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foreign diplomats, and leading citizens throughout
Hanoi received an envelope in which there
was a pink piece of paper with this poem reputedly
written by Ho Chi Minh (and broadcast over
Radio Hanoi on 1January 1968):
This spring will be far better than any spring
past,
As truth of triumph spreads with trumpet
blast
North and South, rushing heroically together,
smite the American invaders.
Go forward!
C
... I 49
ertain VIctory IS ours at ast.
CU) Meanwhile, in the command centers in
Washington and Saigon, the reaction to the
apparent stalemate in 1967 was a curious mixture
of optimism and unease about the course of the
war. In certain intelligence circles, in the State
Department, and in the person of Secretary of
Defense McNamara, there was a belief that the
war could not be won as it was currently being
waged. Despite the bloodletting, the communists
were still fielding fighting units while the Viet
Cong political structure could not be permanently
eradicated from the countryside. Rolling
Thunder, after more than two years, simply was
not stopping the supply flow, nor was it pushing
Hanoi to the conference table. Surveying the situation,
these officials, advisors, and analysts
believed that an escalation of the fighting would
not work, either. For some, the only way out
seemed to be negotiations.f"
CU) On the other hand, most of the high members
of the Johnson administration seemed convinced
that the war was being won. For them, the
problem was the slow erosion of public support
for the war. Mostly, this was seen as a public relations
problem: how to counter the poor attitude
of some government officials and the negativity
of the press dispatches from South Vietnam. The
Johnson White House staff dreamed up an
activist program pushing an optimistic theme.
A "Success Offensive" was started by presidential
advisor Walt Rostow, whose Psychological
Strategy Committee monitored press stories from
around the country, seeding friendly press
with information on items such as progress in
hamlet pacification and increased communist
casualties.51
CU) The order from this group was to get out
the message that "we are winning" the war. From
the middle of 1967 to the end of the year, a
crescendo of optimistic statements from various
high-ranking civilians and military washed over
the critics of the administration's policy. In
August 1967, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
General Earle Wheeler, stated that the air war
was "going well and ... that he did not agree with
the [negative] conclusion of the Intelligence
Community." In September, Walt Rostow commented
that he was "outraged at the intellectual
prudishness of the Intelligence Community [concerning
its evaluation of the lack of progress in
pacification]." 52
CU) Into the fall, the administration kept up
the public relations pressure. In November,
General Bruce Palmer, deputy commander of the
U.S. Army, Vietnam, told a reporter that "The
Viet Cong has been defeated from Da Nang all the
way down in the populated areas [sic]. He can't
get food and he can't recruit. He has been forced
to change his strategy from trying to control the
people on the coast to trying to survive in the
mountains." Vice President Hubert H.
Humphrey, returning from a trip to Vietnam told
a television interviewer that "We are beginning to
win this struggle. We are on the offensive.
Territory is being gained. We are making steady
progress." 53 In Saigon, spokesman for the head
of the pacification effort, Robert Komer, briefed
reporters that, based on results of the Hamlet
Evaluation Survey, 67 percent of the population
lived in areas now controlled by the Vietnamese
government.54
CU) Of course the big gun in this offensive was
General Westmoreland. Despite some misgiv-
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