Two Secret Meetings: Student Moderates Debate Johnson Administration on the War

In a plush conference room at the International Motel at J.F.K. Airport last March, and again in a second floor White House meeting room in late June, high ranking members of the Johnson Administration debated some of their "moderate" student critics.

The "J.F.K. meeting," as the conference at the Airport is known by those who were close to it, was perhaps one of the most significant intellectual confrontations known to have taken place between the Administration and its "dove" critics. Because of its previous highly secret nature, participants were later reluctant to talk about it, but one said a few weeks ago, preferring to remain anonymous, "the President's stand was defeated in an honest intellectual debate."

The following account of these two meetings, until now closely-guarded secrets, is drawn from conversations with some of the student participants.

But although the confrontations were the most dramatic points in the ten-month organized life of the student moderates, they were not the group's only contact with the Administration.

The student leaders' group was organized at the 1966 NSA Congress at the University of Illinois as an ad hoc committee to draft a letter to President Johnson stating "moderate" students objections to the War.

The First Letter

The committee met several times during the fall to draft the letter. Their letter appeared on the front page of the nation's newspapers on December 30.

It noted "contradictions" in official pronouncements, expressed doubts that American interests in Vietnam justified the country's growing commitment there, and repeated that the U.S. might soon find its "most loyal and courageous young people choosing to go to jail rather than to bear their country's arms."

From Time to the Boston Globe the moderate students received the publicity they wanted. One of Johnson's aides summoned one of the students advisors, and questioned him about the students plans. The White House, according to official sources, was worried that the group might become the catalyst for a more broad-based opposition.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk invited a group of 40 to an informal talk with him at the State Department in late January. The group who meet with Rusk were hardly veteran "doves"; one commented as he went in, "The Secretary has only to say a few things, and I'll be persuaded."

Stunned

Gregory B. Craig '67, the moderator of the Rusk meeting and one of the leaders of the moderate students' wrote afterward, "the group came out of the meeting quite literally stunned. There had been virtually no communication; the Secretary did not seem to understand our questions, and his responses seemed hopelessly rigid. In 90 minutes of discussion, the Secretary had succeeded in disaffecting even the most moderate members of our group."

This was the prelude to the meeting at the Airport.

Billed as an informal discussion on Vietnam and the draft, the first verbal duel was arranged by Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. through his contacts with Yale alumni like Burke Marshall, the former assistant attorney general for civil rights; fellow university presidents; and student contacts.

The 22 met in a cavernous, thickly carpeted room around a U-shaped table configuration on the unusually warm afternoon of March 31, 1967.

Among the participants were McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation and one of the three or four senior formulators of the Johnsonian Vietnamese policy; Marshall, who had three weeks before presented the report of the President's Advisory Commission on the Selective Service to Congress; five members of Marshall's Commission; former FDR braintruster Adolph Berle; and the presidents of Brown, Cornell, and the University of Iowa. About ten student leaders were present, including Craig, chairman of the Harvard Undergraduate Council; Strobe Talbott, chairman of the Yale Daily News; Abby Erdmann, Smith N.S.A. representative and a prime mover behind the December letter to the President; and Steven Cohen, president of the Amherst Student Council.

Two-Man Battle

Steven Cohen, now a Harvard graduate student in economics, and McGeorge Bundy would emerge the two major characters in the battle that evening.

The evening session convened at about 8 p.m., after an informal dinner filled with talk of pot, free love, and the radicalization of American society. "The discussion floundered for about 20 minutes," recalls one student participant, "before Cohen opened up."

Bundy had already claimed that negotiations over Vietnam could not take place because Hanoi refused to negotiate. Cohen, who had spent much of the previous two months studying the subject, said that for the purposes of argument he would concede that the North Vietnamese were not willing to come to the conference table. The Amherst senior suggested, instead, that the U.S., despite the President's periodic polemics of peace, wasn't willing to negotiate.

Bundy looked up rarely during the exchange. He sat a few feet across the "U" from Cohen, drawing, according to Miss Erdmann, impossibly straight lines across a paper, then turning the paper and crosshatching the first set of lines with another set of impossibly straight lines.

Cohen asked the former Presidential advisor if one side could negotiate the surrender of the other side. Bundy, recalled Miss Erdmann, answered that both sides must make concessions.

The Amherst honors student then asked Bundy if, in a nation such as Vietnam without any democratic tradition, the party in power which runs any elections would not always win. The Ford Foundation president agreed that it would.

Cohen's Case

Cohen reminded Bundy of Secretary of State Dean Rusk's request to the Viet Cong to lay down their arms and join the free elections.

He then reportedly quickened his rapid fire delivery and pulled his case together. The Secretary of State, Cohen said, was therefore excluding the Viet Cong from ever holding power because, as Bundy himself had just admitted, the U.S.-supported government would run future elections, thus maintaining itself in power. The Administration, therefore, was calling for the surrender of the enemy without demonstrating any willingness to make any real concessions. Cohen then asked if this didn't prove that the U.S. was not really ready to negotiate.

The former top foreign policy administrator admitted that Cohen was right.

The student then changed his tack and, again for the sake of debate, conceded that if a genuine coalition were formed with the Viet Cong, South Viletnam would probably go Communist within four years. Cohen asked why it was so important to Bundy and the Administration if Vietnam did go Communist.

Bundy replied with what one student called a "nineteenth century British balance of power philosophy." He said the U.S. was helping to prevent a third world war by stopping the Communists in South Vietnam.

Cohen reportedly retorted that, far from helping to prevent a third world by stopping the Communists in South Vietnam, the U.S. instead had both greatly increased the likelihood of a third world war and was driving a basically nationalistic Communist state to the international Communist giants in order to obtain arms for defense.

Arbitrary Choice

Cohen then stated that the choice between the two theoretical predictions is arbitrary--both were consistent with the facts as each saw them and both predicted a third world war if its course were not followed. The student stated, "all we know for sure is we're killing millions and spending billions under your plan."

Cohen continued that since it is a non-rational choice--balancing an existing war against a predicted War--he said he would choose his side of withdrawal and face Bundy's prediction of a third world war later, if at all.

Almost inaudibly Bundy said to "himself" as one participant remembers, that he still believed what he said was true.

The meeting would continue for several more hours that evening and the next morning, but the climax of the War debate, it was clear to more than one student participant, was over.

Three months went by before the Administration would meet with its student critics again. During those three months the students completed a second letter to President Johnson which stated their opposition to the War more vigorously than in the New Year's letter. Because of the Arab-Israeli War and the resulting Glassboro Summit Conference, the students held off releasing the letter to the press until late June.

The students had indicated that they would release the letter if President Johnson didn't consent to talk to the students. At about the same time--whether by coincidence or because the White House had heard of the student plans and wanted to take the initiative--about eight of the student leaders were invited to meet with Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs William Bundy on June 28.

The meeting got underway at about 9 a.m. in a second floor conference room in the west wing of the White House. Strobe Talbott from Yale and Steve Cohen, who had just graduated Amherst, would be two of the principle student spokesmen. Douglass Cater, a presidential advisor and one of the Administration's "liberals in residence"; Daniel Davidson, a Bundy aide; and William Bundy were among the Administration representatives.

Frightening Stands

The most important result of this meeting, from the students' point of view, was the "frightening" nature of William Bundy's view of Southeast Asia. Their fright stemmed from two of his stands: his view that a military solution will be achieved within three years and his emphasis on the importance of the war in the future of Southeast Asia.

The students were amazed by Bundy's optimism about the war, after they had spoken to his brother and other military sources who had said that it was impossible to predict when the military phase would end.

Bundy seemed to think, from what one participant said later, that the Viet Cong would become discouraged on one particular day in the future and give up fighting. The students, though not privy to any of the inside military information which Bundy had, considered the Assistant Secretary of State "way off base."

Bundy also stated, according to student participants, that the United States is not only fighting in Vietnam to prevent a third world war as his brother had stated three months earlier, but that the future welfare of 250 million people on the rim of Southeast Asia was also at stake.

One student commended after hearing Bundy: "If I could ever believe that even half of what Bundy believes is at stake in the war, I would fervently support the Administration's policies. However, after seeing what has happened with the supposedly enslaved peoples of Eastern Europe in the last few years, I can hardly agree with Bundy's simplistic predictions for the future of Southeast Asia."

Cohen and Bundy discussed negotiations. To the amazement of the students, the Secretary admitted that the North Vietnamese were willing to negotiate, but the State Department, after capturing several secret Communist documents, had reached the conclusion that the negotiations would only be a ploy to gain more time for the Viet Cong. Hanoi was not willing to negotiate on any sort of "reasonable terms." Bundy told the student leaders.

Peace Feelers

At noon, the meeting moved to the dining room of a hotel across the street from the White House, where an informal discussion continued over lunch. Cohen talked with Bundy's aide in charge of following up peace feelers, Dan Davidson. The Amherst student leader commented later about Davidson, "it becomes crystal clear to me why there are no negotiations from peace feelers with a man of his views in charge of following up peace feelers. Davidson seemed to view any offer from the Communists prima facie as duplicitous simply because they are Communists. Close minded is perhaps the best word to describe his attitude."

The meeting continued into the afternoon on a reduced basis after Cohen, Talbott, and Bundy left. No new ground was covered, however, according to one of the student leaders.

A few days later the student released their second and last letter to President Johnson. The group of 200 student body presidents and campus editors which had brought about a real, though secret, dialogue between the Administration and its critics during the group's ten-month existence broke up.

They had accomplished their original purpose of telling the Johnson Administration how many non-radical students felt about the War. In the context of their original goals; few groups have accomplished as much.