PENTAGON PAPERS GET SPECIAL HANDLING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000300360117-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 17, 2000
• Sequence Number: 117
• Publication Date: June 23, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

POSTON, MASS. STATINTL
GLOBE Approved .For, Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-
M 237 , 967
S 566,377
JUN 2 3 19/1
13y_Margc,.'Mill er
Globe Stail
I morning began taking shape about 5
p.tn. Monday, and by 1:45 a.m. TuOs-
day it was on the street. nixed edition of those papers. I feeler to Hanoi" was the headline"
about a 1965 diplomatic effort. Jhab-
"Secret Pentagon documents bare tion
Globe editor Thomas Winship
,
JFK role in Vietnam war.
and the paper's assistant managing
'
:U111
age One and spread over four
pages inside were-3G columns of type
all(] photographs.
The Globe became the third
t American newspaper to report on a
7000-page analysis tracing this coun-
tiy's growing involvement in Indo-?
;China from World War II thrcnigb. ,
anid 19GFf.
1 The material made available to
The Globe covered a wide range
of events from 1961 to the enc. Of the , the publication by the N.Y. Times
sl(idy. Nowhere were the papers and Washington Post of secret Pent-
marked "secret," or `"top secret" or agon documents on the war in Viet-,
confidential." Ham continues without let-up--but
The staffers who were to put the also without too much success so
story' together gathered at 5 p.m. far. For the truth has a way of
Monday in a locked room away from emerging always into the clear light
the. Globe City Room. Preparations of day.
for tine project were handled by John Robert Healy, who 'is both the
Driscoll; assistant to the editor The Globe's executive editor and politi-
7 City staff Went about its usual busi- cal editor, wrote the story about
Hess of ptitting out the early edition the Kennedy era. The headline was
of the morning paper. Kennedy OK'd covert action."
The special staff began reacting. ; "The material the Globe had
"Then everybody there began split up very easily," Healy said.
We had the advantage of knowing
uggesting possible stories ," ? recalls --,hat the Times and Post-had pub-
Mattlhev/ V. 'Storm, metropolitan
lished. The interesting stuff left was
editor for the morning Globe. Storm the Kennedy era, the last phase of
y
...
The Globe's five-man Washington cnlnn vorv onrly rnatorinl in the
, '. available via the wire services after;
Storm would eventually write the ? r isennower ye~~.rs. "
,~ Healy describes the material in publication in the Globe.
.main news story. It began: Unpub?? ' the Pentagon documents as "not so
lislied portions of. the 47-volume startling--except that it's all there. "I look at Loory and Loory~looks
Pentagon history of the Vietnam war It's a very stark thing. Ydu don't at me, and we both know we're up :
were made available yesterday have to editorialize. It's all there to something," Nolan said.
(Monday) to the Bostoh Globe." The for the reader to see." When Nolan arrived fie began
story included a suimnary of the There was no standard way the writing from the Pentagon papers .
and. finished writing about 1:30 a.m.'
material The Globe was publishing authors of the Pentagon study wrote , his story making the "re--' the history to date of US Gov- about an era, said Healy. Some sec- . Tuesday headline: "Cli
ernment actions against the New tions use the memo style, some. use poadlate" sought edition. The e massive shake-up in:
York Times, which had begun ex paraphrase. Some of the material
cerpting the Pentagon documents on is arranged in chronological fashion,' Viet regime." Because the story was,
Sunday, June 13, and the Washington. other parts are written in narrative
Post; whose excerpts began June 18., fashion, Healy notes.
So that the Globe material would Two stories .- carried on inside'
not duplicate what the Times and ' pages in The Globe --? were written G`tS,
Post had p ] Jue@'iFo4?>tonelei3steZOG4 tO4)~0 .{ 80-01601R000 0_651_17-4S.
espondent; Darius Jhalivala.
`:Soviets refused to carry peace
STATINTL
editor, Crocker Snow Jr., decided
what the stories should be and who
would write then-,. Snow's story on
Page One bore the headline, "Tet
Offensive turned Johnson toward
Vietnamization policy.".
Charles Whipple, chief editorial
writer, began work on his piece.
istration' campaign in court to stop
vala also wrote a story on the Hono-
lulu conference in June 1964, head
lined, "CIA played down US domino
theory" ' ,'r"irthe headline.
One Globe staffer, Martin Nolan,
chief of the paper's Waslhington
bureau, was not in the locked room.
He had a prior engagement ---- to
speak on "Government and the
Media" to students at American Uni
versity in Washington.
Committed to'this date --- to scrub
it might have tipped off the Globe's
publication --- Nolan delivered his
talk. In the question period which
followed, he was asked: "Is competi--
tion among newspapers as much of
an influence as it was always said to,
be?"
Nolan replied that he knew and,
liked Neil Sheehan, the Times re-
porter credited with obtaining the
Pentagon study. "But I would have
broken both his legs to get the story
first," Nolan told the students.
Nolan took a late evening plane
from Washington to Boston. A. fel-
low passenger was Stuart Loory, who
covers national security for' the Los
Angeles Times. The Los Angeles
Times led its edition yesterday morn
the Johnson Administration and ing with a stor
based on the Globe
(:)
Ti
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J 1,
d-"i"
!1
 STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/
i16
JUN 'N v?
Second in a series on the substance of the U "s ca1'y as may ti_, ivoa, when the
Pentagon documents on the origin and the American public knew only that the U.S.
escalation of the Vietnam roar,
had advisers in Vietnam, I resident Ken-
.nedy was dispatching underground agents
to sabotage and harass the Communists in
North -Vietnam.
President Johnson sanctioned similar
-attacks in the months which preceded the
in the Gulf of Tonkin.
The disclosures of covert United States
actions, directed both at friendly Saigon and 3't1stifi tiorl for attacks . ?
hostile Hanoi, show a stern Washington face
the public seldom sees distinctly. It is not known whether the North Viet.
Throughout the Vietnam war era, presi- namese thought at the time the destroyers
dents have approved part of or supporting the pattern of
a string of secret mili- attacks being made against them,
tary and diplomatic subversions. They were, But it is a fact of history that the Johnson
those in command at the time insist, administration used the attacks on the des
nece the tunes, troyers to sell Congress the Tonkin Gulf
Not t knowing
of these. clandestine opera- resolution which was later to be cited as
tions until long after the event, the public legal justification for the war.
and Congress are seldom in a position to
challenge them on moral or political in retrospect, it appears that the Alnerl-
rrounds. can public knew far less about the actions
The Pentagon papers, now being filtered of their government than did the enemy in
-:out through the New York Times, Washing- Hanoi.
ton Post, the Boston Globe, and Rep. Paul The North Vietnamese. Foreign Office
N. McCloskey Jr. (11) of California, give an issued a white book oii the war in July, 1905.
unparalleled glimpse of life behind Wash- It discussed position papers of various U.S.
ington curtains. officials which, in light of the Pentagon
Without the current disclosures, mislead- papers, sound eerily as if Hanoi had a pipe.
ing and incomplete as they may be in some line into official Washington.
instances, most of the stories would have William L. Ryan, foreign affairs expert of
had to await normal release times, usually the Associated Press, analyzed the white
some 20 years hence. book and concluded, "There is evidence the
North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies
-Seolde.ci by Taylor
Here are some of the clandestine or sub plans, operations, prospects, and weak-
surface operations the Pentagon papers and nesses."
South Viotziainesc Army were determined to
get rid of General Khanh,
The authors. of the Pentagoll report said
General Khan]; "made frantic but unsuccess-
ful efforts to rally his supporters" and finally
submitted his resignation, claiming that a
"foreign hand" was behind the coup.
Thus it is not surprising the difficulties
the U.S. has today in convincing the Hanoi
government that it is keeping hands off in
the October presidential elections in Saigon.
The Central Intelligence Agency seems to
come off quite well in the papers that-have '-
thus far been published. Its forebodings.
have proved too accurate.
However, it is hard to forget that only on
April 15 of this year the present director,/
of central intelligence, Richard Helms, wassaying in a public speech:
"We [the CIA] cannot and must not take
sides. When there is debate over alternative
policy options in the National Security
Council . , . I do not and must not line up
with either side."
`Ilv. t hit harder'
Yet here is an excerpt from a 1065 mem-
orandum from John A. McConc, director of ?fr
CIA, to other officials:
"... It is my judgment that if we are to
change the mission of the ground forces we
must also change the ground rules of the
strikes against North Vietnam. We must
hit them harder, more frequently, and in-
flict greater damage. Instead of avoiding
the MIGs, we must go in and take them
out. A bridge here and there will not do-
the job. We must strike their airfields, their
petroleum 'resources, power. stations, and
their military compounds,
.United States sponsored or engaged in in of the South Vietnam Government nave a,i,s,. in my opinion, must be done
the Vietnam war period: been apparent all along even to the un- promptly and wiith minimum restraint. If
0 While U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot sophisticated eye. Hanoi calls South Viet- we are unwilling to take this kind of deer
Lodge was counseling South Vietnamese namese leaders puppets. Washington pub- sion now, we must not take the actions
.President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, U.S. au- Rely says it is giving advice and assistance, concerning the missions of our thoriti,es were plotting the Nov. 1, 1963, coup but not interfering in internal politics. forces, . . . '' - ground
which busted biro (per Mr. McCloskey, who In one of the. New York Times summaries
of the Pentagon papers, it reports that Another official whose advice was not
adds, We were in it up. to our eyeballs?). ~, heeded was Undersecretary of State George
0 Later, when more coups got in the way during another heated meeting on July Ball. Tucked away in one of his memos was
of successful prosecution of the war, Am- [1964], General Khanh asked Ambassador a confirmation of how U.S, governments
bassador Maxwell Taylor called young Taylor whether to resign [from the premier- act without the public's knowledge.
South Vietnamese military men to the em- ship]. The Ambassador asked him not to do bossy and "read them the riot act," so? ? ? ? Speaking of how best to get a U.S. peace
"Do all of you understand riot actsh?" the In early 1965, one of the Pentagon papernproposaal to the Hanoi government, Mr.
or you
asked the Viet- reported McGeorge Bundy, special assistant 13a11 said:
Ambassador s all
namese officers (according to a cable in for national security affairs, as not agreeing "The contact on our side should be
"I told with Ambassador Taylor that General Khanl handled through a nongovernmental cutout
eluded in the Pentagon papers). "must? someho'.V be removed 'from
you clearly at General Westmoreland's m the (possibly a reliable newspaperman who
'can be repudiated)
"
dinner we Americans were tired of coups. scene.
Three weeks later, the Pentagon papers'
? Apparently I wasted my words. . . - Now re
orted that some vrnm.r Turks in the
p
By Courtney It, Sheldon
The Christian Science Monitor
in the South knew a good deal about U.S.
r\ I W V V L V V/ V V/ V T . V r\- \ V V V- V V V t\ V V V V V V V V V ^ -T
-carry you -farever ou o ug.
 A0W dLFor Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01
EL PASO, TEX.
HERALD-POST
E - 42,378
JUN -?,3 TO
In all the shouting over the Pen-
tagon papers on U.S. involvement in
Vietnam, one major point Is being
overlooked: Just how good a study
is It?
The question is important because
'Politicians are already seizing on
bits and pieces of the leaked papers
to:"prove" this or that self-serving
assertion.
The other day, for example, Kan-
sas Sen. Robert J. Dole, Republican
National Chairman, charged that
the papers showed "eight years of
deception and escalation" by the
Democrats. And Senate majority
? . ;leader Mike Mansfield hit s u c h
"sniffing" at the report "for political
,profit."
One danger, we think, Is that the
public may be misled into thinking
? t11at a definitive history of the Viet-
. nam war has been disclosed. This
could only help those political lynch-
ing parties now trying to hang the
? rope of Vietnam around their op-
ponents' necks.
:Fortunately for the cause of fair
' ptay, a good appraisal,_ of the Pen-
tagon study exists. It was written
bg,'Leslie H; Gelb, the former govern-
ment official who headed the task
force that produced the 43-volume
history.
;With commendable objectivity,
Gelb makes clear the project's short-
cOmings, deficiencies and handicaps.
H. notes that his team had com-
plete access to Defense Department
papers, only limited access to State
Department and-CIA. material, and
IV/ no access to files in the White
Hbuse, where final decisions were
made. Nor could 'his Men interview
top officials..
"The result," 'writes Gelb, "was
not so much a documentary history,
as a history based solely on docu-
ments . pieces of paper, forma-
dable and suggestive by themselves,
could have meant much or nothing.
"Perhaps this document was never
sent anywhere, and perhaps that
one ... was Irrelevant. Without the
memories of people to tell us, we
were certain to make mistakes .
this. approach to research was found
to lead to distortions and distortions
we are sure abound in these studies."
His staff, Gelb continues, was
"superb-uniformly bright and in-
terested." He concedes they were
"not always versed in the art of
research," and adds:
,"Of course, we all had our pre-
judices and axes to grind and these
shine through clearly at times, but
we tried, we think, to suppress. or
compensate foi them."
.Also, Gelb recalls, his men came
from the armed forces, the State
Department, the "think tanks" and
were constantly being yanked back
by their superiors before they could
finish their work.
"Almost all the studies had several
authors, each heir dutifully trying
to pick up the threads-of his pre-
decessor," he says.
In .his conclusion, Gelb states:
"Writing history, especially where
it blends into current events, espe-
Vietnam, is a treacherous exercise."
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 NATIONAL GUARDIAN
STATINTL
Approved For Release 2db$/0i 4.$/`tlA-RDP80-
some in Washington were hoping to gain control of
0 11 Hanoi as well as Saigon, although Sheehan gives no
indication of what the Pentagon study says on ? this
point.
However, Sheehan points out that the Pentagon
Q history reveals a continuity in U.S. policy that began
J `~ l r 1 11 And since the French defeat in 1954 the U.S. had been
1 ~'`~ "~i en
ed in "acts of sabotage and terror warfare against
a
g
g
North Vietnam," a covert war that was markedly STATIAITI
By Iclcnaru n. rraru activity in South Vietnam.
A top-secret 7000-page?Pentagon study on the history
The intensification of the covert war against the
of U.S. intervention in Vietnam and Indochina was DeThe is Republic' of Vietnam in 1964 is where
described in lengthy articles, accompanied by govern- Shhan's detailed account and the supporting docu-
ment. documents drawn ill) by high-level U.S. officials, ments begin. In February 1964 the U.S. initiated "34A
that appeared ared in the New York Times June 13-15. operations" against the DRV. They "ranged from
Publication of the two final installments of a projected. flights by U-2 spy planes and kidnappings "ranged
North
five was interrupted by a temporary federal court Vietnamese citizens for intelligence information,"
injunction Lion handed Down June 15 in Now York at the Sheehan writes, "16 parachuting sabotage and
psycho- logical-warfare teams into the North commando raids
The published material, an unprecedented public
disclosure of high-level government discussion on tiie from the sea to blow up rail and highway bridges and the
formulation of U.S. policy and directives for its im- bombardment. of North Vietnamese coastal instal-
plementation,. provides an irrefutable recbrcl of the nations."
unprovoked, unilateral U.S. aggression in Indochina.
The documents printed by tile Times before the Behind tiro Tonkin hicident
'injunction was issued dealt with events in 1964-65, Under the supervision of McNamara, the 34A raids
clearly exposit tftc lies of the Johnson administration were expanded in tempo and magnitude in three stages
by the words and papers of its highest officials. "Hoisted in 1964. In May of that year U.S. bombing and
by his own petard" was the observation of one of the reconnaissance: began on a systematic basis in.Laos; these
.Pentagon's unnamed historians about the discrepancies activities too were escalated and brought closer to the
between Johnson's words and policies. DRV border in succeeding months with the intention of
Normally documents of this sort alight never see the putting pressure on Ilanoi. Finally, a third element in a
light of clay again, or at least they would remain coordinated U.S. program consisted of intelligence cot-
classified for decades. Thus the circlunstanccs of their lcction by U.S. destroyers that penetrated the North's
disclosure takes on significance equal to the revelations coastal waters. It was in this context of covert viar about
. which Congress and the American people were ignorant
themselves.. that the "Tonkin incident" occurred.
The Pentagon history, actually about 3000 pages in The Pentagon study shows that 41- a congression-
length with 4000 pages of documentation from the U.S. al resolution that would be later used as the equivalent
,,,/embassy in Saigon, the defense secretary, the CIA and
the National Security Council, among other sources, was of a blank check to conduct military operations in.
,being summarized by a team of Times writers headed by Indochina was part of a scenario drawn up before the.
/Neil Sheehan, who worked on the series for three Tonkin Bay affair.
months. The. History itself was begun under the tenure. of From Tonkin Bay to full-scale bombing of the North
Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara but not was a small step--and part of the same scenario. The
completed until some months after his resignation. ? decision to bomb was made in the summer of 1964 just
prior to Johnson's denunciations of Goldwater for the
Record of U.S. difficui-ties latter's advocacy of this, but the program was put on ice
The Pentagon study was 'a symptom of policies that' temporarily because of electoral, considerations, the
were in deep trouble, an effort to find the source of U.S. Pentagon study noted. W. W. Rostow is revealed as the
difficulties. But there is no evidence that it made any main evangelist of bornbing; he and some top military
impact upon the Johnson administration, whose logical "lei' were certain that Ilanoi would crumble quickly
under the bombs, or possibly just the threat of them,
calculus was predicated on a blind infatuation with believed Rostov. Others were less inclined to this
American power and which never questioned the right of
U.S. intervention in Indochina. The only thing that gave ?
the Johnson administration pause was the fact that U.S.
intervention had not produced the desired aims which in
.November 1964 were described by Sheehan: co n-fi nuc'a
"....Tile minimum United States position [for nego
tiations] was defined as forcing Hanoi to halt the ? -
insurgency in the South. and to agree to the establish-
ment of a secure non-Communist state, a position the
[Pentagon] analyst defines as `acceptance or else.' .
le
to
Moreover, tall- of an I'l wit tIG not wer
ippro~ied' or telease ~1O0i/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R000300360117-4
1. r?t States into a position to obtain this minimum goal in
 NEW YORK TIID9
Approved FoS q1 2001/03/O 1jf;I fDP80-01601
I3y MAXWELL I). TAYIAXt
WASHINGTON--1 am grateful to
The Times for affording me this op-
:portunity to explain why I think the
!action of the paper in publishing se-
lected portions of the highly classified
'Gelb "study was contrary to the na
tional interest,
In brief, my position, is that this
.action contributes to further misunder-
standing and confusion regarding the
events portrayed, tends to impair the
working of the foreign policy process,
and adds to the disunity which is al-
ready undermining our strength as a
nation. These views are largely rode-
pendent of the aegal aspects of the
case, and of the importance or lack of
Importance of the classified material
which has been revealed.
As history, the articles are unreli-
able and often misleading because of
the incompleteness of the basic source
material and the omissions and sup-
pressions resulting from the selective
process carried out by the Pentagon
authors and the editors of The Times.
The Gelb group had only limited access
tp_reports from without the Pentagon,
llvhereas the White House, State, C.I.A.,
and other agencies were key partici-
pants in the activities under review.
Starting from this incomplete data
base, Gelb's analysts exercised a form
of -censorship in choosing what data
to use, or what to exclude. The Times'
performed a similar function in dc-
oitling what to publish from among
the 47 Gelb volumes. Thus, in the
final publication, the principle served
was not the right of the people to
know all about the Government's Viet-
nam policy, but rather the right of The
Times to determine what Parts the
public should know about it. As one
member of that public, I would like
to know the criteria employed by The
Times is making its determinations.
The resulting literary product is a
melange of incidents presented in a
disjointed way which makes them dif-
ficul?t to understand and to relate to
one another. It is hard to distinguish
approved governmental actions from
individual views of comparatively low-
ranking staff officers. There is often
a perceptible antiwar bias in the com-
mentary which suggests that' the offi-
cials involved were up to something
sinister and surreptitious rather than
carrying out publicly. approved nation-
al policy. For these reasons, I am afraid
that the articles will confuse rather
than enlighten the persistent reader
TF.
CUfoLa t h
Us-1 cw`c 70
loyal employe of government can find The press should be able to fulfill
in the press a ready market for gov- its secular role of exposing rascals
ernmental secrets, no secret will he and mistakes in Government without
safe. In the atmosphere of suspicion making common cause with the
and fear of betrayal created within enemies of Government. We must have
government, one can hardly. expect to both a free press and an effective
get forthright opinions and uninhibited Government capable of defending and
recommendations from subordinates enhancing our national interests
.,who must consider how their views (against all enemies, foreign and do-
will read in the morning press. niestic). If we expect to remain a great
There will be a similar reaction nation, these are not alternatives.
among our international associates. Al- Incidentally, there has been fre-
-
ready we are seeing the embarrassment quent reference of late to the pre-
of allies such as Australia ,and Canada sumecl embarrassment caused by The
over references appearing in The Times Times article to the governmental
articles. Other nations are viewing participants mentioned. If anyone is
with dismay this latest evidence of interested, I ant not among the em-
internal disarray in- the United States barrassed. In the period covered by
and are doubtless reminding them- these clocuinent.s, I was working car,
selves of the need for reticence in fu- mostly for peace and security in South-
ture dealings with us. Only the propa~~ east Asia, an objective which the Con-
gandists of Hanoi and Moscow find gross had just determined by an over-
cause for rejoicing. And they are Open- ' whelming majority to be vital to the
ly enjoying themselves. national interest. We toilers in the hot
My last concern is over the effect Vietnamese snn took that mandate
of this incident on our national unity, seriously, and the C,clb study portrays
of late a prime target of subversive his hard at work in obedience to it.
forces seeking to - undermine the
sources of our national power. There Gen. Alux%t,cll U. Taylor, retired,
has been an arrogance in the way The served cis Ambassador to Vietnam,
Times has thrown down the gauntlet ill 1964-65, and as a special consultant
challenging the Government's right to to the President, 1965-69.
identify and protect its secret which
assures a bitter putrlie fight. The
Times has not only challenged the'
Government's right to make this de-
termination but has undertaken to sub-
stitute its own judgment in deciding
what secrets are entitled to protection.
If allowed to continue in its present
form, the controversy will provide a
further revelation to our enemies of
our internal divisions at a time when
we need all of our strength and pres-
tige to effect an honorable 'settlement -
of the Vietnam war.
There should be ways for reasonable
men to reconcile the needs of a free,
press and of'national security without
resort to exaggerated classification of
documents by the Government or re-
sort to the role of "fence" on the part -
of the press. Without security a free:
press cannot long endure, nor can the:
society and economy which sustain, -
it. Without strong, articulate informa-
tion media, the Government cannot
communicate with the electorate, or
win popular support for the needs of
eign policy is. from two sources. If it national security.
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The damage which I foresee to for-