The Doctine

 CHAPTER 11 

The Doctine

IN ITS first issue after the invasion Time magazine reported, "As he briefed White House staffers last week Henry Kissinger announced with a straight face that the Cambodians 'had sent in a request for enough stuff to equip an army of 200,000. We asked them to take it back and reconsider' Kissinger went on, 'and then they came back with a request for enough stuff to equip an army of 400,000.' As so often, Kissinger's joke served to mask the truth. Within a year the Lon Nol army was being built, at Kissinger's insistence, into a force of 220,000 men.

At the time of the invasion Nixon declared, 'The aid we will provide will be limited to the purpose of enabling Cambodia to defend its neutrality and not for the purpose of making it an active belligerent on one side or another.' This was not the truth. The aid provided was designed almost entirely for the second purpose. As Kissinger told one WASSAG meeting that summer, 'The President is determined to keep an anti-Communist government alive in Phnom Penh.'

Alexander Haig was dispatched to Phnom Penh soon after the invasion. It was the first important solo mission that he had been entrusted with, a first opportunity to demonstrate his ability to act for the President in his own right rather than as Henry Kissinger's military assistant. (The State Department was not at first informed of the trip; when Marshall Green, the Assistant Secretary of State, heard of it he called Elliot Richardson and said, 'We can't fight it but we can mitigate it... let's get one of our best men on Cambodia to go along ... Haig does not have the substance ... It would get the State Department into the action.") Haig would visit Cambodia many times over the next three years. He was vital in defining the relationship between the White House and Lon Nol, between the White House and the United States embassy, between the White House and reality.

United States military aid had already begun, secretly, in April, with the supply of automatic rifles and several thousand Khmer Krom troops from South Vietnam. Now Haig's mission was to decide not whether the United States aid program should be extended, but how it could best be implemented. The decision to support Lon Nol was, in one sense, implicit in the decision to invade (or, rather, the invasion rendered aid almost inevitable). The first of many reports on Cambodia by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pointed out that "Cambodia has now been linked inextricably to the war in Vietnam and ... the terms of reference of that war have been permanently changed because its geographic area has been expanded." Vietnamization was now on a wider stage.

After an inadequate briefing in Saigon (no one on Abrams' staff seemed to have a complete idea of what was happening in Cambodia), Haig and an official from State to whom Haig paid little attention, flew up to Phnon Penh. John Court, from the NSC staff, went to inspect the Cambodian army in the field. Haig arrived at Pochentong airport in his battle fatigues, to be met by the charge, Mike Rives, who was dressed in his usual languidly style. Haig did not take to Rives, who has described himself as a "perfectly average" diplomat—not a popular species in the White House. He was a rather mild, self-effacing type who, one of his colleagues says, "would seem a stuffed shirt to a man like Haig, who is into machismo." Like most foreigners in Phnon Penh, Rives and his staff were bewildered by the speed with which the country disintegrated; communications, both within Cambodia and to the outside world, were poor. His reporting of the hectic events of March and April was often very good, but sometimes he had been reduced to simply passing on Cambodian intelligence reports, and these— as in the case of the advancing Chinese People's Liberation Army—could be unreal.

Rives ran a low-key mission, suitable to the discreet presence that the State Department had wished to maintain in Sihanouk's capital. He lived in a small house near the Bassac river; the chancellery was in the servants' quarters in his garden. There was no air-conditioning, and the living system consisted of cardboard boxes. A big metal container in the filing system was used as a safe. To Haig it was most unsuitable for an American

embassy and he made his disaste clear before he set off for his interview with Lon Nol.

It is normally considered courteous and efficient for the ambassador or head of mission to accompany any official visiting the rulers of the country to which he is accredited. Breaching this convention diminishes the status of the representative in the eyes of the host government. In the Nixon-Kissinger years, it was ignored whenever the State Department was to be excluded from policymaking. Haig had no intention of taking Rives to see Lon Nol, despite the fact that Rives spoke far better French than the major whom Haig had brought with him from Saigon as interpreter. Afterward Haig refused to tell Rives, State’s representative or anyone else in the mission exactly what had passed between him and Lon Nol. Eventually, officials learned that the encounter was as critical as it was painful.

Lon Nol was clearly frightened by the forces unleashed by his move against Sihanouk. His original spontaneous reaction to the invasion had been to protest. He told an Asian diplomat, who told the U.S. Embassy, that he greatly regretted that the United States had not consulted Cambodia first. He wished that the Americans had blocked the Communists’ westward escape route before attacking, instead of spreading them across Cambodia. (He did not seem to appreciate that Nixon was more interested in avoiding American casualties than in finding the North Vietnamese or that the invasion was actually intended to push the Communists away from South Vietnam’s border.) The Cambodian leader told Haig that there was no way his small force could stop them. His country was in danger. Only the American army could help.

When he had finished talking, Haig began. He informed Lon Nol that President Nixon intended to limit the involvement of American forces in Cambodia. They would be withdrawn at the end of June. Then the President hoped to introduce a program of restricted economic and military aid.

As the implications of Haig's words for the future of Cambodia became clear to Lon Nol, he began to weep. Cambodia, he said, could never defend itself. Unable to control his emotions, he walked across to the window and stood there, his shoulders shaking, his face turned away from Haig. Haig then went across the room to try to comfort the General. He put his arm around his shoulder and promised him, through the interpreter, that President Nixon supported him and would give him what help he could, despite the political constraints in Washington.

By now, the attitude of the Congress was clear. The day after the invasion the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which reported tele- grams running at eight to one against the adventure, demanded an audi- ence with Nixon and approved a bill to repeal the Tonkin Gulf Resol- ution.* The Committee charged the President with usurping Congress's war-making powers by neglecting to consult them before the invasion and averred that he was "conducting a constitutionally unauthorized war in Indochina." The White House declared that Nixon was acting on his constitutional authority as Commander in Chief. On May 11 the Commit- tee approved, over the administration's strenuous objections, an amend- ment proposed by Senator Frank Church and Senator Sherman Cooper to the Foreign Military Sales Act, which restricted future operations in Cambodia. In the modified form in which it was finally passed by the Senate, "the Cooper-Church amendment" outlawed the introduction of any troops into Cambodia after June 30, forbade the provision of Ameri- can advisers to Cambodian forces and prohibited all air operations in direct support of Cambodian forces. It also proclaimed that assistance given by the United States did not constitute a commitment to the defense of Cambodia.

It was an historic act, the first time in the history of the war that Congress legislated to restrict the President. It had far-reaching implica- tions. Politically, the important point is that it was not spontaneous; the legislature had been provoked by the President into taking this step. Al- ready the invasion was "dysfunctional."

When Haig first met Lon Nol the final language of the amendment was unwritten, but the Senate's anger over the commitment to Cambodia was clear. Still, the Colonel promised the General that everything possible would be done, that he had a friend in the White House, and that he could deal directly with the President.

It was not a commitment Haig made blindly. He and John Court understood some of the misgivings expressed by Mike Rives about the Cambodians' ability to defend themselves under their new leaders. There was enthusiasm, but a visit to the battlefields along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border showed how much it had to make up for. (Court met one "Cambodian general" who was apparently a South Vietnamese deserter.)

. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was passed in August 1964, after President Johnson announced that two United States destroyers had been attacked in international waters off Vietnam by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The resolution supported the President in all measures necessary to repel armed attack on American forces. As such it provided the executive with basic legislative approval for its actions as the war developed. It later emerged that Johnson had been less than candid in his description of the attack (in disguise.) Evidence on the ground bore out the gloomy conclusions of the Pentagon's Systems Analysis Office, which had just studied the Cambodian army and discovered that it "suffers from lack of combat experience, equipment deficiencies, understrength military units, fragmented dispersal throughout the country and lack of mobility." Its "greatest shortcoming" was its incompetent and corrupt officer corps. Training was inadequate; equipment was "a considerable mix"; artillery was "limited"; the aircraft are obsolete and maintenance of both the aircraft and airfields is poor. "Only one airfield, Phnom Penh, had fuel pumps. Naval equipment was "also obsolete." The armed forces could quickly be raised to 90,000, but the experience of South Vietnam suggested they could not be properly trained and controlled for about four or five years.

These findings and many more were presented in May 1970. Haig, moreover, had personal reason to question Lon Nol's value as a leader. He looked at the maps showing the Chinese army's march south, he learned that Lon Nol had been involved in smuggling to the North Vietnamese, and it was clear after only a short visit that the General's mind tended to take flight. But he knew also that the White House had made the basic decision—Lon Nol was to be aided, the new war was to be underwritten.

Back in March and April the administration had had freedom of choice in reacting to events in Cambodia. If it had decided not to encourage, let alone to arm Lon Nol, it could have compelled either the return of Sihanouk or, at least, an attempt, by Lon Nol, to preserve the country’s flawed neutrality. This would not have been an ideal solution for Washington, it would probably have meant a government dominated by Hanoi and at the very least it would have allowed the Communists continued use of Sihanoukville (which Lon Nol renamed Kompong Som) and the sanctuaries. But as the suppressed National Intelligence Estimate had pointed out, short of permanent occupation the sanctuaries would always pose a military problem for a South Vietnamese government; that was a fact of both geography and revolutionary warfare.

When Haig went to Cambodia, Washington’s options were already limited by the White House’s recent decisions. Without any knowledge of him, aid had been handed to Lon Nol and, without any consideration of the implications, the Communists had been driven deeper into his territory. The government’s predicament was more serious than ever. The decision to expand aid to Lon Nol now was made on the basis of three factors: the idea of providing a new protective shield for American troops in Vietnam; the personal emotional investment that Nixon had already made in Cambodia; and the President's desire to experiment with the "Nixon Doctrine."

This was the doctrine that had been offered in a hastily assembled press briefing in Guam in July 1969. Nixon had said he could not be directly quoted, but a full account of his talk in indirect speech, reproduced in the Congressional Record, gives an authentic flavor.

He began by saying that his first trip to Asia had been in 1953 "with the usual four days in each country." This time he was spending only one day in each, but that was just as good, particularly if you believed, as he did, that the really important thing about a foreign country was its leaders. What they all wanted to know was what America's role in Asia would be "after the end of the war in Vietnam." He understood that the reaction of many Americans was to withdraw, but he believed that the United States must stay if it was to avoid involvement in another war. America was a Pacific power; Guam was in the Pacific. World War II came from Asia, so did the Korean war. So did Vietnam. Today, "the major world power that adopts a very aggressive attitude in its foreign policy, Communist China, is of course in Asia," as were two minor but also belligerent powers, North Korea and North Vietnam.

He described the achievements of South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, the problems of the Philippines, the poverty of India and Pakistan, the growth of national and regional pride in Asia. For the future, he said, "The United States was going to encourage and had a right to expect that [defense] would be increasingly handled by, and the responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves." As for the difference between internal and external threats, Nixon dismissed that; internal threats—as in Thailand—would not exist but for the external support they received. If another "Vietnam-type problem" occurred America must avoid "that creeping involvement that eventually submerges you." If any Asian country faced internal subversion the American role should be "to help them fight the war but not fight the war for them." This was "a good general principle, one which we would hope would be our policy generally throughout the world." Military involvement and aid would recede, but economic aid "would be adequate to meet the challenge as it developed." That was the lesson of Vietnam.

The implication of the "Doctrine" was that America's ends remained unchanged, but the means had altered. Specifically, Asian forces would be required to fill the gap between Washington's ambitions and the will ingness of American citizens to die on behalf of those ambitions in foreign fields. The Doctrine was, in fact, Vietnamization internationalized, and all the risks implicit in Vietnamization attended it. Neither in his background talk nor later did Nixon ever seem to consider what effect the introduction of American assistance might have upon a client country or what might happen if, after Washington had committed its prestige, that client proved unable, in a Nixon phrase, "to hack it." Should Washington ever disengage from a government that it had encouraged if that government should prove incompetent, or were they bound to sink together? These and other questions remained unasked until Cambodia provided the test case.

On his return to Washington, Haig helped to develop the scheme by which the Doctrine should be implemented in Cambodia. His plan included an expanded United States mission with a large military attaché's office for intelligence gathering, and an extensive communications system both within the country and connecting Cambodia to the outside world. The United States should concentrate on equipping the Lon Nol army with light weapons; an integral part of the plan was the use of American air power in the border areas and, when necessary, deeper into the country to support Lon Nol's troops.

Haig's visit was the first of what became known to American diplomats as the White House's "stroking missions" to Lon Nol. Over the coming years Spiro Agnew, John Connally, Admiral McCain, the Commander in Chief Pacific Forces (CINCPAC), the Commander of the Seventh Air Force, and most frequently Haig himself would go out to comfort Lon Nol with assurances. Their visits were interspersed by spear carriers from the National Security Council, eager and aggressive young men with direct orders from Kissinger or Haig.

One of the commodities in which these men traded was the naiveté and credulousness of the Khmer leaders. Sihanouk had never allowed the emergence of an independent or self-confident ruling class; there was no one and nothing to replace him. Many Khmers found the vacuum more frightening than liberating and eagerly accepted the Americans' protection. They did so, for the most part, in good faith. Lon Nol himself had no understanding of international affairs—he knew little of the exigencies of Vietnamization, the balance of power, the attitudes of the United States Congress; six years after he came to power he said in an interview that he had never known that Kissinger supported détente. Insofar as he was trained in international politics at all, it had been by contact with the United States officers in the fifties and early sixties and by watching the war in Vietnam. There, he considered and he said as much, that the United States had "lost face"; he believed that he offered Washington a chance to regain prestige. To him, American support was automatic in any war against demon Communism; he had never dreamed it might be qualified or curtailed.

Little was done to enlighten him. As if the "stroking missions" were not enough, Nixon began to write Lon Nol a series of warm and optimistic letters praising him for past achievements and exhorting future efforts. Delighted by the correspondence, Lon Nol seized any excuse—the Fourth of July or Buddha's birthday—to write the President. Some of his letters were in longhand, written, he said, in the middle of the night. They could be filled with vague and wandering mysticism, with praise for Nixon, with accounts of the shadows of the moon; they almost always requested aid.

His letters could have been merely acknowledged. Instead Nixon sent effusive replies. Lon Nol took the correspondence, which continued until Nixon's indictment, very seriously. He would keep the latest letter from Nixon in the breast pocket of his tunic and pull it out to show his friends the newest promises from "mon ami, Monsieur le Président."

Soon after Haig's return from Cambodia Jonathan "Fred" Ladd, who was on a trip to San Francisco, received an urgent call from Henry Kissinger. He asked if Ladd would be interested in a senior State Department position in the Far East. Ladd said he might be, and Kissinger persuaded him to take the night flight to Washington.

In 1969, Ladd had retired from his post as commander of U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam and set up a charter-boat business in Florida. In March 1970, at the time of the coup, he had had an unexpected call from the Pentagon asking whether he would like to return to "the area with which I was familiar." He said then that he would consider an offer, but it was only now, after the invasion, that the suggestion was followed up.

The next morning at the White House, Kissinger and Haig, whom Ladd had known in Korea, told him that Cambodia was the assignment, and that the President wished to open an aid program to be run by a civilian. Ladd was doubtful. As a Green Beret, he had been critical of the regular army's massive buildup in South Vietnam. He used to say that it made as much sense to send American troops to the Mekong Delta as it would for Chiang Kai-shek to dispatch the Kuomintang army to help out south of the Mason-Dixon line. This attitude had cost him his stars; he had known in 1969 that he would never make General. Still, he was interested in Cambodia, had known the Khmer Serei troops well and, when Haig and Kissinger assured him that this time it would be different—that the program would be limited, that few Americans would be involved, that the lessons of Vietnam had been learned, and that he could apply them—Ladd agreed to try. "Don't think of victory; just keep it alive," Kissinger said.

Ladd immediately became aware of bureaucratic tensions, Kissinger told him that he would deal directly with the Cambodian head of state, the Prime Minister, the United States ambassadors in Bangkok and Saigon, General Abrams, and Admiral McCain, who was already speaking of Cambodia as “my war.” But the State Department, which had been ordered to give this retired soldier a foreign-service rank to do a military job for which it had little enthusiasm, tried to fob him off with a low grade. When Ladd complained, the White House overruled State; but it was a sign of conflict to come. In a brief visit to the Pentagon he sensed that the military was as wary of his unusual position as were the diplomats. When he stopped in Saigon en route to Phnom Penh he learned that Abrams, like Haig, was contemptuous of the way in which Mike Rives ran his mission. It also seemed clear that the military in Saigon had little idea what was happening beyond the twenty-one-mile zone of Cambodia that United States and South Vietnamese forces had invaded.

When Ladd arrived, the United States embassy was still housed in Mike Rives's shabby servants quarters. Ladd's office, shared with two military assistants, was an unconverted bathroom. There was only one ordinary telephone line out of the building, and it was often out of order. Rives was still resisting expansionist pressure from Saigon, but as Larry Bonner, one of Ladd's military assistants, wrote to a friend, "a bemused smile from time to time revealed an inner conviction that he was just shoveling shit against the tide."

Like every official coming to Phnom Penh from Saigon or Washington, Ladd was warned that the White House was anxious to keep Cambodia out of the press. After the invasion by United States troops, correspondents had flocked to Cambodia. Arnaud de Borchgrave, Newsweek's one-man world bureau, had set up his command post in a bungalow by the pool of the Hotel Royal. He spent most of his time with ambassadorial contacts and both briefed and debriefed other journalists as they returned each evening from the front. (Seventeen did not return; the front was a movable line in the first weeks of the war, and almost all the journalists who were captured were killed.) De Borchgrave wrote some exotic stories and confided one scoop to his friend, columnist Joseph Kraft; the Chinese, he said, really were coming. Kraft laughed.

One of Kraft's own columns was to have an astonishing influence. It mocked the Defense Attaché, Colonel William Pietsch, not a very effective diplomat. Kraft described "Colonel P" as "a creature of comedy and maybe pathos, chiefly distinguished by the wearing of a white bartender's jacket." He quoted him as saying "Now here's the line for you. What we're seeing here is a reverse domino theory. People are standing up to be counted. The Vietnamese, the Thais, the Cambodians. The enemy is on the run. He's running for his life. Let me speak not as a colonel, but as a man in the street, Mr. USA. I think that what President Nixon did was a brave decision. If there was anything wrong, it's that he waited as long as he did. Even so, the enemy is hurt. The enemy is taking a licking. I'll bet my professional reputation that we'll bring it off." The column caused consternation in the White House; Pietsch was immediately recalled. The incident made a lasting impression on the embassy, and few people ever dared to speak freely to reporters again. Ladd, who loved to gossip over a bottle of Scotch about the antics of the military, was an exception.

Like other visitors from Washington, Ladd was at first struck by the enthusiasm of the Cambodians he met and by the apparent popularity of the coup among the urban population. Many American officials, ignoring Lon Nol's mysticism, compared him with President Suharto of Indonesia. William Colby, who wanted the CIA to run Cambodia like Laos, was quite impressed; Lon Nol assured him that the war had “a spiritual basis” and derived from the glories of Angkor. Nixon's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board was remarkably enthusiastic after meeting Lon Nol, but Mike Rives cabled Washington: “Lon Nol's optimism, as usual with visitors, was encouraging, though somewhat startling and is based perhaps on some naïveté and failure realize Cambodia probably embarked on long hard struggle. . . .”

At first, Ladd had the two bureaucratic essentials to success—access and information—both in Phnom Penh and Washington. He would visit Lon Nol at his home almost daily. They pored over maps on the floor and former colonel Fred Ladd, now Foreign Service Officer Grade Two, told the general what he should do with such men and matériel as he commanded. Ladd was Lon Nol's direct channel to the White House. Haig had told Ladd that he could communicate with the NSC through an American he would meet outside the embassy in Phnom Penh. This secret instruction started a proliferation of channels—which was, in the future, to cause great confusion in the embassy.

In his first weeks Ladd tried to discover just what the Cambodian army possessed in its Soviet, Czech, French, Chinese, American arsenals. His initial budget, till the end of June, was just $7.9 million, and much of this went to the purchase of ammunition for the varied weapons systems from a variety of sources. He set aside the rest for uniforms, medical supplies, radios, training of truck drivers and repairs to the small T-28 bomber planes that were the backbone of the Cambodian air force.

The fact that a budget existed at all and the manner in which it was obtained is more important than its small size. The money was not authorized nor appropriated by Congress. To avoid having to go before a hostile legislature for funds before the Congressional elections in November, Nixon diverted funds from other military-assistance programs by presidential determination—largely, in fact, from South Korea. In July he supplemented the first installment with $40 million for the fiscal year 1971. This was later raised again: When he eventually came to Congress at the end of 1970 for funds, he was daring the legislature, in effect, to discontinue it—which was much harder for Congress to do.

On June 30 Nixon marked the withdrawal of American troops from Cambodia with an enthusiastic television report on the brilliant success of the invasion. He cited the considerable quantities of arms, ammunition and rice captured and the 11,000 Vietnamese or Cambodian enemies killed. He praised the quality of the ARVN, of the U.S. Army, and of his own decisions. (He made no mention of COSVN, the supposed target when the invasion began.) His evaluation has been accepted and repeated uncritically by Kissinger, Ford and Theodore White, among others. (In his book on Watergate, Breach of Faith, White describes the invasion as one of the two major achievements of Nixon's rule, environmental policy being the other.) In fact, Nixon's assessment was very nearly irrelevant to what had really happened in the past two months.

Early in the operation Melvin Laird had sent a memo to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs arguing that "the success of the military activities in Cambodia will be reflected in: Lower U.S. casualties; Increased Vietnam-Cambodia will be reflected in: Lower U.S. casualties; Increased Vietnam-ization. Continuing U.S. troop redeployment, in fulfillment and even in excess of the President's announced goals. Progress in negotiations." By these standards the invasion was not very successful. In the short term it certainly disrupted North Vietnamese logistics and attacks down "Rocket Alley" from the Parrot's Beak to Bien Hoa slackened for some months. But negotiations and Vietnamization were set back by the venture. Troop redeployment was not much affected and, despite Nixon's and Kissin- ger's subsequent claims to the contrary, it had only the most marginal impact on American deaths. Casualties did fall, but this was principally because American troops were withdrawn from the country while a South Vietnamese shield was placed between them and the enemy. This was, of course, the primary purpose of Vietnamization.*

Over the course of the war, the death rate for American forces averaged 1.8 percent per year. (This compares with annual losses of at least 2.5 percent for South Vietnamese troops, 5 percent for United States forces in Korea, and about 6.7 percent for the French Expeditionary Force in every year of the First Indochina War.) More than half of all combat deaths occurred in the north of South Vietnam, far from Cambodia, and about 70 percent of them were in United States maneuver battalions engaged in offensive action—such as the invasion itself, which increased combat deaths for May and June 1970 by 20 percent. From 1969 on, combat troops were withdrawn faster than support troops, and maneuver battalions fastest of all. These plans had been drawn up before the Cambodian invasion; they were not contingent upon it. By the spring 1972 Communist offensive, almost all American troops were safely in rear areas; nearly half of all United States deaths during that year occurred out of combat, many of them in helicopter accidents.

The success of Vietnamization in this regard is shown most starkly in a year-by-year comparison of American and South Vietnamese casualties. The South Vietnamese official figures are not very reliable, but they give a broad impression. In 1969, 9,414 Americans and 21,833 Vietnamese died in combat; in 1970, the figures were 4,221 and 23,346; in 1971, 1,380 and 22,738. The 1972 offensive made that year the worst for the South Vietnamese. Almost 40,000 of them died, along with 300 Americans. Vietnamese combat deaths in 1972 were about 5,000 fewer than American combat deaths in the entire war. Their attrition rate fell only slightly after the Paris Peace Agreement of 1973.

A June 1970 Rand study, “U.S. Casualties During Vietnamization,” warned that one effect of the invasion might be a shift of the Communist focus of attack. This did begin to happen. A post-factum analysis, conducted soon after the invasion began by two systems analysts on Kissinger's staff, found that the Delta, the Central Highlands and Binh Dinh

The White House impressed upon the entire administration how important it was that casualties should at least appear to fall after the invasion. At Laird's morning Vietnamization meeting on May 28, 1970 Admiral William Lemos stated that it was essential U.S. casualties be cut back sharply in July. “If necessary, we must do it by edict.”

province along the coast of central Vietnam had been left vulnerable and exposed when the American forces went into Cambodia. Their post-factum analysis of captured documents and supplies could not substantiate any of the premises on which the invasion had been based. The CIA drafted a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) that showed that United States interests in Indochina had been seriously compromised by the invasion. An account by the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Systems Analysis) was given to Laird in August 1970. He wrote, "Although U.S. and ARVN cross-border operations have disrupted NVA operations in Cambodia to some extent, these operations have not substantially reduced NVA capabilities in Cambodia. Approximately 25% of the Vietnamese Communists' reserve stocks have been lost. Captured supplies can be reconstituted in about 75 days with the opening of additional supply routes through Laos and continued high level supply operations into the rainy season."

In its bullishness the White House took no account of the political impact of the invasion abroad. In his speech of April 30, Nixon had stressed that one principal purpose of the invasion was to sustain America's credibility in the world; it had, in fact, the opposite effect. The United States Information Agency surveyed foreign opinion and concluded that the invasion had caused "a traumatic reaction in the world at large" and a blow to American prestige.

Nor did official assessments take into account the dangers that the invasion had raised in Cambodia and the way in which it drained Vietnamization. Now South Vietnamese troops and air power would fight in two countries. American planes would be spread thinner, the Saigon government would have to cope with at least another 100,000 refugees, and a limited supply of Congressional patience and American resources would be further strained.

By the end of May, State and Defense Department officials were admitting privately that they had never expected the fighting in Cambodia to spread so far so fast, and that it was clear that South Vietnamese troops would have to stay there indefinitely. Melvin Laird was exasperated. “The South Vietnamese are wandering all over Cambodia protecting the government while we, in turn, are in South Vietnam protecting the South Vietnamese,” he complained at a morning meeting in the Pentagon.

The realities were spelled out by Nixon, nor by those who spoke for him, but in a June 1970 cable from the Joint Chiefs to General Abrams: “Although scheduled reductions in United States troop strength in the Republic of Vietnam will soon place additional in-country responsibilities on RVNAF forces, operations should be conducted by these forces in Cambodia, particularly during the next few weeks ... to prevent loss of major objectives to NVA/VC ... It is considered that the prevention of total take-over of Cambodia by the NVA/VC is a prime objective that RVNAF ground forces and United States air interdiction should be used to achieve this objective." There was now a new hostage.

The reference to "air interdiction" is vital. As the covert use of bombing had been integral to Vietnamization, so it became essential to the pursuit of the Nixon Doctrine in Cambodia. As we shall see, it was deployed with a disregard for controls and procedures that seem remarkable.

The "Patio" strikes by tactical aircraft, which Abrams had requested before the invasion, ended in May; they had been successfully concealed under falsified reports. Then, at the insistence of the White House, the bombing—by tactical aircraft and B-52s—was again extended farther and farther into Cambodia. Under the terms of the Cooper-Church amendment it was illegal for the United States to bomb Cambodia after June 30, except to intercept Communist men and supplies en route to Vietnam. By the end of the summer much of the country was a free-fire zone for United States aircraft and since their postoperational reports were almost all deliberately inaccurate, there was little follow-up to see what targets were actually being attacked. Pilots had far more liberty than in Vietnam to bomb any target they wanted.

At the same time Cambodia was open house for the South Vietnamese Air Force. They and the army were free, for the first time in decades, to give expression to their historical contempt for the Khmers. They behaved as if they were conquering a hostile nation, rather than helping a new ally; every Cambodian was a VC and a target. Perhaps the most chilling evidence of the pleasure that the pilots took in it all was contained in a cable sent by Abrams to the Pentagon. He reported that until now it had been virtually impossible to induce the South Vietnamese to fly on Sundays. Now they were paying bribes of 1,000 piasters each to be allowed to go out seven days a week—over Cambodia.

It was the same with the South Vietnamese ground troops. ARVN soldiers returned home with looted Hondas, bicycles and radios, and their commanders did not deter them. Throughout the later part of the summer, the 495th ARVN battalion rampaged through the villages around the town of Takeo. According to a CIA report from Phnom Penh, the ARVN commander, Captain Le Van Vien, frequently called in air strikes "to drive the people from the villages"; he and his men would seize the villagers’

animals and force them to buy them back. Rives reported to Washington that ARVN troops frequently ambushed and killed Cambodian officers; the governor of Svay Rieng made constant complaints about the way in which the South Vietnamese stole cars, sandwiched them into military convoys and barreled through border posts firing at the Cambodian sentries. Rives informed his superiors that even Lon Nol was "getting increasingly fed up" and was considering how he might get rid of it "really." But he could not. Thieu began to demand that the Cambodians pay for ARVN's presence. Kissinger's response was to suggest that Cambodia's other traditional enemy, Thailand, send troops. Throughout the summer Kissinger and Nixon promoted this idea, in the end without success, over the skepticism of the Defense Department. The agony it aroused in Phnom Penh could have been understood in most places. Cambodian Assistant Chief of Staff General Sak Sutsakhan told a Filipino officer who was a CIA agent that the Lon Nol government feared that South Vietnam and Thailand were trying to annex the territory each had claimed for years. For their part, Thai ministers made their contempt for Lon Nol quite clear to American officials; it was on this as much as anything else that the proposal foundered. Even so, training in Thailand and logistics of support from the Thais became part of the Nixon Doctrine as applied to Cambodia.

The effects of the invasion were clear enough to some. While it was still going on, three American journalists—Richard Dudman, Washington Bureau Chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Elizabeth Pond of the Christian Science Monitor, and Michael Morrow of Dispatch News Service—were captured in Cambodia by the Viet Cong and spent forty days in their hands. In a book about the experience, Dudman wrote that "the bombing and the shooting had simply spread the sanctuaries" and that "the bombing and the shooting was radicalizing the people of rural Cambodia and was turning the countryside into a massive, dedicated and effective rural base. American shells and bombs are proving to the Cambodians beyond doubt that the United States is waging unprovoked colonialist war against the Cambodian people." When Elizabeth Pond took the same message to Melvin Laird he listened. But later he was assured by the military that even Pond's press colleagues considered her pro-Viet Cong.

Mike Rives also understood a good deal. Thoughtful that he had no great reported cautiously and critically. It was evident that he had no great enthusiasm for this venture, and he greatly irritated the White House, where the blurred line between intelligence and policy was by now virtually erased. Rives's careful reporting had already earned him abuse from the NSC staff and Haig also thoroughly disliked him. The visit of Spiro Agnew to Phnom Penh in July 1970 almost ended his career.

When Vice-President Agnew flew in from Saigon, a group of Cambodian officials and children stood at the steps of the plane to greet him. The door opened and a squad of Secret Service men, Uzi machine guns at the ready, burst out. They rushed down the steps thrusting aside the welcoming party, and hustled Agnew toward a heavily armed helicopter, which had been sent from Saigon to take him the perfectly safe three-mile drive to the palace.

Agnew was greeted there by Acting President Cheng Heng. They had gifts to exchange. Agnew had brought a set of world maps, some silver cocktail glasses and a pair of leather-covered “In” and “Out” trays. He was given some finely worked traditional Cambodian silver. He left it behind when he departed from Phnom Penh.

Wherever Agnew was led in the palace by the diminutive Cheng Heng, the Secret Service went also, their machine guns over their arms. When the Acting President wanted to show Agnew one room that they had not cleared, the Secret Service men pulled Agnew away and refused to let him enter. During lunch they sat around the table, their guns still at the ready. It was all too much for the impeccably polite Mike Rives. When he saw one Secret Service man openly training his gun on the Acting President’s face, he finally lost his temper and asked the agent to behave more graciously.

Rives did not have enough credit at the White House to insult such a sacred cow as the Secret Service. Agnew's guards complained to him, he complained to Nixon, the White House complained to State. Rives, the Department was told, must be sacked. His colleagues managed to protect him to the extent that he was just shunted into the backwater of African research before being quietly moved back onto the Laos-Cambodia desk. But his career never recovered, and his treatment reinforced the conviction of his colleagues that skepticism, especially about Cambodia, was an unprofitable business. It was a lesson that his successor in Phnom Penh, Ambassador Emory "Coby" Swank, would learn, and that he first applied and finally disregarded at a time when such nonchalance was possible only at high personal cost.