The discussion of Viet-Nam in this telecast is of particular interest.
Verbatim excerpts from this portion of the discussion are enclosed for
your information and appropriate use. The questions posed in these
excerpts are about corruption in South Viet-Nam, political stability in
that country, the role of press reporting, and the bombing of North
Viet-Nam.
Enclosure
Excerpts of a Panel Discussion with Vice
President Humphrey4
Q. As Senator Ted Kennedy,
among others, has brought home from his last trip to Viet-Nam5 some
accusations of rather extended corruption in the South Vietnamese
government—and that these conditions are a rather important key to
the ability of the South Vietnamese government to mould a national
society. I was wondering what the U.S. Government has done in the
past weeks or so to react to these accusations, and also if this
South Vietnamese government is not going to respond to correct these
conditions, if we will continue our commitment to that nation?
The Vice President: Well, now, corruption is
not exactly a monopoly of Southeast Asia, or of Viet-Nam. I don’t
want to make any invidious comparisons, but there are a few cities
in the United States that could teach the South Vietnamese some
lessons in how to operate corrupt government, and I think we might
spend a little time cleaning our own stables before we start
lecturing, piously lecturing a goodly number of other people.
There isn’t any doubt but what there’s corruption in the government
of Viet-Nam, and by the way, there’s a good deal of it in some other
governments, a good deal of it. Now, if you want to go around the
world, picking out people that you’re going to do business with, and
with whom you have alliances and allegiance, on the basis of whether
or not they meet puritanical standards, you’re going to find
yourself with very, very few friends. As a matter of fact, there may
be a few of them that’ll leave us, because we have a little problem
here every once in a while. We even have to appoint committees in
the Congress on ethics.
So let’s not try to pretend that corruption is a monopoly of any
particular people or country. Now, the next thing. We wanted—for a
[Page 565]
period of time there
was a great deal of criticism because the government in South
Viet-Nam was a military junta. So we insisted, as an ally, and
encouraged as an ally, the development of representative government
institutions, and with all if its limitations, the people of South
Viet-Nam did elect a Constituent Assembly, and my fellow American,
we never did. Our Constitution was not written by elected officials.
That Constituent Assembly did write a Constitution, despite the fact
that most of the critics said they never would, and it wrote it in
the open light of day without any censorship; ours was not.6 Ours was written behind closed
doors; there wasn’t a single cameraman or newspaperman permitted
within a hundred yards. Had anybody known what the Founding Fathers
were doing in Philadelphia, we never would have had a Constitution;
everybody knew that.
Now, those of us that are students of history and government ought to
start leveling with the American people. A Constitution was written
and it was adopted, and elections were held. Now, it’s no small task
to have an election in a country that’s beleagured by guerrilla
warfare, but they held it.7 There were very few elections in World War II, in
the Allied countries that were under attack; I don’t recall any. As
a matter of fact, it’s rather unusual. Now, a government has been
elected. Now it may not be so good, but some people don’t think ours
is so good. There’s a substantial portion of the American public
that thinks they ought to change here too. And they accuse us of all
kinds of things. Now, that government is their government; it may
not be as good as I’d like, but we insisted that they have one that
was elected. Now the fact of the matter is that there is a need for
progress as we see it in the government in Viet-Nam, and we do press
for it. But they are not a satellite. On the one hand, if we took
them and bent them to our will, somebody would say “Now, that’s the
total Americanization, not only of the war, but of the
government.”
On the other hand, if we don’t bend them to our will, we’re
criticized because we don’t exercise our influence. So what do we
try to do? We try to reason; I think one of the most impressive men
in American public life, in my lifetime, is Ambassador Bunker, and one of the things I’d
like to leave with you students is that this man has been respected
in university circles, in church circles, in political circles, and
professional circles, for at least forty years. He’s a tremendous
person. Now when did he get to be so bad? I mean, here is the same
Ambassador Bunker that was a
United Nations representative, an Ambassador to Italy, an Ambassador
to India, our special representa
[Page 566]
tive in the Dominican Republic; heralded,
considered one of the great, ethical, practical statesmen of our
time.8 Now
he goes to Viet-Nam and all at once you can’t believe him; all at
once he’s ineffective. All at once he isn’t telling us the truth,
according to some people. I don’t agree with that at all; I think
Ambassador Bunker is doing a
magnificent job representing the people of the United States, and if
any man wants decency in government, if I know him, and I know him
well. I served in the U.N. with Ambassador Bunker; I know of no more moral man
in this world than Ambassador Bunker. I know of no more effective man in diplomacy
than Ambassador Bunker. I
think he’s doing everything that can be done to influence people to
do what is right. In the meantime, it is an elected government, and
that’s some accomplishment. By the way, has anybody made a report on
the corruption in North Viet-Nam? When did they have an
election?
Q. Mr. Vice President, the real question seems to be the—not so much
the fact that there is corruption, which I’m willing to agree to,
not only in South Viet-Nam but anywhere, but what if, in light of
this, the continued problems that the South Vietnamese government
continues to face, within its own structure, that it collapses, what
will then be our position? Is this not a possibility?
The Vice President: Well, my good friend,
there are always possibilities, but there’s been no evidence that
it’s going to collapse. As a matter of fact, this is what people
have been predicting all along. The predictions about this country
have been unbelievable. First of all, some people predicted in the
Congress that the elections would be a hoax and a fraud. They
weren’t. Some people predicted that the junta would never permit a
Constitution to come into being, but they did. Some people said that
Thieu and Ky and the Assembly would never respond to constitutional
government, but they have. And now we are saying it’ll most likely
collapse, and it hasn’t, and it has gone through the most terrible
blood bath in recent days that any country could possibly face, and
what’s been the result? Thus far, the government is holding its own;
thus far, not a single unit of the South Vietnamese Army has
defected, not one. Thus far, the National Assembly meets and
debates. I haven’t heard of any reports of a National Assembly
debating up in Hanoi. I think we are—ought to be praising these
people for their efforts in trying to make constitutional government
work.
[Page 567]
It isn’t that it’s perfect; it’s not very perfect here. We’ve been
trying to get a tax bill out of committee in this country for a year
and a half. Can’t even get it out of subcommittee. I don’t think
that we’ve got too much to brag about sometimes, when we’re
criticizing others. All I’m saying is, don’t sell them out before
the facts. The truth of the matter is that they’ve done better than
most of their critics ever thought they would do. We hope they’ll do
better; we encourage them to do better. But I learned a long time
ago that if you constantly brand a fellow as a failure, if you are
suspicious as to whether or not he can ever do anything, you can
rest assured that most people will react just about the way you
treat them, and if you treat them like losers, they’ll start acting
that way. If you treat them as if they’re unwanted, they’ll act that
way, but if you give them some sense of confidence, and at the same
time encourage and persuade and cajole and try to instruct, you may
get a better system. And I think that’s what we’re doing. I think we
have a right to be somewhat encouraged at what we’ve seen.
Q. Mr. Vice President, positions regarding U.S. involvement in
Viet-Nam are widely disparate, even among the most respected public
officials and figures in the United States. Do you interpret this as
simply misinformation, or maybe differences of opinion, or is it
misinterpretation of facts, or just is it misinformation?
The Vice President: I think it’s a compound of
all of those. This is the first—maybe I can be helpful on this.
First of all, I don’t think that people that disagree with us are
unpatriotic. I want to make that quite clear. This is a very complex
situation. This is an entirely different kind of struggle than this
country has ever been engaged in before. This is the first war in
the nation’s history that has been fought without conditions of
censorship. This is the first war in the nation’s history that’s
been fought on television, where the actors are real, where, in the
quiet of your living room, of your home, or your dormitory, wherever
you may be, this cruel, ugly, dirty fact of life and death and war
and pain and suffering come right to you, and it isn’t a Hollywood
actor. I’ve had letters from mothers that have seen their boys shot
down in battle, and let me tell you that I think that television is
the most—well, it’s the most dramatic instrument of our time. That
tube, for either good or evil, and thank goodness we can use it now
at least in dialogue, which I think is the way it ought to be used.
At least in part. It can be a great educational instrument.
There are so many different views about—even whether we should be
there, whether our national interest is involved, whether a treaty
ought to be fulfilled. Whether we should have ever signed a treaty;
there are a lot of—well, many people feel that we made mistakes, and
we really are over-involved. There are people that honestly feel
that
[Page 568]
way. I happen to be
one of those, sir, that believes that you can’t relive the past. I
also happen to be one that believes that the greatest protection of
peace in this world today is the integrity of the American word or
commitment. Now maybe we shouldn’t give our word as often as we do,
or our commitment; but when we do, it is imperative that we mean
what we say, and I can say for President Johnson and Vice President
Humphrey, we signed no
new treaties in the years that we’ve been in power. One treaty that
we’ve signed is the space treaty,9 to prevent the orbiting of weapons of mass
destruction. That’s the only international treaty of great
international significance. Now we’re trying to get a
non-proliferation treaty on nuclear weapons,10 to stop the
spread of nuclear power in this world, because we think it increases
danger.
But going back to your question, sir. I, as a government official,
must place a great deal of reliance upon what we call our
intelligence sources. I do not place total reliance upon them; I
know there are newsmen in Viet-Nam for whom I have great respect,
that differ with these intelligence observations, but might I say
that it’s pretty much like the domestic scene. Some of us get a
fixation, or get a fixed point of view on a particular development
and do not see the totality of it. For example, if you wanted to
talk with me about politics, domestic politics, let’s say two or
three years ago, I most likely would have concentrated most of my
attention upon that area which I knew the better, which is my home
state of Minnesota, and I’d get into intricate details about it
which would be rather baffling both to the viewer, the listener, and
even to the propounder.
But when you take a bigger view of the nation, you don’t have time
for all of that little detail, and your observations become more
generalized, and in a sense, I think, more meaningful. I think this
is part of the trouble in Viet-Nam. For example, most of our
reporters, and they’re good reporters, they follow American troops.
They like to live with the American troops; they speak the language,
they like the food, they like the fellows. It’s their life; they
don’t go with the ARVN
[Page 569]
troops, only once in a
while. And generally the time that they observe the ARVN troops is when they—when they
lose, when they’re in trouble.
Now, within recent weeks, because of the nature of the Tet offensive
from the Viet Cong and North Viet-Nam, and because about ninety
percent of the troops that are engaged on the Allies side are South
Vietnamese troops, not American but South Vietnamese, the reporters
have, by necessity, if they were going to cover anything and because
much of the fighting was in Saigon, where the reporters remain, they
had to cover South Vietnamese operations. Now the fact of the matter
is, the South Vietnamese have fought bravely, very bravely, and they
have fought well, and these are the same troops that they were
calling no good just a few weeks ago. The fact that the war was
brought to Saigon, my friend, I think has changed a great deal of
reporting on the war, and I noticed over the weekend that even from
Paris, the observers in Paris that have been very critical of us now
seem to come pretty much to the conclusion that some of us had about
the nature of this recent Tet offensive and what its purpose was.
They now agree, all the capitals around the world now seem to agree
that the Viet Cong were out to take the cities, to establish what
they called revolutionary administrations, to force upon Saigon a
coalition government, to depose Thieu and Ky, and to really have a
fait accompli, and tell the Americans “If you want to negotiate,
you’re going to negotiate with us or get out.” It didn’t work. They
didn’t get a popular uprising; they didn’t get mass defection of
troops. They don’t hold a single city today; they hold a part of
Hue, and a small part of a suburb in Saigon. They had terrific
losses. I speak of the enemy. Obviously there have been some
negative aspects; the pacification program has been brought to a
stand-still. I still think the enemy has the strength to launch a
very serious attack; I don’t know what the ultimate outcome of all
this is going to be. I think you’ll have to wait for events to speak
louder than newspaper reports, but you see, it’s the complexity of a
guerrilla war; it’s the complexity, too, of this culture, that we’re
so unfamiliar with. And I think that this is why that there’s so
much what you call in different interpretations. I think it is
wrong, however, for us to assume that there is a kind of malice on
the part of some. I think really what happens is people just see it
differently.
Q. When the bombing was first started, we said it was to bring the
Vietnamese to the conference table, and then later we said it was to
keep the guerrilla warfare down. Exactly what is the stated policy
now for the bombing, since obviously the other two haven’t
worked?
The Vice President: Well, I’ll just say this.
Bombing has been a part of our general military operation. I want to
say with equal candor, as
[Page 570]
the Prime Minister of Great Britain said when he was here,11 that this government has proposed to the
North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, in the San Antonio formula, that
we are prepared to stop the bombing, aerial and naval, at once, if
it will lead to prompt and productive talks, provided that the
assumption is that there will be no escalation or no taking
advantage of this type of a negotiating stance. We are prepared, my
dear lady, right now, to accept immediate cease-fire. We are really
prepared to have what we call immediate stand-down, with every bit
of the troops standing as they are, and to enter negotiation. The
roadblock to peace is not in Washington. I can tell you that my dear
lady; the roadblock to peace is not here. The roadblock to peace,
regrettably, is in Hanoi. We are prepared as of this moment, I say
as Vice President of the United States, to have immediate
negotiations for the cessation of this struggle; immediate
cease-fire. Now, if you could get a statement like that out of an
equally responsible official of the enemy, you will perform the
greatest service that any citizen in this country has ever
performed.
