By the end of August 1965, the Johnson administration was willing to try the United Nations in an effort to get something started in Vietnam. The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, had dropped dead in the streets of London in July, and President Johnson had persuaded Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg to resign from the Court and replace Stevenson at the United Nations. Washington was stunned by the move—at least I was. I could not understand why Goldberg would give up the prestigious Court seat. Goldberg wrote later in his memoirs, “I had an exaggerated opinion of my capacities. I thought I could persuade Johnson that we were fighting the wrong war in the wrong place [and] to get out.” He also assumed that he could persuade Johnson to reappoint him to the Court. But that never happened.
In October, Pope Paul VI came to New York to address the General Assembly. He met with Johnson and Goldberg in the presidential suite in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. He then went to the General Assembly to make an elegant appeal for peace, which I covered for The Star.
I was invited to meet with Goldberg at his apartment in Washington earlier to chat about foreign affairs. I found him to be quite interested in exploring ways to find a solution to the Vietnam war.
He later expressed great unhappiness at never being invited to return to the Supreme Court.
On Election Day, November 2, 1965, an off-year for presidential elections, the Washington area was startled when a young Quaker, Norman R. Morrison, a father of three, burned himself to death outside the Pentagon in protest against the Vietnam war. It happened in late afternoon in front of hundreds of startled homeward bound Pentagon employees. He had been holding his 18-month old daughter but she was unharmed because he had either put her down or dropped her from his arms. His wife, Anne, also a Quaker, issued a statement later, through a friend: “Norman Morrison has given his life today to express his concern over the great loss of life and human suffering caused by the war in Vietnam. He was protesting our government’s deep military involvement in this war. He felt that all citizens must speak their convictions about our country’s action.” His death occurred too late in the day for The Star’s late edition, but it was on the front page the next day and also on the front page of The New York Times. There was no official comment made the administration about the suicide, but it turns out that it had a profound effect on Defense Secretary McNamara.
He wrote later, in his memoirs, that “Morrison’s death was a tragedy not only for his family but also for me and the country. It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.” McNamara said that “I reacted ot the horror of his action by bottling up my emotion and avoided talking about them with anyone—even my family.”
I spent considerable time with Secretary of State Dean Rusk in this period. The regular State Department correspondents had off the record briefings from Rusk on Friday afternoons, and generally he tried to give an upbeat appraisal of events. On November 27, 1965, some 20,000 protestors clogged the streets around the White House, and Rusk held a late afternoon press conference. I wrote in my story for The Star that he was “openly pessimistic about the chances for a negotiated Vietnam settlement.” Rusk suggested that the peace marchers “try to get North Vietnam to agree to unconditional discussions with the United States.”
“If they addressed a letter to both sides saying ‘Will you agree to negotiations with preconditions?’ We would say ‘yes.'” He added. “I would be interested in knowing what Hanoi would say.”
As Christmas approached there were expectations of a brief bombing halt over North Vietnam. But McNamara, who was vacationing with his family in Aspen, Colorado, had other ideas. He telephoned Johnson, who was at his Texas ranch, and then flew down there to persuade him to have an unlimited bombing halt. This led to a bombing halt that lasted through the month of January 1996, and to a vigorous peace campaign by the United States. High level diplomats wee sent everywhere seeking to persuade Hanoi to come to the table. But on January 29, 1965, Ho Chi Minh himself rejected “with finality the U.S. ‘peace offensive.'”
By the spring of 1966, there was some optimism about the ability of the South Vietnamese government to persevere. But this did not stop the almost weekly huge demonstrations against the war. and possibly to influence the Congressional elections in November. Johnson announced a summit meeting in Manila for all the countries with troops in Vietnam. This produced a grueling 17-day trip, which marked my first aboard a Presidential press charter. I have to admit that I enjoyed the prestige and importance of the trip. The trip took us to Hawaii, American Samoa, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, and a surprise visit to the Cam Ranh Bay base in South Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, and a refueling in Japan. We stopped in Alaska on the way home. Summing up the trip, I wrote in my book: “In short, the long trip did nothing to reduce the widespread opposition to the war in the United States and only hastened Johnson’s decision to find a diplomatic way to end the conflict–an effort which would frustrate him to the end of his term.”
In early 1967, I persuaded The Star’s editors to let me attend a summit conference in Guam between U.S. and South Vietnamese leaders, and then fly on to Saigon. It was a relatively quiet time in South Vietnam, and with the assistance of Richard Critchfield, The Star’s correspondent in Saigon, I explored the city, met with diplomats and published a story based on captured Viet Cong documents. I then visited Hong Kong for the first time and wrote about the ongoing Cultural Revolution being waged by Mao Tse-tung in China, which at that time had no diplomatic relations with the United States, outside of occasional meetings in Warsaw.
We were all surprised, after I returned to Washington, by the outbreak of heavy fighting in the Middle East between Israel and Egypt and Syria and Jordan, which became known as the Six Day War. It resulted in Israel’s capture of the Sinai, the West Bank of the Jordan river, and of East Jerusalem.
