Complications of escalation, continued

Cassette #4 - Maxwell Taylor

Karnow:

In early 1965 when you were asked if you wanted ground troops, you said not yet. I wonder if you can go back over this point...it might prompt the South Vietnamese to slacken their efforts.

Taylor:

Well, I think as I recall I listed that as one of the objections as a possible development...

Karnow:

Could you repeat the point?

Taylor:

...in answering the cable with regard to the need for introducing American ground forces. I had other, other reasons for opposing it at the time but that was...had frequently been raised in our own previous discussions in Washington and Saigon, the impact on the Vietnamese. Would they then slacken in their efforts and let us take over the task? I thought it was a valid point although I'm not sure that that was ever the case after we came in.

Karnow:

There is a report that there was a CIA study that was done saying that the North Vietnamese had the capacity to escalate in response to a bombing campaign in the north, and that this was eliminated from a mission report that you sent back to Washington in early 1965. Was that true? Was the CIA...?

Taylor:

I know of no such thing. Actually everybody said it. I don't know why anyone would pick it out unless it was just because it was a known fact. In fact I don't ever know of any intelligence report ever sent out by the CIA that ever came to my attention that didn't go through exactly as it was. If I didn't agree with it, I'd send a separate cable. And I don't recall I ever did that.

Urgency of the troop increase

Could you describe the attack on Pleiku? You were there at the time, I mean in Saigon.

Taylor:

I was in Saigon.

Karnow:

I just want to ask one point about this. Was the Pleiku attack...there had been various other attacks. There was the Bien Hoa attack, there was the Brinks BOQ on Christmas Eve. I mean...

Taylor:

Qui Nhon was a third and then I believe Pleiku was a fourth.

Karnow:

That was...was this really the trigger for the bombing of the north?

Taylor:

Well, each time I thought...I recommended retaliation and up until Pleiku it was turned down. Now it just happened that McGeorge Bundy was visiting in Saigon. The first time he had ever been in Saigon and...which I welcomed. Because of his his position in the White House. It was a great strengthening of the understanding to have him see with his own eyes what was going on.

And he had...I had told him I was sending a cable to...for recommending bombing and he volunteered as I recall to telephone in and his support. We each talked to Cy Vance I believe by telephone on the subject. I asked him for his approval and to my amazement, Cy Vance telephoned back in a very short time, I would say fifteen to twenty minutes, maybe somewhat longer, giving us a concurrence that I had been trying to get for months.

Karnow:

I wonder if...go back to earlier requests...if you recall this. mean obviously I don't want you to say it if you don't. But in the Bien Hoa attack occurred the night before the election and its been said that one of the reasons that Lyndon Johnson didn't want to start the bombing is it was a bad thing on the night of the elections. Brinks BOQ happened on Christmas Eve and you know, you don't bomb on Christmas...I mean, does this ring true with you?

Taylor:

Yes, very much so...my mind, I assure you.

Karnow:

Wasn't there something on Thanksgiving too?

Taylor:

Qui Nhon was the next one and I don't recall any reason there. There might have been but I've forgotten.

Karnow:

I don't want to put words in your mouth but would you...could you go through that scenario of the eve of election or Christmas Eve...

Taylor:

Well, it just happened that Bien Hoa which was significant I think I mentioned before as being the very first time that an American installation had been attacked directly by the Viet Cong. You had soldiers killed, yes, but usually they'd been mingled with South Vietnamese.

Hence my recommendation...I knew that November 4th followed November 3rd but nonetheless from the point of view of the situation in Vietnam, we should have retaliation. I must admit I was not surprised when I was turned down. Then there were two others. One was at, uh in the Brink officer barracks in Saigon which took place on Christmas Eve, again recommended retaliation got turned down. I felt reasonably sure...who wants to bomb Santa Claus.

Qui Nhon I can't recall. I can't recall why it was turned down. It was not spectacular but again it was a building blown up with some slight loss of lives. Pleiku came along then in the following year and there was no critical date nearby. I think they timed it in Washington perhaps it changed somewhat and it was approved very promptly.

There was one thing about the bombing in the north. Kosygin was in Hanoi at the time. Did that give you any cause to pause?

Taylor:

It didn't me because I'm not sure that I knew it. I...at least it was not a matter of discussion. Again, this was Saigon. From Saigon's point of view this was the thing to do. Kosygin's in the north, they better know about it in Washington.

Karnow:

According to the maybe coming back over a point we've mentioned earlier, but according to the stuff in the Pentagon Papers, you had some reservations about Westmoreland's recommendations in 1965 about putting Marines in to Da Nang to secure the Da Nang base. But this was a kind of opening wedge...opening the wedge as you said earlier.

Taylor:

Well, of course, General Westmoreland and I were very close all the time in Vietnam. We...he knew everything important that I knew and I would assume...I assume...I'm sure I knew everything important that he was doing. What I would call policy level.

I had a very unusual authority when I became ambassador, one which I would never recommend repeating, being repeated. I was...the president wanted me to be in charge of everything that went on in South Vietnam. And I said does that include the military operations? Everything. So that's the way the directive was written.

I knew this would make my military friends unhappy so I went first to the...General Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, went over and said that's what it is, that's the way the President wants it. I know you won't like it. You can tell me so if you want to. But that's the way he wants it. He listened. I hope you won't worry about it because you know as a military man I think I know enough to keep my finger out of military pies and will try to do so.

I did the same thing with Admiral Sharp, CINCPAC, and then with Westmoreland. And Westy and I very quickly said there are no problems because I told Westy I want to see every cable you send to the Pentagon which is at a policy level.

And I hope you'll discuss it with me in advance but if you want to send it, obviously it's your right and duty to send it. I will then send my own cable to the president via the channels. I can only...I think in one case we disagreed and I still can't remember what it was. It was not too big but nonetheless this happened only once.

So I knew very well Westy's concern about the north. And the Da Nang area. So, I was not at all surprised when he finally gave a formal recommendation. I believe that's what you're talking about, in February. I was still not convinced that it was necessary. We had three battalions of Marines just over the hill. I couldn't believe the three battalions of Marines could hold off any number of the Viet Cong even reinforced against Da Nang at that time. But then fairly shortly after that additional evidence came in of major units in the north and I think it was that time Westy came back and I supported his request. I'm not quite sure of the sequence but that's about the way it worked out.

Karnow:

Ah, remember the Honolulu conference took place in April and again, according to the documents in the Pentagon Papers, it was partly called in response to your rather negative reaction to the notion of putting in ground forces. Was that whole issue debated at Honolulu?

Taylor:

As I recall that...about April 2nd I was back in Washington to discuss this question of where we're going now. My recollection again is by that time the Marines were ashore and one airborne brigade was authorized and perhaps had come to the Saigon area. The question was, what after that.

I met with the president and all his advisors and thought there was an agreed list. I was not pressing any particular number of forces as long as Westmoreland could say he could accommodate them. But the actual decision was quite a limited number...again I'm sorry, I can't give you the...that were to go in.

So I took off for Honolulu...for Saigon...and I think he understood what the future held. I'd hardly got there when cables started coming in from...copies of cables, military cables, alerting this marine, this regiment, army units being alerted. And I was terribly worried, what is going on here. What's happening? Has somebody suddenly pulled the plug and all these units are coming without my being informed? And I was really hot under the collar and sent quite a warm cable back to Washington on the subject.

Which resulted in the stop everything order to everybody who'd been alerted. To meet in Honolulu and that's how the meeting came up and that's where we sat down and agreed on a troop list which is the one we actually followed.

Karnow:

Now, again, from the outside, having been at Honolulu, it seems that when everybody met at Honolulu, one was able to foresee how many troops would have to be committed to Vietnam over the long term. Is that true?

Taylor:

It was an estimate to say...we don't know and never said this is all you're going to ever need. Because we know we need this many over the next three months. Westmoreland said he can accommodate them. We have the troops in the United States, we'll approve that list.

Karnow:

But there were no real numbers put on, how many we have over the long term.

Taylor:

Never. No, I never heard anyone state how many you need in the end. You see, it was almost unpredictable. Even if you had to do it over again, because the enemy really controlled the initiative. We could, we could send enough to stop what was there and had no one else come across the frontier and establish a reasonable amount of order, but the other side wasn't in that mood. He didn't understand the rules of the game. He kept reinforcements.

Karnow:

Do you recall how many troops were going to be in by the end of '65?

Taylor:

No, but of course the record's there. I've forgotten how...The final number was around a half million.

Karnow:

By the end of '65...

Taylor:

No, it was all [incomprehensible]...From that point on there was no question about the ambassador knowing what was taking place.

Karnow:

Were you in the embassy in March? At the end of March there was an attack on the embassy.

Taylor:

I showed the very good judgment to be away at that time. I was here in Washington...and get Alex Johnson who was my very able State Department representative, number two and managed to get a war scar out of it and we lost one employee killed and many, many wounded.

I have the picture of Lyndon Johnson in one of these rooms that has the...[incomprehensible] picture behind my desk when I was away because the chinks in it made by flying glass which would have gone through the ambassador if he'd been sitting there.

Karnow:

By the end of the spring of '65 as I recall, most of the...almost all of the South Vietnamese strategic reserve battalions had been chewed up in various battles, Phuoc Long or Quang Ngai and so forth. And was this a thing that turned your view towards a need for American troops.

Taylor:

It was the whole composite situation which was the losses of the units in South Vietnam, the lack of battle worthiness of a number...a large number of their battalions, the evidence of larger units moving across into the north and edging up toward Da Nang. There were many, many indicators by that time but I had no compunctions whatsoever to agree after having been opposed to it originally to the landing of Marines.

Military strategy and the search and destroy mission

Karnow:

During that period of '65 we began to hear all these new phrases that were coming out like the enclave theory and the search and destroy approach and so forth. What do these things mean? They were, they became a part of the language...

Taylor:

They came to mean other things...different things to different people. Somebody said that...I was for the enclave theory which I think Jim Gavin really fathered. From Jim's point of view, as I understood it...he said I don't understand it but his editor understood it [incomprehensible]... We'll put our troops in the areas along the beach, along the front and just leave them there. They'd be there as a potential threat and by some device I never quite understood that would be a deterrent for their reinforcement.

Well, that was one enclave theory. I think I was accused of being saying essentially the same thing because I wanted...I actually had the initial troops come in and go into areas on the coast with the idea that they would get all of their equipment together and get set, clear out their own area so there's no question of it having raids in their own camp and then be ready to work...whatever task Westmoreland decided to give them.

Karnow:

What was search and destroy?

Taylor:

Search and destroy was nothing more than what, as you saw in your military education at the infantry school, you learn that battles consist of, um, of reconnaissance, of fixing the enemy, of fighting the enemy and destroying the enemy. Well, search and destroy was to find the enemy and then to destroy the enemy.

So it was just a compressed phrase of the purpose of all ground operations. It ended up by suggesting that you're out really to destroy the country which you were trying to save, at least that seems to have been the interpretation. I was, a little like the word counter insurgency. A very unhappy choice of words that could be turned against the user.

Karnow:

Did you feel during this whole period of revolving door governments that during the time you were ambassador that there might be a government that might come in that would favor a neutralist solution for South Vietnam?

Taylor:

Not really, not really because at least insofar as I knew these Vietnamese and they, I knew them by that time at least a long time and lots of hours in discussion and working with them. They had such a stake in this place that they knew what a neutralist government meant. It meant eventually a communist takeover, the whole communist formula. They knew it very well and they knew their lives were at stake, the country was at stake and so on. So I had no real concern about that.

I knew there was a small neutralist group, unidentified, in the country, but how large it was I never knew and it never seemed to be of any importance. The, all the generals talking about themselves always accused the French-trained generals of being necessarily neutral because France was neutral, which was the logic I don't think we necessarily follow.

Karnow:

What was it like to deal with Ky after he became prime minister?

Taylor:

Well, Ky was an interesting character. I often said he was the Vietnamese Georgie Patton. He had much of his flamboyance, had the same pearl pistols, he had the same flaring foulard around his neck, and he was very gallant man. If I wanted a bomb put on the right place, he was a little like Curt LeMay. I...I would like to have Ky or Curt LeMay take that bomb and put it down.

They were the kind of people that did it. Having said that, he had no sense of organization whatever. He was an idea man. He came into office and announced that list far greater promises than any president ever came in. He hadn't the foggiest idea what...what...what it really meant and how he'd get the resources and so forth. I understand he protests now that we Americans wouldn't let him do all these things, but he never knew what he wanted to do. And then never had the means.

So I just say he was a good man to have around but he had his limitations and the Thieu-Ky team made a better combination than I ever expected when we first put them together.

Taylor's replacement by Lodge

Karnow:

Under what circumstances did Lodge come back and replace you. Was this a change a change in...?

Taylor:

Well, I had...I had not wanted to go to Vietnam. I hadn't wanted to come back to public service and I'd come back, I told President Kennedy in a military capacity because I couldn't deny an obligation to serve in it. And I took this job as ambassador, knowing what...I had no idea...I had a pretty clear idea of what it was...

Voice:

Excuse me. We've got a sound problem, a motorcycle went by. You ask that question again, Stan.

Karnow:

Yeah.

Voice:

...about Lodge.

Under what circumstances did Lodge come back and replace you?

Karnow:

Yeah, I'm sorry, there was just a noise outside. What were the circumstances of Lodge's return to replace you as ambassador?

Taylor:

Well, I had not wanted to go to Vietnam. I felt there were plenty of good State Department professional ambassadors to go out and do this job. But did it because the president really seemed to feel he really was going to end up with a situation he had to solve...someone had to go out there. But I did it with the understanding I'd only spend a year. Well, actually I spent a little over that, not much, but it was always understood that I would come back at that time.

When Lodge came back I was frankly surprised simply because he'd been there and he knew...he was no sinecure either. The fact that he put himself in double jeopardy, I told him, ought to get him two decorations instead of just one. So that was all that mattered. My tour was up and when it approached I started reminding him, bear in mind we have a deal here that in roughly a year I'll be coming back. And in due course Lodge was nominated.

Karnow:

There's a recollection of my own that in '65 when we began to put troops in, the objective was we were going to try to stop the communists from cutting the country in two, if I recall. Try to stop the communists from coming down to divide...

Taylor:

That was mentioned as one of the possibilities. I don't know that that was the reason that was justified. It was just to strengthen the enemy. It was just to strengthen the enemy. You could have a lot of things and did a lot of things.

Karnow:

But I remember the end of 1965 there was a visit to Saigon by McNamara...

Taylor:

When was this?

Karnow:

End of '65.

Taylor:

End of fifty, '65...

Karnow:

'65, yeah. And the language that began to come out of the nation was somewhat different. It was we were going to go on and win the war. It seemed to change from we're going to stop the other side.

Taylor:

Was it my embassy or was this Lodge's embassy by this time?

Karnow:

Well, it was the end of '65...it might have been your...

Taylor:

It might have been either one of us. At the end of '65...no, I...I...I have an alibi. I left in July of '65.

American ambivalence during the war

Karnow:

Well, let me ask you in a general way. Do you think it's valid or a mistake to begin with one kind of objective and change your objective, in a sense?

Taylor:

No. Of course we did that in Korea and that cost us...a difficult...

Karnow:

I was thinking of the Korean War.

Taylor:

I never...I...I never saw...I never saw this trend you talked about. I watched...as I came back I...the president asked me to be his consultant. I told him I'd already signed a contract to run the Institute for Defense Analyses and that was a full time job. Well, he said give me just half your time. Well, it's awful hard to turn a president down and so I signed up but I didn't know one thing. That he was to get the daylight hours and I was to get the hours of darkness. So I spent many hours over there, over cables and I would have known this had their been any conscious change in policy. And I never...I never heard this, tell you the truth.

Karnow:

What do you...

Taylor:

And I say, win is not a dirty word. Depends on what you mean...I'm glad you mentioned this because I was...I had to argue...you see I was fighting doves and hawks at all time. The hawks being my best friends, they were sometimes the hardest. They'd say why don't you get out there and win this thing. What do you mean by winning? Well, that makes them gulp and swallow their Adams apple.

Are you talking about an Appomattox or surrender on the deck of the Missouri or what are we talking about and they didn't know. Said, I'll tell you what winning is. It's doing what you set out to do and we're going to win that if we don't give up, setting out to do is, is self determination for South Vietnam and [incomprehensible] for the north. And in that sense I would hope that was always the objective. Should have been.

Karnow:

In your opinion did Congressional criticism later begin to interfere with the management of the war? Do you think... Do you think we were fighting on two fronts, one later, in the later period?

Taylor:

Well, do you mean while I was there or...

Karnow:

No, later.

Taylor:

Well, it's unhappily true and that's one of the reasons why I would say...I regret we didn't declare war, that many honorable men, members of Congress got up and made the statement for a great value to the enemy, giving aid and support to the enemy by any interpretation you could possibly could. And that's most regrettable, sure. Certainly that made it very difficult for the conduct of the war.

Karnow:

Would you single out any of these people?

Taylor:

Nope. The record is clear. You can find them you know very well.

Karnow:

But I want to hear from your...ruby red lips.

Taylor:

Yeah, I know. I'm not doing this, you know, to get any private vengeances off. I'm...I hope we're contributing to some clarification of what happened out there which is terribly fogged up in the minds of people and the minds of history.

Karnow:

What were your relations with the press and what kind of...

Taylor:

While I was there I would say it was not brilliant but was good. It was satisfactory. Barry Zorthian came out to help me. He was I thought one of the best public relations men I ever met. I tried to be as frank...I met regularly with the press I enjoyed talking to them, I knew several of them were very much against what I was doing but that's their [incomprehensible]...I couldn't complain.

The real problem came when the troops came in and I suppose had the good fortune of not facing that problem. What are you going to do when you have a war and you don't have a have a have any censorship, you don't have the kind of handling of the press which has been traditional in the wars of this century.

Karnow:

There were some members of the press who really would have preferred to have censorship.

Taylor:

I've heard them say that. I've heard them say that. Now I wondered if they really meant it. Why wasn't it put in? Well, I had nothing to say about it. I was certainly interested in it and analyzed the pros and cons. The problem was who was going...that means censorship, it means checking out passes, it means restriction of movement.

A lot of that we could certainly handle. There's no reason why we couldn't say that any, that any press representative going out with the troops has to have a card certifying him and plus the fact that he will accept the fact that he will do what the responsible area commanders will put in.

But talking about censorship, are you going to have the MAAG running the censorship? The embassy running the censorship? Anybody that wanted to could duck the censorship by running up to Hong Kong. It was almost impossible to control in any traditional sense the way they ran WWII for example.

And are you going to turn it over to the Vietnamese government. You know how terribly inept they were, how they infuriated their best friends and so forth. So it was just a tough one that no one ever had a solution for. I hope you'll develop this point when...

Karnow:

We're going to try and do one show on the press. Another observation has been made about the American experience, we lacked an institutional memory. Now there are a couple of points that you made. One is the rotation system was such that people left. The other one is of course...I'm sorry, it's your wife coming in...

Uh, the sense that we were there without any real memory because the rotation of people was such that as you say you had to invent the wheel every time you came out. The other thing is you didn't...this has been a charge that we rarely...didn't learn anything from the French experience in Indochina. What do you think about this?

Taylor:

Well, I agree to some extent and disagree to other extent. There were certainly an undesirable rotation in the military of replacement. But we had the same thing in Korea. We were not...should not have been surprised nor were we surprised with the objectionable features to replacement.

But what was the alternative. Are you going to freeze the men? Are you going to take that regular army that we had and take them out there and leave them there until they die off or they run out of enlistments and come back and no one ever will join the army again for the next ten years? Or are you going to then draft people and send them out there for four or five years, something like that, some long period of time?

The alternatives were just as bad as rep—...we knew you could live the replacements but it certainly lowered the efficiency of units. An outfit is never trained. You're always training new men coming in. In Korea there's one thing, though, which I haven't mentioned. In Korea we had the good judgment to have what we call KATUSA. KATUSA's were Korean soldiers who were assigned to American units. They were all infantrymen.

And it was a great privilege to be assigned to American units. Then you got on American rations and all various things of that sort. And those lads, let's say two or three in a squad. Well, they were the...till they got killed off which they did...they didn't, they were the hard core of that squad. They were the repository. Their English wasn't very good but they knew all the tricks of the trade and the recruits came in. They were a great help to the officers and the non commissioned officers.

We were never wise enough to do that in South Vietnam. I suggested it several times to my Pentagon friends after I came back. They had a dozen good reasons why not to do it. I didn't think they were very good, don't think they're very good still. But that would help a little bit. The other aspect of it...?

Lessons of the Vietnam War

Karnow:

We didn't learn very much from the French experience...

Taylor:

I would say that we knew the French experience, that we had MAAG's while the French were there so we had a...some of the senior officers went back there had the French experience. But the French experience was not good. We knew it was bad and much of it we shouldn't follow. They believed in the beau geste forts so we sat around and sitting there doing just what we found the South Vietnamese army to do. And we were thoroughly sure that we'll never end this thing unless you get out and run the enemy down and run them out of the country or dispose of them one way or another.

So I don't know that we missed very much. Now I thought you might have added how about the British experience down in Malaysia. I visited Malaysia before going out there. And also I knew Thompson, William Thompson...

Karnow:

Robert Thompson?

Taylor:

Robert Thompson...who was very useful and I think he writes now as a, rather reproachfully we didn't follow his example. I would say we learned a lot from him on some things but that war was so completely different. It was a criminal affair. When I visited Malaysia they had pictures on the wall of the principle guerrillas. There were were wanted, the principle wanted men of the FBI and furthermore there were generally speaking Chinese who stood out. They had great simplicity in their task. So we learned something I would say from both. I hope we learned as much as we should. But we didn't...our failure were not following the French example.

Karnow:

You now see people in the armed forces. What impact has the Vietnam War made on the American armed forces today?

Taylor:

Well, that's too big a question. I just don't know. I would say of course most of them would like to forget about it because it was very bitter experience and the treatment they received here at home, it;s not just the veterans here...they were not out of jobs...the whole feeling...our boys fought the dirtiest, toughest war, the ones that were out there. I once told my son, my company commander, he went though more in that nine months he had that company than I went through in three wars. In terms of real hardship, real exposure. No appreciation for it, in fact, condemnation.

Well, they don't bellyache, they don't speak out loud but they feel it very deeply or have. I think its tending to go away. But it takes the unhappy form of saying let's forget about that kind of war, let's think about Europe and those good old days of WWII, divisions and corps and tanks and so on, which is something that is part of the military custom but its far from all that I see problems that are ahead of us.

Karnow:

You'll be happy to know I'm about to make the last question...

Taylor:

Are you sure? The tape must be sagging a little bit.

Karnow:

Well, it's a very gentle one again. What would you say are the lessons of Vietnam? What can we learn from Vietnam

Taylor:

Well, tremendous...of course if you ask the lessons in diplomacy, the lessons in military tactics and in logistics and in economics...economics played a very important part in the war. Enormous...enormous things applicable to that unusual situation.

The real problem, I see the military problem more clearly than the others is to sort out what is peculiar and not transportable out of this situation to avoid saying well, because this succeeded or failed in Vietnam, it will succeed or fail someplace else. The selectivity with which these lessons are first recognized and then exploited is very important to every branch of the government.

Karnow:

Well let's make it personal. What would you say to you is the most important lesson?

Taylor:

Well, I wish you'd put it this way: What are the principle failures because I could answer that with great...

Karnow:

All right.

Taylor:

...confidence. I would say it's in the intelligence field. Now that doesn't mean the CIA is no good or G2's aren't any good. I mean in the sense that as a government that we knew far too little about first our ally. How we're going to help this little country. No one ever told us they're going to have no leaders to work with. No one had told us that there was no unity in the country, no sense of nationhood. None of that cement that held Korea together.

I was always thinking well, this must be about like Korea. Well, Korea, you had a unified country. You had an old President Rhee. He wasn't' George Washington but he was a strong, stalwart type that you can lean on and get support from.

You found none of that. That was a surprise to everybody, as far as I know. At least no wise guys even after the fact said we understood the Vietnamese. Well, next we knew even less about North Vietnam. I was always asking well who is Ho Chi Minh? Well, a few people in Washington had met Ho Chi Minh but in terms of what kind of man he was, nobody really knew.

And then from that on down they'd never heard of most of them. So we never had...and almost nobody had spent any real time in North Vietnam. So the information directly from reliable sources on most of the...rather rudimentary things was lacking. But the final things we didn't know ourselves, we hadn't followed the Delphic orator, know thyself. We didn't know ourselves.

I thought this was the same country we fought the Korean War in. It wasn't. It was a different country. And the events that happened here at home were incredible. I couldn't understand it. In Vietnam...I just started when I came home and when I got here I couldn't understand what had happened. And I hadn't been out of this country for a long period of time. So we didn't know ourselves. Until we know the enemy and know or allies and know our friends and then know ourselves, we better keep out of this dirty business. It's very dangerous.

Extension of the war into Cambodia

Karnow:

That's terrific. I just thought of one last question if I may, because we may do one show on Cambodia. And I know you weren't involved at the time but uh from a purely military point of view, did you think the incursion into Cambodia in 1970 was useful operation?

Taylor:

Yes, it should have been done before. There was every reason to go out and clean up the areas just over the line where large collection s of military supplies being used against us the next day. Every reason to do it. We talked about it before that I was against it. I was never against it because it shouldn't be done but I'd asked my Vietnamese friends, who were all so keen and blood in their eye, let us get over, we'll clean them up.

Yes, you'll get something the first day, then they'll be gone and going to the next jungle and the next jungle and you can't...you haven't cleaned up the jungles here in your own country. So it is that, the endless, the impossibility with the means available that made me very much against going into Cambodia on the ground. But when Nixon went in with the area he had and under the circumstances I thought he was absolutely right. I wouldn't say he handled it either publicly or with Congress in the right way, but as a, as a responsible action as head of state, I would say he's right.

Karnow:

Except we had a new war on our hands.

Taylor:

No. Hell, we had that thing all the time. It never failed. Cambodia was at war with us by any sense. Every day they let the enemy operate outside of there. That had been going on for years.

Karnow:

Well, that's great I think that's, if anybody has any more, listen...

Taylor:

If anybody's got anything more, just hold it to his or herself.

Voice:

If you can just repeat that last statement about that we were already, because...the coughing.

Karnow:

We were already, what was that?

Voice:

The last statement you said we were already in that war.

...we had a new war on our hands.

Taylor:

Ah ha.

Karnow:

I see, we said we have a new war on our hands.

Taylor:

I'm not sure I'll get the same eloquence into this.

Voice:

I'm sure.

Karnow:

Go ahead.

Taylor:

You want to ask the question again?

Karnow:

Yeah, I'll ask the question, I'll even be provocative, I mean we found ourselves supporting another government, the Lon Nol government after that incursion and had a new war on our hands, didn't we?

Taylor:

No, I would say that by any interpretation of war, we had been at war with Hanoi...with Cambodia since...at the outset since they left the territory of that country was being used for military operations, the formation of military attacks and the stationing of indispensable supplies on Cambodian soil.

We should have gone over there long before it we'd had the resources to do so. So I would say that we didn't start a new war. The war was already there. What we did with rel—in relation to the...to the Phnom Penh government, I ‘m not sure about that. It was the political aspect but we never took on any obligation there except to stop something which was greatly impeding the determination of the war that we were trying to end.

Karnow:

That's fine.

END CASSETTE #4.