Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET - Sensitive
A "Carrot" at Johns Hopkins. Although devoting much effort to public explanation and private persuasion, the President could not quiet his critics. Condemnation of the bombing spread and the President was being pressed from many directions to make a major public statement welcoming negotiations. He found an opportunity to dramatize his peaceful intent in his renowned Johns Hopkins address of April 7, in which he (l) accepted the spirit of the 17-nation Appeal of March 15 to start negotiations "without posing any preconditions," (2) offered the vision of a "billion dollar American investment" in a regional Mekong River basin development effort in which North Vietnam might also participate, and (3) appointed the illustrious Eugene Black to head up the effort and to lend it credibility and prestige. The President's speech evoked much favorable public reaction throughout the world, but it failed to silence the Peace Bloc and it failed to move Hanoi. Premier Pham Van Dong responded to the President's speech by proposing his famous Four Points as the only correct way to resolve the Vietnam problem and, two days later, denounced the President's proposal as simply a "carrot" offered to offset the "stick" of aggression and to allay public criticism of his Vietnam policy. But this is as far as the President was willing to go in his concessions to the Peace Bloc. To the clamor for a bombing pause at this time, the Administration responded with a resounding "No."
Consensus at Honolulu. By mid-April, communication between Washington and Saigon had become badly strained as a result of Ambassador Taylor's resentment of what he regarded as Washington's excessive eagerness to introduce US combat forces into South Vietnam, far beyond anything that had been approved in the April 1-2 review. To iron out differences, a conference was convened by Secretary McNamara at Honolulu on April 20. Its main concern was to reach specific agreement on troop deployments, but it also sought to reaffirm the existing scope and tempo of ROLLING THUNDER. The conferees agreed that sufficient pressure was provided by repetition and continuation of the strikes, and that it was important not to "kill the hostage" by destroying the valuable assets inside the "Hanoi do-not." Their strategy for victory was "to break the will of the DRV/VC by denying them victory." Honolulu apparently succeeded in restoring consensus between Washington and Saigon. It also marked the relative downgrading of pressures against the North, in favor of more intensive activity in the South. The decision, at this point, was to "plateau" the air strikes more or less at the prevailing level, rather than to pursue the relentless dynamic course ardently advocated by Ambassador Taylor and Admiral Sharp in February and March, or the massive destruction of the North Vietnamese target complex consistently pressed by the Joint Chiefs.
Following Honolulu, it was decided to publicize the fact that "interdiction" was now the major objective of the bombing, and Secretary McNamara devoted a special Pentagon briefing for the press corps to that issue.
vii
