RIPPLE SALVO… #255… MARIGOLD: SECOND ACT ON STAGE… But first…
12 NOVEMBER 1966… HOME TOWN HEADLINES from the New York Times on a partly cloudy Saturday in New England…
Page 6: “Arlington”… United States Marine Corps Commandant Wallace Greene…’Never in past wars have we asked so much of our young servicemen as we are asking today in Vietnam. Never have they responded with so much professionalism and understanding. Never have they been quicker to grasp the fundamental nature of the threat to freedom.'”… Page 1: “Gemini Links Up with Its Target, Orbit Boost Called Off… 12th and last trip in series marred by faulty Agena pump that cancels test–radar unit also balky–but launching is described as the smoothest of any and docking is perfect (crew: Captain James Lovell, Jr. and Major Ed Aldrin)”… Page 1: “Political Unrest Growing in Saigon: Reshuffle Limited and regime reported weighing shift of 2 Corps generals and cabinet ministers…. Page 1: “U.S. Court Frowns On Georgia Choice By Legislature, runoff election now looms in Governorship, race by Callaway and Maddox…November 29 vote possible…ruling by Judges expected next week, 1963 edict of High Court cited.”… Page 1: “19 Lost In Crash of Radar Plane”… Air Force EC-121 Constellation falls in Atlantic off Nantucket.”…Page 1: “Vietcong Fire 200 Mortar Shells Into First Division Headquarters.”… Page 6: “Manpower for Vietnam: Military men estimate ultimate need at 600,000 to 750,000 American troops.”… Page 7: “Parades and ceremonies honor the Nations past and present fighting men.”… Page 9: “Thant asks Unconditional End of raids on North Vietnam.”…
12 NOVEMBER 1966…THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF… CIA (TS sanitized)… NORTH VIETNAM: Ho Chi Minh told { redacted} that he realized the United States could not be forced to leave Vietnam by military action. Ho said he was counting on the American public eventually tiring of the “useless slaughter.” When asked about possible neutralization of all of Vietnam under international guarantees, Ho said he had given this much thought. He did not reject the idea. Ho said very little about China and urged his visitor to remember the Vietnamese are not Chinese…. ISRAEL: Three Israeli soldiers were killed and six wounded early today when their vehicle ran over an Arab-planted mine about a mile inside Israel’s border with Jordan. This is the first such case since the UN Security Council wound up its consideration of the Israeli complaint early last week. THE NEW INCIDENT MAY WELL TRIGGER THE ISRAELI’S EXPECTED RETALIATORY STRIKE.
12 November 1966: Operation Rolling Thunder: NYT: No coverage of the air war. “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) Three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 12 November 1966.
(1) MAJOR JOHN HENRY GALLAGHER was flying an A-4E of the VMA-311 Tomcats and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai and was killed at the controls taking off from Chu Lai on a strike mission. MAJOR GALLAGHER was Killed in action. This was the fifty VMA-311 aircraft lost on this deployment. MAJOR GALLAGHER perished fifty years ago on this date…
(2) and (3) COMMANDER ROBERT CLARENCE FROSIO and LTJG JAMES GRADEY JONES embarked in USS Franklin D. Roosevelt were flying A-4Es of the VA-12 Flying Ubangiis and making a section approach through bad weather to the carrier and had a mid-air at low altitude. Neither pilot was able to eject. COMMANDER BOB FROSIO, the Squadron Commanding Officer, and LTJG JONES were returning from a strike mission and were Killed in Action and lost at sea…the Fate of countless Naval Aviators for more than a hundred years… They have rested in peace where they fell in the service of their country since 12 November 1966…
RIPPLE SALVO… #255… MARIGOLD… Every participant who served in Vietnam, and their families, should take the time to digest the events of this botched State Department and President Johnson opportunity to begin negotiations to end the Vietnam war several years earlier than when it finally happened. An earlier Ripple Salvo (#171 of 19 August 1966-refer to RTR archives ) introduced the “First Act” of MARIGOLD in this forum. I continue this episode tonight and will be returning to the subject periodically through November and December as the facts of MARIGOLD unfold in the corresponding days of November and December of 1966, that are referred to by the author of “MARIGOLD: THE LOST CHANCE FOR PEACE IN VIETNAM,” James G. Hershberg, as “Act Two.” Concurrent with my necessarily brief comments here I most strongly recommend readers read an on-line document at the National Security Archive “Cracking a Vietnam War Mystery,” a 25 page review of the 890-page “MARIGOLD.” “A new (January 2012) book that uses long hidden Communist sources to explore a potential missed opportunity for peace in 1966.” If your faith in the United States State Department wasn’t shaken by the disclosures that Secretary of State Rusk leaked target information to North Vietnam to allow North Vietnam to get civilians our of the pattern without concern for the safety of the pilots assigned to bomb those targets, or, if your blood boils as the facts of Benghazi, Libya and the deaths of four brave Americans, including our ambassador, are finally revealed, you will be gritting your teeth as you contemplate “what could have been” in December 1966 if the Secretary of State and our President had paid attention to details it was their responsibility to measure and act on. I most strongly recommend Vietnam veterans, air and ground, sea and land, Google MARIGOLD and read through the plethora of materials that have only been made available in the last five years. Cover-up? You decide. Start with http://nsaarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB369/index.htm
Why bring it up now? MARIGOLD Act Two happened in November and December 1966. Fifty years ago this month we missed a chance for peace in Vietnam that didn’t come again for years, years in which the number of American troops killed in action went from 6,250 (In early DEC 66) to more than 58,000 by the time our POWs came home. More than 39,000 of those KIA came in the years 1967, 68, and 69. This is not a “what if drill,” this is a history lesson that should be pounded into the head of every “cookie cutter” State Department SES and above servant of the people in Foggy Bottom. There is good reason to call it Foggy Bottom. Just read a little of the MARIGOLD stuff that was hidden for decades. How many guys do you know who died in Vietnam? Did they die needlessly? You decide.
Here is a paragraph from the Washington Post Review of Marigold by Gordon Goldstein of 24 February 2012…
“Was Lewandowski right? Could America have escaped its disastrous involvement in Vietnam years earlier, and at far less cost, than actually occurred? Was the failure predestined; accidental; or ‘death by murder,’ as a key participant (an American ally, no less) privately fumed, blaming Washington for its ill-timed bombing of Hanoi? What really happened? What went wrong??”
Lest we forget… Bear -30-