Mr. President:
Attached is our translation of Ho’s flat no, plus the comments made in
transmittal.2 They are breaking
off the Moscow contact.
We cannot know what is running through their minds, but we must assume
that “no bombing for the possibility of talk” was as much of a consensus
as Ho could get out of his split government; it may have shaken and,
even, frightened them that Moscow would consider a formula involving the
end of infiltration; and we must assume that they have decided to sweat
us out to the 1968 election and, if they lose, withdraw silently rather
than to negotiate—although the latter judgment is clearly premature.
In any case, Nick, Cy, and I will be putting our heads together; and next
week—perhaps Tuesday lunch, when I believe Sect. Rusk will be back—we can go into it and
move.3
Attachment4
Lyndon B. Johnson
President of the United States
Your Excellency:
On February 10, 1967, I received your message.5
Here is my reply:
Vietnam is thousands of miles from the United States. The Vietnamese
people have never done any harm to the United States, but contrary
to the commitments made by its representative at the Geneva
Conference of 1954, the United States Government has constantly
intervened in Vietnam, has launched and intensified its aggression
against South Vietnam for the purpose of prolonging the division of
Vietnam and of transforming South Vietnam into an American colony
and an American military base. For more than two years now, the
American Government, using its military planes and its navy has been
waging war against the sovereign and independent Democratic Republic
of Vietnam.
The U.S. Government has committed war crimes and crimes against peace
and against humanity. In South Vietnam, a half million American
soldiers and soldiers from satellite countries have used the most
inhuman and barbaric methods of warfare such as napalm, chemicals
and toxic gases to massacre our compatriots, destroy their crops and
level their villages. In North Vietnam, thousands of American planes
have rained down hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs destroying
towns, villages, factories, roads, bridges, dikes, dams and even
churches, pagodas, hospitals and schools. In your message you seem
to deplore the suffering and the destruction in Vietnam. Allow me to
ask you: who is perpetrating these awful crimes? It is the American
and satellite soldiers. The United States Government is entirely
responsible for the critical situation in Vietnam.
American aggression against the Vietnamese people is a challenge to
the countries of the Socialist camp, menaces the peoples’
independence movement and gravely endangers peace in Asia and the
world.
The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, liberty and peace.
But, in the face of American aggression, they stand as one man,
unafraid of sacrifices, until they have gained real independence,
full liberty and true peace. Our just cause is approved and
supported strongly by all the people of the world, including large
segments of the American people.
[Page 174]
The Government of the United States is aggressing against Vietnam. It
must stop this aggression as the only way leading toward the
re-establishment of peace. The Government of the United States must
stop the bombing, definitively and unconditionally, and all other
acts of war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, withdraw
from South Vietnam all its troops and those of its satellites,
recognize the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and allow
the people of Vietnam to settle their problems by themselves. This
is the essence of the Four Points of the Government of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam as well as the expression of the
principles and essential provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1954 on
Vietnam. It is the basis for a just political solution of the
Vietnamese problem. In your message, you suggested direct talks
between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the United States. If
the Government of the United States really wants such talks, it must
first unconditionally halt the bombing as well as all other acts of
war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Only after the
unconditional stopping of the bombing and all other American acts of
war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam can the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam and the United States enter into conversations
and discuss the questions in which both parties are interested.
The Vietnamese people will never yield to force nor agree to talks
under the menace of bombs.
Our cause is entirely just. It is our hope that the Government of the
United States acts with reason.
Sincerely yours,
