265. Telegram From Secretary of Defense McNamara to the Ambassador to Laos (Sullivan)1
6070. Joint Defense-State message. DOD Special Task Force now approaching point of determining and making commitments for assets needed to lay barrier in South Vietnam and Laos. Current planning is to have this barrier installed and in operation by September 15, 1967.
Present concept is to deny vehicle traffic no motorable roads in Laos in what is generally the “Cricket Area.” This zone is to extend from just south of the 17th Parallel (in vicinity of Route 9) north to just beyond Mu Gia Pass. To be effective the several alternative routes must be covered. The area is expected to extend westward into Laos as far as Mahaxey at the northwest limit and as far as Moung Sen at the southwest extreme. There can of course either be “sanitary” areas for known friendly populations or resettlement of friendlies outside the denial area.
The concept, to be effective, will involve (1) daily seeding of short-lived self-sterilizing mines on and adjacent to selected vehicle routes which are capable of blowing a truck tire or causing loss of a foot, (2) biweekly laying of sensors along the same routes, (3) continuous visual and sensor surveillance aircraft over the area in question, and (4) very quick reaction air strikes where traffic is detected (probably barring case-by-case approvals from Washington, Saigon or Vientiane—implying that advance approval of a broad class of cases will have to be given). Each of these—especially the first and fourth—involve large investment of resources and obvious political implications.
The concept, as it applies to Laos, also includes the denial to enemy foot infiltration traffic of the network of trails skirting the western edge of the DMZ. This area is a strip 20 km deep running west from the DMZ to Route 90 northwest of Tchepone. Denial techniques will include mining of traversable terrain, positioning of air surveilled sensors in the more likely avenues of infiltration, e.g. Se Bang Hieng river valley east of Tchepone, and fast reaction air strikes on detected intruders.
ASD/ISA understood you to say that—if we kept publicity down, if we continued bombing North Vietnam, and if we avoided friendly populations—you thought the probability was better than 70% that Souvanna would go along with a program of this kind.
[Page 525]We would appreciate your assessment of the political factors which will affect the allocation of resources that is now being made. Please make response personal for Bundy and McNaughton.
You should know that the Task Force is now pursuing tests along the lines of your suggestions.
With respect to other points you raised with ASD/ISA, thinking here is that barrier will not be inside North Vietnam.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Laos, Vol. XVI, Cables, 2/66–1/67. Top Secret. Drafted and released by Richard C. Steadman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs). Bromley Smith wrote a note on the White House copy of this telegram making certain that Rostow should see it.↩