LARGE STAFF MEETING MARCH 23, 9:45 - 10:27 A.M. - LAOS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: Library of Congress
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): LOC-HAK-269-5-10-7
• Release Decision: RIFLIM
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: January 11, 2017
• Document Release Date: November 3, 2009
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: March 23, 1971
• Content Type: MEMO

No Objection to Declassification in Full 2009/11/03: LOC-HAK-269-5-10-7
MORI/CDF
C05140194
MEMORANDUM
FROM Jeanne W. Davi
SUBJECT: Large Staff Meeting March 23, 9:45 - 10:27 A. M: - LAOS
Mr. Kissinger: I thought we might have a brief session on where
we stand on Laos -- what was achieved and what was not achieved -
and give you an opportunity to ask questions.
As I told you at the beginning of the operation, the basic concept
was to interdict the enemy's supplies so as to prevent or .delay an offen-
sive in this dry season and to push it as far back as possible into the next
dry season. We were attempting both in the south and in Laos to interdict
as much as we could. The operation in the south has proceeded at a
fairly steady pace with some impact. In the north in, military terms.
the North Vietnamese, when confronted with the threat, threw in almost
all the forces they had available. They drew a division from South
Vietnam and their entire strategic reserve from North Vietnam. This
resulted in a much larger enemy force than we anticipated. The South
Vietnamese were consistently outnumbered, and the nature of the terrain
means that they were even more outnumbered at any one point because
of the difficulty in reinforcing and other factors. The South Vietnamese
fought extremely well. Of the 22 battalions involved, 18 did well and
only four were in various degrees of trouble. It was interesting to me
that all the soldiers photographed clinging to the helicopter landing gear
were carrying their rifles and their gear. This was not. the behavior of
soldiers in a state of panic. This is the best estimate of the fighting
performance of the South Vietnamese by Al Haig and' others who have been
over there during this period.
Of course, there were many military problems. This was the first
time the South Vietnamese had undertaken a large-scale offensive action
without American advisers and American ground observers. The coordina-
tion between tactical air and combat units was not as good as it might
have been. And I'm not sure there was a full understanding of the
strategic concept underlying the operation. However, if we assess the
success of Vietnamization based on this operation in terms of combat
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performance under conditions of inadequate air support, the lack of over-
whelming strategic direction, and almost constant movement without a
quickly discernible pattern, on the whole they did extremely well.
Let us, consider the impact in terms of attrition of forces and of
logistics. The ARVN suffered 1000 dead and about 4000 wounded. In
every previous engagement, the ratio of North Vietnamese casualties
has been 7 to 1. The body count in this case is about 12, 060. Normally
I don't take the body count too seriously, but in this case I think it is
probably low. There were massive air attacks, B-52s and tactical air
attacks, in zones where enemy forces had to be by the nature of their
attack pattern. Enemy casualties must have been extremely high.
General Abrams thinks 8 out of 10 units were severely hurt, and common
sense tells us that this is probably true. No South Vietnamese units ran.
Where fire bases were lost, it was only after protracted fighting and the
casualties must have been enormous.
If the enemy strategy was to hold substantial combat,forces in Laos
to protect against an incursion and to move into the northern part of South
Vietnam in the dry season, we can assume that the probability of such an
offensive has been substantially reduced. The North Vietnamese didn't
have 100-plus tanks in Tchepone to defend Tchepone. They were obviously
intended to move into the flatlands. Therefore, the result of this opera-
tion has been to prevent a major North Vietnamese offensive in August
or September, prior to the South Vietnamese elections.
In the matter of logistics, our intelligence community has behaved
like a group of hysterical Talmudic scholars in the exegesis of some
abstruse paragraph. Because their feelings were hurt at having been
wrong on the amount of supplies coming in through Sihanoukville, they
decided not to tell us anything. They said they knew their numbers were
wrong, but they wouldn't. tell us why and wouldn't say what was right.
No matter how wrong last year's figures were on tonnage we should have
been able to use last year as a base and to say that through-put this year
was five times higher, or whatever the percentage was. Finally, Wayne
Smith and Bob Sansom came up with a valid analytical model which gives
us a realistic way of looking at the problem and should let us know what
percentage of last year's through-put is getting into Cambodia and South
Vietnam this year. The enemy had three sources of supply during the
last dry season -- items coming in through Sihanoukville, purchases on
the Cambodian economy and material coming through southern Laos.
We know what came through Sihanoukville, not because of our intelligence
community but because we captured the bills of lading. And we have some
idea of what was purchased on the open market in Cambodia. Those two
sources are no longer available. Therefore, in order to sustain a pro-
tracted war strategy in South. Vietnam and Cambodia for the next dry
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season, the enemy will have to put through the same amount as last
year on the trails, plus enough to replace material from the other two
sources. They will have to put in four or five times more down the trails to
get the same amount out at the other end, because of consumption along
the way, attrition by air and other factors. We could debate how many
trucks were killed coming down the trail, but. that is irrelevent. Since
we are counting with the same inaccuracy as last year and by the same
criteria, we can estimate what has been destroyed this year in some
percentage relationship to last year. They have kept 40-50, 000 troops
in Laos this year as opposed to 8000 last year. These had to be fed and
supplied. A great deal of their input has been consumed in southern
Laos by the troops held in preparation for the Lam Son offensive or the
expected attack on the trail system. Also, we had the consistent inter-
diction of the trails during the operation as well as the consumption by four-
plus enemy divisions of material moving through the system during the
operation. This was in addition to the fact that there were simply more
troops. Taken all together, on the basis of common sense, if not theology,
so far the through-put has been a fraction of the through-put last year.
With all these additional strains, it had to be reduced, andlall the evidence
we have tends to suggest that it has been. That is the basis for the Presi-
dent's statement yesterday that only 25% as much has gone through this
year as last. Of course, as the South Vietnamese leave Laos, the logistic
system will be repaired. But the caches destroyed by air or picked up
on the ground were quite substantial -- about 30-40% of the scale in the
Cambodian operation. The logistic disruption was considerable and we
are now analyzing exactly how much.
So the results were twofold. Whatever offensive operations may be
undertaken in MR-I and MR-2 will be substantially smaller than they would
have been without this operation, due to the disruption of their supplies,
the destruction of the caches and the attrition of their forces. And, it is
unlikely that they will be able to build up their stockpiles in MR-3 or MR-4
during this dry season to permit them to undertake major operations at
the beginning of the next dry season. This means they will have to take
a substantial portion of the next dry season to build up their supplies
there, which is important for the withdrawal of American forces.
There are some potentially negative aspects of the operation in
terms of the morale of the South Vietnamese and the possible impact on
the South Vietnamese political situation, if Thieu should be attacked by
his political opponents. We are told that South Vietnamese morale is not
substantially impaired; indeed, that there is some improvement. I'm
inclined to take this with a grain of salt; no one can tell until the troops
are back in their base camps and the officers can reflect on the operation.
I consider this is potentially negative. Morale in Hanoi has probably
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E I FIDENTIAL - 4 -
Iiicdkkd! up ' However, they know better than we do what a close thing it
tea11}r`=was --.how close to the abyss they really were. They behaved in
aff'fincharacteristically panicky way. They called for assistance from
their'big brothers and they have never done that before, even during the
Jr''&riod.of maximum bombing of the north. If Wayne Smith's analysis is
t iise'ct Hanoi's basic strategic situation has deteriorated. We don't
ki`iovrr';?'however, whether their situation is sufficiently worse to get them
t-d' egbtiate, or, indeed, what they would negotiate about, given the.
itn a`vcirable` situation they face in the countryside. They may prefer to
take'their chances on the withdrawal program rather than negotiate.
s pin:,J ,
i~-erg Are there any questions?
c}i ' , 'Mx. "Sonnenfeldt: I get at the universities and from the newspapers
st the difficulty with the relationship between the short-term spilling of
blbodand?the longer-term expectations and effects of operations such as
this-;one. How do you suggest we cope with this, short of putting the
Ptesident on the line.
't= n"x- `Mr. Kissinger: All of us are working for the President and we are
expected to behave with confidence and dignity during this period and not
go about beating our breasts. Some of the breast-beating about the
spilling of blood is totally irresponsible. Those 100 tanks and four divisions
were not just resting in Tchepone. They would have come into South
Vietnam later this year. It's interesting that we have exceeded in every
respect the minority plank in the 1968 Democratic Party platform which
was rejected at the Democratic convention. It was considered great
wisdom to say at that time that the war should be turned over to those
most concerned. Now, people are saying that it is immoral for us to put
the 'South Vietnamese in a position to defend themselves. The slogan is
no longer "end American participation in the war, " but "end the war. "
The war can end only by negotiation or by someone's defeat. Since North
Vietnam won't negotiate and since we can't defeat Hanoi under these
ground rules, they argue that we must participate in the defeat of Saigon.
Not only is it our obligation to disengage ourselves but to see to it that
someone stops fighting. They are not urging us to get the North Vietnamese
to stop fighting. They are urging us to get the South Vietnamese to stop
fighting, and this we will not do. There are two alternatives: negotiate
or put the South Vietnamese in a position to defend themselves. "End the
war" is an appealing slogan, but the practical consequences would be to
end the war on the other side's terms. I have no particularly bright ideas
on how to cope with the point you raise, Hal, but we must be honest with
ourselves.
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Mr. Levine: You noted the importance of the buildup by the enemy
and the fact that the South Vietnamese were increasingly out-numbered.
Why didn't more troops go in to prevent this situation from developing?
Mr. Kissinger: This relates in part to the organization of the South
Vietnamese Army. There are two divisions in each Corps area, and
these, divisions normally do not fight well outside of their own area.
You can't move them around as you can divisions in other armies. The
South Vietnamese used their entire strategic reserve. They had two
divisions disposable plus one which they took from I Corps which is
contiguous to Laos. They.might have used another division from I Corps
and some of us thought they should have. But they judged that the neces-
sity to retain political control in South Vietnam and the impact of heavy
casualties were too great to commit the other division. They made a
very heavy investment in this operation --. they put in their best divisions
and all their strategic reserves.
Mr. Hyland: Will there be enough American forces left during.the
next dry season to support a similar operation? ,,
Mr. Kissinger: There will certainly be fewer American forces in
Vietnam in the next dry season and it is unlikely the South Vietnamese
could conduct this exact type of operation on. their own in. the next dry
season. I have only recently become an expert on the routes through
southern Laos, but I know now that you don't necessarily have to interdict
the supply route at Tchepone. You could mount raids against other points
further down-at less cost and with increased capability. It is unlikely the
North Vietnamese will get a free shot at uninterrupted supplies from now on.
Mr. Negroponte: Were you impressed by how quickly the North
Vietnamese reinforced?
Mr. Kissinger: Yes, the North Vietnamese fought an extremely
intelligent campaign. They reinforced quickly, they knew what they were
doing and they behaved very effectively. They threw in practically their
entire effective army. They had only a holding force in Cambodia. The
toll must have been very heavy.
r
Mr. Lehman: Did the intelligence community know there were
100 tanks there?
Mr. Kissinger: No. If they did, they didn't tell us.
Mr. Levine: Why do you think the effect might be negative?
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Mr. Kissinger: I was trying to be completely fair. I think the net
impact over the period of a year will be a substantial plus if we keep our
cool in this country. If you compare the effect of doing nothing with the
results of this operation, over the period of a year we will be substantially
better off. The supplies and units which have been destroyed or damaged
would have been available this year and next, and you would have had the
situation of American forces heading for their ships while the North
Vietnamese were cranking up a major offensive. Their capability has
been substantially reduced. The operation is a substantial plus, although
not as decisive as some had hoped it would be. Compared. to anything
else we might have done, and considering our objectives, it was a very
major plus. We will for the next few weeks take a tremendous amount of
nagging, but we would have done so for a longer period in any event if
we had not undertaken this operation.
Mr. Levine: What has been the reaction in South Vietnam?
Mr. Kissinger: So far it has been a tremendous plus; they consider
it a big victory in South Vietnam. What happens when the feedback from
this country gets to them, I can't predict. There could be some negative
aspects, but I don't think enough to outweigh the achievements. Last
year, people thought we were risking everything by going into Cambodia.
If we hadn't, we would have been run out of South Vietnam by_now. With
the Americans pulling out ' of III and IV Corps we would have been in..serious
difficulty. We have had no great difficulty in the highlands this year and
we have been building capability for next year. On that basis, even with
the negative aspects, it has been a big plus. We had no choice but to do
something to interdict the supply flow.
Mr. Dro e: Are we doing any briefing of members of Congress?
Mr. Kissinger: We did a little yesterday, and Secretary Laird and
Admiral Moorer are going up before the Committees.
Mr. Wright: Given the propositioning of North Vietnamese troops,
the presence of tanks and the speed with which they reinforced, is there
the possibility that the operation had leaked?
Mr. Kissinger: We assume anything the South Vietnamese do is
penetrated. Our mistake was, knowing it was penetrated, that we went
ahead with the original plan. It was thought harder to change the plan
than to pull it off. For some reason we have never tried to use the system
of making a plan and, while it is running, to divert the operation in another
direction. This was not in itself decisive, however. We did achieve
major disruption of the enemy's logistic strength and major attrition of
their forces.
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