141. Editorial Note
On September 21, 1963, Secretary of Defense McNamara responded to President Kennedy’s queries about the veracity of the article in The New York Times by David Halberstam, September 16 (see Document 117). McNamara’s signed memorandum to the President, September 19, reads as follows:
“In your memorandum dated 16 September 1963, you inquired as to the accuracy of subject article and whether there is a split between our military and the Vietnamese on the strategic hamlet program in the Delta area.
“Attached is an analysis, based upon reports received from the U.S. Military Assistance Command, as well as country team statistics. It indicates that there is no rift between our military and the Vietnamese on the program and that the article contains other inaccuracies.” (Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OSD Files: FRC 69 A 3131, Vietnam-1)
The attached analysis referred to by McNamara was 19 pages long and dated September 20. In it, the Department of Defense maintained that the United States and South Vietnam differed over strategic hamlets in the Camau peninsula and the Delta, but agreed on goals and strategy for the program. According to the analysis, Halberstam underestimated the effectiveness of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam, overemphasized Viet Cong successes, and failed to mention the supposed 4 to 1 casualty ratio in favor of the government forces. This analysis is published in Declassified Documents, 1982, 446B.
There is a more general unattributed analysis of Halberstam’s views of the strategic hamlet program in the Delta, dated September 17, at the Kennedy Library. This document states that Halberstam’s conclusions are “overly lugubrious” and “should be treated with reserve!” According to the analysis, joint U.S.-GVN strategic planning called for a holding action in the Delta until other corps were sufficiently [Page 278] secure to allow transfer of forces there. In effect, the analysis maintained that the military situation in the Delta was not getting markedly worse, but the battles to dislodge the long-entrenched Viet Cong were yet to be fought. (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Vietnam Country Series, Memos and Miscellaneous)
The Central Intelligence Agency prepared on September 26 a memorandum for McCone, entitled “David Halberstam’s Reporting on South Vietnam.” In this analysis the CIA drew the following conclusions:
“A review of all the articles written by Mr. Halberstam since June indicates that he is by and large accurate in terms of the facts that he includes in his articles. The conclusions he draws from his facts, plus the emphasis of his reporting, however, tend to call his objectivity into question. Since June, the great majority of Halberstam’s articles have dealt with the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam and the injurious effects of the crisis on the struggle with the Viet Cong.
“In his almost invariably pessimistic reports, Halberstam makes liberal use of phrases ‘some Americans,’ ‘informed Vietnamese’, or ‘lower (or higher) ranking Americans,’ etc. Such sourcing is impossible to refute. However, other observers writing from South Vietnam indicate that large segments of the American military community have been and still remain optimistic about the course of the war. Such optimistic sources are almost never quoted by Mr. Halberstam.” (Ibid., Halberstam Article, 9/63)