Tucker's Last Stand (27 page)

“And then,” Bundy chimed in, “there's Algeria. By no means settled, with a great many very determined men turning on de Gaulle himself. What he did there, Mr. President, is really what he is urging us to do. He decided a couple of years ago that the military could not impose a French solution on Algeria. The French call it
force majeure
—”

“Is that the same as ontomonism?”

McGeorge Bundy quickly studied the Commander in Chief. But his face was entirely innocent. He was not being teased, Bundy concluded. He would slide out of the problem deftly. “Yes,” he said, evading entirely the question he had been asked, “the idea of an overwhelming force against which one simply doesn't
argue
. Almost as if it were fate.” Bundy picked up his notebook. “De Gaulle said at the press conference, ‘It does not appear there can be a military solution in South Vietnam—'”

“How the hell does he know?” The President was aroused. “The Vietnamese who beat the French were fighting for independence from France. The South Vietnamese are fighting for independence from North Vietnam. They know goddamn well the United States doesn't want to colonize South Vietnam. Shit, I'd like to think in a year, two years mebbe, the whole Vietnam business will be just a memory, a bad memory. But even if there weren't any more people out there than on Quemoy and Matsu—how many was that. Walt, about fifteen?—even if we weren't talkin' about
fifteen million people we promised we'd keep free
, we have the SEATO alliance, and we have the Containment Doctrine. Are we supposed to repeal all of those simply because
General
de Gaulle, who never won a military battle in his life, that I was ever told about, says there cain't be a military solution?”

Bundy held in there. “Sir, he goes on, he says … ‘Certain people imagine that the Americans could seek elsewhere this military solution that they could not find on the spot, by extending the war to the North. Surely they have all the means for this, but it is rather too difficult to accept that they could wish to assume the enormous risk of a general war. Then since war cannot bring a solution, one must make peace.'”

McNamara opened his own notebook. “Listen to what's been happening since our raids, Mr. President. Here's our friend Khrushchev. He said your—our—raids (he was talking about the retaliatory raid after Tonkin 2) were ‘an attempt to restore the use of violence and piratical methods in relations between states.' And he said the U.S.S.R. would ‘stand up for other socialist countries if the imperialists impose war on them.' Since Khrushchev always says the same thing at least two times, he said it again in his next sentence. Retaliatory raids are ‘a threat to the security of the people of other countries and can entail dangerous consequences.'” McNamara raised his hand, asking the President to withhold comment for one moment. “And then two days earlier we got this from Peking: ‘The so-called second Tonkin Gulf incident on August 4 never occurred. It was a sheer fabrication in order to extend the war in Indochina.' And then, one day later, the Peking Party newspaper writes that we have committed ‘armed aggression' against North Vietnam in order ‘to gain some political capital for the coming presidential election and to involve the allies of the U.S. in war.'” McNamara raised his hand even higher, pleading to hold back the presidential reaction. He had one more. “So two days after
that
, 100,000 Chinese rally at Tiananmen Square where Lioa Chengchih says it all: ‘The Chinese people are determined by practical deeds to volunteer aid to the Vietnamese people in their just struggle against U.S. aggression and in defense of their motherland.'

“There, Mr. President, there it is. As far as de Gaulle is concerned, there are two alternatives. The United States either negotiates or faces a”—McNamara's voice was solemn—“a world war.”

Lyndon Johnson took over.

“Well,” he said, “and what does de Gaulle propose? He proposes we all go back to the Geneva Accords. Genius! Sheer genius! Give that man a Nobel Prize. What in holy shit does he think we've been sayin' over the last five years? That the Accords have been
violated
! The Geneva Accords
recognized
South Vietnam. There was going to be a vote on unification but Diem said no, because the terror campaign had begun by the North. One million refugees—that's the right figure, isn't it Walt?” Rostow nodded—“
One million refugees
and then a terror campaign,” he repeated the word. “What we have is just what we have said it is, a war of aggression staffed by Communists supplied by Communists, one more of their fucking acts of aggression against the free world.”

There was silence.

“Now, Dean, here's what to do. One, get Bohlen over here from Paris, and you,” he pointed to McNamara, “brief him on the plans we've got going to seal off that Trail. Tell Bohlen—what the hell's an ambassador to France for?—to go and
see
de Gaulle and
tell
him that goddamnit we are not going to have a
world war
but that if every time the Communists want to take over one more country they say, Get out of our way or it's going to be a world war, then they can gobble gobble gobble—Wonder if Chip Bohlen knows how to say ‘gobble' in French?” The President looked around the table, willing to give any volunteer the opportunity to come up with the French word. He resumed. “Tell de Gaulle we have very modest, er, plans but we believe, we damn
well
believe, we can stop them, because the South Vietnamese people, including those one million refugees, don't want that
poet
Marxist Ho Chi Minh to take over their country. Okay?” Dean Rusk was taking notes.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“And then issue a statement—”

“Yes, we'll need a statement. Over your signature?”

LBJ paused. Then, “No. I don't want to give General Charles de Gaulle, President et cetera of France, holy—holy
carrier
of the Cross of Lorraine, the feeling that every time he says some dumb thing at a press conference, I'm going to twitch. Over
your
signature. Give it out as a State Department reaction. Say what we
all
”—he looked around the table, his face one big interrogatory—“what we
all
think. Right?”

“Right, Mr. President.”

Late that afternoon the State Department issued the press release. It said, in part, “The United States seeks no wider war. If others would keep the solemn agreements already signed there would be no problem in South Vietnam. If those who practice terror and murder and ambush will simply honor their existing agreements, there can easily be peace in Southeast Asia immediately. But we do not believe in conferences called to ratify terror, so our policy is unchanged.”

Listening to the six o'clock television news, Lyndon Johnson heard the statement read out by the State Department's press officer. He was much cheered on hearing it. “
That's telling them
,” he muttered to his wife. Lady Bird agreed.

27

September 12, 1964

Saigon, South Vietnam

At the safe house, Tucker Montana asked Rufus what was it exactly that de Gaulle had said.

“I just this afternoon read the cables, after Blackford and I got back. You heard about it? The press conference? Where …?”

“From my friend. My girlfriend. Lao Dai—Black knows her. She's pretty affected by it, says de Gaulle said we can't win a ‘military victory' unless we're prepared for a world war. Makes a big difference, you bet, hearing this here from the biggest cheese in France. I guess a lot of the locals figure, if the same country that lost in Indochina ten years ago is now saying the Americans can't win in Indochina unless they want a world war, that kind of cools their optimism, right, Rufus?”

“I assume it had that effect on your friend, Tucker?”

Tucker nodded. “Right.”

“I imagine the State Department or the White House will have a reply in the next few hours. I've left word for it to be brought in, if it's while we're still here; otherwise we can get the news tonight or tomorrow. But you're right. What de Gaulle said is worth a lot of strategic hamlets to the enemy. It's one more burden, but let's hope it won't be decisive. Our problems are more mundane. Blackford, give Tucker the figures you've accumulated—the Agency, Tucker, wanted gross figures on the operations of 34-A, now that it is a—public enterprise.”

“After what de Gaulle said”—Blackford looked grim—“I wouldn't be surprised if some of those people we're talking to, yesterday and today, are looking at all those junks out there and thinking, Dunkirk! Only where would they sail to? But that's another question—sorry. Yes, the figures.

“Well, Tucker,” Blackford brought out his notebook, “to give you a little perspective: In the last six months of 1961 the South Vietnamese clocked one hundred and forty incidents of infiltration by sea. These included infiltration of bazookas and groups of up to sixty-five men strong, by single junks. The estimate is that fourteen hundred infiltrators passed through the coastal system during those six months. That's a lot of armed men shipped here to kill rural schoolteachers, mayors, and guards, and any women and children who get in the way.

“Back in the fifties, the South had a total of only eighty junks, all of them sailing boats, no motors. Beginning in December 1961, President Kennedy moved in. Five hundred junks were built with U.S. funds, sixty more using South Vietnamese funds. Three kinds of junks: About thirty ‘command junks,' each carrying a crew of ten, with automatic weapons and radios. About two hundred and fifty sailing junks, for conducting surveillance as pickets or patrols. These are stationed in specific harbors. A few hundred motorized sailing junks for patrolling extended areas of the sea. By the beginning of this year we had about six hundred and fifty all told.”

“What have they accomplished?”

Blackford didn't need his notebook. The figures were logged in his memory. “You've already seen the figures on the number of searches—three hundred and fifty thousand. They fingered one hundred forty VC agents. They're going at it every day, covering eight hundred miles of coastline. Obviously we have no way of knowing how many got through, either because they were detained, examined, and thought innocent, or because they penetrated the naval screen.

“Now, Rufus, this isn't in our Gulf-Trail script, but I just want to make one point. If, after he gets through with his Igloo operation on the Trail, Tucker finds his front as leaky as mine is, what have we accomplished?”

“Don't we have to assume that the number of North Vietnamese is finite, Blackford?”

“Yeah, I guess I'd weigh in with that, if I were a Pentagon planner. But nothing seems to discourage these people. Nothing. Goddamn, three hundred and fifty thousand at-sea searches, and there's no indication, we all know that, of any decrease in the level of guerrilla activity out there. Hell, we're surrounded by it. Now, Tucker, you've got something real fancy coming up here, the Igloo operation. But these bastards are regenerating at one hell of a rate—”

Tucker broke in. “Never
mind
. What do you
do
when your junks finger a couple of NVAs with bazookas hiding in a fishing boat? They're brought in. Maybe they're put in prison. Maybe they're shot. But that's small potatoes, and we're always going to lose on the small-potato front, even if the gooks don't succeed in bringing down enough infiltrators to win the war. We
know
what they're
planning
on, they're planning on
twenty thousand troops per month
coming down the Trail, and that's the big artery we're going to choke up. If we can seal that off, then at your end all you've got to do is intensify the search procedures, maybe sink a few more of those buggers out there at sea: then give the South Vietnamese a chance. If ever they stop playing musical chairs with the presidency, they can go out there in the country and sniff out the North Vietnamese guerrillas and their allies in the South—who, we've all agreed, aren't numerous.”

Blackford sighed audibly. “Yes. I know that's the plan. And we're here to set the plan in operation. But I've got to say, Rufus, it doesn't look good.”

Rufus was brisk with him. “Our job is to make the situation better. It is Washington's responsibility to decide whether making it better is not enough.”

Rufus resolutely pursued his agenda. But Blackford knew that Rufus's rare display of anger, frustration, disappointment and disagreement wasn't directed at him.

Should he try to sleep? Or should he
not
try to sleep? He had Richard Tregaskis's Vietnam
Diary
, from which he got reconfirmation on the subject of the dogged spirit of the Vietnamese, in particular those in the North, who had borne the brunt of the bitter war against the French.

The book was engrossing, if depressing. He considered turning to the new novel by Harold Robbins, or to Faulkner's
Sanctuary
, which Sally had sent him in paperback. (“If you haven't read this forty-eight hours after receiving it, give up whatever else you're doing. You can't grow
one week older
without reading
Sanctuary
!”) Her weekly call came in, generally, between 2 and 3
A.M.
Not an incivility of hers, to call at that hour. For some reason 6 to 7
P.M
., Mexico time, was the best hour for getting through; she couldn't figure out why, nor could he, and to tell the truth, after a while they didn't try.

As a rule she called the BOQ, because he was usually in Danang; and that meant he had to pull up a cot by the side of the phone at the end of the corridor, so as not to wake other officers housed there. But she knew this week to call the hotel in Saigon. Should he try a quick nap? It would be harder, after they spoke, because her voice put him in high gear. Soon he was dreaming that he was trying to decide whether to dream … and the telephone rang.