CONTINUES IN SAIGON ABOUT USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The “rumor" allegedly started by an “unknown person in New York" that the White House and Pentagon are considering using “tactical" nuclear weapons in Saigon caused ripples of apprehension around the world. It was taken almost everywhere to be a trial balloon sent up by the Pentagon to see how stiff the clamor might be and also as a first move to accustom the American people to the idea.
Johnson, as was to be expected, denied that consideration was being given to employment of "tactical" nuclear weapons in Vietnam at present. And Prime Minister Harold Wilson, during his visit to Washington, denounced the suggestion as "sheer lunacy."
Most of the world took Johnson's denial and filed it where it belonged -in the "credibility gap."
Despite Johnson's signal to softpedal the subject, talk continued in Saigon about resorting to the bomb. The talk was intensified, according to a report by Beverly Deepe in the February 21 Christian Science Monitor, by “a high-explosive political backlash" to the "short-term military advantages gained by killing large numbers of Communist forces." In other words, the mass slaughter conducted by the American forces is arousing such revulsion among the Vietnamese people as to stir them to new intensive efforts to rid their land of the hated invaders; and to meet that development, the U.S. command may decide to turn to the bomb.
Miss Deepe reported the explanation of "one reflective senior Vietnamese official, who has consistently been pro- American":
"This destruction in the cities is more and more looking like Hungary in reverse. And neither the outside world nor the Vietnamese are likely to forget this or to forgive the Americans for it. It's
The Bache Outlook, house organ of Bache & Co., a Wall Street brokerage firm, offered the following comments on the meaning and possible repercussions of the National Liberation Front victory in Vietnam at the beginning of February:
"The war in Vietnam is shifting into a new indiscernible phase and the market is not likely to stage a meaningful rally until this phase is fully dissected.
no good saying the Vietnamese Government
requested your helicopters to rocket or
authorized them in tight tactical situa-
tions. The Vietnamese government offi-
cials will only look like butchering
assassins for the Americans.
"The Americans have bombed North
Vietnam for three years now -- with total
disregard for the political repercussions
of it. Now, American and Vietnamese fire-
power is being used to shell supposedly
government-—controlled cities, without
regard for the effects on the civilian
population and their homes. If you once
extend this policy, the very next step
is nuclear warfare. No? What else will
be the next step if the two-thousand
pound bombs dropped by B-52's do not dis-—
lodge the Communists from their entrench-
ments and artillery tunnels near Khe
Sanh? we
The correspondent of the Boston
newspaper, who has been sending vivid
factual accounts of the situation in
South Vietnam, continues:
"In private, unofficial conversa-
tions, an increasing amount of talk with
hard-line military officers is cropping
up to the effect that they would prefer
to use nuclear weapons rather than let
Khe Sanh fall, if the options actually
narrow down to these two extremes.
"More Vietnamese, including both
low-ranking military officers and busi-
nessmen, also are talking about the pos-
sibility of some kind of nuclear warfare.
"The recent statement by Gen.
Earle G. Wheeler, chairman of the United
States Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he did
not believe nuclear weapons would be
needed to defend Khe Sanh made little im-
pression on the few Vietnamese who read
it. In this, as in other cases, many Viet-
namese have displayed a tendency to be-
lieve whatever is officially denied."
"Also not to be overlooked is
Korea and, parenthetically, the U.S.
strategy in other world trouble spots
and its limitation in the role of world
policeman.
"This unsettlement, however, has
brought a giddy market into a much more
reasonable position, a position that
could begin to attract more conservative
institutional funds."