by Mark Clodfelter

National War College

National Defense University

CASE STUDY

Violating Reality

The Lavelle Affair, Nixon, and the Parsing of the Truth
National War College

National Defense University

The National War College at the National Defense University in 

Washington, DC, is the premier Department of Defense joint professional military education institution for national security strategy. Its 

mission is to educate future leaders of the Armed Forces, Department 

of State, and other civilian agencies for high-level policy, command, 

and staff responsibilities by conducting a senior-level course of study in 

the theory, development, and assessment of national security strategy.

The 10-month curriculum emphasizes the joint and interagency 

perspective. Reflecting this emphasis, 59 percent of the student body is 

composed of equal representation from the land, sea, and air Services 

(including the Marine Corps and Coast Guard). The remaining 41 

percent is drawn from the Department of State and other Federal 

departments and agencies, as well as international fellows from a 

number of countries. Graduates earn a master of science in national 

security strategy. 

The NWC commandant, a military officer of one-star rank, occupies a nominative position that rotates among the Army, Navy, and Air 

Force. As joint sponsor of the National War College, the Department of 

State nominates a Foreign Service Officer with Ambassadorial rank to 

serve as the commandant’s deputy and international affairs adviser.

Cover

In this 1972 photograph, General John D. Lavelle, USAF, is shown as Seventh 

Air Force Commander in Saigon (AP File Photo)
Violating Reality

National War College

Case Study

National Defense University Press

Washington, D.C.

March 2016

by Mark Clodfelter

Violating Reality

The Lavelle Affair, Nixon, and Parsing the Truth

“Mark Clodfelter uncovers the truth about a dedicated Air Force leader who was treated unjustly 

and wrongly abandoned by the government he served. It is time to correct that error.”

Lieutenant General David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.)

Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, 2006–2010

Dean, Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Power Studies

“Mark Clodfelter’s analysis of the Lavelle Affair is a terrific piece of scholarship.”

Dr. Richard H. Kohn

 Chief of the Office of Air Force History

 Chief Historian, USAF, 1981–1991

 Professor Emeritus of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those 

of the author and do not necessarily represent the official policy of the Defense Department or 

any other agency of the Federal Government. Cleared for public release; distribution unlimited.

Portions of this work may be quoted or reprinted without permission, provided that a 

standard source credit line is included. NDU Press would appreciate a courtesy copy of reprints 

or reviews.

First printing, March 2016
vii

Contents

Foreword.............................................................................................................ix

Acknowledgments.............................................................................................xi

Introduction........................................................................................................ 1

Background ......................................................................................................... 4

Initial “Unauthorized” Strikes........................................................................... 8

Appeals for “Liberal” ROE Interpretations...................................................12

The Moc Chau Radar Attack...........................................................................16

Netting of North Vietnam’s Radars................................................................19

The Dong Hoi Mission and Allegations of Falsified Records.....................23

“Mad Bomber” Nixon Secretly Changes the ROE .......................................29

Lavelle’s Relief from Command—and Nixon’s Reaction.............................37

Judging the Truth .............................................................................................48

Assessment and Legacy ...................................................................................60

About the Author .............................................................................................65

ix

Foreword

Dr. Mark “Clod” Clodfelter is a nationally recognized scholar and valued faculty member 

at the National Defense University. Clod has put countless hours into researching this monograph about former U.S. Air Force General John D. Lavelle, who commanded Seventh Air Force 

in Vietnam from 1971 to 1972. Scholars have peer reviewed the monograph and found it to be 

a study of significant historical value.

Scholars may disagree with Dr. Clodfelter’s conclusions, but they cannot dispute the value 

of his work for use by military institutions, from Service academies through senior Service colleges, as a case study in civil-military relations.

MajGen F.M. Padilla, USMC

President

National Defense University

xi

Acknowledgments

For comments and critiques, the author is grateful to Professor Emeritus Peter Maslowski 

at the University of Nebraska; Professor Emeritus Richard Kohn at the University of North Carolina; Professor Rondall Rice at East Carolina University; Maj Gen Robertus “Dutch” Remkes, 

USAF (Ret.); Lt Col Wendy Walker, USAF, at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska; Col Andrew 

Nielsen, USAF, Adam Oler, and Professor David Tretler at the National War College; Professors 

David Mets (Emeritus), Harold Winton, Mark Conversino, and Rich Muller at the School of 

Advanced Air and Space Studies.

The author also thanks Maranda Gilmore at Air University’s Air Force Historical Research 

Agency; Martin Gedra, Dr. Alex J. Daverede III, John Clagett, and Jennifer Dryer at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland; and Patrick Casey and 

Jennifer Krist at Myers, Brier, and Kelly, LLP, for invaluable research assistance.

The author further thanks Dr. Jeffrey D. Smotherman, George Maerz, Lisa Yambrick, Dr. 

John J. Church, Joanna E. Seich, and Dr. William T. Eliason at NDU Press for their superb work 

in preparing this case study for publication.

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Violating Reality

Introduction

On December 20, 2010, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) denied the Pentagon’s 

request, endorsed by President Barack Obama, to advance posthumously Air Force Maj Gen 

John D. Lavelle to the retired list in the rank of general.1

 Thirty-eight years earlier, Air Force 

Chief of Staff Gen John D. Ryan had fired the four-star Lavelle as the Seventh Air Force commander in Saigon for allegedly conducting unauthorized airstrikes against North Vietnam and 

ordering the falsification of mission reports. Senate hearings in September 1972 deemed Lavelle 

guilty of both offenses, resulting in his demotion to major general following retirement. Yet a 

careful reading of documentary and taped evidence, much of it recently discovered and not 

available at the time of the original Senate hearings, reveals that General Lavelle neither violated 

the rules of engagement (ROE) that prescribed America’s air war at the time of his dismissal nor 

falsified mission reports. Accordingly, Lavelle should have his rank restored, and the so-called 

Lavelle affair should serve as a cautionary tale for political and military leaders alike who question the proper conduct of “civil-military relations” in the complex and often confounding era 

of modern limited war.

The declassification and release of segments of President Richard Nixon’s White House tapes 

in 2002 and 2003 disclosed that Nixon had authorized many of the airstrikes that Lavelle had ordered. Those tapes, along with the release of formerly classified documents in the eighth volume 

on the Vietnam War in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series, papers in the National Archives to include several documents declassified in 2015, General Lavelle’s 

1978 Air Force oral history interview, and recent interviews of individuals who participated in 

the events in question, shed new light on the 1972 SASC and House Armed Services Committee 

(HASC) hearings addressing Lavelle’s actions as Seventh Air Force Commander. Those hearings 

gained the most publicity, given that the June 1972 HASC hearing was the first to highlight the 

Lavelle affair in an attempt to discover what had transpired and why, and the September 1972 

SASC hearings decided Lavelle’s retired rank. Two other hearings also offered insight on Lavelle’s 

conduct: the June 1972 SASC hearing that considered the reappointment of Admiral Thomas 

H. Moorer, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and the March 1973 SASC hearing to 

determine if 180 Air Force and Navy officers involved in allegedly unauthorized airstrikes should 

1 Letter, John McCain, Ranking Member, and Carl Levin, Chairman, Senate Armed Services 

Committee, to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, December 20, 2010, available at <http://mbk-wpmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/12084248/Letter-to-Secretary-Robert-Gatesfrom-John-McCain-and-Carl-Levin-12-20-10-00218716xBF28F.pdf>.
2 

Clodfelter

receive promotions. When combined, all of those sources show that Lavelle complied with the 

wishes of “higher authority” and accurately reported his actions to the command echelons in both 

military and civilian spheres. The materials now available further reveal that some general officer 

testimony provided under oath during House and Senate hearings was not always exact, and those 

discrepancies—along with the failure of the Nixon White House to acknowledge publicly its new 

bombing policy—helped to seal Lavelle’s undeserved fate.

Lavelle’s supposedly unauthorized bombing came to light in early March 1972, after General Ryan received a letter that Air Force Sgt. Lonnie Franks, an intelligence specialist with 

the 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at Udorn Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, had written 

to Senator Harold E. Hughes (D-IA), a critic of the Vietnam War. The letter alleged that the 

wing’s pilots regularly filed false reports after flying escort missions for reconnaissance aircraft 

over North Vietnam, claiming that they had received ground fire from North Vietnamese air 

defenses when they had not. Ryan dispatched Gen Louis L. Wilson, Jr., the Air Force Inspector 

General (IG), to Saigon to investigate Lavelle’s actions, and Wilson agreed with Franks’s assessment. The IG further determined that such missions violated the ROE then governing the air 

war over the North.2

 Wilson reported that Lavelle had conducted 28 unauthorized missions, 

consisting of 147 sorties, during a 4-month span in which Seventh Air Force flew between 

25,000 and 40,000 total sorties.3

 General Ryan called Lavelle to Washington, telling him that he 

would be relieved of command and demoted to his permanent rank of major general should 

he decide to remain in the Air Force. Lavelle instead chose retirement, and the Senate Armed 

Services Committee voted 14–2 to keep him on the retired list as a major general.4

2 Lieutenant General Louis L. Wilson, Jr., “Report of Investigation Concerning Alleged Falsification of Classified Reports for Missions in North Vietnam,” March 20, 1972, 1–5, available at <https://

mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Lavelle-IGReport.pdf>. 

3 Ibid., 2; Hearing before the Armed Services Investigating Subcommittee on Armed Services, 

House of Representatives, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North 

Vietnam” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), June 12, 1972, 8; Hearings before 

the Committee on Armed Services of the United States Senate, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., “Nomination of John 

D. Lavelle, General Creighton W. Abrams, and Admiral John S. McCain” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), September 12, 1972, 44; September 13, 1972, 132; September 19, 1972, 

320. The SASC hearings of September 12 listed 24 missions and 137 sorties that “appear to fall within the 

category of mission ordered to expend [ordnance] whether or not there was enemy reaction from SAM 

defenses or AAA.” See 281.

4 Aloysius Casey and Patrick Casey, “Lavelle, Nixon, and the White House Tapes,” Air Force 

Magazine, February 2007, 90.
3

Violating Reality

The 1972 SASC, though, did not have access to much material relevant to the case (such 

as Wilson’s IG report), and additional information has since appeared. The 2010 Senate Armed 

Services Committee considered some of this material, but it did not consider all of it. In particular, the 2010 SASC failed to connect the numerous classified deletions in key testimony during 

the 1972 hearings to revelations found in the Nixon tapes and Lavelle’s 1978 interview. Such 

ties added new meaning to the testimony given in 1972 that the 2010 SASC did not take into 

account. Moreover, documents declassified after the 2010 SASC ruling support Lavelle’s contention that he acted with the knowledge—and backing—of his superiors, further demonstrating 

his innocence.

The case study that follows is not only an effort to help exonerate Lavelle for the unjust 

treatment he received, but it also reveals much about how American civil-military relations can 

function during a controversial limited conflict in which disparate personalities often played 

a dominant role. By the time of the Lavelle affair, the Vietnam War had cost the United States 

more than 50,000 Americans killed and exceeded $125 billion in monetary expenditures—

enormous outlays in both lives and treasure for no tangible result after 7 years of combat. The 

war had ripped apart the fabric of the Nation and made the 1968 Presidential race that elected 

Richard Nixon one of the most contentious contests in American political history. The war’s 

limited character, resulting from the threat of active Chinese or Soviet intervention, not only 

confused many in the American public, but also baffled many in the American military. Generals and admirals chafed against restrictive ROE that constrained the actions they could take. 

Meanwhile, beginning with President Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a mutual distrust developed between America’s political and military leadership, and 

that animosity endured into the Nixon administration. Nixon’s approach to Vietnam, though, 

differed from that of his predecessor, especially in terms of his steadfast reliance on National 

Security Advisor Henry Kissinger at the expense of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, which 

added a new wrinkle to the civil-military relationship.5

 Congress, with its penchant for partisan 

5 The most thorough analysis of Melvin Laird’s tenure as Secretary of Defense is Richard A. 

Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military 1969–1973 (Washington, DC: Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2015). Hunt observes that Laird’s “relations with 

the White House and the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] would at times be complicated and characterized by 

mutual mistrust. The secretary, the White House, and the JCS would deliberately keep each other in the 

dark about their actions or intentions,” 28–29). For an excellent examination of the Nixon-Kissinger relationship, see Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: 

Free Press, 2001), especially 37–60.
4 

Clodfelter

politics, also played a key role in the Lavelle affair. The twists and turns of the following story offer much worthy of consideration for 21st-century American political and military leaders who 

will continue to fight limited wars.

Background

 The spark that ultimately produced the Lavelle affair was the November 1968 bombing 

halt “agreement,” concluded as part of the Paris peace negotiations. That agreement came at 

the end of Operation Rolling Thunder, President Lyndon Johnson’s air campaign against North 

Vietnam that had begun in March 1965 and dropped 643,000 tons of bombs.6

 The North Vietnamese had refused to engage seriously in negotiations until Johnson stopped bombing their 

country, and the bombing had also become a focal point for the growing anti-war movement 

in the United States. As a result, Johnson halted Rolling Thunder on October 31, 1968, and soon 

afterward, an apparent agreement emerged in Paris. In it, the North Vietnamese seemingly 

concurred that they would not attack South Vietnamese cities, move large quantities of troops 

or supplies into the South, or fire on unarmed U.S. reconnaissance aircraft over the North in 

exchange for a bombing halt against North Vietnam.7

 North Vietnamese violations of those 

restrictions occurred soon after the agreement and often generated airstrikes against the North 

in retaliation. As attacks against reconnaissance aircraft increased, the U.S. Air Force and Navy 

began to escort the aircraft with bomb-laden fighters that could conduct “protective reaction 

strikes” against North Vietnamese air defenses once they shot at U.S. aircraft. President Nixon 

announced the rules of engagement governing the air war over the North in November 1970: 

“If our planes are fired upon, I will not only order that they return the fire, but I will order that 

the missile site be destroyed and that the military complex around that site which supports it 

also be destroyed by bombing.”8

6 U.S. Grant Sharp and William C. Westmoreland, “Report on the War in Vietnam (as of 30 June 

1968)” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 53.

7 Former President Lyndon Johnson, who approved the “agreement,” wrote in his memoirs: “Our 

negotiators reported that the North Vietnamese would give no flat guarantees; that was in keeping with 

their stand that the bombing had to be ended without conditions. But they had told us that if we stopped 

the bombing, they would ‘know what to do.’ [American negotiators] were confident Hanoi knew precisely 

what we meant and would avoid the actions that we had warned them would imperil a bombing halt.” 

See The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 

1971), 518.

8 Quoted in “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 98.
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Violating Reality

Nixon’s description of the ROE was not entirely accurate, however. American technicians 

had perfected a radar homing and warning (RHAW) indicator that triggered a tone in a pilot’s 

headset when the radars guiding North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) or anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) locked on to an aircraft prior to firing.9

 This warning of radar activation 

gave the pilot several seconds of reaction time before missile launch or AAA firing and enabled 

him to attack the threat before it shot at him. As a result, the following rules of engagement 

for fighters escorting reconnaissance aircraft over North Vietnam were in effect when Lavelle 

took command of Seventh Air Force on July 29, 1971: “Fighter aircraft may strike any SAM or 

Triple A site below 20 degrees north [latitude] which fires at or is activated against U.S. aircraft 

conducting missions over Laos or North Vietnam [emphasis added].”10 The phrase “is activated 

against” stemmed from the creation of RHAW gear and significantly altered the ROE to allow 

airmen to fire first in the case of an imminent threat from radar-guided SAMs or AAA. That 

development, and the North Vietnamese counter to it, created the controversy that ultimately 

resulted in Lavelle’s relief.

Lavelle had entered the Army Air Corps in 1939 as an aviation cadet after graduating 

from Ohio’s John Carroll University with a bachelor of science degree. In World War II, he flew 

76 combat missions in P-47 fighters, including patrolling the Normandy invasion beachhead 

and providing air support in the drive to the Rhine. During the Korean War, as a supply depot 

commander in Japan, he reorganized the supply system to allow for the shipment of equipment 

from the United States directly to South Korea. After commanding McGuire Air Force Base, 

New Jersey, he attended the Air War College and then alternated between assignments on the 

Pentagon’s Air Staff and in Europe. Promoted to major general in 1966, Lavelle commanded 

17th Air Force in Germany, Italy, and Libya, a vast organization that contained fighters in all 

three locations. 

Returning to the Pentagon, he gained his third star and from 1968 to 1970 took charge 

of the Defense Communications Planning Group, which, among other missions, developed 

secret sensors used to detect trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In this assignment, he recalled 

9 Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and North Vietnam, 1966–1973

(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 205; Northrop Grumman, “The Radar Warning 

Story,” n.d., 2, available at <http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrBT8wpB.ZVyA8A4lpXNyoA;_ylu=X3o

DMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--/RV=2/RE=1441167274/

RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.myaoc.org%2fEWEB%2fimages%2faoc_images%2fgoldcrows%2fwe

b%2fRadarWarnStory.doc/RK=0/RS=qEKsPlgTsYW_.Ok9aZOkIRB1V3Y->. 

10 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 18, 1972, 281.
6 

Clodfelter

that he often clashed with Air Force Chief of Staff Ryan, most notably when Lavelle opposed 

Ryan’s desire for the Air Force to take control of Lockheed-Marietta because of its significant 

cost overruns in developing the Air Force’s C-5 transport aircraft. Secretary of the Air Force 

Robert C. Seamans supported Lavelle, whose view prevailed. Ryan ultimately sent Lavelle to a 

posting in Hawaii as the Vice Chief of Pacific Air Forces rather than to Lavelle’s desired job as 

the commander of Air Training Command.11 Ryan, interviewed in 1979, could not remember 

the rift over Lockheed-Marietta or that Lavelle wanted to serve in Training Command. The 

former Chief of Staff did recollect discord over sending F-4Cs to Vietnam to support the sensor 

program, but he remarked, “I was against the F-4Cs, but my God, there weren’t any strained relations. . . . Hell, if it was strained relations, I would never have promoted him to four stars and 

put him down there at Seventh Air Force.”12

“Obviously the Chief was not as down on me as I thought he was because he has final say 

[in selecting the Seventh Air Force Commander],” Lavelle remembered, “but part of the reason 

that I got the job was because I was asked for.”13 Lavelle had strong backing from Gen George 

S. Brown, who commanded Air Force Systems Command and had served as Seventh Air Force 

Commander in 1968–1969, and from the commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), Army GEN Creighton Abrams, who had interacted frequently with Lavelle during Lavelle’s posting as Vice Chief of Pacific Air Forces. Abrams, who would serve as Lavelle’s 

boss, directed the overall American military effort in Vietnam and had his sights set on thwarting 

an anticipated North Vietnamese invasion, which intelligence analysts projected for early 1972. 

President Nixon’s commitment to reducing American troop totals in Vietnam would result in 

only 156,800 Soldiers and Marines in the South by the end of 1971; that total would drop to 

69,000 by May 1972.14 Thus, South Vietnamese ground forces and American airpower were the 

11 See U.S. Air Force Oral History Interview of Gen John D. Lavelle by Lt Col John N. Dick, 

Jr., McLean, VA, April 17–24, 1978, K239.0512-1036, Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), 

Maxwell AFB, AL, 442–446, 528–539, and 549–554. Lavelle contended that Ryan took out his wrath on 

him over the Lockheed-Marietta incident by assigning him to be Vice Chief of Pacific Air Forces, widely 

viewed as a “backwater” position. See, especially, 535–536. 

12 U.S. Air Force Oral History Interview of Gen John D. Ryan by Dr. James C. Hasdorff, San Antonio, TX, May 15–17, 1979, K239.0512-1123, AFHRA, Maxwell AFB, AL, 223, 226–227.

13 Lavelle oral history interview, 553.

14 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, “The Vietnam War: Military Statistics,” available at <www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/seventies/resources/vietnam-war-military-statistics>. 
7

Violating Reality

main elements available to stop the expected assault, and Lavelle, as Abrams’s air deputy, immediately began to work with his new commander to negate such an attack.

Soon after his arrival in Saigon, Lavelle got a lesson on how political concerns could affect 

his ability to command his forces. On September 21, 1971, Seventh Air Force fighters, in concert 

with a small number of Navy aircraft, conducted Operation Prize Bull, bombing targets north 

of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the dividing sector between North and South Vietnam. Prize 

Bull was not Lavelle’s idea. He had received a late-night notice from Air Force Lt Gen John W. 

Vogt, the Director of the Joint Staff in Washington, DC, who called on behalf of Joint Chiefs 

Chairman Admiral Moorer. (Before passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense 

Reorganization Act of 1986, the Chairman was in the operational chain of command.) Vogt told 

Lavelle to prepare a list of suitable Northern targets within 35 miles of the DMZ and then bomb 

them regardless of weather conditions. Lavelle did as directed but found few targets worthy of 

attack. The weather proved dreadful, allowing pilots only 6 hours to drop their bombs blind using radar techniques in 198 strike sorties.15 Lavelle surmised that the White House had ordered 

the attack, and his supposition proved correct. A breakdown in the Paris peace negotiations 

caused Nixon to demand the raid, which Lavelle thought did little to thwart the North Vietnamese build-up.16 The attack did illustrate, though, that when the President ordered an airstrike, 

the previously established ROE for bombing did not apply. 

In the wake of Prize Bull, Lavelle still faced the prospect of a North Vietnamese assault, and 

ominous signs pointed to a massive attack. Along with stockpiling materiel along their southern 

border and in Laos, the North Vietnamese had begun bolstering their air defenses in the area. 

During the 1970–1971 “dry season” stretching from September to February, they had placed 

only 2 SAM sites below 20 degrees north latitude in either North Vietnam or Laos; a year later, 

they had constructed 13. That addition resulted in more than 200 SAM firings in 1971–1972 

15 Memorandum for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, from Air Force Lt Gen John W. Vogt, 

Director, Joint Staff, Subject “Protective Reaction Strikes,” DJSM 2168-71, December 2, 1971, Attachment 

4, Folder: Vietnam—November–December 1971, Box 27, File: 92-0029—Records of Admiral Thomas H. 

Moorer, 1970–1974; Record Group (RG) 218—Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Archives 

and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, MD. Vogt remarked, “Operation had to start on 21 

September without regard to weather. . . . Evaluation: Objective of all-weather option achieved. US intent 

to protect aircraft in Laos demonstrated.”

16 Thompson, 202–203; Lavelle oral history interview, 605–612; Henry Kissinger, White House 

Years (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1979), 1037–1038. Lavelle’s oral history interview mistakenly 

notes that this mission occurred in November 1971.
8 

Clodfelter

compared to 20 the previous year. Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese started moving MiG fighters to southern airfields and flying over Laos, where they could not only provide air cover for the 

build-up, but also threaten American B-52 bombers, RC-135 intelligence aircraft, and AC-130 

gunships. Indeed, on October 4, 1971, a MiG attempted to shoot down a B-52, and by the end 

of the 6-month dry season in March 1972, 72 MiGs had flown through Laotian or South Vietnamese airspace, compared to 5 the year before.17

As General Abrams’s air deputy, Lavelle was responsible for controlling the skies above 

South Vietnam and Laos—and protecting any American aircraft flying there, as well for 

obtaining photographs of the North Vietnamese build-up. Much of the reconnaissance 

duty went to the 432nd Wing at Udorn, Thailand, which sported a squadron of unarmed, 

camera-equipped RF-4s plus two squadrons of ordnance-carrying F-4s. For “protective reaction strike” missions, two F-4s typically accompanied a single RF-4 that photographed 

the North Vietnamese landscape, with its crew looking for stockpiled goods, tanks, AAA, 

SAM sites, missile transporters, trucks, and MiGs parked on airfields. According to the 

ROE, if fired upon—or activated against—during such a mission, the crews of the F-4s 

could respond only to the air defense threat, not against targets such as tanks or stockpiled 

equipment.

Initial “Unauthorized” Strikes

The attempted shoot-down of the B-52 in October troubled Lavelle, who monitored North 

Vietnamese airfields for the appearance of MiGs. In early November 1971, intelligence reports 

indicated that MiGs had begun consistent operations from airfields at Dong Hoi and Quang 

Lang,18 both located in the southern part of North Vietnam. Abrams requested that Lavelle 

conduct a photo reconnaissance mission of Dong Hoi, located farther to the south than Quang 

Lang.19 Admiral Moorer was in Saigon at the time, and, according to Lavelle, Moorer advised 

him to conduct a protective reaction strike against Quang Lang airfield, the base for the October 

MiG attack on the B-52. Moorer told Lavelle that “if you get fired at over there, then you can 

go after the MiGs,” believing that defensive fire would certainly occur when American aircraft 

17 Lavelle oral history interview, 569–583.

18 In messages and other correspondence, “Quang Lang” is sometimes written as “Quan Lang.”

19 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 13, 1972, 105; “List of Allegations,” 

Binder: SASC Hearing, September 27, 1972, 2, Box 90, Admiral Moorer Records, RG 218, NARA, College 

Park, MD.
9

Violating Reality

appeared over Quang Lang—and thus the raid would be in accordance with the ROE.20 Technically, protective reaction strikes were to be happenstance events transpiring when the North 

Vietnamese fired—or intended to fire—at American aircraft on a reconnaissance mission. Yet 

drawing enemy fire over an important target like Quang Lang was almost inevitable. Indeed, 

Moorer told President Nixon 3 months later that the North Vietnamese always shot at American aircraft over the North,21 a sentiment that General Abrams echoed in his September 1972 

testimony to the SASC.22

In his Senate testimony in September 1972, Moorer remarked, “At no time did I suggest to 

General Lavelle that he should preplan these strikes against these fields [Dong Hoi and Quang 

Lang].” Moorer told the SASC that he assumed Lavelle would operate according to the ROE, 

which required aircrews to take fire before they could return it, and “any suggestion that I authorized anything different is incorrect.”23 Nonetheless, Lavelle thought Moorer wanted him 

to attack Quang Lang, albeit in a manner that would satisfy the ROE, so the Seventh Air Force 

commander doubled the number of escort aircraft for the mission.24 In reality, Moorer’s February 2, 1972 conversation with Nixon revealed that the Chairman intended for air commanders 

to conduct exactly the type of preplanned missions that he criticized when testifying before the 

SASC. Moorer told the President that he had directed General Abrams “to increase his airfield 

reconnaissance and to make certain these reconnaissance aircraft are heavily supported with 

bombing aircraft, and if these aircraft are fired upon, which they always are, he was to then attack 

20 Quoted in Lavelle oral history interview, 575–576; “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 55, 59–60.

21 “National Security Council Meeting,” February 2, 1972, Foreign Relations of the United States 

(hereafter, FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. VIII, Vietnam: January–October 1972 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010), 50. Also contained in “Meeting of President Nixon and the National Security Council,” February 2, 1972, in The Nixon Tapes, ed. Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 367. 

22 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 13, 1972, 128.

23 Ibid., September 28, 1972, 444. Yet Moorer later stated during the hearing, “going to an airfield 

like Quang Lang, it would be, you know, the ultimate in nonprofessionalism if you just waited until you 

got there, flying at 500 or 600 knots, to decide what you are going to do in case you do get fired upon. So 

they [air crews] make a very careful study of the antiaircraft sites, the missile sites, and say, if we get attacked, I want you to do this, you to do that. But if we do not get attacked, we just fly right on over and in 

this case, we had alternate targets in Laos that they would have gone on over and attacked.” See 463–464. 

24 Colonel Charles A. Gabriel, USAF, “Statement of Witness,” March 14, 1972, in Wilson, Jr., 

“Report of Investigation.” 
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Clodfelter

the airfield, and so we have been doing a series of operations of this type, sir [emphasis added].” 

Moorer went on to mention raids against Dong Hoi, Quang Lang, and Vinh, noting that “they’re 

very effective” and that the attacks must “be done continually in order to make certain that the 

airfield is not restored to operation.”25

On November 7, 1971, Seventh Air Force aircrews flew a protective reaction strike against 

the airfield at Dong Hoi, and the following day they did the same for the one at Quang Lang, 

receiving ground fire in both cases. Lavelle noted afterward that Moorer had played a key role 

in arranging the Quang Lang attack by securing permission for Air Force aircraft to fly there, 

given that the airfield was in one of the Navy’s zones of operation.26 Moorer denied that claim 

in Senate testimony in September 1972, remarking that “all I told him was that he could simply 

coordinate with the Navy to insure that both the Navy and the Air Force did not arrive on the 

target at the same time in their photorecce [photo reconnaissance] flights. It was not a matter of 

getting permission at all; it was just a matter of conducting a routine coordination which is done 

daily.”27 Moorer’s statement was disingenuous, however, because “routine coordination” between 

the Air Force and Navy rarely resulted in permission for one Service to operate in another’s airspace; Moorer’s intervention would have quickly cut through the Service parochialism that often 

25 “National Security Council Meeting,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 50. Also in 

“Meeting of President Nixon and the National Security Council,” The Nixon Tapes, 367. 

26 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 38; Lavelle oral history 

interview, 575–576. In April 1966, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, the Commander of Pacific Command, 

divided the airspace over North Vietnam into seven bombing zones to deconflict aircraft and prevent 

mid-air collisions. The Navy received four zones and the Air Force three; Air Force aircraft could not fly 

in Navy zones, and vice versa, without receiving prior permission from the other Service. 

27 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 28, 1972, 444, 449, 455. In answering questions from Senator Hughes, Moorer stated that Lavelle, not he, did the coordination with the 

Navy to fly in the Navy’s airspace for the Quang Lang mission, noting that such coordination “is the 

simplest kind of thing that goes on all the time.” Hughes followed with, “Did General Lavelle lie, then, 

in his statement [that Moorer secured permission from the Navy for the mission to occur]?” Moorer 

responded, “I think he, in using the word ‘permission,’ certainly gave the impression that he was forbidden to do this at the time before he discussed it with me. That was not the case.” Moorer uses the word 

“permission” to mean that the Navy had no authority to tell Lavelle what type of missions he could fly in 

Navy-controlled airspace once coordination occurred with that Service; Lavelle uses “permission” as a 

synonym for “coordination.” Moorer depends on this semantical distinction to claim that he did not communicate with the Navy to secure the airspace for Lavelle, and he persisted with it in additional exchanges 

with Senator Hughes. Semantics aside, in the final analysis, Hughes was correct: either Lavelle or Moorer 

did not tell the truth. 
11

Violating Reality

denied such requests.28 As for the attacks on Dong Hoi and Quang Lang, airmen saw no MiGs 

on either mission, but they cut the runway at Quang Lang. Lavelle gave post-strike photographs 

to Moorer before he returned to Washington. To the Seventh Air Force commander, the admiral 

seemed pleased by the results.29

The attacks on the Dong Hoi and Quang Lang airfields marked the first of Lavelle’s “unauthorized attacks” cited in the March 20, 1972, Air Force IG report. During his Senate testimony 

10 months later, General Ryan condemned the attacks as ROE violations, stating, “I think it is a 

violation to preplan an attack that says you will drop bombs regardless of whether you are fired 

on or not.”30 Two weeks after the airstrikes, however, Admiral John S. McCain, the commander 

of Pacific Command, sent a message to Moorer, copying Ryan, Abrams, and Lavelle, stating that 

the raids “were protective reaction strikes conducted in accordance with current air operating 

authorities.”31 Lavelle recalled that most of the ordnance for the Dong Hoi and Quang Lang missions “was maximized for AAA suppression,” not bombing airfields. He added:

We resolved then and there that when we were going on future high priority 

missions of this nature, and we were going to get the opportunity to do something, 

we would plan the mission in detail. It just didn’t make sense to carry on random 

protective action strikes without any tactics developed to make the most effective 

use of the opportunities that were given us. So from then on we did plan when we 

went in on an escort of the recces, if we were fired on and we attacked a target, we 

would optimize our effort by hanging munitions on board that were good not only 

for AAA suppression but to strike targets.32

28 During Operation Rolling Thunder, the air campaign against North Vietnam from March 1965 

to October 1968, the Air Force and Navy competed with one another for maximum number of sorties 

that each could fly in its respective zones of operation and used the sortie totals as a measuring stick to indicate which Service was contributing the most to winning the war. See Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air 

Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 129–130.

29 Lavelle oral history interview, 576.

30 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 18, 1972, 256.

31 Message, McCain to Moorer, info to Ryan, Lavelle, Abrams, and others, 0005Z, November 21, 

1971, available at <http://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/

Extraction.-LAV-51-54-00224829xBF28F.pdf>. 

32 Lavelle oral history interview, 578–579.
12 

Clodfelter

Ryan told the SASC in September 1972 that the Quang Lang attack was not a template for 

future protective reaction strikes, but simply revealed the need to get permission before flying in 

Navy territory.33 When asked if Admiral Moorer’s assistance on the Quang Lang raid could not 

be interpreted “as the Chairman giving permission to General Lavelle to preplan and to [go] in 

and strike?” Ryan curtly replied, “No, sir.”34

At the time of the raid, though, Ryan’s thoughts about it were very different—he berated 

Lavelle for poor bombing. Ryan contacted Gen Lucius D. Clay, Jr., the Pacific Air Forces commander and Lavelle’s “Air Force boss,” bemoaning the “disappointing results.”35 Clay in turn 

told Lavelle, “We know what you are trying to do and appreciate your taking advantage of the 

opportunities, but when you get such an opportunity, you’re going to have to do a better job of 

it.”36 Moreover, in early December 1971, when Ryan visited Vietnam, he took a side trip to the 

base at Udorn, Thailand, and told the crews who had flown the mission that he was upset by 

their dismal performance.37 Colonel Charles Gabriel, the 432nd Wing commander, highlighted 

Ryan’s trip to Udorn in a personal statement attached to the March 1972 Air Force IG report. 

“Members of the 432nd have inferred from this incident,” Gabriel wrote, “that all our planned 

and directed protective reaction strikes have been cleared at least as high as the Chief of Staff 

level and probably at the JCS level since our Chief had received some criticism in the JCS over 

the poor BDA [bomb damage assessment] resulting from this air raid.”38

Appeals for “Liberal” ROE Interpretations

The attacks on Dong Hoi and Quang Lang did little to deter the North Vietnamese. On 

November 20, 1971, a MiG took off from Dong Hoi and fired on a flight of B-52s with air-to-air 

missiles; the bombers managed to escape harm. General Bruce K. Holloway, the commander 

of Strategic Air Command (SAC) who controlled the B-52 fleet, then grounded all B-52s in 

Southeast Asia for 48 hours as a result of the apparent inability of Seventh Air Force to protect 

his bombers.39 Holloway did so without informing Admiral Moorer, General Abrams, or Gen33 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 18, 1972, 278.

34 Ibid.

35 Lavelle oral history interview, 578.

36 Quoted in ibid.

37 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 60, 85; Gabriel, “Statement of Witness,” in Wilson, Jr., “Report of Investigation.” 

38 Gabriel, “Statement of Witness,” in Wilson, Jr., “Report of Investigation.” 

39 Lavelle oral history interview, 593–596.
13

Violating Reality

eral Ryan, although the SAC commander did tell Gen J.C. Meyer, the Air Force Vice Chief of 

Staff—who failed to notify the Chief.40 Abrams, who relied on the aerial behemoths to deliver 

firepower to American and South Vietnamese troops, and Ryan were irate over Holloway’s action.41 Moorer exploded in a message to Holloway: “It would certainly have been most helpful 

at the Washington level if the JCS could have had some prior warning that you contemplated 

such unilateral action which impacts heavily on tasks assigned the field commanders.”42 As a result, the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for a conference to determine how best to defend American 

aircraft, especially B-52s.

In Honolulu on December 4–5, Lt Gen Vogt relayed Admiral Moorer’s directives to an 

assembly that included Admiral McCain, the commander of Pacific Command and Abrams’s 

reporting official; Air Force General Clay, the commander of Pacific Air Forces; and Air Force 

Maj Gen Winton W. Marshall, the vice commander of Seventh Air Force, who attended the 

meeting on behalf of General Lavelle. Vogt’s message from Moorer was blunt and mimicked 

what the admiral would later tell President Nixon: field commanders should be more aggressive and more flexible in applying the existing authorities that they had for attacking North 

Vietnamese air defenses. He recommended raising the number of escorts for reconnaissance 

aircraft from 2 to 8 or even 16 if required to guarantee damage in protective reaction strikes; 

commanders should employ the maximum number of escorts if intelligence indicated MiGs on 

airfields to the south. In addition, the Joint Chiefs would not question aiming points on protective reaction strikes, and commanders could expect full backing from the chiefs for the raids 

40 Ibid.

41 Abrams cabled Admiral McCain: “The issuance of an order which materially and suddenly 

alters the application of combat power to an ongoing mission without prior consultation with the field 

commander is in itself disturbing. Perhaps even more serious are the implications of force employment 

which are involved. . . . The whole psychology of force employment in SEA [Southeast Asia] is involved in 

the CINCSAC [Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command] decision to withdraw his force from the 

threat area. If too great a reluctance to risk losses becomes the dominant psychology in SEA, it should be a 

matter of the highest concern. Such a psychology is infectuous and could have widespread impact.” Message, Abrams to McCain, MAC 11312, 1028Z, December 1, 1971, quoted in Lewis Sorley, A Better War: 

The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt, 

Brace, and Company, 1999, 2007), 314. 

42 Message, Admiral Moorer to General Holloway, Admiral McCain; Info: General Abrams, General Lavelle, 1 December 1971, Subject: “Arc Light,” available at <http://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.

com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/Extraction.-LAV-8570-8572-00224843xBF28F.pdf>. 
14 

Clodfelter

conducted.43 By acknowledging that air commanders could choose their own aiming points, 

Vogt gave those leaders the green light to select the targets that they wanted to attack before the 

mission occurred. 

In short, Vogt’s relayed message appeared to be a call for more missions like Quang Lang—

with better planning—and better results. Lavelle viewed Vogt’s guidance that way, remembering 

that the conference “was the beginning of our more aggressive actions, if you will.”44 Air Force 

Maj Gen Alton D. Slay, Lavelle’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, for Seventh Air Force, recalled, “You don’t have to be behind the door when brains were passed out to figure that you’re 

going to do something with those 16 airplanes. That’s overkill to protect one little reconnaissance airplane. . . . What they were saying was if they [the North Vietnamese] give you the 

slightest provocation, then you go ahead and zap them.”45 When questioned by the SASC about 

the Honolulu conference and Vogt’s recommendation to increase escort fighters on protective 

reaction strikes, Moorer noted that the MiG threat necessitated the doubling of escorts; for 

now, such missions would have to include fighters on combat air patrol to engage with potential MiGs.46 Yet in early February 1972, Moorer described a protective reaction strike to the 

President as a mission that would contain “one reconnaissance aircraft, two fighters protecting 

against MiGs, and eight attack planes,” with the attack aircraft receiving the preponderance 

of emphasis.47 Furthermore, Moorer’s description of the outcome of the Honolulu conference, 

provided to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird at Laird’s request, discussed only how to deal 

with MiG threats and made no reference at all to protective reaction strikes or the procedures 

guiding them.48

The Honolulu conference amplified the impetus to attack North Vietnam that Lavelle 

had already received from Secretary Laird. In early November 1971, Laird visited Saigon, and 

Lavelle had a private conversation with him for about 10 minutes before a dinner at Ambassa43 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 20, 48, 50; September 19, 

1972, 314; Lavelle oral history interview, 597–599.

44 Lavelle oral history interview, 599.

45 U.S. Air Force Oral History Interview of General Alton D. Slay by Dr. Edgar F. Puryear, Jr., 

February 18, 1981, K239.0512-11496, AFHRA, Maxwell AFB, AL, 83.

46 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 28, 1972, 446.

47 “National Security Council Meeting,” February 2, 1972, FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 

1972, 50. See also “Meeting of President Nixon and the National Security Council,” The Nixon Tapes, 367.

48 Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

Subject: “Operating Authorities,” CM-1439-72, January 10, 1972, Binder: SASC Hearing 27 September 

1972, Box 90, Admiral Moorer Records, RG 218, NARA, College Park, MD.
15

Violating Reality

dor Ellsworth Bunker’s residence. Lavelle mentioned the threat to American aircraft from MiGs 

operating from airfields in southern North Vietnam and the need for changes in the ROE to 

attack them directly. Laird replied that “it was an inopportune time” to request new bombing 

authorities; Lavelle and Abrams should “make maximum use of the authorities we had and he 

would support us in Washington.”49 In his 1978 oral history interview, Lavelle recollected that 

the time was “inopportune” for announced ROE changes because of “public apathy and dissidence about the war.” He added that Laird “told me I should make a liberal interpretation of the 

rules of engagement in the field and not to come to Washington and ask him, under the political 

climate, to come out with an interpretation; I should make them [sic] in the field, and he would 

back me up. While on the other hand, if I asked for authority, he would probably have to turn 

it down for political reasons.”50 Lavelle reported the conversation to Abrams, recalling that he 

agreed with Laird’s advice.51 In a May 2007 letter to Air Force Magazine, Laird confirmed that he 

had told Lavelle “my order on ‘protective reaction’ should be viewed liberally” and added that 

Moorer and Abrams “all agreed with the liberal interpretation of my order on protective reaction. The new orders permitted hitting anti-aircraft installations and other dangerous targets if 

spotted on their missions, whether they were activated or not [emphasis added].”52

Besides the Honolulu conference and Laird’s encouragement, Lavelle received another inducement to intensify bombing. When he returned to the United States to attend a commanders’ conference in Washington in December, he received a detailed briefing—at the direction of 

Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Meyer—from Air Staff officers describing how he might destroy 

the North Vietnamese radar site at Moc Chau, a “ground control intercept” (GCI) radar that 

relayed radar information to MiG pilots so that they could position themselves to shoot down 

American aircraft. Its span of coverage provided a “radar air picture” over Laos and southern 

North Vietnam unavailable to American aircrews, giving the MiG pilots in that area a distinct 

advantage. Before receiving the briefing, Lavelle learned that MiGs operating with the Moc 

Chau site had downed three F-4s over Laos in concert with a large-scale North Vietnamese 

ground offensive there; 25 MiGs had covered the Northern advance.53 Lavelle later reflected on 

49 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 50. 

50 Lavelle oral history interview, 592–593.

51 Ibid., 593.

52 Melvin R. Laird, Letter to the Editor, Air Force Magazine, May 2007, 4.

53 That number of MiGs was the largest total to fly on a single day in the war. Lavelle oral history 

interview, 582.
16 

Clodfelter

the proposed attack on Moc Chau: “No one mentioned anything to me about doing it, legal, illegal, or what have you. . . . Just how to.”54

The Moc Chau Radar Attack

The loss of the F-4s caused Lavelle to cut short his visit to Washington and return to Vietnam. Shortly after arriving in Saigon, he attempted to implement the proposed attack on Moc 

Chau raised by the Air Staff.55 The mission failed to knock out the site because the radar was 

off the air at the time of the raid, preventing the attacking fighters with anti-radiation missiles 

(ARMs) to lock on to the radar signal, and the pilots brought their ordnance back to base. 

Lavelle would not give up on taking out Moc Chau, but before another opportunity could appear, President Nixon decided to order airstrikes of his own.

Dismayed by the continued North Vietnamese build-up, the President ordered a 5-day 

series of attacks dubbed Operation Proud Deep. From December 26–30, Air Force and Navy 

fighters combined for 1,000 sorties that reached as far north as the 20th parallel, almost to North 

Vietnam’s heartland. The initial purpose of the raids was to destroy 130-millimeter (mm) heavy 

artillery that the North Vietnamese had prepared to move south, but the targets expanded as 

the attacks continued, including the Quang Lang airfield. Dismal weather caused much of the 

bombing to occur through the clouds using radar techniques, and results were less than desired.56 Once again, Nixon displayed his ability to take control of the air war at a moment’s 

notice, perhaps hoping to indicate that he was willing to begin unrestrained bombing of the 

North.57 For those raids, intelligence analysts did not complete the computerized post-mission 

report, known as the Operational Report Number 4 (OPREP-4), to list the results of Proud Deep

missions, though Nixon remained informed of the attacks throughout the operation.58

54 Ibid., 587; Thompson, 206.

55 Lavelle oral history interview, 586. 

56 Thompson, 203; Lavelle oral history interview, 618; Bernard C. Nalty, Electronic Countermeasures in the Air War against North Vietnam 1965–1973 (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 

1977), 78–80.

57 In his memoirs, Nixon stated that the Proud Deep attacks stemmed from the shelling of Saigon, in 

violation of the 1968 bombing halt agreement. The failure of North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho 

to meet with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in a secret November session during the Paris peace 

negotiations, followed by a lack of communication from Hanoi in December, likely spurred the airstrikes as 

well. See Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), 584.

58 Hearing before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 93rd Cong., 1st sess., 

“Certain Nominations in the Air Force and the Navy” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing 
17

Violating Reality

Following Proud Deep, Lavelle returned to the problem of the Moc Chau radar. On January 

5, 1972, he successfully attacked the facility, sending two ARM-equipped F-105s that flew formations resembling F-4s to deceive the North Vietnamese and cause them to leave their radar 

on, enabling the F-105s to bomb it. The raid put the facility off the air for 18 days.59 Lavelle had 

briefed Abrams before the attack, and both men believed that the airstrike was a necessity, given 

that Moc Chau had facilitated the recent MiG attacks. Moreover, at the time of the raid, Lavelle’s 

aircraft would help protect American helicopters engaged in an extraction operation near the 

area, and MiGs were almost certain to be airborne—controlled by Moc Chau. Major General 

Slay explained the logic this way: “The Moc Chau radar is an extension of the pilot’s gunsight; it 

tells him were we are; it points him; it aims him and this, to us, is a part and parcel of the defense 

network against which we are authorized to strike.”60 The Joint Chiefs viewed the raid differently 

once they received its post-mission report. They responded with a message to Abrams stating 

that they sympathized with the rationale for the attack but that it did not adhere to the ROE, and 

that he should not do it again.61

The Moc Chau mission did not make the Air Force IG’s list of unauthorized raids, yet the 

raid is a noteworthy component of the Lavelle affair for several reasons. First, the September 

1972 Senate hearings referenced it multiple times to highlight the Joint Chiefs’ displeasure with 

the perceived ROE violation. Second, Maj Gen Slay told the SASC that he and Marshall had 

planned the airstrike and briefed it to General Abrams because Lavelle was away in the United 

States at the time.62 Lavelle noted in his 1978 oral history interview that he had returned to 

Vietnam before Christmas and “planned and approved the Moc Chau raid.”63 Abrams’s September 1972 testimony to the SASC confirmed that Lavelle was present before the raid and had 

discussed it extensively with Abrams before it occurred. “We were altogether—General Lavelle, 

some of his staff, some of my staff; and, in fact, I am the one who gave the approval to make that 

strike,” Abrams told Senator John C. Stennis (D-MS), the SASC chairman. Stennis responded, 

“You two discussed it, and this was before the strike and all, and you gave approval?” “I did,” 

Office, 1973), March 22, 1973, 20; “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 15, 1972, 

232–233, 238.

59 Lavelle oral history interview, 588, 625.

60 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 19, 1972, 304.

61 Ibid., September 12, 1972, 62–63 and September 13, 1972, 107–108; Lavelle oral history interview, 589–590.

62 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 19, 1972, 291–292, 304–305.

63 Lavelle oral history interview, 589.
18 

Clodfelter

answered Abrams.64 Slay’s inexact statements regarding the Moc Chau planning—an easily verifiable episode—call into question the veracity of parts of his testimony to the SASC.

A third reason for the significance of the attack on Moc Chau was that it triggered a change 

in the ROE. On January 26, 1972, after several pleas from Admiral Moorer, Secretary of Defense 

Laird modified the ROE to permit attacks against GCI radars such as Moc Chau “when MiGs 

were airborne and indicated hostile intent.”65 The new ROE still remained somewhat vague 

because Laird offered no precise definition of “hostile intent.”66 Lavelle decided to make that 

determination, telling his aircrews “that anytime MiGs were airborne below 20 degrees north, 

it was [sic] hostile because it was far enough south to attack one of our airplanes, our troops, or 

our bases.” Seventh Air Force fighters subsequently attacked the Nam Lang Nhia GCI site, and 

Lavelle received a message from the Joint Chiefs asking who had called an airborne MiG hostile 

that was not in the immediate vicinity of Nam Lang Nhia. “We reported that I had declared it 

64 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 13, 1972, 106–107.

65 Quoted in “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” 33. See also “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 13, 1972, 104; Hearing before the Committee on 

Armed Services, United States Senate, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., “Nomination of Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, 

USN, for Reappointment as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff,” June 23, 1972, 13.

66 The following exchange between Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and General Lavelle reveals the 

lengths to which air commanders in Vietnam often had to go to verify that an enemy aircraft was “hostile”:

Goldwater: Were your orders specifically against attacking MiGs on fields below the 19th

parallel?

Lavelle: I would say so, Senator, but it was an indirect type; they had to be declared hostile.

Goldwater: A MiG had to be declared hostile?

Lavelle: Had to be declared hostile and it had to show hostile intent and a MiG on the 

ground we didn’t interpret it as showing hostile intent.

Goldwater: You didn’t?

Lavelle: We didn’t feel we had authority to.

Goldwater: You didn’t have the authority to hit a MiG just because it was sitting both on 

an airfield below the 19th parallel; you could not consider that hostile until something shot 

at you and he took off?

Lavelle: Yes sir; that’s right.

Goldwater: It is a hell of a way to run a war.

See “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 56.
19

Violating Reality

hostile because it was south of 20 degrees and in a position to hit our aircraft,” Lavelle remembered. “We never heard anything more about it.”67

Netting of North Vietnam’s Radars

For Lavelle, the GCI radar sites not only were a threat to his aircrews when MiGs were airborne, but also had become a significant threat even when MiGs failed to fly. In December 1971, 

the North Vietnamese succeeded in “netting” their various radar systems so that the GCI radars 

could provide tracking information to SAM sites.68 As a result, the SAM operators now had to 

turn their Fan Song radars on for only an instant to gain a final position reading, which allowed 

the firing of missiles at the last possible second and minimized—or negated completely—the 

warning tone that pilots received in their headsets before missile launch. “Crews reported that 

in many of the SAM incidents they had little or no Fan Song RHAW indications prior to missile sighting,” remarked Air Force Col Clifford Beaton, Seventh Air Force’s Director of Operational Intelligence. “It is apparent that the Fan Song was being activated almost simultaneously 

with missile launch, and that the SA-2 [missile] system was relying heavily on data provided by 

GCI and other search radar equipment.”69 In mid-December, the North Vietnamese downed an 

F-105 and an F-4 using this new tactic, and Lavelle determined that the notion of “radar activation” based on receiving an RHAW gear warning from a North Vietnamese SAM site was no 

longer valid. The situation demanded a new interpretation, Lavelle believed, and he concluded 

the netting of North Vietnamese radars meant that American pilots were now “always activated 

against” when they flew over the North.70

Lavelle first discussed the dangers that the netted radars posed to his crews with General 

Abrams in a December 19, 1971, Saigon staff meeting. Abrams questioned the recent loss of 

the F-105, asking Lavelle if the crew had received a warning signal. Lavelle responded, “No, sir. 

67 Lavelle oral history interview, 589–590.

68 For a thorough review of North Vietnamese air defenses, see Nalty, 1–13, and especially 10 on 

netting.

69 Colonel Clifford M. Beaton, Seventh Air Force Director of Operational Intelligence, “End of 

Tour Report, 22 April 1971–23 April 1972,” K740.131, AFHRA, Maxwell AFB, AL, Attachment 2, “The 

SA-2 Threat,” 4. Beaton further observed that this “adjustment in North Vietnamese SAM tactics and 

techniques . . . reduces the warning time available to aircrews and gives the [SAM] site added protection 

from anti-radiation missiles.” 

70 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” 34. See also Lavelle oral history interview, 637–639; “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 55–56. 
20 

Clodfelter

Apparently the tactics they’re using is to home in and get their azimuth, sir, by tracking aircraft 

without turning on their Fan Song [SAM radar] equipment.” “This would be by [GCI] radar?” 

Abrams asked. “Yes, sir,” Lavelle answered. “As a result of that, they have their azimuth problem 

all worked out. They can go ahead and fire the missile without turning the Fan Song on until 

the last minute, the last 20 seconds, before impact—before engagement. So as a result of that 

the crews getting the signal don’t have time to react. The missile’s already on them before they 

can—so they’re using a new tactic is what it amounts to.” Abrams gave that insight a long pause 

before asking why the North Vietnamese had not done that before. “Good question,” Lavelle 

replied. “I just think it’s a new tactic they’re using. . . . [It’s] the first time this week, as we recall, 

that they’re using this kind of a tactic. And we’re only guessing. The F-105 crew did not have any 

previous warning until practically the time of impact.” Abrams paused again for an extended 

span before stating, “Well, that thing’s going to require some study.”71

In their testimony to the Senate, both Abrams and Lavelle confirmed they often discussed 

radar netting and its impact.72 Yet Lavelle also stated to the SASC, “I cannot say to you that I 

then said, therefore, under this interpretation we should consider the system activated against 

us. I can say to you that I did point out and did discuss with him [Abrams] and we did agree 

that the system was activated against us and that crews that were going in there had to be protected and couldn’t just stand around and wait until somebody shot one down before we could 

attack.”73 Abrams told the SASC that Lavelle never gave him the impression that pilots were to 

attack regardless of enemy reaction, but added that he never heard Lavelle’s logic that netting 

indicated radar activation until just before the September 1972 hearings began.74

In actuality, Abrams fully appreciated Lavelle’s argument that radar netting was a deadly 

new tactic, and the MACV commander agreed that dealing with it in the manner that Lavelle 

recommended conformed to the ROE. The day following the attack on Moc Chau, Abrams 

sent a message to Admiral McCain, with information copies to Admiral Moorer and General 

Ryan, describing the rationale used for bombing the GCI radar. In the first half of the message, 

Abrams argued that MiGs had to rely on information from GCI sites to be effective, and thus 

those radars were valid air defense targets. He then stated:

71 Transcript of 19 December 1971 Commanders Weekly Intelligence Estimate Update at MACV 

Headquarters, in Lewis Sorley, ed., Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968–1972 (Lubbock: Texas 

Tech University Press, 2004), 722.

72 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 11, 1972, 24; September 13, 1972, 105.

73 Ibid., September 11, 1972, 24.

74 Ibid., September 13, 1972, 106, 151.
21

Violating Reality

In addition to the use of GCI radars to control and vector attacking fighters, the 

enemy is now using EW [early warning] and GCI radars as an integral part of the 

SA-2 missile fire control system. The SA-2 missiles are aimed and launched using 

EW or GCI radar derived azimuth and range information. At a predetermined 

time, the Fan Song radar is turned on for a very short period (from two to five 

seconds) during which time terminal guidance information is sent to the missile. 

This tactic effectively negates the protection afforded by our radar homing and 

warning equipment since there is little or no time to evade the missile with such a 

short warning. We believe that this tactic was used in the shootdown of the F-105 

and F-4 near Mu Gia pass on 10 and 17 December respectively. This tactic must 

be countered if we are to continue to operate within the SAM threat area.

For the reasons outlined above, I consider protective reaction strikes against 

EW and GCI radars to be consistent with the published rules of engagement.75

Abrams’s message assured that Moorer, as well as Ryan and McCain, now knew that North 

Vietnamese netting posed a lethal threat to American aircrews—and that Abrams wanted to 

take action to forestall it. Moorer agreed that the role of GCI radars in vectoring MiGs also 

constituted a legitimate reason to bomb those radar sites, but according to the current ROE, he 

could not condone the attack on Moc Chau. He could, though, try to get the ROE changed. The 

day after receiving Abrams’s message, Moorer sent a memorandum to Secretary Laird requesting approval for attacks on GCI sites and sent a follow-up request on January 20, 1972. In the 

latter memo, Moorer noted that “the ability to determine on a real time basis which specific 

GCI site is controlling a MiG intercept is extremely limited,” and thus all sites should be designated valid targets. Moorer also mentioned the SAM threat stemming from radar netting as a 

legitimate reason for attacking GCI sites. “Due to the number of radars involved in providing 

track information to the SAM system, and the number of SAM battalions involved (26 south of 

20 degrees North [latitude]), there is no capability for field commanders to equate radar emissions to specific SAM activity,” he explained. “The only reliable, and timely [indication] that a 

SAM battalion is about to attack a target is reception of a brief burst of SAM guidance signals.”76

75 Message, General Abrams to Admiral McCain, Info Admiral Moorer, General Ryan, General 

Clay, Admiral Clarey, and General Lavelle, 0405Z, January 6, 1972, Subject: “Iron Hand Expenditure,” 

Folder: COMUSMACV GENSER MSGS (1 January–14 January 1972), Box 62, Admiral Moorer Records, 

RG 218, NARA, College Park, MD.

76 Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
22 

Clodfelter

Moorer knew from Abrams’s message that a “brief burst of SAM guidance signals” was likely 

insufficient for an aircrew to respond to the threat. His appeals about the importance of GCI 

radars to both MiG and SAM operations ultimately caused Laird to permit attacks on GCI sites, 

with the caveat that MiGs had to be “airborne and hostile.” 

Although Abrams’s January 6, 1972, message about radar netting also went to General 

Ryan, 9 months later Ryan would remark to the SASC that netting “was not a new phenomenon; 

it had been practiced in North Vietnam, I would say for certain, since 1967 when I commanded 

the Pacific Air Force.”77 When pressed by senators on that claim, Ryan recanted, “Perhaps the 

internetting was developed to a greater degree in 1971 and early 1972 than it was in 1967. I have 

no way of knowing this.”78 As the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and a member of the Joint Chiefs 

who received constant updates on the air war over the North and monitored its developments 

closely, Ryan’s assertion that he had “no way of knowing” the extent of North Vietnamese radar 

netting is subject to question, especially given his receipt of Abrams’s January 6, 1972, message. 

Ryan added, “As far as coming to my attention that the internetting should have an effect on the 

Rules of Engagement, I don’t recall it coming to my attention.”79

In contrast to Ryan’s dogmatic denial that radar netting affected the ROE, General Slay waivered in answering the SASC. Slay was uncertain if Lavelle had ever talked to Abrams about whether 

netting triggered radar activation. Slay also vacillated to the SASC about whether he had discussed 

the concept with the commander of Seventh Air Force. When asked if Lavelle had stated “that any 

time you crossed the [North Vietnamese] border that that radar system was activated against you?” 

Slay first responded, “General Lavelle has mentioned this many times.” The exchange continued:

Senator Hughes: Did you actually discuss this with him?

General Slay: Yes sir, I have.

Senator Hughes: Did he communicate to you that he considered this an activation 

of the radar system of your plane?

General Slay: I can’t say, sir; I really can’t.

Subject: “Operating Authorities,” CM-1464-72, 20 January 1972, Binder: SASC Hearing 27 September 

1972, Box 90, Admiral Moorer Records, RG 218, NARA, College Park, MD.

77 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 18, 1972, 251.

78 Ibid., 279.

79 Ibid.
23

Violating Reality

Senator Hughes: He has implied that this, in his mind, was his authorization to 

go ahead and preplan and conduct the strikes.

General Slay: That’s a fine point, sir. I don’t know.80

The Dong Hoi Mission and Allegations of Falsified Records

Lavelle’s interpretation of the ROE had enormous consequences for the missions that followed and for the accusation that he ordered the falsification of post-strike mission reports. 

On January 23, 1972, relying on his expanded definition of “radar activation,” Lavelle ordered 

a protective reaction strike against the airfield at Dong Hoi. The impetus for the raid stemmed 

from actions that Lavelle had taken after the MiG firing on B-52s in November 1971. That attack 

caused Lavelle to develop a “counterplan” in case a MiG again flew to Dong Hoi in preparation 

to attack a bomber. Dubbed “Quick Check Recce,” Lavelle’s plan placed an RF-4 and two escorts 

on alert at Da Nang, the closest South Vietnamese air base to Dong Hoi. On January 23, intelligence analysts reported that a MiG had taken off from Hanoi headed for Dong Hoi and noted 

that a flight of B-52s would be in the area that evening. Before implementing Quick Check 

Recce, Lavelle recalled that he contacted General Abrams and received Abrams’s approval for 

the strike.81 Lavelle then dispatched the aircraft on alert at Da Nang to Dong Hoi. In the meantime, the weather deteriorated. Lavelle determined that his crews could fly under the clouds and 

bomb the airfield, which they did, compelling the MiG to return to Hanoi.82

After the escorts had cut the runway and departed the target, the RF-4 crew radioed the immediate post-strike mission report, known as the Operations Report 3 (OPREP-3). Through code, 

the airmen stated that the escorts had expended ordnance and the raid was successful, but that 

the enemy had not reacted, meaning that the North Vietnamese had not fired at them. General 

Lavelle, who monitored the mission from the Seventh Air Force command post, heard the transmission and stated that the aircrew could not report “no reaction.” As he subsequently recounted 

to both the HASC and the SASC, he meant by that statement that the North Vietnamese had 

80 Ibid., September 19, 1972, 306.

81 Ibid., September 11, 1972, 9–11, 37.

82 Ibid., 36–37; Lavelle oral history interview, 599–601. Much of the SASC testimony regarding 

the January 23, 1972, Dong Hoi raid contains deletions because details of the strike were classified at the 

time of the Senate hearings. Lavelle’s 1978 oral history provides missing information from the Senate 

account. Conversely, Slay in his SASC testimony contends that Lavelle never implemented Quick Check 

Recce. See “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 19, 1972, 278. 
24 

Clodfelter

indeed reacted by activating their GCI radars, and the RF-4 crew should report that fact. Lavelle 

directed General Slay to contact Colonel Gabriel at 432nd Tactical Fighter Wing and make sure 

that the wing did not post “no reaction.” In later discussing the incident with the SASC, Slay had 

difficulty remembering which mission triggered Lavelle’s remark in the command post, but he recalled that Lavelle “got me right after that, as well as my chief in the command post and explained 

the facts of life to us, that ‘Anytime you are over North Vietnam you have, just by definition, people 

[who] are going to shoot at you so you must report that you have been reacted upon.’”83 Lavelle 

told the SASC that he should have specified his intentions more clearly than he did and should 

have directed Slay to convey, “Report hostile reaction radar.”84 Yet given the tense atmosphere in 

the command post, with a MiG headed for Dong Hoi where it could intercept a flight of B-52s, 

Lavelle’s comment was not as complete as it could have been.

As a result of Lavelle’s guidance, Slay relayed to the 432nd a requirement to state that the 

North Vietnamese had shot at the flight. Colonel Gabriel, his pilots, and intelligence specialists 

at Udorn never realized Lavelle’s intent to categorize the raid as one stemming from the threat 

posed by netted radars. Told that they could not state “no reaction” on the written post-strike 

mission report, the OPREP-4, intelligence analysts selected from one of the four “reaction categories” on the form—SAMs, AAA, small arms, or MiGs—and chose AAA; “radar activation” 

was not an option listed. Furthermore, Sergeant Franks, whose dismay with inputting seemingly invalid data into the OPREP-4 prompted the Lavelle investigation, later told the SASC that 

he and his fellow Udorn intelligence specialists were unaware that radar activation was a valid 

reason for escort pilots to expend ordnance on protective reaction strikes.85 Franks said that on 

the raids in question, he and other intelligence specialists usually reported on the OPREP-4 that 

pilots did not observe mission results because of “smoke and foliage.”86

For the remaining “unauthorized” protective reaction strikes through early March, Franks 

and his cohorts repeated the process used to complete the OPREP-4 for Dong Hoi.87 Gabriel 

recalled Slay telling him, “You will report it in that way each time; regardless of whether or not 

83 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 19, 1972, 290.

84 Ibid., September 11, 1972, 31, 46; “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” 22.

85 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 14, 1972, 190–191.

86 Ibid., 163.

87 Two of those strikes listed as “unauthorized” included attacks on 130mm artillery, approved by 

President Nixon, on February 16–17, 1972. Those raids did not yield OPREP-4s.
25

Violating Reality

there is a reaction you will report reaction, fighters expended.”88 Franks remembered that Gabriel, in turn, frequently met with his vice commander, Air Force Colonel Jerome O’Malley, to 

determine the data that should appear on OPREP-4s.89 Yet Slay also told Gabriel to send him a 

detailed, accurate report describing what had actually occurred on each mission, and relayed 

that information to Lavelle.90

The OPREP-4 was a cumbersome mission summation read by a computer and completed 

by preparing punch cards; preparation of it was time-consuming, and its value was questionable. Slay remarked:

I doubt if there is anyone above the rank of sergeant or so whoever, at headquarters, 

whoever looks at the OPREP-4. It is in a form that the computer can digest. . . . 

If there was an OPREP-4 in front of me right now I could not tell you what that 

OPREP-4 said without some sort of a format to go by. . . . For a usable piece of 

paper for somebody to pick up and read it and say, “This is what happened,” it is 

terrible. It is not in script; it is in—it is all chopped up. But the computer likes it 

and we were using the computer for our data base.91

The report went to almost 200 recipients, many of whom had no interest in its information. 

Yet for an Air Force that had defined “success” for much of the war by reporting a high sortie 

count—especially a count that exceeded the Navy’s sortie total92—the data reflected on the antiquated OPREP-4 could serve as a mechanistic way of gauging a contribution to the war effort 

during a time when other Services appeared to contribute more. Lavelle was unaware that the 

report even existed and stated that the first time he saw an OPREP-4 was when General Wilson, 

the Air Force IG, produced a copy of it after arriving in Saigon in March 1972.93 For determining mission success, Lavelle relied on the reports that he received from Slay, forwarding those to 

Abrams. Ultimately, those reports would go to the White House. 

88 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 15, 1972, 201.

89 Ibid., September 14, 1972, 169.

90 Ibid., September 15, 1972, 234–235, September 19, 1972, 288, 289, 300–301; IG interview of 

Colonel Charles Gabriel, March 12, 1972, in Wilson, Jr., “Report of Investigation,” Appendix F.

91 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 19, 1972, 313.

92 Clodfelter, 129–130.

93 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 78; “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 49.
26 

Clodfelter

As for the veracity of the OPREP-4s filed in concert with the allegedly unauthorized missions, the nature of the protective reaction strikes made it difficult for inspectors to determine 

if those reports were indeed erroneous. “It was clear to Colonel Gabriel that his reports had to 

be that a reaction had occurred,” Slay observed to the SASC. “Now, whether, in fact, they [sic] 

had occurred, or not, I don’t think there is anybody, even the pilots on the flights, could say for 

certain whether they did or not. In other words, if they didn’t see any that still doesn’t mean that 

there was none. There could have been.”94 Sergeant Franks, who completed only “three or four” 

OPREP-4s, recollected that often aircrews “did get shot at; as I pointed out when I first started 

out, they did not get shot at and after a while they did and when they did get shot at after a while 

we did report it accurately.”95 Asked when the first false reports appeared, Slay responded, “As a 

matter of fact, as I say, I am not sure, to be extremely technical, that they were false.”96

J. Fred Buzhardt, the general counsel for the Department of Defense, conducted his own 

investigation of the Lavelle affair from April through October 1972 and concluded that the 

special reports that came to Lavelle’s headquarters following each protective reaction strike negated the charge that Lavelle had falsified mission reports. “In essence,” Buzhardt observed, “the 

people were reporting accurately in special category messages precisely what did happen.”97 He 

continued, “To sustain a criminal charge of falsifying records, it is necessary, because it is one of 

the elements of the offense, to prove a specific intent to deceive. Where people are reporting the 

facts to their superiors correctly, you cannot sustain the element of a specific intent to deceive.” 

Moreover, Buzhardt maintained, “As to the question of proof, on either a violation of the Rules 

of Engagement or falsifying reports, after the most intensive investigation we are even now not 

in a position to prove with any degree of conclusiveness that there was no enemy fire except on 

only one of the missions that took place. That was at Dong Hoi on the 23rd of January.”98

The immediate reaction of the Joint Chiefs to the Dong Hoi attack—the third of Lavelle’s 

“unauthorized” raids—was to praise it. Admiral Moorer even lauded the strike to President 

Nixon.99 The January 26, 1972, message from Moorer, notifying Admiral McCain and General Abrams of the ROE change permitting strikes on GCI radars when hostile MiGs were 

airborne, contained a congratulatory note for the Dong Hoi raid. Moorer stated that since the 

94 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 19, 1972, 290.

95 Ibid., September 14, 1972, 168, 171.

96 Ibid., September 19, 1972, 295.

97 “Certain Nominations in the Air Force and the Navy,” March 22, 1973, 19.

98 Ibid., 5.

99 “Meeting of President Nixon and the National Security Council,” The Nixon Tapes, 367.
27

Violating Reality

December 1971 Honolulu conference, commanders had “adopted a more vigorous protective 

reaction posture which has resulted in several highly successful protection reaction strikes.”100

He listed a Navy strike on Quang Lang on December 18 plus the Air Force’s January 23 raid 

on Dong Hoi as examples to follow. When asked by the SASC about the Dong Hoi mission, 

General Abrams said that he remembered little about it, though he likely forwarded the laudatory JCS message to Lavelle because Lavelle was not an addressee on it. Abrams elaborated to 

the SASC about how Dong Hoi was an important North Vietnamese base because a MiG there 

could threaten B-52s, and thus he had instructed Seventh Air Force to conduct a protective 

reaction mission over Dong Hoi on November 7, 1971.101 As for the attack against it on January 

23, Abrams reported, even after checking records of the raid, “there is nothing about it which 

sticks in my mind”102—an odd statement for him to make given the serious MiG threat occurring in concert with the mission. 

Throughout his testimony to the House and Senate, Lavelle remained adamant that North 

Vietnam’s radar netting expanded the definition of “activated against” and that the protective 

reaction strikes that he ordered not only suited that definition, but also conformed to the guidance that he had received to interpret the ROE more liberally than before. The following exchange with Senator John Tower (R-TX) on September 21, 1972, revealed the depth of Lavelle’s 

conviction:

Senator Tower: Did you advise . . . General Abrams or Admiral Moorer or 

Secretary Laird, did you advise them and discuss these missions with them, that 

100 Message, Admiral Moorer to Admiral McCain, info General Abrams, 0032 Zulu, January 26, 

1972, available at <http://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/

Extraction.-LAV-209-212-00224830xBF28F.pdf>. General Lavelle received formal notification of the updated ROE in Message, Admiral McCain to General Abrams and Admiral Clarey, info Admiral Moorer, 

General Clay, General Lavelle, Vice Admiral Mack, and Rear Admiral Cooper, 2153 Zulu, January 26, 

1972, Subject: “Operating Authorities and Strike Planning,” Folder: CINCPAC GENSERV MSGS (January 1972), Box 57, Admiral Moorer Records, RG 218, NARA, College Park, MD. That message contained 

no congratulatory comments. “Zulu time,” abbreviated “Z,” referred to Greenwich Mean Time, which the 

U.S. military used as the “standard time” for all military activities.

101 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 13, 1972, 105. Abrams stated, “A 

MiG at Dong Hoi was important to me, because with the GCI that they had, it gave it—it could get properly handled as far south as Da Nang. And this meant then that if that was in fact true it extended the MiG 

threat for B-52s and other aircraft that much further south.”

102 Ibid., 106.
28 

Clodfelter

you had ordered your recon escort aircraft to expend ordnance on these missions 

regardless of the absence of enemy reaction?

Lavelle: Sir, we never dispensed ordnance without enemy reaction; it was there—

the radars.

Tower: Did you, and you never ordered them to expend ordnance even in the 

absence of enemy reaction?

Lavelle: How could there be an absence, sir? You see, the recce said the system was 

activated against us; we considered them activated against us.103

As Lavelle confirmed during the House hearings on June 12, 1972, according to his logic SAMs 

were activated, as far as his pilots were concerned, “any time [they] were over North Vietnam.”104

Still, that reasoning did not allow him to bomb indiscriminately, and he attacked only 

a selected number of North Vietnamese air defense targets that he believed could endanger American aircrews. Those targets included SAMs, radars, MiGs, AAA, and their support 

equipment. When a reconnaissance mission discovered about 60 North Vietnamese tanks 

in the open, roughly 8 miles north of the DMZ, Lavelle refused to attack them even though 

Slay and other officers recommended it. “However liberally I wanted to interpret those rules, 

I could not interpret them to hit those tanks. I had to hold my men back,” Lavelle told the 

HASC.105 The Air Force IG labeled two strikes against missile transporters on January 31, 

1972, as “unauthorized,” contending that Lavelle had scheduled the raids regardless of whether the enemy returned fire. Lavelle viewed the missiles on the transporters as a direct threat; 

earlier, the North Vietnamese had fired four SAMs from Laos at AC-130 gunships, with one 

of the missiles a near miss. He informed the SASC that he had shown photographs to GEN 

Abrams of the transporters parked near the Laotian border, telling him that “we just morally 

could not sit there and let them come into Laos when the weather got bad and shoot down 

an airplane.”106 Lavelle stated that Abrams agreed with him—and with Lavelle’s plan to launch 

103 Ibid., September 11, 1972, 21.

104 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 35.

105 Ibid., 43–44. See also “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 11, 1972, 21, 49.

106 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 12, 1972, 67.
29

Violating Reality

protective reaction strikes to destroy the missiles regardless of whether any enemy firing occurred.107

In sum, Lavelle believed that the raids he conducted—and the logic that he used to justify 

them—matched what “higher authority” wanted him to do. He refused to engage in “trolling,” 

a tactic used by the Navy in which a reconnaissance aircraft flew solo over a desired target to 

draw fire while escorts waited at a distance, because he thought that the practice needlessly 

threatened the reconnaissance crew.108 Lavelle was convinced that his procedures for protective 

reaction strikes offered the best chance for his aircrews to survive and still accomplish the mission that he had received. He remarked to the SASC in September 1972:

It was quite clear that we were first encouraged to be and then commended for 

being more aggressive; that we were told to be more flexible; that we were told to 

increase the number of fighter escorts with the reconnaissance aircraft to ensure 

effective results on protective reaction strikes; that Washington wouldn’t question 

our aiming points and would back us up. . . . Higher authority had recommended, 

encouraged, and then commended an extremely liberal targeting policy, well 

beyond the language of the R.O.E. This liberal interpretation by higher authority 

of WHAT could be struck, plus the encouragement to be more aggressive and 

more flexible, influenced my determination to make a similar, though I believe less 

liberal, interpretation of the conditions under which we could strike (emphasis in 

original).109

In early February 1972, Lavelle would find that “higher authority” would exert greater influence 

on his ability to conduct missions than he had thus far seen.

“Mad Bomber” Nixon Secretly Changes the ROE

To Richard Nixon, bombing, or the threat of bombing, offered answers to many national 

security problems. He contended that President Dwight Eisenhower had successfully ended 

107 Ibid., 67–68. According to the special message sent from the 432nd Wing to Seventh Air Force 

Headquarters after the attacks, the raids destroyed 30 trucks and triggered 3 large secondary explosions. 

See also Lavelle oral history interview, 635.

108 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 11, 1972, 39–40, September 15, 

1972, 221, September 19, 1972, 287.

109 Ibid., September 12, 1972, 51.
30 

Clodfelter

the Korean War by threatening a nuclear airstrike on Manchuria in the spring of 1953 that convinced the Chinese to back down.110 Eisenhower’s action—or Nixon’s interpretation of it—affected the then–Vice President’s view of airpower’s efficacy. In May 1954, Nixon recommended 

American bombing in support of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, arguing that a few conventional strikes would suffice “to let the Communists see that we were determined to resist.”111

Soon after becoming President, Nixon, supported by General Abrams, Secretary Laird, 

National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and the then–Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army 

GEN Earle Wheeler, began a secret air campaign with B-52s against North Vietnamese troops 

and supply depots in Cambodia, technically a neutral country.112 Crews flew 4,308 B-52 sorties 

against Cambodian targets between March 1969 and May 1970, with the Air Force maintaining two sets of mission reports for the raids—similar to the two sets of reports kept following 

Lavelle’s allegedly unauthorized protective reaction strikes.113 One set of reports showed that the 

bombs fell in South Vietnam, and the other revealed that the bombs actually fell in Cambodia—

the President did not want to trigger protests from the American public, which wanted to leave 

Vietnam, by showing that he had enlarged the war.114 Nonetheless, on May 9, 1969, the New 

York Times reported that B-52s had bombed enemy outposts in Cambodia.115 The feared public 

protests never materialized, though Kissinger spent considerable time with Federal Bureau of 

Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover trying to find the leak.116 The raids continued despite the 

loss of secrecy as Nixon believed them worthwhile, pointing to lower American casualty rates as 

proof of that claim.117 Bombing would remain his option of choice for dealing with North Vietnam. Once the North Vietnamese finally began their anticipated offensive at the end of March 

1972, he told Kissinger to relay to Northern negotiators in Paris: “You tell those sons of bitches 

110 Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 82–84.

111 Nixon, 154.

112 Ibid., 380–381.

113 Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 93rd Cong., 1st sess., 

“Bombing in Cambodia” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), July 16, 1973, 2–12, 

July 20, 1973, 132–133. B-52s dropped 120,578 tons of bombs on Cambodia during the 15-month span. 

See Carl Berger, ed., The United States in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973: An Illustrated Account (Washington, 

DC: Office of Air Force History, 1984), 141.

114 Nixon, 382.

115 William Beecher, “Raids in Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested,” New York Times, May 9, 1969. 

116 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: 

Simon and Schuster, 1979, 1981), 33–35. For more on “Nixon, the Mad Bomber,” see Kimball, 76–86.

117 Nixon, 382; Bombing in Cambodia, 133.
31

Violating Reality

that the President is a madman and you don’t know how to deal with him. Once reelected I’ll 

be a mad bomber.”118

In February 1972, Nixon not only concluded that airpower was a key weapon to stymie 

the invasion build-up, but he also feared that increased North Vietnamese aggressiveness might 

cause the loss of a B-52. The downing of a key symbol of America’s military might would be a 

massive blow to national prestige and would certainly bolster North Vietnam’s determination 

to win the war. The President was not about to let that happen. He fully endorsed the liberal interpretation of the ROE advocated by Lavelle, telling Admiral Moorer and Secretary of Defense 

Laird at a National Security Council meeting on February 2, “If you’re following your intelligence reports, we’re having correct protective reaction strikes every damn day right now, so 

you’re hitting things. Incidentally, and I understand, and I just want to be sure, that that’s being 

interpreted very, very broadly [emphasis added].”119

Yet Nixon did not want a “broad interpretation” of the ROE to result in publicity that would 

trigger an adverse reaction from the American people. Following the invasion of Cambodia in 

May 1970, he had endured massive protests from 4,350,000 college students at more than 1,300 

universities that included shootings at Kent State, the State University of New York–Buffalo, and 

Jackson State.120 Moreover, the Democrats held sizable majorities in both houses of Congress, 

and in December 1970 Senator Frank Church (D-ID) had joined with anti-war Senator Sherman Cooper (R-KY) to secure passage of an amendment preventing the President from putting 

American ground forces in Cambodia or Laos.121 Nixon warned the National Security Council: 

“We don’t want to do anything that is stupid. We don’t want to do anything that unnecessarily 

exacerbates our public in this country, the ugly youth. We must realize that as support for what 

we’re doing—or, shall we put it, as the level of criticism of what we do escalates, it encourages 

the enemy.”122 He then returned to a firm stance, concluding the meeting by stating, “There’s 

118 Quoted in Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New 

York: Summit Books, 1983), 568.

119 “National Security Council Meeting,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 58. Also in 

“Meeting of President Nixon and the National Security Council,” The Nixon Tapes, 375.

120 Kimball, 216.

121 Julian E. Zelizer, “How Congress Got Us Out of Vietnam,” The American Prospect, February 19, 2007, available at <http://prospect.org/article/how-congress-got-us-out-vietnam>. Noted Zelizer, 

“The passage of the Church-Cooper amendment marked the first successful use of congressional budgetary authority to limit the war.” 

122 “National Security Council Meeting,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 66–67. Also in 

“Meeting of President Nixon and the National Security Council,” The Nixon Tapes, 381–382.
32 

Clodfelter

one determination that I’ve made: we’re not going to lose out there. . . . And that means we will 

do what is necessary. But we can’t do it in terms of pusillanimous planning and options that are 

inadequate.”123

 In an Oval Office gathering with Kissinger and Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker the next 

day, Nixon elaborated on just how broadly he wanted to interpret the ROE. Nixon still feared 

that the movement of SAMs into Laos and southern North Vietnam would lead to the loss of a 

B-52. Yet he was afraid of giving Abrams “blanket authority” to attack SAM sites because “it’ll 

get out.” On the eve of departing for his noteworthy visit to China, the President was anxious 

that increasing the intensity of the air war might affect the trip or stir anti-war protests at home. 

Thus, as was the case with Cambodia, he decided that he would intensify bombing—and keep 

it secret. Nixon told Bunker that protective reaction strikes against SAMs would now really 

become “preventive reaction.” He elaborated, “I am simply saying that we expand the definition 

of protective reaction to mean preventive reaction, where a SAM site is concerned. And I think 

that, but let’s be sure that anything that is done there it’s best to call an ordinary protective reaction. Who the hell’s going to say that they didn’t fire?” Kissinger, concerned about a leak that the 

ROE had changed, retorted, “No, but could they stop from blabbing it at every bloody briefing?” 

and Bunker answered, “Yes, absolutely.”124

The President emphasized what Bunker was to do after returning to Saigon: “Tell him—I 

want you to tell Abrams when you get back, he is to tell the military not to put out extensive briefings with regard to our military activities from now till we get back from China. Do it, but don’t 

say it.” “Yeah,” Bunker responded. Nixon then highlighted his feelings about the matter: “Goddamn it, he [Abrams] can do that. . . . Because goddamn it, these PRO [public relations officers] 

officers blab. . . . He can hit SAM sites, period. Okay? But he is not to build up publicity for the 

duration. And, if it does get out, to the extent it does, he says it’s a protective reaction strike.”125

123 “National Security Council Meeting,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 68. Also in 

“Meeting of President Nixon and the National Security Council,” The Nixon Tapes, 383.

124 “Conversation Among President Nixon, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs 

(Kissinger), and the Ambassador to South Vietnam (Bunker),” February 3, 1972, FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 73–74. Also in “Oval Office Meeting with Nixon, Bunker, and Kissinger,” The Nixon 

Tapes, 387–388.

125 “Conversation Among President Nixon, Kissinger, and Bunker,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 74–75. Also in “Oval Office Meeting with Nixon, Bunker, and Kissinger,” The Nixon Tapes, 

388–389.
33

Violating Reality

Bunker confirmed that he would deliver the message, and the President provided an addendum 

to his order:

Nixon: He [Abrams] is to describe it as a protective reaction, and he doesn’t have 

to spell out that they’ve struck. After all, it is a SAM site, a protective reaction 

strike against a SAM site. As you know, when we were hitting the [Mu] Gia Pass 

and the rest, we’d call that protective reaction—

Bunker: Yeah.

Nixon: —and then bomb the hell out of a lot of other stuff.

Bunker: Sure.

Nixon: Okay?

Bunker: Sure.

Nixon: So what we want is protective reaction. Fair enough?

Kissinger: Fair enough.126

The only restriction that the President placed on attacking SAM sites was timing. Abrams 

could attack the sites “and bomb the hell out of a lot of other stuff ” until Nixon departed for 

China on February 17. Limited attacks would continue in the northern portion of the DMZ 

while the President was overseas. Nixon implied that he would relate the Oval Office discussion in a meeting with Admiral Moorer later that afternoon, telling Kissinger to remember to 

stress the point about attacks in the northern DMZ.127 The President then chastised his military 

chiefs for being too timid: “We will see that the authorities are adequate. I can assure you that 

the authorities will be adequate. We will see that more planes are put in there, and carriers. 

126 “Conversation Among President Nixon, Kissinger, and Bunker,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 75–76. Also in “Oval Office Meeting with Nixon, Bunker, and Kissinger,” The Nixon Tapes, 

389.

127 “Conversation Among President Nixon, Kissinger, and Bunker,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 76. Also in “Oval Office Meeting with Nixon, Bunker, and Kissinger,” The Nixon Tapes, 390.
34 

Clodfelter

Goddamn it, they should have asked for more planes and carriers. Henry, I don’t understand 

the military.”128

Nixon’s meetings with Bunker and Moorer produced rapid effects. On February 5, Secretary Laird sent Moorer a memorandum authorizing airstrikes on any target in the northern 

portion of the DMZ whenever General Abrams “determines the North Vietnamese are using 

the area in preparation for an attack southward.”129 Moorer relayed that message to Abrams 2 

days later but stressed: “No public announcement of any kind will be made with regards to these 

actions.”130 That same day, Moorer notified Admiral McCain and General Abrams, as well as the 

four Service chiefs, that the President wanted a daily update of events in Vietnam:

As you are no doubt aware, highest authority is following the Southeast Asian 

situation very closely. In this regard, I have been asked to provide a daily report 

of the situation to include a personal assessment. It would be most helpful if 

Abe could provide me, on a daily basis, his very brief personal assessment on 

the friendly-enemy situation to include any significant items which would be of 

interest to the commander in chief. I will need this report in Washington NLT 

1200Z, beginning 7 February.131

To answer Moorer’s request in terms of the air war, Lavelle sent Abrams the detailed mission summaries from the protective reaction strikes that Colonel Gabriel had forwarded to 

General Slay. Those reports included specific targets attacked, number of sorties flown, damage 

inflicted, enemy response, and whether any American aircraft were shot down or damaged. 

Abrams in turn forwarded the information through Admiral McCain in Hawaii to Admiral 

128 “Conversation Among President Nixon, Kissinger, and Bunker,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 77. Also in “Oval Office Meeting with Nixon, Bunker, and Kissinger,” The Nixon Tapes, 390.

129 Memorandum, Secretary Laird to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Subject: “Operating Authority for Southeast Asia,” February 5, 1972, available at <http://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.

com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/Extraction.-LAV-8607-00224844xBF28F.pdf>. 

130 Message, Admiral Moorer to Admiral McCain, information copy to Abrams and the four 

Service chiefs, Subject: “Standby Authorities,” 2134 Zulu, February 7, 1972, available at <http://mbkwp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/Extraction.-LAV-269-270-

00224840xBF28F.pdf>. 

131 Message, Admiral Moorer to Admiral McCain and General Abrams, 2334 Zulu 5 February 

1972, available at <http://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/

Extraction.-LAV-266-00224831xBF28F.pdf>. Copies of this message also went to the four Service chiefs. 
35

Violating Reality

Moorer, and Moorer sent the reports to Laird, who forwarded them to the President. Kissinger 

frequently saw the reports and commented on them as well. For all of those carefully recorded 

raids (17 missions, comprising 70 percent of the alleged unauthorized strikes), no complaints 

came to either Abrams or Lavelle from Nixon, Laird, Kissinger, or the Joint Chiefs. Indeed, 

on the February 8 report of air action over North Vietnam, Nixon scribbled in the margin for 

Kissinger: “K—is there anything Abrams has asked for that I have not approved [emphasis in 

original]?”132

Although Nixon had told Ambassador Bunker that attacks should occur on North Vietnam only in the northern DMZ during the China visit, airstrikes continued above the DMZ 

during that time, and Nixon received daily updates on them while in Beijing. Abrams later 

told the SASC that the President’s China trip influenced actions in Vietnam and that “we were 

instructed to make sure that we did nothing outside of what we had been authorized to do that 

would become an embarrassment and that sort of thing.”133 Still, Nixon himself authorized 2 

days of large-scale airstrikes against 130mm artillery positions in North Vietnam that occurred 

on February 16–17, the latter day being his departure date for Beijing.134 The two attacks made 

the list of “unauthorized” airstrikes conducted by Lavelle, although at the time he received a 

congratulatory message from Moorer praising the bombing.135 Like the Prize Bull and Proud 

Deep missions, intelligence analysts did not record the raids’ results on OPREP-4s. Gabriel still 

reported the attacks’ outcome to Slay, and Slay sent the results to Lavelle, who forwarded them 

up the chain of command until they reached the traveling President. The mission summaries to 

the President continued for protective reaction strikes from February 18 to March 9, as did the 

compiling of OPREP-4s.

In his testimony to the HASC in June 1972, Air Force Chief of Staff Ryan acknowledged 

that Seventh Air Force received an accurate report of protective reaction strikes from Colonel 

132 “Memorandum for the President from Henry A. Kissinger, Subject: Secretary Laird’s Daily 

Report on Southeast Asia Situation,” February 8, 1972; Folder: Vietnam, January—February 1972 (2 of 

3); Box 158, National Security Council Files, Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda, CA. Also in FRUS,

Vietnam: January-October 1972, 84.

133 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 13, 1972, 126.

134 Ibid., September 18, 1972, 282.

135 Message, 1841 Zulu, February 17, 1972, for Admiral McCain, info General Holloway, General 

Abrams, Admiral Clarey, General Clay, General Lavelle, VAdm Mack, RAdm Cooper, from Admiral Moorer; Subject: “Air Strikes against Enemy Gun Positions,” available at <http://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.

com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/Extraction.-LAV-285-286-00224841xBF28F.pdf>. 
36 

Clodfelter

Gabriel saying, “This is what we really hit.” Ryan continued, “It was a special, what we call 

‘Specat [special category report] eyes only’; in other words, a message that does not come to 

the normal distribution centers.” Asked twice if the Specat went to General Abrams at MACV 

Headquarters, Ryan responded, “No, sir. It went to no one but Seventh Air Force.”136 That statement was an unusual one for Ryan to make, given that he had received a copy of the February 7, 

1972, message from Admiral Moorer to Admiral McCain and General Abrams requesting that 

Abrams provide McCain with a daily update of activities that would ultimately go to the President. Ryan knew that the information forwarded to Abrams about the Air Force’s air war came 

from Lavelle. Moreover, once the daily activity summary arrived at Moorer’s office, Ryan, as a 

member of the Joint Chiefs, would likely have seen it given that he closely monitored airstrikes 

on North Vietnam, as demonstrated by his reaction to the poor bombing on the November 8, 

1971, raid against Quang Lang airfield. Ryan further observed to the HASC that the post-strike 

information provided by the Specats appeared within 24 hours after an attack; in contrast, the 

OPREP-4s generally took much longer to complete.137

 On March 11, with the arrival in Saigon of the Air Force IG, Lavelle halted protective 

reaction missions—not because he believed that they violated the ROE, but because he could 

not figure out how to report those missions correctly on the OPREP-4. “When we stopped, that 

very day I assigned a group of three men to find out how we could continue what we were doing, 

but report it accurately,” Lavelle told HASC member Representative Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) in 

June 1972. “But the reports were in such detail, we were not able to find a way where we could 

accurately report what we were doing.” Congressman Pirnie responded, “It was for that reason 

that it [the bombing] was stopped? Not because of what was being accomplished was contrary 

to the basic mission of protection of the forces and stopping the enemy buildup?” Lavelle answered, “That is correct, sir.” Pirnie persisted, “But merely because, as of that time, authority 

was not granted for carrying out those actions without fulfilling the reporting requirements?” 

Lavelle again answered, “That is correct, sir.”138

Designed in 1968 to report the results of a mission conducted according to the questionable terms of the “bombing halt agreement,” the OPREP-4 had remained constant in format 

despite the technological changes affecting the air war almost 4 years later. As Lavelle noted, the 

form provided no way to accommodate the alterations, and Fred Buzhardt, the Department of 

136 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 37.

137 Ibid.; “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 19, 1972, 300–301.

138 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 30.
37

Violating Reality

Defense (DOD) General Counsel, agreed with Lavelle’s assessment. “We don’t believe there was 

any falsification of records by these people [involved in the alleged unauthorized missions] in 

the legal sense,” Buzhardt stated in March 1973. “They were using a reporting format given to 

them.” He added, “When the people came in and debriefed, they actually reported what took 

place and we have this in evidence from the messages. . . . They did not conceal what actually 

took place.”139

Lavelle’s Relief from Command—and Nixon’s Reaction

Once recalled to Washington, in a meeting at Ryan’s home on March 26, Lavelle argued 

that he—and his superiors—had received accurate accounts of the raids in question, but he 

also took blame for failing to articulate clearly his notion of “activated against,” which produced OPREP-4s that may have contained false information. Lavelle remained adamant that 

he had not ordered the falsification of those reports.140 Ryan recalled the dialogue differently: 

“He [Lavelle] came in, and I asked him what the hell was going on. Here is what the Inspector 

General had found out, that they [Seventh Air Force personnel] were falsifying reports on his 

orders. He admitted that he had told them to falsify reports. . . . The gist of our conversation was 

that he told my crews to lie.”141

Lavelle remembered asking Ryan to contact Abrams, but Ryan satisfied himself with 

Abrams’s comments in General Wilson’s March 20, 1972, IG report. Yet those remarks implied 

support for Lavelle’s direction of protective action strikes. As recorded by Wilson, Abrams’s 

observations were that “the defenses in the southern area of North Vietnam had progressively, 

year after year, increased until they were now more severe than at Hanoi. He said that as a matter of policy, this country insisted on the right of free overflight of North Vietnam to maintain 

surveillance of the activity going on there, and we would take whatever action was necessary to 

preserve this right.”142 Ryan stated to the HASC in June 1972 that Abrams was aware of many of 

Lavelle’s protective reaction strikes, based upon what Lavelle had told Ryan after Lavelle’s recall 

to Washington. Representative Otis G. Pike (D-NY) asked about the January 23, 1972, Dong 

Hoi mission, “Is there any question in your mind about the veracity of what General Lavelle has 

139 “Certain Nominations in the Air Force and the Navy,” March 22, 1973, 7–8.

140 Lavelle oral history interview, 642.

141 Ryan oral history interview, 219–220, 231.

142 General Creighton Abrams, Interview Summary, March 11 and 16, 1972, in Wilson, Jr., “Report of Investigation,” appendix D. 
38 

Clodfelter

just said, about his statement that he talked to General Abrams about it?” In response, Ryan provided a tepid endorsement of Lavelle’s honesty, “I have his statement for it. I have the Secretary 

of Defense’s statement. I have the Secretary of Defense’s statement that General Abrams told 

him that he had not given him the authority to strike.” Pike retorted, “That is not the question. 

The question was not whether he had given him authority to strike; the question was whether he 

had been made aware in advance of the strike that this was going to take place.” Ryan responded, 

“I cannot answer that question, Mr. Pike, because I did not talk to General Abrams.”143

After returning to Washington, Lavelle determined that he would not only talk to General 

Abrams, but would also meet with Secretary of Defense Laird and Secretary of the Air Force 

Seamans. Lavelle succeeded in reaching Abrams’s deputy, Army GEN Frederick C. Weyand, 

who sympathized with Lavelle and said that he would notify Abrams and call back, but neither 

Weyand nor Abrams returned the call.144 According to Lavelle, Ryan said that he would try to 

arrange appointments with Laird and Seamans.145 After waiting to see both secretaries for a 

week, Lavelle determined that he would receive no high-level backing and decided to retire, especially when informed by Ryan that other officers could receive punishment if Lavelle pursued 

the matter. Ryan advised him to take a medical retirement that would likely include 50 percent 

disability, meaning that much of Lavelle’s retired pay would avoid taxes because of his health 

issues—Lavelle had a heart murmur following a heart attack as well as emphysema and a variety 

of other ailments. The Air Force Chief further told Lavelle that he would support him for the 

retired rank of lieutenant general, rather than Lavelle’s permanent rank of major general. Although Ryan did not think a court-martial was appropriate, he was emphatic that Lavelle could 

not remain in the Service at his present rank. Lavelle recalled that Ryan mentioned recently 

approving the dismissal of 20 cadets from the Air Force Academy for an honor code violation, 

and stated that the Air Force could not have two standards—one for generals and one for cadets. 

When Lavelle countered that he had no knowledge of the alleged false reports, Ryan answered 

that Lavelle was responsible for them, and Lavelle agreed with that assessment.146

On the morning of April 6, as Lavelle signed his retirement papers, President Nixon met in 

his White House office with Lavelle’s replacement as Seventh Air Force Commander, Lieutenant General John Vogt, Jr. Nixon was unaware of Lavelle’s dismissal, but Kissinger, who was also 

143 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 47–48.

144 Lavelle oral history interview, 643.

145 Ibid.

146 Ibid., 642–649. Lavelle actually received 70 percent disability.
39

Violating Reality

present, had carefully monitored events in Saigon and had lobbied for Vogt to get the job. Kissinger knew Vogt well; Vogt had studied with him in a Harvard program for senior officers.147

Kissinger had also worked with him as the Director of the Joint Staff, and Vogt was familiar with 

the air situation in Southeast Asia—he had delivered Admiral Moorer’s message to the Honolulu conference for Lavelle to be more aggressive in conducting protective reaction strikes. Although Vogt was in line for a fourth star and a position on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization staff, he was receptive to taking over Seventh Air Force. For Kissinger, Vogt was the perfect 

choice to go to Vietnam. The National Security Advisor was unpopular at MACV Headquarters, 

and Vogt’s appointment as Abrams’s air commander would give Kissinger a back-door channel 

to Saigon. On April 5, Kissinger called Moorer from the Oval Office recommending that Vogt 

receive the command, and Nixon chimed in about the need for “someone with imagination 

and verve.”148 That input eclipsed Ryan’s choice of Air Force Lt Gen Marvin McNickle, the commander of Thirteenth Air Force in the Philippines, to replace Lavelle. 

Kissinger called Vogt that afternoon to let him informally know that he would command 

Seventh Air Force. Though pleased, Vogt was also apprehensive about the reception he might 

receive from Abrams. He said to Kissinger, “I definitely will have a problem at the other end.” 

Kissinger responded, “We will make heads roll. You do what is wanted and he’s got to get out of 

the way.”149 Vogt stated that he would like to meet with Kissinger before departing for Saigon, 

and Kissinger arranged for him to see the President as well.

Throughout their ensuing April 6 meeting, Nixon referenced the North Vietnamese offensive that had finally begun on March 30—a massive, 120,000-man assault backed by large 

numbers of tanks and 130mm heavy artillery—and how airpower should thwart it. “The only 

thing the whole goddamn thing is about now is air, right Henry?” the President asked. Kissinger 

quipped, “Oh yeah; this is sophomoric.” Stopping the offensive, Nixon said, required dynamic, 

innovative leadership, and he maintained that theme throughout the gathering. He further believed that the Air Force’s performance thus far had been inadequate because of a failure to fly in 

poor weather. He declared, “If the Air Force at this point doesn’t do an adequate job at this time, 

and screws it up, as it has been screwed up before, because of a lack of imagination, a lack of 

willingness to take risks . . . this is probably the last time the Air Force is going to have a combat 

147 Stephen P. Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 94.

148 Quoted in ibid., 95.

149 Quoted in ibid., 99.
40 

Clodfelter

role.” He added, “You’re going out there on a rescue operation. But if you have to go out there I 

want you to know, I want you to know that you’ll be backed to the hilt, and you’ll have to take 

some casualties. . . . I feel very strongly about this.”150 Presidential aide H.R. Haldeman, who was 

also present and taking notes, jotted down:

Vogt said he understood what the P[resident] was saying loud and clear and that 

he’d move in and get it solved. The P told him to bypass Abrams, that he did not 

have confidence in Abrams, that he’d been a great commander in World War II 

but that Vogt was to get things done. If he had any problems he was to let the P 

know, not just let things simmer.

Vogt then raised the point that his hand would be greatly strengthened if he 

were to be made Deputy Commander out there instead of just Air Commander 

and the P said that it is to be done and ordered Henry to get it done. It was quite 

a dramatic meeting and I think undoubtedly had a dramatic effect on General 

Vogt.151

Vogt would later describe Nixon as “wild-eyed” during the meeting; “he wanted somebody to 

use imagination—like Patton.”152

After Vogt and Kissinger left the Oval Office, Haldeman confided to Nixon, “You got a guy 

volunteering for the assignment because he knows it’s fucked up out there. . . . That’s why he 

volunteered.” Nixon, stupefied by that statement, responded, “He volunteered?” “Yeah,” Haldeman replied. He continued:

He came to Henry and said, “I’ll give up my, my fourth star, he’s so smooth, I’ll 

give up my fourth star if you’ll let me go out to Vietnam and [get] the military 

back.” He saw what they were doing wrong. Instead of worrying about his own fat 

ass in the Pentagon; it’s his interest in trying to get out and win the goddamn war. 

150 Transcript of White House conversation—President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Lt Gen 

John W. Vogt, H.R. Haldeman, April 6, 1972, available at <https://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/

wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Lavelle-Presskit-09-White_House_Tape_Transcript_19720406_Nixon_

Kissinger_Vogt.pdf>. 

151 H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), entry for Thursday, April 6, 1972, 436–437.

152 Quoted in Hersh, 506.
41

Violating Reality

And then you put it the way you did. He knows he’s got backing. He knows, you 

told him pretty clearly he’s not to listen to his commanders.153

Haldeman believed Kissinger’s description of why Vogt sought command of Seventh Air 

Force, and the aide’s recitation of the story sold Nixon as well. Throughout the Oval Office 

conversation, the President had no idea that Ryan had sacked Lavelle, and likely had never 

heard Lavelle’s name. Nixon instead ruminated about Vogt’s potential to succeed, remarking 

that “Vogt has to pull this off; it’s the Air Force,” and then the President shifted his thoughts to 

whether Abrams might become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Haldeman offered that Vogt’s 

Vietnam performance might place the Air Force general in the running, an idea that intrigued 

Nixon.154

On April 7, Ryan announced that Lavelle had retired from the Air Force “for personal and 

health reasons”155 and that Vogt, who was promoted to four-star general that day, would replace 

him as Seventh Air Force Commander. Secretary Laird had directed Lavelle’s removal from 

command to Admiral Moorer on March 30, advising Moorer, “It is important that this matter 

be handled on an urgent and discreet basis.”156 On April 8, the day following Ryan’s announcement, a New York Times article revealed that Ryan had met Laird’s first requirement, but not 

the second. Reporting on American bombing in response to the North Vietnamese offensive, 

correspondent William Beecher highlighted “the sudden decision to replace the current commander” and noted that “the official reason given for General Lavelle’s replacement was ‘ill 

health.’”157 Beecher’s story fueled speculation that a more significant factor had spurred Lavelle’s 

removal from command, given that the change had transpired only a week after North Vietnam 

had begun its massive assault.

Otis Pike (D-NY) was one individual skeptical of the official reason given for Lavelle’s retirement. A member of the House Armed Services Committee, Pike had observed fellow committee members investigating the 1968 My Lai massacre—and its associated cover-up—during 

153 Transcript of White House conversation, April 6, 1972.

154 Ibid.

155 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” December 15, 1972, 1.

156 Memorandum for Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, from Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, 

Subject: Command of Air Elements in Southeast Asia, 30 March 1972, available at <http://mbk-wp-media.

s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/16214459/Extraction.-8613-00225960xBF28F.pdf>. 

157 William Beecher, “Secretary Assails Hanoi; Laird Says U.S. Will Bomb Until North Pulls 

Back,” New York Times, April 8, 1972. 
42 

Clodfelter

hearings in the spring of 1970. He felt that a similar whitewashing might be at hand as he tried 

to secure additional information about Lavelle’s retirement from the Pentagon’s Air Staff but 

was “rebuffed.”158 The chief counsel for the HASC’s special investigating subcommittee, who 

contacted the Air Force on April 27, also received no response. On May 4, Pike wrote the HASC 

chairman, F. Edward Hébert (D-LA), requesting a formal inquiry, and Hébert granted the request. Pike argued on the floor of the House of Representatives on May 15 that the Air Force had 

not told the truth about Lavelle’s removal from command. The congressman continued:

I believe there is a major issue here, important to our Air Force, and important 

to our nation.

Perhaps the most major issue is the credibility of our military. The military 

complains that it is misunderstood and mistrusted. It cannot be understood and 

will not be trusted as long as it tries to sweep its scandals under the rug and as 

long as it persists in trying to obscure the truth instead of telling the truth.159

Later that day, Ryan responded to Pike’s accusations: “Gen. John D. Lavelle was retired at 

his request for personal and health reasons. His retirement became effective April 7, 1972. He 

had been relieved of command of the 7th Air Force by me because of irregularities in the conduct 

of his command responsibilities.”160 Pike wasted no time in answering Ryan’s declaration, telling 

his fellow congressmen the next day:

Now, Mr. Speaker, at long last a tiny bit of the truth is beginning to emerge. But, 

only a tiny bit. “Irregularities in the conduct of his command responsibilities” is a 

gloriously vague phrase, designed to create the illusion of truth while concealing 

the facts. What irregularities? What conduct? What command responsibilities? 

The American people are entitled to all the facts, not a tiny little piece of them.161

158 Otis G. Pike, “Reports from Washington,” Congressional Record 12, no. 17, May 18, 1972.

159 Otis G. Pike, “The Air Force Is Trying to Sweep a Scandal under the Rug,” Congressional Record 118, May 15, 1972, 4490.

160 Quoted in “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 2.

161 Otis G. Pike, “Is General John D. Lavelle a Goat or a Scapegoat?” Congressional Record 118, 

92nd Cong., 2nd sess., May 16, 1972, 4568.
43

Violating Reality

Once the House hearing began on June 12, Chairman Hébert asked a similar series of questions 

to open the proceedings.162

Ultimately, the House determined that although Lavelle bore responsibility for the false 

reports, his actions had been in good faith, and he was not the type of commander who would 

circumvent the ROE. “Common sense and the law of survival compelled the assumption that 

SAM/AAA sites in North Vietnam were always ‘activated against’ U.S. or allied aircraft,” the 

HASC report concluded.163 It added:

That he [Lavelle] lived “by the book” is an inescapable conclusion, and there is 

nothing in his record which would cast the slightest shadow on his integrity or 

doubt on his ability. . . . Is it likely that such a man would jeopardize a brilliant 

career by engaging in actions which could bring him neither honor nor glory, 

but which could almost certainly bring him dishonor and disgrace? The law of 

probabilities would suggest a negative answer.164

The HASC berated the Defense Department for failing to provide requested documents, 

such as the Air Force IG report and the rules of engagement, to the subcommittee conducting 

the hearing. The HASC further admonished some Defense Department representatives for the 

“incredible secrecy” surrounding the case, noting that the secrecy appeared to stem from the 

desire to avoid embarrassment to Lavelle. “But having just summarily relieved him of his command, reduced him in rank, and caused him to retire, it is difficult to understand how either the 

Air Force or DOD could have added to the General’s embarrassment,” the report stated. “Therefore, one might be excused for entertaining an uneasy feeling that someone other than General 

Lavelle could be receiving the benefits of this secrecy.”165

The House hearing came as a surprise to the President. On June 14, after it had ended, 

Nixon revealed his ignorance of the Lavelle affair in an Oval Office meeting with Secretary of 

State William Rogers and Kissinger. Rogers started the conversation by saying, “That damn 

general is going to cause you a lot of trouble; that Lavelle.” Nixon replied, “What the hell is that 

all about? Who is Lavelle?” Kissinger began an explanation and the President cut him off, “And 

162 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 2.

163 Ibid., December 15, 1972, 9.

164 Ibid., 7.

165 Ibid.
44 

Clodfelter

is he being made a goat? If he is, I don’t, it’s not good. I don’t believe in it.” The National Security 

Advisor then offered his account of what had occurred:

Kissinger: Well, well, ah. He’s ah. What happened was that during March he apparently 

interpreted protective reaction orders very liberally to put it mildly. And sometimes 

initiated attacks, and when Laird found out about it he removed him. And—

Nixon: Laird removed him?

Kissinger: Laird removed him. In April, early April, without practically—

without telling us that he had already done it. So now he’s, that fellow before the 

Congressional committee . . . 

Rogers: Giving you a good—

Kissinger: And he admits that he had launched twenty-three unauthorized 

attacks. And of course that knocks into the head our argument that all during 

March we restrained ourselves.

Rogers: Plus the fact that the young sergeant has written some Senators saying 

that he was advised to fabricate reports, which is going to be difficult to explain.

Nixon: Well, I just think that they had made a goat of him for that. I don’t know 

Lavelle.

Kissinger: I don’t know Lavelle either. This wasn’t—

Nixon: Are we making him a goat? You think so?

Kissinger: Well I think ah. I think it was X-rated where he stood; there’s more 

damage out of the service than he would have done if it had been handled more 

. . . 

Rogers: He also indicated that Abrams knew about the previous; that Abrams 

knew about it previous. He said Abrams knew about this.

Nixon: He probably did.166

166 Transcript of Oval Office conversation among President Richard Nixon, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and Secretary of State William Rogers, The White House, June 14, 1972, available 
45

Violating Reality

Later that morning, Nixon met privately with Kissinger, and the topic of Lavelle came up at 

the start of the conversation. The President reiterated that he did not want Lavelle “to be made 

a goat,” and added, “We all know what protective reaction is, this damn Laird playing games.” 

Kissinger responded, “What happened with Lavelle was he had reason to believe that we wanted 

him to take aggressive steps,” to which Nixon replied, “Right, that’s right.” Kissinger continued, 

“Then he did it. And then suddenly Laird came down on him like a ton of bricks. And he had 

him already removed by the time I even learned of it. By that time, the damage was done.” The 

President mentioned his concern for Lavelle on multiple occasions, and each time that Nixon 

did, Kissinger tried to change the subject. When Nixon asked why Laird had removed Lavelle, 

remarking that “you destroy a man’s career,” Kissinger began to discuss Laird’s character and 

how the Secretary of Defense had seemingly manipulated the budget. Nixon finally said, “But 

come back to Lavelle. I don’t want a man persecuted for doing what he thought was right. I just 

don’t want it done.” The President then disparaged Sergeant Franks, comparing him to Daniel 

Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers. “Of course, the military are impossible too,” Kissinger rejoined. Nixon responded, “Well, they all turn on each other like rats.” Kissinger agreed, 

and then began discussing how the Russians would respond to the air attacks on North Vietnam 

stemming from the North’s offensive. Nixon told him to “come back to Lavelle now” and asked, 

“Can we do anything to stop this damn thing? Why’d he [Laird] even remove him?”167

Kissinger’s response, and Nixon’s follow-on questions, revealed much about how the National Security Advisor had taken advantage of the situation while providing minimal information to the President:

Kissinger: No. If they hadn’t removed, well. . . . They kept John Vogt instead who 

is probably better, but. . . . Because he understands us better. But, Lavelle was 

actually moved out before Vogt went out there. Lavelle was removed at the end 

of March.

Nixon: Because of this?

Kissinger: Yeah.

at <https://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Lavelle-Presskit-11-White_

House_Tape_Transcript_19720614_Nixon_Rogers_Kissinger.pdf>. 

167 Ibid. 
46 

Clodfelter

Nixon: Why the hell did this happen!? A decision of that magnitude without? I 

should have known about it Henry, because this is a—

Kissinger: Well, Mr. President, the point was—

Nixon: Because this is something we told. You remember we, we, we told Laird to 

keep the pressure on there in March!

Kissinger: By the time I knew about it, it had already been done. There was no 

point in—

Nixon: I see.

Kissinger: —involving you anymore. Because he notified me after the guy had 

already been removed.168

Nixon then turned from compassion to pragmatism, asking, “How do we handle it public 

relations–wise?” Kissinger answered, “I think this will go away. I think we should just say ah . . . 

after all we took corrective steps. We could have easily hidden it. I think you might as well make 

a virtue of a necessity.” Nixon replied, “Well, I don’t think anybody gives a damn that we went in 

and bombed. I think they probably favored it. . . . I don’t like to have the feeling though that the 

military can get out of control. Well, maybe this censures that. This says we do something when 

they . . . ” and he stopped in mid-sentence. Then he added, “It’s just a hell of a damn. And it’s a 

bad rap for him, Henry.” Near the conclusion of the conversation, Nixon confessed, “Well you 

see, deep down, the thing I’m getting at is this. That ah, with Laird, I just don’t like him to make 

a goat of this fellow. Because Laird knows goddamn well, that ah, I told him, I said it’s protective 

reaction. He winks, he says, ‘Oh I understand.’”169

Nixon continued to vacillate between sympathy and practicality, but in the end, his version of 

pragmatism won out. He requested a summary of Lavelle’s actions from Laird, but the Secretary’s 

description contained numerous inaccuracies. Laird noted that aircrews had bombed targets such 

as “truck convoys” and “POL [petroleum, oil, and lubricants]” when the missions in question had 

not struck those objectives. In addition, Laird wrote, “General Lavelle admitted to the Air Force 

Inspector General that he had ordered the preplanned missions to be conducted and that he had 

168 Ibid.

169 Ibid.
47

Violating Reality

also directed that the fact of no enemy reaction in the form of anti-aircraft fire or radar activation 

could not be reported.”170 That comment was a half-truth at best, given that Lavelle had said nothing about reactions to anti-aircraft artillery and failed to clarify his remark about radar activation 

following the January 23, 1972, Dong Hoi mission. One week after his conversation with Kissinger, Nixon decided to take his National Security Advisor’s advice. In a June 22 news conference, the 

President answered questions about Lavelle’s dismissal by declaring, “The Secretary of Defense has 

stated his views on that; he has made a decision on it. I think it was an appropriate decision.”171 A 

week later Nixon elaborated to the press, “But he [Lavelle] did exceed authorization; it was proper 

for him to be relieved and retired. And I think it was the proper action to take, and I believe that 

will assure that kind of activity may not occur in the future.”172

After making statements that assured the Lavelle affair would not affect his Presidency, 

Nixon still felt remorse for the general whose fate the President had ultimately sealed. On September 15, 1972, while the SASC hearing on Lavelle convened, Nixon met with Army MG Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s deputy, in the Old Executive Office Building. The President wanted to 

take action on the “Lavelle incident,” observing that he had directed the conduct of protective 

reaction strikes. Haig responded that Lavelle “falsified reports—and it just wasn’t necessary.” 

Nixon answered, “He didn’t shred evidence.”173 A month later, after the SASC had ruled against 

Lavelle, the President again spoke to Haig, “All of this goddamn crap about Lavelle! And I feel 

very sorry for the fellow, because you and I know we did tell him about ‘protective reaction’ being, very generally . . .” “Very liberal,” Haig offered. “Yeah, very liberally, very liberally,” Nixon 

responded. “Remember I said it was, if they, if they hit there, go back and hit it again. Go back 

and do it right. You don’t have to wait till they fire before you fire back. I told Laird that. And 

I meant it. . . . Now Lavelle apparently knew that and received that at some time. . . . There 

170 Memorandum for the President from the Secretary of Defense, Subject: “Circumstances 

Surrounding the Replacement of General John D. Lavelle as Commander, 7th Air Force,” 15 June 1972, 

Binder: SASC Hearing 27 September 1972, Tab H-2, Box 90, Admiral Moorer Records, RG 218, NARA, 

College Park, MD.

171 “Transcript of the President’s News Conference Emphasizing Domestic Affairs,” New York 

Times, June 23, 1972.

172 “Transcript of the President’s News Conference Emphasizing Foreign Affairs,” New York 

Times, June 30, 1972.

173 Transcript of Old Executive Office Building conversation between President Richard Nixon 

and Major General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., September 15, 1972, available at <https://mbk-wp-media.

s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Lavelle-Presskit-13-White_House_Tape_Transcript_19720915_Nixon_Haig.pdf>. 
48 

Clodfelter

wouldn’t be any crap at all if we hadn’t stopped the bombing [in 1968]. If you look back, all he 

did was hit the goddamn SAM sites and military targets!”174

In all likelihood, Lavelle felt much the same as the President. “If I had it to do all over again, 

I would do the same thing, but I would look into and understand the reporting system so that 

[false reporting] would not have happened,” Lavelle told the HASC in June 1972. When asked 

if the alleged unauthorized missions were necessary, he responded, “Yes, sir. And I believe also 

that they were within an interpretation of the rules of engagement that as the commander on 

the spot, seeing them, I could make.” Lavelle elaborated on the netting of North Vietnamese 

radars and how the tactic affected his interpretation of “activated against” in the ROE. He then 

stated, “And I have said, and I still say, that in certain limited instances when the target was critical on saving the lives of our crews I applied this rule.”175 Lavelle might have added, as Nixon 

repeatedly emphasized, that as Seventh Air Force commander facing an imminent enemy offensive, he received significant encouragement to interpret the ROE “liberally.” Most of that encouragement came with promises of support. “I was sure I was going to be [backed-up] because 

I was told that was going to be,” Lavelle reflected in 1978, “but I wasn’t.”176

Judging the Truth

In the years that have transpired since the October 1972 SASC ruling, much evidence has 

come to light revealing how unjust that decision truly was. The Nixon tapes are the most obvious 

addition, but much declassified message traffic has since appeared, as well as the Air Force IG report, which the 1972 SASC did not see. Given the availability of the additional materials, the 2010 

SASC’s refusal to consider the Pentagon’s request to have Lavelle’s retired rank posthumously 

advanced to general is especially confounding. In the SASC’s letter of December 20, 2010, to 

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the SASC chairman, and Senator 

John McCain (R-AZ), the SASC ranking member, cited the failure of Deputy Under Secretary of 

Defense for Personnel and Readiness, William J. Carr, and the Air Force Board for Correction of 

Military Records to examine thoroughly several sources and reconcile “conflicting documentary 

evidence.” Those sources included documents in the eighth volume of the State Department’s 

174 Transcript of Old Executive Office Building conversation between President Richard Nixon and Major General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., October 23, 1972, available at <https://mbk-wp-media.

s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Lavelle-Presskit-14-White_House_Tape_Transcript_19721023_Nixon_Haig.pdf>. 

175 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 25.

176 Lavelle oral history interview, 676.
49

Violating Reality

Foreign Relations of the United States series on Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs’ reaction to the January 

5, 1972, attack on the Moc Chau radar site, and Secretary Laird’s “authorized” biography. The 

SASC also criticized the Defense Department for “not consider[ing] sufficiently the importance 

of the falsified official reports submitted by Maj Gen Lavelle’s command.” The SASC further requested that “living witnesses to the events in question are afforded the opportunity to provide 

evidence and comment on the issues raised by this nomination” and that the Defense Department should “consider the issue of Maj Gen Lavelle’s role in the falsification of official reports.”177

Yet instead of undermining the Pentagon’s case that Lavelle should receive posthumous promotion, the considerations mentioned by the 2010 SASC amplify why he should. Moreover, the 2010 

SASC failed to mention a key source that provides perhaps the strongest argument for why Lavelle 

should get his two stars back: the testimony provided by general officers to the 1972 and 1973 House 

and Senate Armed Services Committees when viewed against the evidence now available.

The SASC letter noted that the Pentagon’s request relied “heavily” on Nixon’s Oval Office 

conversation with Ambassador Bunker and Kissinger on February 3, in which the President 

directed attacks on SAM sites whether or not they fired at American aircraft. The letter further 

stated that in that meeting, Nixon “said the bombings should stop between February 17 and 

March 1, 1972” during his China trip. Without a doubt, Nixon’s February 3 discussion was 

important. The President not only condoned attacks on SAM sites but also conveyed to Bunker that attacks could occur against other North Vietnamese military facilities, citing earlier 

protective reaction strikes against the Mu Gia Pass that bombed “the hell out of a lot of other 

stuff.” Concerning airstrikes on North Vietnam while he was in China, Nixon did tell Bunker 

that bombing should not occur then, except for the northern portion of the DMZ.178 Nevertheless, the President changed his mind, because he approved the 2-day series of raids on 130mm 

artillery positions north of the DMZ transpiring on February 16–17. Moreover, for the seven 

allegedly unauthorized airstrikes occurring during the February 17–March 1 span, Nixon received detailed daily reports from Laird, with the original information provided by Lavelle. The 

President never said to stop the attacks.

177 Letter, John McCain, Ranking Member, and Carl Levin, Chairman, Senate Armed Services 

Committee, to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, December 20, 2010.

178 Conversation Among President Nixon, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs 

(Kissinger), and the Ambassador to South Vietnam (Bunker), February 3, 1972, FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol.

VIII, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 76.
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Clodfelter

The SASC letter also mentioned that the day after Nixon’s Oval Office conversation with 

Bunker, the President approved National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 149, which 

went from Kissinger to Laird. The memorandum reiterated that airstrikes could occur in the 

northern portion of the DMZ, but it limited attacks on SAM sites until “the enemy offensive 

commences but not prior to March 1, 1972 and only after final clearance with the President.”179

As for his approval of NSDM 149, Nixon reveled in making key decisions via covert or backchannels, and he excelled in defying existing policy to suit his own ends. His February 3 direction to Bunker that Abrams “can hit SAM sites period—do it, but don’t say it,” was just one 

example of Nixonian decisionmaking; the “official” policy in NSDM 149 made no substantial 

change in the ROE that would attract the press attention Nixon feared, while the actual policy 

altered those rules significantly. The President had used the same technique when he ordered 

the 1969 secret bombing of Cambodia without informing Secretary of the Air Force Seamans 

or Air Force Chief of Staff Ryan (neither found out until the New York Times broke the story).180

Similarly, Nixon dispatched Kissinger to Moscow in April 1972, without notifying either Secretary of State Rogers or the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, to arrange a May summit with Soviet leaders.181 The President had further kept the “real” Paris peace negotiations, 

ongoing between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho since August 1969, secret until announcing them 

in January 1972.182 Perhaps the best summation of Nixon’s decisionmaking methodology came 

from Kissinger, as recorded in Haldeman’s diary following Nixon’s verdict to send B-52s against 

Hanoi targets in the December 1972 “Linebacker II” campaign: “Henry makes the point that the 

P’s best course is brutal unpredictability.”183

An elaborate set of back channels assured that Kissinger as well as Nixon could communicate directly with military leaders to convey commands without going through the Secretary of 

Defense. Since the North Korean shoot-down of a Navy EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft in April 

1969, a rift had developed between Nixon and Laird over how best to respond to international 

crises.184 Admiral Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, became a primary target for receiv179 National Security Decision Memorandum 149, February 4, 1972, FRUS, 1969-1976, Vol. VIII, 

Vietnam: January–October 1972, 79.

180 Shawcross, 29.

181 Kissinger, 1123–1125.

182 Richard Nixon, “Address to the Nation on a Plan for Peace in Vietnam,” January 25, 1972, 

transcript available at <millercenter.org/president/Nixon/speeches/speech-3879>.

183 Haldeman, December 18, 1972, 557.

184 After the shoot-down, Nixon wanted to resume EC-121 intelligence flights near North Korea 
51

Violating Reality

ing personal Presidential direction. Laird had notified military chiefs and high-ranking civilian 

defense officials that they had to communicate with him first before contacting the President, 

but Moorer rejected that notion. In a February 1, 1972, telephone conversation with Haig, the 

admiral revealed that he had told Kissinger a week earlier, “My first loyalty is to the President and 

the orders he gives me are obeyed immediately.” Moorer added, “Any order from the President, of 

course, will be obeyed from me regardless of Laird.”185 After Nixon’s discussion with Ambassador 

Bunker on February 3, the President met with Moorer about the air war and likely revealed the 

contents of the earlier conversation; Nixon emphasized that he wanted frequent updates on the 

war and that Moorer should provide them directly to the White House.186 Meanwhile, Kissinger 

established a separate back-channel line of communication with Lavelle’s successor as Seventh Air 

Force Commander, General Vogt, to undercut Abrams’s command authority. Neither Nixon nor 

Kissinger had much direct contact with Abrams because they did not view him as an exceptionally 

competent commander. “Abrams doesn’t think creatively,” the President said in a February 5, 1972, 

telephone conversation. “No, he is a shell,” Kissinger replied.187

By the start of the September 1972 Senate hearing, the list of Lavelle’s allegedly unauthorized missions had changed three times, and the SASC ultimately recorded six attacks that occurred before Nixon’s February 3, 1972, directive to Bunker: the November 7, 1971, attack on 

Dong Hoi airfield; the November 8, 1971, attack on Quang Lang airfield; the January 23, 1972, 

attack on Dong Hoi airfield; the January 25, 1972, attack on a SAM site near Route 137; and 

immediately, but Laird delayed in implementing that order for 3 weeks. See “Editorial Note,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 80–81; and Hunt, 38–45. Nixon recalled the episode in his memoirs: “Thanks 

to this incident I learned early in my administration that a President must keep a constant check not just 

on the way his orders are being followed, but on whether they are being followed at all.” See Nixon, 385. 

185 From Moorer diary, February 1, 1972, in “Editorial Note,” FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 

1972, 81.

186 Ibid., 82. Moorer wrote in his diary: “At the conclusion of our discussion he [Nixon] asked me 

to submit proposals for ensuring that we did have adequate military capability and went on to say that he 

would like to see me frequently in order to be kept up-to-date.” Original emphasis.

187 “Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between President Nixon and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger),” February 5, 1972, FRUS, Vietnam: January–October 1972, 

83. Nixon had seriously considered firing Abrams in September 1971 after the general stated publicly that 

the United States would not maintain a residual force in Vietnam after combat operations ended. The 

President told Kissinger, “Get someone second in command that will keep him [Abrams] from drinking 

too much and talking too much.” Quoted in Hunt, 196.
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Clodfelter

two attacks on January 31, 1972, against missile transporter convoys.188 Lavelle conducted the 

November 7, 1971, Dong Hoi mission after coordinating with Abrams, and Lavelle coordinated 

with Moorer for the Quang Lang airfield attack the next day; aircrews on both missions received 

ground fire approaching the targets. Though the Joint Chiefs judged the January 5, 1972, attack 

on the Moc Chau GCI radar site to have exceeded authority, it did not make the “unauthorized” list because Abrams ordered it, plus it spurred Secretary Laird to change the ROE to allow 

attacks against GCI radars when hostile MiGs were airborne. Thus, when Lavelle bombed the 

Nam Lang Nhia GCI radar after Laird’s revised ROE and reported to the Joint Chiefs that a MiG 

had flown south of the 20th parallel during the raid, he received no reprimand.

The third allegedly unauthorized strike was the January 23, 1972, raid on the Dong Hoi 

airfield when a MiG was enroute there from Hanoi. The attack also produced the first questionable OPREP-4, stemming from Lavelle’s statement that aircrews could not report “no reaction” 

on the mission. Additionally, beginning with that mission, Colonel Gabriel started sending 

General Slay complete mission summaries that in turn went to Lavelle. The next raid on the 

Senate’s list was the January 25 attack on a SAM site, which Lavelle described to the SASC as “a 

normally scheduled reconnaissance flight, fired on by a SAM. The escort aircraft expended their 

ordnance on the missile site.”189 The fifth and sixth “unauthorized” flights were attacks on January 31 against missile transporters. For those strikes, Lavelle maintained that he coordinated 

with Abrams, who approved them. Lavelle told the SASC, “I could have made this raid without 

getting his [Abrams’s] approval. I did not and would not because we were going into North 

Vietnam under a liberal interpretation of the rules to let me hit it. So I went to General Abrams 

and said that I was going in there and he concurred.”190

After conducting a 4-month examination of the Lavelle case that was far more exhaustive 

than the Air Force IG’s investigation, Department of Defense General Counsel Fred Buzhardt 

concluded that aside from the January 23, 1972, Dong Hoi raid, no certainty existed that an 

ROE violation had occurred on any of Lavelle’s questioned attacks. A pilot’s ability to detect enemy fire depended on a number of factors, to include weather conditions, and for the Dong Hoi 

attack, the weather was marginal. Furthermore, the Dong Hoi mission, with a MiG barreling 

188 Lavelle provided a detailed, notarized response to all of the allegedly unauthorized raids in a 

September 26 statement; see “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 26, 1972, 95–99. 

See also September 18, 1972, 281.

189 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 26, 1972, 96.

190 Ibid., September 12, 1972, 69.
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Violating Reality

toward the airfield and posing a threat to B-52s, was not a typical protective reaction strike. Despite Abrams’s professed inability to recall the raid to the SASC, Lavelle remembered it clearly, 

recollecting that Abrams told him after learning of the prospective MiG attack, “Well I certainly 

consider that protective reaction; the system is activated against us.”191

The 2010 SASC letter also probed the veracity of the guidance that Lavelle received from 

Secretary Laird to conduct protective reaction strikes more aggressively. In particular, the letter 

questioned the reliability of Laird’s account of his early November 1971 meeting with Lavelle in 

Saigon, in which Laird confirmed to Air Force Magazine in 2007 that he had told Lavelle to take 

a liberal view of the ROE.192 The SASC letter claimed that Laird’s comments contradicted Laird’s 

authorized biography, With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics, written by Dale Van 

Atta and published in 2008. Yet a close examination of the three pages devoted to the Lavelle affair in Van Atta’s book reveals a summary riddled with inaccuracies, such as a description of the 

ROE in effect during the McNamara era; an assertion that Lavelle ordered a “mission unauthorized by the field commander General Abrams” the day after Laird departed Saigon; and a claim 

that falsified mission reports began with the November 1971 attacks on Dong Hoi and Quang 

Lang airfields.193 Van Atta’s interpretation of Laird’s “more liberal” protective reaction policy, “hitting enemy antiaircraft sites if enemy radar tracked an American plane or had been activated on 

previous missions to the same area,”194 actually hews closely to Lavelle’s reading of the ROE once 

the North Vietnamese netted their various air defense radar systems in December 1971. On the 

191 Ibid., September 11, 1972, 10.

192 Laird, Letter to the Editor, Air Force Magazine, May 2007, 4. The SASC letter incorrectly referenced Laird’s visit to Saigon in December 1971; Laird actually visited Saigon in early November 1971, 

in concert with Chairman Moorer’s visit.

193 In With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics (Madison: University of Wisconsin 

Press, 2008), 399, Dale Van Atta writes, “Under the McNamara authorities, before Laird instituted ‘protective reaction,’ various targets were allowed only if the enemy had fired upon American planes.” The 

ROE for Rolling Thunder stemmed from a target’s location and whether the President had authorized it 

for attack, not on whether the North Vietnamese fired at the attacking aircraft. See Clodfelter, 117–134. 

The day after Laird departed Saigon, Seventh Air Force aircraft flew a reconnaissance mission against 

Dong Hoi airfield that received fire. Abrams ordered that mission, according to his own admission in 

testimony provided the SASC in September 1972. See “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” 

September 13, 1972, 105. According to both the March 20, 1972, Air Force IG report and the 1972 House 

and Senate hearings, the first instance of a falsified mission report occurred in concert with an attack on 

Dong Hoi airfield on January 23, 1972.

194 Van Atta, 399.
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Clodfelter

whole, though, the mistakes permeating Van Atta’s account make it a dubious resource to challenge the truth of Laird’s 2007 statement.

The alleged fabrication of the OPREP-4 postmission reports and Lavelle’s role in that process became central aspects of the Lavelle affair, and the 2010 SASC letter highlighted those facets. The reports in question listed anti-aircraft artillery fire occurring on the controversial missions, though as Buzhardt’s thorough investigation revealed, AAA fire may well have occurred 

and gone unnoticed on virtually all airstrikes. Moreover, even if the falsification of OPREP-4s 

transpired, Lavelle and his subordinates made no effort to hide the true results of the missions, 

and indeed Lavelle received detailed mission summaries filed by Gabriel for Slay. Buzhardt remarked, “In those instances he [Lavelle] told them not to report, in effect, in the operational 

report No. 4 or 3 the fact of lack of enemy reaction, but he instituted a separate form of reports 

which came to his headquarters in which he required them to give all the facts in detail of what 

happened over the target. In essence, the people were reporting accurately in special category 

messages precisely what did happen.”195 Buzhardt finished his investigation in October 1972—a 

month after the SASC hearings to determine Lavelle’s retired rank had ended. The Specat reporting requirement that Buzhardt highlighted—and that received minimal attention in the 

2010 SASC review of the case—significantly undermines challenges to Lavelle’s veracity. If the 

general had harbored the intent to mislead, creating such reports would have been senseless. 

Instead, they corroborate his testimony that inaccurate OPREP-4s were the product of a communication error, not malfeasance.

Lavelle fully acknowledged his responsibility for failing to state during the January 23 Dong 

Hoi mission that his aircrews should have reported, “Enemy reaction—hostile radar.” His lack 

of clarity led to OPREP-4s that may have been incorrect, but he neither ordered nor sanctioned 

such reporting. “My instructions were not clear and were subject to misinterpretation and, in 

retrospect, were apparently interpreted by my subordinates as an exhortation to report enemy 

fire when there was none,” Lavelle explained to the SASC on September 26, 1972. In addition, he 

never knew that the computer-fed OPREP-4 existed. Once General Wilson showed him copies 

during the IG’s visit to Saigon, Lavelle stopped the questionable reporting and ended protective 

reaction strikes. Two weeks later, a SAM downed an AC-130 gunship, killing 13 airmen.196

Lavelle’s commitment to preserving the lives of his aircrews likely spurred his “liberal” 

interpretation of the ROE, but the original impetus for such action came from elsewhere. The 

195 “Certain Nominations in the Air Force and the Navy,” March 22, 1973, 19.

196 Lavelle oral history interview, 673.
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Violating Reality

Joint Chiefs, the Air Staff, and the Secretary of Defense encouraged him to broaden the air war 

by using the “existing authorities” to the fullest, and the loss of two fighters to North Vietnam’s 

newly netted radar system caused him to take the advice from above and redefine “activated 

against.” With the ability of SAM operators to use GCI radar information and fire their missiles 

with little or no warning for American pilots, Lavelle wrote the SASC that his “interpretation 

of the pertinent rule of engagement was a reasonable one.”197 He had earlier told the HASC, 

“Under this condition [netting] that system was activated against us whenever we went over 

there. Now, I realize . . . that an interpretation of this was that you had to know it was activated 

against you. Or, you could make the other interpretation—it is always activated against you.” A 

congressman then asked, “It was never going to be any more activated against you than it was 

until the missile actually fired, is that correct?” Lavelle replied, “That is correct.”198 Lavelle’s argument is difficult to counter, especially given that he refused to allow his logic to condone carte 

blanche raids on North Vietnam and restricted his attacks to only air defense–related targets. 

He had multiple opportunities to bomb tanks but refused to do so. 

Several high-ranking officers tended to view Lavelle’s justification differently, and the 2010 

SASC letter failed to question this key part of the Lavelle puzzle—the veracity of the testimony 

given to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees by others wearing the uniform and 

stars. Just as Lavelle’s testimony needed examination in light of source material now available, 

the statements made under oath by witnesses who testified during the hearings also required 

scrutiny. Air Force Chief of Staff Ryan, who ordered the IG investigation after receiving Sergeant 

Franks’s letter, told the SASC that the members of Seventh Air Force, aside from Lavelle, bore 

minimum responsibility for what had occurred. “The bad apple was the head apple,” Ryan replied 

to Senator Hughes when asked if a bad apple in a basket could infect those around it.199 Yet after 

his recall to Washington, Lavelle remembered Ryan saying that Lavelle “was the victim of some 

sorry staff action” and indicating that General Slay was responsible for that failure.200 Ryan also 

stated he was surprised when he visited Udorn Air Base in December 1971 that Colonel Gabriel 

and his officers did not come forward and apprise him “of the situation when I was out there.”201

The “situation” that Ryan referenced was the violation of ROE and falsification of mission reports, 

197 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 26, 1972, 99.

198 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 34.

199 Ibid., September 18, 1972, 272.

200 Lavelle oral history interview, 654–655.

201 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 26, 1972, 271.
56 

Clodfelter

though no violations had occurred, nor had any questionable OPREP-4s appeared at that time. 

In actuality, Ryan was upset then because the November 8 attack on Quang Lang airfield produced such poor bombing, and he notified Lavelle of his displeasure. 

Other Ryan statements appeared questionable. Ryan contended that the North Vietnamese 

had netted their radar system since 1967, a dubious assertion that he then tried to amend. His 

description of the ROE to the HASC also rang hollow when he downplayed the importance of 

the phrase “activated against.” “In essence the rules of engagement have been constant that on 

our protective reaction strikes, escorting our reconnaissance aircraft, that they would be fired on 

before you took offensive action against that site,” he said.202 Three months later, he maintained 

to the SASC that the ROE had not stayed constant, stating, “later those Rules of Engagement 

were changed” to allow firing at SAM and AAA radars if they were activated against aircraft.203

During the HASC hearing, Ryan mentioned that he had examined only three OPREP-4s out of 

all those submitted for the “unauthorized” airstrikes,204 plus he informed the SASC that he had 

not read all of Lavelle’s previous testimony.205 Ryan further stated to the SASC that he should 

have revealed Lavelle’s relief from command in the initial announcement of Lavelle’s retirement, 

rather than just mentioning that the retirement was for “personal and health reasons.”206 Senator 

Hughes offered this blunt assessment of Ryan’s actions: “This appears to me from the beginning 

to have been an effort to conceal the facts from the general public about General Lavelle’s relief 

of command, his retirement, and the whole works.”207

General Abrams compared the failure to report Lavelle’s actions to the cover-up of the 

My Lai massacre. “It is the same thing with My Lai,” he told the SASC. “How in the world this 

was not—I mean, there were so many people who knew about that, so many, I was there the 

whole time. I was there before that occurred, after it occurred, [and] there was not a thing until 

that thing broke out in the press.”208 Yet Abrams—whose Senate testimony was used not only 

as part of the Lavelle case, but also to confirm Abrams’s own appointment as Army Chief of 

Staff—met with Lavelle frequently regarding protective reaction strikes and never suspected 

202 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 33. 

203 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 18, 1972, 245.

204 “Unauthorized Bombing of Military Targets in North Vietnam,” June 12, 1972, 12–13.

205 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 18, 1972, 260.

206 Ibid., 258. “In retrospect it probably could have been handled better,” Ryan remarked. “For 

that I take responsibility.”

207 Ibid., 257.

208 Ibid., September 13, 1972, 135. 
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any abnormalities. As indicated by Abrams’s remarks to Lavelle during the December 19, 1971, 

staff meeting after the loss of an F-105 to North Vietnam’s netted radar system, the MACV 

commander definitely understood the dangers that netting posed to American aircraft and 

told Lavelle to study the problem—with the implication being to find a solution for it. Abrams’s 

January 6, 1972, message to McCain, Moorer, and Ryan emphasized that aircrews had lost the 

ability to detect SAMs before they fired and revealed that Abrams accepted Lavelle’s notion 

that radar activation now always occurred over North Vietnam. Nevertheless, Abrams asserted 

to the SASC that Lavelle had “acted improperly” regarding the ROE but had no recollections 

of specific violations.209 Additionally, Abrams’s memories of his role in the November 7, 1971, 

attack on Dong Hoi airfield and in the January 5, 1972, attack on the Moc Chau radar were 

extensive, but he could not recall the January 23, 1972, strike on Dong Hoi airfield when a MiG 

threatened a flight of B-52s. Abrams further told the SASC that he never read the Air Force 

IG report, though General Wilson wrote in the report that Abrams had read a draft of the 

document.210 To Abrams, Lavelle’s ROE violations threatened military discipline, but he was 

uncertain that Lavelle had “acted against policy.” When asked by the SASC to clarify what he 

meant, Abrams responded, “He acted against the rules, and I think rules are a little different 

than policy. I am not sure of myself there. I just don’t know.”211

The testimony of Joint Chiefs Chairman Moorer also contained some dubious remarks. 

His comments about his role in coordinating the November 8, 1971, raid on the Quang Lang 

airfield were questionable, for without his efforts Lavelle would likely not have secured the Navy’s 

permission to attack that target. Furthermore, in the June 23, 1972, SASC hearing to confirm 

Moorer’s reappointment as Chairman, the admiral offered observations regarding the chain of 

command that contradicted the arrangement he had secured with President Nixon. Moorer explained to Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) that the President gave his orders to the Secretary of Defense to transmit to the military chiefs. Smith then asked if the President “would 

not go direct, would not bypass the Secretary?” Moorer responded, “All orders to the operating 

forces pass through the Joint Chiefs of Staff but the President would not go down into the system. 

Neither would I. I would not bypass Admiral McCain and I would hope the Secretary of Defense 

209 Ibid., 108.

210 Ibid., 109; Abrams, Interview Summary, March 11 and 16, 1972, in Wilson, Jr., “Report of 

Investigation,” Appendix D.

211 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 13, 1972, 109.
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would not bypass me.”212 As Moorer well knew, Nixon had ordered him to report directly to the 

White House, and Nixon (and Kissinger) often communicated directly to him.

Moorer’s preparation for the SASC hearings in September 1972 was also telling. For that 

event, his staff compiled a thick briefing binder that contained arguments to refute eight allegations that Moorer had condoned, or perhaps even induced, Lavelle’s actions. To rebut the 

allegation that “the authorities above General Lavelle did not know what he was doing [because] 

there was a breakdown in civilian and military command and control through failure to detect 

the excesses and false reporting,” staff officers critiqued the reporting system that supposedly 

guided Lavelle’s actions. They wrote that “only one” mission, Dong Hoi on January 23, 1972, 

was “for sure flown in violation of operating authority,” and that the respective November 7–8, 

1971, strikes against Dong Hoi and Quang Lang airfields “both IN FACT were flown in accordance with operating authorities [emphasis in original].”213 Despite having this information at 

his disposal, Moorer refused to reveal it in his testimony, and not until DOD General Counsel 

Fred Buzhardt’s remarks during the March 1973 Senate hearings—6 months after the SASC had 

retired Lavelle at the rank of major general—did the lack of certainty regarding Lavelle’s ROE 

violations come to light. On the penultimate page of the list of allegations prepared for Moorer, 

the admiral wrote in block letters the word “integrity”—which could serve as an apt, if not 

ironic, summary for many aspects of the Lavelle affair. 

As for the testimony of General Slay, who served as Lavelle’s director of operations for 

the last 2 months of the controversial raids, parts of it must be read with a jaundiced eye. Slay 

contended that he designed the January 5, 1972, Moc Chau radar attack because Lavelle was 

away from Vietnam. Both Lavelle and Abrams reported differently, and transcripts of Abrams’s 

taped staff meetings reveal that Lavelle was indeed present.214 Colonel Gabriel told the SASC 

that Slay had directed him after protective reaction strikes not to report trucks destroyed on 

OPREP-4s because trucks were not air defense–related targets;215 Slay recalled to the SASC that 

“trucks were entered into the data base and we would just get credit for the trucks that we would 

get killed.” R. James Woolsey, general counsel to the SASC who led the Senate’s investigation, 

asked, “Were you aware before the inspector general’s visit that trucks were not being included 

212 “Nomination of Moorer for Reappointment as Chairman,” 20.

213 “List of Allegations,” Binder: SASC Hearing, September 27, 1972, 5, Box 90, Admiral Moorer 

Records, RG 218, NARA, College Park, MD. 

214 See transcripts of “Special Air Brief, 4 January 1972” and “8 January 1972 Weekly Intelligence 

Estimate Update,” in Sorley, ed., 742, 743.

215 “Nomination of Lavelle, Abrams, and McCain,” September 15, 1972, 202.
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in the OPREP-4s when they were, in fact, struck?” Slay responded, “No, sir, I was not.” Woolsey 

continued, “Did you ever instruct him [Gabriel] to leave any types of targets out of the OPREP4s from the standard reporting system?” Slay replied, “No, sir; not to my recollection; no, sir.” 

Woolsey persisted, “Did you ever say anything which could have been interpreted that way by 

him?” Slay answered, “If he did it, I must have because Charlie is a very honorable man and I 

don’t think he would just have done that on his own.”216 Lavelle remarked in his oral history 

interview that he had to counsel Slay on three different occasions for publicly berating subordinates. To Lavelle, Slay was the “fair-haired boy” of several Air Force four-star generals. “The Air 

Force had destined, obviously, for him to go ahead,” Lavelle remembered, “but I couldn’t condone the way he was treating his people.”217 In 1981, 2 years after Lavelle’s death, Slay referred 

to Lavelle’s conduct of protective reaction strikes as “a totally honest misjudgment” in which 

Lavelle believed he had the “tacit approval [of] the people in Washington. . . . Everybody, at 

least in my shop, understood those things were recorded and accurate. . . . No one in [Seventh 

Air Force] headquarters ever gave it a second thought because everybody assumed that this was 

another exercise like Cambodia.”218

Almost 40 years later, two individuals who played central roles in the Lavelle affair offered 

their thoughts about the Lavelle affair. Otis Pike (D-NY), who had led the call in the HASC for 

an investigation of Lavelle, expressed his anger at not receiving a copy of the ROE during the 

June 1972 hearing. He also recalled that Secretary Laird wanted to talk with him privately during the hearing and said that the questions Pike had asked “could affect the next election.” Laird 

“told me he would give me all the details on the Lavelle case if I would promise not to talk about 

it anymore. I declined,” Pike remembered. He added, “If I had had the White House tapes at 

the time I would have been even angrier at President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger for turning 

General Lavelle loose and then hanging him out to dry by denying they had done so.”219 James 

Woolsey, the SASC general counsel from 1970 to 1973, noted that if the SASC had access to the 

Nixon tapes and Secretary Laird’s 2007 letter to Air Force Magazine, “I am quite confident that 

it would not have voted against advancing General Lavelle on the retired list.” Woolsey further 

216 Ibid., September 19, 1972, 325–326. From Lavelle’s perspective, trucks that appeared at radar 

sites or with missile transporters were valid air defense targets.

217 Lavelle oral history interview, 655–659.

218 Slay oral history interview, 82–83.

219 Letter, Otis G. Pike to John B. Dempsey, April 19, 2008, available at <https://mbk-wp-media.

s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Lavelle-Presskit-18-Pike_Letter_20080419.pdf>. 
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observed, “It is important to understand that the only offense of which General Lavelle is guilty 

was not being sufficiently informed about the format of some computer data forms.”220

Assessment and Legacy

Combining Lavelle’s testimony and his oral history with testimonies of others, the documentary evidence now available, and, in particular, the findings in the Nixon tapes, reveal a picture very different from that seen by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in 1972 

and 1973 and by the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2010. Lavelle did not 

violate the rules of engagement, nor did he order the falsification of records. Given the conditions that governed the air war over North Vietnam at the time, and the direction that he received from political as well as military leaders, he carried out his orders to the best of his ability 

while trying to minimize the danger to his aircrews. He was not perfect in trying to accomplish 

those tasks. Yet the failure to provide clarity does not equate to a deliberate attempt to deceive. 

Lavelle is not the first, nor the last, commander who failed to provide precision when issuing 

orders, but he may well be the first four-star officer to be sacked and subsequently demoted because of his failure to be specific. He had no intent to deceive, unlike President Nixon, who used 

deception as a fundamental instrument of policy, as seen by the bombing of Cambodia and the 

February 3, 1972, decision to attack SAM sites. Lavelle kept his superiors fully informed of his 

actions, and the commander in chief was pleased by Lavelle’s accomplishments—and genuinely 

disheartened by his dismissal.

In the final analysis, the Lavelle affair stands as a test of American civil-military relations 

in the modern era of limited war. Lavelle remembered that military leaders throughout the war 

were reluctant to confront their civilian masters because such actions might be perceived as 

challenging the principle of civilian control of the military. Indeed, Lavelle recalled that Ryan’s 

primary concern after General Wilson’s investigation was the violation of that principle:

When Ryan called me back and fired me, his total discussion for the first hour 

or two was the Air Force had followed civilian instructions, had done what they 

were told; they hadn’t liked the job; they didn’t want to fight the war; they weren’t 

willing to fight the war that way, didn’t want to fight it that way, but there was no 

220 Letter, R. James Woolsey to the Board of Correction of Air Force Records, June 11, 2008, 

available at <https://mbk-wp-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Lavelle-Presskit16-Woolsey_Letter_20080611.pdf>. 
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instance on record of the Air Force not doing exactly what our civilian betters had 

told us to do, and I [Lavelle] was the first one that cast a doubt on that.221

 During the House and Senate hearings, many editorial writers excoriated Lavelle for conducting his own private air war and trying to hide what he had done. So it must have appeared 

at the time. In reality, rather than attempting to usurp power, Lavelle grappled with how best 

to stop an imminent enemy offensive that he could not attack directly with the massive force 

at his disposal—and how to achieve that goal without further endangering his aircrews. All the 

while, he received guidance indicating that he should “liberally” interpret the rules and hit the 

enemy harder, along with promises of support should the situation go awry. Lavelle interpreted 

the rules as suggested, and for doing so, he was cast adrift by his military chiefs, and ultimately 

by the President.

Today’s commanders should expect to face the same type of dilemma, because many of the 

situations they are likely to confront will demand interpretation. The rules of engagement are 

unlikely to be black and white; thorny phrases such as “activated against” will likely reappear, 

and what seems to be sound guidance at one point in a conflict may quickly become lethal because the enemy gets a vote—and a savvy enemy will use the ROE to his own advantage. Moreover, no two Presidents will be alike; their personalities and temperaments will have a profound 

effect on how they use military power, and air power in particular, which is the military instrument that seemingly offers the most gains for the lowest costs. Lyndon Johnson relied heavily 

on McNamara, his Secretary of Defense, for military insight. In contrast, Nixon did all he could 

to undercut Laird and called on Kissinger to serve not only as de facto Secretary of Defense, 

but also as de facto Secretary of State. Professor Richard Kohn, who has written extensively on 

American civil-military relations, observed, “Civilian control is not a fact, but a process that 

varies over time and is very much ‘situational,’ that is, dependent on the issues and personalities, 

civilian and military, involved at any given point.”222

Additionally, commanders must understand that “civil-military relations” refers not only 

to their relationship with the President, but also to how members of Congress interact with 

the military. Lavelle recalled that he met with Senator John C. Stennis (D-MS), who chaired 

the SASC, several times before the SASC hearings commenced in September 1972. He asked 

221 Lavelle oral history interview, 680.

222 Richard H. Kohn, “Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations,” The National Interest 35 (Spring 1994), 16, available at <http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/out-of-control-the-crisisin-civil-military-relations-343>. 
Stennis why the committee would conduct its investigation, given that committee members 

were already aware of the facts in the case. “This is an election year,” Stennis replied. “Don’t you 

understand?”223 Partisan politics were certainly a factor in the questioning that came to Lavelle 

and others who testified. The Democrats, who largely opposed Nixon’s handling of the war, controlled both houses of Congress and would still do so after the 1972 election, when they threatened to cut all funding for the war in response to the President’s “Linebacker II” December 

bombing offensive. Unless generals and admirals have an appreciation for domestic politics and 

how it can affect strategic decisionmaking by the commander in chief, they will have difficulty 

providing guidance that the President finds acceptable.224

Generals and admirals can possess personality defects as well; high rank is no guarantee 

of sound strategic thinking—and the integrity and responsibility that need to accompany it. 

What should a commander like Lavelle do if given advice from superiors to interpret existing 

authorities “liberally”? How should a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs respond if the President 

tells that individual to ignore the Secretary of Defense? How should a field commander like 

Vogt respond if the National Security Advisor tells the commander to report directly to Washington rather than through the military chain of command? One might answer these questions, and many others raised by the Lavelle affair, by advising the officer receiving the guidance to get it “in writing.” Asking for such written confirmation may well require a large dose 

of what Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz referred to as “the courage to accept 

responsibility, either before the tribunal of some outside power or before the court of one’s own 

conscience.”225 The current standing rules of engagement attempt to remove such hesitation, 

and today’s Air Force doctrine warns commanders to request clarification, guidance, or changes whenever orders may appear uncertain.226 Despite this evolution in direction, confusion can 

still occur, especially in situations involving self-defense.227 In addition, asking for a written 

223 Lavelle oral history interview, 660.

224 Noted Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz, “We can now see that the assertion 

that a major military development, or the plan for one, should be a matter of purely military opinion is 

unacceptable and can be damaging. Nor indeed is it sensible to summon soldiers, as many governments 

do when they are planning a war, and ask them for purely military advice.” See Carl von Clausewitz, On 

War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 607. 

Original emphasis.

225 Ibid., 101.

226 Annex 1-04, “Legal Support to Operations: Rules of Engagement,” March 4, 2012, available at 

<https://doctrine.af.mil/download.jsp?filename=1-04-D12-LEGAL-ROE.pdf>. 

227 The current standing rules of engagement (SROE) for U.S. forces are published in Chairman 
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confirmation of a directive implies that it is at least questionable, if not illegal, which may not 

be the case. Furthermore, if the guidance is appropriate, asking for it in writing destroys the 

trust that is fundamental to the sound functioning of the military establishment—and is also 

essential to the notion of its civilian control.

Such issues will not disappear. The current era of 24/7 news cycles and social media will 

make dealing with these issues more difficult not only for a field commander, but also for any 

individual holding a high position. Lavelle met the challenges that he faced with logic, integrity, 

and dignity. His example offers much food for thought for American leaders in the 21st century.

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI) 3121.01B, and approved by the Secretary of Defense. See 

CJCSI 3121.01B, “Standing Rules of Engagement/Standing Rules for the Use of Force for U.S. Forces,” 

June 13, 2005. Outside U.S. territory, the SROE apply to all military operations and contingencies. The 

current SROE, which are classified secret, are under revision. For a detailed discussion on ROE, with a 

particular focus on self-defense, see Christopher D. Amore, “Rules of Engagement: Balancing the Inherent Right and Obligation of Self-Defense with the Prevention of Civilian Casualties,” National Security 

Law Journal 1, no. 1 (Spring 2013), available at <www.nslj.org/pdfs/NSLJ_Vol1_Iss1_Spring2013.pdf>.

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About the Author

Dr. Mark Clodfelter joined the National War College at the National Defense University in 

July 1997. He is a former Air Force officer who was a ground radar officer by trade. After serving 

radar tours at Myrtle Beach and South Korea, he spent the remainder of his career in military 

academia. That service has included two teaching tours in the History Department at the Air 

Force Academy, one at the Air Force’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell 

Air Force Base, and one as Air Force ROTC Professor of Aerospace Studies at the University of 

North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Air Force Academy, a master’s degree from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and a Ph.D. from the University of North 

Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of 

North Vietnam (Free Press, 1989), Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American 

Air Power, 1917–1945 (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), and numerous articles and book 

chapters dealing with the American military experience. His area of expertise is American military history, with a special emphasis on airpower and the Vietnam War.