1966

Operation Junction City?

On January 8th Operation Cedar Falls – largest combined offensive to date. 16,000 US and 1,400 SV clearing VC from “Iron Triangle” area 25 miles northwest of Saigon. The VC choose not to fight and ‘melt away’ into jungle. US then discover extensive network of tunnels and use ‘tunnel rats’ – volunteers – who explore the tunnels. After US and SV leave the VC rturn to rebuild their sanctuary. This pattern continued throughout war, “in and out” tactics.

Luna 9 landed on moon – 3rd February 1966

Four previous soft landing attempts had failed. It was an egg shaped capsule and sent tv pictures back to earth.

In December 1965 Operation Game Warden had begun consisting of US Navy river patrols on South Vietnam’s 3,000 nautical miles of inland waterways. February 6th, VC guerrillas attacked the US military compound at Pleiku in the Central highlands, killing eight Americans, wounding 126 and destroying ten aircraft. Operation Flaming Dart, the bombing of a North Vietnamese army camp near Dong Hoi by US Navy jets from Aircraft Carrier “Ranger”.

In Hanoi the Soviet PM is pressured by the North VN to provide unlimited military aid to counter the US aggression. This was agreed and Surface to Air missiles (SAMs) arrive within weeks.

Another military coup came on February 18th resulting in Khanh being replaced by military/civilian government led by Dr Phan Huy Quat.

February 22nd General Westmoreland asked for two batallions of marines to protect the air base at Da Nng from 6,000 VCs massed in the vicinity. The presdient approves the request against “grave reservations” of Ambassador Taylor in Vietnam. He felt that the US may be able to repeat the mistakes made by the French in sending ever increasing numbers of soldiers into the Asian forests and jungles of a “hostile foreign country” where friend and foe are indistinguishable.

During the first 6 months of 1966, US troops virtually destroyed the area surrounding Saigon. The countryside devastated to deprive the enemy of cover. More villages than ever relocated to ‘controlled hamlets’.

The CIA helped South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in south Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, this operation killed about 20,000 “Viet Cong”. Chomsky: “US military force demolishes what is left of the Vietnamese countryside”.

Edward Lansdale wanted south VN army to bear brunt of the war.

Artillery and air bombardment prior to ground sweeps of OPERATION

March 2nd, operation Rolling Thunder began. Over 100 US fighter bombers attacked targets in North Vietnam. Scheduled to last eight weeks, it actually ends up lasting three years. Also, the first US strikes against the Ho Chi Minh trail occur.

Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a gradual and sustained U.S. 2nd Air Division (later Seventh Air Force), U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) aerial bombardment campaign conducted against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 2 March 1965 until 1 November 1968, during the Vietnam War. Wikipedia

Operation Rolling Thunder

Five phases:

1.            March to June 65: obvious military targets near Hanoi.

2.            July 65 to June 66: North Vietnamese steel industry , bridges, trains and ships.

3.            June to sep 66: storage facilities.

4.            Oct 66 to March68: industrial targets and ‘sporadic attacks’.

5.            After the Tet offensive targets between 17th and 19th parallels while LBJ attempted to negotiate a peace plan with the north.

The cost to America of maintaining SVN’s army and managing the overall conflict in VN went up to $2m per day.

On Feb 17th, the US National Security Council recommends the bombing of NVN.

In March, secret US-backed bombing raids began against the Ho Chi Minh Trail inside Laos, conducted by mercenaries flying old US fighter planes.

It did little to halt the flow of soldiers and supplies from the north. Eventually 500 US jets will be lost attacking the trail. After each attack, female construction crews appear to repair the trail.

McNamara visited South Vietnam on March 6th 1964 to pledge support for Khanh. Upon arriving back at Washington he advised LBJ to increase military aid to shore up the sagging SV Army. The cost to the US of maintaining SV’s Army and managing conflict rises to $2m per day. US NSC recommends bombing North Vietnam and LBJ approves only the planning phase.

March 8th, the first US combat troops arrived in Vietnam as 3,500 marines landed at China Beach to defend the American air base at Da Nang. They joined 23,000 US military advisors already there.

March 9th LBJ approved the use of Napalm – a petroleum based anti-personnel bomb that showers hundreds of explosive pellets upon impact. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm

March 11th, Operation Market Time began. A joint effort between the US Navy and South VN Navy, to disrupt North Vietnamese sea routes used to funnel supplies into the south. It was successful, causing the North to divert to the more difficult Ho chi Minh Trail. The US embassy in Saigon was bombed by “terrorists” on March 29th. More than 50 were killed.

Black teenagers riot in Watts, Los Angeles; two men killed and at least 25 injured (March 15). Supreme Court decides Miranda v. Arizona.

Fulbright Hearings

Fulbright organised a public congressional hearing on the Vietnam War. All senior cabinet members of the Johnson administration were called to testify.

U.S. Senate hearings relating to the Vietnam War. As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Fulbright held several series of hearings on the Vietnam War. Many of the earlier hearings, in 1966, were televised to the nation in their entirety (a rarity in the pre-C-Span era); the 1971 hearings included the notable testimony of Vietnam veteran and future-Senator John Kerry.

Televised sessions before C-SPAN existed. 100 or more Americans dying in Vietnam every week. Greater than 385,000 US troops were in Vietnam by the end 1966. Nearly 6,500 had been killed since the start of the war. LBJ took off for a special Vietnam summit in Honolulu to counter the Fulbright hearings – hoping press would follow him and leave all that hearings business alone.

But it didn’t happen like that. LBJ met with Ky Thieu, Westmorland and press wasn’t interested. LBJ agreed to more troops – he wanted total victory in 1966. After receiving praise from LBJ, Ky purged his enemies, prompting Buddhist riots and an attempted coup against him. This wore down the public’s trust of LBJ.

In the hearings, LBJ’s cabinet said very little and some refused to say anything. Hearings were disappointing. Sometimes tv networks refused to broadcast the hearings considering them unpatriotic. They got hours of  ‘I Love Lucy’ instead.

During the first 6 months of 1966 the CIA were helping SVN agents identify and murder alleged VC leaders in South Vietnam. A 1971 Congressional report claimed that around 20,000 VC were killed as a result.

Protesters changed their chant from “Ho Ho ho chi Minh, the NLF is going to win” to “Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

 “US military force demolished what is left of the Vietnamese countryside” – during the first 6 months US troops virtually destroyed the area around Saigon, the countryside devastated. “Controlled hamlets” chomsky

South Mall, Albany, NY. Billion dollar government complex built for state capital – construction begins.

Back in Washington, on April 1st, LBJ authorised sending two more marine battalions and up to 20,000 logistical personnel to VN. He also allowed US troops to conduct patrols in the countryside. This is kept secret from the public for two months.

April 7th LBJ delivered his “Peace Without Conquest” speech at John Hopkins Uni offering Hanoi “unconditional discussions” to stop the war in return for massive economic assistance in modernising Vietnam. It was, however, quickly rejected. NV had good reason not to trust the US.

April 15th the US and SVN fighter bombers dropped a thousand bombs on VC positions. Two days later 15,000 students gathered to protest the bombing campaign.

April 20th Johnson took his top aides, including McNamara, General Westmoreland, General Wheeler, William Bundy, and Ambassador Taylor, met and agreed to recommend to the president sending another 40,000 combat soldiers to Vietnam.

April 24th LBJ announced Americans in Vietnam are eligible for combat pay.

On 1 April 1966, MSC sent out contracts to Douglas, Grumman, and McDonnell for conversion of a S-IVB spent stage under the name Saturn S-IVB spent-stage experiment support module (SSESM). In May the Apollo astronauts voiced concern over purging the stage's hydrogen tank in space. Nevertheless, in late July it was announced that the Orbital Workshop would be launched as a part of Apollo mission AS-209, originally one of the Earth-orbit CSM test launches, followed by two Saturn I/CSM crew launches, AAP-1 and AAP-2.

Design work continued over the next two years, in an era of shrinking budgets. In August 1967 NASA announced that the lunar mapping and base construction missions examined by the AAP were being canceled. Only the Earth-orbiting missions remained, namely the Orbital Workshop and Apollo Telescope Mount solar observatory. Later several Moon missions were canceled as well, originally to be Apollo missions 18 through 20. The cancellation of these missions freed up three Saturn V boosters for the AAP program. Although this would have allowed them to develop von Braun's original S-II based mission, by this time so much work had been done on the S-IV based design that work continued on this baseline. With the extra power available, the wet workshop was no longer needed; the S-IC and S-II lower stages could launch a "dry workshop" directly into orbit. Wikipedia

On 8 August 1969, McDonnell Douglas received a contract for the conversion of two existing S-IVB stages to the Orbital Workshop configuration. One of the S-IV test stages was shipped to McDonnell for the construction of a mockup in January 1970. The Orbital Workshop was renamed Skylab as a result of a NASA contest. The actual stage that flew was the upper stage of the AS-212 vehicle). The mission computer used aboard Skylab was the IBM System/4Pi TC-1, a relative of the AP-101 Space Shuttle computers.

May 3rd, the first US army combat troops, 3,5000 173rd Airborne Brigade, arrived in VN. May 11th VC over-run SVN troops in Phuoc Long Province north of Saigon and also attack in central SVN.

May 13th, the first bombing pause was announced by the US in the hope that Hanoi would now negotiate. There were to be 6 more pauses in the Rolling Thunder campaign, all with the same intention. The VC attacked US Special Forces in Phuoc Long, and on the 19th US bombing resumed.

June 18th – Ky took power as prime minister with Thieu as official Chief of State.

The first use of the term "Black Power" as social and political slogan was by Stokely Carmichael and Mukasa Dada (then known as Willie Ricks), both organizers and spokespersons for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On June 16, 1966, after the shooting of James Meredith during the March Against Fear, Carmichael said:

"This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain't going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!"

Some, though not all, Black Power adherents believed in racial separation, black nationalism, and the necessity to use violence as a means of achieving their aims. Such positions were for the most part in direct conflict with those of leaders of the mainstream Civil Rights Movement, and thus the two movements have often been viewed as inherently antagonistic. However certain groups and individuals participated in both civil rights and black power activism.

Internationalist offshoots of black power include African Internationalism, pan-Africanism, black nationalism and black supremacy. Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_power

The Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African American organization founded to promote civil rights and self-defense. It was active within the United States in the late 1960s into the 1970s.

Founded in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in October 1966, the organization initially espoused a doctrine calling for armed resistance to societal oppression in the interest of African American justice, though its objectives and philosophy changed radically throughout the party's existence. While the organization's leaders passionately espoused socialist doctrine, the party's black nationalist reputation attracted an ideologically diverse membership base. [1] Ideological consensus within the party was difficult to achieve, and some members openly disagreed with the views of the leaders.

The group was founded on the principles of its Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace," as well as exemption from military service that would utilize African Americans to "fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America."[2]

While firmly grounded in black nationalism and begun as an organization that accepted African American membership exclusively, the party reconsidered itself as it grew to national prominence and became an iconic representative of the counterculture of the 1960s.[3] The Black Panthers ultimately condemned black nationalism as "black racism" and became more focused on socialism without racial exclusivity.[4] They instituted a variety of community programs to alleviate poverty and illness among the communities it deemed most needful of aid. While the party retained its all-black membership, it recognized that different communities (those it deemed oppressed by the American government) needed to organize around their own set of issues and encouraged alliances with these organizations.

The group's political goals are often overshadowed by their confrontational and even militaristic tactics, and by their suspicious regard of law enforcement agents; whom the Black Panthers perceived as a linchpin of oppression that could only be overcome by a willingness to take up armed self-defense.[5] The Black Panther Party collapsed in the early 1970s, after party membership had started to decline during Huey Newton's 1968 manslaughter trial. There have been a variety of allegations about the lengths to which law enforcement officials went in their attempts to discredit and destroy the organization; including allegations of assassination.[6] Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_panthers

Nelson Rockefeller was re-elected to a third term as Governor of New York. Winthrop is elected Governor of Arkansas.

France quit NATO on 1st June 1966, and The Beatles paid tribute the following year.

Cabinet Goodbyes

Katzenbach, replaced by Ramsey Clark (Attorney General)

New Job

Housing and Urban Development – Robert C Weaver.

July 1st – VC attack against Da Nang air base. H C Lodge was reappointed as US ambassador to South Vietnam on July 8th. LBJ held meeting about Vietnam with his top aides from July 21st to 28th. July 28th LBJ announced in a press conference that he was to send 44 combat battalions to Vietnam increasing the US military presence to 125,000 men. Monthly draft calls were doubled to 35,000.

B52 bombing in areas of the Mekong Delta with a population density of up to 1000 people per square mile, with effects that “can be readily guessed”. The “merciless bombing” mainly murders” innocent bystanders. That is the reason why so few weapons are found among “the heaps of the dead”. He describes the lies of the respected was correspondent Joseph Alsop “always willing to swallow uncritically every official handout”, and the truths that Alsop casually relates about such US atrocities as razing of hospitals – a “clear cut” war crime, as are other atrocities he recounts from the US press such as the transport of VC prisoners “whose hands and cheeks had been pierced and the wire run through their hands, mouth and cheeks; and then tied together”, so that, as a US pilot put it “them gooks sit” quietly when “we got them wrapped up like that” .

Ky and Thieu in charge of Vietnam – the “Young Turks”. Ky was media friendly and was bigged up in “Life” magazine as a kind of JFK figure with his wife as Jackie.

The Jack Ruby Appeal & Death

Ruby's lawyers, led by Sam Houston Clinton, appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas. Ruby's lawyers argued that he could not have received a fair trial in the city of Dallas because of the excessive publicity surrounding the case. A year after his conviction, in March 1965, Ruby conducted a brief televised news conference in which he stated that "everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world."[13]

Eventually, the appellate court agreed with Ruby's lawyers for a new trial, and on October 5, 1966, ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted. Ruby's conviction and death sentence were overturned. Arrangements were underway for a new trial to be held in February 1967, in Wichita Falls, Texas, when, on December 9, 1966, Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, suffering from pneumonia. A day later, doctors realized he had cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain.

Ruby made a final statement from his hospital bed on December 19 that he and he alone had been responsible for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.[14] "There is nothing to hide," Ruby said. "There was no one else."[15] He died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to bronchiolar lung cancer, on January 3, 1967 at Parkland Hospital, where Lee Harvey Oswald had died and President Kennedy had been pronounced dead after his assassination.

Wikipedia

In mid-summer. Battle for Batangan Peninsula was underway. The VC took heavy casualties but still defeated the Americans. This while LBJ was escalating the war.

The “many flags” campaign inviolved a Korean War like effort to get Asian/Pacifc allies into the fight – Australia and New Zealand in limited support role.

In August (4th) LBJ asked congress for an additional $1.7bn for the war. And on August 31st signed a law criminalising draft card burning. Although it may result in a five year prison sentence and $1000 fine, the burnings became common during anti-war rallies and got lots of media coverage.

October 16th anti-war rallies in 40 US cities and in Europe too, London and Rome. On the 30th 20,000 marched in Washington supporting US involvement in Vietnam – who organised this?

Che arrived in Bolivia in November 1966 – challenging Bolivia’s military dictatorship and eventually a revolutionary movement that would spread through Latin America wounded and captured on October 8th 1967 and murdered the following day.

November 27th 35,000 anti-war demonstrators encircled the White House and marched on to the Washington monument for a rally.

McNamara visited VN on Novemebr 30th, privately warning that US casualty rates of up to 1000 dead per month could be expected.

December 4th – 137 wounded, 8 dead, when hotel used by US military was bombed by VC.On the 7th McNamara told LBJ that the north apparently “believe that the war will be a long one, that time is their ally, and that their staying power is superior to ours.” Dec 18 – 20th LBJ met his top aides again. On Christmas day, the second pause in bombing occurs which lasts 37 days. The US tried to force the north into talks, which NVN resisted.

With regard to US charges of VC terrorism Fall responds that US intelligence agrees with every knowledgable observer that “the VC are deliberately keeping terrorism at a low level because of its psychologically adverse effects”, unlike the US invaders who have no hope of appealing to the population and therefore must rely on their limitless resources of violence and destruction. He contrasts the US attack with that of the French, not “exactly models of knightly behaviour” though never descending to the appaling level of US savagery. He adds that the “torture and needless brutality to combatants and civilians alike has been sidestepped” or “ignored” in the US, unlike France which had, furthermore, never dared to send conscripts or increase the draft “for fear of public opposition to the war.”

Fall reported the “truly staggering amount of civilians…gettingkilled or maimed” by US assault. Estimates of 200,000 dead from 1956 to 1965, virtually all south Vietnamese.

Bernard Fall gave a graphic account of napalm raids on viollages in a free bomb zone in the Camau Peninsula in the deep south. Napalm bombs force villagers into the open so they can be attacked with fragnmentation bombs and then raked with cannon killing an unkown number of peasants .

US troop levels had now reached 184,300. During 1965 90,000 SVN soldiers deserted, 35,000 NVN soldiers had infiltrated via the Ho chi Minh trail, around 50% of the countryside now under VC control. On the bright side, General Westmoreland was chosen as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year”.