The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

In September, with the bureaucracy as divided as ever, Kennedy decided to try and get information from both Lodge and Harkins on a long list of specific questions. The request was very much the President’s and he asked that Hilsman compose it. The cable itself reflected a vast amount of doubt about the progress of the war. Eventually the answers from both men came in: the Lodge report was thoroughly pessimistic, while the Harkins report was markedly upbeat, filled with assurance, but also bewildering because it seemed to be based on the debate in Washington rather than the situation in Saigon. In it, the puzzled White House aides found a reference by Harkins to an outgoing cable of Taylor’s. They checked out the number of the Taylor cable, but could find no record of it in the White House. Sensing that something was wrong, one of the White House aides called over to the Pentagon for a copy of the Taylor cable, giving the number, though being careful to call a low-ranking clerk, not someone in the Chairman’s office who might have understood the play. The young corporal was very co-operative and came up with the answer the aides wanted, a remarkably revealing cable from Taylor to Harkins explaining just how divided the bureaucracy was, what the struggle was about, saying that the Hilsman cable did not reflect what Kennedy wanted, that it was more Hilsmanish than Kennedyish, and then outlining which questions to answer and precisely how to answer them.