Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume IX, Vietnam, October 1972–January 1973

128. Minutes of a Washington Special Actions Group Meeting¹

Washington, November 28, 1972, 11:11 a.m.–noon.

SUBJECT

• Indochina

PARTICIPANTS

• Chairman—Henry A. Kissinger
• State
  • U. Alexis Johnson
  • William Sullivan
• Defense
  • Kenneth Rush
  • G. Warren Nutter
  • R/Adm. Daniel J. Murphy
• JCS
  • Adm. Thomas H. Moorer
  • V/Adm. John P. Weinel
• CIA
  • Richard Helms
  • George Carver
  • William Newton
• NSC
  • M/Gen. Alexander M. Haig
  • Richard Kennedy
  • John Holdridge
  • James Hackett

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS

It was agreed that:

• —There are to be no more leaks on any matter relating to the peace agreement or post-cease fire arrangements.
• —DOD will prepare an options paper on U.S. civilian employees in Vietnam, which will provide information and options on the following:
  • a. The smallest number of American civilians required.
  • b. The shortest time they will be needed in Vietnam.
  • c. The greatest dissociation of civilian employees from the Mission that can be arranged.
  • d. The possibility of using third country nationals.
• —DOD will determine whether it is possible to have foreign assistance legislation concerning Vietnam referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee instead of the Foreign Relations Committee.
• —Contingency plans should be prepared as soon as possible for our forces in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Mr. Sullivan: Thao just made the plane with five minutes to spare; he damn near missed it.

Mr. Kissinger: Who is he?

Mr. Sullivan: He is Duc’s (Nguyen Phu Duc) assistant.

Mr. Kissinger: Dick (Helms), want to go ahead?

Mr. Helms read a prepared statement (copy attached).²

Mr. Kissinger: Tom (Moorer), do you have anything to add?

Adm. Moorer: Yes, the North Vietnamese are moving some of their surface to air missiles south of the 20th parallel. They have a total of forty battalions of SAMs, of which 28 have been north of the parallel and 12 south. They now are moving eight south, so they will have twenty north and twenty south. They are also moving some tanks down the trail, in the area of the Bolovens Plateau.

Mr. Kissinger: Are we hitting them?

Adm. Moorer: Yes, we are.

Mr. Kissinger: We are killing ourselves with this leaking that has been going on. We had a sensible provision on civilians in the agreement, but after all these stories in the press, the other side is taking issue with us on this and now are insisting on no U.S. civilians. This is an issue that is in the national interest. It is not just a question of which self-serving agency can get the biggest post-war operation in Vietnam. Do you think the President can go to the American people and tell them the settlement has broken down because we need 20,000 American civilians in Vietnam to service the airplanes we just gave them? We have a cable in from (Ambassador) Porter reporting what damage the New York Times article³ is doing to him. He is sure the North Vietnamese will raise it in the meeting in Paris tomorrow. I didn’t need Porter to tell me it was a problem; I spent four days with Le Duc Tho on this last week. I can tell you it’s a serious problem. They may be giving us more trouble on one or two other issues, but this one is bad enough. Do you think the President really cares whether we have a major general or a civilian as head of these activities? These news stories are claiming that we plan to have fifty officers supervising thousands of civilians. Where did they come from? They didn’t come out of thin air. In my opinion, they are the result of deliberate leaks by high-level officials. What do you think the North Vietnamese reaction will be? They are not idiots; they know what they’re doing. The sections of the agreement on POWs and civilians were favorable. Now they are reading the Times and they know the section on civilians is weak. They’re going to give us hell on it and we’ll have to work out the greatest dissociation we can of these civilians and our Mission. We’ll also have to figure the smallest number of civilians we can manage with and the shortest time we need to have them stay. I need answers to these questions within the next twenty-four hours. No one knew anything about this civilian personnel problem until two weeks ago. There have been high-level leaks, either in Saigon or here, I don’t know which, but I’m afraid the damage has been done. We’ll be lucky if we can keep any civilians in Vietnam.

Mr. Johnson: I’ve been working with Fred Buzhardt at Defense on the legalities of handling contractor personnel. Defense has to be told, or it has to be reiterated to them, that the policy is that the contracting must be done by the GVN with the U.S. Government providing the money. The contracting can’t be done directly by the USG.

Mr. Kissinger: Will the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approve our providing the money for this?

Mr. Johnson: No, they won’t, but perhaps we won’t have to go to them for six months.

Mr. Kissinger: If they won’t approve it, you would accomplish nothing that way.

Adm. Moorer: The Armed Services are putting up $500 million, we have to cover them.

Mr. Johnson: Not those under contract. We estimate 3,000 people and a total cost of $200 million per year.

Mr. Kissinger: How can you do it without Senate Foreign Relations Committee approval?

Mr. Johnson: Maybe it can come out of the DOD budget. Is that possible?

Adm. Murphy: I don’t think so.

Mr. Rush: Neither do I.

Mr. Kissinger: What is happening here is that we are being forced into a position in which we may have no civilians in Vietnam. How can we go to the people and the Congress and say the agreement is breaking down because we must have American civilians there? Would you take another look at this problem? We can’t rely on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and I don’t want to have to go to them. We have to find a different solution.

Mr. Johnson: Is the issue that is causing the North Vietnamese concern whether the civilians are direct employees of DOD or indirect contract employees, or is it the question of the number of civilians?

Mr. Kissinger: What they want to do is change the agreement by adding the phrase that civilians performing supply, storage and maintenance functions would be withdrawn. At this point they are thinking of U.S. Government civilian employees. If we raise the question of contract civilians, or if a story on that point appears in the Times, they will add them to their request. We have to keep quiet about these things. In October they wanted to include in the agreement a provision prohibiting civilians from performing military functions. I asked them what they had in mind and they didn’t know. Now they know—they have read all the news stories. They had no idea when we talked of fifty attachés that they would be the nucleus of a huge civilian operation; that we would replace thousands of military personnel with thousands of civilians. Now they are probably going to criticize the fifty military they have already agreed to.

Adm. Moorer: Can’t you call their attention to all the flights of Soviet military equipment they are receiving?

Mr. Kissinger: We’ll make all those arguments, but we are going to take a battering on this.

Adm. Murphy: Can the President waive the requirement for end-user checks of the equipment we have given the South Vietnamese?

Mr. Kissinger: I want all of this under GVN contracts.

Mr. Sullivan: How many civilians will be required to make the end-user checks?

Mr. Johnson: We have been discussing 1,500 to 2,000 DOD civilians. If we remove the end-user checks, could we cut that to 1,200?

Adm. Murphy: It would be less than that, but I don’t think numbers is the problem.

Mr. Nutter: Neither do I.

Adm. Murphy: If the GVN is handling everything, it will all have to be done in-country, without offshore contracting.

Mr. Kissinger: You say 1,200 to 2,000, who are the other 30,000 we have talked about, all Vietnamese?

Adm. Murphy: Yes, South Vietnamese.

Mr. Kissinger: Now we have a major problem concerning the function of the military attachés.

Mr. Johnson: I anticipate a very limited number of DOD civilian employees in Saigon. Most of them would be handling maintenance at the airfields.

Mr. Kissinger: Must the maintenance be done by Americans?

Adm. Murphy: They would not be DOD civilians, just U.S. citizen employees under contract.

Mr. Kissinger: How many of these would there be?

Adm. Murphy: About 5,000.

Mr. Kissinger: I don’t think the North Vietnamese ever focussed on this. (to Gen. Haig) What do you think?

Gen. Haig: No, they didn’t. They focussed on CORDS and the MRs.

Mr. Kissinger: When we asked them what other civilians they had in mind, they couldn’t think of any.

Gen. Haig: They mentioned Paul Vann.

Mr. Kissinger: That’s right, they mentioned Vann. I don’t know, maybe they’ll be so hungry for an agreement next week they won’t make a big issue of this, but I doubt it.

Mr. Sullivan: But don’t you need some choices before you go back?

Mr. Kissinger: Yes, I need some options, perhaps some time limits for the retention of our civilians. If we suggest two years, I don’t think it will make them happy.

Mr. Johnson: Offshore contracting is not a problem?

Gen. Haig: No.

Mr. Kissinger: Not now it isn’t, because they haven’t thought of it yet. But if we publish it in our newspapers, it will become a problem.

Mr. Rush: Maybe we shouldn’t mention anything about this until the agreement is signed.

Mr. Kissinger: After that New York Times story they will raise it and they’ll also attack the fifty military. I’m afraid the damage is already done.

Adm. Murphy: Would they accept U.S. citizen employees under GVN contract?

Mr. Kissinger: The agreement isn’t that specific, it says U.S. personnel will withdraw. One way of partly getting around the problem is to put a time limit on the withdrawal.

Adm. Murphy: I see two ways of handling the civilian employees. One is to do what we are doing now and the other is to have South Vietnam hire the civilians, with us financing it by providing budget support to the GVN. If we do it that way, it would have to go through the Fulbright Committee⁴ and they’ll kill it.

Mr. Sullivan: Well, I don’t know, it could be buried in the foreign assistance budget.

Mr. Kennedy: No, it can’t. It’s so big, it’s 25% of the foreign assistance budget, that it can’t be hidden. It’s just too big.

Mr. Sullivan: We’re in trouble if we have to go to Fulbright.

Mr. Kissinger: It’s impossible to go to Fulbright. If we briefed him in advance, the problem would immediately be in the public arena. Can we possibly put it before the Armed Forces Committee?

Mr. Johnson: I don’t know, maybe we can. (to Mr. Rush) What do you think?

Mr. Rush: We’ll check to see if it’s possible.

Mr. Sullivan: The last time the North Vietnamese gave us a list of functions they left out “repair and maintenance.” Maybe it was just an oversight on their part, but we may have something we can work on there.

Mr. Kissinger: Can you review the list and see if we can leave some of those items in and take some others out?

Mr. Sullivan: I’ll take a look at it.

Adm. Murphy: It looks like they have our list.

Mr. Kissinger: No, they have been reading the papers.

Adm. Murphy: What about using Filipinos or other foreign nationals for some of the supply and maintenance activities?

Mr. Sullivan: The Filipinos are supposed to leave under the agreement.

Mr. Kissinger: And now New Zealand appears about to leave SEATO.

Adm. Murphy: Can you ask if third-country nationals can be used?

Mr. Kissinger: No, you can’t do it that way. You can’t ask them anything. If you ask them, they will say no. We had it the way we wanted until the papers started publishing organization charts.

Adm. Murphy: We’ll give you a memo on this.

Mr. Kissinger: Yes, give us a memo by COB tomorrow.

Adm. Murphy: Can you give us a few extra hours?

Mr. Kissinger: O.K., make it by open of business on Thursday; that will give you twelve additional hours. The President may leave town at noon on Thursday, so get it in if you want him to act on it. (to Mr. Helms) Where do we stand on intelligence?

Mr. Johnson: On the question of overt intelligence, we have identified one hundred Vietnamese-speaking Foreign Service Officers and can send them to Vietnam right away. We can send them there initially for ninety days and then see how we handle it thereafter.

Mr. Kissinger: What does that have to do with intelligence?

Mr. Johnson: They would be reporting overt intelligence. When the one hundred arrive in Vietnam, we will have the 150 overt intelligence reporters in the country that the intelligence committee recommended. They will work in the countryside, in many cases in the same provinces where they were stationed before, so they will know the area and the people. Their activities will be coordinated out of the consulates and at the Embassy level at Saigon. They will be able to perform a dual function, reporting both intelligence and any violations of the ceasefire that may occur in their areas. The station chief will be responsible for covert intelligence activities, while these FSOs collect overt intelligence. The covert and overt activities will be coordinated by the consuls in their areas and overall by the Embassy. This may get hairy and we may lose a few of these people, but I think it will work effectively. George (Carver), do you see any coordination problem?

Mr. Carver: No, the set-up sounds fine.

Mr. Johnson: We’re all set here, but we have to work this out with Embassy Saigon before going ahead.

Mr. Kissinger: (to Mr. Carver) You want to fly twenty F–4 and three P–3 flights a day?

Mr. Carver: I’d like to have authorization to do so. We don’t plan to actually make that many flights, but we’d like authorization in case we need it.

Mr. Kissinger: What’s the story on Canadian participation in the ICCS?

Mr. Sullivan: The Canadians are still saying they are not pregnant about this, but they sent five generals and three colonels down here to discuss the ICCS.

Mr. Johnson: The Canadians are pregnant about it. They wouldn’t miss this for the world.

Mr. Sullivan: Canadian Brigadier General Kirby spoke to Pheng Phongsavan in Laos about the role of the ICCS. Pheng talked about a force of “regiments” guarding the passes.

Mr. Kissinger: What size force have we been planning?

Mr. Sullivan: 4,500.

Mr. Kissinger: That’s not bad. If they want 1,000, maybe we can get them up to 2,000.

Mr. Johnson: It’s better than we expected.

Mr. Kissinger: The Indonesians are planning a large force. Suharto says he wants to help the South Vietnamese Army wipe out the leopard spots. (Laughing) I don’t think he fully understands the function of the ICCS.

Mr. Johnson: You didn’t discourage him, did you?

Mr. Kissinger: Of course not. (Laughing) He’s right in the spirit of things.

Mr. Johnson: The ICCS will need helicopters.

Mr. Sullivan: Yes, and other things. According to our present draft, we will pay 28% of the cost.

Mr. Kissinger: I have a few odd items to discuss. How are we coming with the delivery of items by sea? When is the last ship due to arrive?

Adm. Murphy: December 16. Everything is underway.

Mr. Kissinger: You see, by holding up the negotiations we have given you enough time to get it all delivered. What about the replacement of consumables?

Adm. Murphy: We plan to deliver POL as required. Big items of hardware, such as tanks and guns, can be delivered quarterly, monthly, or any way that’s necessary.

Mr. Kissinger: Are we dismantling any bases?

Adm. Murphy: No, sir. We don’t own anything in Vietnam. State may want to dismantle something they own.

Mr. Kissinger: It’s a pleasure to do business this way. We promised to remove our forces and dismantle our bases, but we have no forces and no bases, so now we can say we have nothing there. Are you sure that in all of Vietnam there is not one lousy American base?

Adm. Murphy: Not that the Defense Department owns.

Mr. Kissinger: (to Gen. Haig) Do we have the paper we need on that?

Gen. Haig: (nodded yes)

Mr. Kissinger: How about the F–5A/F–5E trade-off?

Adm. Murphy: That’s several years away.

Adm. Moorer: The F–5Es aren’t even being built yet.

Mr. Kissinger: [less than 1 line not declassified]

Mr. Carver: [less than 1 line not declassified]

Mr. Kissinger: [less than 1 line not declassified]

Mr. Carver: [2 lines not declassified]

Mr. Sullivan: [less than 1 line not declassified]

Mr. Carver: [less than 1 line not declassified]

Mr. Kissinger: We should have another WSAG later this week. I want contingency plans for our forces in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. For example, the SGU forces in Laos should remain until all foreign forces are withdrawn. These points should all be clear to our people in the field. I want another meeting on Friday (December 1) to discuss those contingencies.

1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), Box H–117, Washington Special Actions Group, WSAG Minutes (Originals) 7–27–72 to 9–20–73. Top Secret; Sensitive. The meeting took place in the White House Situation Room.
2. In Helms’s briefing, entitled “The Situation in Indochina,” November 28, he indicated that “there have been no major new military developments” in South Vietnam for two weeks. (Ibid., Box H–090, Washington Special Actions Group Meetings, WSAG Meeting Vietnam Planning 11–28–72)
3. Fox Butterfield, “U.S. to Keep Many Civilians in Vietnam,” The New York Times, November 27, 1972, p. 1.
4. Senator Fulbright chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.