91. Memorandum From the Director of the United States Information Agency (Murrow) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1
SUBJECT
- Defoliation
If we will win in Viet-Nam with defoliants, but lose without them, then we must use them. If we will probably win with defoliants and probably lose without them, then also we must use them. If we might win with defoliants, and might win without them, then we had better consider the implications before undertaking the project proposed by the Department of Defense for 2,500 acres in Phu Yen Province.2
We have a tradition in this country of not using food as a weapon of war. Chemical and biological warfare are subjects which arouse emotional reactions at least as intense as those aroused by nuclear warfare, as witnessed by the publicity surrounding the recent accidental death of the British scientist, our Korean and East German experiences, and the recent Indian incidents. A series by Rachel Carson currently running in the New Yorker and soon to be published in book form3 sets forth with devastating impact the consequences of insecticides on insect-plant life balance and human health. The Agriculture Department is concerned about the implications of this book for our foreign crop marketing; if we launch a defoliation program in Viet-Nam our enemies and many of our friends will use this book against us.
Depriving the Viet Cong of their local food supplies and forcing them onto the open plain where they can more easily be dealt with is a [Page 241] legitimate and necessary military objective. But what are the alternative methods of achieving this objective? Have all been tried and have all failed? Given the relative predictability of the growing season, can not the Viet Cong be ambushed or otherwise prevented from harvesting these crops?
No matter how reasonable our case may be, I am convinced that we cannot persuade the world—particularly that large part of it which does not get enough to eat—that defoliation “is good for you.” Nonetheless, should the President decide to proceed with the project, it is important that we be given a brief period to explain to the world exactly what we are doing and why. This will reduce, to some extent, the impact of the inevitable Communist propaganda campaign.
- Source: National Archives, RG 306, Office of Plans, General Subject Files, 1949–1970, Entry UD WW 382, Box 118, IAF 1962. Secret. Drafted by Sorensen. The memorandum is an edited and revised version of an August 14 memorandum from Sorensen to Murrow. (Ibid.) A notation in an unknown hand at the end of the memorandum indicates that it was hand-carried on August 16. Also printed in Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. II, Vietnam, 1962, Document 266.↩
- In an August 8 memorandum to the President, McNamara stated that Nolting and Harkins had recommended a proposal for the Vietnamese Government “to conduct a trial program of chemical crop destruction in Viet Cong territory of eight target areas totaling 2,500 acres” in Phu Yen Province. The memorandum is printed in Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. II, Vietnam, 1962, Document 262. For the Department of State response to the proposal, contained in an August 23 memorandum from Rusk to the President, see ibid., Document 270.↩
- Reference is to Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962). Portions of the book were serialized in three issues of the New Yorker in June 1962. (John M. Lee, “‘Silent Spring’ Is Now Noisy Summer: Pesticides Industry Up in Arms Over a New Book,” The New York Times, July 22, 1962, pp. 1, 11)↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩