THE BOMBING HALT: Johnson's Gamble for Peace

THE Viet Nam war has divided and demoralized the American people as have few other issues in this century. It led, on March 31, to Lyndon Johnson's renunciation of the presidency in the realization that he might well have been defeated for reelection. Its steadily growing cost was perhaps the greatest single obstacle to Johnson's hopes of building a Great Society for the U.S. in its cities, countryside and classrooms. The war's ugliness, and the often misunderstood reasons behind U.S. participation in it, greatly contributed to the rebelliousness of America's young. More than anything else, it has been Hubert Humphrey's identification with the President's war policy that has cost him Democratic and independent support throughout the election campaign. Thus it came as the supreme irony of the Johnson Administration that, as Americans prepared to go to the polls this week to vote for another President, the agony of Viet Nam appeared about to be alleviated.

In a televised address to the nation that may rate as the high point of his career, the President announced: "I have now ordered that all air, naval and artillery bombardment of North Viet Nam cease," effective twelve hours after he spoke. "What we now expect--what we have a right to expect--are prompt, productive, serious and intensive negotiations." When those negotiations resume in Paris this week, the morning after the U.S. elections, representatives of both the Saigon government and the Viet Cong are expected to take part--though Johnson emphasized that the Communists' participation "in no way involves" U.S. recognition of the Viet Cong's political representatives. Johnson gave no hint of what, if any, concessions Hanoi offered. Presumably there was some quid pro quo, but in order to spare Hanoi embarrassment among its allies, most notably Peking, the U.S. may keep the specific terms secret as long as possible. Still, the President made it clear that if North Viet Nam takes advantage of the pause--such as massive violation of the Demilitarized Zone or the shelling of cities--the U.S. will not hesitate to resume the bombing. "We could be misled--and we are prepared for such a contingency," he said.

More than any other phase of the Viet Nam war, the bombing of the North aroused emotional opposition both in the U.S. and abroad. But ending it was not an easy decision. By holding back the U.S. bombers, Johnson risked repudiating a major element of his own policy. But he also assured his reemergence, in his final months in office, from under the war's clouds.

With a Micrometer. Johnson's decision was of the kind few outgoing chief executives have ever had to face. It was complicated immensely by the closeness of the election; he had to judge whether a halt would help Humphrey or be considered a cynical ploy. All the same, when he announced a partial bombing halt last March 31, and simultaneously renounced a second term in office, his popularity rating spurted 13 points. Were Humphrey's standing in the polls to increase by even a third of that amount, his already growing chances to overtake Richard Nixon in the presidential race might be materially enhanced.

Johnson's announcement climaxed days of roiling activity. In Saigon, officials would not even say whether U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker had been conferring with South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu--when everybody in town knew that he had. In Paris, U.S. diplomats were reported to have rented unimpressive automobiles so that they could speed inconspicuously to meetings with North Vietnamese negotiators at obscure hideaways. To attend one White House conference, Defense Secretary Clark Clifford drove to the State Department in his chauffeured limousine, met Secretary of State Dean Rusk in the basement, then with Rusk hopped into a nondescript Chevrolet for the half-mile drive to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The ruse failed; newsmen sighted them anyway.

As the week began, Washington received word from Hanoi that the North Vietnamese were amenable to Johnson's latest proposals, transmitted to them about a month ago. Before making a final decision, however, the President decided to review the picture once more. General Creighton W. Abrams, commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam, responded to an urgent summons from Johnson. "Get him over here as soon as you can," the President had ordered. The general hastily boarded a four-jet C-141 StarLifter for an unannounced flight to Washington. There he conferred with the President and with Pentagon officials, also joined Johnson's policymaking Tuesday Luncheon Group at the White House, including Clifford, Rusk. Central Intelligence Agency Director Richard Helms, Presidential Adviser (for national-security affairs) Walt W. Rostow, and General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Abrams has made a number of extremely strong statements in support of the bombing, and it was assumed that the reason for his hurried trip was to bring him into line on a bombing pause. Abrams did not require undue persuasion. During an all-night session at the White House with Johnson and several top aides that began at 2:38 a.m. he noted that the situation in the field has improved vastly in recent months, and that a bombing halt might now be militarily tolerable.

Corridor Conference. In Saigon, meanwhile, Thieu met almost daily with Bunker, for a total of ten conferences in a fortnight. Thieu fed the speculation about a bombing pause with several other actions. One of the major stumbling blocks had been Saigon's resistance to a bombing halt. Thus it was highly significant that Thieu dispatched a three-man advance party to Paris to arrange quarters and communications for an official South Vietnamese delegation to the peace talks. He met with New Zealand's Prime Minister Keith Holyoake, whose country has a 500-man artillery and infantry contingent in Viet Nam, and issued a joint conmunique that sounded more hard-lining than it actually was. Thieu and Holyoake declared that the National Liberation Front, political superstructure of the Viet Cong guerrilla movement, "cannot be considered as an independent entity distinct from North Viet Nam in international peace negotiations." The real significance of the two leaders' statement was that it raised no objection to the Viet Cong's participation in the Paris talks, so long as it is considered part of Hanoi's official delegation.

Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, all along the most intransigent of Saigon's top officialdom toward peace moves, also seemed to be relenting, particularly after several no-nonsense conferences with U.S. Deputy Ambassador Samuel Berger. For the first time since they were inaugurated one year ago last week. South Viet Nam's President and Vice President were seen in deep conversation in the corridor that separates the "Thieu wing" from the "Kywing" of Saigon's Independence Palace. Said Ky to an aide: "What can I do? I must accept this reconciliation for the sake of the country."

The Usual Insults. Other moves were under way in Vientiane, capital of supposedly neutral Laos, for years a center of communications and intelligence for the warring sides. U.S. Ambassador to Laos William Sullivan and his North Vietnamese counterpart, Le Van Hien, were reported to be secretly discussing the eventual regrouping of troops should a cease-fire be proclaimed. In Paris, U.S. and North Vietnamese negotiators met in the ornate Hotel Majestic for the 28th time since the peace talks began on May 13 and exchanged the usual insults. The real news, as elsewhere throughout the current thrust toward peace, lay several strata beneath the surface. The No. 2 man on the U.S. team, Cyrus Vance, was absent. He was said to be working at the American embassy, but there was speculation that he was off somewhere continuing secret talks with Hanoi's Colonel Ha Van Lau, his opposite number.

Amidst the flotsam of rumors, one fascinating tidbit made the rounds in Washington last week. It was that North Viet Nam's President Ho Chi Minh was in Peking, presumably explaining to Mao Tse-tung & Co. the reasons for a shift in stance. It was perfectly clear that the Chinese were not at all happy about the prospect of a bombing pause if it involved the slightest concession on Hanoi's part.

Prayers, Not Curiosity. As the week began, Lyndon Johnson told a Democratic luncheon at Manhattan's Waldorf -Astoria: "What I need now is not your curiosity. I need your prayers." Allied officials emphasized that the next move was up to Hanoi, and Hanoi wasn't moving. "You will have to ask Ho Chi Minh," said New Zealand's Holyoake when asked about the prospects of a pause. "At the present time, it rests with Hanoi."

The North Vietnamese batted the ball right back to the U.S. Said Hanoi's Nhan Dan: "The U.S. propaganda campaign about a so-called breakthrough in Paris will end in a flop." In Paris, Colonel Lau complained: "The Americans' formulas change, give the appearance of being more supple. But in reality, they all boil down to the same thing--reciprocity. And we can't accept this."

The major stumbling blocks at times indeed seemed insuperable. Aside from the prickly problem of reciprocity, there was the question of representation. At first, Hanoi demanded that the N.L.F. be seated as an independent entity and that Saigon's "puppet" government be barred altogether. Saigon, in turn, insisted on separate representation for the South Vietnamese delegation, and insisted that the N.L.F. "traitors" be kept away. Washington was campaigning hard for a "two-sided" arrangement under which the guerrilla leaders were lumped in with North Viet Nam's negotiators and the South's officials sat together with the Americans.

A Real Fadeaway? Beyond such diplomatic considerations, there was the question of what would happen militarily if the U.S. did call off its bombers. For weeks, the Communists had been scaling down the fighting, withdrawing some 40,000 front-line troops, mostly to sanctuaries on or near the borders of Cambodia and Laos. U.S. casualties dipped to 100 killed three weeks ago, the lowest level in 14 months; two weeks ago, the dead totaled 109, the second lowest.

Was this a genuine lull, or had the Communists been hurt so badly by Abrams' successful tactics that they were merely pulling back to regroup, as they have done so often in the past? Many in the Johnson Administration seemed willing to interpret the lull as a deliberate signal from Hanoi that the North Vietnamese wanted to move on to a new phase in the Paris peace negotiations. A minority, centered in the Pentagon but also including Rostow and Rusk, held out in the absence of firm and far-reaching North Vietnamese concessions. Said one U.S. diplomat: "I have always thought that one of our biggest problems would be to get our own military to admit the fact of a fadeaway."

The military had a number of compelling arguments to justify its hesitancy. Communist rockets landed on Saigon last week for the first time in more than a month. Senior U.S. officials an nounced that, far from pulling back, the Communists were massing for a drive on Saigon. Seventy combat battalions, including eight artillery battalions, were reported within 50 miles of the capital. To the north, 25 to 30 Communist battalions were on the prowl in the DMZ and the two northernmost provinces of South Viet Nam.

No Breakdown. The Communist concentration led a U.S. officer to comment: "There are still no signs that the lull in enemy activity has been directed by Hanoi as a sign of good faith. We still believe that the enemy is refitting for another offensive." Supporting his view was the fact that prisoner interrogations and captured documents continued to indicate that a November as sault was planned. The U.S., for its part, maintained its bombing raids against North Viet Nam's panhandle--roughly from the 17th to the 19th parallels. Early last week, bomber pilots flew 139 missions, the most in nearly a month. The next day, regardless of worsening weather, they flew 134.

Despite the fear among military men that Hanoi was not really serious, statesmen and diplomats the world over passed the word that a breakthrough was at hand. Thailand's Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, long a hard-liner about the war in nearby South Viet Nam, returned from a visit to Washington to announce that the U.S. and North Viet Nam had entered the "final stages" of bargaining for a bombing pause, predicted results in the "not too distant fu ture." In Paris, an official of an allied country with troops in the South said flatly: "Everything is settled." The White House was far more cautious. But when rumors began spreading that the talks between the U.S. and North Viet Nam were on the verge of collapse, word was passed that there had been no breakthrough, but no breakdown either.

The maneuvering really began in earnest last February, when General William C. Westmoreland, then the U.S. commander in Viet Nam and now Army Chief of Staff, appealed to the President for 206,000 more U.S. troops in the wake of the Communists' Tet offensive. Johnson rejected the request, though he did agree to a modest increase, and the ceiling on U.S. manpower now stands at 549,000. Then came Johnson's March 31 renunciation of a second term and his declaration of a partial bombing pause over the North. Six weeks after that, in mid-May, the Paris peace talks began.

When the President met with Thieu in Honolulu in July for private talks, some officials insist, he was trying to persuade Viet Nam's President to accept a bombing halt. After the meeting, Johnson spoke in harsh terms of the fighting ahead, and the assumption was that he and Thieu had agreed on a new step-up in military activity. That assumption may well have been incorrect. Not long after the Honolulu meeting, a group of South Vietnamese senators passed through Paris en route home after a visit to Washington and told newsmen and diplomats there that a bombing pause was in the offing.

Three Questions. Their comments were discounted at the time, but within a matter of weeks came Johnson's mes sage to Hanoi, transmitted through the Paris negotiators, that got the final phase under way. L.B.J. was swayed partly by the fighting lull, partly by word from Paris that Hanoi's men had given assurances that if Johnson grounded the bombers he would not have reason to regret it. In unusually gentle terms, he asked Hanoi to indicate what it would do, if the bombing ended, about:

1) Levels of infiltration and supply.

Could the U.S. assume that these would not increase once there was no risk of aer ial attack?

2) The Demilitarized Zone. Would Hanoi agree not to exploit the cratered, bloodied strip near the 17th parallel to mount attacks on allied forces just to the south?

3) Representation at the peace talks.

Could the allies expect that Hanoi would not veto the Saigon delegation, particularly in view of the fact that Washington was willing to accept some sort of N.L.F. presence at the talks?

The North Vietnamese did not reject Johnson's message out of hand. Instead, Politburo Member Le Due Tho, officially described as an "adviser" at the peace talks but actually Hanoi's principal overseer, hurried home via Moscow, where he conferred with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin. Once he reached Hanoi, he found himself embroiled in a bitter debate between North Viet Nam's pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet factions. One or more messages were apparently sent seeking more information. The Administration noted simply that no "breakthrough" response had come from Hanoi. Some U.S. officials feared that the North Vietnamese, in view of the forthcoming presidential elections in the U.S., might be holding out for a better deal.

Still, it was plain that sentiment within the Administration was overwhelmingly for a pause. From Paris, Averell Harriman was one of the first to advise that the opportunity should be grasped at once. Though nobody knew what Clifford told the President in private, studies from his staff tended to discount the value of continued bombing. "The results were so impressive," said one official, "that no one bothers to argue any more." Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze was said to share the antibombing predilection.

Same Pendulum. For the past year, three institutions have been principally responsible for formulating Viet Nam policy: the Tuesday Lunch Group that Abrams sat in on last week; the Thursday Group, including C.I.A. Boss Helms, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Wheeler, Nitze, and several others who meet regularly in Under Secretary of State Nicholas deB. Katzenbach's office; and the Eleven O'Clock Group, mostly lower-level officials assigned to draft the policymakers' decisions. Among all these officials, few supported the bombing of the North up to the end. The swing man, inclined first one way, then the other, was Lyndon B. Johnson.

In Saigon, Thieu found himself swinging from the same pendulum. When Bunker initially informed him of Johnson's new proposals, he was amenable. Then he reverted to a hard line. To protect himself from the even harder-line advocates within his government -and without--Thieu insisted on public acknowledgment from Hanoi of any concessions it was making in exchange for a bombing pause. He also firmly refused to countenance N.L.F. participation as an independent entity at the Paris talks. But under insistent pressure from his American allies, he began to weaken, seemed ready to accept the "two-sides" formula.

Declining Curve. Despite the agonizing uncertainty in Washington and Saigon about the wisdom of a bombing pause, one element worked relentlessly in its favor: the military, political and economic situation in the North.

"They have lost more than 100,000 men killed this year," said a Pentagon expert. "Do you realize that is two field armies? They send those boys down south and they never come back. And they're doing no better in the war." One U.S. observer insisted that Hanoi can rely on only six of every ten men sent south to fight; the rest defect, including an even larger number of North Vietnamese civilian administrators, or melt into the jungle. The growing rate of defections, moreover, leads to better allied intelligence--a major factor in recent months in blunting Communist offensives.

Boys of 15 and 16 are being drafted by the North, including Catholics who had not been considered sufficiently reliable in the past because of the strong Catholic minority in the South. Many

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