NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
What conditions were proper was the subject of considerable disagreement and confusion. Tactically, the U.S. desired to respond to North Vietnamese acts rather than to appear to initiate a wider war. But the strategic purposes of bombing in NVN were in dispute. The initiation of an air campaign was deferred early in 1964 as a prod to GVN reform. By 1965 such initiation was argued for as a support for GVN morale. Some adherents claimed that bombing in NVN could destroy the DRV's will to support the war in South Vietnam, Others expected it to raise the price of North Vietnam's effort and to demonstrate U.S. commitment but not to be decisive in and of itself. The only indisputable facts seem to be that the long planning and debate over expanding the air war, the claimed benefits (although disputed), and the relatively low cost and risk of an air campaign as compared to the commitment of U.S. ground forces combined to indicate that the bombing of NVN would be the next step taken if nothing else worked.
Nothing else was, in fact, working. General Khanh's government was reorganized in November 19644 to give it the appearance of civilian leadership. Khanh finally fell in mid-February 1965 and was replaced by the Quat regime. Earlier that month the insurgents had attacked the U.S. base at Pleiku, killing eight Americans. Similar attacks late in 1964 had brought about recommendations for reprisal attacks. These had been disapproved because of timing. On this occasion, however, the President approved the FLAMING DART retaliatory measures.
Presidential assistant McGeorge Bundy was in SVN when the Viet Cong attacked the U.S. facilities in Plelku. He recommended to the President that, in addition to retaliatory measures, the U.S. initiate phase II of the military measures against NVN. The fall of the Khanh regime a week later resurrected the worst U.S. fears of GVN political instability. The decision to bomb north was made, announced on 28 February, and strikes initiated on 2 March. A week later, after a request from Generals Taylor and Westmoreland which was debated little if at all, two battalion landing teams of Marines went ashore at DaNang to assume responsibility for security of the air base there. U.S. ground combat units were in an active theater on the mainland of Asia for the first time since the Korean War. This may not have been the Rubicon of the Johnson administration's Vietnam policy but it was a departure of immeasurable significance. The question was no longer one of whether U.S. units should be deployed to SVN; rather, it was one of how many units should be deployed and for what strategic purposes.
The Army Chief of Staff, General Harold K. Johnson, went to Saigon in mid-March and recommended that bombing restrictions be lifted and that a U.S. division be deployed to SVN for active combat. General Taylor strongly opposed an active combat -- as distinct from base security -- role for U.S. ground forces. But the President decided on 1 April to expand the bombing, to add an air wing in SVN, and to send two more Marine battalions ashore. These decisions were announced internally on 6 April in NSAM 328.
General Taylor continued to voice strong opposition to a ground combat role for U.S. forces but his voice was drowned out by two developments.
