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Overview
Marigold presents the first rigorously documented, in-depth story of one of the Vietnam War's last great mysteries: the secret peace initiative, codenamed "Marigold," that sought to end the war in 1966. The initiative failed, the war dragged on for another seven years, and this episode sank into history as an unresolved controversy. Antiwar critics claimed President Johnson had bungled (or, worse, deliberately sabotaged) a breakthrough by bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned secret U.S.-North Vietnamese encounter in Poland. Yet, LBJ and top aides angrily insisted that Poland never had authority to arrange direct talks and Hanoi was not ready to negotiate.
This book uses new evidence from long hidden communist sources to show that, in fact, Poland was authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts and that Hanoi had committed to entering talks with Washington. It reveals LBJ's personal role in bombing Hanoi as he utterly disregarded the pleas of both the Polish and his own senior advisors. The historical implications of missing this opportunity are immense: Marigold might have ended the war years earlier, saving thousands of lives, and dramatically changed U.S. political history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804783880 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/11/2012 |
| Series: | Cold War International History Project |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 936 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Marigold
THE LOST CHANCE FOR PEACE IN VIETNAMBy JAMES G. HERSHBERG
Stanford University Press
Copyright © 2012 James G. HershbergAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7884-8
Chapter One
Dong Chí Lewandowski's Secret Mission The Players Take Their Places, February–June 1966
Touching on the current potential usefulness of the Commissioners individually as a link between Hanoi and Saigon he spoke with some enthusiasm of what an achievement it would be if any one of us could be instrumental in opening the door to a settlement. —Canada's ICC commissioner on meeting Janusz Lewandowksi, April 1966
The Americans are not to be kicked in the balls. —Lewandowski to Pham Van Dong, the spring of 1966
Do you think they are masochists? —Lewandowski to Henry Cabot Lodge, June 1966
I hope you Americans are not escalating to a new peace offensive. —Canadian ICC commissioner Victor C. Moore to Lodge, June 1966
Adam Rapacki was disappointed but not discouraged by the failure of his peace diplomacy during the thirty-seven-day pause. As Washington resumed bombing, the Polish foreign minister sought to position Warsaw to maneuver more effectively. Secretly sending Michalowski all the way to Hanoi had been an exceptional step, not easily repeated, and Rapacki wanted someone on the ground in Vietnam able to probe continuously to discern whether conditions were ripe to try again, and to seize any opportunity that might appear.
Coincidentally, he had before him a concrete opening to advance this objective. Poland's ambassador in Hanoi had only narrow room to maneuver, dealing with just one side of the conflict; he was also a rigid neo-Stalinist who instinctively exhorted the Vietnamese Communists on to total victory over the imperialist aggressors—not toward the kind of compromise settlement that would be the aim of any secret peace diplomacy.
However, Poland's delegate to the International Control Commission, who was also of ambassadorial rank, was another story. Henryk Wendrowski was deeply frustrated as he neared the end of his year-long term. Initially, he had imagined that the commissioners, uniquely able to shuttle between enemy capitals, might act to restrain the conflict. But by December 1965, he had concluded that neither Hanoi nor Washington was ready to compromise, and that negotiations could not start until both lost faith in military victory—maybe in a year or so. Originally slated to stay until June 1966, Wendrowski happily told a British diplomat that he would be "leaving here for good" in March. "He said he was personally glad because, contrary to the expectations which had been entertained when he was first appointed here, there was nothing in present circumstances which he or the Commission could usefully do."
Nevertheless, Rapacki calculated that Hanoi's stridency would one day yield to a more sober approach—and then Poland's ICC delegate might again be eligible to conduct peace feelers. Gossip put a veteran diplomat in line to succeed Wendrowski, but the foreign minister opted to gamble on a less experienced but perhaps more energetic figure, the head of the United Nations desk at the Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych (MSZ, Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Janusz Lewandowski, who was cosmopolitan despite his youth (he was not quite thirty-five years of age).
But first, in line with standard Communist procedure, Rapacki had to vet Lewandowski's appointment with the Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnetrznych (MSW, Ministry of Internal Affairs), the secret police overseer, keeper of the most sensitive files. So on February 3, the MSZ's human resources director informed the Interior Ministry's Foreign Operations Department that it wished to send "citizen Janusz Lewandowski" as the new ICC delegate but needed MSWs "opinion" before acting.
* * *
In early February 1966, as the air attacks resumed, President Lyndon Baines Johnson fled Washington to confer in Honolulu with South Vietnam's two top military rulers: Prime Minister (and Air Force head) Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky and chief of state General Nguyen Van Thieu. The hastily arranged summit's ostensible goal was to stress political, economic, and social reforms aimed at expanding popular support for the Saigon regime. But it also afforded a chance to review plans for the war's escalation, ratifying the Johnson administration's secret intent to double the number of troops by the end of the year (from about 200,000 to more than 400,000) and step up offensive operations in South Vietnam and against infiltration routes in Laos.
Even if most Americans still backed the war, LBJ knew the renewed bombing would provoke international and domestic censure. To blunt it, he resumed not "with a large and dramatic bang" but with less "noisy" strikes which he could then ratchet up far beyond the pre-pause level. He also asked the UN Security Council to take up the war—a transparent public relations ploy, because with "Red" China and North Vietnam not even in the world body, and Moscow aloof, the UN could hardly act effectively; Hanoi blasted the proposal (Vietnam "falls within the competence" of the Geneva Conference, it said, not the UN), echoed by Communist allies, and it quickly perished.
Poland and the rest of the Soviet Bloc predictably issued "harsh, sometimes violent" condemnations and forecast Hanoi's ultimate victory. By arrogating to itself the right to bomb a small nation, Rapacki asserted, Washington "was creating a dangerous and deplorable precedent in international morality." Hinting at a sinister Chinese role, he told London's envoy that the war did not serve U.S., Soviet, British, or Polish interests, and "daily" exacerbated the risk of a broader conflict. U.K. ambassador George Clutton felt Rapacki's "highly emotional" views reflected his "Western liberalism," while Michalowski was "essentially a pragmatist and a realist and sees at once the American quandary," because an unconditional halt risked a domestic backlash if it exposed U.S. troops to intensified Communist infiltration. Yet both Poles dismissed suggestions that the situation called for new peace efforts through the Geneva cochairs or the ICC. They reiterated the need to stop the bombing first and echoed Hanoi's line that the only item to negotiate was the modalities of a full U.S. withdrawal and Vietnamese reunification.
To U.S. and U.K. diplomats, Rapacki and Michalowski lamented Washington's failure to use the Warsaw channel to resolve authoritatively the confusion over Ho Chi Minh's letter before restarting the air raids. Yet despite chagrin that its efforts during the pause had "shipwrecked," Warsaw remained poised to mediate when circumstances eventually compelled the combatants to seek peace. "Michalowski was far less pessimistic and bitter about the future than I had expected, and to my surprise there was no word of disengagement on the Polish side," Clutton reported. Secretly, the Poles had not given up hope of acting as peacemakers. In early February, Wendrowski paid a farewell visit to Hanoi—and took a far more moderate line than Washington might have suspected.
Lunching with Pham Van Dong on February 4, Poland's ICC delegate gave an appraisal of the military and political situation that could hardly have comforted his host. Citing "detailed information" from U.S., journalistic, and diplomatic circles in Saigon, Wendrowski told the premier that
1. The Americans are currently preparing very carefully to eliminate the NLF [National Liberation Front] (the building of the bases and the home front, doubling the number of planes, aspiring to cut the "Ho line" [Ho Chi Minh Trail] simultaneously from the side of Siam [Thailand] and [South] Vietnam).
2. The society of the South are against the governance of Ky, but at the same time they are anticommunist for the most part, and they do not always want to topple the military regime and facilitate the victory for the NLF.
3. Further development of the military situation in the South will not be easier for the DRV, it will only become harder.
4. Prolonging the conflict makes it easier for the "hawks" to transform the war in Vietnam into a wider dispute.
Dong, who "listened to the information with great interest," must have grasped that Wendrowski's analysis implied that Hanoi should negotiate with the Americans rather than rely solely on military means to vanquish them. Cautiously, he promised to relay his "assessments and fears" to the Politburo. However, he reassured him (as he had Michalowski and Alexander Shelepin) that the North Vietnamese would do their best to keep the war limited, could fight a long time because right was on their side ("They are prepared for the worst"), and even if Washington redoubled its troop strength in 1966, their "Marxist analysis of the situation" guaranteed eventual triumph.
Still, Dong sensed that his arguments were not wholly convincing. He stressed Hanoi's readiness to engage in contacts with Washington despite their futility as well as with fraternal Communist delegations to explain the DRV's stance, as "sometimes even the friends cannot understand it." Throwing a bone to Soviet Bloc criticism that the DRV's failure effectively to counter LBJ's peace diplomacy had cost support in what was then called the Third World, he also "finally" agreed to permit a visit by Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, a leading figure in the Non-Aligned Movement, though Hanoi did not expect any significant results. Dong remained carefully neutral in the Sino-Soviet split, and thus he avoided mentioning China despite an acute awareness that Moscow put the onus on Beijing for egging Hanoi along the military path.
Two days later, General Giap invited Wendrowski for a de facto reply to the Pole's pessimistic statements to Dong. Radiating confidence, the military commander argued that the Americans, like the French, were doomed. In a mirror image of Wendrowski's assessments, he cited successful past DRV and NLF military operations and predicted total failure for future U.S. attempts to subdue Communists in the South or intimidate the North. "We have losses," he admitted, "but they are significantly smaller than what the Americans are writing about. The bombings of the North are giving us difficulties, but they will not break our country. Even if all our cities are destroyed, our country will not fall. We cannot let the South become a great American prison." Giap put "great emphasis" on the socialist bloc's "unity and help," rather blithely, given its rampant discord. "There was no word uttered on the subject of China," Wendrowski noted.
Wendrowski's soundings in Hanoi reinforced his already-bleak assessment. Back in Saigon, he observed that despite alleged signs of "greater flexibility on the question of negotiations," Hanoi still felt it could win militarily, so peace appeared impossible, at least for now, "because the positions of the two sides were irreconcilable."12 As Poland's commissioner prepared to make his escape, Rapacki confirmed the identity of his successor. On March 5, a senior Interior Ministry counterintelligence official notified the Foreign Ministry that he had no objection to appointing "citizen Lewandowski" to replace Wendrowski; an MSW official noted blandly that he had already worked at diplomatic posts abroad and received "a positive opinion," and recommended consent.
Mystery Man: "A Very Serious Fellow"
The first word of Lewandowski's new job came out of the blue in early March. Lewandowski was working at his office when one of the deputy foreign ministers, Josef Winiewicz, poked his head in and said, "Rapacki wants to talk to you.... He wants you to go to Vietnam."
The foreign minister had not plucked Lewandowski from the UN desk for the ICC job to engage in frivolous charades. The main reason no one had yet terminated the moribund ICC had been the slim hope that it might one day play a useful role in peace diplomacy—and the awareness that with its mixed composition and residual travel rights between Saigon and Hanoi, it constituted a unique potential communications link between the belligerents, who lacked direct normal relations.
Such calculations undergirded the secret mission Rapacki now gave the young diplomat. Recounting Poland's past efforts—Harriman's visit, Michalowski's odyssey, and so on—he instructed Lewandowski to probe aggressively for any opening toward peace, and to exploit to that end his unique status as a Saigon-based Communist diplomat shuttling to Hanoi, should the opportunity arise. "Look, we think that probably the time is now coming that something useful may happen on this Vietnamese question," he said, "so if you go to Saigon keep open your ears and your eyes and if any sort of possibility would exist there, do not overlook it." The briefing on prior contacts with Hanoi struck Lewandowski as "hopeless" regarding the DRV's obduracy toward peace talks. While offering no specific or concrete plan, Rapacki flashed him a "green light" to latch onto any chance, even a minuscule one, to ameliorate the conflict.
The surprise ICC assignment excited Lewandowski. It put him in the midst of the globe's most acute international crisis, in a setting that promised intrigue, adventure, a possibility to contribute to peace, and the chance to explore a new part of the world after posts in Africa and the Middle East. It was a challenging and prestigious, if risky, plum for an ambitious junior diplomat. Though generally familiar with the conflict, he plunged into reading on Vietnamese history, culture, and politics. Besides reviewing cable traffic going back to the French colonial period, he received a "colorful" briefing from Michalowski, who, over coffee in his office, described Harriman's visit and his own "mission impossible" (Lewandowski's term) to Hanoi. He also got a military intelligence report—to acquaint him with espionage considerations running an outpost in a hostile capital, and the military setup he would oversee—and an appraisal of the military situation from the Polish general staff, which was doubtful that Hanoi could defeat the U.S. war machine. His predecessors filled him in; Romuald Spasowski, now a foreign ministry division chief, described the persons he would encounter, including Henry Cabot Lodge, and in East Berlin on his way to Paris to wrap up UN affairs, he had a short (and not especially illuminating, he felt) chat with Wendrowski.
After these whirlwind preparations, Lewandowski headed for Southeast Asia in early April 1966. He was, he later recalled, newly "free." His marriage of nearly a decade—to an "attractive blonde," cultured, well-educated, and fluent in English—had recently dissolved, childless. Alone, Lewandowski embarked on a new phase of his life and career. Bypassing Moscow, he flew Czechoslovak Airlines via New Delhi and Rangoon to Phnom Penh, where he checked in with Poland's small Cambodia-based ICC staff before boarding a rickety commission plane for the hop to Saigon.
* * *
Many years after the clandestine affair in which Lewandowski played the lead role, "an air of mystery" still surrounded him, a distinguished historian of the Vietnam War would write. "At the time," George C. Herring observed nearly two decades later, "Americans knew virtually nothing about him, and frequently confused him" with another Polish Foreign Ministry official with the same last name. Nor would time clarify his identity or motives. Lacking any better source, Herring quoted an ex-Hungarian diplomat, János Radványi, who had defected to the United States, as calling Lewandowski "a high-ranking officer in Polish intelligence and a hard-liner consistently hostile to the United States." Subsequent accounts—until now—have failed to clarify his identity, motives, actions, or affiliations.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Marigold by JAMES G. HERSHBERG Copyright © 2012 by James G. Hershberg. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Maps and Photographs....................xiIntroduction....................xiii
A Note on Names and Terminology....................xix
Abbreviations Used in the Text....................xx
Prologue: Mission Impossible? "Operation Lumbago" and LBJ's Thirty-Seven-Day Bombing Pause, December 1965–January 1966....................1
Chapter 1: Dong Chí Lewandowski's Secret Mission: The Players Take Their Places, February–June 1966....................67
Chapter 2: "Could It Really Be Peace?" Marigold's "Devious Channels"—Act One: July 1966....................125
Chapter 3: Intermezzo: August to October 1966—A "Mosaic of Indiscretions and Rumors"....................161
Chapter 4: "A Nerve-Eating Business": Marigold Blossoms—Act Two: November 1966....................203
Chapter 5: "Something Big Has Happened": Toward the Warsaw Meeting, December 1–5, 1966....................243
Chapter 6: Informing the North Vietnamese Ambassador in Warsaw: Nguyen Dinh Phuong's Marigold Mystery Tour....................281
Chapter 7: "It Is Pity": Waiting for Gronouski—December 6, 1966....................297
Chapter 8: "It Looked as If We Could Move Forward": Marigold in Suspense, December 7–13, 1966....................315
Chapter 9: "The Americans Have Gone Mad": Bombing Hanoi Again, December 13/14–18, 1966....................363
Chapter 10: "The Christmas Present": Marigold's Last Gasp, and First Leaks, December 19–24, 1966....................411
Chapter 11: "The Ultimate Reply": The End of the Affair, December 25–31, 1966....................447
Chapter 12: Secret Spats: Talking and Fighting, January 1967....................499
Chapter 13: "A Sunburst of Recriminations": Riders on the Storm, February–June 1967....................547
Chapter 14: The Long Year Wanes: D'Orlandi, Lodge, and Lewandowski Leave Vietnam, March–June 1967....................603
Chapter 15: "You Will Never Get the Inside Story": The Secret Search for The Secret Search for Peace in Vietnam, May 1967–March 1968....................623
Chapter 16: Sequels, Revivals, Regrets: Marigold's Echoes during LBJ's Last Year, February 1968–January 1969....................665
Epilogue: "A Lot More Dead Young Soldiers"—Last Words, and the Battle for History....................695
Acknowledgments....................733
A Note on Sources....................739
Notes....................743
Selected Bibliography....................867
About the Author....................874
Index....................875