THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF 8 APRIL 1968

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: President's Daily Brief 1961-1969
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005974369
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: September 16, 2015
• Document Release Date: September 16, 2015
• Publication Date: April 8, 1968

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The President's Daily Brief
-71?774"2"44. 8 April 1968
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DAILY BRIEF
8 APRIL 1968
1. Vietnam
2. Pakistan
Communist forces continue tore-
act cautiously to US operations in the
Khe Sanh area. They, seem to be offer-
ing only limited resistance while try-
ing to determine the scope of the al-
lied drive.
Farther south, the North Vietnam-
ese seem to be taking advantage of the
last few weeks of dry weather in the
central highlands to move very large
quantities of combat supplies into Kon-
tum Province.
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3. Poland
4. East Germany
5. Soviet Union
6. Soviet Union
More reports are coming in on high-
level government changes expected this
week. We do not think Gomulka is on
his way out, but the reports do point
to a high government post for Edward
Gierek, the man who may well take over
from Gomulka ultimately.
Gierek, Politburo member with a
strong power base in the industrial
south, has been speaking more and more
like a man who sees a big future for
himself.
What looked earlier like a Gierek
alliance with the hardliners now seems
more like a temporary tactical ploy.
He is now making a pitch for support
from the party's younger, reform-minded
members, and he is omitting the anti-
semitic overtones from his speeches.
The surprising thing about the
"referendum" yesterday approving a new
constitution was that more than 400,000
people voted against it (out of some
12 million). It took courage to vote
no. The authorities were standing by,
taking down the names of those who did
so.
The party's Central Committee is
scheduled to meet this Tuesday. We
think it will be concerned mainly with
domestic affairs.
The lunar probe launched yester-
day seems to be operating as planned.
It will take about three days to reach
the area of the moon. This is the
first time in well over a year that a
Soviet probe has successfully left
earth orbit. Its mission is either to
orbit the moon or to land a payload on
the surface.
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Top Secret
FOR THE PRESIDENT'S EYES ONLY
1.) Special Daily Report on North Vietnam
2.) North Vietnamese Reflections of U S
Political Attitudes
?Top Secret
16
8 April 1968
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Special Daily Report on North Vietnam
for the President's Eyes Only
8 April 1968
I. NOTES ON THE SITUATION
Hanoi Publicly Silent on Prospective "Contacts"
with US: The Vietnamese Communists did not issue
any significant new public statements or commentary
during the weekend concerning their attitude toward
prospective "contacts" with a US representative.
Communist media have not reported Foreign Minister
Trinh's statement to CBS correspondent Charles Col-
lingwood that Hanoi is ready "to make contact" with
a US representative in Phnom Penh "or in another
place to be mutually agreed upon."
Sihanouk Willing to Host Vietnam Peace Talks:
On Friday, Sihanouk told
that he "would be happy" to have Phnom Penh used as
the site for initial US -?North Vietnamese contacts.
He said this in the course of a speculative discus-
sion about various places that might be proposed by
Hanoi. He thought Rangoon was another possibility.
* * *
Hanoi Continues to Condemn Bombings: North
Vietnam is issuing daily reminders of continued US
bombing in an attempt to keep up the pressure for
a full bombing cessation. In a broadcast on 7
April, Hanoi radio charged the US with conducting
"repeated and very savage bombing raids" against
North Vietnamese territory. The broadcast implied
these attacks were in violation of President John-
son's statements of 31 March. According to Hanoi,
the President said he was stopping the bombing "ex-
cept in the area north of the Demilitarized Zone,"
and that this area included "almost 90 percent" of
North Vietnam's population. "In reality," said the
broadcast, the US has continued to attack "an impor-
? tant part of the territory and population" of North
Vietnam. It cited attacks in all four provinces
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south of the 20th parallel, and "even Lai Chau prov-
ince," in the northwestern part of the country,
where the regime claims an attack occurred last week.
North Vietnamese news agency items on 6 and 7
April were blatantly aimed at drumming up interna-
tional support for Hanoi's case against the US. The
agency charged the US with attacks on "many heavily
populated areas" and with killing "many people, in-
cluding old folks and children." The news agency
said US attacks in one southern province had in-
creased sharply since the President's speech, and
mentioned bombings while "local people were eating
dinner" and Catholics were "holding services."
* * *
Hanoi Scores President Johnson's "Stubbornness":
In a commentary broadcast to American troops in
South Vietnam ?on 5 April, Hanoi radio noted both
President Johnson's restrictions on bombing and his
call for negotiations. It called his concern for
casualties on both sides "hypocrisy," however, and
said these moves were forced on the President by
the Tilitary situation in Vietnam and rising pres-
sures against US policy both at home and abroad.
The broadcast condemned the President's moves
as inadequate and argued that sending additional US
troops to Vietnam and continuing bombings "against
populated areas hundreds of miles north of the DMZ"
amounted to a "US plot." The broadcast repeated the
key paragraph from Hanoi's 3 April statement about
being ready to contact the US in order to stop the
bombing, but ended by telling US forces they should
not be in Vietnam and by accusing the President of
"stubbornness."
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.Hanoi Claims Action Around Khe Sanh: For the
fourtl?UTTIE-5-75WT-Ranoi's international news
?service on 7 April carried false accounts of "heavy"
fighting around Khe Sanh. Claims of "heavy losses"
inflicted on US forces by Communist infantry and ar-
tillery units in the Khe Sanh area were attributed
to,Viet Cong press reports. On 7 April the news
service claimed that "over 1,400 enemy troops" had
been "wiped out" and 16 aircraft shot down in the
period 3-6 April. This account, like three earlier
ones, is virtually all fiction. Except for one
sharp clash on 5 April, Communist forces offered
little resistance to allied operations around Khe
Sanh during this period, and artillery attacks on
the base were relatively light.
Japanese Correspondent's Report: A Japanese cor-
respondent just back from Hanoi wrote in the 7 April
Asahi that he was surprised to find almost no signs
of airattacks on Hanoi. He said he expected to see
destruction similar to that in Japan during World
War II, but the only definite mark of bomb damage he
observed was the Paul Doumer Bridge.
In Haiphong, however, he reports the picture
was much different, with schools, hospitals, and
churches in ruins. Even there, though, he said
supplies of food and other daily necessities seemed
ample and trucks rolled through the bombed-out areas
regularly.
* * *
Traveling Diplomat: Hanoi's vice minister of
foreign affairs, Hoang Van Loi, is continuing his
junket through Africa. On Saturday he arrived in
Guinea; from there he will visit Mali, Congo (Braz-
zaville), Tanzania, Egypt, and Syria.
* * *
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* * *
II. NORTH VIETNAMESE REFLECTIONS OF US POLITICAL
ATTITUDES ON THE WAR
Hanoi on King Assassination: Hanoi radio's
domestic service on 6 April broadcast a commentary
on Martin Luther King's murder. This had prompted
a "resurgence of the Negro movement" in the US, it
said, and then reviewed reports of disorders in US
cities. President Johnson, it claimed, "ordered a
national funeral for King" in order to "appease
the struggle." The commentary charges that King
had been "jailed 15 times by President Johnson for
his civil rights struggle," and that last year the
President used arms to "suppress" Negroes. The
broadcast only weakly links the disorders to Viet-
nam, by saying that while the US is "having head-
aches with the Vietnam issue," the Negroes' 'truggle"
is another blow at the administration,
A more vicious line directly connecting the
assassination and the war was taken in the party
daily, Nhan Dan, on 7 April. North Vietnam, it said,
"demanded" that the US stop "all acts of suppres-
sion" against black people. The outbreak of new
violence in US cities is hailed as a "second front"
against "US imperialism right in the heart of the
United States." Vietnam is described as the "center
and front line" of the "first front" against the US.
The paper concludes by quoting words used by Premier
Pham Van Dong during Stokely Carmichael's visit last
summer praising the "struggle" of American Negroes
against the US "common enemy."
* * *
North Vietnamese Radio Notes US Support: Hanoi
radio in nglish on Saturday, said that "progressive
American opinion" welcomes the North Vietnamese
statement of 3 April. It said many prominent person-
alities are "calling on the American public to
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increase its struggle to urge that the US Government
stop the war." The American "personalities" men-
tioned in the broadcast included "Dellinger, editor
of the Review Liberation; the Reverend Berningan,
well-known peace militant"; the Reverend Coffin; and
Joan Baez.
The broadcast also claimed that some 90 Ameri-
can youths in New York last week demonstrated against
conscription for Vietnam and decided to return their
draft cards. "They, called on the American people to
redouble their pressure on the government to end its
aggression."
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