THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF 11 APRIL 1969

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: President's Daily Brief 1969-1977
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005976718
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: August 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2016
• Publication Date: April 11, 1969

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The President's Daily Brief
11 April 1969
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PUK 1 PM FKL,NIDLIN 1 UNL Y
12 April 1969
LATE NOTES FOR THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF OF
11 APRIL 1969
I. MAJOR PROBLEMS
VIETNAM
There was continued shelling today with a second attack
at Vinh Long city in the IV Corps area and hits on 25-30
other towns. Recent intercepts show that a number of enemy
main force regiments in the III Corps provinces near Saigon
are in the process of withdrawing to base areas and border
sanctuaries. (Central Intelligence Bulletin;
PirDDtE EAST
Igraeli and Jordanian troops battled for three hours to-
day eight miles south of the Sea of Galilee, according to a
Jordanian military spokesman. The Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram,
claims that several senior Israeli military officers who
were conferring at an advance post near the Suez Canal Thurs-
day were injured by artillery fire. (Press)
There is nothing significant to report on Europe or
Soviet Affairs.
II. OTHER IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS
CAMBODIA
Phnom Penh radio today carried a statement by Sihanouk
that he has received a letter from President Nixon saying that
the US will recognize Cambodian frontiers next Wednesday and
that he is preparing his diplomats for a renewal of relations
with the US. (FBIS 09, 12 Apr)
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MAJOR PROBLEMS
NIPPLE EAST
The embassy in Amman reports that the fedayeen may be
getting ready for a major show of strength. Signs pointing
in this direction had started to appear even before Tuesday's
rocket attack on Elat, and they have multiplied since then.
The Jordanian Government apparently is working itself up to
an attempt to curb the terrorists, but the embassy doubts
that it will do anything until Husayn returns. The govern-
ment lost a good bit of prestige--and hence saw its leverage
with the terrorists reduced--by its inept handling of the
rocket incident.
Fedayeen confidence and inflexibility were apparent in
what an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization in
Beirut told a US Embassy officer. In the last 18 months he.
claimed, the fedayeen have grown strong enough to keep any
Arab government from reaching a separate settlement with
Israel. He also made it clear that Husayn was not empowered
to speak for the fedayeen during his current visit to Washing-
ton, and that the PLO rejected both the Security Council res-
olutibn of 22 November 1967 and the current four-power talks.
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VIETNAM
The current refusal of the Vietnamese Communists
to meet privately with representatives of the govern-
ment of South Vietnam may well represent a firm deci-
sion-by the Politburo in Hanoi to.procrastinate'until
the US agrees to four-way private talks on the political"
future of Smith Vietnam, There are signs, hOwever, that
the lack of. action-or reaction on the part of the Commu-
nists. in. Paris reflectscontinuing debate within the
Politburo.over what course to take.
We suspects
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Vietnamese Politburo has been in extended session over
how to proceed both in .Paris and on the battlefield in'
South Vietnam. We. note in particular that Le ? Duc Tho
has been back in Hanoi for almost two months now This,
his longestmabsence from Paris, may be a result of the
Politburo's inability to reach agreement-over. what to
do next.
. We believe that the North Vietnamese leadership has
long been split over how to fight the war, and that
strong differences are continually surfacing now over
how to, proceed in the negotiations'. There probably are
some who advocate a policy of ending the fighting soon'
and attempting to carry-on the strUggle.in the South
largely through political methods. These people, who
perhaps include Truong Chinh and\Pham Van Dong might
be willing tO make a deal,-with the current-government
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in Saigon and accept a temporary settlement which accorded
the Liberation Front a legal political role in South Viet-
nam. Those who advocate this path, of course, also favor
use of illegal and paramilitary action whenever and where-
ever it can be used,effectively to aid their cause. Others
in the Politburo, such as Le Duan, remain unalterably op-
posed to reliance on 'a so-called "parliamentary road" to
power and to the fundamental political compromises this
would require on the part of the Communists.
The Chinese Communists undoubtedly would back the
views of Hanoi's hard liners. Peking obviously has been
worried for a long time that Hanoi was.going to compromise
significantly in the course of the negotiations. Since
last autumn there have been many, items in Chinese media
which could be read as strong hints of concern that the
Vietnamese Communits are going to choose ?a "parliamentary
road."
Truong Chinh's magnum opus of last summer, which
laid out the path the Politburo wanted to take in South
Vietnam, was very defensive on the question of whether
the? party advocated the "road of peaceful transition."
Truong,Chinh flatly ruled out any such illusion as a means
of "seizing power," but he was very vague on the courses
which might become necessary if the party was unable to
seize power by force. He noted, in fact, that in Vietnam
either the "political or the armed struggle will play
the principal role in accordance with the actual situa-
tion." He went on to state that "when not able- seize
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power, we should cleverly coordinate illegal activities
with legal or semilegal ones," thus leaving open the possi-
bility of some sort of participation in the legal govern.ment or political life Of South Vietnam.
We believe, in fact, that some time last summer the
North Vietnamese made some basic strategy decisions. One of
these probably was to try to force a negotiated settlement
of the war which would ensure eventual withdrawal of all
US forces. The Politburo probably also recognized that
achieving such a settlement would require fundamental Com-
munist political concessions in South Vietnam.
It is likely that these were the decisions reflected
in Truong Chinh's report and more specifically in Hanoi's
agreement in October to accept the present South Vietnamese
Government as one of the principal parties in the negotia-
tions. This, in itself, was certainly a grim compromise
for the hard liners. They probably have been trying when-
ever possible to forestall further steps along this toad.
In our view, however, the decisions made last summer have
not been reversed and whatever debate may now be going on
in Hanoi involves the tactics for carrying out the new stra-
tegic course.
Recent deployments by Communist main force units and
the level of enemy activity over the past few weeks have
combined to create a mixed picture of Hanoi's intentions
in the military sphere. The disengagement of a number
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of enemy main force units from combat areas, coupled with
a sharp downturn in the number of infiltration groups enter-
ing the pipeline, suggests that the enemy intends to close
down his latest offensive and lie low for a while.
On the other hand, the spate of shelling incidents to-
day, several intercepts referring to other upcoming attacks,
and the current move 50X1
into the Laos corridor west of Khe Sanh all point 50X1
toward an intent to continue the offensive.
These seemingly contradictory moves- could reflect in-
decision among the party leadership on how to proceed at
present. A more.likely-explanation, however, is that the
Communist high command has decided to alter somewhat the
character of its military effort while retaining its basic
purpose. The primary aim of the offensive which began on
22 February. probably was to demonstrate that:Communist
forces remain in the field and that,there,is no likelihood
of an early end to the fighting apart .from a negotiated
settlement of the war. The Comthunists-may now believe
that they can continue to make that point by staging only
occasional large-scale shelling incidents, such as the one
today. By pulling some of their main force units back into
base areas. they may' hope to reduce their casualties and
thus also the number of replacements needed from North
Vietnam.
They may also believe that by keeping other units near
certain key allied installations and urban centers
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they can maintain -a suffiCient threat to
tie down significant numbers of allied units in largely
de-
fensive At the same time they can give some main
force units a respite frOm the fighting.
The enemy high command must also be considering ways
of countering any US plan for unilateral withdrawal of US
forces from South Vietnam. Hanoi wants US troops out, but
it wants to extract political concessions from the US as
the price for lowering the level of the military threat
sufficiently to allow such a withdrawal. The North Viet-
namese believe their only hope of getting adequate politi-
cal and military concessions from the US lies in domestic
pressure on the US administration. They further believe
that any unilateral US troop withdrawal may lower the level
of domestic pressure and thus lessen the likelihood of such
concessions.
Thus, Hanoi's planners probably will design their mil-
itary operations in such a way as to make significant US
troop withdrawal appear a serious threat to the ability of
the GVN to contain the-Communi,sts.., If this is the case,
over the next few months we may- find the enemy launching
more, of his attacks against ARVN units and areas primarily
defended by government forces During the latest offensive,.
the Communists appear to have been trying primarily to drive
up the level of US casualties, presumably on the assumption
that the higher the level-of US casualties, the more do-
mestic pressure on the US Government to make concessions in
Paris.
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SOVIET AFFAIRS
The Soviets are continuing to press the leadership
in Prague prior to the opening of a Czechoslovak party
plenum next week. Soviet Defense Minister Grechko re-
turned to Prague today from East Germany, where he met
with Ulbricht and Polish party chief Gomulka. In Moscow,
the Czech ambassador was called in yesterday for a
"friendly" talk with Brezhnev.
The return of Grechko, as well as the continued pres-
ence of Deputy Foreign Minister Semenov, emphasizes that
the Soviets are unwilling to tolerate Dubcek's delays in
carrying out their demands. They probably are prodding
Dubcek and his colleagues to make sure the central com-
mittee endorses to the letter Moscow's revised prospectus
for "normalization." The plenum will probably go along
after prolonged and painful debate.
Moscow seems also to be playing a role behind the
scenes in Prague's precautionary measures to avert
threatened strikes over several issues. Semenov met with
trade union chief Polacek today, probably to sound out
the hitherto liberal unions on their attitude toward new
"normalization" measures. If the workers stage a general
strike over expected price hikes, the students and other
sectors of the population might join them. Consequently,
one of Grechko's objectives may be to coordinate security
measures with the Czechs and among his commanders in case
the situation should necessitate action by Soviet occupa-
tion forces.
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Meanwhile, the Dubcek leadership apparently has
worked out a compromise to head off a strike threatened
by students over press censorship. The students an-
nounced that they will hold only a relatively harmless
one-day "teach-in"--a solution that may be acceptable
to the Russians.
There is widespread speculation that some top party
leaders, including Dubcek and the popular presidium mem-
ber Josef Smrkovsky, will be ousted at the forthcoming
plenum. The Russians allegedly are pressing for Smr-
kovsky's removal, even though they are aware that this
action, as well as other retrogressive measures, could
bring the Czechs into the streets.
EUROPE
the West German Foreign
Office thinks that De Gaulle is playing old-fashioned
intra-European power politics in order to establish French
primacy.
said De Gaulle recognizes that he cannot
hold out forever against UK entry into the European Com-
munities. His current tactic is therefore to propose a
kind of French-UK-West German-Italian consortium for di-
recting Europe, ?with France playing the leading role.
noted the wide gulf between De Gaulle's ideas on
Europe and those of other Western European governments
who support integration.
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seemed to betray some anxiety that De Gaulle
might be able to obtain US and UK acquiescence in his
efforts. He alluded to the concern felt in Bonn prior
to the President's European tour that the President
would endorse De Gaulle's ideas on Europe in the inter-
est of improving US-French relations.
Finally,
made clear that Bonn does not favor
a British-French dialogue as originally proposed by De
Gaulle, thus contradicting Lord Chalfont's assertion
that the Germans have been encouraging London to under-
take talks.
II, OTHER IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS
There is nothing signifidant to report.
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,
Top Secret
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