RIPPLE SALVO… #555… On 12 September 1967 CIA Director Richard Helms delivered to President Johnson a 33-page report that LBJ “tossed aside after a merely cursory reading.”…. The report prophesied the outcome of the Vietnam war…”U.S. concessions leading to a negotiated agreement, followed by communist takeover within a relatively brief period.” This report remained in the CIA’s Top Secret archives until 1998… but first…
Good Morning: Day FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY-FIVE of 1,000 day journal looking back fifty years to the air war called Operation Rolling Thunder… Lest we forget…
12 September 1967…HEAD LINES from The New York Times on sunny Tuesday in New York City 50 years ago…
SUMMER IN AMERICA 1967… Page 1: “Teacher’s Tie-Up City Schools; 400,000 Pupils Miss Opening Day–LI Railroad Road Stoppage Affects 80,000–Train Service Out–Railroad Says Runs Will Be 80-90% Today”... “…a wildcat stoppage by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers forced a drastic slowdown…Schools picketed as volunteers help man the classrooms…The city’s school system was disrupted yesterday as 46,000 of the city’s 58,000 teachers stayed away. so did 400,000 of their one million students….Teachers want a minimum starting salary of $7,000/yr and have refused a $6,600 offer.”… Page 1: “Hurricane Beulah Batters Dominican Republic–Headed for United States”... Page 13: “U.S. Court Turns Down attack On House Anti-Communist Unit”... “A three-judge Federal District Court panel rebuffed today an attempt by the ACLU to have the House Committee on Un-American Activities declared unconstitutional…by a 2-1 decision ruled it did not have jurisdiction to consider the committees constitutionality. The decision will be appealed by the ACLU to the Supreme Court.”… Page 25: “East St. Louis Negroes Throw Fire Bombs In Fresh Disorders”… “a second round of unrest followed a speech by H. Rap Brown. Police Chief: ‘We never had any trouble until he showed up.’… the flare-up was precipitated by the police shooting of an 18-year old Negro school dropout who was shot to death when he attempted to wrest a gun from a policeman and then fled, refusing to stop in a stolen car investigation….H. Rap Brown: ‘America has no use for Negroes.’ “
Page 34: “Many In Congress Prefer Tax Reform to Johnson’s Plan for Tax Increase”… Page 36: “Chrysler Raises Prices On ’68 Cars”...”Lowest priced car at $2,248 in ’68. Chrysler New Yorker at $4,535 up from $4,339.”… Page 38: “Lieutenant General James Gavin Intensifies Bid to Sway GOP—Meets Scranton in Effort To Influence Party On War”... “Gavin leading a search for a candidate committed to deescalating the war. The general has long contended that the military escalation in Vietnam has impaired the national effort to meet the urban crisis.”
VIETNAM: Page 15: “MORSE PROPOSED U.N. PEACE MOVE–URGES CONGRESS TO REQUEST SECURITY COUNCIL MEET ON VIETNAM”... “Senator Wayne Morse introduced today a resolution calling upon President Johnson to request an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council ‘to consider all aspects of the ear in Vietnam and to act to end the conflict.’ The resolution would pledge the United States in advance ‘to accept and carry out any decision on the matter by the Security Council. This would mean, the Senator’s office explained, that if a majority of the council should call on the United Sates to end the bombing of North Vietnam, the United States would not exercise its veto even though it opposes the decision.”… Texas Senator John Tower, the only other Senator in the chamber other than Senator Morse and Kentucky Senator Sherman Cooper, who was in support of a UN sponsored solution, responded to the Senator Morse resolution: ‘If the United States planes close the port of Haiphong as they did in 1943 the principal port of North Vietnam will be out of the war and victory for the allies will be nearer.'” The session was interrupted by three men and two women–members of the ‘Direct Action Project for the National Mobilization Committee. They thew about 100 multicolored, mimeographed anti-war leaflets to the floor of the Senate from the visitors gallery… a bearded young man in the front row began throwing the leaflets…he was joined by the other four demonstrators. The leaflets were addressed to ‘All U.S. Congressmen’ and declared: ‘Your first order of business this session should be a general declaration of peace, followed by immediate withdrawal of troops in Vietnam, an end to conscription and an end to the suppression of black Americans. Until you meet these emergencies, there will be sustained disturbances in the Government apparatus.’
VIETNAM: Humble Host is ever-alert for the short DOD announcements of “servicemen who were killed in action.” The small one or two-inch news items are usually found on an inside page at the bottom of a column of news. During the period 9-15 September the NYT posted five announcements with the names of American servicemen “killed in action.” In this week 50 years ago Americans killed in action in Vietnam: 37+95+38+56+41=267… To date: a total of 13,000 KIA in the Vietnam war. Sadly, 45,000 brave American young men will join these fallen heroes fighting an “unwinnable war.”
12 September 1967… The President’s TS Daily CIA Brief…NORTH VIETNAM: Security consciousness in North Vietnam: Foreign observers on national day report that the meeting was surrounded by strict security precautions that accompany the appearances of top leadership. The North Vietnamese give visiting foreigners and diplomats as little as one hour notice, explaining that the danger of air raids makes such arrangements….
12 SEPTEMBER 1967… NEW YORK TIMES (12 Sept reporting 11 Sept ops) Page 1: “Haiphong Bridges Hit By U.S. Bombs–Rail Yards Struck–Warehouses Also a Target in Move to Isolate Major Port From Rest of Country–Blow to Supply Seen”… “3 Cargo ships Believed Hit By Shrapnel From Missiles Fired By North Vietnamese”... Navy carrier pilots bombed four targets in Haiphong and its suburbs yesterday (11th) in a move to isolate the city, North Vietnam’s major port. Pilots from two carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin smashed the city’s railroad yard and a major warehouse area in the suburbs and knocked out two bridges with air-to-ground missiles. One bridge carried highway traffic over a canal three-quarters of a mile from the center of the city and the other was a Haiphong rail and highway bridge over another canal in a southwestern corner of the city. The attacks were reported to have halted all rail movements from the port. All roads out of the city were also reported cut except one highway bridge three miles to the southwest.
“In the latest attacks F-4 Phantoms and A-4 Skyhawks from the carrier CORAL SEA blasted the warehouse area just west of the city limits, hitting at 13 warehouses and a support building... Pilots from the ORISKANY reported they had scored two hits on each of the two bridges. Navy pilots also hit three antiaircraft sites and two surface-to-missiles sites near the bridges. Pilots said the flak was intense and that numerous missiles had been fired at them over the targets… Although no planes were lost during these attacks, an Air Force B-57 Canberra bomber was shot down by round fire during an attack in southern North Vietnam. (This loss was reported on the 10 September post. Crew: Major N. Overly, POW, and Capt GD Peterson, KIA) It was the 674th aircraft lost over the North.”…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) there was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 12 September 1967.
(1) CAPTAIN J.E. BIRMINGHAM and 1LT R.A. KOPP were flying an RF-4C of the 12th TRS and 460th TRW out of Tan Son Nhut on a night photo reconnaissance mission running Route 1A from the DMZ northward. Eight miles north of the buffer zone they were hit by ground fire and turned seaward in attempt to fly the damaged aircraft to Danang. No luck. Forced to eject off the coast east of Quang Tri where they were rescued by an Air Force helicopter to fly and fight again….
RIPPLE SALVO… #555… “The Consequences of Defeat in Vietnam”… “On September 12, 1967 Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms submitted to President Johnson a report entitled “Implications of An Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam.” Written by intelligence analysts in the Office of National Estimates, the report dealt with the impact of failure to sustain the non-Communist state in South Vietnam. This failure would not come as a result of a complete military and political collapse of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, but would evolve from the likely compromise solution that would result from a peace settlement negotiated within a relatively brief period of time and to the advantage of the Vietnamese Communists. The risk of an unfavorable outcome in Vietnam were considerable. The authors of the report described the permanent damage that would result to the United States in the international arena, the internal dissension that would follow, and the destabilization that would arise in other areas of Southeast Asia. They mitigated their conclusions, however, by suggesting that ‘such risks are probably more limited and controllable than most previous argument has indicated.’ (Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Vietnam, Outcome CIA Study).”
Humble Host most strongly recommends an essay available on-line by Mark Atwood Lawrence for History Now titled “The Consequences of Defeat in Vietnam” be added to your reading. In September 1967 our President was handed a serious “best guess” on where our nation was headed. At that point the war had claimed about 13,000 American warrior’s lives. Before the prophecy of the CIA study, which was not available to Vietnam war scholars and authors until declassified in the late 1990s, another 45,000 brave Americans would perish in the unwinnable war.
Humble Host is of the opinion that the CIA has a similar report in the 2017 TS-SCI files entitled “The Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Afghanistan,” and another entitled “The Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Iraq”… Further, Presidents G.W Bush, Obama and Trump were given an opportunity to consider the implications of unfavorable outcomes in both our hopeless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and after a cursory look all three of our fearless leaders put them aside as not providing the conclusion most desired, just as LBJ did with the Vietnam outlook on 12 September 1967. So we proceed to spend blood and treasure on lost causes. Quagmires, if you prefer.
RTR Quote for 12 September: SAMUEL JOHNSON, The Patriot: “He that raises false hopes to serve a present purpose, only makes a way for disappointment and discontent.”…
Lest we forget… Bear