policy - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
24. General Paul Harkins, then COMUSMACV, in a letter to BDM dated
23 August 1979, discussed the Battle of Ap Bac:
We mustered some regular forces and dropped in a couple
of battalions of paratroopers, who were the best troops
the South Vietnamese had. Unfortunately, they dropped
late in the afternoon and by the time they had picked
up and folded their "chutes" - as we had taught them
to do in training - it was too dark to attack that
evening. They did attack the next A.M. and had the
town back by noon.
Harkins contends that descriptions of the battle by Halberstam
and others were based on a press briefing given by John Paul
Vann, US advisor, in which Vann berated the South Vietnamese
troops. With respect to the time spent folding chutes -- it
should be noted that parachutes were in short supply and any
left in the drop zone would quickly be gathered up by local
scavangers. The-efore, quick recovery of chutes was considered
to be essential.
25. Werner, p. 38.
26. Knightley, op. 379-380. Diem, however, expelled Newsweek correspondent
Francois Sully in September 1962. See James Pronson, The Press
and the Cold War (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1970,
pp. 192-203.
27. "Uncensored Press Failed Viet rest, General Says," (Westmoreland)
The Washington Post, 23 April 1978.
28. The credibility gap was widened in December, 1962, by the statement
of Arthur Sylvester, then Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public
Affairs, who said concerning official deceptions, "It would seem to
be basic, all through history, that a government's right, if necessary,
is to lie to save itself when it's going up in a nuclear war. This
seems to me basic."
29. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Signet,
1976), p. 44.
30. Ibid., pp. 258-259.
31. Bagdikian, The Effete Conspiracy, p. 129.
,VA.
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