#: 499670 S7/JFK Debate  [POLITICS]
    07-Mar-96  14:57:50
Sb: Prouty Critique #11
Fm: D.T. FUHRMANN 71301,527
To: ALL

From the January 14 meeting (Eisenhower actually kept to a pretty consistent
schedule of NSC meetings, about one a week.....many of the memos related to
those meetings have been declassified and are available) Mr. Prouty 
leaps to a Foster Dulles visit to Korea two years previously, quoting 
some of Dulles' comments at the time: "No matter what you say about the 
president of Korea and the president of Nationalist China, those two 
gentleman are the equivalent of the founder of the church....they are 
Christian gentleman." Subsequently, on June 19th, Dulles spoke before the 
South Korean parliament: "The American people welcome you as an equal 
partner in the great company of those who make up the free world.,...I 
say to you: You are not alone. You will never be alone so long as you 
continue to play worthily your part in the great design of human 
freedom."   Pretty vague stuff, eh?  What;s the point here?  In the next
paragraph Prouty notes that for a man of Dulles' stature these were "most
unusual statements on many accounts and they were surpassed only by his
"prediction" of the outbreak of the Korean War at that time."

Whoa!  What prediction?  We're not told, unless the ambiguous comments 
quoted above are supposed to be a prediction?  And if the prediction is 
somewhere else, then what is "most unusual" about Dulles' comments? We 
won't learn that either.  No explanation but we've now been let in on the 
secret that a week before North Korea invaded South Korea, Dulles 
predicted that event. [For a detailed discussion of Dulles' visit in the 
early summer of 1950, see: Bruce Cumings, "The Origins of the Korean War, 
Vol II, The Roaring of the Cataract,
1947-1950," pp 500ff] There is no doubt that Dulles intentionally sought to
reassure the South Koreans that we would help if they were attacked, and to
some degree this was equally intended to demonstrate US resolve to the
Communists...in hopes of deterring an attack.  His speech before the South
Korean parliament was drafted with the assistance of people within the 
Truman administration.  Predicting an attack on South Korea at that time 
was easy. The entire peninsula was already at a war-pitch due to tensions 
between north and south, and there were repeated threats of confrontation 
and war. Predictions of an attack were made daily, but none actually 
predicted the assualt which North Korea unleashed on June 25, 1950.

Mr Prouty then jumps back to 1954 and the Eisenhower administration's 
debates over how to respond to the growing crisis in Indochina. Referring 
to a January 29, 1954, meeting, Prouty reports that while the ostensible 
purpose of the meeting was to discuss what might be done to aid the 
French, a major item on the agenda was the "Erskine Report" on Indochina. 
According to the memo of record on this meeting, however, it was indeed 
the question of what we could do to assist the French that took up most 
of this meeting.

The "Erskine Report was only an early draft. [The final version of this 
report can be found as NSC 5405 in Foreign Relations of the United 
States, 1952-1954, Vol XIII, Pt 1, "Indochina," p 1109ff]. However, other 
than stating that the report "was premised on US action short of the 
contribution of US ground forces," Mr. Prouty says nothing more about 
this "important" document.(P 39) Mr. Prouty also fails to mention that 
according to the memo of the meeting, "the paper was only a point of 
departure for further work by the Special committee." [SOURCE:  Foreign 
Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Vol XIII, Pt 1, "Indochina," p 
1005]. Admiral Radford expressed his concern that the report was "too 
restrictive in that it was premised on US action short of the 
contribution of US combat forces," arguing that the US could not afford to
let the Viet Minh take the Tonkin Delta. If this were lost, Radford 
declared, Indochina would be lost and the rest of Southeast Asia would 
fall.  The psychological impact of such a loss would be unacceptable to 
the US.  He proposed redrafting the paper to have two parts, one which 
would be based on no intervention with US combat forces, and another 
"indicating what should be done to prepare against the contingency where 
US combat forces would be needed.  General W.B. Smith (Undersecretary of 
State, former DCI) "was generally agreeable to this approach."  Mr. 
Prouty doesn't bother to tell the reader any of this either. Is it 
irrelevant?  Does this information alter one's sense of the discussion at 
this allegedly critical meeting?

Prouty does provide a footnote at this point, though again offers no sources
or references.  In what amounts to an aside, Prouty states that this was a
"pivotal meeting in developments leading to the steady escalation of the
conflict in Vietnam."  He does not, however, explain how and why this is 
true. Having written an extensive study of the Eisenhower deliberations over
Indochina myself, I would have to argue that this particular meeting was 
quite early in the process of working out their response to the impending 
French debacle.  The really crucial and important decisions would not be 
made until April and May of 1954, but Mr. Prouty choses not to even 
mention the high level meetings which the collapse of the French position 
precipitated.

Making reference to "the Magsaysay scenario," Prouty takes pains to note 
that DCI Dulles had Lansdale present at this meeting, and proposed the he 
should go to Indochina as one of five liason officers agreed to by 
Navarre.  He reports that the group was agreeable to this proposal and 
Dulles was authorized to send Lansdale.  What isn't mentioned is that 
Admiral Radford suggested that Lansdale remain in Washington for the 
moment to help in drafting the final version of the Erskine Report, which 
was "agreeable" to Allen Dulles. [SOURCES:  Foreign Relations of the 
United States, 1952-1954, Vol XIII, Pt 1, "Indochina," p 1005ff.  A copy 
of the same memo is in the Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Vol I, pp 
443ff]   One must assume that the only reason Mr. Prouty happened to 
select this particular meeting of all the many meetings focused on this 
crisis is because he arch-nemesis Edward Lansdale makes an 
appearance.....and this is the most crucial event in the evolution of US
policy vis-a-vis Indochina.

In another yet footnote (# 4 for this chapter) Mr Prouty reminds us that
Lansdale is the same gentleman who engineered Magsaysay's victory, and 
states that he was being sent to Vietnam "to see if he could work the 
same magic with Ngo Dinh Diem."  Actually, it would still be several 
months before Diem's name would even be raised in policy debates (Foreign 
Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Vol XIII, Pt 2, "Indochina," p 
1577ff), but this is a minor detail.  There is no mention of Ngo Dinh 
Diem, nor of what Lansdale's mission was to be, in the memorandum of the 
January 29th NSC meeting.

Although Mr. Prouty's emphasis is totally on the Esrskine report and Dulles'
suggestion about sending Lansdale to Indochina, those items are 
mentioned only in passing in the actual memo of record, taking barely a 
dozen sentences in a memo that as published is five pages long. And this 
seems to be in direct contradiction to the focus and emphasis which Mr. 
Prouty has drawn above.


continued in #12.......