LBJ’s Vietnam Qualms Detailed

In the first few months after he assumed the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson was unsure about how to handle the growing American involvement in Vietnam, according to new material released recently by the LBJ Library and the National Archives.

Transcripts of secretly taped telephone calls the new president had with his advisors from January to March, 1964, show Johnson repeatedly asked his defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, and his national security advisor, the late McGeorge Bundy, for simple explanations of what was happening in the war. His requests came as he tried to figure out where to go with an issue that would ultimately roil the country and lead to Johnson’s decision not to seek a second term.

“The tapes reveal a Johnson very different from the Oliver Stone caricature of a president coming to office hellbent on getting deeply involved in a war in Vietnam,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss said, referring to Stone’s film “JFK,” which implied Kennedy was assassinated because he opposed expanding the war in Vietnam. Beschloss, who has reviewed the materials, is writing a book based on hundreds of the Johnson presidential tapes.

“What is a one-sentence statement of what our policy is out there?” Johnson asked McNamara in a telephone call March 21, 1964, one of 78 taped conversations released this month. McNamara was calling to say he was sending the president a speech the defense secretary was planning to give the next week to “take a lot of the heat off of you on that Vietnam issue.”

In an earlier conversation with McNamara on March 2, Johnson ruminated about the choices facing him on Vietnam and his desire for a memo from the defense secretary: “A couple of pages . . . four-letter words and short sentences, several paragraphs so I can read it and study it and commit it to memory, not for the purpose of using it now.”

He then went on to outline three options for dealing with Vietnam that he could present to the American public. “We could send our own divisions in there and our own Marines in there and they could start attacking the Viet Cong,” Johnson said. “We could come out of there . . . and as soon as we get out they could swallow up South Vietnam. . . . Or we can say this is the Vietnamese war and they’ve got 200,000 men, they’re untrained, and we’ve got to bring their morale up . . . and we can train them how to fight . . . and the 200,000 ultimately will be able to take care of these 25,000 [Viet Cong] and that after considering all of these . . . it seems [it] offers the best alternative to follow.”

In a phrase that grimly forecast the future, Johnson added, “Then, if the latter has failed, then, we have to make another decision, but at this point it has not failed.”

Beschloss said the newly released tapes show “a president agonized by a number of conflicting purposes. He wants to do what’s right by the free world; he is worried that he will be criticized by Kennedy people if he strays from his [Kennedy’s] intentions. And he wants to make sure the Republicans cannot denounce him for being soft on communism.”

The transcripts also show the new president was concerned that his staff was putting forward an administration line on committing forces to Vietnam before Johnson was ready. In a sharp March 4, 1964, call to Walt Rostow, one of his national security advisors, Johnson asked if Rostow had told then-Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Chalmers Roberts that a speech by Johnson earlier that week had meant “an offensive in North Vietnam” was on the horizon.

When Rostow responded by saying he had talked to Roberts and other reporters about the administration’s position “to hold Southeast Asia,” Johnson retorted: “Number one . . . I wouldn’t talk to them [reporters] at all. Number two . . . the president doesn’t know the position of the administration, so you can’t know it.”

“What we are seeing,” Beschloss said, “rather than a president who has fiercely made up his mind and unwilling to listen to advice . . . we see a president at a genuine pivotal point.”

A conversation with Bundy on March 2 seems ironic, in hindsight: “There may be another coup, but I don’t know what we can do,” Johnson said. “If there is, I guess that we just--what alternatives do we have then? We’re not going to send our troops in there, are we?”

In another conversation, Johnson asked McNamara, “Do you think it’s a mistake to explain what I’m saying now about Vietnam and what we’re faced with?”

He responded: “Well, I do think, Mr. President, that it would be wise for you to say as little as possible. The frank answer is we don’t know what’s going on out there.”

The Gulf of Tonkin incident six months later prompted a congressional resolution authorizing greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and McNamara became a proponent of U.S. involvement in the war.

McNamara released his memoirs last year, saying he left office convinced the war was a terrible mistake.

Tapes also revealed Johnson’s thoughts on other matters:

* Regarding Russian leader Nikita Khruschev, Johnson told Bundy he was tired of responding with few details to Khruschev’s proposals for peace between the two nations.

“I would like for you all to sit down and think and be some wise men, and see if you can’t come up with some proposals besides just having him run me in the corner and me dodge like a Mexican bullfighter,” the then-president said on Jan. 2, 1964.

* Referring to the John F. Kennedy assassination, Johnson told aide Jim Rowley, head of Johnson’s security detail, he wanted a cutback in the number of agents assigned to protect him.

“I want a report of the number of people assigned to Kennedy the day he died, and the number assigned to me now. And if mine are not less, I want them less right quick,” Johnson said. “. . . I don’t need eight people following me to church.”

Juan B. Elizondo Jr. of the Associated Press contributed to this story.