The Invasion

 CHAPTER 9

The Invasion

Lon Nol was an unlikely war leader. Most of his life had been spent in the armed services, and he had been a minister in several of Sihanouk's cabinets, Prime Minister in the last. But he was more used to taking orders than giving them and, a believer in hierarchy, he had prostrated himself at the Queen Mother's feet after Sihanouk was deposed to ask her forgiveness. Lon Nol had long been in favor of an American role in Southeast Asia and in Cambodia, and although he had profited from the cross-country trade with the Vietnamese Communists, as a devout Buddhist, he considered fighting Communism a holy duty. In financial matters, he may have been worldly, but at moments of crisis, a strain of mysticism, never far from the surface, overwhelmed him.

Almost nothing was known of  him in the white House at the time of the coup, One American catoonist aptly drew kissinger saying to Nixon " All we know about Lon Nol is that his name spelled backwards makes Lon Nol" But immediately after Sihanouk's deposition the staff of the National Security Council found their in trays clogged with memoranda, questions and demands from the Oval Office . Roger Morris, who resigned over the invasion, believes these " stream-of-consciousness excusions into courage and aggression " will make eextraordinary reading for historians- if they survive . Their message was that the United States must act somehow and decisively, and that this man Lon Nol must be helped  at all costs. There was to be no pause to see whether Sihanouk might return or even whether the new goverment was at all competernt,"From Day One," says Marshall Green, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and State's representative on WAS-SAG—the White House's crisis management body—"Nixon was intent on building up Lon Nol." It was a decision that disturbed many officials in both State and Defense Departments. It led to the invasion and the five-year war.

On March 24, Mike Rives cabled from Phnom Penh that "one of greatest dangers present situation exists in possible clashes between Cambodia and NVN/VC troops, whether initiated by former or latter. Once serious fighting starts there would appear very serious chance escalation not only through possible calls for help by one side or other but because of good possibility that Khmer people would rise or be encouraged to rise against resident Vietnamese and Chinese."

Rives was exactly right, and his views were endorsed by Marshall Green, who was unwise enough to send a memo on his reservations to both Kissinger and Rogers on the twenty-eighth, arguing that the United States should try to work through the French and the Algerians to find a diplomatic solution to Cambodia's new problems. The French had proposed an international conference on Indochina. "It would be very risky to try to solve the North Vietnamese problem in Cambodia by force," he wrote. "I would consider our best action to be to wait on events, saying little." Green believed that the only hope for Cambodia lay in continuing Sihanouk's policies if not actually helping to restore Sihanouk himself. But the White House declined to give public support to France's call for a conference, and lukewarm private agreement was inadequate.

In another memo dealing with the problems of aid, Green pointed out the paradox that "without massive U.S. support, the Government of Cambodia cannot rebuild its position ... but U.S. support could restrict its neutrality, which is its greatest resource." He argued, moreover, that Congress would see aid to Lon Nol as widening the war and might therefore impose further restrictions on aid to Vietnam. Helping Cambodia could hinder Vietnamization. This is exactly what happened.

Green reflected the opinion of many members of Congress. Fears of America being drawn into another "quagmire" were now being frequently expressed on Capitol Hill. But Green's pleas for caution were 

The quagmire myth which stated that the United States was drawn unwillingly deeper and deeper into the Vietnam commitment had not yet been effectively destroyed in April 1970. It took the publication of the Pentagon papers in 1971 to show how consciously and willingly most of the desisions to escalate had been made.

futile, and they were ruinous to his career. His dissent infuriated the White House, and as a result, he was subsequently denied the one job for which he had trained himself for years, ambassador to Japan.

By the end of March, little or no attempt was being made to restrain the South Vietnamese from crashing across the border when they wished. Simultaneously, the North Vietnamese moved westward into Cambodia with the apparent intention of securing their lines of communication. In Washington, Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler suggested that United States troops might move after them. Even the Lon Nol government deplored this and repeated that it sought only to protect Cambodia's neutrality with United Nations support. But Robert Pursley, Laird's military assistant, was receiving constant calls from Alexander Haig and others on Kissinger’s staff, stressing the need for a coordinated assault on the sanctuaries. The options under consideration were heavy artillery attacks, the use of South Vietnamese troops with or without United States air and artillery support, and, at the outside, a combined US-ARVN ground operation. Pursley reacted cautiously to Haig’s calls. He was instructed that the State Department was to know nothing of the discussions. “We were told to keep everything, particularly cables between Abrams and the JCS, on a very close-held basis,” says Pursley. “State got very little information, except when the White House decided to bring them in.”

Melvin Laird was alarmed by the White House's truculence and, despite Haig's command to exclude State, he kept in touch with Rogers. On March 31 he wrote Rogers that, although Lon Nol's replacement by a "Communist-oriented" government would undermine the United States position in Vietnam, "We will be in a difficult position if Cambodia asks the U.S. government to become militarily involved in that country." He suggested the United States should do all it could, short of direct involvement, to strengthen Lon Nol; for example, Washington could see that both South Vietnam and Thailand unilaterally dropped their border claims and other suits against Cambodia. (By suggesting this, Laird implicitly acknowledged that the United States had previously encouraged those pressures to harass Sihanouk.) He thought also that the Australians should be encouraged to send military advisers and give economic aid to Lon Nol.

By the beginning of April Lon Nol was clearly alarmed at his inability to stop the march of the war westward. At steamy briefings in Phnom Penh, government spokesmen were vaguer than usual, and on April 3 journalists were surprised to find that the official transcript of the proceedings conference Lon Nol had just given them included questions and answers that had not been asked or answered. For example, “Question 10: But can we insist on this question—will American troops be called in? Answer: My opinion is that I am thinking of the possible intervention of all friendly countries, for example, Indonesia or others.”

By mid-April, 70,000 volunteers had enlisted in the army. This was 60,000 more than the government had called for, twice as many as the old regular army. Their induction was cursory, their training on a golf course outside Phnom Penh was erratic, and their equipment was nonexistent. Every day they could be seen setting out from the city, hanging on the sides of Coca-Cola trucks or brightly painted buses, wearing shower clogs or sandals, shorts or blue jeans, parts of very old French uniforms or oversized American fatigues, some empty-handed, some carrying French, Russian, East German, American, Chinese weapons, AK-47s, M-16s, rifles, pistols, and submachine guns, laughing as they headed for the war in the plains. “We cannot just send these men armed with sticks to face an enemy armed to the teeth and with twenty years’ fighting experience,” said one officer. Lon Nol made an international appeal for arms.

The White House had already secretly decided that they would be provided. In Saigon, Abrams ordered that all captured AK-47 rifles be sent to Phnom Penh. "I don't want to see any hanging on officers' club walls," he said. The White House instructed the Pentagon to devise surreptitious ways of delivering these and other weapons. The Chiefs were doubtful that this could work, but General Westmoreland cabled Abrams in Saigon to suggest that "it would appear that we might consider delivering arms by sea to Vung Tau and then by air to Phnom Penh. We would want delivery to be covert if possible; however, this may not be feasible over a long period or if large quantities are involved."

The White House also ordered that the Khmer units that had for years been trained in Vietnam finally be launched on a grand scale into Cambodia. The order covered not only ordinary ethnic Khmer battalions, known as Khmer Krom, but also Son Ngoc Thanh's Khmer Serei. In late March and early April Son Ngoc Thanh was flown around Vietnam on a recruiting drive, and Abrams cabled the Chiefs to say, "Three battalions of Khmer Serei with a total strength of about 1,500 are available now... if these units are urgently needed to support the Lon Nol government they should be inserted by air at Phnom Penh."

More and more Khmer Serei and Khmer Krom were flown into Cambodia over the coming months. They were far better trained than the Cambodian troops and, as an elite corps, seemed to Lon Nol a political threat. They were subsequently thrust into all the worst meat-grinder battles, and few survived.

Inevitably, news of Nixon's decision to assist Lon Nol leaked out in Washington. The administration assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the amounts were insignificant. But the first step is always the hardest, and here it had been taken without any consultation with Congress and with no consideration of the long-term implications. Lon Nol immediately asked for more. Within weeks he said he needed full infantry equipment for 400 battalions, massive communications gear, 2,500 military trucks, 1,000 jeeps, 30 helicopters, 30 fighters, 12 transport aircraft. By the end of the war this was small beer.

Throughout the first part of April the new government demonstrated its ability to rule Cambodia without Sihanouk in a way that should have given the administration cause for reflection. Lon Nol was being advised by Indonesian officers. Rather as Suharto had unleashed hatred of the Chinese population after the coup against Sukarno, so Lon Nol tried to compensate for lack of peasant support by exploiting the Khmers' traditional fear of the Vietnamese. After the division of French Indochina, some 400,000 Vietnamese had remained in Cambodia; many of them were merchants, and a good number of them had, like Lon Nol himself, profited from the trade with the Vietnamese Communists. Sihanouk had made a point of controlling the violent racial antagonisms that existed between his subjects, but now the government propaganda machinery was geared to persuade the Cambodians that all Vietnamese residents were members of the Viet Cong. The radio screamed abuse and in Phnom Penh the government staged a pageant at which the brilliant, beautiful Khmers were seen liquidating their knavish neighbors.

The real killings of Vietnamese began in the village of Prasat, in the Parrot's Beak; the government blamed their deaths on crossfire. Journalists there insisted that Khmer troops had simply shot them. Then about 800 Vietnamese men were taken from their riverside village of Chrui Changwar. Their hands were tied behind their backs, they were pushed into boats, shot and thrown into the Mekong. More and more were executed in this way, and for days their swollen bodies floated downstream, getting caught in the ferries and in fishermen's nets, staining the muddy water the color of rust.

When journalists arrived at a schoolyard in the town of Takeo, it looked like an abattoir, with flies buzzing through the classrooms and over the pools of coagulating blood. Dozens of wounded Vietnamese lay on the ground, gasping and writhing in the sun, watched by young Cambodian soldiers who lounged against the walls with spent cartridge cases around their feet. The soldiers had come the night before: 'They shot and shot,' wept one teenage boy. One man, lying on his back in his own blood, had stuffed his clothes into his gaping stomach. There was a hospital only one hundred yards away, but no help had been given. Some of the wounded Vietnamese begged the reporters for help: they were sure they would be killed off that night. The journalists went to the province chief, who blandly assured them that the crossfire in the vicinity was really shocking. One reporter lost his temper and angrily abused the surprised official, and they were then allowed to bundle as many of the wounded as they could into their hired cars. As the sun was setting they raced them back through roadblocks to hospitals in Phnom Penh. Later the car-rental firm complained about blood on the seats.

Protests by diplomats and the press, and also the White House, even-tually led Lon Nol to admit that the murder of Vietnamese civilians was not essential to his revolution. Nonetheless, he ordered a band of Vietnamese detainees taken from a camp in Phnom Penh to help relieve the town of Saang, southwest of the capital. The detainees were told, as they were driven in trucks toward the town, that they were "volunteers" and that their role was simply to persuade the Communists to leave. They were dropped on a country road about two miles outside Saang; one nervous man was given a white flag to lead the procession and Cambodian officers brought up the rear, prodding with sticks. From over a mile away, two women were ordered to read the government's message through megaphones: the Viet Cong must leave, respect the 1954 Geneva Accords, and recognize that Sihanouk's overthrow was an internal matter. One senior Cambodian officer explained to Kevin Buckley of Newsweek: "This is a new tactic of ours. It's psychological warfare." After the pitiful procession shuffled round the last bend in the road, a rapid exchange of automatic-weapon fire began: bullets snapped across and along the road and Lon Nol's "volunteers" fell howling to the tarmac. The town was not captured.

The next day, the Cambodians attacked Saang themselves. Their order of battle on this occasion was not untypical of the way in which they then went to war. The troops took three hours to edge up the last 500 yards into town. They were fired on and moved only because of the accuracy with which one of their colonels flung rocks at them from behind. As they inched forward, they blasted the houses and shops in front with small arms, mortars, and recoilless rifles. There was no response. When they reached the wreckage of the center of the town they found it empty except for an old Buddhist monk who sat by the road, laughing. “We are going to win now,” exulted one young soldier, “the Viet Cong didn’t stay to fight.”

Ever since 1970, Nixon and his associates have claimed that the invasion of Cambodia at the end of April was a great success. This assessment has been widely accepted. It is not accurate. The invasion not only was disastrous for Cambodia, but it also had serious long-term effects on Vietnamization and on the nature of the Nixon administration itself. The way in which it was conducted broke rules of good policymaking, ignored vital intelligence, and disregarded political realities. Congress, to whom the Constitution assigns the power to declare war—in order, as Lincoln put it, that “no man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us”—was totally ignored. So was almost everyone else. Writing about the Cuban missile crisis, Richard Neustadt suggested that Congressional debate could no longer be a realistic constraint on modern Presidential crisis management and that more effective was argument within the Executive Branch. But even this unofficial, unrecognized restraint was missing in April 1970. Decision-making was already so centralized in the White House that it was not true, in Neustadt’s phrase, that the President stood “at the center of a watchful circle with whose members he cannot help but consult.” There was little to prevent Cambodia from assuming an importance that was more symbolic than real.

Throughout the month Nixon was visibly angered by the Senate's rejections of the two men he had nominated for the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the resignation of Abe Fortas. After his first choice, Clement Haynsworth, was thrown out, Nixon publicly demanded that his second, G. Harrold Carswell, be approved automatically. The Senate, however, found that Carswell had no legal qualification for the task and was a segregationist; he too was rejected. In his book Six Crises, Nixon had described how he had always tried to control his impulsive rages. This time he wheeled into the White House press room, stuttered out a denunciation of the sixty-one “vicious,” “hypocritical,” “prejudiced” Senators who had thwarted the people's wishes as he had expressed them, and jerked out again leaving a slightly awkward press corps behind him.

His distress did not abate during the month, and it was apparent that, whatever else he thought of Cambodia, Nixon also saw it as a chance of restoring his slighted authority. “Those Senators think they can push me around, but I’ll show them who’s “Tough,” he warned Kissinger after one Congressional appeal for caution.

“The liberals are waiting to see Nixon let Cambodia go down the drain just the way Eisenhower let Cuba go down the drain.”

His belligerence was increased by another irrelevant factor. Early in April, he had a private viewing of the film Patton, in which George C. Scott gives a compelling performance as the gifted, demagogic, lonely, and naïve World War II general who defied conventional restraints and risked everything to achieve success in the Battle of the Bulge. The film appealed to Nixon’s self-image, and he had a second showing as the Cambodian crisis deepened. William Rogers was dismayed to hear the President repeatedly citing Patton in this context, almost as he quoted his triumph over Alger Hiss during domestic troubles.

In response to the aggressive sounds from the White House, the Joint Chiefs in Washington and General Abrams in Saigon began to fire across the world proposals and counterproposals for escalation. Abrams asked first that he be allowed to send the Special Forces Salem House teams deeper into the country. “Lucrative targets would be engaged by tac-air, artillery, and/or exploitation forces,” he wrote. Then, while American attention was fixed on the precarious flight of the Apollo 13 astronauts, Abrams asked for a month of tactical airstrikes into Cambodia. At this time, according to the White House’s public claims, the North Vietnamese were moving westward and threatening Phnom Penh, but Abrams stated that he had increased sightings of their troops in the borders of eastern Cambodia. He guaranteed that “to preclude compromise, bombing could be kept totally secret.”

General Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, replied that approval would have to be given "at higher level," and he was not optimistic. But, a clear master of bureaucratic maneuver, he added, "In interim suggest you consider Menu (B-52) Operations for area described. Would contemplate earlier approval in view of ongoing program." Abrams did not take up this attractive offer; he replied, "At this time it is not believed that the targets described are of sufficient persistence to qualify as lucrative Menu targets." It was not long before his patience was rewarded; he was allowed to send fighter bombers up to eighteen miles into the country.

By the end of May, 156 tactical airstrikes had been flown under the code ... under false reports until ... bombing was finally made public, Abrams ... about the reasons for the falsification and concealment. It was necessary, "Because we did not have authority to use Tacair in Cambodia."

As Abrams was making his request, the Vietnam Moratorium Committee announced on April 19 that it would close its Washington office by the end of the month for lack of funds and support for the antiwar movement. It was a symbolic moment, and Nixon might well have considered it a major vindication of Vietnamization. But the President was still unsettled, and that day he flew 5,000 miles to Hawaii to associate himself with the astonishing escape of the Apollo 13 astronauts. He was briefed on Cambodia by Admiral John D. McCain Jr., Commander in Chief of the United States Forces in the Pacific, known as CINCPAC, who was based in Honolulu.

McCain, whose son was a POW in North Vietnam, was to play an important part in the story of Cambodia. He is a tiny, sprightly man with a straightforward view of the world. His military briefings were legendary. He would talk very excitedly for forty-five minutes on a subject that might be dealt with in ten and illustrate a doom-laden message with lurid maps of Southeast Asia. Extended from the bright-red belly of China were gigantic red arrows or claws reaching all over that part of the world for which McCain felt responsible. Sometimes his sermons on the "Chicom" threat were so energetic, his cries of woe so violent, his passionate pleas for aid so draining, that at the end of a briefing he would drop into his chair, ask for questions, and fall fast asleep.

In the Pentagon, McCain was known, because of his maps, as the “Big Red Arrow Man,” and both generals and journalists spoke with mingled awe and amusement of “McCain’s claws.” Nixon apparently was impressed when McCain unfurled for him a map of Cambodia with half the country already stained red and the dreaded claws reaching south and west beyond Phnom Penh and on toward Thailand. Cambodia must be saved, cried the Admiral, the President must act decisively. If he were still intent on announcing the withdrawal of another 150,000 men from Vietnam, then it was essential to protect Saigon’s western flank. Lon Nol needed more than just a few thousand old rifles; what was required was an assault on the sanctuaries. Nixon flew McCain back to San Clemente to give the same message to Henry Kissinger. Kissinger’s reaction is not recorded.

The next day, April 20, Nixon addressed the nation on Vietnam. It was an optimistic speech; he promised that “pacification is succeeding,” that “we finally have in sight the just peace we are seeking.” He hoped to withdraw another 150,000 troops within the next year. The President gave no hint of impending crisis, though he did refer to “enemy escalation in Laos and Cambodia” and warned that “I shall not hesitate to take strong and effective measures” to deal with any resulting threats to United States forces. After the speech, reporters with him observed that The President was very tense. To their dismay, he decided to fly home to Washington that night; they arrived at the White House sometime after 1 A.M. Six hours later, Nixon was briefed by Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA.

Helms informed the President and Kissinger that the NVA were now threatening Phnom Penh itself. Kissinger later confided to reporters that Lon Nol’s appeal for arms was very poignant. What Helms did not say, either then or at any stage during the next week, was that he had just received a National Intelligence Estimate on the Cambodian situation.

Titled “Stocktaking in Indochina: Longer Term Prospects” and drafted by the CIA's Indochina specialists, the paper dealt with the implications of Sihanouk's removal. It considered that if Hanoi could be denied Cambodian sanctuary, its strategy would be endangered. But there was no way this could be enforced by Lon Nol. It "would require heavy and sustained bombing and large numbers of foot soldiers, who could be supplied only by the United States and South Vietnam." Such an expanded allied effort could seriously handicap the Communists and raise the cost to them of prosecuting the war, but, however successful, it probably would not prevent them from continuing the struggle in some form (emphasis added).

Helms did not forward the memorandum to the White House. Instead, he sent it back to the Chairman of the CIA’s National Estimates Board, Abbott Smith, with a handwritten note: "Let’s take a look at this on June 1st and see if we would keep it or make certain revisions." Helms has since declined to explain his coyness; one member of the Board testified later that the Director would have considered it “most counterproductive” to send such a negative assessment to the White House, where he and the CIA had already encountered hostility. George Carver, Helms’s Special Assistant for Vietnamization Affairs, objected to this explanation of Helms’s action, but inadvertently confirmed it; he testified that Helms thought it would be fatuous to send the estimate forward, for although Helms knew Nixon was already planning an invasion, his analysts did not.

Helms did not forward the memorandum to the White House. Instead, he sent it back to the Chairman of the CIA’s National Estimates Board, Abbott Smith, with a handwritten note: "Let’s take a look at this on June 1st and see if we would keep it or make certain revisions." Helms has since declined to explain his coyness; one member of the Board testified later that the Director would have considered it “most counterproductive” to send such a negative assessment to the White House, where he and the CIA had already encountered hostility. George Carver, Helms’s Special Assistant for Vietnamization Affairs, objected to this explanation of Helms’s action, but inadvertently confirmed it; he testified that Helms thought it would be fatuous to send the estimate forward, for although Helms knew Nixon was already planning an invasion, his analysts did not.

Carver’s view is hardly coherent. The CIA Indochinese experts’ ignorance of Nixon’s desire to send troops into the sanctuaries freed them of political pressures and would have tended to make their conclusions more, not less, relevant. But such was the fear of the White House within the CIA that Nixon was deprived of the considered opinion of the specialists that invasion was unwise. Whether it would have had any influence must remain a matter of speculation, but the incident is illustrative of the way in which inconvenient views were suppressed.

Helms' self-censorship was the prelude to ten days of somewhat neglected and emotional decision-making. There was no consensus within the administration on North Vietnamese intentions. In Saigon, MACV offered captured documents that showed that Hanoi expected a United States invasion of the sanctuaries, and others that showed that the Communists expected the United States to provide only indirect aid to Lon Nol. Still others, produced later in Washington, purported to show that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were massing in the sanctuaries at the same time as they were supposed to be encircling Phnom Penh. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation noted later, "There seem to be captured documents to prove almost any point or to support, retrospectively, almost any conclusion."

The Chiefs were surprised but not displeased by the depth of the President’s anguish. On the evening of April 21, General Westmoreland cabled Abrams: "As you are certainly aware, there is highest-level concern here with respect to the situation in Cambodia." He saw it as a mood to be exploited: "The threat to Phnom Penh and the present concern of higher authority may be conducive to relaxation of some of the constraints under which we are operating. If this happens we should be prepared to take advantage of the opportunity." He asked Abrams how best the United States could involve itself more deeply in South Vietnamese attacks across the border. He needed a reply overnight so that he could advise "higher authority" the next day.

Abrams needed little prodding. He had been keen on an invasion since he had arrived in Saigon. Moreover, as one of his deputies said later, “South Vietnam was relatively tranquil then. We were looking for something to do.” Abrams responded that “our present degree of participation [in South Vietnamese invasion plans] is considered adequate,” but he also supported the selective use of American troops “in most productive base areas, if U.S. policy permits.” He suggested the dispatch of the Khmer Serei to Phnom Penh and the delivery of about 10,000 carbines to Lon Nol: “Problems are not foreseen for either covert or overt delivery.”

Abrams proposed an elaborate scenario for widening the war. One section of his cable is worth quoting at length.

A pattern of progressive escalation in U.S. participation, coupled with continuing ARVN cross border operations, is suggested in the following countermeasures which warrant consideration:

A. Maintenance of pressure of military force in Northern and Southern Laos.

• B   Encourage programs of cooperation Between the GVN and the Lon Nol Government.
• C  Provisions of weapons, munitions, and communications:
• D  In support of:RVNAF, use of U.S. gunship, artillery, and tacair in Cambodia.
• E  Selective combined US/RVNAF military operations against: High-payoff targets which might develop in Cambodia.
• F Exploit status of the Mekong river as an international waterway.
• G  Plan for quarantine of Sihanoukville:Prepared and imposed at an appropriate time.
• H  Selective application of military force against: Selected military targets in North Vietnam.

"That was very much how it happened. The next day Kissinger informed a National Security Council meeting that whether the North Vietnamese were intent on capturing Phnom Penh or merely setting up a provisional government, Vietnamization was now endangered. General Westmoreland, representing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told him of Abrams’ suggestions and said that he himself thought that an invasion by South Vietnamese troops alone would be adequate. That night, the twenty-second, Nixon authorized the final planning for a South Vietnamese attack on the Parrot’s Beak, just northwest of Saigon. General Wheeler cabled Abrams to say that the South Vietnamese invasion was to begin on April 27. 'Our objective is to make maximum use of ARVN assets to minimize U.S. involvement and maintain the lowest possible U.S. profile.'"

Laird and Rogers were anxious that nothing more than that should be done. Rogers told a House subcommittee—in phrases that were to haunt him—that the United States had “no incentive to escalate... We recognize that if we escalate and get involved in Cambodia our whole [Vietnamization] program is defeated.” Rogers’ opposition meant that the State Department was now even more excluded from the planning process. The White House suspected State officials of leaking the information that Nixon, not Thieu, had authorized the supply of arms to Lon Nol and insisted on a new internal caption—"No-Dis Khmer"—designed to prevent distribution of top-secret cables about Cambodia to the Department's Cambodian experts. It remained in force until after the invasion.

In the Pentagon, the Vietnam Task Force, the group principally concerned with Vietnamization, was not consulted, perhaps because earlier in the month it—like the CIA—had decided that an invasion would make no long-term difference.

The main policy-making body now was WASSAG, but Secretary Laird’s representative, Warren Nutter, was forbidden to attend some of its crucial meetings. “Only Kissinger and Nixon really knew what was going on,” says one of Kissinger’s staff. This is a little exaggerated. Nixon was also taking advice from Attorney General John Mitchell and from his friend Bebe Rebozo.

On the twenty-third, Nixon began to suggest that if the South Vietnamese were to be sent into some of the sanctuaries, it might be worth sending American troops into others. He called Kissinger, who was at the home of Senator J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to ask for plans for such attacks by the following day. Kissinger told the Senator nothing of this. The next morning, he and Nixon met with Helms, Admiral Thomas Moorer, representing General Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Helms’s deputy, General Robert Cushman. The proposed target for an American attack was Base Area 352 and Area 353 in the Fish Hook section of the border, north of the Parrot’s Beak. Area 353 was the Breakfast site, where Abrams had claimed to locate COSVN over a year earlier. Area 352 was Dinner. Since the bombing had begun, the two locations had been plastered with about 29,000 tons of bombs, but even so, Abrams claimed that COSVN was still in place, and some United States officers continued to conjure visions of a Communist Pentagon East, telling the gullible that COSVN was a reinforced-concrete bunker, 29 feet underground, that housed about 5,000 officials and technicians. Newsweek, among others, believed and reported it. So did Nixon.

Laird was not at this discussion on the twenty-fourth, and according to William Watts of Kissinger’s staff, who was present, Admiral Moorer asked what he should relay back to the Secretary. He was informed that he was attending the meeting as the President's military adviser not as the representative of the Chairman of the Chiefs; he was to tell Laird nothing. Kissinger, however, phoned Laird to ask for plans of attack on the two bases. Laird’s ignorance of the President's intentions is clear from the fact that his main concern at that time was to limit the number of American personnel that would accompany the South Vietnamese invasion of the Parrot's Beak. He had just sent General Wheeler a long list of questions to be put to Abrams; he said, “It is absolutely essential that we have no U.S. personnel involved in the initial phases or so-called ‘first wave’ of the operation... It is likewise essential that no U.S. ground advisers be introduced into Cambodia at any time during the operation.” Wheeler sent Laird’s remarks to Abrams with suggestions as to how to deflect the Secretary's concern.

At the same time, however, Laird was beginning to believe that, by its requests, and by such questions as “How can you be absolutely certain that ARVN alone can do the job?” the White House was deliberately encouraging the Joint Chiefs and Abrams to argue that United States troops were essential. In an attempt to dampen White House enthusiasm, Laird suggested that Kissinger seek Congressional reaction to the idea of American forces invading a neutral nation. Instead, Kissinger and Nixon chatted informally with John C. Stennis, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, a Vietnam warrior who could be expected to endorse the plan but who had no constitutional authority alone to approve it.

Laird’s concern seems to have been warranted. Abrams now sent a proposal for an American attack on Base Area 352/353, to coincide with the South Vietnamese invasion of the Parrot’s Beak. Wheeler replied that he was sympathetic, but “It is unlikely that we would be authorized to employ U.S. forces alone, except in extremis. An all-out attack on Phnom Penh would be an example. Therefore, recommend you not surface proposal at this time. Suggest you continue to march with planning for joint operations in 352/353 area but have in your hip pocket, on U.S. Eyes Only basis, suitable unilateral plans for extreme contingency. Warm regards.”

On the evening of April 24, Henry Kissinger summoned his so-called "house doves"—William Watts, Roger Morris, Tony Lake, Larry Lynn, and Winston Lord—to a staff meeting in his office. Its purpose was to discuss American options in Cambodia. Of these five, only Lord remained with Kissinger after the invasion.

Kissinger claimed that the encounter was “stormy and emotional”; but, in retrospect, Roger Morris felt that “not for the first or last time a policy in Indochina that warranted screaming was too gently opposed.” If so, it was in part because Kissinger managed not to reveal exactly what was planned, still less what was being contemplated. With great skill he

When Georges Bidault asked John Foster Dulles for United States air support around Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Dulles replied that the President could not authorize a single airstrike without Congressional approval. This was not mere diplomatic flimflam; Admiral Arthur Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had been pressing for just a strike and was even prepared to consider the use of nuclear weapons. But Eisenhower decided that there would be no United States commitment to Indochina without specific agreements with the French and the British and, more importantly, without complete Congressional support. The difference between the Eisenhower/Dulles approach and the Nixon/Kissinger attitude is instructive. The first pair could act as true conservatives or strict constructionists conveyed the impression that this was an entirely South Vietnamese show with, at most, a few American spotter planes helping out.

Nonetheless, Kissinger was made aware that at least four of his staff considered any attack on Cambodia disastrous. Lord said nothing, but Kissinger's Special Assistant, Tony Lake, told him it would represent an extension of the war that would cause real problems both in Cambodia and at home; William Watts saw it as part of the escalation discussed in September 1969, leading inexorably to an invasion of Laos and then to the bombing of Haiphong as well; Morris said that no one had any idea what North Vietnamese intentions were, and Lynn felt that the risks outweighed all possible gains and that salvation could be found, if at all, only on the fields of South Vietnam. He thought that resources should be concentrated on improving South Vietnamese provincial governments and local forces. Lynn’s were the only arguments that seemed to impress Kissinger, because, Kissinger said later, he talked in terms of the military aspects of the invasion rather than emotion, law, morality or public opinion.

General Westmoreland, in his memoirs, asserts that Kissinger pressed for the invasion. Certainly, he did not exercise the independence of his office; once it was clear that Nixon was interested more in the views of John Mitchell and Bebe Rebozo than in those of Rogers or Laird, he made little protest. As a result, Kissinger’s stakes in the invasion were high, and Nixon made this clear in a number of ways. One evening the President called to discuss the plans. As usual, Kissinger had one of his staff on the extension to take notes for history; this time it was William Watts. Nixon seemed drunk and said, “Wait a minute—Bebe has something to say to you.” Rebozo came onto the line: “The President wants you to know if this doesn’t work, Henry, it’s your ass.” “Ain’t that right, Bebe?” slurred Nixon. There was some truth in this. By declining to try to argue the President out of invading Cambodia, Kissinger was pitting himself against both Rogers and Laird, and was committing his future influence to at least the appearance of success.

In Saigon, Abrams drew up a plan for a combined American-South Vietnamese assault on Base Areas 352–353—“Operation Shoemaker.” Because of the hastiness of the request and the demands for secrecy, the General was not able to make very detailed preparations. The intelligence officers on the Cambodian Desk, ignorant of the proposal, could not be asked for an assessment. No one counted the number of bridges on the roads into Cambodia, and two days before the invasion the Operational Staff did not know the length of the frontier between Cambodia and South Vietnam. Aerial intelligence on North Vietnamese troop movements inside Cambodia was far from accurate. Neither Mike Rives nor Lon Nol was allowed to know of the plan, so no coordination with the Cambodians could be arranged.

As a result, Abrams’ plan for the American invasion, cabled on April 26, one day before the South Vietnamese invasion was due to begin, was little more than a revision of previous JCS proposals, and it lacked a full account of Communist deployments since the end of March. When Kissinger asked Larry Lynn to review it, Lynn was horrified by its brevity and sloppiness. He realized that basic questions relating to the effect on South Vietnam and on Vietnamization, the disposition of air resources and so on, had hardly been posed, let alone answered. No one from the National Security Council had been dispatched to Phnom Penh to examine the situation on the ground. The few reports that did come in were from Mike Rives, who had very little idea of what was happening in the eastern provinces. To the fury of the White House, he reported a Cambodian claim that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was marching south from Yunnan province through Laos. Nixon cursed Rives, but he sent no one he trusted to make an assessment.

In the past, Lynn had usually found Kissinger rather meticulous. On this operation astonishingly little analysis had been done. Lynn sat by himself in the Situation Room studying the plan, and listing questions on a yellow pad. When he had finished, Kissinger passed them on to the Joint Chiefs; but Lynn did not have the impression that Kissinger considered them urgent. It seemed, in fact, that the decision had already been taken.

Throughout this period, the White House was assuring reporters that the administration hoped that the rather ambiguous Soviet proposal for another convocation of the Geneva Conference would succeed. But since Premier Kosygin had rebuffed Sihanouk, and since the Prince was now in Peking, the extent of Soviet influence seems questionable. Peking was already dominating the growth of resistance to Lon Nol.

Over April 24–25, the Chinese sponsored a conference near Canton attended by Sihanouk; Prince Souphanouvong, leader of the Pathet Lao; Nguyen Huu Tho, President of the National Liberation Front; and North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong. The conference pledged all  four revolutionary movements to joint action against "the imperialists." Chou En-lai attended the final session to give it his endorsement. Nonetheless, the Chinese had still not wholly committed themselves to Sihanouk, and in Phnom Penh Chinese officials were still trying to persuade Lon Nol that he should accommodate the Viet Cong in the border areas. As men and arms began to flow from Saigon, and as, in Nixon's words, the border areas were "softened up" by even more B-52 attacks to "convey our concern," the possibility of accommodation in Indochina became more and more remote. In Washington, Nixon saw Patton again. He seemed to Rogers to be "a walking ad for that movie."

In the last few days before the launching of Operation Shoemaker, a series of tense meetings was held in the White House. On the morning of the twenty-seventh, Nixon met with Laird and Rogers. Only then did it become clear to them that he was on the verge of committing United States troops to the Fish Hook, with the approval of General Abrams. Rogers wondered if Abrams was simply telling the President what he wanted to hear. Nixon then drafted a back-channels cable to ask Abrams to repeat his views directly to the White House. Subsequently, this was presented as an attempt to get at the "unvarnished truth." Its inevitable effect was to encourage Abrams to ask for everything the President seemed prepared to offer. Only a few days back neither he nor the Chiefs had expected the use of United States troops to be part of "Presidential policy"; they had been ready to invade the sanctuaries with the ARVN alone. Now, given the choice, there was no reason for Abrams—or any other commander—to ask for less rather than more. He confirmed that United States troops would increase the chances of success.

Nixon made his final decision to send in American troops next morning, the twenty-eighth. He subsequently explained to Nelson Rockefeller, "I sat right here with two cabinet officers and my national security adviser, and I asked what we needed to do. The recommendation of the Department of Defense was the most pusillanimous little nit-picker I ever saw. 'Just bite off the Parrot's Beak.' I said you are going to have a hell of an uproar at home if you bite off the Beak. If you are going to take the heat, go for all the marbles. ... I have made some bad decisions, but a good one was this: When you bite the bullet, bite it hard—go for the big play."

It was Kissinger, Presidential Assistant H.R. Haldeman and Attorney General John Mitchell—not the Secretaries of State and Defense—whom he informed first. Not one Congressional committee knew anything about it. Indeed, the day before, at a closed hearing, Rogers had given the Senate Foreign Relations Committee no hint that any such action was contemplated.The Senators, however, had explicitly warned him that the Senate was opposed to substantial aid to Lon Nol.

When the White House told him the news, General Wheeler sent Abrams a cable which began, "Higher authority has authorized certain military actions to protect U.S. forces operating in South Vietnam. Authorization is granted for conduct of a combined U.S./GVN operation against Base Area 352/353." Attacks could be mounted up to 30 kilometers into Cambodia. Only now did Kissinger ask his staff to begin to consider all the implications of the use of American troops. William Watts was chosen to coordinate the NSC staff work on the invasion, but he went to Kissinger's office to tell him he objected to the policy and could not work on it. Kissinger replied, "Your views represent the cowardice of the Eastern Establishment." This, on top of the strain of recent weeks, was too much for Watts. He strode toward Kissinger, who retreated behind his desk. Watts stalked out to write a letter of resignation. In the White House Situation Room he was confronted by Alexander Haig, who, by contrast, was delighted by Nixon's decision. Haig barked at Watts that he could not resign: "You've just had an order from your commander in chief." "Fuck you, Al," Watts said. "I just did."

For Haig, to refuse any order was unthinkable, and he was disgusted when two more of the staff, Roger Morris and Tony Lake, wrote a joint letter of resignation. In it they put forward their objections to the invasion and added that "the reasons for our resignation, involving an increasing alienation from this Administration also predate and go beyond the Cambodian problem. We wished to inform you now, before the public reaction to our Cambodian policy, so that it will be clear that our decision was not made after the fact and as a result of those consequences." They handed the letter to Haig but, fearful of driving Kissinger into one of his rages at this difficult time, they suggested it be delivered only after the invasion had begun.

Even the ordinary White House staff was somewhat alarmed. Kissinger was asked at a meeting whether the invasion did not expand the war. "Look," he replied, "we're not interested in Cambodia. We're only interested in it not being used as a base." The wider justifications he cited dealt with superpower relations: "We're trying to shock the Soviets into calling a Conference," he said, "and we can't do this by appearing weak." William Safire asked if it did not breach the Nixon Doctrine, and Kissinger replied, "We wrote the goddam doctrine, we can change it." At the end of the meeting Haig stood up and shouted, "The basic substance of all this is that we have to be tough." That was indeed a point.

Another, as Kissinger instructed his staff, was that "We are all the President’s men."

Nixon disregarded advice that Abrams simply make a routine announcement of the invasion from Saigon. He was apparently determined to make the most of the occasion and he worked on his speech himself until 4:15 A.M. on the morning of April 30, the day it was to be delivered. A few hours later he called Haldeman and Kissinger into his office and, slumped in his chair, he read it to them. They had only minor comments.

It was much later in the afternoon that the speech was taken over to Laird and Rogers. They were horrified. “This will cause an uproar,” Rogers told his staff, and Laird called Kissinger to suggest fundamental changes. Under his prodding Kissinger did now suggest some; Nixon rejected almost all of them. The final speech was very much his own; as delivered, it ranks with "Checkers," the 1962 "last" press conference, and the 1974 "farewell" to the White House staff, as among the key Nixon texts. As Jonathan Schell, of The New Yorker, pointed out, it reflected his attitudes toward himself, his place in America and America’s place in the world, and it explains much about why he acted as he did. It had almost nothing to do with the realities of Cambodia.

Ignoring Menu, Nixon began with the lie that the United States had “scrupulously respected” Cambodia’s neutrality for the last five years and had not “moved against” the sanctuaries. This falsehood was repeated by Kissinger in his background briefings to the press. That same evening he told reporters that the Communists had been using Cambodia for five years but, “As long as Sihanouk was in power in Cambodia we had to weigh the benefits in long-range historical terms of Cambodian neutrality as against any temporary military advantages and we made no efforts during the first fifteen months of this administration to move against the sanctuary.” The next day he said of Sihanouk’s rule, “We had no incentive to change it. We made no effort to change it. We were surprised by the development. One reason why we showed such great restraint against the base areas was in order not to change this situation.”

In his announcement of the invasion, Nixon stated that his action was taken “not for the purpose of expanding the war into Cambodia, but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam”; he would give aid to Cambodia, but only to enable it “to defend its neutrality and not for the purpose of making it an active belligerent on one side or the other.”

He promised that in the Fish Hook area American and South Vietnamese troops “will attack the headquarters for the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam"; Laird had repeatedly told him that except in the wider reaches of military fantasy, no such "key control center," as Nixon put it, existed. He alleged that "the enemy ... is concentrating his main forces in the sanctuaries, where they are building up to launch massive attacks on our forces and those of South Vietnam." Melvin Laird had, in fact, reluctantly approved the invasion only because he was sure that the movement of the Communists westward out of the sanctuaries would render United States casualties tolerably low. Nixon then noted"—incorrectly—that "there has been a great deal of discussion with regard to this decision I have made."

More important than the specific falsehoods are the illusions upon which Nixon's speech was based. Underlying it was the notion that there is always some unknown but awaited threat, in anticipation of which current actions must be formed and judged. "Plaintive diplomatic protests" were no longer enough; alone, the President said, they would simply destroy American credibility in areas of the world, "where only the power of the United States deters aggression." The destruction of the sanctuaries would save American lives in Vietnam, but it was more important for the service it could render elsewhere.

The President's image that night, on television screens across across America, was not comforting. His tone was strident, his words were slurred and he mopped the sweat from his upper lip. His emotion was understandable, for his vision of the world was truly a nightmare. "We live in an age of anarchy. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilization in the last five hundred years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed. Small nations all over the world find themselves under attack from within and from without." It was to these threats that the United States and he, the President, must respond. "If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world."

Nixon introduced himself, as he so often did, into the discussion by promising that "I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history." He compared his action with the "great decisions" made by Woodrow Wilson in the First World War, Franklin Roosevelt in the Second, Eisenhower in Korea, and Kennedy during the missile crisis. "It is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight," he intoned. "Would America have the strength to stand up to "a group"—by which he presumably meant the entire North Vietnamese population and the Viet Cong together with their supporters in Moscow, in Peking and across the world—that flouted the President’s will? "If we fail to meet this challenge, all other nations will be on notice that despite its overwhelming power the United States, when a real crisis comes, will be found wanting."

Despite the secrecy and the rhetoric, this was not, it seems, in a real crisis. Cambodia was a test, a trial through which Nixon was putting the American people, let alone the Cambodians, so that if a real crisis did come one day, the world would beware. "This is not an invasion of Cambodia," Nixon insisted. (Officials were ordered to call it "an incursion" instead.) At one level this was just another lie, but at another it was true. Cambodia was a testing ground for United States resolve.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has pointed out that Nixon’s view of the world recalls that of the Romans, as Joseph Schumpeter described it. "There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented." This was precisely what happened in Cambodia. United States troops were now committed to its forests, rubber plantations and villages to assure the world that the giant was in training for the ultimate test.

The law was not relevant. Then, and subsequently, Nixon justified his action in terms of his responsibility as Commander in Chief to protect American troops, and he explained his refusal to consult Congress by citing Kennedy's secret moves at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Afterward the White House asked the Justice Department to prepare a legal justification. The task fell to William Rehnquist, an assistant attorney general, whom Nixon later elevated to the Supreme Court. His arguments are not impressive. He asserted that the Commander in Chief clause of the Constitution was "a grant of substantive authority" that allowed all Presidents to send troops "into conflict with foreign powers on their own initiative." In fact, the clause only gave the President such powers as the commanding officer of the armed forces would have had if he were not President. Rehnquist suggested that the invasion was only a very mild assertion of Presidential prerogative.*

. During the Algerian war of independence the United States rejected France’s claimed right to attack a Tunisian town inhabited by Algerian guerrillas, and in 1964 Adlai Stevenson, at the U.N., condemned Britain for assaulting a Yemeni town used as a base by insurgents attacking Aden. Even Israel had frequently been criticized by the United States.

Mike Rives and the U.S. mission in Phnom Penh learned of the invasion by listening to Nixon’s speech on Voice of America. Rives hurried around to tell Lon Nol what was happening in the eastern provinces of his country. Lon Nol was shocked. He declared publicly that the operation violated Cambodian territorial integrity. All that day United States and South Vietnamese troops, tanks, and planes churned across the earth and the air into the provinces of Ratanakiri, Mondolkiri, Kompong Cham, and Svay Rieng. Reporters flying westward by helicopter to cover the invasion noticed that the unmarked border was easily discerned. On the South Vietnamese side the buffalo grazed calmly, well used to the noise of the war above and around them. In Cambodia the animals ran into each other and scattered, terrified.

" for attacks on enemy bases outside its territory. Now Rehnquist claimed that the United States' Commander in Chief has powers under international law that French, Israeli, and British political leaders did not have. Arthur Schlesinger noted that rather more relevant was Marshall's rule that 'an army marching into the dominions of another sovereign may justly be considered as committing an act of hostility; and, if not opposed by force, acquires no privilege by its irregular and improper conduct.' When Herndon advised Lincoln that the President could invade a neighbor if this were necessary to repel invasion, Lincoln had replied, 'Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose.'"