Mr. SCHOENBRUN. None except to thank you for the privilege of being able to appear before you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. I thank you both. I know it is a great effort to come and answer questions over a long period and rake these things over. It is a very unpleasant duty to ever raise questions about the wisdom of one's own Government, but I don't know how a democracy is supposed to operate if we don't. It seems to me it is an essential element in trying to make a democratic system function. Do you wish to say anything further, Mr. Ellsberg. NECESSITY OF ADMISSION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR VIETNAM Mr. ELLSBERG. I do think of one thing. You have brought up the Tonkin Gulf incident. I was very startled in reading the record of your last hearings, when you were questioning someone or other and you made the remark, Senator Fulbright, that you felt "shame" for your part in that operation of getting the congressional resolution. The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. ELLSBERG. That word leaped out at me because I had not remembered seeing an American official use such a word or in any way imply a sense of personal responsibility to that degree. It is almost un-American to do so, it would seem. There were many people involved in that incident, but you are the only one I have heard admit responsibility and regret. I think your word seems appropriate for you in your position and I think you have done a service for the Senate in the eyes of the college students and of the older people of this country, as they look at people who like to think of themselves as the establishment or the power holders, the decisionmakers, in having the courage and the character to acknowledge that publicly. I think that helps. I regret, on the other hand, that the people who were involved at that same point in misleading you and getting us deeper into the war have unfortunately not been heard from, not even to say "I was wrong" let alone to say that they feel any degree of shame for their role in this. I think the reason that is vitally needed if we are to get ourselves out of this crisis of national self-confidence is that the voters of the country and the youth of this country, everyone, must hear statements from their leadership that imply that those leaders have a sense of personal values and of personal responsibility and are capable of acknowledging it. The political consequences of refraining from that, of refraining from the indignities of "mea culpas" and post mortems and so forth, are the lessons of history remain clouded, remain unreadable and that the current President is put ever more in the position of bearing the whole responsibility for terminating the involvement. Now he chose to do that, unfortunately, by not even trying to share responsibilities with Congress on this occasion, but the less he shares it and the more he feels himself that all humiliation and shame for what happens in Vietnam after we leave will accrue only to him, the more we are condemned to this war so long as he is in office. So I feel that it is really important that other people who shared in that deci sionmaking, as I did in a very minor way, but especially the people like McNamara and Rusk and Bundy and the others, be prepared to say, as I hoped they would say before the President took up the standard of Nixon's war last November: "It is not your war. Don't make it your war. It is our war. We made the decisions and the lies and fatal mistakes that got us into this war and kept us in and made it larger. Don't make the same mistakes. Get us out." I am afraid it is because they have not yet been willing to say that that we find our President and our executive branch in fact repeating those mistakes today. HASTE OF ACTION ON GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION REGRETTED The CHAIRMAN. Since you mentioned it, I have felt very badly about that. I should have had much greater skepticism, of course, but at the time I had no reason whatever to believe that it wasn't just as they represented it. The study that the committee made was long after the fact. What I should have done was delayed and held hearings on the Tonkin. Gulf resolution and done what we are trying to do now, which is to examine these actions before the fact if we can. I am bound to say, however, that even now in the hearings 2 days before the Cambodian invasion, we did not receive any reasonable notice of it. Therefore, we were prevented from having any reasonable opportunity to express an opinion prior to the fact. As a matter of fact, only incidentally but not because they knew it was impending, a number of Senators, specifically people like Senators Cooper and Church and some of those who had been involved in the previous effort to put a restriction on enlarging the war into Laos, had this very much on their minds. But not having any notice whatever that they were going into Cambodia, they had no opportunity to express themselves. This is what I meant by subverting the democratic process. I should have been more skeptical simply because, well, I always wish I were wiser than I am and that I could have foreseen that it hadn't happened that way. As I look back I had no reason to do it, but still I think as chairman I should have said "well, wait a minute." The Gulf of Tonkin resolution passed the House unanimously and it came over, and their greatest plea was that it must be done immediately in order to deter the North Vietnamese from any further actions. To get the full effect we must show unity of purpose and determination, and it would look unpatriotic not to follow the President's recommendation as conveyed in that resolution. At the time it looked that way. All I say is that I should have been wiser. I should have said, "No, I will have the hearing; I will not allow it to be voted." It is possible that it would have happened, although there were only two dissenting votes in the Senate. Anyway that is history. I hope we are doing better. At least we are not falling in line like sitting ducks as we did then and we are trying to make an effort to inform the Senate and the public before we get deeper and deeper into greater difficulties. Whether we have any success or not remains for history to prove, but you gentlemen have made a great contribution in my opinion. IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM I can't emphasize more the importance of understanding how we became involved. It does relate to the conviction on the part of my colleagues and members of the public as to what we should do now. I think it is very important. If we don't have any feel about the justification of the war, how can we have any feel about ending it? If you accept the rhetoric that this is a holy war, why then is there no excuse for urging the President to end it. We ought to go through with it. If you accept some of the basic assumptions, it ought to be pursued to the end. But I don't know any responsible people who wish it. The most difficult thing, as Senator Javits said, is that rhetoric is one way and the action is the other and it is always difficult to come to grips with the essential question. You are always in a position of appearing to think the leaders are not telling the truth. This is a rather objectionable position to be in before the American public. They resent the suggestion that they are being hornswoggled, as they say in the country. Therefore, it destroys your own credibility when you question it. It is extremely difficult to come to grips with the essential elements involved in this war. Mr. SCHOENBRUN. But it must be done and it is my experience, Mr. Chairman, when the American people are given the factual background they are prepared to accept it and then they say, "We have been hornswoggled." That is the reason why I got this call from the University of California, which has never taken a major role, but now they have said "my God, this is really wrong". I think you have done a perfectly wonderful job in the educational process and whatever minor contribution I have been able to make is a joy to me and I do not agree with Senator Case, who wants to dismiss it as past history. I don't think there is anything bad about mea culpa. Mea culpa and confessional in public is a very noble and purging experience and I join with Mr. Ellsberg in my admiration of you, Mr. Chairman, as being perhaps the only leader in this country who has ever stood up publicly and said, "I have made a mistake and I mean to correct it," and it is a great joy to appear before you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. The committee is adjourned. (Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m., the committee was adjourned.) "DIEMISM" AND U.S. AIMS: IMPACTS OF THE ARREST, TRIAL, AND 1. THIEU'S (AND U.S.) MOTIVES, IN VIETNAMESE EYES Why has Thieu shown such determination to strip Chau's immunity and punish him? Because Chau has been spokesman for the desires of many, probably most, Vietnamese for an end to the fighting. He has called for political concessions toward coexistence and direct talks with the NLF leading to a negotiated settlement. Thieu's backers cannot accept such a policy. His regime almost surely cannot survive peace or an end to American presence and support; without American aid and backing, it could not win in a political competition either with non-communists or with communists. Indeed, Thieu may well fear, as Chau charges, and so he himself is said to claim that he would be in immediate jeopardy from the backers of a hard-line anti-communist policy among the Northern Catholics, high army officers and the Americans who constitute the vital core of his narrow support if he should even tolerate such proposals or fail to act vigorously to suppress them. But Chau's silence, Thieu found, could not be bought or coerced. In fact-what seems to have triggered the intense drive from December on to arrest him-he was exposing publicly the operations of Thieu's associate Nguyen Cao Thang to bribe other Assembly members. Chau's voice was protected constitutionally, as a member of the Assembly. His immunity had to be overridden. The precise charge is a side issue. To have relatives on both sides of the revolutionary conflict is perhaps more common than not; nor are occasional meetings unusual (especially, for example, during the family reunions at Tet). If Chau's failure to report visits from his brother to the GVN as well as to US officials (this along with a gift of 30,000 piasters and a car ride on the first visit, was the strongest charge leveled at Chau prior to his trial) is an offense, it is one which Chau admitted publicly at the time of his brother's arrest. But it was not a matter for which the required 4 of his fellow deputies (all of whom had been screened for loyalty and anti-communism before election) were expected to lift his immunity from arrest. Nor did they, when this was brought to a floor vote, at the insistence of Thieu. Despite heavy efforts by Nguyen Cao Thang, the millionaire pharmacist who serves as Thieu's bag man in bribing assembly members (his official role is "liaison"), only 70 deputies-far short of the 102 required-could be found to censure Chau's actions. What seems to have brought on Thieu's determined campaign to eliminate Chau from the assembly, first (unsuccessfully) by voice and then by petition, was precisely Chau's public speeches in the assembly denouncing Thang's actions. A central lesson of the affair for Vietnamese oppositionists will be the lack of an effective restraining influence by the US. Even on matters of principle, legal and constitutional form and procedure, of the sort that the Nixon Administration particularly emphasizes as the aim and justification of our presence, public silence by the US is now to be expected. Vietnamese (and Americans) must infer that if there were private protests by the Ambassador intended to restrain Thieu's aims or even his tactics, they were obviously ineffective, and the US was content to accept this. Barring simple diplomatic or judgmental incompetence, the choice of interpretation for Vietnamese seem to be: (a) that the US did not consider the issues, either of principle and form, or of the substantive policies and critiques raised by Chau, sufficiently important to warrant further US intervention (e.g., by public statement, of a sort volunteered frequently on other matters, especially in support of the current regime); (b) that the US actually approves the course of Thieu's policy, and does not mind this approval being evident; or (c) that the US, perhaps in return for agreement on Vietnamization, has tacitly or explicitly given Thieu a free hand for some period in dealing with his domestic non-Communist opposition. These interpretations are not exclusive; they might all be valid. But none of them—including incompetence can be reassuring to oppositionists who might have relied upon the US presence and stated aims to restrain Thieu from illegal arrests and other coercive pressures in repressing critics of the regime or spokesmen for cease-fire and coexistence. The very fact that Chau was known to highly-placed officials in the US Government, that US journalists gave major critical play to Thieu's actions, and above all that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in particular its Chairman, Senator Fulbright, raised the strongest possible criticisms of both Thieu's actions and US acceptance-all this without any apparent effectiveness or restraining influence-strengthen these inferences in the most dramatic way possible. The inferences of Thai, Chi and myself below are premised upon events proceeding as they have till now, with a continued lack of effective protest by Vietnamese Assemblymen or oppositionists and by the United States. However, the Supreme Court has yet to be heard from, as have the most prominent oppositionists. such as Don and Minh, or Buddhist leadership. The attitude of the lawyers involved in the case, and of some Assemblymen, in response to the brutality of the actual conduct of Chau's arrest and trial, raises the possibility that there yet may be a strong and perhaps effective challenge to Thieu's moves against the constitutional order. If there is, the position of the United States Government will be of critical importance in determining the outcome. So the evolution below, while probably accurately describing Thieu's intentions, the inferences being drawn by Vietnamese, and even the probable course of events, cannot be regarded as completely determined. 2. IMPLICATIONS FOR POLITICAL EVOLUTION IN VIETNAM According to Vu Van Thai, former RVN Ambassador to Washington (27 February 1970): "This is the beginning of a return to a police regime in Saigon. It destroys the creditibility of a negotiated settlement in Paris; this has been scuttled by Thieu, leaving only Vietnamization. This is the end of democracy in Saigon, poor as it already was. An assembly that had refused to remove immunity was coerced to voting for it; and the US went along, despite its past association with Chau and knowledge that he was an anti-communist. Anyone advocating coexistence with the Communists will now expect to get many years in jail; no one will dare speak of the possibility. It is now known that Thieu can muster the votes and that the US will back Thieu even in illegal matters. The battle was lost before the trial, when Thieu was allowed to use enough pressure and coercion and corruption to get a three-fourths vote; now the independence of the national assembly has been destroyed." The larger policy almost surely symbolized by the pursuit of Chau would mean the end of hopes-slim as they might have appeared before of the peaceful evolution of the GVN, via freedom of expression, political organization, and the elections of 1970-71, toward a regime that would be willing effectively to seek an end to the fighting, and one that might be capable of competing effectively with the communists. A non-communist, nationalist government truly representing the majority of the population of South Vietnam would be likely to express popular desires for an end to the fighting. It would thus act to bring about a political competition with the communists. That would entail inescapably a significant, perhaps a strong risk of eventual communist domination. This risk would be a sufficient reason for the present Saigon regime and perhaps for the present US Administration (like past ones) to block its emergence. Yet at the same time, such a broadly representative government could offer the only real hope of confronting the communists effectively enough in such competition to avert communist domination without relying upon continued American presence or support. This possibility would be especially strong if the non-communists had time and freedom to organize starting early in the course of an American withdrawal, i.e., profiting from a year or so of American presence. As Vietnamese like Chau and Vu Van Thai have long argued, the very risk posed by a communist open political challenge is probably essential to (though it does not guarantee) progress toward cohesion of the non-communist factions in SVN that form the majority of the population. Yet the current policy of Thieu, if it continues to be supported by the U.S. Government, means a decisive choice by both Administrations against any such evolution. It means the choice of an authoritarian regime based upon police repression and military power, upon the support of a narrow group of Vietnamese factions excluding all others, above all upon the continued support and presence of the Americans. What the future seems to hold for South Vietnam is not a new style of politics-a promise, however dim at best, that seemed more vivid in 1968-69 than at any other time-but a return to a very familiar form. "Diemism Diemism without Diem" is a description that comes inevitably to the minds of Vietnamese, and of those Americans with longest experience in Vietnamese affairs. "Diemism" is not merely an epithet, nor a casual historical allusion. It means a number of precise characteristics, all now foreseeable as sharply as they were experienced in the past in the latter days of the Diem regime: (a) narrow-based, exclusionist politics; (b) specifically, a political base drawn from elements of Northern Catholics and other refugees, the army, the governmental bureaucracy, and above all, the U.S.; (c) with respect to other factions-Buddhist, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, Montagnard, Khmer, students, unions, the peasants and the poor in general-exclusion from power, repression, divide-and-rule tactics of subversion, manipulation, coercion and bribery; (d) repression of significant political opposition, suppression of freedom of speech and the press (censorship), of political activity and organization; harassment of political parties; (e) disregard, subversion, or destruction of constitutional forms; rigged elections, political arrests, destruction of the independence or influence of the National Assembly or the Supreme Court; |