How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965

CHAPTER SEVEN: Crossing the Threshold: ANALYSIS

CHAPTER SEVEN Crossing the Threshold: ANALYSIS IN THE PERIOD from late 1964 through the retaliation for the Communist attack on Pleiku in February 1965, President Johnson and his associates were in superficial agreement but underlying disagreement about how to strengthen the military effort in Vietnam. Ambassador Taylor had requested authorization for air strikes but opposed the use of ground forces. The president had criticized the requests he received for bombers and suggested ground operations by unconventional forces. General Westmoreland had come up with a thirty-four-battalion conventional force estimate for base protection, which Ambassador Taylor described as "startling." Secretary of State Rusk disagreed with Secretary of Defense McNamara and Special Assistant McGeorge Bundy about the immediate need to use u.S. military power to force a change in Communist policy. THE ROLE OF THE ADVISORY SYSTEM Organizational decision making inevitably is based on imperfect information and analysis.1 Nevertheless, the Johnson administration 's unresolved, unexamined policy disagreements are conspicuous . The chances that policy differences would not be addressed were increased by the changes in the national security policyIjames G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations, especially "Cognitive Limits on Rationality," 137-71. Crossing the Threshold: ANALYSIS 135 making procedures after January 1961. Kennedy and his associates dismantled the agenda-setting NSC Planning Board and the implementation-planning Operations Coordinating Board. Kennedy also reduced the frequency of NSC meetings and, in general, departed from Eisenhower's practice of making the NSC a central deliberative forum. The Kennedy changes continued under Johnson. Like Kennedy, Johnson relied upon informal advising. In 1964 and 1965, his top foreign policy advisers were Secretary of State Rusk, Defense Secretary McNamara and Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, plus a changing array of ancillary advisers: e.g. George Ball, William Bundy, John McNaughton and the CIA directors during this period-John McCone and later William Raborn. Johnson also remained in close touch with his ambassadors to Saigon (Lodge until his first tour of duty ended in 1964 and then Taylor through July 1965) and sent McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and other top advisers on fact-finding missions to South Vietnam. Johnson went for long periods without calling the NSC into session and then often used it for briefings rather than policy discussions. There were no NSC meetings from October 1964 to the eve of the Pleiku incident in February 1965. During the first eighteen days of February, there were six NSC meetings, all dealing with Vietnam, with half focusing on the response to Pleiku, then only four more in the period from February 18 through July. At times in 1965, Johnson partially systematized his informal procedures by holding regular Tuesday luncheon meetings with top advisers, but these were not based on anything approximating the staff work that informed Eisenhower's weekly NSC meetings.2 2The NSC was convened 358 times during Eisenhower's presidency, an average of about 45 meetings a year. Kennedy convened the NSC 21 times in 1961, 10 times in 1962 and 12 times in 1963. johnson's NSC met 24 times in 1964, but only 11 times in 1965. In johnson's three remaining years in office, it averaged a little more than a dozen meetings a year. NSC Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Library; Index to National Security Council Meetings, NSC Meetings File, Kennedy Library; NSC Meeting Files, Johnson Library. Humphrey , "Tuesday Lunches at the Johnson White House: A Preliminary Assessment ." Graff, The Tuesday Cabinet. 136 HOW PRESIDENTS TEST REALITY The operating styles of johnson's leading aides also affected the decision-making process. As McGeorge Bundy's fork in the Y memorandum shows, even the views of the two other members of the triumvirate of top Johnson advisers-Rusk and McNamara -sometimes reached Johnson accompanied by Bundy's gloss. It was Bundy who informed Johnson that he and McNamara leaned toward intervention, warning of the danger of being forced out of Vietnam "in humiliating circumstances." Rusk's view reached Johnson via Bundy and accompanied by Bundy's assertion that Rusk's unwillingness to support escalation was "not good enough." The nature of Bundy's role as special assistant to the president for national security affairs is central to any understanding of the operation of johnson's core national security advisory group. As his January 27 memorandum to Johnson makes clear, he was a policy advocate as well as process manager. (He also sometimes had...