Ike's Spies by Stephen E. Ambrose Read Free Book Online

agency contrasted the two Vietnams. The north was “organized along strict Communist lines. The standard of living is low; life is grim and regimented; and the national effort is concentrated on building for the future.” In the south, meanwhile, “the standard of living is much higher and there is far more freedom and gaiety.” Security in the south was much improved; the number of Communist guerrillas was down from10,000 to 2,000, “scattered along the Cambodian border and in the remote plateau region of the north.”
    The agency did admit that there were problems, although one had to go to the fine print of the bulky document to find them. One was that Diem concentrated on building his armed forces, not long-term economic development. Consequently, American aid dollars were used to buy consumer goods from Japan or the United States, which inhibited the development of local industry.
    Another problem was that “a façade of representative government is maintained, but the government is in fact essentially authoritarian.… No organized opposition, loyal or otherwise, is tolerated, and critics of the regime are often repressed.” The strongly centralized one-man rule provided stability at the expense of alienating the nation’s educated elite and inhibiting the growth of political institutions that had popular support.
    Overall, however, the CIA’S conclusion was that “Diem will almost certainly be President for many years,” and that with Diem there would be stability and continued prosperity in South Vietnam. 18
    In briefing President-elect Kennedy on January 19, 1961, on Southeast Asia, Ike did not even mention Vietnam. It was not a “problem area.”
    Nearly two decades later, by which time the United States had sent 4.25 million of her young men to Vietnam, and then brought them home, and lost the war, General Goodpaster placed part of the blame for Ike’s shortsightedness on Vietnam at the feet of the intelligence agencies. Goodpaster characterized our information on Vietnam as “inadequate, poor, terrible.” 19
    That judgment seems unfair if it is directed solely toward the CIA . America’s policy toward Vietnam was made in the White House and the State Department, not in CIA headquarters. The chief feature of the CIA reporting was that it could usually be read either way. Ike could have supported Diem on the basis of the intelligence he received, or he could have adopted an anti-Diem policy on the basis of those same reports. The choice was his. All the CIA did was to supply him with information. That was all it was supposed to do.
    On the question, who got us into Vietnam? the Eisenhowers could be as quick to point the finger of blame as Ike’s successors. In an interview in 1979, Milton Eisenhower said, “One of thehardest things I had to do with Lyndon Johnson was that he kept saying, as the criticism of the Vietnam war mounted, ‘I’m only carrying out the policy of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.’
    â€œAnd on one occasion I said, ‘President Johnson, you’re making a terrible mistake. President Eisenhower was bitterly opposed to any participation in the Vietnam war. He was importuned by the Air Force and everybody else, and he declined time and again.’
    â€œAnd Johnson looked at me, and took me by surprise. He said, ‘Well, then why is it that now that we’re in there he’s never spoken a word of opposition?’
    â€œI said, ‘Well, there are two things to be said about that. Before we get into a fight it’s quite a different matter. And furthermore, now that we’re in it and you are making all the statements that you are, if President Eisenhower differed with you, it would be the greatest comfort to the enemy that you can imagine, and it would prolong the war.’
    â€œHe said, ‘My God, I never thought of such a thing. I’ll never say that