named "Pennsylvania," to make a peace overture to Hanoi through Aubrac
and Marcovich. Kissinger was retained as Washington's contact with the two
French intermediaries.

2. The purpose of the "Pennsylvania" Initiative

a. *Hitchens* asserts that Aubrac and Marcovich “briefed Kissinger in Paris,” and that Kissinger then “parlayed their information into high-level conversations in Washington, relaying the actual or potential negotiating positions of [Prime Minister] Pham Van Dong and other Communist statesmen to Robert McNamara.”²³ According to Hitchens, this “relaying” of “negotiating positions” resulted in the “relentless bombing of the North.”²⁴

*Fact:* On July 24, 1967, Aubrac and Marcovich traveled to Hanoi to meet with Ho Chi Minh and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, to whom they presented the American proposal for negotiations. Prime Minister Pham replied that if the United States ordered "an unconditional end of bombing," then there would be "no further obstacle to negotiations."²⁵ Aubrac and Marcovich related Prime Minister Pham's position to Kissinger, who in turn notified the White House.

President Johnson authorized a reply to be sent through Aubrac and Marcovich. Washington sought Hanoi's assurance that it "would not take [military] advantage" of a bombing halt. Kissinger was enlisted to travel to Paris and work Johnson's terms into a formula acceptable to Hanoi.

On September 10, 1967 Prime Minister Pham replied with a letter denouncing Johnson's message as an "ultimatum." "The Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam," Prime Minister Pham wrote, "energetically rejects the American propositions."²⁶ When the United States responded by proposing a direct meeting between Kissinger and a North

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Lyndon B. Johnson, *The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency*, p 266.

²⁶ Johnson, p 267.

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Vietnamese representative, Hanoi replied that such a meeting "cannot take place."²⁷

Sensing that the channel had ceased to be productive, Secretary of State Rusk told Kissinger to inform Aubrac and Marcovich that "we don't see any desire on [Hanoi's] part to engage in serious discussions."

In late October, 1967, Aubrac and Marcovich made a final attempt to relate Washington's offer to Hanoi. They were rebuffed. "There is nothing new to say," Hanoi's trade representative in Paris told them. "There is no reason to talk again."²⁸

In February 1968, during a truce for the Tet holiday (the Vietnamese New Year celebration), Hanoi launched its largest offensive of the war.

### 3. The "Result" of the Pennsylvania Initiative

a. Hitchens asserts that the "result" of the "parlayed" "negotiating positions" was the "American destruction of the Paul Doumer bridge." Hitchens further asserts that the "destruction" of the bridge "outraged the [North] Vietnamese side," and implies that it should be considered a war crime.²⁹

**Fact:** The Long Bien/Paul Doumer Bridge over the Red River was a crucial military supply link between Hanoi, mainland China, and the port of Haiphong. It was used throughout the war to transport military personnel and equipment, and was defended by extensive anti-aircraft installations.³⁰
According to Harrison Salisbury of the *New York Times*, the bridge was

in all probability the single most important military objective in North Vietnam. Without this bridge the movement of traffic from north to south [Vietnam] would be radically impeded. Loss of the bridge would not knock North Vietnam out of the war. But it would make Hanoi's war effort infinitely more difficult.³¹

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Johnson, p 268.

²⁹ Hitchens, p 19.

³⁰ Guenter Lewy, *America in Vietnam*, p 398. See also John L. Frisbee, "A Bridge Downtown," *Air Force Magazine* (January 1992).

³¹ Salisbury, *Behind the Lines: Hanoi*, New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p 207.

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# Operation Speedy Express

Drafted 10/07/03 by Sky Schouten

## Background:

Throughout the war, Hanoi sought to subvert the South Vietnamese government by orchestrating a campaign of political terror. The chief agents of this campaign were the guerilla forces of the National Liberation Front (the NLF, or "Vietcong"). By the end of 1968, communist forces were estimated to have assassinated 16,594 South Vietnamese government officials and abducted 27,213.34 The NLF also routinely issued death threats against South Vietnamese citizens who sought to vote in elections, and on numerous occasions bombed polling stations.

In December 1968, regional commander General Creighton Abrams authorized "Operation Speedy Express," a campaign against NLF strongholds in the Mekong Delta provinces of Kien Hoa and Dinh Tuong.

## 1. Purpose and legal authority of Operation Speedy Express

a. Hitchens asserts that Operation Speedy Express violated "the international laws and charters governing the sovereign rights of self-defense"35 because "no regular North Vietnamese units' were deployed in the Mekong Delta"36 at the time of the operation.

**Fact:** From 1957 through 1968, Hanoi relied primarily on a strategy of guerilla warfare in South Vietnam. To this end, Hanoi trained, equipped, and commanded the National Liberation Front and infiltrated its cadres into South Vietnam. Under the customary laws of war, non-uniformed guerillas are classified as enemy combatants, and may lawfully be pursued by a defending government and its allies.

34 Lewy, *America in Vietnam*, p 454.

35 Hitchens, p 22.

36 Hitchens, p 31.

## 2. Authority for Implementation of Operation Speedy Express

a. Hitchens asserts that the Nixon administration implemented Operation Speedy Express to help bolster President Nixon's domestic political position. Hitchens further asserts that, while there is no direct evidence that Kissinger participated in the planning or implementation of Operation Speedy Express, nonetheless the "degree of micro-management revealed in Kissinger's memoirs" means "we can be sure" that Kissinger "was not unaware." Therefore, Hitchens argues, Kissinger should go "straight to the dock at Nuremberg or The Hague."

*Fact:* Operation Speedy Express was designed and implemented during the Johnson administration, under the authority of President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, and regional commander General Creighton Abrams. Kissinger had no operational role in this administration, nor any position in its military chain of command.

When the Nixon administration took office on January 20, 1969, the pacification campaign in Kien Hoa and Dinh Tuong provinces was ongoing. There is no evidence to suggest that the White House was made specifically aware of Operation Speedy Express, nor of its termination on June 1, 1969.

# Planning for a Hypothetical "Operation Duck Hook"

## Background:

As National Security Advisor, Kissinger was often charged with preparing special studies and options papers for President Nixon. Such documents compiled the views of various government agencies concerning the viability of potential American policies.

In October 1969, President Nixon ordered a study exploring the implications of "Duck Hook" - a hypothetical operation designed to overwhelm Hanoi's military infrastructure and end the war in one decisive stroke.

"Duck Hook" was modeled in part on the operations with which the United States ended the Korean War. In May 1953, President Eisenhower ordered aerial strikes against five major North Korean dams, thereby destroying the year's rice crop and diverting thousands of man-hours into flood control; at the same time, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles threatened the use of nuclear weapons against China. The Communist side relented, and within weeks an armistice was signed at Panmunjom.³⁷

## 1. Context and content of the hypothetical "Operation Duck Hook"

a. **Hitchens** asserts that "Kissinger at one point contemplated using thermonuclear weapons to obliterate the pass through which ran the railway link from North Vietnam to China, and at another stage considered bombing the dikes that prevented North Vietnam's irrigation system from flooding the country."³⁸ Hitchens labels these actions "potential war crimes [on] our bill of indictment."³⁹ Hitchens cites, but does not quote, the accounts of Tad Szulc and Roger Morris to support his assertions.

**Fact:** In October 1969, Kissinger instructed the Duck Hook task force to "consider the options of bombing the Red River dikes to flood the vital farm land of North Vietnam and closing the rail supply lines at the Chinese

³⁷ William Stueck, *The Korean War: An International History*, pp 328-330. See also "Dam Raids of 1953," in Spencer C. Tucker et al., *Encyclopedia of the Korean War: A Political, Social, and Military History*, Vol. I, pp 179-180.

³⁸ Hitchens, p 33.

³⁹ Hitchens, p 34.

border.”⁴⁰ The task force’s conclusion was that this option was militarily
possible, but politically infeasible. They emphasized this conclusion in their
report.

Soon after Kissinger assigned the Duck Hook study,
as one of the men remembered it, "someone raised the question of nuclear
weapons." Kissinger said, "It is the policy of this administration not to use
nuclear weapons, and we shall not [use them], so this option excludes that
one thing." But "you are not to exclude the possibility of a nuclear device
being used for the purposes of a blockage in the pass to China, if that
seems to be the only way to close the pass."

Several participants assumed Kissinger meant using a tactical
nuclear weapon to close the mountain pass over which the railroad line runs
from China to North Vietnam. This railway was one of the most important
routes for deliveries of Chinese war materiel, fuel, and food to Hanoi, and
railroad bridges and tracks in Vietnamese territory were often hit by
American aircraft throughout the war. But the special group never
considered in its study the possibility of using a nuclear device as part of the
proposed blockade of North Vietnam, and Kissinger is not known to have
alluded to it again.⁴¹

## 2. Outcome and Purported Implications

a. Hitchens acknowledges that "Neither of these measures... was taken."⁴²
Nonetheless, Hitchens asserts that the fact that Kissinger "contemplated" such operations demonstrates Kissinger's "regnant mentality" of criminality.⁴³

**Fact:** Kissinger instructed the task force to prepare a report on whether an operation such as Duck Hook would be feasible under current military and political conditions. Their conclusion was that it would not. Accordingly, they included in the report an "Analysis" section advising the president to reject "Duck Hook." In November 1969, Kissinger presented the study to President Nixon. The president rejected the "Duck Hook" option, and it was never implemented.

⁴⁰ Morris, *Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy*, pp 163-4.

⁴¹ Szulc, *The Illusion of Peace*, pp 151-152.

⁴² Hitchens, pp 33-34.

⁴³ Hitchens, p 34.

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# The Writings and Statements of Military Jurist Telford Taylor

## Background:

In 1945, Colonel Telford Taylor was retained as an assistant to the Chief Counsel for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. When the chief prosecutor resigned his post in 1946, Taylor was selected as his replacement and promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. In 1962 Taylor was appointed a professor of law at Columbia University in New York. In this capacity Taylor became an outspoken critic of American policy in Indochina. In 1971, Taylor published *Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy*, in which he lamented the inconsistency of permitting Washington and Hanoi to pursue military policies elements of which had been considered "war crimes" during the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals.

## 1. General Taylor's opinions on international law and the Vietnam War

a. Hitchens asserts that "In January 1971," General Taylor "deliver[ed] the opinion that a large portion of his country's political class should probably be hooded and blindfolded and dropped through a trapdoor on the end of a rope."⁴⁴ Hitchens describes this view as General Taylor's "legal and moral conclusion."⁴⁵

Fact: During a January 1971 appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show," General Telford Taylor commented that if "the American people... face the principles that they laid down and applied to Germans and Japanese... [and if] they're willing to have the principles work the other way too," then President Johnson's top military commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, could be tried for war crimes and "could be found guilty... That's for some court to decide if you have the evidence there and look at it."⁴⁶ The next day, a *New York Times* reporter asked Taylor whether

⁴⁴ Hitchens, p. 25.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Neil Sheehan, "Taylor Says by Yamashita Ruling Westmoreland May Be Guilty," *New York Times*, January 9, 1971. This is the "considered statement" Hitchens cites in his account.

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he meant to implicate other American officials in his remarks. “The only civilian leader to whom the Yamashita precedent might conceivably be applied, [Taylor] said, would be Lyndon B. Johnson as Commander in Chief.”⁴⁷

b. *Hitchens* cites Taylor's book *Nuremberg and Vietnam* as evidence that “Taylor anticipated the Kissinger case in many ways when he recalled the trial of the Japanese statesman Koki Hirota,” who was convicted of criminal responsibility for Japanese atrocities in the 1937-1938 “Rape of Nanking” in China.⁴⁸ Hitchens asserts that according to Taylor’s interpretation of international law, Kissinger should be tried for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” just as leading Nazis and Japanese militarists were.

*Fact:* General Taylor did not advocate trying American government officials as war criminals. Nor did he make any reference to Henry Kissinger in his 1971 book *Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy*, or in the public remarks to which Hitchens refers. The extent of Hitchens’ obfuscation is made clear in this letter⁴⁹ from Jonathan Bush, General Taylor’s authorized biographer:

To the Editor:

Christopher Hitchens's originality and his use of evidence and international law are open to debate. But his reliance on the late General Telford Taylor's writings to argue that criminous heads of state must be tried, and that aerial bombardment constitutes a triable offense, is in error. As his biographer, my impression is that Taylor, though a passionate Vietnam dove, had too nuanced and forthright a view of international law to provide the ammunition Hitchens needs.

True, Taylor did say that Generals Westmoreland and Abrams, and even Presidents Johnson and Nixon, might be guilty of war crimes based on the *Yamashita* decision (in which the Supreme Court let stand a military conviction of a Japanese commander for atrocities in the Philippines that he neither ordered nor condoned nor knew of). But, like most civil libertarians, Taylor also thought that Yamashita was a procedural disgrace. He argued that the law was more accurately

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Hitchens, p. 29.

⁴⁹ Featured in the “Letters” section of the May 2001 issue of *Harper’s* magazine (pp. 4-5), in response to the initial publication of Hitchens’ two-part essay “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” (*Harper’s*, February & March, 2001). The disputed passages on General Taylor were published verbatim in the book version of *The Trial of Henry Kissinger*.

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stated in Nuremberg's "Hostage Case" (U.S. v. *List*), which held commanders responsible for war crimes only when they "knew or should have known" of the atrocities, a more restrictive standard.

Similarly, Taylor wrote repeatedly against the aerial bombing campaigns over both North and South Vietnam. But he knew that, except where it was demonstrably unnecessary, indiscriminate, and disproportionate, strategic bombing had not been criminal during World War II and that international law in this area had not evolved in the intervening twenty years. Taylor's view of bombing is illustrated in his December 1972 trip to Hanoi with Joan Baez and others who opposed the war. The delegation not only saw devastation but was itself bombed -- Nixon's Christmas surprise. Taylor, nonetheless, told the press and his North Vietnamese hosts that the bombing was cruel, destructive, but not a violation of the laws of war. (The clear violation, he added, was North Vietnam's failure to evacuate American POWs to shelter as soon as bombing began.)

Taylor opposed stretching the rhetoric of international law to challenge even dreadful policy, as Hitchens could have discovered. In misconstruing Taylor's arguments, what Hitchens has managed to do is convince this long-time opponent of Nixon and Kissinger's foreign-policy disasters that even Kissinger deserves better than to be tried before the kind of international tribunal recently endorsed by the contrite Robert McNamara.

Jonathan A. Bush
Center for Scholars and Writers
New York Public Library
New York City

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# Pakistan, the India-Pakistan War, and Bangladesh

Drafted 9/28/03 by Charles Hill

Minor revisions 10/01/03 by Sky Schouten

Reviewed 10/__/03 by Charles Hill

## Background

The state of Pakistan was created in 1947 as two geographically separate parts: West Pakistan, site of the capital Islamabad, and, on the other side of the subcontinent, East Pakistan. In 1971 an East Pakistan independence movement led by the Awami League caused Islamabad to react militarily and a bloody civil war broke out. India's intervention opened an India-Pakistan War, which became the focus of a world crisis involving the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the United States. At the end of 1971, East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh.

Unrelated to these events, but in the same timeframe, the Government of Pakistan was serving as a diplomatic intermediary between the US and China, who were seeking to end two decades of hostile estrangement.

## 1. Pakistan as the intermediary between the US and China

a. *Hitchens* asserts that Washington's use of Pakistan to facilitate an opening to China amounted to “deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination, in Bangladesh” and that there was “complicity, on Nixon and Kissinger's part, in the massacres” of the civil war because the US did not denounce the conduct of Pakistani forces as they attempted to suppress the independence movement. According to Hitchens, “In late 1971, at the very height of the mass murder, Kissinger sent a message to [Pakistani president] General Yahya Khan, thanking him for his ‘delicacy and tact.’”

*Fact:* The Pakistan civil war and the opening of contacts between the US and China were separate developments. On April 27, 1971 the Pakistani ambassador in Washington delivered a letter from the Chinese Premier inviting President Nixon to China "for a direct meeting and consultations." The next day, President Nixon sent a letter to President Yahya Khan thanking him for the "helpful role" he had played as an intermediary. "I particularly appreciate,"

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