ties to the CIA
were uncovered during a Roman Catholic sainthood investigation.(50) But,
Dooley's and Lansdale's efforts worked. They convinced thousands of
North Vietnamese Catholics to flee to the South, thereby providing Diem
with a source of reliable political and military cadres, and in the
process also duped the American public into believing that this flight
of refugees was a massive condemnation of the Vietminh by the majority
of Vietnamese (Note: CIA disinformation campaigns are technically
illegal if carried out against the American public).

While all of this was happening, the Vietminh were withdrawing to the
North according to the Geneva Agreements and Diem went about
establishing his control over the areas evacuated by the Vietminh. By
spring 1955, the Vietminh had removed all of its army from the South
(approximately 100,000 men) and regrouped them to the north of the 17th
parallel. The areas abandoned were turned over to the French Union which
then passed them off to Diem. Diem encountered little resistance in
extending his administration to these areas since the only Vietminh who
remained in the south were conducting themselves peacefully while
preparing for the elections.

Diem had a harder time in the larger southern regions where he came up
against the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hoa religious sects. He responded with
brutality and crushed those he couldn't bribe out of existence. It was
said that "The total amount of American dollars spent on bribes during
March and April 1955, by Diem may well have gone beyond $12
million."(51) Diem went on to abolish all other opposition and quickly
earned a reputation as a very brutal ruler.

To assist Diem, the United States sent 350 additional military men to
Saigon in May 1956, an "example of the US ignoring" the Geneva Accords,
stated the Pentagon Papers. Shortly afterwards, John Foster Dulles
confided to a colleague: "We have a clean base there now, without a
taint of colonialism. Dienbienphu was a blessing in disguise."(52)

[As our politicians spent their time working up public fervor with
anti-Communist rhetoric and lies to back up their paranoia, a number of
activities were underway back home. For example, from 1955 to 1959,
Michigan State University (MSU), under a US Government contract,
conducted a covert police training program for the South Vietnamese.
With full knowledge of MSU officials, five CIA operatives were concealed
in the staff of the program and carried on the university's payroll as
its employees. By the terms of a 1957 law, drawn up by the MSU group,
every Vietnamese 15 years and older was required to register with the
government and carry ID cards. Anyone caught without the proper ID was
considered a National Liberation Front (Vietcong) suspect and subject to
imprisonment or worse. At the time of registration a full set of
fingerprints was taken and information about the person's political
beliefs was recorded.](53)

David Hotham, the Vietnam correspondent for the London Times and the
Economist, wrote in 1959 that the Diem regime imposed by the United
States "has crushed all opposition of every kind, however anti-Communist
it might be. He has been able to do this, simply and solely because of
the massive dollar aid he has had from across the Pacific, which kept in
power a man who, by all the laws of human and political affairs, would
long ago have fallen. Diem's main supporters are to be found in North
America, not in Free Vietnam..."(54)

But, American support was not just financial. The US Army began training
Diem's army while the CIA concentrated on building his government and
training his police. The CIA also fed American newspapers stories about
Diem, his miraculous victory over the Hoa Hoa and Cao Dai sects, and
even wrote a Special National Intelligence Estimate that explained how
Diem's "success [was] achieved largely on his own initiative and with
his own resources," which was a complete lie.(55)

Even with all the American aid, after Diem's first year running the
Saigon government he still could not risk internationally supervised
elections due to lack of popular support. In mid-1955, when Ho Chi
Minh's government sought to begin the pre-election "consultations"
called for in the Geneva Agreements, Diem refused. On July 16, 1955,
Diem declared: "We have not signed the Geneva Agreements. We are not
bound in any way by these agreements, signed against the will of the
Vietnamese people."(56)

In 1956, Diem's interest in "free" elections was shown by a "referendum"
he held in order to vest his regime with some semblance of public
support. He received 98.2 percent of the bogus vote. Life Magazine later
reported that Diem's American advisors had told him that a 60 percent
margin would be sufficient and would look better, "but Diem insisted on
98 %."(57)

The US clearly supported Diem in this stand, although they would have
preferred Diem at least paying some lip-service to the Geneva Accords by
going "through the motions of trying to organize free elections in
cooperation with the Communist North."(58) This refusal to participate
was a clear reflection of Diem's own estimate of his political strength.
On September 21, Diem declared that "... there can be no question of a
conference, even less of negotiations" with the Hanoi Government.(59)

Meanwhile, the Hanoi government continued preparing for elections. After
receiving Diem's refusal to meet for consultations, Hanoi sought
international support for the elections and appealed to the Co-Chairmen
of the Geneva Conference for help, and reminded France of its
obligations. The French, embarrassed, replied by stating: "We are not
entirely masters of our own situation. The Geneva Accords on the one
hand and the pressure of the allies on the other creates a very complex
juridical situation... France is the guarantor of the Geneva Accords...
But we do not have the means alone of making them respected."(60)

On May 8, 1956, the Co-Chairmen of the Geneva Accords invited both South
and North Vietnam to transmit their view about the time required for
opening consultations about nation-wide elections. Hanoi responded by
sending Diem a letter requesting that consultations begin immediately.
On June 4, Hanoi sent the Co-Chairmen a letter saying that their request
had gone unanswered and if the South continued to reject living up to
the Geneva Agreements, Hanoi would request a new Geneva Conference. In
August, 1956, Hanoi again repeated its request for a new Geneva
Conference. Knowing this, a statement 10 years later by the Assistant
Secretary of State can best be understood as an obvious attempt to
rewrite the history of this period, when he stated to the American
public that "...when the issue arose concretely in 1956, the regime in
Hanoi... made no effort to respond to the call of the Soviet Union and
Great Britain." (They being the Geneva Co-Chairs).

Hanoi continued pursuing the issue through all the accepted channels,
but got nowhere. Hanoi wrote letters requesting a conference on the
elections with Diem in June 1957, July 1957, March and December 1958,
July 1959 and July 1960. Diem refused repeatedly and Moscow and Peking
both confined their support for Hanoi to moral platitudes.

Complicating things was the fact that the North was trying to renew its
trading relations with the South while all of this election pleading and
rejection was going on. In the past, the highly populated North was
heavily dependent on the South's surplus rice. Hanoi offered to help
"the population in the two zones in all economic, cultural, and social
exchange advantageous for the restoration of the normal life of the
people."(61) But, as with elections, Saigon refused to even discuss the
matter.

Rebuffed by Saigon and certainly unable to secure any trade relief from
the US and its allies, the North had no choice but to look elsewhere for
trade partners. The Soviet Union and China responded. Devastated
economically by the war, Hanoi began to concentrate more on agrarian
reform and the elections took a back seat to this overwhelming need.
Foreign aid however, declined from 65.3 percent in 1955 to 21 percent by
1960. Historian Bernard Fall observed that Hanoi's "desire to avoid a
new colonialism" was behind Hanoi's independent stance. Although
receiving aid from both Moscow and Peking, Hanoi carefully played the
middle of the road and never made any irrevocable commitments to either
country.

Although the artificial geographical partition had left the North weaker
economically than the South, by 1960 the Northern government had become
far less dependent upon outside economic aid than had Saigon. Removal of
American aid would have collapsed the Saigon government. Removal of
Chinese and Russian aid to the North would have crippled the country's
industrialization program, but the North Vietnamese state could still
have stood.

The Civil War Begins

While the North was busy preparing for the hoped-for elections, Diem and
his followers were busy repressing the Vietminh in the South. Vietminh
members were rounded up, jailed, executed, or sent to "re-education"
camps. Estimates vary, but all state that by 1956 there were around
50,000 Vietminh in jail. In 1956, the conservative publication Foreign
Affairs concluded: "South Vietnam is today a quasi-police state
characterized by arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, strict censorship
of the press and the absence of an effective political opposition... All
the techniques of political and psychological warfare, as well as
pacification campaigns involving extensive military operations have been
brought to bear against the underground."(62)

Diem also instigated a land reform plan that alienated much of the
peasantry. Unlike the North, who had tried (and failed) to implement a
Chinese-based agrarian reform, but then modified the program to better
fit the people's needs successfully, Diem forced his new agrarian reform
down the throats of the peasants with the predictable results.

Additionally, in one fell swoop, Diem eliminated the autonomy of South
Vietnam's 2,560 villages and put in place a centralized administration,
out of touch with the problems of the villagers.

Further antagonism was generated by Diem's treatment of the Montagnard
people of the Central Highlands. Whereas the French had left the
Montagnards to themselves more or less, in March 1955 the Montangards
lost their autonomy and Diem attempted to force the Vietnamese culture
on them. [This is in direct contrast to the North, who recognized the
value of the Montagnards and other non-Vietnamese cultures. The North
set up autonomous zones for the Montagnards to live in and helped
standardize their written languages and created secondary schools in
Hanoi with courses in their native languages.]

Beginning in 1957, approximately 210,000 ethnic Vietnamese from the
coast were regrouped in fortified villages that the Montagnards had
always regarded as their own and as necessary to their support. Two
years later the Montagnards themselves were regrouped and consolidated.
These issues would later become major complaints by the Montagnards
against the Saigon government (20 years later, I myself would hear the
lament of the Montagnards about the loss of their land while drinking
rice wine with them during my own tour in the Central Highlands).

With all of this going on, it is amazing that there wasn't a Vietminh
insurrection in the South earlier. There were essentially two reasons
for the delay. First, Diem's repression of the Vietminh (with the help
of the CIA) was very widespread. Southern Vietminh leaders were jailed
or killed. It would take considerable time before new leaders could be
capable of handling the smoldering rural discontent. Secondly, Hanoi
continued in its unwillingness to encourage armed resistance to Diem's
regime in the South.

In September 1960, Hanoi finally gave its approval for the insurrection.
By then the southern unrest had reached such a peak that if Hanoi had
not given its approval, they may well have lost their influence over
other future events south of the 17th parallel. But, long after the
passing of the date set for elections, Hanoi continued to caution
against the use of violence and urged peaceful reunification.

Diem's repression led to a predictable uprising and renewed military
confrontations in the South. Contrary to US policy assumptions, all
available evidence shows that revival of Vietnam's civil war in the
South in 1958 was undertaken by Southerners at their own -- not Hanoi's
-- initiative.

On April 26, 1960, a group of eighteen Vietnamese notables - ten of them
former ministers - issued a public manifesto to Diem. Their statements
referred to "anti-democratic elections" and to "continuous arrests that
filled the jails and prisons to the rafters." All who signed the
manifesto were subsequently arrested. On November 11, paratroop units of
the army encircled Diem's palace and called on him to rid himself of his
family advisors and follow a political course closer to the country's
needs. After stalling, Diem had his loyalists overpowered the
paratroops. This caused a number of political and military leaders to go
underground. Opposition to Diem obviously penetrated Saigon itself.

There was little chance of Diem wining the hearts and minds of the South
Vietnamese, for that would have required a social change of the kind
Diem was unwilling to accept, the kind the United States has been
unwilling to accept anywhere in the Third World. If either Diem or the
US had been willing to accept it there would have been no need to cancel
the 1956 election, but... canceled they were. Thus, there was no way for
the US to avoid being seen by the Vietnamese people as just the latest
arrival of imperialist occupiers, following in the footsteps of the
Chinese, then the French, then the Japanese, then the French again.

By postulating that the land to the north of the 17th parallel was a
separate state, any Northern support of the insurgency in the South
could be viewed as "external aggression," an opinion endorsed by those
who considered the conflict as an example of communist expansion.
Secretary Dean Rusk ignored the highly complex causes and history of the
civil war in Vietnam and developed the theme of "aggression from the
North," which was to become a prominent theme as American-supported
efforts of the Saigon regime proved ineffective against the rebellion.

In 1961, several fact-finding missions were embarked upon by Washington.
Vice-President Johnson returned from his trip praising Diem and
concluding that South Vietnam could be saved from Communism by prompt
American action. He called for an increase in the size of the Vietnamese
army, coupled with political and economic reform programs. Professor
Eugene Staley returned from his fact-finding mission and advocated the
establishment of "strategic hamlets" as part of a general strategy
emphasizing local militia defense. This became known as the "Staley
plan." General Maxwell Taylor and White House aide Walt Rostow led a
delegation that "expressed a conscious decision by the Secretary of
State to turn the Vietnam problem over to the Secretary of Defense."(63)
The major theme of the Taylor-Rostow report was that the Vietnam problem
was mainly a military one, which could be solved by a larger commitment
of American power including, if necessary, American fighting men. These
two plans would guide US policy over the next t two years.

Despite the mounting threat to his regime, Diem refused to see the
extent to which the insurgency was a direct response to his own brutal
rule. He kept insisting that more brutal measures would fix the problem,
and became increasingly agitated by American and Western representations
of the conflict as a "civil war." To Diem's twisted logic, the uprising
was due to communist subversion. In February 1962, Diem's government
called upon foreign correspondents to stop referring to the Vietcong as
"rebels" and "insurgents" and instead "use the following terms: Viet
Cong, Communists, Hanoi's agents and aggressors from the North."(64)
This attitude went hand-in-hand with the idea that social and political
reforms would have to await the prior establishment of full security.
Diem, like Washington, did not perceive that the war was first of all a
political problem and could only be solved through primarily political
means.

During 1962, the United States undertook a major buildup in Vietnam in
accordance with the Taylor-Rostow recommendations. The emphasis here was
heavily on the military side of the program due to the unwillingness of
the Saigon government to implement economic reforms. Beginning in
January, large amounts of material began arriving in Vietnam along with
larger numbers of American military advisors and helicopter pilots. The
helicopters provided a great tactical mobility to the South Vietnamese
and by mid-October 1962 the crews had begun to take the initiative in
firing at the insurgents. Less than a year later, armed helicopters were
often assigned to fly strafing missions.(65)

Diem's repression finally reached the point where news of the many
revolts reached the American public and Diem's true character was
revealed. In May 1963, a Buddhist uprising raised the veil of myth
surrounding Diem. He ordered his troops to fire into a crowd of
Buddhists protesting Saigon's order against displaying the Buddhist
flag. The protests spread to Saigon where younger and more militant
Buddhists assumed leadership of the movement. On June 11, a Buddhist
monk set himself on fire to dramatize their cause. A picture of this
made the evening news. Diem reacted by having his Special Forces attack
Buddhist pagodas in Saigon, Hue and other cities. Diem closed the
universities and arrested over 4,000 students. Since many of these
students were children of military and civil service people, Diem helped
contribute to his own demise by further eroding his already-slender
power base. Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu also irritated military leaders
by making it appear that it was the army that had desecrated the pa god
as.

The Diem Coup

When popular resistance to Diem reached the level where he was more of a
liability than an asset, he was sacrificed. On November 1, 1963, some of
Diem's generals overthrew him and then murdered both him and his brother
after they had surrendered. The coup, wrote Time magazine "was planned
with the knowledge of Dean Rusk and Averill Harriman at the State
Department, Robert S. McNamara and Roswell Gilpatrick at the Defense
Department and the late Edward R. Murrow at the US Information
Agency.(66)

Diem's death potentially opened up the chances for peace in Vietnam.
General Duong Van Minh stepped in to fill Diem's shoes even though
considerably less than half of South Vietnam was under Saigon's control.
The NLF had virtually established a de facto alternative government in
rural Vietnam. In most of the areas that Saigon considered its own,
their authority was restricted to the daylight hours, with the nights
being owned and controlled by the NLF. [This is a situation that would
not change for the duration of the war.]

Shortly after assuming power, General Minh received a manifesto from the
NLF requesting that all parties concerned with South Vietnam sit down
and negotiate with each other in order to achieve a cease fire and
create a climate in which free elections could take place. The manifesto
further advocated a policy of neutrality and friendly relations with all
countries and suggested that the reunification of Vietnam be "realized
step by step on a voluntary basis."

Diem's death also encouraged talk of possible peace on the international
front. The New York Times editorialized on November 10, 1963, that "a
negotiated settlement and 'neutralization' of Vietnam are not to be
ruled out," and that the time had come to restore the Geneval settlement
by negotiations. UN Secretary General U Thant recommended that the US
promote a coalition government in Saigon which would include
noncommunist refugees living in France.

After Kennedy's death, U Thant met with President Johnson and reportedly
conveyed a message from Ho Chi Minh proposing talks on a settlement. By
December, further pressure for neutralization of South Vietnam came from
Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who (again) invited South Vietnam to
join his country in a neutral confederation.

However, the US quickly made it clear that it was against any kind of
neutralist solution. By mid-December, Secretary of Defense McNamara told
Saigon's leaders that Washington did not see neutralism in Vietnam's
future and that President Kennedy's plans for withdrawing from Vietnam
had been revised.(67)

Any doubts regarding a US rejection of any kind of compromise and its
intent on prosecuting the war were removed with Johnson's New Year
message to General Duong Minh which stated:

Neutralization of South Vietnam would only be another name for a
Communist takeover...The US will continue to furnish you and your people
with the fullest measure of support in this bitter fight...We shall
maintain in Vietnam American personnel and material as needed to assist
you in achieving victory.(68) Even though General Minh took stern
measures against neutralism by suppressing several proneutralist
newspapers and organizing anti-French, antineutralism demonstrations, he
soon came under criticism from the United States and from his own
generals for failing to stop the neutralist sentiment growing in
Vietnam. On January 30, 1964, General Nguyen Khanh overthrew General
Minh's junta in a coup. He justified this as a necessary step to halt
the neutralist movement that had grown under General Minh.

A week after Khanh's accession to power, the NLF again called for
negotiations to end the war, but by then Saigon's course toward
continuing the conflict had become more decided. The Khanh junta
rejected both neutralism and negotiations and squarely aligned itself
with the United States. The US, in turn, expressed its willingness to
work with the new regime.

However, during the first six months of Khanh's rule, previous ground
loss to the Vietcong was not regained, and the areas it controlled even
expanded. This led to increased frustration for American officials. The
rise in military and economic aid and the modest influx of American
forces was proving ineffective.

Meanwhile, Barry Goldwater (on the stump for the Presidential election)
was advocating more force by taking the fight into North Vietnam itself.
This reinforced an argument the Pentagon had been making along the same
lines for years. It also reinforced Khanh's position since he was also
advocating an extension of the war into the North and delivered a major
address called bac tien ("to the North").

Two days after this address, Nguyen Cao Ky, the commander of the
Vietnamese Air Force, announced that it was prepared to bomb North
Vietnam at any time and that they could destroy Hanoi. General Maxwell
Taylor, the new US Ambassador, reportedly reprimanded Ky for making such
a provocative statement (and Khanh for permitting it). Khanh responded
by saying that as far as he understood the situation, there were no
basic policy differences expressed, only differences about timing and
about what to announce publicly.(69)

Concerned about an escalation of the war, Secretary General U Thant
again suggested a peaceful settlement. The first steps toward this, he
said, could be taken at a reconvened Geneva Conference. France backed
this recommendation. French President de Gaulle warned against the
"tremendous risk" of a generalized conflict. He said that the
impossibility of achieving a military decision meant "returning to what
was agreed upon ten years ago and, this time, complying with it."(70)

Both Moscow and Hanoi (as well as Paris) sent communications to the
fourteen nations that had participated in the 1961-62 Geneva Conference
on Laos, urging that it be reconvened in order to deal with the renewal
of fighting there.(71) China, the NLF and Cambodia indicated their
support quickly. Considering the mounting intensity of the Sino-Soviet
dispute at the time, China's endorsement of the Soviet proposal was
unusually prompt and positive. Peking appealed for a reconvening of the
conference to "stop the US imperialist aggression and intervention in
the Indochinese states, safeguard the Geneva agreements, and defend the
peace of Indochina."(72)

Neither the Secretary General of the UN, the French President, nor the
Soviet government received any encouragement from the US. The Johnson
administration quickly rejected the idea. (Indeed, there was no interest
expressed at exploring any of the opportunities for peace which seemed
to be opening up.) President Johnson stated that "We do not believe in
conferences called to ratify terror,"(73) The next day the US announced
that it would increase its military mission in South Vietnam 30 percent
(from 16,000 to 21,000).(74) Johnson was no doubt eager to forestall any
possibility of a Republican attack on him during the upcoming 1964
election. Being accused of being "soft on communism" wouldn't wash well
with the public.

In Vietnam, the war was entering a new phase. Air Vice-Marshal Ky stated
publicly in a news conference of July 23 that South Vietnamese commando
teams had been engaged in sabotage missions inside North Vietnam "by
air, sea and land."(75) Two days later Hanoi Radio charged that the
Americans and their "lackeys" had fired on North Vietnamese fishing
craft, and the Hanoi government lodged a formal protest with the
International Control Commission. On July 30 Hanoi accused the South
Vietnamese naval vessels of again raiding its fishing boats in Tonkin
Gulf under the protective cover of an American destroyer, and
additionally bombarding two North Vietnamese islands. This elicited
another North Vietnamese protest on July 31.

On August 2, according to the official US version of events, North
Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an unprovoked attack upon the US
destroyer Maddox while it was engaged in a "routine patrol." Hanoi
admitted to the attack, but said it was in reprisal for the bombardment
of nearby North Vietnamese islands.

[Senator Richard B. Russel suggested that the North Vietnamese might
have been "confused" because there had been some South Vietnamese naval
"activity" in the Gulf of Tonkin, but State Department officials
rejected the explanation.]

Hanoi and Washington thus both agreed that North Vietnamese PT boats had
deliberately engaged the Maddox on August 2, but differed as to where
the engagement took place, the reason for the attack, and its outcome.

According to the US, on August 4, North Vietnamese torpedo boats
launched a second attack, this time against the Maddox and another
destroyer, the Turner Joy, at a time when they were 65 miles from shore.
Neither destroyer suffered any damage or casualties and were reported to
have destroyed the attacking boats. Hanoi insisted that this second
attack never, in fact, occurred. As Senator Fulbright later observed:

But this Gulf of Tonkin incident, if I may so, was a very vague one. We
ere briefed on it, but have no way of knowing, even to this day, what
actually happened. I don't know whether we provoked that attack in
connection with supervising or helping a raid by South Vietnamese or
not. Our evidence was sketchy as to whether those PT boats, or some kind
of boats, that were approaching were coming to investigate or whether
they actually attacked. I have been told there was no physical damage.
They weren't hit by anything. I heard one man say there was one bullet
hole in one of those ships. One bullet hole!(76) [This "Tonkin Gulf
Incident" was indeed fabricated by the US, as was discovered in the
early 1970's when the Maddox and Turner Joy logs and transmissions were
revealed. There had been no attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats.]

The American response, putting damage and doubt aside, was prompt.
President Johnson went on television at 11:30 p.m. on the evening of
August 4, thirteen hours after the attack. He informed the American
public that retaliatory action was already underway. "Air action is now
in execution against gunboats and certain supporting facilities in North
Vietnam which have been used in these hostile operations." Prior to
issuing this statement, he had met with the leaders of both parties in
the Congress and informed them that "I shall immediately request the
Congress to pass a resolution making it clear that our Government is
united in its determination to make all necessary measures in support of
freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia." They had, he said, g
iven him "encouraging assurance" that "such a resolution will be
promptly introduced, freely and expeditiously debated, and passed with
overwhelming support."(77)

The next day President Johnson asked Congress to "join in affirming the
national determination that all such attacks will be met," and to
approve "all necessary action to protect our Armed Forces and to assist
nations covered by the SEATO treaty." The resolution passed 466-0 in the
House, 88-2 in the Senate (with only Senator Gruening and Morse
opposing). It authorized the President to "take all necessary measures
to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to
prevent further aggression." The measure further stated that the United
States was prepared "as the President determines to take all necessary
steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or
protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requestin
g assistance in defense of its freedom."

The die was cast. The so-called Tonkin Gulf Incident was just one of
many fabrications made by our government to further the cause for war.
One such ridiculous fabrication was a 1966 US Army training film called,
"County Fair," in which the sinister Vietcong were shown in a jungle
clearing heating gasoline and soap bars thus creating a vicious
"communist invention" called... napalm.(78)

Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, was
the man most responsible for "giving, controlling and managing the war
news from Vietnam." One day in July 1965, Sylvester told American
journalists that they had a patriotic duty to disseminate only
information that made the United States look good. When one of the
newsmen exclaimed: "Surely, Arthur, you don't expect the American press
to be the handmaidens of government," Sylvester replied, "That's exactly
what I expect," adding: "Look, if you think any American official is
going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? ---
stupid." And when a correspondent for a New York paper began a question,
he was interrupted by Sylvester who said: "Aw, come on. What does someon
e in New York care about the war in Vietnam?"(79)

In order to support State Department claims about the nature of the war
and the reasons for American military actions in Vietnam, further
fabricated information had to be generated. A former CIA officer, Philip
Liechty, stated in 1982 that in the early 1960's he had seen written
plans to take large amounts of Communist-bloc weapons, load them into a
Vietnamese boat, fake a battle in which the boat would be sunk in
shallow water, then call in Western reporters to see the captured
weapons as proof of outside aid to the Vietcong. In 1965, this is
precisely what occurred. The State Department "White Paper," titled
"Aggression From the North," which came out in February 1965 relates
that a "suspicious vessel" was "sunk in shallow water" off the coat of
Vietnam on 16 February 1965, after an attack by South Vietnamese forces.
The boat was reported to contain at least 100 tons of military supplies
"almost all of communist origin, largely from Communist China and
Czechoslovakia as well as North Vietnam." The white paper noted that
"Representatives of the free press visited the sunken North Vietnamese
ship and viewed its cargo."

Liechty said also that he had seen documents involving an elaborate
operation to print large numbers of postage stamps showing a Vietnamese
shooting down a US Army helicopter. Liechty stated that the professional
way the stamps were produced was meant to indicate that they were
produced by the North Vietnamese because the Vietcong would not have had
the capabilities. Liechty claimed that letters, written in Vietnamese,
were then mailed all over the world with the stamp on them "and the CIA
made sure journalists would get hold of them." Life Magazine, in its
issue of February 26 1965, did in fact feature a full color blow-up of
the stamp on its cover, referring to it as a "North Vietnamese stamp."
This was just two days before the State Department's white paper
appeared.

In reporting Liechty's statements, the Washington Post noted:

"Publication of the white paper turned out to be a key event in
documenting the support of North Vietnam and other communist countries
in the fighting in the South and in preparing American public opinion
for what was going to follow very soon: the large-scale commitment of
the US forces to the fighting."(80)

Part of the "large-scale commitment" to the war effort involved more
operations conducted by the CIA on behalf of Washington. In 1965,
William Colby oversaw the founding of the agency's Counter Terror (CT)
program. In 1966, due to agency sensitivity to the word "terror," the
name of the CT teams (there were multiple teams) was changed to
Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs). Wayne Cooper, a former Foreign
Service officer who spent almost eighteen months as an advisor to South
Vietnamese internal-security programs, described the operation: "It was
a unilateral American program, never recognized by the South Vietnamese
government. CIA representatives recruited, organized, supplied, and
directly paid CT teams..."(81) The function of these teams was to use
terror - assassination, abuses, kidnappings and intimidation - against
the Viet Cong leadership. Colby also supervised the establishment of a
network of Provincial Interrogation Centers. One center was built (with
agency funds) in each of South Vietnam's forty- four provinces. An
agency operator or contract employee directed the activities of each
center's operation, which consisted of torture tactics against suspected
Vietcong. Usually such torture was carried out by Vietnamese nationals.

In 1967, Colby's office devised another program that would later be
called Phoenix, to coordinate an attack against the Vietcong
infrastructure. Again, CIA money was the catalyst. According to Colby's
own testimony in 1971 before a congressional committee, 20,587 suspected
Vietcong were killed under Phoenix in its first two and a half
years.(82) Figures provided by the South Vietnamese government credit
Phoenix with 40,994 VC kills. Colby admitted to this same committee that
there was no proven method for knowing whether their victims were
Vietcong or not.

On January 27, 1973, the US signed the "Agreement on Ending the War and
Restoring Peace in Vietnam" in Paris. Among the principles to which the
US agreed was the one stated in Article 21 of the Agreement:

In pursuance of its traditional policy, the United States will
contribute to healing the wounds of war and to postwar reconstruction of
the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and throughout
Indochina.

Five days later, on February 1, President Richard Nixon sent a message
to the prime Minister of North Vietnam reiterating and expanding upon
this pledge. The first two principles put forth in the President's
message were:

1) The Government of the United States of America will contribute to
postwar reconstruction in North Vietnam without any political
conditions.

2) Preliminary United States studies indicate that the appropriate
programs for the United States contribution to postwar reconstruction
will fall in the range of $3.25 billion of grant aid over 5 years. Other
forms of aid will be agreed upon between the two parties. This estimate
is subject to revision and to detailed discussion between the Government
of the United States and the Government of the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam.

Since that time, the ONLY aid given to any Vietnamese people by the
United States has been to those who have left Vietnam and those who have
been infiltrated back to stir up trouble. People who have formed groups
to provide aid to Vietnam have been targeted for harassment by the
Federal government.

Over 2,000,000 Vietnamese dead. But are the real victims of the Vietnam
war yet to be born? The United States dropped tens of millions of pounds
of herbicide on Vietnam. Included in this were large quantities of
dioxin, which has been called the most toxic man-made substance known.
Three ounces of dioxin placed in the New York water supply, it is
claimed, could wipe out the entire populace. Studies done since the end
of the war indicate abnormally high rates of cancers, particularly of
the liver, chromosomal damage, birth defects, long-lasting neurological
disorders, etc., in the heavily sprayed areas. The evidence is not yet
conclusive, but further studies have been difficult to perform due to
the US long-standing isolation of Vietnam. Thousands of American ve
terans of Vietnam have been fighting for disability compensation due to
their own exposure to the toxins. For years, citing "lack of evidence,"
several herbicide manufacturers finally agreed to a settlement in 1984.
It is extremely unfortunate that the "evidence" our veterans needed was
waiting to be collected in Vietnam. Every year that passes pushes the
possibility of collecting it farther and farther away.

During the Vietnam war, many young Americans refused military duty on
the grounds that the United States was committing war crimes in Vietnam,
and that they too, if they took part in the war, would be guilty under
the principles laid down at Nuremberg.

These principles were generated after the Second World War, when the
International Military Tribunal convened at Nuremberg, Germany. Created
by the Allies, the Tribunal sentenced to prison or execution numerous
Nazis who pleaded that they had been "only following orders." In an
opinion handed down by the Tribunal, it declared that "the very essence
of the [Tribunal's] Charter is that individuals have international
duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by
the individual state."

In 1971, Telford Taylor, the chief Untied States prosecutor at
Nuremberg, suggested rather strongly that General William Westmoreland
and high officials of the Johnson administration such as Robert McNamara
and Dean Rusk could be found guilty of war crimes under criteria
established at Nuremberg.(83) Yet, every court and judge, when
confronted by the Nuremberg defense, had dismissed it without according
it any serious consideration whatsoever.

"The West has never been allowed to forget the Nazi holocaust. For 40
years there has been a continuous outpouring of histories, memoirs,
novels, feature films, documentaries, television series... played and
replayed, in every Western language; museums, memorials, remembrances,
ceremonies...Never Again! But who hears the voice of the Vietnamese
peasant? Who can read the language of the Vietnamese intellectual? What
was the fate of the Vietnamese Anne Frank? Where, asks the young
American, is Vietnam?"(84)

**********

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Epilogue
I cannot guess what affect, if any, the information contained in this
article will have on you, the reader. I know that for myself, learning
about the internal political situation in Vietnam; the pervasive
internal support for the communists; the continued avoidance by the US
of every possible chance for peace; the lies, propaganda and
disinformation campaigns perpetrated not only against the Vietnamese,
but against the American public by our own government; the incredible
dishonesty of our own elected officials, saying one thing, doing
another, agreeing to promises and commitments, but never intending to
keep them; all these things have changed my fundamental understanding of
the Vietnam war, and given me the answers as to how and why the US got
involved in the first place.

It is one thing to say, "Oh sure, everyone knows the Vietnam war was
wrong." But, it's another thing to actually dig into the available
information and find out just how wrong it was. The US attack on Vietnam
(and can it be called anything else?) didn't have to happen. It was
avoidable. The 58,000 Americans didn't have to die, nor did 2,000,000
Vietnamese. The anger American families, who lost loved ones, have
directed toward the Vietnamese is misdirected. The US government is
responsible for their deaths, and the anger of the American public
should be directed at it and the people who orchestrated the war.

The power to change the course of history was in our government's hands.
Imperialistic arrogance, personal gain and prestige, greed,
anti-Communist hysteria, and the desire to control, drove the
decision-making process that led the US to war. The commanding officers
and government officials who directed the war are indeed guilty of war
crimes. But they will go unpunished.

The facts about the Vietnam war are available, but are not discussed. As
I said before, if the truth does not come out, we are doomed to repeat
the same mistakes. And we already have. It appears as if the only people
to have learned something from all the deception surrounding Vietnam, is
the government. Our elected officials have learned that knowledge is
power, and knowledge hidden and kept from the American public, provides
the power to do what one wants, without oversight and second-guessing.

Control the information and you control the way people think. Thus, you
can convince the American public that tiny, backward countries like
Grenada and Nicaragua pose a serious military threat to the United
States; that the US does not carry out wars against the population of a
country, but rather, against satanic individuals, like Gaddafi, Noriega,
Hussein, and Aidid. The total number of people we kill is kept from us,
lest the American public get weak of heart. That international law is
meant to be broken by the US when it suits our needs is a given, as in
Panama. The murder of several thousand fleeing Iraqis is a direct
violation of the Geneva convention, but so what? It was, in the words of
a jet pilot involved in the mass murder, "A real turkey shoot!"(85) If
the issue is never discussed by our media, it never reaches the status
of being an issue.

My purpose in relating this all too brief history to you is to inform.
My own ignorance of the facts led me willingly to the battlefields of
Vietnam. When the next war comes, and it will, I want you to question
everything the government tells you. This isn't the military, where you
are trained not to question authority or think about the consequences of
your actions. We owe it to the young men and women who will fighting and
dying in the next war to hold our government and military officials
responsible for their decisions. But more than this, we owe it to
ourselves to seek out the history of our previous military
interventions, learn the facts, teach our young, lest we forget...

**********

------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES:
1. Cited in The United States In Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and
John Lewis (Delta, 1967): This was after the collapse of the Tang
Dynasty, and it was from Nan Han, a small successor kingdom confined to
South China, that the Vietnamese won their independence.

2. Ibid: For fuller accounts of this early period, see D. G. E. Hall; A
History of Southeast Asia, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan 1963); John F.
Cady, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1964); Joseph Buttinger, The Smaller Dragon (New York: Praeger, 1958)

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid. The most comprehensive biography of Ho Chi Minh available in
English is to be found in Bernard B. Fall, The Two Vietnams (New York:
Praeger, 1964), especially pp. 81-103. All subsequent citations from
Fall's work refer to this book. Another substantial account is to be
found in Jean Lacouture, Cinque hommes et la France (Paris: Editions du
Deuil, 1961), pp. 11-108. A large part of Ho Chi Minh's writings for the
period May 25, 1922 through September 10, 1960 are available in a four
volume edition (Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works [Hanoi: Foreign Languages
Publishing House, 1960-62.

5. Ibid. Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Vietnam (Paris: Editions du
Deuil, 1952), p. 57; Fall, op. cit., pp. 83-84.

6. Ibid. Fall, op. cit. p. 87; Donald Lancaster, The Emancipation of
French Indochina (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 79.

7. Ibid. Fall, op. cit. pp. 87-88. This pamphlet is not included in Ho's
Selected Works. For his ideas on race relations in the United States,
see in Volume I of this series, "Lynching, a Little Known Aspect of
American Civilization," pp. 99-105, and "The Ku-Klux-Klan," pp. 127-132.


8. Ibid. Lancaster, op. cit., p. 80; Fall, op. cit. p. 90.

9. Ibid. Lacouture, op. cit., p. 31; Devillers, op. cit., p. 59.

10. Ibid. Fall, op. cit. p. 97. There is considerable agreement that Ho
spent this period in Moscow.

11. Ibid. Lacouture, op. cit., p. 36; Fall, op. cit., p. 97-98.

12. Ibid. According to a statement by Diem to Southeast Asia Seminar,
Cornell University, February 20, 1953, it was Ho's leadership as a
nationalist that enabled him to rally such wide Vietnamese support.

13. Ibid. Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina (Stanford, Cal.:
Stanford University Press, 1954), pp. 112-113.

14. Ibid. Harold Isaacs, No Peace for Asia (New York: Macmillan, 1947),
pp. 148-149.

15. Ibid. Devillers, op. cit., p. 152; Fall, op. cit., pp. 100-101;
Lancaster, op. cit., p. 143; Hammer, op. cit., pp. 130-151; Isaacs, op.
cit., pp. 148, 164.

16. See excerpt of the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic
Republic of Viet Nam cited at the end of this article.

17. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum; Ho Chi Minh
and Vietminh working with the OSS, admirers of the US; Chester Cooper,
The Lost Crusade: The Full Story of US Involvement in Vietnam from
Roosevelt to Nixon (Great Britain, 1971) pp. 22, 25-7, 40. Cooper was a
veteran American diplomat in the Far East who served as the Assistant
for Asian Affairs in the Johnson White House. He was also a CIA officer,
covertly, for all or part of his career; French collaboration with the
Japanese: Fall, op. cit. pp. 42-9; Ho Chi Minh's desk: Blanche W. Cook,
The Declassified Eisenhower (New York, 1981), p. 184.

18. Cited in The United States In Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and
John Lewis (Delta, 1967): According to Harold Isaacs, General Gracey
stated to him: "We have discharged our obligation to them. Now it is up
to them to carry on." Isaacs, op. cit., p. 162.

19. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum; Washington
Post, 14 September 1969, p. A25. Lansing was the uncle of John Foster
and Allen Dulles. He appointed them both to the American delegation at
the Versailles peace Conference in 1918-19, where it was that Ho Chi
Minh presented his appeal.

20. Cited in The United States In Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and
John Lewis (Delta, 1967): Estimate of the French naval officer who
assumed command in the area in December 1946. Devillers, op. cit., p.
337.

21. Cited in The United States In Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and
John Lewis (Delta, 1967): The Vietminh had gained the military
initiative well before the communists came into power in China. Their
military strength against the French was already clearly established
before they were able to secure even modest military assistance from
Communist China, although during the final phases of the war, material
supplied by the Chinese was to help considerably in major battles. The
French did not allege a military-assistance agreement between the
Vietminh and the Chinese communists until April 1950. See Ambassade de
France, Service de Presse et d'Information, Document No. 26 (New York,
November 10, 1950).

22. "The Two Vietnams," by Bernard Fall (New York, 1967), pp. 122, 124.

23. "Year 501, The Conquest Continues," by Noam Chomsky, South End
Press, 1993

24. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History; US Global Interventions Since
World War II by William Blum: Zed Books, Ltd. 1986

25. Cited in The United States In Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and
John Lewis (Delta, 1967): "The Pentagon Papers" (NYT edition), 1971; p.
XI.

26. Ibid., Fall, pp. 43.

27. Ibid., The Pentagon Papers, p. 11.

28. Ibid., The Pentagon Papers, p. 36.

29. Ibid., The Pentagon Papers, pp. 5,11; D. Eisenhower, The White House
Years, 1953-56 (NY, 1963) pp. 340-41; S. Adams, Firsthand Report (NY,
1960) pp. 121-2.

30. Ibid., Adams, p. 24.

31. Ibid., The Pentagon Papers, p. 46.

32. Ibid., The Times (London) 2 June 1954, quoting from an article by
Willoughby.

33. Ibid., Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien
Bien Phu (Great Britain, 1967) p. 307; Parade Magazine (Washington Post)
24 April 1966; Roscoe Drummond and Gaston Coblentz, Duel at the Brink
(New York, 1960) pp. 121-2.

34. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History; US Global Interventions Since
World War II by William Blum; Joseph Burkholder Smith: Portrait of a
Cold Warrior (New York, 1976) pp. 172-4.

35. Ibid.

36. Cited in Rethinking Camelot by Noam Chomsky: Melvyn Leffler,
Preponderance, 166, 258; FRS, 32-3. See Year 501 by Chomsky, ch. 2.1-2

37. Ibid.

38. Cited in The United States In Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and
John Lewis (Delta, 1967): The Pentagon Papers, I 597, 434f. AWWA 33f.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., Fall, (Two Vietnams), pp. 153-4

41. Cited in The CIA: A Forgotten History; All other actions: The
Pentagon Papers, Document No. 15: 'Lansdale Team's Report on Covert
Saigon Mission in '54 and '55,' pp. 53-66.

42. Cited in The United States in Vietnam by George Kahin and John
Lewis: See Anthony Eden, Full Circle (London: Cassell, 1960), p. 142.

43. Cited in The United States in Vietnam by George Kahin and John
Lewis: Article 27 of the Franco-Vietnamese Armistice Agreement. See also
the treaty of June 4, 1954, between France and Bao Dai's State of
Vietnam, which made clear that the latter's independence was to entail
assumption of all obligations "resulting from international treaties or
conventions contracted by France in the name of the State of Vietnam,
and all other treaties and conventions concluded by France in the name
of French Indochina insofar as these affect Vietnam." Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Vietnam, Bureau of Archives,
Treaties on Vietnamese Independence and Franco-Vietnamese Association,
cited in Ngo Ton Dat, "The Geneva Partition of Vietnam and the Question
of Reunification during the First Two years (August University, 1963),
pp. 452-453. The writer of this dissertation served at the Geneva
Conference as aide to prince Buu Loc, who was Bao Dai's Prime Minister
prior to Ngo Dinh Diem.

44. Ibid., Statement by Assist. Secretary Walter S. Robertson, Dept. of
State Bulletin (Washington: Department of State, December 1961)

45. Ibid., A Threat to the peace (Washington: Department of State,
December 1961), p. 3

46. Cited in The United States in Vietnam by George Kahin and John
Lewis: Diem was from a Roman Catholic mandarin family that had served
the vestigial and effectively French-controlled imperial Annamese court
at Hue. After working in the imperial administration for four years,
Diem resigned in 1933 because of a dispute with Emperor Bao Dai. In
1946, following a long period of political retirement and study, Diem
was offered the premiership by Ho Chi Minh. He turned it down in part
because he held the Vietminh responsible for the murder of his brother.
After an unsuccessful attempt to develop a rival political force, he
left Vietnam in August 1950. He spent the next four years abroad, mostly
in the United States, where he lobbied for support among religious, pol
itical, and academic leaders. The influence of Cardinal Spellman and the
American Friends of Vietnam, a group that has often been referred to as
the "Vietnam lobby," is difficult to gauge, but it was probably
significant in gaining support for Diem in th e United States.

47. Cited in Deadly Deceits, My 25 Years in the CIA by Ralph McGehee: p.
131

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., Dr. Tom Dooley, Three Great Books (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Cudahy, Inc., 1960), pp. 48, 98, 100.

50. Ibid., Jim Winters, "Tom Dooley the Forgotten Hero," Notre Dame
Magazine, May 1979, pp. 10-17

51. Ibid., Bernard B. Fall, The Two Vietnams (New York: Praeger, 1964),
p. 246; Osborne, "The Tough Miracle man of Vietnam," Life, may 13, 1957;
New York Herald Tribune, April 1, 1955.

52. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum: Emmet John
Hughes, The Ordeal of Power (London, 1963) p. 208; Hughes was a speech
writer for President Eisenhower.

53. Ibid., Michael Klare, War Without End (New York, 1972) pp. 261-3;
David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Espionage Establishment (New York,
1967) p. 152.

54. Cited in Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky: In R. Lindholm, ed.
Vietnam: The First Five Years (Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1959), p. 346.

55. Cited in Deadly Deceits, My 25 Years in the CIA by Ralph McGehee:
Department of Defense, United States Vietnam Relations 1945-1967
(Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1971)
(Hereafter referred to as the Department of Defense Pentagon Papers).,
Vol. 10, p. 958

56. Cited in The United States in Vietnam: Documents Relating to British
Involvement in the Indochina Conflicts 1945-1965, Command 2834, (London:
Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1965), p. 107

57. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum: Life
Magazine, 13 May 1957.

58. Cited in The United States in Vietnam: New York Times, August 9,
1955.

59. Ibid., The Times (London), September 22, 1955.

60. Ibid., Le Monde, February 25, 1956; Journal Officiel de la
Republique Francaise, Debats Parlementaires, Conseil de la Republique,
February 24, 1956.

61. Ibid., Vietnam News Agency, February 7, 1955.

62. Ibid., William Henderson, "South Viet Nam Finds Itself," Foreign
Affairs, Vol. 35, No. 2, January 1957, pp. 285, 288.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid., New York Times, February 15, 1962.

65. Ibid.

66. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum: Time, 30 June
1975, p. 32 of European edition.

67. Contrary to the myths surrounding Kennedy and the Vietnam war,
carefully following Kennedy's speeches, notes and reported conversations
demonstrates that Kennedy only intended on withdrawing US troops "after"
a clear defeat of the NLF and not before. When it became obvious that
the war was going to last longer than first predicted, war plans had to
change.

68. Cited in The United States In Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and
John Lewis (Delta, 1967): New York Times, January 1 and 2, 1964

69. Ibid., Peter Grose in the New York Times, July 24, 1964. See New
York Times also: July 26, 1964.

70. Ibid., "President de Gaulle Holds Tenth Press conference," Ambassade
de France, Service de Presse et d'Information, New York, No. 208, July
23, 1964, p. 11.

71. Ibid., Hanoi Radio, July 24, 28, and 29, 1964; Moscow Radio, July
26, 1964, as quoted in Documents Relating to British Involvement in the
Indo-china Conflict, 1945-1965, Command Paper 2834 (London: Her
Majesty's Stationery Office, 1965), p. 239.

72. Ibid., Peking Radio, August 2, 1964. See Peking Review, Vol. VII,
No. 32, August 7, 1964, p. 22.

73. Ibid., The New York Times, July 25, 1964.

74. Ibid., NYT, July 28, 1964.

75. Ibid., See NYT, July 23, 1964. South Vietnamese commandos had been
conducting such operations against the North Vietnamese since 1957 and
particularly since 1961. See NYT, January 1, 1962 and July 26, 1964; and
le Monde, August 7, 1964.

76. Ibid., "Why Our Foreign Policy Is Failing," an interview with
Senator Fulbright by Eric Sevareid, in Look, May 3, 1966, pp. 25-26.

77. Ibid., NYT, August 5, 1964.

78. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum: Covert Action
Information Bulletin (Washington) No. 10, August - September, 1980, p.
43.

79. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum: Congressional
Record, House, 12 May 1966, pp. 9977-78, reprint of article by Morley
Safer of CBS News.

80. Ibid., Washington Post article reprinted in San Francisco Chronicle,
20 March 1982, p. 9.

81. Cited in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti
and John D. Marks., p. 236.

82. Ibid., Even Colby has admitted that serious abuses were committed
under Phoenix. Former intelligence officers have come before
congressional committees and elsewhere to describe repeated examples of
torture and other particularly repugnant practices used by Phoenix
operatives. However, according to David Wise, writing in the New York
Times Magazine on July 1, 1973, "Not one of Colby's friends or
neighbors, or even his critics on the Hill, would, in their wildest
imagination, conceive of Bill Colby attaching electric wires to a man's
genitals and personally turning the crank. "Not Bill Colby... He's a
Princeton man.'"

83. Cited in The CIA, A Forgotten History by William Blum: San Francisco
Chronicle, 9 January 1971 (New York Times Service); also see Telford
Taylor, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (New York, 1970).

84. Ibid.

85. CNN News.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM
(EXCERPTS)
All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of
the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means:
All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have
a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of
Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal
rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."

Those are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years the French imperialists,
abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, have violated
our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-citizens. They have acted
contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

They have enforced laws; they have set up three distinct political
regimes in the North, the Centre and the South of Viet Nam in order to
wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain
our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practised obscurantism
against our people.

To weaken our race, they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone,
impoverished our people and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests and our
raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of banknotes and the
export trade.

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people,
especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have
mercilessly exploited our workers...

The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and
not from the French.

The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has
abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century
have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our
people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has
reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been
established the present Democratic Republic.

For these reasons, we, members of the provisional Government,
representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we
break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal
all the international obligation[s] that France has so far subscribed to
on behalf of Viet Nam and we abolish all the special rights the French
have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.

The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are
determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French
colonialists to reconquer their country.

We are convinced that the Allied nations which at Teheran and San
Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and
equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of
Viet Nam.

A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than
eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies
against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free
and independent.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Viet
Nam has the right to be a free and independent country - and in fact it
is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize
all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and
property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

copyright 1993 by Jeff Drake all rights reserved
--fini--
Peace
Amen
Om
K

DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing!  These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically  by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Om