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7 —————————— SNIE 14.3-67 Robert S. McNamara no longer trusted his military men. In April 1967 he quietly asked the CIA for an objective assessment of the war, and the appraisal he received was not encouraging. Viet Cong strength, Langley told him, was five hundred thousand; the American pacification program had stalled; and the air campaign against North Vietnam would not achieve its desired results. CIA Director Richard Helms disliked McNamara’s furtive courtship of the agency. During World War II, Helms, a Williams College graduate with experience as a foreign reporter, had been essentially drafted into the OSS. After the war, and after realizing that he lacked the financial independence to fulfill his dream of becoming a newspaper publisher, Helms decided to make the newly formed CIA his career. Diligent, alert, and above all loyal, Helms perhaps more than anybody else understood the agency’s role within the Washington, D.C., power structure — and understood that the CIA was rightly the president’s. McNamara’s secret request had put Helms in a tricky situation vis-à-vis the White House, and he would need to consider the political implications of this for upcoming Special National Intelligence Estimate 14.3-67. SNIE 14.3-67 would assess, on behalf of the president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Vietnamese Communists’ abilities to prolong the war. Special indicated that the estimate request came from outside the CIA, 14.3 stood for Indochina, and 67 was the year. As intelligence products go, the SNIE 14.3-67 document would be an influential one, and Helms predicted internecine warfare within the intelligence community over its production. He well knew that Vietnam War statistics were a contentious commodity in D.C. power circles, and fearing the worst Helms resignedly warned his 105 Hiam_A MONUMENT TO DECEIT_text_Layout 1 1/28/14 9:43 AM Page 105 lieutenants at Langley that the “Vietnam numbers game” would be played “with ever increasing heat and political overtones” in the year ahead. George Carver, however, didn’t share his boss’s reticence for controversy. He viewed SNIE 14.3-67 as a golden opportunity to advance SAVA’s prestige and influence. Through back channels Carver had just told the White House that MACV figures for the Viet Cong “may be extremely low,” to the CIA hierarchy Carver said that these statistics “should be raised, perhaps doubled,” and to the State Department he confided that the true number of Viet Cong are “more than 300,000” and “as high as 500,000.” Carver on this matter had the backing of many at headquarters who believed that “the company” was on the right side of this issue. Adams, home from his third trip to Vietnam, enjoyed one of his periodic resurrections as agency hero.1 SNIE 14.3-67 was to be drafted by the Office of National Estimates (ONE), an entity set up in the early days of the CIA to serve as the capstone of the analytical effort. The Board of National Estimates directed ONE, and a small staff carried out its orders. The staff’s work was coordinated with all interested parties, and ideally ONE’s final estimates represented unanimity. If total agreement was not possible, dissenters had two options. They could accept the estimate generally but “take a footnote” with their specific objections, or else they could appeal to the U.S. Intelligence Board and argue for more substantial changes. Helms as director of the CIA was also the USIB chairman, however, and had the final say on all estimates. A ONE staffer, Robert Layton, now back at headquarters from his stint at the Saigon Collation Branch, was tasked to draft SNIE 14.3-67. He often consulted Adams on the matter. Adams told Layton that the MACV numbers in use since “time immemorial” didn’t make sense anymore, and Layton was receptive to including higher estimates for Viet Cong forces in SNIE 14.3-67, believing that Adams could always back up his view with hard evidence. But there was conflict: “Sam and I had a lot of slinging matches because he had his standards, some of which I knew damn well you couldn’t sell.” Adams was not always happy with Layton but, Layton said, “At least I was willing to listen to him; we could talk to some degree the same language.” 106 A MONUMENT TO DECEIT Hiam_A MONUMENT TO DECEIT_text_Layout 1 1/28/14 9:43 AM Page 106 [3.137.213...

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