On Two Fronts

Donning a blue suit, dark tie and rimless glasses for his televised press conference last week, Lyndon Johnson projected an aura of somber calm. His remarks matched his manner. He presented a cool, dispassionate defense of his conduct of the Viet Nam war. He turned away critics with soft answers, explained once more his decision to continue bombing the North (see box next page). The President was confident but cautious. While he could "no longer see any possibility of military victory on the part of North Viet Nam," neither could he forecast a quick or easy victory for the Allies.

Johnson is more certain than ever that the air war is badly hurting Hanoi and that the best way to get peace talks started is not to relax the pressure but to keep it up. Accordingly, he moved to tighten the screws "another notch or two," as he put it. From bases in Thailand, U.S. F-105s streaked to the big Thai Nguyen steel complex 28 miles north of Hanoi and damaged it severely (see THE WORLD).

As the President and his advisers see it, such strikes put a high price on Hanoi's efforts to resupply and reinforce Communist forces in the South. Were the bombing to end, U.S. casualties would almost certainly increase, and Johnson would find himself in an indefensible political position. As it is, American losses* for the week ending March 4 were the highest of the war: 232 dead, 1,381 wounded, four missing (v. 1,736 Communist dead, at least twice as many wounded).

Not to Be Trusted. For Johnson, Viet Nam is a two-front war--the military conflict across the Pacific, and the political battle in the U.S. At home, the hostilities seemed to be escalating, despite his efforts to damp down his long-running vendetta with Bobby Kennedy. The feud, which had its beginnings in the 1960 Democratic Convention, flamed into open warfare last month when Bobby returned from Europe amidst rumors that he had received a significant peace feeler in Paris (which he had not).

During a 45-minute meeting in his White House office on Feb. 6, Johnson castigated Kennedy for his stance on Viet Nam. "If you keep talking like this, you won't have a political future in this country within six months," the President is said to have warned. "In six months, all you doves will be destroyed." At one point, Johnson used the phrase, "The blood of American boys will be on your hands." Finally, the President told Kennedy, "I never want to hear your views on Viet Nam again." He also reportedly said to the Senator: "I never want to see you again."

Bobby, for his part, is said to have called the President an s.o.b. and to have told him at one point: "I don't have to sit here and take that --." When the President asked him to go before the press and say that the U.S. had never received a genuine peace feeler from Hanoi, Kennedy said that unless he saw all the pertinent communications he could not make such an announcement. "I'm telling you that you can," said Johnson. Bobby, implying that the President was not to be trusted, refused to accept that assurance.

Mistaken Offer. The quarrel deepened, perhaps irreparably, with Kennedy's Senate speech two weeks ago calling for a unilateral U.S. bombing halt. In preparing the speech, he consulted such longtime advisers as Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger and Writer Richard Goodwin. He also invited New Left Leaders Staughton Lynd and Tom Hayden up to his United Nations Plaza apartment in Manhattan to review his conviction that if the U.S. really wants fruitful negotiations, it will have to accept the possibility that the people of South Viet Nam may some day elect a Communist government.

In his speech, Bobby complained that the U.S. had stiffened its terms for talks by demanding some concession from Hanoi in return for a halt in the bombing. The U.S. did indeed begin insisting a year ago that the North must offer concrete evidence of its desire to talk peace. As recently as the 37-day bombing pause in 1966, the Administration was offering to end the air war for nothing more than an agreement to begin negotiations. But many top officials thought that this was a mistake, since it would give Hanoi a protracted reprieve from bombardment in exchange for talks that could be turned into a lethal filibuster. To their surprise--and relief--Hanoi made no move to accept the offer. Since then, the Administration has been demanding a quid pro quo before it will agree to call off the bombing raids against the North.

Papering the Rift. Some of Robert Kennedy's closest associates have helped fuel the feud with Lyndon. His brother Teddy predicted in Boston that unless Johnson ends the war before 1968, the Democrats might go down to defeat. Officials of the Americans for Demo cratic Action predicted, without noticeable regret, that Johnson might become the first Democratic President in the 20th century to be unseated after a single term. Schlesinger declared that the Administration had misrepresented Hanoi's offer to talk because it "does not consider negotiations advantageous at this time." The charge brought a swift reply from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg. "That is not true," he declared. "We are ready for unconditional negotiations today."

Both Johnson and Vice President Humphrey did their best to paper over the break. Johnson sought to downplay it at his press conference, though later, in an obvious--and overly harsh--reference to Bobby he deplored the fact that some men seemed willing to sue for peace merely out of a "temporary lust for popularity." Humphrey meanwhile tried unconvincingly to dismiss the rift as a "difference of opinion over details." Kennedy, he explained, "has never asked for withdrawal from Viet Nam. never broken with the President on the fundamental principle of our involvement." Nonetheless, the differences are serious enough to alarm officials who have served in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, for one. is more concerned about the effectiveness of the bombing than he will publicly admit--and that places him a shade closer to Bobby Kennedy's position than the President might find comfortable. Another is Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach, who sat in during the blistering White House confrontation between Johnson and Kennedy and nodded agreement whenever the President turned and asked him, "Isn't that right?"--but hastened afterward to placate Bobby. Such Kennedy holdovers as Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien and Goldberg are thought to be upset over the rift. Moreover, now that both McGeorge Bundy and Bill Moyers have left the White House, there is no longer a bridge between Johnson's personal staff and the Kennedy camp.

"Damned Gutsy." Johnson got support from various other quarters for his position last week. In London, Richard Nixon declared that Bobby is "out of his mind" for questioning Johnson's sincerity in seeking peace, added that the President's performance in the face of intense pressures for a bombing halt has been "damned gutsy." In the Philippine resort of Baguio, U.S. diplomats from 15 Asian capitals agreed that "any slackening of the collective military effort or of the policies and programs in nonmilitary fields" would prolong the war rather than shorten it.

On his way to a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, who returned last week after talks with North Vietnamese officials in Burma "more convinced than ever" that a bombing pause "is an absolute prerequisite" for a peace parley, Goldberg declared: "The war cannot stop by one party taking an action that is not reciprocated."

Even the Rt. Rev. James A. Pike, a longtime opponent of U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, endorsed Johnson's present policy. "I don't believe we should stop the bombings and hope that the other side comes to the table," said Pike, former Episcopal Bishop of California. "We have to sit down first and then bring all fighting to an end."

With no indication that Hanoi has any interest in sitting down, Johnson announced that he would sit down with the U.S. men on the scene. He plans to fly to the Pacific island of Guam this weekend with McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk to confer with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and Commander General William C. Westmoreland on future strategy.

* The U.S. command in Saigon last week abandoned its controversial policy of reporting U.S. unit casualties only as "light," "moderate," or "heavy" and began releasing the actual totals of dead and wounded. Reason for the change: the U.S. now has such preponderant force in Viet Nam that it is of little or no military advantage to the enemy to learn the precise extent of his effectiveness. In addition, "heavy" casualties--meaning 15% or more of a unit dead or wounded--often gave a misleading impression of how badly a unit had actually been hit.

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