Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with W. W. (Walt Whitman) Rostow, 1981

Rostow: It’s...I was relatively optimistic about the state of the war towards the end of ’67, uh, but I should frame that, uh, response by telling you the position I took in April of ’67. That was when Westmoreland came back and asked for additional troops, uh, something like a quarter of a million. Rostow: And there was a fundamental debate about the course of the war, and, uh, in a very rare occasion of my intervening around the Cabinet table, I had ample opportunities to talk to the President directly. I stood up and I said, in effect, uh, “I don’t believe it should be more of the same; I think we should act decisively, and by decisively, I don’t mean heavier bombing, I mean that we should go into North Vietnam as far north as Vinh and when the weather’s right, on to the Ho Chi Minh Trails with US forces, and force an ending of the war on the ground.” Rostow: And that was the view that I held, and, uh, because I thought that the war, otherwise, would be excruciatingly prolonged for the people of Southeast Asia, the United States, and the world, and that we should use our power decisively in those two ways. Uh, I accepted the President’s decision that we would not move in that direction, and pursue his intermediate strategy. And at the end of ’67, I was optimistic for these reasons: First, there was no doubt at all there had been military progress since we came in mid ’65; there had been extraordinary political progress, and economic progress, including a turnaround in agricultural policy, where they finally bit the bullet and gave the peasants enough incentives. Rostow: And, uh, secondly, I was optimistic because we had perfectly adequate intelligence that Hanoi agreed with us, and they...we had this intelligence that they felt the war slipping away, and they were going to make a maximum effort. Uh, we began to hear...to get a picture of just what that effort would be about the end of November 1967, and I sent out, at my own responsibility, uh, asking, uh, for an evaluation of the coming big offensive to...and of the possibilities of negotia...negotiating after it, uh, assuming it was set back; and I was confident it would be set back.

Rostow: And, uh, they sent back this, the country team assessment, and we all went over it, and, uh, CIA commented on it. So that, by early December, we were all geared up for this maximum effort, but it was a maximum effort in response to the progress that we had made. Uh, so I, I as the year ended, I knew it was going to be mighty noisy, and the President did too. He told the Australians... Interviewer: Sorry.

Rostow: Uh, this optimism that I had was, uh, fully shared, of course, by Ambassador Bunker and, uh, General Westmoreland, and the Soviet diplomats like to say this was not accidental, because the most fundamental source of intelligence for the President and the whole community on the war, and the one the historians are going to treasure, and I believe they’re being made available now by the LBJ Library, were the, uh, country team reports, which were extraordinarily detailed, uh, uh, the picture drawn, militarily, politically, economically, with the warts on, and, uh, they had, the reasons that they were so impor—so valued valued was that they held up over time, uh; we were never jumped by anything in Vietnam in the whole period I was there, uh, because the country team reports were so accurate. Rostow: Uh, the notion that, uh, the President, uh, had inadequate information is simply not correct; his most fundamental information...was the summarized information. Of course, he got an awful lot of the...component pieces of that information, economic reports, diplomatic reports, military reports, regularly. But those summations were absolutely first class, solid, and there was continuity in them, and anyone following the whole story, and reading our evaluation and what happened, and looking at what Hanoi’s evaluation was from intelligence, uh, could not avoid, uh, judgment had been, uh, very solid amount of improvements since the middle of 1965.

Interviewer: What was the President’s reaction when the Tet Offensive actually happened, and what was your own reaction? Rostow: Well, the President, uh, knew that this was coming, uh, from early December 1967; he had told uh, Australian Cabinet, uh, when I happened to be present, when we went out there for the service for Harold Holt, when he was drowned. Rostow: Uh, he had told them that, uh, in response to the question. The question it sent it was interesting, it was, uh, “Do you think uh, this would be a good time for a bombing halt and an attempt at a negotiation?” And his response was “Not now.” Uh, this was just before Christmas ’67. He said, “We’re going to have a very hard winter, they, they’re going to make a maximum effort, we shall see Kamikaze tactics. When they’re set back, that will be the time, uh, for a peace move.” And then he went right on, uh, he went on and said, “I’m not sure that, uh, in the course of an election year they will finally settle it, uh, but I think we have a chance of getting it to negotiations.” Rostow: And, so, he, in other words, had this thing very firmly in mind, and the cables that came from Westmoreland in the period just before the Tet Offensive, uh, gave, uh, him a very precise sense of, all of us, a sense that the thing was heightening, it might come any day. As you know, Westmoreland asked that th...and received, uh, permission, (a) to cancel US leaves at Tet, and (b) to resume bombing, uh, despite the Tet, uh, stand down in the tactical areas, uh, uh, in the, uh, near the, uh, truce lines.

Rostow: And, uh, President Johnson’s, uh,...you remember we did have a bombing halt for Tet, and President Johnson’s response to his cable, uh, Westmoreland’s request, uh, I transmitted to him the request. He said, “Yes, I agree, uh, he can do that,” and he said, “If it was up to me, I’d cancel the whole Goddamn thing.” Rostow: Uh, he knew very well that this was the, was about to come; he could not, uh, get the, uh, South Vietnamese alerted; they’d tried, and some of them were off for holiday, and, uh, but ah as far as the President was concerned, he was fully prepared.

Interviewer: Well how, (cough) if, uh, the offensive was anticipated, uh, how did you explain that the, that the Viet Cong was able to get in, let’s say, as far as the American Embassy in Saigon or take over Hue for awhile? Rostow: Yes, well, the, the, uh, the tactics that were used involved their infiltration into the town, in rather subtle ways, and they surfaced, and they were able to not get into the US Embassy, they were able to get into the, the yard, uh, and, uh, they did manage to infiltrate into the towns of, of Vietnam, uh, quite a few VC. Rostow: And they did so expecting an uprising once their presence became known. What happened was the VC were turned over to the police and the militia or whomever, and were decimated. But, uh, it was a tactic, uh, a very expensive tactic, from which the Communists in the South have not recovered to this day. Uh, they, uh, uh, South Vietnam even despite the war was in many ways still a relatively open society; people moved around all over it, and, uh, getting into Saigon was no big trick. Interviewer: Do you think then that, uh, that our own forces didn’t take enough precautions to prevent that?

Rostow: Well, the, our forces were not responsible for the security of the city; they had very different missions. And I’m not sure that, uh, the, uh, any normal... Interviewer: Start one more time, “our forces...” Rostow: I don’t believe, uh, our forces had the kind of re-, responsibility for the security of the town; those forces, the security of the the town’s in the hands of the police, the militia, the ARVN, and infiltrating people into a town of that kind, uh, could be done; it turned out to be a disaster for the Viet Cong. Rostow: Now they got into Hue that, but those are north Vietnamese military, and there was a pitched, prolonged battle, as you know, in Hue, and they were thrown out by the South Vietnamese marines, not the US But, uh, so that I don’t think it was very remarkable achievement to get a lot of fellows in there, uh, the, the; it would have been remarkable if they had triggered an uprising, but they trigged a, nothing, and were decimated. Interviewer: Did you still, uh, feel optimistic or confident after the Tet Offensive began?

Rostow: Even more so, because it’s one thing to be a, it, uh, yes, uh, yes I was op...optimistic after the Tet Offensive, even more optimistic, uh, in a sense, than before, because it’s one thing to have confidence that you’re going to cope with this maximum effort; it’s another thing to, to see that it, everyone was coping; and, uh, you’ll see that, uh, the cables from Saigon, from Ambassador Bunker, uh, told us that the, uh, the enemy was defeated, uh, on the ground, very early; it would take time to mop up. And, uh, moreover, the reaction, the political reaction and the energy of the government in coping was most heartening. Rostow: Uh, one could feel that, uh, the government that had been elected in the elections of ’67 really became a government by coping with Tet. So that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, watching the reaction after Tet, military and political in Vietnam that we had achieved a great victory. The great question was, what would be the reaction of the United States? Rostow: And if you go back to President Johnson’s press conference shortly after Tet, that’s exactly what he said. He didn’t,...overdraw, he underplayed the, the degree of success he knew we had, uh, militarily; he underplayed the degree of success he knew we had in the sense of the South Vietnamese have reacted positively.

Rostow: But he, he, uh, the question in his mind was the US political and, uh, psychological reaction. And, in retrospect, uh, this was, uh, a, a, uh, the negative reaction was the result of two things: I think historians will share the blame with the US media and the Johnson Administration. Interviewer: Stop...our battery ran out. Can you just pick that up and... Rostow: The public was surprised and shocked, uh, for two reasons, basically: One, uh, Tet was grossly misinterpreted by the media; they either didn’t understand it, and, and as Peter Braestrup’s two volumes shows, they depicted it to the American people in, um, uh, terms that just don’t hold up with the facts, or, at the time, or in retrospect. Rostow: But I think equally the Johnson Administration and the President, as he acknowledges in his book, “The Vantage Point,” bear responsibility, and when I say the Administration, I include myself. We did know what was coming, we did warn, uh, the Australians, uh...I was, I briefed the press in my office about the coming offensive. There were briefings in Saigon, and, uh, uh, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Buzz Wheeler, went out and gave a first class speech in, uh, the Detroit Economic Club, saying we’re going to face Ardennes type of battle, kind of a...last gasp, maximum effort.

Rostow: And, uh, but the only way that could have gotten through to the American people and prepared them for the shock, prepared them as well as the President was prepared, or his staff, would have been if the President had said this openly, just the way he’d said it to the Australian Cabinet before Christmas ’67. Rostow: And, in retrospect, he, he, he says in his book that he should have done it in the context of the State of the Union Message. The reason is interesting; it’s it’s a...for these, for this it’s a very inadequate reason. The reason is the convention is that you don’t let the enemy know how much you know, and, uh, so it would have been regarded as rather bad form for the President to do this. But, any case, uh, that is where I would put the blame; there’s no doubt that the...that there was a gross misinterpretation by the American people. Interviewer: Do you think...uh...can you explain why public support for the war was declining even before the Tet Offensive?

Rostow: Uh, the Tet Offensive came at a time when there had been a slow erosion of public support for the war, uh, and I think that the, uh, reason for it was one of the reasons that I wanted to set more decisively militarily, but it was best stated in an interview with Pham Van Dong, with Bernard Fall, in 1942, around the end of the year in the Saturday Evening Post; I had it in this office somewhere, I had it in the State Department, uh, where I was in ’62, I had it in the White House. Rostow: But what it said, essentially, was, “Americans do not like long, indecisive wars. This is going to be a long, indecisive war, and therefore, we shall win.” And, uh, the, uh...I do think that, uh, the tactics that President Johnson chose, which were supported by about 18 percent of the American people, uh, 55, 60 percent wanted a more vigorous military policy, directly addressed to the North; and those who wanted to reduce our effort gradually rose from about 15 to 30 percent. Interviewer: Excuse me...was that Pham Van Dong’s interview in 1942?

Rostow: The public opinion, as I say, had been gradually eroding in its support for the war, but it was only about up to about ah 30 percent of the public who felt that we should do less rather than more. Rostow: The largest group was still, before Tet, about 55 percent felt we should do more. The first reaction to Tet was to increase the proportion of those describing themselves as hawks to over 60 percent, but when the President did not take decisive action, militarily, to conform to this, uh, mood, and then when he decided he wasn’t going to run, I think, uh, the combination of the lack of preparation of the people for Tet, which wou...could have been avoidable, the bad, uh, projection of what happened at Tet to the American people by the media, uh, the lack of vigorous military response and then the President saying he wasn’t going to run led a great many, uh, people who had supported not the President so much, had had only about 18 percent support for his tactics, but the 50 plus 50 percent who were really hawks, said, Well, if we’re not going to go in and win this thing decisively, let’s get out, or begin to get out. Rostow: And that, think, was the the progressive sort of defection that eroded the position down through ’68, while, in the field, uh, Westmoreland, Abrams, were rolling up the enemy, and, uh, the economy was reviving, and all sorts of things, the pol—political system was gaining strength, so that Mr. Nixon came in with a very good position in the field, politically, a very good position in the field militarily, but a a country that had just about had enough of it, uh, politically, at home.

Interviewer: What, in your estimation, was the Communist objective at Khe Sanh? Rostow: At Khe Sanh I think they had, uh, a...as always with them, multiple objectives. I think that, uh, what they, their basic objective was to pin down a lot of US ground forces, ground forces, so that they could get the forces of their own in on the coast behind them to get into the cities. Rostow: Uh, and, uh, the second objective was, if they could pull off a Dien Bien Phu, and force the surrender of the garrison, uh, that would be a maximum result. What happened in fact is that, with very few men on the ground, quite a lot of air power, artillery, we pinned down two to four of their divisions, and they never were able to get into the, the coastal area, but, uh, I think those were the two objectives of Tet, of, uh, Khe Sanh.

Interviewer: What was your reaction to the request by the military for an additional 206,000 troops at the time of Tet? Did that seems justified to you? Rostow: It seemed justi-...I thought that the extra troops would be justified, uh, only if we used them in a very active policy to force an end of the war on the ground, uh, through putting, uh, forces into North Vietnam as far as north as Vinh, and blocking off on the ground with US forces multiple trails in Laos. I didn’t think, uh, we would need or justify that, uh, additional force for more of the same, and, uh, the, uh, that...that was my, my, my basic, uh, judgment on it. Now, in fact, uh, we did not, uh, what...when I heard that this request came in, my recommendation was that we set up a task force that would look at all the variables bearing on this question, including our balance of payments, uh, what the South Vietnamese themselves could do by way of an increased effort, and, uh, that we have a very sober assessment of this. Rostow: But well before that assessment was over, and well before it got into the New York Times, the President decided he would not do it, uh...add to the troops; I think he put in an extra 20,000 or so, or...but he...that was, I think, for two reasons: One, and the most fundamental, which saved him the problem, was that the, uh, South Vietnamese increased their own mobilization remarkably, and the M-16 rifle, which was in short supply, uh—I only learned that at the time, and don’t understand why to this day—uh, the M-16 rifle, obviously, in the President’s view, should go first to the Vietnamese, rather than to American forces; secondly, we had a balance of payments crisis at that time, and, uh, but, the underlying reason was things were going very well in Vietnam.

Interviewer: Do you remember the President’s reaction when you suggested that, uh, when you came out in favor of the additional troops? Did you speak to him about that? Rostow: No, my first initial reaction was, was, was for the troops, but my view was, uh, that what I felt was that my personal reaction didn’t matter, and...I myself wouldn’t feel comfortable until I look into it, uh, so I was not giving him a sober thing, sober judgment; what I recommended to him was that we set up a, an inquest, and I drafted out the terms of reference for that inquest, and he forwarded them, and... Interviewer: Now, what was your reaction to the conclusions of the task force, which...which seemed to go against the idea of more troops?

Rostow: No, by that time it was perfectly obvious that (a) we, uh, well, there was no will in the...the President was not prepared to, to advocate a...the use of the additional troops for the purposes that I thought they should be used for, for operations outside South Vietnam; we had balance of payments problems, we had M-16 problems, and, uh, you know, one of the recommendations of that task force that neither he nor I agreed with, nor Dean Rusk, was there should be no new peace initiative. Rostow: I don’t know whether you’re aware that that was one of the recommendations of the task force. The President was clear that we were going to have a peace initiative, soon as we...we finished, uh, showing these fellas that they’d failed at Tet; and I’d always had it envisaged for May, in my mind, because that is the, in terms of the weather, the end of the dry weather in...in, uh, Vietnam, and, uh,...but he...uh...he told the Australians that he was going to follow a success in setting them back with a peace...but the task force, under Clifford, came up proposal, no new peace initiative. Interviewer: What... How did the peace initiative get...?

Rostow: But the peace initiative emerged very naturally, as things unfolded successfully through February. Early in March, uh, Secretary Rusk, uh, uh, sent over a proposal which, uh, by a group of British intellectuals, including Barbara Ward, that we should adopt, uh, adopt a Communist strategy of negotiate and fight. Rostow: And that we should start by seeing if we could trigger this by offering a...a...actually, carrying out a bombing halt. And this rather appealed to Secretary Rusk, because he said, Let’s just...we’ve obviously set them back, let’s just stop bombing and see what happens. Rostow: And when the...Mr. Rusk suggested this very early in March, he said, Now Dean, you get right onto that; and he and I worked on it, I knew he was working on the refinement of this proposal, and the President knew about it, and, uh, we were talking about a speech, and in my own mind, I was...very confident there would be a proposal in it, ah because the...the situation was unfolding very well in the ground, both politically and militarily. Rostow: Uh, the...I remember we had a session, and, uh, we brought Arthur Goldberg down from New York, and, uh...we laid out the proposal, Mr. Rusk laid out the proposal. We had, uh, quite a lot of ah resistance to it, but, in any case, uh, it beca..was clear to me that the President felt that the time had come to make a proposal, and, and Rusk’s proposal of stopping the bombing and offering to negotiate from a position of strength, but we offered it...we stopped the bombing except in the tactical areas of...a bit north of the, uh, the Parallel, so that we would not be leaving our troops open to, uh, harassment.

Interviewer: What... What was the position of Clark Clifford? He was now Secretary of Defense, uh, in all this; what was your own...what issues did you agree or disagree on? Rostow: Well, it’s...it’s very hard, because his position changed in the course of March. Uh, my...Clark Clifford was a friend, uh, in this period, a very close friend; he’d come in to this job at a difficult moment, and...uh...from my post, ah which, incidentally, for anyone holding it, has the potential assets of being a man who works in a healing way with his colleagues, and Clark Clifford was a close friend. Rostow: I, uh, worked with him, and we agreed on most things, and may have disagreed on some. But the only thing I will say is that his position on the bombing business, and the negotiating situation, changed in the course of the month. Sometime around mid month, uh, he was against, uh, the Rusk type of proposal, in which you’d stop without any prior guarantees from Hanoi, uh, and see what happened.

Rostow: Uh, he wanted to get some sort of guarantee, but through quiet diplomacy, because we had never lost contact with Hanoi throughout this period, diplomatically. Uh, he...he...he opposed Rusk’s proposal; by the end of the month he agreed with it. Interviewer: Did you, uh, go into the role of the wise man that...that when they had their meeting in March, and do you recall the...they concluded that the...they came to the conclusion that the war had to be de-escalated...uh...how did you feel about that, and do you feel they were properly briefed on the situation? Rostow: I...I...the “wise men’s” meeting is, uh, uh, hard to evaluate in history, because it took place after the President had mad all his fundamental decisions. He was not...he’d decided he wasn’t’ going to run, he decided he was going to make the speech, he decided he was going to follow the Rusk proposal of stopping the bombing in the north, except in the tactical area, and offering to negotiate.

Rostow: All of that had been settled before they met, uh...my own interpretation of, uh, the, uh, the so called “Wiseman’s Meeting” was that it dramatized a split in the establishment, uh, of, uh, which had come about, uh, in the...after Tet, and perhaps had been growing for some time, and, uh, it simply saddened me. My reaction was incorporated...uh...in a note I wrote to Dick Helms, who was sitting next to me while they were there. Interviewer: Sorry. Let’s pick it up at “it simply saddened...” Interviewer: I hear some feedback from your...

Rostow: As for the wise men, I...a...the, at the time they met towards the end of March I think all the principle decisions had been made by the President. He had ah...what he had foreshadowed with the Australians had come true, there had been this maximum effort, it had been set back... Rostow: Uh, he was ready to make his uh peace proposal, uh, Rusk had taken the lead, and uh, the meeting of the wise men I think, as he, the President says in his memoirs, was, uh, a kind of demonstration of the, uh, the split in the establishment that was evident in many other ways. I think he brought them together primarily to get them briefed by Abrams and others as to what the exact situation was. He himself believed that it was a situation which if you had the facts, uh, should be heartening. Interviewer: Let’s go on to the—to the speech that he finally delivered on March 31st. Could you describe your role in drafting the speech and [cough] your agreement or or attitudes towards the proposals for the peace talks in...

Rostow: I had no significant role in the drafting of the speech itself. Uh, but I had taken it for granted since early March, when to my certain knowledge, the President had told Secretary Rusk to go to work hard on this proposal that he had in mind. And I had been in touch with him upon it. He held this very tight, and the President was adamant that we not put it into early drafts of the speech. Just as he was adamant that no one write in the fact that he wasn’t going to run again. Rostow: But I was, uh, I just assumed from early March, and indeed I assumed from the, hearing the President talk to the Australians that we were going to have a peace proposal some time in the wake of the Tet Offensive. Interviewer: When did you first learn that the President [cough] was...had decided not to run for re-election and what was your own reaction to that? Rostow: Well, I only learned definitively when he called us up on March 31st and told my wife and I to get over to the White House. He wanted to show us something before his speech. But I had heard him, the first time had never heard him say he was not going to run...uh, flatly, was in the early autumn of ’67.

Rostow: Uh, the second time...there were two occasions, actually, within a month, uh, in the autumn in which he, to a group sss said, "Now I wish you all to know that if, as of this moment, I shall not run in November '68. I haven’t fully made up my mind, but you sh..., that’s the presupposition on which you should operate." Rostow: And when Westmoreland was home in November, he called Westmoreland aside and asked him whether the troops in the field would understand if the commander in chief said he was not going to run. Rostow: And Westmoreland thought about it and said, yes they would understand. And I do believe that General Westmoreland was the last man who could have persuaded the President uh to run in ’68. Interviewer: As you observed Lyndon Johnson, what do you think motivated his decision not to run again?

Rostow: I think first he was fearful of his health—not afraid of dying—but afraid of a stroke. There was stroke in his family and he once told me he never walked past the picture of Woodrow Wilson without shuddering and thinking what in a nuclear age would happen if you had a disabled...a president disabled with stroke, but, uh, not dead, and, uh, the ambiguities that would go with that. Secondly, as he told Robert Kennedy on the 4th of April in a remarkable interview with him it was the last time they met and it was a healing occasion. Rostow: He said that, uh he had consciously used up his...his capital in his domestic ventures. And, ah, he thought that another man might better unify the country. He said the next president would not be able to get a great deal out of Congress in terms of social legislation. But nevertheless he thought that, uh, that uh, he had used up his capital as he intended to and that it was time for another man who might better unify the country. But those, I think, were the two decisive things. Interviewer: When the peace talks, the so called peace talks started in Paris in May of ’68, how could you, would you describe the mood, was it euphoric [cough], was it optimistic [cough], did people in the Administration, did you yourself think [coughing] that now the war was going to wind down?

Rostow: Ahhh, I was not euphoric, I assure you. Ah, so far as the peace talks opening in Paris, uh, I think we were pleased that we had come to that stage and we had earned it. By we, incidentally, I mean the South Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Thais, everyone, ourselves who'd seen through the Tet Offensive. Rostow: We had earned it the hard way. On the other hand, there was not one member of the Administration involved in these matters that didn’t remember the Korean negotiations which started in ’51 and only ended in ’53, so that we didn’t think that uh we were not about to throw our hats in the air and think that we were home free and the killing would wholly stop. Rostow: Uh, I’d say that uh, the fundamental attitudes that we had where we were pleased at the performance of the South Vietnamese and our own forces at Tet, we were very pleased with the political reaction in South Vietnam, and the coming to greater maturity and cohesion of the government. We were glad the negotiations were started, but there was no naïveté about, uh, when or if they would yield a constructive result.

Interviewer: [cough] How did you feel [cough] about the decision later in that year to go on to a full bombing halt? Rostow: The decision to go on to a full bombing halt in October was an extremely difficult decision to make. Uh, I did recommend that we, we, we go with it, and I wrote a special memorandum for the President and uh, uh, the decisive voice in that, incidentally, was General Abrams, who with a most moving session around the cabinet table which went on into early hours of the morning was finally asked by the President, and uh, he said, uh, President asked him, "General, if you were in my position, would you make this decision?" Rostow: And Abrams thought, and he said, "Mr. President, it will plunge you into a cesspool of controversy, but I would make the decision." Now the reason...all of us knew in though back of our minds that from the Communist point of view there was a political element in this. And we hated to have, uh, that element in it.

Rostow: On the other hand, uhhh, as commander in chief responsible for the lives of his own men and indirectly for the lives of the South Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, I mean, the President felt, and I felt, in support of him if there was any chance that this could bring, uh, a peace a day earlier, uh, that he had no right to reject it. But because of its timing, it was a most painful decision for the President to make. Interviewer: One thing I think I would like to clarify [cough] is in your own position, was at one stage you’re in favor of landing of actually intervening on the ground in North Vietnam which seemed to be a very hawkish position, and here you are supporting a full bombing halt which seems to be a very dovish position. Could you square this circle for us? Rostow: Well, I...I’ve been described as a hawk, and a dove, I’ve been attacked from the experts from the left, and the right. Uh, if you’re in a war, as we were, and war means people are getting killed, you’re overriding objective has nothing to do with hawks and doves. Your overriding objective is to get the war over as soon as possible with a minimum loss of life.

Rostow: I myself felt that without enlarging the war a more decisive use of American power could have ended that war sooner. I was not about to make my judgment an occasion for withdrawing my support from PresidentJohnson who took a different view of the appropriate conduct of the war. Rostow: The reason I did not uh, sort of resign on principle, was that he was the man that had been elected, uh, by the American people in a nuclear age to make this kind of decision. And, uh, I greatly admired and respected what he was trying to do within our society, and admired and respected the way he took a minority position on the conduct of the war, even if I thought he was not right. And I have a great sense of love and compassion for a president making these tough decisions, and if I could help him, even a little, I was about to do it. But I did not agree with the way—with his military ah methods that he used in the war. I thought they were too protracted and painful and costly. Interviewer: [cough] Now, it’s also been reported, could you speak to this subject that you were there [cough]in a way sort of keeping up the President’s morale during very difficult periods. Could you, if this is in fact true, I mean, could you give us some examples of what you were doing?

Rostow: My role in relationship to the President was to serve him in in providing in...in...information and trying to help coordinate things in the town, and when asked, to give him what advice I had. I did not take it to be my task, uh to be a morale builder in the sense of uh giving him providing him with excessively cheerful information. Rostow: Uh, it’s possible that uh my presence on his staff was uh, a minor comfort to him simply because uh, uh, I’m not only a viscerally cheerful fellow, but my views about Asia had been formed out of research and quiet study in the '50s. Rostow: I’ve never, I had deeply rooted views about the importance of Southeast Asia in our own interests and the stability of Asia, and uh, I would have much preferred to have worked in Washington in the ‘60s in which I could have spent all my time on economic development problems and not on a war. But, uh I think the fact that uh my views were deeply grounded and I went about my business, uh, with a certain amount of good cheer may have been something of a support to him. But I was not a cheerleader.

Interviewer: But apart from... Interviewer: May I call a cut? I'm sorry. Rostow: I think in the... Interviewer: Hold it. And go ahead. Rostow: In March of ’68, I do believe Secretary Rusk was peculiarly important to the president. He understood ah better than I did that the president’s decision not to run was coming out of. And, he probably, he certainly had a better insight into the notion that this peace mission that he was working on might, in some way, relate to that. I wasn’t bright enough to make that connection. Rostow: Ah. But, ah, so that ah ah the, from early March when the President instructed him, and I was present when it was done, to follow the lead that he had laid before the president. Ah. I had no doubt that a peace mission was coming and I think Mr. Rusk had the notion that it might very well relate to the president’s announcement that he wasn’t going to run in 1968.

Interviewer: Now the last point I want to raise, give you a little elbow room here. Looking back what do you think went wrong in Vietnam that’s the first point and secondly, looking back, what do you think went wrong and secondly, Interviewer: Two separate questions there... Interviewer: All right, let’s do the first one. Rostow: What went wrong in Vietnam, uh, is Watergate. Without Watergate I believe that the agreement made by President Nixon, Secretary of State Kissinger in early ’73 would have held up. Uh, the President had been re elected by an overwhelming majority, he had great prestige. He had promised in writing, he had laid down for Thieu very important conditions of American support should the uh Hanoi violate uh the agreement. Rostow: But in the course of ’73 President Nixon lost his legitimacy as Watergate came to overwhelm him. If you read his biography, it’s an extraordinary document because you just watch this cancerous growth, and of course Congress then came out from under in this business of cutting aid, and really destroying the South Vietnamese began, which was consummated by the Watergate, Congress and...I honestly believe the war would have been won as in Korea, without Watergate.

Rostow: Now, the other aspect of the war is that I do believe it was fought down through, uh, uh, ’67, ’68, ’69, down to ’75. It took so long, oh uh because of the strategy that was followed. I think in ’67 when we really had really established a logistical base and gotten improvement of our position, if we’d acted decisively, I think we could have ended the war in ’68. Rostow: Uh, but the uh, those are the two elements. There’s a third element of what went wrong, which is not much discussed, which was back to the Kennedy period. If President Kennedy had insisted, even at the uh risk of some military action, that the Laos Accords be honored, negotiated with great pain in ’62, in which the Soviets were to guarantee that Hanoi not transit Laos against South Vietnam, and we were going to make Laos a Finland, to use the Soviet analogy. If we had been very tough in enf...as tough in enforcing the agreement as we were in negotiating it, I think the tragedy in Southeast Asia would have ended then. Interviewer: What do you think about the possibility that if combat troops had uh, been put in as early a ’61...late’61 as was recommended in [noise] what’s your comment on that?

Rostow: I don’t...the question of combat troops that General Taylor and I recommended be put in...’61, uh, I don’t really believe that was very important matter in the history of the war. I think that uh, we wanted to put them in...to stabilize the area, and we had a fear as we went up in II Corps, I remember and General Don briefed us. Rostow: There was some danger we felt that the country might be cut in half by some sudden move from the Highlands. And also, that there would be a stabilization of morale. Also, if we put engineers in, they could help with the floods and do other useful things around the countryside. But uh, I think the fact that President Kennedy did not put those troops in...what he did do was to keep a marine battalion at sea and at hand for some emergency. Rostow: It was not a fundamental determinant, uh, of the outcome one way or ‘tother. Because you remember 1962 was a good year for our side. It began to become un, unstuck in ’63 when Diem began to press forward his brother Nhu.

Interviewer: I’d like to ask a question. If you could just say very briefly—back in ’67, I shared Westmoreland’s optimism because... Rostow: Just that much? Interviewer: Yeah, and then maybe a sentence or two... Rostow: Back in ’67 I shared Westmoreland’s temperate optimism, uh, because basically we were staring at the same body of evidence—military evidence, political evidence, economic evidence. Interviewer: One last question. What do you think looking at it today, has been the impact of Vietnam on our country and our position in the world? Rostow: The impact of, of Vietna—the engagement in Vietnam on the United States is uh, is extremely difficult to sort out. It’s a multiple, uh, set of impacts and they were different at different times. Uh, there was uh, the anti-war movement, for example, which cannot be wholly separated from other things that had very little to do with Vietnam which were taking place in the United States and other advanced industrial countries. Rostow: The revolt of the, of the, the university students who found themselves no longer in an elite position, but a kind of mass position ah, the uh, which is a general reaction in Japan, Western Europe, United States... Uh, the reaction against uh, materialistic affluence and so on. Those things all interwove. That was the sixties—that was the march on the Pentagon and that sort of thing.

Rostow: Uh, then there was the reaction of uh, the split in the establishment. The establishment really formed up, uh, had deeper roots when when Stimson and Knox came in 1940 to work with Franklin Roosevelt, uh, pulling together a group who were uh going to back a Democratic president, carrying on an interventionist internationalist policy, and you could almost date it from that day to the meeting of the wise men, when it split. Rostow: Uh, but that was a very traumatic event and we haven’t healed that up yet. Uh, then there’s the quite different question of the reaction of the American people to the fact of our withdrawing defeat and seeing on television our scrambling out of Saigon and leaving an ally in the lurch. A-a-a traumatic event which we haven’t yet taken the full measure. Rostow: So that uh, I, I do not pretend to a-a try to form a fully maturing, balanced view of the impact of Vietnam. All I will say, it’s multiple, has many dimensions and different dimensions at different times. And there’s been no great historian of this passage in our history.

Interviewer: You couldn’t venture [cough] a comment on the impact of Vietnam, as in, the scar of Vietnam today on...? Rostow: At the present time, you you uh cannot talk about the impact of Vietnam on the United States because its uh impact is so different. I’m a teacher so I live with young people. For them, they blessedly are born into the world all afresh, and and Vietnam in the sixties is as far away as the Second World War, or the First or the Civil War for many of the younger people. Rostow: And they want to know why, why it happened. They’re not gonna be burdened. For those who lived through the '60s to whom it was a traumatic event, uh, uh who felt passionately one way or ‘tother it’s uh something they’ll carry through their lives. This is not unique, uh, uh. Earlier generations in Europe carry the Spanish Civil War and the controversies over that through their lives. Or the Suez Crisis. Rostow: Uh, so, uh, but it, it’s, it was a major traumatic event, and uh for a lot of human beings. But right now I think that we are a resilient country, basically. Uhhh, it was a troubling, demeaning event—the full meaning of which people haven’t, uh, evolved. I think that starting with, let’s say, the Soviet moving to Afghanistan has been the reforming of a new consensus that, in a sense, we’ve got to put that behind us and get on with the job of looking after our, after our interests again. And, uh, there’s been quite a lot of healing. I wouldn’t overestimate it, though, for individual human beings. But the country has come through it in tolerable shape, but at an enormous cost to the '70s.

Interviewer: Tell us again, what you recommended in terms of going North in 1968 to finish the war, just briefly. Interviewer: We’ve got less than a minute, okay?

Interviewer: Say Ho Chi Minh Trail rather than trails in Laos. Rostow: All right. In 1967 and then again in the wake of Tet when I would have preferred that we do, uh, would have been to move our own forces into, uh, North Vietnam as far north as Vinh and then uh uh block the Ho Chi Minh Trails in Laos with our forces on the ground. And I think that would have ended the war. Interviewer: Did you tell the President that you recommended this? Rostow: Yes, I recommended it in ’67, and I recommended very much this in ’68. Interviewer: Okay, everybody quiet, room tone, camera running and noise. Interviewer: I want to correct that 1942 to 1962. And we can just do it on audio tape, cause if we...Just say 1962 a couple of times, and I can edit that in if we...

Rostow: Sure. Interviewer: Camera off? Interviewer: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Thank you. Rostow: Okay? 1962, 1962, 1962... Interviewer: Need more pauses in the trim... Rostow: 1962. 1962, 1962, 1962. Interviewer: Great. Very good....listen, wasn't too bad, we got you... Interviewer: ...before we will. Interviewer: Is that what you, roughly what you... Interviewer: I just want to see whether the flag has any effect on... Interviewer: Pull it out? Interviewer: ...editing room. If I find we're going to have to make some edits, can I check with you? Rostow: Of course you can. Interviewer: Yeah, okay, now put it... Rostow: Of course you can.