Günter Bischof - The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

To southern doves, Tet stood as further proof of Johnson’s duplicity and the moral bankruptcy of U.S. policy. Gore repeated calls for a negotiated settlement and posited that the war had both drawn Russia and China together and increased the danger of Chinese intervention. Cooper captured the attitude of a growing number of Americans when he questioned the purpose of the United States’ utter destruction of South Vietnam as a result of the war. The Kentucky senator quoted reporter James Reston, who questioned how the United States could win a military victory in South Vietnam without “destroying what we are trying to save.” Cooper continued, “Is it not time for us to ask whether we are crossing that line, when South Vietnam’s major cities, such as Hue and parts of Saigon, are systematically reduced to rubble and dust?” 43

In the aftermath of Tet, William Fulbright continued to push for a clarification of the administration’s objectives. On 5 February, he put into the record an article by columnist Tom Wicker on the differences between the statements of the U.S. military and civilian officials in Vietnam, who were encouraged to be optimistic, and the more realistic accounts of the reporters who traveled with ordinary troops. A few days later, the Foreign Relations Committee voted to ask the president again, as they had over the past few months, to allow Secretary of State Rusk to testify publicly in order to explain the current situation in Vietnam. In a letter to the president, Fulbright observed that some members, presumably including the chairman himself, “felt strongly that what is now at stake is no less urgent a question than the Senate’s constitutional duty to advise, as well as consent, in the sphere of foreign policy.” 44

While waiting on a response, Fulbright convened hearings to study the incidents that prompted the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Since early 1966, Fulbright, in light of other inconsistencies in Johnson’s statements, had begun to question the administration’s conclusions about what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August 1964. He had never consulted the logbooks of either the Maddox or C. Turner Joy , but a retired navy admiral had commented to him that the events “sounded unrealistic.” In the wake of Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach’s insistence that the chairman knew the full implications of the 1964 resolution when he convinced questioning senators to vote for it and the undersecretary’s characterization of the resolution as a “functional equivalent of a declaration of war,” Fulbright instructed his staff to investigate the Gulf of Tonkin incidents. They uncovered several facts inconsistent with Defense Secretary McNamara’s explanations in August 1964. The South Vietnamese “OPLAN34” raids on the North Vietnamese coasts, and the U.S. “Desoto patrols” had been related. In other words, the U.S. ships had acted provocatively and almost invited attack. In addition, doubt still remained as to whether the second incident, in which the Maddox was allegedly attacked, had ever occurred. Fulbright called for hearings. McNamara, now out of office and by some accounts at the point of a nervous breakdown, reluctantly agreed to testify. 45

The former secretary continued to claim that the Maddox and C. Turner Joy had no knowledge of the OPLAN-34 attacks. Fulbright then read a cable sent from the Maddox at the time that referred to the operations. McNamara’s response seemed like pure nonsense. “We can find no basis,” he declared, “for the commander making that statement.” Eventually McNamara confirmed the commander actually sent the cable, but he disagreed with its conclusions. Fulbright quoted another cable from a naval commander who reviewed the second incident and cast doubt on whether the North Vietnamese ever fired torpedoes at the Maddox . McNamara stood by his convictions, saying he was convinced the attack had taken place.

Fulbright could not contain his contempt and despair. He exclaimed that if he had knowledge of the full story he would not have pushed for quick passage of the resolution. “We accepted your statement [in 1964] completely without doubt”:

I went on the floor to urge passage of the resolution. You quoted me, as saying these things on the floor…. All my statements were based on your testimony. I had no independent evidence, and now I think I did a great disservice to the Senate. I feel very guilty for not having enough sense at that time to have raised these questions and asked for evidence. I regret it…. I regret it more than anything I have ever done in my life. 46

McNamara, in response to the hearings, released a twenty-one page statement saying that Johnson and he had acted responsibly in August 1964. It further condemned Fulbright, Gore, and others for impugning his and his administration’s integrity. Fulbright retaliated. He insisted that the administration misled Congress in 1964 and continued to cover up its duplicity. He revealed that when a navy commander contacted the committee in November 1967 to provide information on McNamara’s lack of candor immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, Pentagon officials confined him to a mental ward for a month. Fulbright, to complete the public humiliation of the administration, released the full transcripts of the hearings. Americans now knew that their president had lied to them about Vietnam. 47

The president himself, though publicly declaring throughout February and March that the United States would win in Vietnam, began to doubt the prospects of continuing to fight to win the war or to extend his presidency. The war, the sluggish economy, and the riots in the cities also diminished his personal approval rating to the all-time low of his presidency. An unexpectedly strong showing by Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary and the subsequent entry of his old nemesis Robert Kennedy into the race added to his personal pressures. Senator Russell, his close confidante throughout his presidency, dreaded meeting with Johnson during this period because the president often cried uncontrollably. Having also lost key hawks such as Stennis on the war, Johnson gradually came to the conclusion that he should begin a de-escalation of the conflict. On 31 March 1968, he proposed a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam north of the Demilitarized Zone. The president would not grant Westmoreland’s request—he would only send 13,500 more troops over the next five months. Johnson also promised to reduce “substantially the present level of hostilities.” The president hoped that the moves would encourage the North Vietnamese to begin peace negotiations. At the end of the speech, he dropped a bombshell—in order to concentrate on ending the war he would not seek or accept the Democratic nomination for president. About a month later formal peace negotiations between U.S. and North Vietnamese officials began, which were to bog down a few weeks before the November general election. 48

One of the last public debates the Johnson administration had to endure over Vietnam came at the tumultuous Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968. As usual, southern legislators commanded the spotlight. As Mayor Richard Daley’s police force attacked protesters outside the convention hall, a ruinous and vitriolic debate erupted on the floor over Vietnam policy. On one side stood the chairman of the Platform Committee, House Majority Whip Hale Boggs of Louisiana, a staunch Johnson ally. Predictably, Boggs followed the administration’s line of continuing the fighting and bombing as well as peace talks. On the other side, Tennessee senator Gore, the maverick Democrat who a growing number of Tennesseans considered too liberal for the state, helped lead a spirited fight to adopt a more dovish Vietnam plank within the Democratic platform. Gore took the podium and proposed a Vietnam platform that advocated an unconditional ending to the bombing of Vietnam, a mutual phased withdrawal of U.S. and North Vietnamese troops, and direct negotiations between Saigon and the National Liberation Front. In an impassioned speech, he also criticized the continuation of the status quo as represented in the administration’s Vietnam platform proposal and lamented the result of what he considered the United States’ tragic involvement in Vietnam: