RIPPLE SALVO… #888… 9 JULY 1968: MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence; SUBJECT: New Book: THE BETRAYAL by LCOL WILLIAM R. CORSON, USMC (ret.)”… The memo, available from the CIA Reading Room, sums up the Colonel’s book this way: “The Betrayal is a bitter, cynical and smart alecky book highly critical of the Army, the State Department, the South Vietnamese hierarchy and ARVN. Only the Marine Corps comes out unscathed; the author’s hero–General Krulak. The jacket blurb states that Col. Corson has lived, worked and traveled throughout Southeast Asia and participated in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. His final months on duty were spent in Washington as a Systems Analyst in the area of pacification and insurgency in the Southeast Asia Programs Division.”… Marquis Childs of the St. Louis Post Dispatch said of the book back in 1968: “an angry book by an angry man, THE BETRAYAL is noteworthy, not for the supercharged emotion barely controlled, but because the author maps a reasonable way out of the war.”… Humble Host will load the rocket pod with a full load of LIEUTENANT COLONEL CORSON’s 5″ Zunis for Single Fire in several posts over the next week. LCOL CORSON was threatened with Court Martial if he persisted in publishing this book that attacked the entire Johnson Administration in the middle of an election campaign… He published… more below… but first…
GOOD MORNING…Day EIGHT HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT of a review of the history surrounding the employment of the nation’s air forces against the North Vietnamese in Operation Rolling Thunder during the years 1965 to 1 November 1968…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Saturday, 10 August 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “U.S. TROOPS RETURNING FIRE KILL 15 CIVILIANS IN DELTA”…”American force in the Mekong Delta killed 15 civilians yesterday while defending themselves against Vietcong ambushes, the United States military command said tonight. More than 100 were wounded. the ambushes took place a Army and Navy flotillas were escorting artillery barrages on the muddy, monsoon-swollen Cantho River, 80 miles south of Saigon. The Americans fired back with rifles and .50-caliber machine guns. a military spokesman said the fire hit civilians in Cairang, a river town of about 5,800. ‘Unfortunately, the ambushes came at a bend in the river near the town,’ an American officer who visited Cairang said today. ‘The bullets just sailed across the bend and into the town.’… Thirty-five miles northwest of Saigon troops of the 101st Air Cavalry Division clashed with an enemy force armed with rocket grenades and automatic weapons. Eleven of the enemy and two Americans were killed in the action… Allied forces sealed off a coastal village five miles northeast of Hue and killed 42 members of an enemy force menacing th ancient capital while suffering no casualties.”… Page 5: “VIETCONG CLAIM BIG GAINS IN ’68–COMMUNIQUE IN HANOI SAYS PERIOD IS BEST OF WAR”… “The commander of the People’s Liberation Armed forces, or Vietcong, in a review distributed today covering the first half of 1968, said achievements had far surpassed those of any previous half-year….’a total of 380,000 enemy, including 133,000 American troops were killed, wounded or captured,’ the communique said. It claimed the downing or destruction on the ground of more that 4,400 aircraft and the destruction of 8,730 vehicles, including 4,500 tanks and armored troop carriers and more than 700 big guns.”…
PEACE TALKS: Page 1.”NORTH VIETNAMESE DAMPEN SPECULATION ON ‘SIGNAL’–Officials In Paris Draw Bsck From Hint That Lull In War Has Political Significance”…(Also: see the link to Historical Document 327 next para)…
Page 1: “JOHNSON TO BRIEF NIXON AND AGNEW ON TALKS IN PARIS–Republican Nominees To Fly To Ranch Today–Will See Rusk, Vance and Helms”… (Outline of briefing at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d327)… Page 12: “HUMPHREY VISITS JOHNSON IN TEXAS–Meeting Is Devoted to Foreign Affairs”… Page 1: “SENATOR McCARTHY READY TO RUN AGAINST HUMPHREY–He will Open Drive Today As Peace Candidate With Some Kennedy Support”… Page 13: “RACIAL TICKET OF G.O.P. SCORED BY NEGROES–N.A.A.C.P. OFFICIAL CRITICAL OF REPUBLICAN CHOICES”… Page 1: MOSCOW STRESSES PARTY SUPREMACY–Warns Against Any Move Toward Liberalization”… Page 1: “TITO AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA LEADERS CONFER AS PRAGUE EXULTS”…
10 AUGUST 1968…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (11 Aug reporting 10 Aug ops)… Page 6: “In the air war, an Air Force F-105 participating in the 130 strike missions (multi-plane–Humble Host opines that the average “mission” was a division of four aircraft= four sorties) over North Vietnam, was shot down just north of the demilitarized zone, which straddles the border between North and South Vietnam. The pilot was listed as missing.”… VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 10 August 1968. The loss reported in the brief note in the New York Times refers to the F-105D downed on 9 August piloted by COLONEL David WINN, who Humble Host saluted WITH HIGHEST RESPECT in Ripple Salvo #887…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) FOR THE FOUR 10 AUGUST DATES OF THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATIONS OVER NORTH VIETNAM…
1965… LTJG LAWRENCE SCOTT MAILHES, USN… (KIA)…
1966… LCDR JOSEPH STEPHEN HENRIQUEZ, USN… (KIA)…
1967… NONE…
1968… NONE…
RIPPLE SALVO… #888… THE BETRAYAL was a controversial book published in July 1968 concurrent with the voluntary retirement of LCOL WILLIAM CORSON. Corson’s blunt criticism of the way the war was being fought and lost is concluded by a chapter titled “To Stay or Not to Stay?”…Therein he presented OpPlans for both options. At the time–July-68– he boldly stepped forward to say what many were thinking, but lacked the courage to say, 26,000 American troops had fallen. Before the war came to its disastrous ending nearly five years later, 32,000 additional American troops would give up their lives pursuing a lost cause. LCOL CORSON is gone. His legacy is THE BETRAYAL. The book and the experience and ideas of LCOL CORSON have lasting pertinence for current and future relations and engagements in our foreign military operations. Humble Host will focus on THE BETRAYAL and “eat this elephant one bite at a time” over the next week…
LCOL CORSON was responding to a call to duty spoken by President John F. Kennedy a month before he was assassinated… RTR Quote for 10 August: “JOHN F. KENNEDY, Amherst College, October 1963: “The higher duty of the writer…is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may…. In serving his vision of the truth the artist best serves his nation.”…
Lest we forget… Bear