Seaborn Second Mission
The following text is drawn from the document "A Study of Canadian Policy with Respect to the Vietnam Problem, 1962-1966." The full text of the report can be accessed as a PDF in the introductory page of this exhibit. Each of the sections of this exhibit constitutes a section of the study -- this page is composed of pages 13-21.
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In a conversation of July 13 with Bundy, the Ambassador in Washington asked whether there had been any change in the State Department’s initial assessment that the Seaborn operation could be a useful exchange. Bundy replied that the operation was at least as vital as when it had first been suggested; "in fact, it was the sole reliable channel available to the USA”. Bundy did not display any concern that Seaborn’s next visit to Hanoi might have to be postponed until mid-August. In another context, he commented on “the current pause as far as USA decision-making is concerned”. According to the Ambassador, this was doubtless a partial explanation for the lack of American haste in pursuing the exchange with Hanoi; another reason was a desire not to seem overly eager.
The Ambassador’s query reflected a fairly general suspicion in Canadian official circles that USA thinking might be changing and that less importance might now be attached to the Bacon exercise. In public statements, USA spokesmen had been taking issue with South Vietnamese statements that North Vietnamese military units were involved in the South. Had the assessment of the threat lessened? Had Washington simply panicked earlier in asking for the Seaborn mission? A memorandum from Far Eastern Division to the Under-Secretary dated July 31 concluded as follows:
"One can doubt, as we do, the advisability of carrying the war to North Vietnam, while admitting that the United States might at some point reach a conclusion that it had no alternative other than to commit the whole might of the United States Army to the war in South Vietnam. What is disturbing in the USA decisions since early June to put less emphasis on warnings to Hanoi, is that it compromises the credibility of the United States position. We ourselves are confused not about the likely direction of United States policy. We think a move North is more likely than withdrawal, but cannot be entirely certain that the United States' determination might not flinch before embarking on a course that could lead to war with China. If we are confused, it would seem likely that the North Vietnamese are even more uncertain of United States intentions.
The principal effect of United States vacillation in its statements about extending the war to North Vietnam seems to us to have been to undermine the object the United States primitively hoped to achieve when it sought to make use of Seaborn as a means of communication to North Vietnam: to ensure that North Vietnam remains absolutely certain of United States intentions and therefore be under no illusions as to the consequences of its acts in South Vietnam."
While these questions were being asked in Ottawa, Seaborn was making plans to visit Hanoi, and he asked, on August 3 whether there would be any special Bacon instructions; by then, his trip had been under discussion for some time. He concluded: "Sullivan’s rather casual reaction July 25 to my telling him of my August 10 trip to Hanoi makes me wonder whether USA has after initial enthusiasm and excitement now lost interest in Operation Bacon. If so, I should know it before going to Hanoi."
As Seaborn’s message was being transmitted, the first incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin were taking place, and these developments culminated on August 5, in American aircraft bombing four patrol boat bases and an oil depot on the North Vietnamese coast. Two days later a state of emergency was declared in South Vietnam, and the United Nations Security Council was convened at the request of the USA and it agreed to ask both North and South Vietnam for information. (Two days later the North Vietnamese Government issued a statement refusing to cooperate with the United Nations and reiterating its established position that only the Geneva Conference machinery had any locus standi and any right to deal with the matter.)
On the same day both houses of the USA Congress overwhelmingly approved a Resolution supporting the President’s action in undertaking retaliatory air strikes and authorizing further military action if he judged it necessary.
It was against this background that Seaborn’s second visit took place. As noted above, the visit itself had been, in a general way, on the planning boards for some time and was not related to these dramatic new developments; indeed, it had been a moot point right up until the last minute whether the Americans would want anything special said. The content of his assignment was adjusted however to reflect developments in the Tonkin Gulf. In an interview with the Canadian Ambassador on August 7, Mr. Bundy expressed regret at the delay in providing material for Seaborn, but at the same time he welcomed the decision to go ahead with the proposed trip: "The more contact with Hanoi the better.” Another senior contact in Washington indicated continued interest in Seaborn’s mission as "our only channel".
Finally, on August 8, a request cleared by the White House and the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defence was passed to us for use by Seaborn. The full text is contained in Washington telegram No. 2872 of August 8, Appendix 11.
The message was indeed just that: a toughly-worded statement of position providing few, if any openings which might invite a positive response (as opposed to a reaction). It began with an outline of the American version of what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin earlier in the month. “About the only reasonable hypothesis was that North Vietnam was intent either upon making it appear that the USA was ‘a paper tiger’ or upon provoking the USA. In view of the uncertainty aroused by the deliberate and unprovoked DRV attacks of this character, the USA has necessarily carried out precautionary deployments of additional air power to SVN and Thailand". The message went on to reiterate the limited nature of USA objectives in Vietnam, and urge that North Vietnam, whose control over the activities of the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao was no secret, confine itself to the territory assigned to its administration under the 1954 Agreement. It was pointed out that there were examples elsewhere - Yugoslavia and Poland - of the USA accepting the existence of Communist regimes in a spirit of peaceful co-existence and tolerance and the economic benefits that had accrued to them for ‘minding their own business’ were to be hinted at. Finally, some new points were added:
(A) “That the events of the past few days should add credibility to the statement made last time that quote USA public and official patience with North Vietnamese aggression is growing extremely thin unquote.
(B) "That the USA Congressional resolution was passed with near unanimity, strongly reaffirming the unity and determination of the USA Government and people, not only with respect to any further attacks on USA military forces, but more broadly to continue to oppose firmly, by all necessary means, DRV efforts to subvert and conquer South Vietnam and Laos.
(C) "That the USA has come to the view that the DRV role in South Vietnam and Laos is critical. If the DRV persists in its present course, it can expect to continue to suffer the consequences.
(D) "That the DRV knows what it must do if the peace is to be restored.
(E) "That the USA has ways and means of measuring the DRV’s participation in and direction and control of the war on South Vietnam and in Laos, and will be carefully watching the DRV’s response to what Mr. Seaborn is telling them.”
Exercising our right to control and amend the content of messages as necessary, officials in Ottawa (subsequently approved by the Minister) told Seaborn to delete from his presentation two points in the American outline, specifically points D and E, as they were unclear and possibly compromising. However, he was advised he could draw on them if he thought it would be useful in certain circumstances. Seaborn's subsequent presentation in Hanoi did not in fact cover these points.
The Canadian side recognized that there had been a need for hasty preparation and revision on the American side, which had probably resulted in sloppy drafting. At the same time, our concern was more than procedural.
"Our commitment to pass messages faithfully does not mean we can be expected to play the role of unthinking mouthpieces," we estimated that passing points D and E to the North Vietnamese without amplification would have reflected on Seaborn and affected his position not only in regard to Bacon but as the Canadian representative in Vietnam. We would have preferred to thrash out questions first with the State Department but were prevented from doing so by lack of time. We hoped this would not be repeated in the future. (Telegram No.Y-606 of August 12 to Washington authorizing discussion of this matter with the State Department: Appendix 12).
Seaborn saw Pham Van Dong on August 13 and transmitted the USA message. The North Vietnamese Prime Minister reacted with extreme anger, and warned that if war came to North Vietnam, it would come to the whole of Indochina. However, in response to Seaborn’s question as to whether Pham Van Dong found "the existence of this link useful, despite the tenor of the messages," the Prime Minister replied "without hesitation and with apparent sincerity that he did indeed find it useful and he wanted the channel kept open."
Pham Van Dong also commented favorably, but in general terms, on the possible role of the ICSC in stabilizing the situation and seeking a solution based on the Geneva Agreement. "The ICC must play a more important role."
The texts of Seaborn’s reports - Saigon telegrams 419 of August 15 and 426 of August 17 - are given as Appendix 13.
The State Department had registered some interest in Pham Van Dong’s references to the Commission, but when Seaborn’s fuller report was received, it was revealed that the North Vietnamese Prime Minister had done little more than repeat a standard sentiment: "The ICC is called upon to play a more and more important role. We (i.e., the ICC) must prepare ourselves for this. We must recognize that the USA is the aggressor, we must take a firm position based on the Geneva Agreement and we must fill this position with honor."
At the end of August, after the dust had settled on the second Bacon encounter, Seaborn, in a personal letter to the Head of Far Eastern Division, echoed the same skepticism that had been evident in Ottawa and the Canadian Embassy in Washington even earlier about the future of the assignment, and the Americans' interest in it: "One important consideration to be kept in mind, which I have not of course mentioned in the other correspondence, is the Bacon operation. For this one we shall obviously have to consult the Americans before taking any drastic decisions about withdrawing from the ICC, for withdrawal would cut off our access to Hanoi.
How important do the Americans consider my messenger role, either now or for possible future use? Can we persuade them to give an honest, not just a polite answer? I sense that USA interest is far less than it was during the heady days of late May when everyone was all hepped up about it. Having taken two Hanoi runs with messages in my hot little hand, and having seen Pham Van Dong’s reaction, I am not surprised if interest in Washington has waned despite the expressed North Vietnamese desire to keep the circuit open. I suspect one reason the North may want it kept open is the hope they may well entertain that, if things get more muddled and hopeless in the South and after the American elections, the USA might want to put forward a feeler for a negotiated way out of Indochina. Even if that situation should arise, would the USA want to use this circuit for the purpose? These are questions which I cannot answer, but they'll have to be fed into the decision-making machine at some stage. Over to you."
In the following weeks, neither side took any initiative to activate the channel. Although there was no repetition of the Tonkin Gulf incidents, South Vietnam was in internal political turmoil. In mid-August, a new constitution was promulgated - and as a result of consequential political disturbances, it had to be repealed by the end of the month, and new constitutional arrangements made. Mid-September saw an abortive coup, and it was not until October 20 that a provisional charter, looking to the restoration of civilian Government, was promulgated. Apart from the military situation itself, it seemed to us at the time that the political situation in the South and the search for a stable and authoritative Government was a major preoccupation for the Americans: without a stable situation in the South, there would be little prospect of reaching any kind of lasting "understanding" with the North.
Similarly, the preoccupations inherent in the USA Presidential elections scheduled for November 30, 1968, tended to further distract attention from Canadian diplomatic activity in Vietnam.
In a memorandum to the Minister dated October 6, we commented:
"We have formed the impression that the USA authorities are less actively and immediately interested in Seaborn’s special assignment than they were last Spring. We recently asked our Embassy in Washington to review this matter with the interested State Department officials in a general way and without suggesting that we were encouraging - or otherwise - any new initiatives. The Embassy has now replied and the relevant section of their telegram reads as follows:
'We were left with the distinct impression that the Bacon exercise does not currently have the same importance in USA thinking as it did earlier this year, perhaps because now that both sides have had two occasions on which to state their positions via this channel, there is little more that the USA can say for the time being, barring a change in circumstances or in USA policy. However, USA interest in the channel is probably only dormant; it could quickly revive in a new situation.'
Mr. Seaborn has received a similar impression in Saigon."
In the meantime, our patience with Indian procrastination in the Commission had been wearing extremely thin. No action had been taken on the commitment given in the Special Report of June 2, 1962 to follow up on the problem of subversion - by processing to completion the so-called Legal Report - and we were determined to make one last major effort to see whether the Indians could be made to live up to this commitment. We felt that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation in Indochina, the basic cause of instability was Northern subversion in the South and the North’s determination to topple the Saigon administration by whatever means. We felt too that if the Commission could be made to focus international attention on this problem for a second time, there might be some hope of arresting what all of us had apprehended almost viscerally rather than comprehended rationally as a tragic USA involvement in a deteriorating situation which had all the overtones of inevitability in a Greek tragedy. "We realized that if the Americans were forced to take extreme measures, which would be clearly and obviously 'indictable' under the Geneva Agreement, there would be little useful purpose served, from a strictly Canadian point of view, by a 'do-nothing' Commission continuing on the ground: in other words, we could see little purpose in a Commission which was powerless to act in any constructive way other than to condemn the South Vietnamese and the Americans. Against this possibility, we could foresee a situation in which it might be necessary to withdraw from the Commission, or indeed to explain publicly the Commission’s failure to act, or to act in a balanced way, if it were asked to withdraw from Vietnam by those it was proposing to condemn. As a result, our posture in the Commission became activist in the extreme. We began pressing the Indians for action on the Legal Report and we began preparing and presenting new cases for Commission consideration which, if they had been dealt with promptly and adequately, would have focused attention on Northern activities in the South. This was no academic Jesuitical exercise on the part of over-zealous officials who had become too closely identified in their own thinking and sympathies with American policy in Vietnam. Rather it reflected two things: first a sense of anger at being constantly blockaded in the Commission by Indian foreign policy objectives without being able to express our own; and secondly the belief that the Commission, while it could not control the actions of others, might be able to deflect some of the excesses of a stream of events which showed signs of becoming ugly. Thus if the Commission had come out with a new report in 1964, even if by Indian/Canadian majority, covering the full range of Commission activities including new judgments against Northern subversion as well as against USA and South Vietnamese activities, it might have done something to blunt or buffer the ensuing disaster.
It should be remembered that American military strength in Vietnam at the time was less than 25,000 men, and these were non-combat personnel; combat troops were not introduced in strength until April, 1965.
Inherent in this situation was the criticism that Canada was playing a double game: through our Commissioner acting strictly as a diplomatic agent, we were conducting a delicate message-carrying exercise based on the confidence enjoyed on both sides of the conflict, while at the same time within the International Commission we were conducting a vigorous exercise aimed at highlighting Northern aggression. Would the policy-makers in Hanoi not misunderstand this situation or regard it as confusing and contradictory? My own view was and is that they had a very good understanding of what we were attempting to do and even if they did not appreciate it, I think there is not much doubt of the fact that we continued to enjoy a considerable measure of respect in the North largely because they knew where they stood with us and they also knew that we could not be handled like politico-diplomatic putty.