Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET - NODIS
As so often with multiple objectives, none seems to have been maximized. For example, if the Poles were concerned solely with ending the war (regardless of the terms), they should have acted with greater discretion after the contact broke Gown, because this would better preserve their usefulness as an intermediary in the future. On the other hand, had they been concerned solely with discomfitting the US, they could have used their ammunition to greater effect by leaking earlier and more sensationally to the press. Perhaps different individuals on the Polish side gave differing priorities to this objective or that.[1] In any case, the fact that none of the objectives was pursued to its logical maximum must mean that, in some larger Polish scheme of things, all were accorded considerable importance.
This is critical in interpreting the episode as a whole, because it implies that, with whatever degree of imprecision, the Poles were in fact trying to find areas of compromise between the DRV and US on acceptable outcomes to the war. Their effort was taken seriously enough in Hanoi to result in DRV agreement to meet with a US representative in Warsaw.[2] This in turn must mean they received some serious guidance on policy from the DRV, even though it is quite unlikely that they were privy to Hanoi's minimum bargaining positions. What they conveyed to us about promising directions for negotiations, therefore, should reflect something of Hanoi's considered judgments, but cannot of course be read as a map of firm and final DRV positions.
It was apparently not until after the Warsaw contact was canceled that the Pole s were asked to specify those messages they had passed on explicit instruction from Hanoi. There {ere three, they said: Lewandowski's message to Lodge expressing DRV agreement to the Warsaw talks; the warning after the December 3 (sic) bombing of Hanoi that the contact was being reassessed by the DRV; and the decision to cancel the Warsaw meeting after the December 13-14 bombing of Hanoi. In addition, the Poles said they had numerous exchanges with Hanoi during the period of Gronouski's contacts with Rapacki in Warsaw (i.e., after December 5) and claimed that they were therefore able to reflect Hanoi's views accurately even when speaking on their own initiative.
2
TOP SECRET - NODIS
- ↑ For example, the cable traffic conveys a picture of Lewandowski as more detached than Rapacki, more concerned simply with bringing the contending parties together than with exacting concessions from the US or throwing the onus for failure upon it. On the other hand, this may reflect differences between the US reporters in Saigon and Warsaw as much as actual differences between the two Poles.
- ↑ We do not know what the DRV expected from the Warsaw meeting nor how its prospects were represented to Hanoi by the Poles. The evidence that the DRV did in fact agree to the meeting is examined in another section.
