US forces were said to be in South Vietnam at the “request” of Saigon. There was no such request. In May 1961, Lyndon Johnson, Vice President, went to Saigon to press the South Vietnamese to ask the US to send in troops. General Taylor too urged sending troops, though “the introduction of US forces may increase tensions and risk a major war in Asia”. Having signed a secret memorandum on sabotage in Vietnam, President Kennedy told the State Department to prepare a White Paper on Vietnamese responsibility for aggression in South Vietnam. The Washington Post and the Pentagon Papers confirm responsibility for the deadlock in the Paris talks on Vietnam rested with the US. While the State Department vowed loyalty to Ngo Dinh Diem, it prepared to overthrow him. The publication by US newspapers in 1971 of the secret Pentagon Papers on US policy in Vietnam showed the methods used to shape public opinion to suit the US ruling caste. They cite countless examples of lies, provocation and perfidy by the US.

• A Damning Indictment
• Continuity of Deception
• Post-the Pentagon Papers
• The Storm Stilled?

A Damning Indictment

An article, the effect of which the Paris Le Figaro likened to a “bombshell in the White House”, appeared on 13 June 1971. It appeared in the New York Times and was the first of a series on, and excerpts from, a top secret Pentagon document entitled, History of US Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy. Two items on the front page of the newspaper introduced the series. One described the Vietnam Archive, and summarized the conclusions of the study, from the initial involvement of the Truman administration, through the build-up of American involvement, to open warfare in 1965. The second gave the origin of the report.

On 18 June, the New York Times was joined by the Washington Post, syndicating its materials to over 300 local newspapers as well as Newsweek magazine and several TV stations. One after the other, theBoston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and the St Louis Post-Dispatch joined the campaign to expose the secret machinery behind the Vietnamese war. These are not radical, or left publications but belong to the “respectable” press.

The New York Times described the Pentagon documents it first brought into the light of day, as:

An almost incredible record of subterfuge, deception, shortsightedness, mistakes, wrong assumptions and arrogant disregard of truth.

But this description falls far short of the ugly picture of official Washington standards of honesty revealed by its disclosures of goverment lying on the Vietnam war, 30 years ago. The lying then has startling parallels with today.

Fearing further exposure of its criminal deception of the American people as well as world opinion, US Attorney General, John Mitchell, on instructions from the White House, took extraordinary measures to gag the press and stop publication of the exposé. In an article, aptly called, in the light of today, The Endless Tragedy, journalist James Reston commented:

For the first time in the history of the republic the Attorney General of the United States has tried to suppress documents he hasn’t read about a war that hasn’t been declared.

Reston said that “the security argument was being used to cover up the blunders and deceptions of the past”. The published documents lifted the curtain on how US policy is made. The Washington Court of Appeals would not prohibit the Washington Post from publishing the papers.

There is no doubt Washington’s Indo-China policy had been throughout a policy of deliberate provocation, readiness to risk a big war, sabotage of a political settlement, and considered deception of the public. Abundant proof of this was provided by the published documents, though, as many American observers rightly noted, they revealed only the tip of the iceberg of US crimes in Vietnam.

The evidence is more than sufficient. The documents showed that US actions in Indo-China were not a pragmatic reaction to a fast-changing situation, but a considered step-by-step programme, the chief elements of which from the beginning were direct US intervention, escalation to the point of possible use of nuclear weapons, bombing of Vietnamese territory, extension of the hostilities to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos, and Vietnamization of the war.
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