The Cold War (63 page)

And there were political as well as technological problems. Because of the strength of the antiwar movement in the United States, the government— under both Lyndon Johnson and Nixon—had imposed many restrictions on targets in the air war, which, naturally, infuriated the airmen. This policy had little effect on public opinion—the doves and foreign critics still charged that the U.S. Air Force was carrying out a barbaric, terrorist campaign—but it was a great help to the North Vietnamese. They knew what was off-limits and could concentrate their SAMs around such predictable targets as railroad yards and radar sites.

The technological advantage was with the enemy; for this reason, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, his deputy, Kenneth Rush, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, were opposed to using B-52s over Hanoi, and they so advised the president. Many of Nixon's political advisers were also opposed, because to escalate the bombing after Kissinger's “peace is at hand” statement would drive the Nixon-haters in Congress, in the media, on the campuses, and among the general public into a frenzy.

But something had to be done to convince Thieu that, whatever the formal wording of the cease-fire agreement, he could count on Nixon to come to the defense of South Vietnam if the NVA broke the cease-fire. And Le Duc Tho had to be convinced that, despite the doves in Congress, Nixon could still punish North Vietnam.

That made the bombing option tempting. Although the B-52s were relatively slow and cumbersome, they packed a terrific punch. They carried eightyfour 500-pound bombs in their bomb bays and twelve 500-pound bombs on their wings. They could drop those bombs with relative accuracy, much better than World War II bombers. (The Seventh Air Force commander, General John Vogt, complained that the internal radar systems of the B-52s were “notoriously bad” and that “misses of a thousand feet or more were common.” However, in World War II, misses of a thousand meters—three times as much—had been common.) They flew from secure bases in Guam and Thailand. They had been used with devastating effect in the Battle of Khe Sanh in 1968 and again to stop the NVA spring offensive of 1972. The temptation to use them against Hanoi was great, and growing.

Kissinger tried to resist it. He recommended more bombing south of the 20th Parallel, against NVA units that were not as well protected by SAMs as Hanoi was, and reseeding the mines in Haiphong Harbor. On the other hand, Haig, always a hard-liner, argued forcefully for an all-out bombing campaign by the B-52s against Hanoi itself.

Nixon later said that ordering the bombing was “the most difficult decision” he had to make in the entire war. But, he added, “it was also one of the most clear-cut and necessary ones.” He issued an order on December 14 to reseed the mines, from the air—and also to send the B-52s against Hanoi. He told Kissinger he was prepared “for new losses and casualties and POWs,” and explained, “We'll take the same heat for big blows as for little blows.”

To Kissinger, the president seemed “sullen” and “withdrawn.” Nixon “resented” having to do what he did, because “deep down he was ready to give up by going back to the October draft” of the armistice agreement. His bombing order, according to Kissinger, was “his last roll of the dice … helpful if it worked; a demonstration to the right wing if it failed that he had done all he could.”

Once Nixon set the policy, public relations became his obsession. John Scali, White House adviser on foreign affairs information policy, put the problem succinctly to Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, in a telephone conversation: “We look incompetent—bombing for no good reason and because we don't know what else to do.” On May 8, 1972, Nixon had gone on television to explain his reason for bombing Hanoi and mining Haiphong: It was in response to the Communists' spring offensive. Scali had thought the television
appearance unnecessary in May, as the justification for Nixon's strong action was obvious then. But in December, when his critics and even some of his supporters could not figure out his reasons, Nixon refused to go on television to explain his actions.

Kissinger badly wanted Nixon to make a broadcast; he had been urging it for days. But Nixon, according to Kissinger, “was determined to take himself out of the line of fire.” Nixon feared that any attempt to rally the people to support more bombing after “peace is at hand” would fall flat.

On the evening of December 14, four days before the bombing was set to begin, Nixon told Kissinger to hold a news conference to explain the status of the negotiations. The president followed up with a five-page, single-spaced memo on December 15 and another of two pages on December 16, instructing Kissinger on what to say. He told the national security adviser to “hit hard on the point that, while we want peace just as soon as we can get it, that we want a peace that is honorable and a peace that will last.” Kissinger should admit the U.S. goals had been reached “in principle” in the October agreement, but add that some “strengthening of the language” was needed “so that there will be no doubt on either side in the event that [the agreement] is broken.” He should accuse Le Duc Tho of having “backed off” on some of the October understandings.

Kissinger should emphasize that with the Christmas season coming on, the president had a “very strong personal desire to get the war settled.” But he should also point out that the president “insists that the United States is not going to be pushed around, black-mailed or stampeded into making the wrong kind of a peace agreement.” Finally, he should say that “the president will continue to order whatever actions he considers necessary by air and sea”—the only reference to the bombing order, which had already gone out.

In his memos, Nixon was repetitious to a degree unusual even for him, an indication of the strain he was under, due perhaps to the difficulty of his position. As an example of his dilemma, it was the Americans—in response to demands from Thieu—who had backed off the October agreements, not the North Vietnamese. But Nixon could not have Kissinger straightforwardly tell the American people his administration was bombing Hanoi to convince Thieu to sign. Thieu was seen increasingly in the United States as the sole obstacle to peace and thus was increasingly unpopular. On December 15, Senator Barry Goldwater, an Arizona Republican and one of the toughest hawks,
said that if Thieu “bucks much more,” the United States should proceed with its withdrawal and “to hell with him.”

Kissinger held his briefing on December 16 and said what he had been told to say. He stressed the president's consistency, unflappability, firmness, patience, and farsightedness. He mentioned Nixon fourteen times (he had been criticized by Haldeman for referring to the president only three times in his October news conference).

By this time the tension in the Nixon-Kissinger relationship was threatening to lead to an open break. Kissinger was unhappy with his boss because of his interference, and his back-and-forthing, on the negotiations. Nixon was furious with Kissinger for his “peace is at hand” statement, which had raised public expectations to a high level, expectations that were going to be dashed when the bombing began. Nixon also resented the way Kissinger had thrust himself onto center stage, his constant leaks to reporters, and the way the reporters responded by giving Kissinger credit for the huge margin of the election victory. Further, earlier in December,
Time
magazine had named Nixon and Kissinger “Men of the Year,” with their pictures on the cover; Kissinger correctly feared that Nixon resented having to share the honor.

On December 17, Nixon wrote a letter to Thieu. Usually, the president signed drafts of letters to foreign heads of government prepared by Kissinger; in this case, he wrote the letter personally. Nixon had Haig fly to Saigon to handdeliver it. In the letter Nixon made a threat: Unless Thieu accepted the agreement, the United States would go it alone. “You must decide now whether you want me to seek a settlement with the enemy which serves U.S. interests alone.”

Although Nixon himself would do anything possible to avoid a break, the threat was not meaningless, because, as Goldwater's statement indicated, Congress might carry it out regardless of the president's wishes. Thieu knew that, and he also knew how to read between the lines of Nixon's letter. After reading it, he told Haig it was obvious he was being asked to sign not a peace agreement but rather an agreement for continued American support.

On December 18 the air force launched its B-52s and fighter-bombers against Hanoi. The orders were to avoid civilian casualties at all costs; for example, a missile-assembly plant manned by Russian technicians in the heart of Hanoi was off-limits, partly because of fear of Soviet casualties, partly to avoid
near-misses that would devastate residential areas. Still, Linebacker II, as the operation was code-named, greatly damaged railroads, power plants, radio transmitters, and radar installations around Hanoi, as well as docks and shipyards in Haiphong.

It was not Nixon but Johnson who had imposed the restrictions on targets; in fact, they frustrated Nixon. The day after the bombing began, he read a report about targets that had been avoided for fear of civilian casualties, and he called Admiral Moorer. “I don't want any more of this crap about the fact that we couldn't hit this target or that one,” Nixon said. “This is your chance to use military power effectively to win this war, and if you don't, I'll consider you responsible.” But the armed forces, concerned about their reputation and perhaps doubtful of the effectiveness of area bombing, continued the restrictions.

Nevertheless, a French reporter in Hanoi referred to “carpet bombing,” a line repeated by Radio Hanoi. As a result, there was an immediate worldwide uproar and many expressions of moral revulsion. There had been no presidential explanation or announcement of any kind. People everywhere had taken Kissinger at his word, that only a few t's needed to be crossed and a few i's dotted and the negotiations would be wrapped up. The shock when the bombing was announced was even greater than that following the Cambodian incursion of 1970.

The adverse congressional and editorial reaction was unprecedented. Senator William Saxbe, an Ohio Republican, said Nixon “appears to have left his senses.” Democratic Senate leader Mike Mansfield of Montana called it a “Stone Age tactic.” Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said it was an “outrage.” In an editorial,
The Washington Post
charged that the bombing caused millions of Americans “to cringe in shame and to wonder at their President's very sanity.” James Reston, in
The New York Times,
called it “war by tantrum.”

Nixon did have supporters, including Governors Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Ronald Reagan of California and Republican senators James Buckley of New York, Howard Baker of Tennessee, and Charles Percy of Illinois. John Connally, former governor of Texas and treasury secretary, called Nixon daily to encourage him and assure him that, regardless of what politicians and the media said, the people were behind him.

That was probably an exaggeration, but not as gross as the exaggerations of Nixon's critics. They charged that he had ordered the most intensive bombing
campaign in the history of warfare. That was nonsense. In comparison to the human costs at Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, and Tokyo—not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki—in World War II, the bombing of Hanoi during the Christmas season of 1972 was a minor operation. Under the severe targeting restrictions followed by the air force, civilian casualties were only around 1,500, and at least some of those were caused by SAM missiles falling back on the city after missing their targets. In World War II a bombing raid that killed fewer than two thousand German or Japanese civilians was not worth even a minor story in the newspapers, not to mention expressions of moral outrage from opinion leaders and prominent politicians. The Christmas bombing of Hanoi was not terror bombing, as the world had come to know terror bombing in the twentieth century.

Nixon's private response was to personalize it and assign to his critics the lowest possible motives. In his diary he wrote that they “simply cannot bear the thought of this administration under my leadership bringing off the peace on an honorable basis which they have so long predicted would be impossible. The election was a terrible blow to them and this is their first opportunity to recover from the election and to strike back.”

That was by no means the whole truth. The most basic cause for the moral revulsion was the nature of the war itself. Few in the United States had protested the firebomb raids of World War II, which set out deliberately to kill civilians. Why the difference three decades later, especially when the air force was doing its utmost to avoid killing civilians? Because from 1942 to 1945, the United States was fighting for its life against a foe who was not only pure evil but also powerful enough to threaten the entire world. In World War II there had been no ongoing negotiations with the Germans and Japanese, only a demand for their unconditional surrender. In 1942–45 the Americans were bombing in order to hasten that surrender.

But in 1972 no one believed that the United States was fighting for its life, or that the NVA could conquer the world, or that there could be no end to the war until Hanoi surrendered; and few believed that more bombing would bring a quicker end to the war.

Despite the protest, Nixon continued to send the B-52s and fighter-bombers, and the battle raged in the sky above Hanoi. If Hanoi was far from being the most heavily bombed city in history, it certainly was one of the best defended. The SAMs shot down six of the ninety B-52s that flew missions on December
20; the following day, two of thirty were destroyed. The air force could not long sustain such losses; on the other hand, the Soviets could not long continue to supply SAMs in such quantity to the North Vietnamese (they were shooting a hundred or more per day at the attackers).

Nixon felt his resolve was being tested; he was determined to prevail. Kissinger, however, broke under the pressure of the protest and began leaking to reporters, especially Reston, word that he had opposed the bombing. This infuriated Nixon. He instructed his aide Charles Colson to monitor all Kissin-ger's telephone calls and contacts with the press. The president, according to Colson, “was raving and ranting about Henry double-talking.” Colson did as instructed and discovered that Kissinger was calling Reston and others, “planting self-serving stories at the same time he was recommending Nixon be tough on Vietnam.”