Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972

123. Minutes of a Meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group¹

Washington, February 7, 1971, 11 a.m.

SUBJECT

• Southeast Asia Dry Season Campaign

PARTICIPANTS

• Chairman—Henry A. Kissinger
• State
  • U. Alexis Johnson
  • Ambassador Bunker
  • William H. Sullivan
  • Robert J. McCloskey
• Defense
  • David Packard
  • Daniel Z. Henkin
• CIA
  • Richard Helms
  • [name not declassified]
• JCS
  • Admiral Thomas Moorer
• NSC Staff
  • Brig. Gen. A. M. Haig
  • Col. Richard T. Kennedy
  • John H. Holdridge
• WH Staff
  • H. R. Haldeman
  • Ronald Ziegler

Mr. Kissinger: What is the kick-off time?

Admiral Moorer: The preliminary thrust will go at 7:00 PM;² the bulk will go at 9:00 PM.

Mr. Kissinger: Will there be much news?

Admiral Moorer: The SVN have placed an embargo.

Mr. Ziegler: When will it be lifted?

Mr. Kissinger: When Thieu speaks.

Admiral Moorer: For other reasons they slipped the announcement time.

Mr. Johnson: Berger says they changed the time because of time change on the kick-off.

Admiral Moorer: An A–6 dropped two bombs on Highway 9 which hit ARVN forces there. They killed 6 men. Otherwise everything is on track and all forces are in position. We are having some difficulty with the airfield but we have adequate helo loading and unloading facilities at Khe Sanh. The NVN are urging their forces to press ahead with truck movements of supplies. We had good air action against their trucks last night. The weather is satisfactory in objective area but there are low ceilings towards the coast which is typical for this time of year.

Mr. Kissinger: [to Helms] Your paper on the Binh Trams is a good one.³ It says that they are operating 500 trucks per night and are using 2400 total.

Admiral Moorer: They are still coming through the passes. We continue to go after them.

Mr. Helms: There have been no major troop movements in the area. They are putting their support troops in defensive posture.

Mr. Packard: Do we have anything on the reported flu epidemic?

Mr. Helms: About half of the troops get it annually.

Mr. Kissinger: Does it affect ours?

Mr. Helms: The ARVN may get it.

Admiral Moorer: I think they have been inoculated. It won’t be as serious a problem for them as for the NVA.

Mr. Kissinger: Do we think that the support units will not fight well and are not mobile?

Admiral Moorer: Yes, they will play a fixed defensive role.

Mr. Helms: On Chup, we have had sharp fights in last 3 days.

Admiral Moorer: We are keeping Lamson as the name of the operation. It has three phases:

• —1st about to start now
• —2nd—exploitation
• —3rd—withdrawal

Mr. Johnson: Laird called on the operation name. I put out a message to get Thieu to refer to Lamson.

Mr. Kissinger: There have been no unusual Peking–Moscow reactions?

Mr. Sullivan: They have been mild.

Mr. Johnson: Rogers saw Dobrynin at a party and he had no comment.

Mr. Kissinger: The PA scenario⁴ has gone out. We must slip it 3-1/2 to 4 hours.

Mr. Johnson: Yes, I have gone out with a Flash cable to advise our allies of the slipped time.

Mr. Kissinger: Who gets the message in France?

Mr. Johnson: Chaban will get it as a message for Pompidou who is in Africa.⁵ We will do this Sunday evening. They also know of the change in time.

Mr. Kissinger: As I understand it the PA scenario is that Thieu goes at 10:15, MACV at 10:45 and Henkin goes after MACV.

Mr. Henkin: Yes, that is correct. We will have reporters in the building at that time.

Mr. Kissinger: Shall we turn to the Questions and Answers?⁶

Mr. Johnson: First I’d like to raise one other matter. Morning press stories might result from leaks from the Hill. We should hold our calls to Congress until later in the afternoon.

Mr. Ziegler: We can hold to our scenario this evening even if it leaks out of Saigon. I would expect AP and UPI to carry about 8:30 tonight.

Mr. Henkin: It will hold.

Mr. Johnson: I think there should be a release in the morning and it would be best if a single statement exists to which all could repair.

Mr. Kissinger: We may want to work on a statement and then put the question to the President about whether we should make it. It should be a departmental release to which spokesmen then could refer.

Mr. Kissinger: Now turning to the Q&As. The spokesmen can work out the details. But we don’t want to have any discussion about our own deliberations or about the precise date when the decision was made.

Mr. Johnson: Would they use this material at briefings tomorrow?

Mr. Ziegler: We would try to get through by referring to the Thieu and other statements. If pressed by questions we would draw on these questions and answers.

Mr. Johnson: Would we straightarm?

Mr. Ziegler: No we can’t do that. But we want to hold within limits.

Mr. McCloskey: We should limit our material to that needed to keep afloat and don’t volunteer anything. We have to stand united on this.

Mr. Kissinger: But our objective is to keep the US out of it tomorrow. Therefore our answers should be kept to the absolute minimum.

Mr. Sullivan: Souvanna said that he would follow the statement by Thieu by 2 hours.

Mr. Kissinger: It would be a disaster if Souvanna speaks before Thieu.

Mr. Johnson: I will check with Godley on the plans for Souvanna’s statement.

Mr. McCloskey: There will be lots of attention paid to the issue of consultation with Souvanna.

Mr. Holdridge: The Senate will be concerned. We won’t be able to hold simply by saying that they should refer to Souvanna’s statement. We may have to firmly deny or turn to the South Vietnamese.

Mr. Kissinger: Then it is agreed that Ziegler, Henkin and McCloskey will redo the Q&As in light of our discussion.

Mr. Johnson: I have a draft statement.⁷

Mr. Kissinger: Is it a good statement?

Mr. Johnson: If this could be put out, it would help.

Mr. Kissinger: We could just say that the Department of State issued it. I will take it up with the President. I believe this would be good. [All agree should keep reference to mission completed and delete last three lines of paragraph 4 of the draft.]

Mr. Helms: In paragraph 8 of the draft we should delete reference to “last evening.”

Mr. Kissinger: [to Johnson] You would put the statement out about 9:00 AM?

Mr. Johnson: I will hold it until we are sure all other statements have been made.

Mr. Kissinger: Then if the President agrees, State will issue this as a Department statement. The Thieu statement to UN also will slip.

Mr. Johnson: We’ll want to be sure of the timing.

Mr. Kissinger: USIA also will hold up and keep in low key.

Mr. Johnson: I will see that this is done.

Mr. Kissinger: Thank you. I think that covers everything for now. We will meet tomorrow at 10:30.

1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), Box H–115, WSAG Meetings Minutes, Originals, 1971. Top Secret; Sensitive. The meeting took place in the Situation Room of the White House. According to a chronology attached to a memorandum from Howe to Haig, February 9, the meeting ended at 12:22 p.m. (Ibid., NSC Files, Box 84, Vietnam Subject Files, Special Operations File, Vol. IV) All brackets except those that indicate omission of unrelated material are in the original.
2. 7 p.m. Washington time was 8 a.m. Saigon time.
3. Apparent reference to a report on the importance of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that CIA sent to Kissinger under a February 6 covering memorandum which indicated that the paper had been prepared for Helms. It described the trail as the “vital life line” to South Vietnam and Cambodia and analyzed the logistics traffic through it. The paper concluded that due to the Cambodian operation in 1970 and weather delays in the DRV’s restocking program during the dry season, a disruption of the DRV’s current restocking effort would force them to delay any major offensives for a year. (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 80, Vietnam Subject Files, Vietnam Operations in Laos and Cambodia, Vol. II)
4. A draft of the Public Affairs Scenario, February 5, is ibid., NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), Box H–79, WSAG (Principals Only), Vietnam, 2/6/71.
5. In a February 7 memorandum to Nixon, Kissinger reported that Ambassador Watson had spoken with Prime Minister Chaban Delmas who was grateful for the advance notification. Chaban Delmas indicated he would inform President Pompidou and maintain secrecy. (Ibid.)
6. A list of questions and answers was in a memorandum Ziegler sent Kissinger, February 6, for use by government spokesmen following the announcement of the operation. Ziegler felt that when combined with the statements issued by Thieu, MACV, and the Defense Department, they would present the administration’s policy credibly and forthrightly. (Ibid.)
7. The approved State Department statement, which was released on February 8, is printed in the Department of State Bulletin, March 1, 1971, pp. 256–257.