Nuclear Weapons and the Vietnam War

Abstract

This article analyzes why US leaders did not use nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War. To date, there has been no systematic study of US decision-making on nuclear weapons during this war. This article offers an initial analysis, focusing on the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Although US leaders did not come close to using nuclear weapons in the conflict, nuclear options received more attention than has previously been appreciated. Johnson's advisers raised the issue of nuclear weapons and threats on several occasions, and Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, looked into nuclear options to bring the war to an end. Ultimately, however, both administrations privately rejected such options. The conventional explanation for the non-use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War – deterrence – is insufficient to explain the Vietnam case. This article analyzes the role of military, political and normative considerations in restraining US use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. It argues that while military and political considerations, including escalation concerns, are part of the explanation, a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons played a critical role.

Key Words:

• nuclear weapons
• Vietnam War
• nuclear taboo

Notes

¹Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (NY: Times 1995), 174.

²James Blight (ed.), ‘Missed Opportunities? Revisiting the Decisions of the Vietnam War, 1945–68’, Hanoi Conference, 20–23 June 1997. Transcript. Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, April 1998, 9–10.

³McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (NY: Random House 1988), 536.

⁴Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (NY: Viking 2002), 63.

⁵See, for example, Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford UP 1957); Robert Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Univ. of Chicago Press 1957); Morton H. Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear Age (NY: Wiley 1963).

⁶Bundy, Danger and Survival, 536.

⁷He devoted only eight out of 735 pages to Vietnam. Bundy, Danger and Survival.

⁸William W. Kaufman, The McNamara Strategy (NY: Harper & Row 1964).

⁹Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 2nd ed. (NY: St. Martin's 1989), Ch.8.

¹⁰Walt W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power (NY: MacMillan 1972), 175.

¹¹Ibid.

¹² CINCPAC Command Histories for 1963, 1964, 1966. I am grateful to the Nautilus Institute for providing copies of these. Excerpts available at <www.nautilus.org/VietnamFOIA/analyses/bulletin.html#cincpac>.

¹³OPLAN 39-65, promulgated Sept. 1964, was the contingency plan for Asian Communist aggression. OPLAN 32-64, promulgated Sept. 1962, was ‘CINCPAC's principal plan for the defense of mainland Southeast Asia up to the point of Gen. war.’CINCPAC Command History 1963, (1964) 38. OPLANS were mainly non-nuclear, but had a nuclear annex. I thank Hans Kristensen for discussion on this issue.

¹⁴ The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Dept. History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam (hereafter PP), Vol. III (Boston: Beacon Press 1971), Senator Gravel Edition, 636, 639.

¹⁵By the beginning of 1963, US onshore deployments of nuclear weapons to Guam, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Taiwan grew to about 2,400, a 66 percent increase from 1961 levels. The onshore stockpile in the Pacific peaked at about 3,200 weapons in mid-1967, 2,600 of which were in Korea and Okinawa, and began to decrease after that. Robert Norris, William Arkin, and William Burr, ‘Where They Were’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 55/6 (Nov./Dec. 1999), 30–31.

¹⁶Ted Gittinger (ed.), The Johnson Years: A Vietnam Roundtable (Austin, TX: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs 1993), 64.

¹⁷Memo from the JCS to the Secretary of Defense, 2 March 1964, JCSM-174-64. Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1964–68, Vol. 1, 115.

¹⁸ PP, Vol. III, 623.

¹⁹Ibid., 238.

²⁰Ibid., 175.

²¹Telegram from the Embassy in Vietnam to the Dept. of State, Saigon, 4 May 1964, in FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 286.

²²Memo for the Record (W. Bundy), ‘Discussion of Possible Extended Action in Relation to Vietnam’, 27 April 1964, Executive Secretariat Conference Files, 1949–72, Box 343, Manila (SEATO) Taipei and Saigon, 20–29 April, RG 59, NA. I thank William Burr for this document.

²³Thomas Allen, War Games (NY: McGraw Hill 1987), 193–206.

²⁴Memo from Chairman of the NSC Working Group (W. Bundy) to the Secretary of State, 24 Nov. 1964, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 941.

²⁵As quoted in David Kaiser American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 2000), 366–7.

²⁶Ibid., 360.

²⁷ PP, Vol. III, 238.

²⁸Ibid., x.

²⁹Kaiser, American Tragedy, 378. Kaiser provides an extended analysis of the decision-making process behind this report.

³⁰Letter from Rusk to McNamara, 28 Nov. 1964, FRUS 1964–68, National Security Policy, Vol. X, Document # 63, at www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/johnsonlb/x/9057.htm, at ‘a’.

³¹Ibid., at ‘a’ and ‘b’.

³²Letter from Rusk to McNamara, 13 Nov. 1965, in ibid., Document #105, at <www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/johnsonlb/x/9061.htm>.

³³Memo from the JCS to McNamara, 22 Jan. 1964, cited in McNamara, In Retrospect, 107–10; Memo from SecDef to Taylor, 21 Feb. 1964; Memo from the JCS to McNamara, 2 March 1964, and Memo from SecDef to President, 16 March 1964, in FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 97–99, 112–18, 153–67.

³⁴Memo of a Meeting with President Johnson, Washington DC, 17 Feb. 1965. FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 2, 305.

³⁵Ibid. Eisenhower had earlier referred to such a gentleman's agreement in his memoirs. When he took office in 1953, US planners were considering a military offensive to force an end to the conflict. Eisenhower wrote, ‘To keep the attack from becoming costly, it was clear that we would have to use atomic weapons.’ He decided ‘to let the Communist authorities understand that, in the absence of satisfactory progress, we intended to move decisively without inhibition in our use of weapons, and would no longer be responsible for confining hostilities to the Korean Peninsula. We would not be limited by any world-wide gentlemen's agreement.’ Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953–56 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1963), 180. In May 1962, Eisenhower had also recommended to Kennedy the use of nuclear weapons in the Laos crisis.

³⁶David Kaiser argues that Eisenhower showed in the meeting that he had been kept well informed of the administration's policy and its rationale. Kaiser, American Tragedy, 403. See also Michael Jackson, ‘Beyond Brinkmanship: Eisenhower, Nuclear War Fighting, and Korea, 1953–1968’, Presidential Studies Quarterly 35/1 (March 2005), 52–75.

³⁷Memo of Conversation between Secretary of State Rusk and Prime Minister Khanh, Saigon, 18 April 1964. FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 244.

³⁸Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Dept. of State, Honolulu, 1 June 1964. FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 410.

³⁹Dean Rusk to the President, 23 Feb. 1965, ‘Deployment,’ Vol. 2, tabs 61–87, NSCH, Box 40, NSF, LBJL, quoted in McNamara, In Retrospect, 173.

⁴⁰NSC Executive Committee Meeting, Washington DC, 24 May 1964, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 371.

⁴¹Memo of Conversation, Secretary's Dinner for Rumanian Foreign Minister Manescu, Washington DC, 14 Oct. 1965, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 3, 455–6.

⁴²George Ball, ‘How Valid are the Assumptions Underlying our Vietnam Policies?’ memo, 5 Oct. 1964. Reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly 230/1 (July 1972), 41–42. Emphasis added.

⁴³Ibid., 43.

⁴⁴Memo from Vice President Humphrey to President Johnson, Washington DC, 17 Feb. 1965. FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 2, 311. In reality, the Eisenhower administration did not rule out war with China in 1953.

⁴⁵Quoted in memo from Walt Rostow to Secretary of State Rusk, 23 Nov. 1964. PP, Vol. III, 645. See also Special National Intelligence Estimate, SNIE 50-2-64, Washington, 25 May 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, Vol. 1, 380.

⁴⁶Chen Jian, ‘China's Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964–69,’The China Quarterly 142 (June 1995), 366–7; Kaiser, American Tragedy, 439–40.

⁴⁷George Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 2nd ed. (NY: Wiley 1996), 5, 46.

⁴⁸McNamara, In Retrospect, 160–61, 275.

⁵¹‘Background Briefing With Secretary McNamara,’ Memo, 22 April 1965, US Policy in the Vietnam War, 1954–1968, VI01501, Vietnam Conference, June 1997, Box 3, National Security Archive. Emphasis in original.

⁴⁹Both Ball and McNamara later stated that they overestimated the risk of war with China. In his 1982 memoirs, Ball conceded that, in hindsight, he exaggerated the risk of the Chinese threat and possible entry into the war, but that at the time ‘we knew almost nothing about what was going on in Chinese foreign policy’. George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (NY: Norton 1982), 505, fn.10. McNamara described later the ‘totally incorrect appraisal of the “Chinese threat” to our security’ but that it was a widely shared view among top officials. McNamara, In Retrospect, 218–19.

⁵⁰Letter from the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to Senator Mike Mansfield, 9 Feb. 1965, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 2, 94, 96.

⁵²Tom Wicker, ‘President Plans No Major Change in Vietnam Policy’, New York Times, 25 April 1965, 1, 3.

⁵³Jack Raymonds, ‘McNamara Calls Hanoi Aggression More Flagrant’, New York Times, 27 April 1965 , 1.

⁵⁴Kaiser, American Tragedy, 432.

⁵⁵Memo from the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to Secretary of Defense McNamara, June 30, 1965, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 3, 391.

⁵⁶McNamara, In Retrospect, 194.

⁵⁷Ilya Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 1996), 73.

⁵⁸Ibid., 47.

⁵⁹Memo from Acting Secretary of State Ball to President Johnson, 13 Feb. 1965. FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 2, 255.

⁶⁰Excerpts from Secretary Rusk's Conversation with President Chiang Kai-shek, 16 April 1964. At <www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/coldwar/documents>.

⁶¹528th NSC meeting, 22 April 1964. FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 258; PP, Vol. III, 65.

⁶²Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Dept. of State, Honolulu, 1 June 1964, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 410.

⁶³Rusk meeting with Ambassador Alphond, French Embassy, 20 July 1964. FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1, 557.

⁶⁴Memo of Conversation Between President Johnson and Prime Minister Pearson, Hilton Hotel, NY, 28 May 1964. FRUS 1964-68, 1, 395; Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Dept. of State, Honolulu, 1 June 1964, Ibid, 410.

⁶⁵Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1984).

⁶⁶Bundy, Danger and Survival, 537; Robert S. McNamara, ‘The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons: Perceptions and Misperceptions,’Foreign Affairs 62/1 (Fall 1983), 58–80.

⁶⁷‘Remarks in Cadillac Square’, 7 Sept. 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, Vol. 1 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office 1965).

⁶⁸Ibid., 538.

⁶⁹Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (NY: Simon & Schuster 1983), 270–72. Physicist Herbert York, a weapons consultant for the government who accompanied McNamara on the trip to SAC, recalled that the visitors were ‘just as impressed, awed, and even stunned’ as he had been when he first heard the war plan briefing a year earlier. Herbert York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace (NY: Basic Books 1987) 185, 204.

⁷⁰York, Making Weapons, 204. William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (NY: Harper & Row 1964), Ch. 2.

⁷¹McNamara to JCS Chairman, 10 Feb. 1961, Appendix A, enclosed in JCS 2101/408, CCS 3001 Basic National Security Policy (10 Feb. 1961), RG 218, NA, as cited in Marc Trachtenberg, ‘The Berlin Crisis’, in Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton UP 1991), 220.

⁷²McNamara, ‘The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons’, and McNamara, In Retrospect.

⁷³Ellsberg, Secrets, 57, 59.

⁷⁴Ibid., 59, 60.

⁷⁵Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern, 384.

⁷⁶Dean Rusk, As I Saw It (NY: Norton 1990), 457.

⁷⁷Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Dept. of State, Honolulu, June 1, 1964, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. 1:410.

⁷⁸Rusk, As I Saw It, 248.

⁷⁹Ibid., 366.

⁸⁰Bundy, Danger and Survival, 537.

⁸¹Ball, ‘How Valid’, 42.

⁸²Ibid., 42.

⁸³The memo as a whole did have an important effect on William Bundy's drafting of the options papers the following month, where option C more or less followed Ball's arguments regarding Vietnam strategy. Kaiser, American Tragedy.

⁸⁴ New York Times, 27 May 1964, 1; Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1964 (NY: Athenaeum 1965), 315–16.

⁸⁵Lawrence Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford UP 1998), 438. Johnson received 61.1 percent of the popular vote and 90 percent of the electoral vote. White, The Making of the President 1964, 315–16.

⁸⁶Samuel Cohen, The Truth About the Neutron Bomb (NY: William Morrow 1983), 95, 84.

⁸⁷Ibid., 84.

⁸⁸Ibid., 93.

⁸⁹Ibid., 93–94.

⁹⁰LBJ, taped conversations, 1995 release, as quoted in Kaiser, American Tragedy, 433.

⁹¹For more on the JASONs, see Gregg Herken, Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advising from the Atomic Bomb to SDI (NY: Oxford UP 1992), 152–56. The discussion in this section draws on Peter Hayes and Nina Tannenwald, ‘Nixing Nukes in Vietnam’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59/3 (May/June 2003), 52–59.

⁹²Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (NY: Basic Books 1979), 149.

⁹³Ibid., and Steven Weinberg, communication with Peter Hayes, 25 Dec. 2002.

⁹⁴Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 149.

⁹⁵F. Dyson, R. Gomer, S. Weinberg, and S.C. Wright, ‘Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia,’ Study S-266, Jason Division, DAHC 15-67C-0011, Washington DC, March 1967 (hereafter Dyson report). Declassified Dec. 2002. I am grateful to Peter Hayes of the Nautilus Institute for providing a copy of it, and for his 19 year effort to get it declassified.

⁹⁶Ibid., 4, 12.

⁹⁷Ibid., 4, 15.

⁹⁸Ibid., 4.

⁹⁹Ibid.

¹⁰⁰Ibid., 47.

¹⁰¹Ibid., 7.

¹⁰³Ibid., 50.

¹⁰²Ibid., 49.

¹⁰⁴Ibid.

¹⁰⁵Ibid., 51.

¹⁰⁶Gomer commentary on Dyson report, Dec. 2002, at <www.nautilus.org/VietnamFOIA/report/JASONs.html#gomer>.

¹⁰⁷Author interview, Austin, TX, 2 Dec. 1998.

¹⁰⁸‘Jason Division: Division Consultants Who Are Also Professors are Attacked’, Science (2 Feb. 1973), 461.

¹⁰⁹Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 149.

¹¹⁰Seymour Deitchman, commentary and interview on Dyson report, 25 Feb. 2003, at <www.nautilus.org/archives/VietnamFOIA/report/insider.html>.

¹¹¹See ‘Targeting Ho Chi Minh Trail,’ at <www.nautilus.org/VietnamFOIA/background/HoChiMinhTrail.html>.

¹¹²Personal communication with author, 3 March 2003.

¹¹³Seymour Deitchman, commentary on Dyson report, 25 Feb. 2003.

¹¹⁴Walt Rostow Papers, Tom Johnson Papers, LBJL.

¹¹⁵Memo to Gen. Wheeler from Robert N. Ginsburgh, 31 Jan. 1968, NSF, Walt Rostow Papers, Box 7, LBJL.

¹¹⁶Memo from Walt Rostow to President Johnson, 3 Feb. 1968. NSF, Rostow, Box 7, LBJL.

¹¹⁷Gen. Wheeler to Gen. Westmoreland and Adm. Sharp (JCS 01154), 1 Feb. 1968, NS Files, NSC Histories, ‘March 31^st Speech, Volume 2,’ Box 47, LBJL.

¹¹⁸Cable from Adm. Sharp to Gen. Wheeler (JCS 01154), 2 Feb. 1968, NSF, NSC Histories, ‘March 31^st Speech, Volume 2,’ Box 47, LBJL.

¹¹⁹Handwritten memo to Walt Rostow from Robert Ginsburgh, transmitting copies of Wheeler cable. Undated but sometime before Feb. 10, 1968. Also Memo from Walt Rostow to the President, 10 Feb. 1968. Both in NSF, Rostow, Box 7, LBJL.

¹²⁰Memo to the President from Walt Rostow, 2 Feb. 1968. NSF, Rostow, Box 7, LBJL.

¹²¹Memo for the President from Gen. Wheeler, 3 Feb. 1968, CM-2944-68, NSF, NSC History, 31 March speech, Vol. 6, Khe Sanh reports, A-S, Box 48, LBJL. John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe, Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1991), 291.

¹²²Memo from Walt Rostow to President Johnson, 3 Feb. 1968. NSF, Rostow, Box 7, LBJL.

¹²³Telegram JSC 1690 to CINCPAC, 11 Feb., 1968, in NSC History, 31 March speech, Vol. 2, Tabs A-Z and AA-ZZ.

¹²⁴David M. Barrett (ed.), Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Papers (College Station: Texas A & M UP 1997), 722.

¹²⁵William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1976), 338.

¹²⁶ Washington Post, 12 Feb. 1968.

¹²⁷‘Wheeler Doubts Khe Sanh will Need Atom Weapons’, New York Times, 15 Feb. 1968.

¹²⁸‘Fulbright and Rusk Clash on Atom Talk’, Washington Post, 17 Feb. 1968. The Congressional inquiry was prompted in part by speculations about the reasons for sending four nuclear scientists to Vietnam. The scientists were in fact being sent to study the ‘McNamara Line’– an electronic barrier to prevent North Vietnamese infiltration across the demilitarized zone separating the two Vietnams. ‘Rumors on Use of Atomic Arms Stirred by “Experts” Asian Trips’, New York Times, 11 Feb. 1968.

¹²⁹Letter to the President from Congressman Charles Bennett, 31 Jan. 1968, and Letter to Charles Bennett from Barefoot Sanders, 1 Feb. 1968. NSF, Country File, Vietnam, Box 102, Folder: Vietnam 7F (2)b, 12/67-3/68, Congressional Attitudes and Statements [1 of 2], LBJL.

¹³⁰‘A-Arm Use Called Lunacy by Wilson’, Washington Post, 12 Feb. 1968.

¹³¹ Public Papers of the Presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968–69, Book I (Washington DC: Government Printing Office 1970), 234.

¹³² Washington Post, 10 Feb. 1968. Emphasis added.

¹³³‘Use of Nuclear Weapons is an Invitation to Disaster’, Washington Post, 9 March 1968.

¹³⁴Summary of Notes by M. Bundy concerning Wise Men's meeting, 26 March 1968. Meeting Notes File, Special Advisory Group, Box 2, LBJL.

¹³⁵Thomas W. Graham, American Public Opinion on NATO, Extended Deterrence, and Use of Nuclear Weapons: Future Fission? CSIA Occasional Paper No. 4 (Cambridge: Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government 1989), 14–15.

¹³⁶John Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (NY: John Wiley 1973), 105.

¹³⁷This pattern of public attitudes toward nuclear weapons (low support for use at first, then higher, but only under certain limited conditions) fits the same general pattern found during the Korean War, although the magnitudes differ. The American public was less willing to recommend the use of atomic weapons in Vietnam than in Korea.

¹³⁸Thomas Schelling, ‘The Role of Nuclear Weapons’, in L. Benjamin Ederington and Michael J. Mazarr (eds.), Turning Point: The Gulf War and US Military Strategy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1994), 112–13.

¹³⁹Blight, Missed Opportunities?, 88.

¹⁴⁰H.R. Haldeman with Joseph DiMona, The Ends of Power (NY: Times Books 1978), 82–83. On Nixon's madman theory, see Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press 1998), Ch. 4.

¹⁴¹In a speech in Chicago in March 1955, Nixon ‘warned the Chinese Communists in the bluntest terms that they would be met with atomic weapons if they embarked on any new aggression … [and] a war breaks out in the Pacific. … Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the targets of any aggressive force …’. Richard J.H. Johnston, ‘Nixon Gives Reds Warning on Atom’, New York Times, 18 March 1955, 16.

¹⁴²Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern, 410.

¹⁴³Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (NY: Harper & Row 1977), 154.

¹⁴⁴‘What the President Saw: A Nation Coming into Its Own’, Time, 29 July 1985, 48–53. ‘Nixon Says He Considered Using Atomic Weapons on 4 Occasions’, New York Times, 22 July 1985. The other three occasions were during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the intensification of the Soviet-Chinese border dispute (he made an implied nuclear threat), and the 1971 India-Pakistan War.

¹⁴⁵‘An Interview with Henry A. Kissinger: “We Were Never Close to Nuclear War”’, Washington Post, 11 Aug. 1985.

¹⁴⁶Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972 (NY: Simon & Schuster 1989), 223.

¹⁴⁷Richard M. Nixon, No More Vietnams (NY: Arbor House 1985), 102; Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (NY: Grosset & Dunlap 1978), 347–8.

¹⁴⁸Richard M. Nixon, ‘Needed in Vietnam: The Will to Win,’Reader's Digest, Aug. 1964, 37–43.

¹⁴⁹Ambrose, Nixon, 193.

¹⁵⁰Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.

¹⁵¹Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 117; Terry Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of US Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1995), 52–53, 54–60, 60–69.

¹⁵² US News and World Report, March 1976.

¹⁵³SM-71-69, Haig Special File, Vietnam Files (Jan.–March 1969), Box 1007, NSC Files, NPMP.

¹⁵⁴Memo for Kissinger from Haig, 2 March 1969, and Memo for Kissinger from Laird, 21 Feb. 1969, Haig Special File, Vietnam Files (Jan.–March 1969), Box 1007, NSC Files, NPMP.

¹⁵⁵Memo for Laird from Kissinger, 3 March 1969, Haig Special File, Vietnam Files (Jan.–March 1969), Box 1007, NSC Files, NPMP.

¹⁵⁶For a discussion of what historian Jeffrey Kimball calls Kissinger's ‘disingenuous chronology’ of this plan's evolution in his memoirs, and a careful effort to reconstruct an accurate chronology, see Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 159–65. Kissinger implies that planning only started in ‘September and October’ (rather than as early as April). His support for the plan appeared to be greater than he revealed in his memoirs.

¹⁵⁷Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (NY: Summit Books 1983), 120.

¹⁵⁸Ibid., 128–29. H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (NY: Putnam's 1994), 69–70, 83. Again, this source cannot be considered authoritative.

¹⁵⁹William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, ‘Nixon's Secret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplomacy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test, October 1969’, Cold War History 3/2 (Jan. 2003), 113–56.

¹⁶⁰‘The September Group,’ as some called it, included Anthony Lake, Winston Lord, Laurence Lynn, Roger Morris, Peter Rodman, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, William Watts, Col. Alexander Haig, Col. William Lemnitzer, and Capt. Rembrandt C. Robinson. Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 163.

¹⁶¹Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown 1979), 284.

¹⁶²Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 163.

¹⁶³‘Vietnam Contingency Planning: Concept of Operations’, 16 Sept. 1969. I thank Jeffrey Kimball for sharing this document.

¹⁶⁴Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace: Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years (NY: Viking Press 1978), 150. According to Szulc's interviews, Kissinger went on to say: ‘It shall be the assignment of this group to examine the option of a savage, decisive blow against North Vietnam, militarily. You are to start without any preconceptions at all. You are to sit down and map out what would be a savage, decisive blow. You are to examine the option from every angle, you are to examine every detail of how it should be executed militarily, what the political scenario would be.’ Ibid., 150.

¹⁶⁵Ibid., 151.

¹⁶⁶Ibid., 153.

¹⁶⁷Ibid, 152.

¹⁶⁸Hersh, Price of Power, 98. Winston Lord told Jeffrey Kimball in a 1994 interview that he was incredulous at the idea that nuclear weapons were considered. Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 163.

¹⁶⁹Hersh, Price of Power, 129.

¹⁷⁰For a full account, see Burr and Kimball, ‘Nixon's Secret Nuclear Alert’, and Scott Sagan and Jeremy Suri, ‘The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signaling and Safety in October 1969,’International Security 27/4 (2003), 150–83.

¹⁷¹Nixon, Memoirs, 403–5. Nixon and Kissinger later both came to regret that they backed down, holding that they should have begun aggressive bombing operations of North Vietnam much earlier, in Feb. 1969. Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 173.

¹⁷²Morris, Uncertain Greatness, 165–66. Morris was an NSC staffer who resigned in 1970 over the secret bombing of Cambodia.

¹⁷³Hersh, Price of Power, 128; Morris, Uncertain Greatness, 165; Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 164.

¹⁷⁴Ambrose, Nixon, 301; William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (NY: Hill and Wang 1998), 80.

¹⁷⁵Ellsberg, Secrets, 233.

¹⁷⁶Hersh, The Price of Power, 129.

¹⁷⁷Gregg Herken, Counsels of War (NY: Knopf 1985), 17.

¹⁷⁸White House Tapes, 25 April 1972, EOB Tape 332-25, NPMP.

¹⁷⁹Haldeman Diary. Quotes from White House Tapes, 2 May 1972, Oval Office conversation, 717-20, NPMP.

¹⁸⁰White House Tapes, 4 May 1972, EOB Tape 334-44, NPMP.

¹⁸¹White House Tapes, 5 May 1972.

¹⁸²Memo for the President's files (Top Secret-Eyes Only), ‘National Security Council Meeting’, 8 May 1972, NPMP, NSC Files, Box 998, Haig Memcons (Jan.–Dec. 1972), 10. Emphasis added.

¹⁸³Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Inner Circles: How America Changed the World: A Memoir (NY: Warner Books 1992), 28.

¹⁸⁴Ibid., 554.

¹⁸⁵Peter Hayes, Pacific Powderkeg: American Nuclear Dilemmas in Korea (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books 1991), 42.

¹⁸⁶Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown 1979) 66–67.