1964 U.S. WAR GAME AN ACCURATE FORECAST OF FAILURE IN VIETNAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403350009-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: October 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
~ Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09 :CIA-RDP90-009658000403350009-1
ARTIrIE APPEARED ^~ LOS ANGELES TIMES
DN PAGE ~ - 6 October 1985
Forecast of Failure in Vietnam
By NORMAN KEMPSTER, eluded the war game, in an article
Timis Staf f Writer
WASHINGTON-In the late
su er of 1964 a ew~ mont s
>~1nrp t-+p iTni fates eaan
sustained bombing of North Viet-
nam, agroup of senior U.S. mili-
o
Penta on for a strafe is "w
mne" a ned to indicate what
wo appen i merles escalated
the fighting.
The results of that secret test,
now being made public in detail by
the official who conducted it, offer
a tantalizing hint that tragedy
might have been avoided if Presi-
dent Lyndon B. Johnson and other
American leaders had not ignored
the findings.
With a team headed by Gen.
Earle C. Wheeler, then chief of
staff of the Army, playing the role
of North Vietnam, the officials
conducted apolitical-military sim-
ulation that, in retrospect, seems
eerily prophetic-predicting ulti-
mate failure for a policy that,
nevertheless, was adopted a short
time later.
"Hanoi did not knuckle under Lo
American presaurea" in the war
game but instead "counteresca-
lated by pouring more troops into'
the south," according to former
State Department official Robert
H. Johnson. "The game ended with
the U.S. team continuing to bomb
North Vietnam while the situation
in South Vietnam became worse
than ever."
Moreover, the war game was
part of a larger study that also
predicted mounting domestic oppo-
sition to a U.S. policy of escalation.
Johnson, now professor emeritus
of international relations at Colgate
University, headed a teak force
that sifted through the alternatives
facing U.S. policy makers in the
months before the United States
moved irrevocably into the Viet-
nam War. Drawing on recently
declassified documents, Johnson
describes the project, which in-
in the fall issue of Foreign Policy
magazine.
Though references to the inves-
tigation have appeared in the past,
Johnson's account contains much
additional detail, which . he was
barred from revealing before the
declassification.
The irony of the prescient re-
port'sfalling on deaf ears is intensi-
fied by the fact that it was conduct-
ed on orders from Walt W. Rostow,
then chief of the State Depart-
ment's policy planning council.
Rostow went on to become Presi-
dent Johnson's national security
adviser and a leading supporter of
increased U.S. involvement in the
war.
The test results-which were
read at the time by Rostow and
probably by President Johnson,
according to the former State De-
partment official-concluded that
military escalation would not in-
timidate Hanoi or save the Saigon
government.
Despite that advice, the Presi-
dent initiated a policy of gradual
increases in U.S. military involve-
ment. Adecade later, Saigon fell.
The studv was conducted by
officials of the State De
enQe De~rt?nent Tnin Chiefn
of Staff CIA and U.S. Informati
enc . was a c ose y guar . "
secret, taking place during the 3964
presidentiab election campaign,
when Lyndon Johnson assured the
public that he would never send
American troops to fight an Asian
war.
Robert Johnson reports that the
study was intended to test the
proposition that U.S. bombing of
North Vietnam would convince the
Hanoi regime that it could not
afford to continue the .war. In
theory, he said, escalation was
intended to make the Communist
regime surrender in face of the
danger of loafing its industrial base
to U.S. air strikes.
The committee doubted that
premise from the start, and the
results of its war game, in which
the U.S. Army chief of stall made it
clear that he would not knuckle
under if he were in the place of the
North Vietnamese military com-
manders, buttressed that akepti-
ciam.
However, Johnson admits, the
committee was unable to suggest
a:sy other strategy that might have
prevented the ultimatt Communist
victory.
"The study suggested that
bombing and other actions against
North Vietnam did not offer the
United States a way around the
difficulties with which it wu grap-
pling, with declining success, in
South. Vietnam; 'Johnson wrote.
"At beat, these actions offered
only an uncertain hope of a breath-
er during which Washington and
Saigon might be able to get a grip
on problems that they had eo far
beenunable to solve.
"The committee also suggested
that the United States might get
caught up. in a situation in which
the South Vietnamese and Laotian
governments might crumble in the
midst of escalation, thereby de-
stroying the political base for the
U.S. actions.
"The committee (also) realized
that escalation could create serious
domestic political problems."
Johnson said he has been assured
that his report was read at the
highest levels of the government
but, despite its arguments, "policy
makers felt that they had no alter-
native. They were not prepared to
accept a negotiated solution that, it~
was widely recognized, would very
likely lead to an early Communist
takeover."
"Washington has sot yet discov-
ered how policy makers can be
induced to take such planning
ezercisea seriously, especially
where-the conclusions are not de-
signed to fit their preconceptions; '-
hesaid.
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09 :CIA-RDP90-009658000403350009-1