I forgot why we stopped.

We stopped because the tape ran out.

No, there was another reason first.

It was the dog.

The dog. The dog. It was an interruption.

Oh, the dog. Right.

I'll tape the last question again, okay?

Bars? You need bars? Okay, terrific.

Ready? Looking back, do you think you made a mistake by leaving Vietnam in '56?

When I left Vietnam in 1956 I was a very tired person. I felt that I should go someplace and sleep for about a month without getting up and trying anything else. So I was physically exhausted and not certain that by staying on in such a condition I could have been very helpful.

Looking back at all this period there are some things that I might have been able to do by staying that might have been very constructive and possibly even change the course of events that would happen. For example, the difficulties in part that Vietnam had are a mistrust between individuals in leadership positions.

For a time even the president and vice president of South Vietnam had some personal feelings going between them that were wrong and that ordinarily I could have brought them together by making them meet each other face to face and talking.

Which I had done previously but these were essentially old friends who had started mistrusting each other, too busy to get in and talk to a person and be satisfied in a face to face conversation and letting things drift when a mutual friend could have brought them together and had them just clear up something in a few moments.

Do you think looking back that you were beginning to have some doubts about Diem's capacity to govern at that time?

I didn't have doubts about his capacity to govern at that time except in his being able, being flexible enough to take in some of his loyal opposition and giving public men among them a chance to do public service.

In this way he had a smallness of character that I felt was unlike the man that I'd seen mostly in him. And he simply let very useful parts of the political and social structure in Vietnam lay dormant or be opponents when they could very well have been pulling together and helping the common cause.

Looking back again, what do you think went wrong in American policy in Vietnam between '54 and '61?

American policy was based on views of Americans who were there, both as officials and as journalists and so on, observers. And as the observers would change, there were always a new generation you might say just learning about a country and finding much of it exotic and strange but explainable to individuals in terms that he was most familiar with which was his own background and culture.

And gradually the Vietnamese image came out as quite an exotic, strange people wearing strange clothes, looking strange to Americans, with a scenery backdrop that was very different from anything that we know. And as we started seeing them as strangers, the interpretation of their motives and so forth became that of strangers.

So a lack of understanding gradually built up as more people were exposed. And in combat time when Americans were in combat, I myself know this, that the decisive officials, the military leadership and our political leadership as well as our economic leadership kept acting largely as though Vietnam had just started as a country the day before they got there. And it was always new to them.

And in talking about things, you have to take time out with such people and explain well, so and so is this close to the other one, this part of the country is noted for this and you can expect this to happen out there. And to get them reacquainted. This was reflected in a tremendous communication system that reflected the American genius to do things electronically so that a tremendous amount of observation was flowing into Washington where decisions were being made and in such quantities that they had to be put on computers to be read out and reflected and summed up.

Computers don't think the way individuals do. We haven't developed the art yet where we can put in the necessary social science into mathematics to bring the right answers to us. So that some of the mistakes that were made in policy making, some of the little jarrings off the true path came about by too much reliance on...well, from knowing too much and letting machines do some thinking for us.

From 1957 until 61, we had the mission there under Ambassador Durbrow and the MAAG commander there was Gen. Williams. And of course there's a lot on the record about that and there was a lot of squabbling within the mission itself. But there's also a report...

Hold on a minute before you ask him the question. Sorry.

What?

Just wait a moment. All right, re-ask your question.

What's the difference? We're going to do it again anyway.

Just pick it up from there.

There's been reported that you recommended that the mission, especially after Kennedy came in, the mission be changed and that Durbrow be replaced. Is that correct?

As far as Ambassador Durbrow is concerned, I visited Vietnam just before the Kennedy inaugural and Ambassador Durbrow was working day and night and I felt that he was a physically exhausted person.

He was lying down physically to rest a great deal of the time and as much out of concern for him as anything else and his health and so on, I felt that he should be pulled out and given a chance to recoup a little bit. I remembered what I was like after a period out there, of exhaustion and I felt that Durbrow was very close to exhaustion and that was the real reason for it. He was...it was faulting some of his decisions, too, I felt, by this tiredness and in such a position you feel like taking the shortest way out of getting something done.

Could you elaborate on some of the decisions you felt might...

I don't recall the decisions definitely at the time but this was based more or less on the getting together of Americans in top positions and Vietnamese in top positions and having a chance to afford great candor with each other and the meetings had taken on a more formal nature than...that wouldn't really truly permit such candor with each other.

And I felt that under such conditions that a change would help the two camps of officials, you might say, get together. I remember this was indicated in a lot of the little ways of the attitudes of people about their...the people in the other camp.

Of why don't you stay on and help with a friend on this. We can't talk to Americans any more because they don't understand things and the American saying well, things have changed since you were last out here. We do this way with people. These are just little indicators of some strain and difficulty.

When you went out at this period, this was during the transition period after President Kennedy was elected...

It was just before...well, after he was elected...the transition just before the inaugural.

Now you recall there was an attempt to coup against Diem in November '60. (Cough) When you saw Diem there at that stage, was he shaken up? What was his reaction to that attempted coup?

Diem was still full of feelings and talk about the attempted coup in '60 when I saw him late in '60. He took me up and showed me where 50 caliber machine guns had come in from positions a block away and gone in through the bedroom, across his bed and hit in the bathroom. And I asked him where he was standing and he showed me. He was behind the wall in the bathroom. He said they meant to kill me because this is where it came across the bed.

And close enough to have hit somebody on the bed. And I said how come you were in the bathroom. He said I'd gone in there to get something from the medicine cabinet and just got it open when they opened fire. He said I wasn't going out there while they were shooting, you know.

But did he, did he feel that the coup was a warning to him, that he ought to reform or change?

We had long talks at that period in late '60 about motives of people that were trying to kill him, of the opposition that was growing against him and as a matter of fact, he asked me one time where I'd been the afternoon before and I said are you having me followed and kept under surveillance and he put that aside and I said well, it's obvious you are. And I said I knew that and I got in with some of your opposition yesterday and made damned sure you didn't know who I was talking to.

Just to find out what their true feelings are on this thing. And this is what they feel about you. And I told him. And I said these are good people who love this country and who want to do some things, who have the wisdom to call them in and it gave them something to do, to do a superb job of helping you as a leader. And he said who are they. And I said I think you know some of them. You just take any good Vietnamese who isn't in helping you right now who should be and you ask them to do it and don't let me name them. You go ahead...you know who the leaders are.

So the disturbing thing was that these were good people. They were people who had been ministers in previous cabinets of his and others who had political groups that supported them, and who were tremendously patriotic and just felt they were spoiling on the vine and this man was not doing everything he could or should and if the country wasn't having its best abilities being used.

And they were talking very bitterly to me about some of the things he had done. And my role I felt then and as an American, as an outsider but wishing them well as our country did...it was our policy to let this be known on both sides that they were thinking on the other and trying desperately as a mutual friend to bring the people together.

As I recall Diem and Durbrow were getting along very badly at that time.

There were some talks about that. This is what, the thing Americans don't understand, what really Diem was telling me. I didn't get in and ask him specifically about how he was getting along with Americans there. I was really more concerned about how he was getting along with the Vietnamese who should be doing things to help their country.

You sent a memo to Defense Secretary McNamara on January 17, 1961 just before the Kennedy inauguration. There was a phrase that was in that memo. You said, "there are practically no George Washingtons, Thomas Jeffersons or Tom Paine in Saigon today." What did you mean by that.

By referring to Americans in the American revolution, and naming such people in this memo that I wrote after my trip out in Vietnam at the end of 1960, I was trying to tell American leaders who were making policy that they were looking to a...at a country in a time of its peril and its great need to not think of them in ordinary terms. That we had our George Washington, we had Tom Paine, we had a Ben Franklin but they didn't out there and they couldn't solve problems the way we Americans thought they should. They had to solve it from their own backgrounds, in their own ways.

And if we saw people that didn't look as big in stature as our own heroes from our own revolution, we should have some compassion and some understanding and empathy with the people who were in a tough spot and help them overcome some of their difficulties without just saying you must do this or we want you to do this and then walking away and when it isn't done the way we'd like to see it, just be hyper critical of their performance.

Were you beginning then to have doubts or lose hope that the United States could encourage the South Vietnamese to act decisively enough against the communists?

I had some some concerns that the relationship between American advisors and Vietnamese officials and officers, that the...their behavior and work would be such that the Vietnamese would grow more confident and stronger and more expert in what they were doing. And I felt that these qualities among the Vietnamese to help themselves, to make their own decisions, to make the best uses of their capabilities and resources were the critical factors in the struggle against North Vietnam.

Now in the same...in that same memo you sent to McNamara, you said that Vietnam ought to be considered to be in critical condition and be treated as, I'm quoting here, "a combat area of the cold war." What were you thinking of specifically? What did you advocate?

The terminology that I used, that Vietnam was critical and that it was in a program emergency situation and in the...and to therefore be given a little different intensity of attention by the United States in the cold war terms, was that I had just been in a country where roads were under fire when they hadn't been when I left there.

That big segments of both population and geography territorial area out in the countryside were being contested by enemy guerrillas who hadn't been in existence before and in such conditions there was an armed struggle taking place and a political struggle taking place that would need some change of thinking in how these people were to be helped. And that we...if we were going to help these people go along in the same old standard ways but do some rethinking and rechecking.

Did you have some specific recommendations as to what to do?

I had some. I can't remember what all they were now but I had a list of recommendations in this memo...it was some years ago and I can't remember. People have quoted things from that memo to me and I've asked them who wrote it. And they said, "You did." And I hadn't remembered it at all.

Why, looking back, why was it that the communist guerrillas were really in many ways much more effective than the South Vietnamese army and political structure?

Well, communist guerrillas are an expression of an authoritarian system in politics and as such they have very strict disciplines. So part of the reason the North Vietnamese and the communist guerrillas and the regular forces behaved so differently than the South Vietnamese stem from the authoritarian practices.

Now there's a carrot and stick with this. The stick is the very harsh discipline that they run under. The carrot is the political reality to them that they make use of and apply and their own campaigns which the communist generals, their leadership in combat always strove towards having the influence and control over the people in the battlegrounds.

Our side was always going after defeating the enemy forces with military. So essentially they...the Vietnamese communists were trying to gain control over the people where we were trying to destroy an enemy. They were political, we were military. And what you...they figured once they got control of the people and the ways that they lived and so on, that when the country...now this was done by them through a political cadre system that they had throughout their armed forces, that reported up through separate channels of command and communication up to their headquarters where the political cadre would have an equal voice with the military commander.

And thus was a very important figure in their armed forces. He would lecture the troops on political motives before going in to combat, he would do his best all the time to have them get along with the people and to gain the confidence of the people or alliance with them. After the combat, after action meeting in which it was like a public confessional, each of the troops would have to get up and explain what he did wrong in combat and why he's never going to do it again and apologize to his comrades.

Well, you can see what happens in combat when, you know afterwards he's got to stand up and talk to the men to the right and left of you how you let them down by either wrong thinking or action at the time or he wasn't all gung ho as he was. So that the motivation of the forces was constantly at a high political pitch and they were always being in a position of hearing explanations of why they were doing something and what its end results were supposed to be.

Where on our side we simply never got into a troop information and education program that we had in this country and the troops often only had vague notions of why they were in the place and were doing something for a government that they knew just the names of a few individuals in.

Now, in a way, it's, you know, not only by what you're saying, but in many ways by things you've written, you seem to project a certain admiration for the way the communists organized themselves and the real question is what was lacking in our clients that they couldn't organize themselves in this way? What was the ingredient that was missing?

Well, the basic element and the difference between the two sides is that an authoritarian form of control would permit a commander or an official to take the man out who disobeyed and shoot him, kill him. On our side we don't do such things. There's a legal system that protects an individual. You can charge him but he goes to a trial and goes through a legal process. There the legal process is the man in charge metes out the punishment on the spot. So this is one of a many faceted type of thing.

I'm talking about, I'm talking about the Vietnamese. I mean the...

I'm talking about the Vietnamese.

Well, I mean they were...

A soldier in the Vietnamese army who misbehaved, if he was on the communist side and the officer didn't like what he had done they'd shoot him as an example to the men. I don't want you doing things like this, boom, and kill him. For the same type of thing in the Vietnamese army on our side, the officer would bring charges against him. And he'd be arrested and have to face a court martial. And then they'd abide by whatever the judgment was for the punishment on that.

What kind of response, when you talked to President Kennedy about Vietnam, what kind of policies did you recommend to him, and what kind of...what was his response? What do you think he really wanted in Vietnam?

I've only talked...I only talked to President Kennedy about some very specific types of problems out in Vietnam, mostly in answers to questions that he'd have about that. And it would usually have been something that was a current and passing type of a problem and as you ask me about that, I can't stop and think for a minute and recall specific answers. They weren't on any earth-shaking types of things at all.

They were usually on some problem about getting the word to the Vietnamese leadership about something, and how best to do it, and types of things like that. And what do you think would be the response if we sent this out there. And sometimes it would be on proposals being put forward. That since we controlled funds to these people, should we threaten...in essence blackmail them into doing right by withholding funds on that. Usually my responses were along the lines of if the Vietnamese understood thoroughly what these were to be used for and the good of the Vietnamese people would result from this thing, they would then understand and go ahead.

And many times out there there were misunderstandings that arose because the words that we used, the terminology were unknown terms to Vietnamese. And not knowing what they were but still not wanting to admit to an American that they didn't understand what the word meant, they would...and still want to get along with us, they'd sort of, "oh yes, yes, we'll do that," without knowing what they were agreeing to.

There was a very popular notion during the Kennedy administration which was almost a fad about counter-insurgency, development of green berets and so forth. Did you share that idea that a counter insurgency program could be effective in Vietnam?

Well, about counter-insurgency, and actually President Kennedy's personal interest in that, enthusiasm, I agreed with the thought that we needed smaller forces, more expert groups, that could be tailored to fit some of the emergencies that we were seeing diplomatically in that period so that we could respond in small enough ways that we didn't have to bring in all of our armed forces or declare war, but could solve problems economically and in ways that wouldn't impinge at all on the sovereignty of other nations, except enemies. And I don't see sending in big bombers and using lots of armor or sophisticated weaponry against small groups of people out in the countryside.

Let me follow that up with a question. You remember there was the mission undertaken by General Taylor and Rostow to Vietnam at the end of 1961. And I gather you went along on that group. One of the things they recommended was putting American combat troops in. How did you feel about that proposal?

As the war in Vietnam heated up during the early Kennedy days, and there were feelings that we could just put combat troops into Vietnam, I did what I could do, which wasn't enough, in expressing views about not getting Americans to fight in a war that conventional forces couldn't understand well enough to be truly effective in, which was a guerrilla type of war.

But the war in Vietnam was such that if the Vietnamese couldn't help themselves sufficiently to be successful in having a viable country, then we as foreigners couldn't do it for them and we should be able to withdraw gracefully if it becomes an impossible task. You can do that with small forces that are trained to work in very small groups. You can't do that when you commit a whole nation to something which you do when you have the regular forces go in to combat.

Did you speak to Kennedy about that?

I did at one time but only very briefly. I talked to his brother Bobby about it several times. I wrote some memos, I wrote some memos not to the President but to the Secretary of Defense, to others who were seeing him.

They had an informal discussion group that used to meet over at Bobby Kennedy's house and I would talk to some of those who were going to those discussions and give them my view points. At times too I would talk to others who were in and out, advisors and close to the top. But my own meetings there were always in response to specific questions that the president had.

Now, in the report, in the recommendations that came out of the Taylor mission, one of them was that a high-level American be assigned as an advisor to Diem and Diem according to the record asked for you. What happened to that idea? Why didn't you take the assignment?

I don't know whatever happened then in that period of 1961, but one of the things that I do know is that I was discouraged from have anything to do with the problems in Vietnam. And as a matter of fact turned around into looking into some of the things in our own hemisphere in Latin America because I got in on very few discussions of Vietnamese problems and most of the military thinking and policy formulation was outside of camp. Meetings were held I didn't know at all. Why that is, this I don't know.

Did the American military consider you kind of maverick?

I'm certain that they did. I'm certain that I was considered a maverick by many people in the government, military and civilian. One of the reasons why is whenever a top official that asked my view on something, I'd try and be as candid as possible in telling him, and it didn't always agree with the views of others and at times apart from our own official views, but I felt a man in a position where he had to make policy and make decisions needed as candid and honest a reply as possible. And just from when I'd say things and seeing the looks on other faces, I'd know it wasn't a popular answer that I'd always give.

(Cough) Excuse me. I know that you weren't directly involved in Vietnam in '65 but looking back on that year, which was a turning point, looking back in the decision to commit combat troops, American combat troops to Vietnam, and to start bombing the North...what was your, what's your judgment about that? Do you think that was a mistaken policy?

Well, as far as what happened in 1955 and the entry...

I'm sorry, start again. It's '65.

'65! Nineteen...As far as what happened in 1965 and the beginning of an American combat role in Vietnam, it was of great concern to me but I was outside of government, I'd been retired, I was in no position to present views to the contrary, but I did talk privately to some of the people in government, including Secretary of Defense at the time. And to others.

But I was always deeply concerned that the war out there was essentially, basically of a political nature and that you don't solve political problems by military, unless you've got a very clear view of where the military can take you for a political solution, which we didn't have.

And I knew that the opposition, the politburo in Hanoi who were the true opponents and opposite numbers of our president and his cabinet and of our joint chiefs organization were superb politicians, had been trained in the school where they had to go to jail at times for their views and suffered a great deal by their political views in the past, and were tough and ruthless in their decisions.

And that they had a tenacity and a view of their own political goals that we didn't have. And this was part of the reason I didn't want to see us involved in something that was truly beyond our ability, that we didn't even realize was beyond our ability.

Well, one of the arguments...you know this recent Rand Corporation study in which a number of Vietnamese have written about why...about the defeat, and one of the points that some of them make is that when the American troops commitment came in, the Vietnamese sort of lost the will to fight. Does that sound like a reasonable thesis to you?

One of the problems that came up with Americans in combat alongside the Vietnamese, was the difference in approach to problems in combat on the ground in Vietnam. The tendency of the Vietnamese to let somebody else go in and fight was a very understandable one among the people who had been fighting for years and who hoped somehow or other to live through a war and go back to civilian life at the end.

Which of course the Americans wanted the same thing. But Americans were bringing in much new equipment and it required technical skills and training that they had to teach the Vietnamese before they could use it. And then gradually as the Vietnamese struggled to cope with large organizations and more complexities in waging the war was that as shown in this recent Rand study, that the Americans would write out instructions or orders and the Vietnamese started the tendency of merely translating them into Vietnamese and then issuing them. And as their own.

And some of the American advisors agreed to this type of procedure since it was a timesaver and it was a time of much stress and emergency and not realizing that by doing this that they were robbing the Vietnamese of initiative and confidence in handling their own affairs. And this was true not only in the military but it was also over on the civilian side of the government.

And it became a type of a thing where lots of the Vietnamese orders were translated from writings by Americans and recognized as such by the Vietnamese and sort of dismissed as not being truly Vietnamese and therefore not worth giving that all-out effort to.

This was part of the tragedy that happened in Vietnam.

Why...how was your assignment to Vietnam arranged when you went back in '65?

I went back in '65 at the request of Henry Cabot Lodge who told me that it was at the request of President Johnson. And he had wanted me to go out there, he said, to help him, the Ambassador, take care of the whole program of pacification that was going on. Which was a military civilian mix. And the problem that I ran into was that there were very fixed ideas...

Excuse me. I have to interrupt for a moment, because you're getting a little...