Date

Mar 3, 1969

Description

From the first weeks of 1969 through much of the rest of the year, Nixon and Kissinger considered how they could apply "maximum pressure" on North Vietnam and the VC/NLF in South Vietnam, which would have the goal of altering the military situation in their favor, enable them to bargain from a position of strength, and persuade the other side to concede key terms to the U.S. and RVN in negotiations.

The subject of military pressure came up early in the new administration at a 27 January late luncheon meeting in the Pentagon between the president, Kissinger, JCS Chairman General Earl Wheeler, and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. During the discussion, someone—probably Nixon or Kissinger—brought up "the possibility of working out a program of potential military actions which might jar the North Vietnamese into being more forthcoming at the Paris talks." The Joint Staff of the JCS soon set about the task of preparing a set of "indicator actions" designed "to create fear in the Hanoi leadership that the United States is preparing to undertake new highly damaging military actions against North Vietnamese territory, installations, and interests."

On 21 February, Laird sent a "working copy" of the Joint Staff's proposed "dramatic steps," which could take the form of either actual or feigned operations—"each developed over an adequate period of time to be picked up by the communists":

A combined airborne/amphibious operation against several objectives in NVN.
Punitive airborne/airmobile expeditions against enemy lines of communications (LOC) and base areas in Laos and Cambodia.
Renewed and expanded air and naval operations against NVN to include closure of Haiphong and the blockade of NVN.
Subversion of the population and preparation for active resistance by the people against the Hanoi regime.
A technical escalation.

Each of the proposed military measures was "keyed" to political and diplomatic maneuvers designed to increase the potential for a jarring impact. The proposal for a "technical escalation," the most startling of them all, amounted to a threat to use atomic and/or biological or chemical weapons and included a "visit" by chemical-biological-radiological weapons experts to the Far East. Haig's paraphrase of that option, however, focused on a nuclear escalation: "A plan for actual or feigned technical escalation or war against [the] North (nuclear)." The visit by weapons experts would be accompanied by political moves such as a U.S. diplomatic "hint" of a "possible technical escalation of the war" and a statement by a senior military official that the "Pentagon periodically examines moves by which new and more modern weapons" could be introduced into the Vietnam conflict.

Laird dutifully passed on the Joint Staff's proposals to Kissinger, but he disassociated himself from them in his cover memorandum. Not only was this paper "preliminary," but General Wheeler and other members of the Joint Chiefs had not reviewed it; nor had Laird's staff. Laird suggested his own skepticism when he wrote that "I must confess to you being more impressed . . . with the potential disadvantages of the proposals than with the possibility of achieving movement in Paris by such means.

Source

NSCF, box 1007, Haig Vietnam Files, Vol. 1 (Jan - March 1969)

Document published in following posting(s):

The Movement and the “Madman”

Mar 24, 2023