DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE
WASHINGTON 20330

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OFFICE CF THE SECRETARY

 

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Dear Elliott:

I share your concern over our inability to satisfy the
doubts of the “conscientious dissenter," but I do not believe
the problem is secrecy. Some information from clandestine
sources cannot -be revealed without jeopardizing the lives of
agents or the effectiveness of our intelligence system, but
on the whole there has been open disclosure of most military
and political information.

The Department of State has issued two white papers and
numerous information notes which make the following case. To
me it is a convincing case of external aggression although it
is by no means as easily defined as Pearl Harbor or North
Korean divisions attacking across the 38th Parallel.

Umaoyer H

1. After the Geneva agreements of 1954 Hanoi forcefully
communized its own territory, executing between 50,000 and
200,000 people in the process. South Vietnam did then reject
the planned North and South elections in 1956, on the basis
that fair elections could not be held under the totalitarian
system operating in the North.

2. Based on evidence collected in 1961, the International
Control Commission (with Communist Poland's delegate dissent-
ing) found that North Vietnam had sent arms and men into South
Vietnam to carry out subversion with the aim of overthrowing
the legal government there. The ICC also found that Hanoi
had violated four provisions of the Geneva accords.

3. The key leadership and hard corps units of the VC
were trained in the North, sent into S. Vietnam and operated
under Hanoi's direction, at least some 40,000 trained men by

the end of 1964,
£

4, Lower level VC forces were recruited in South
Vietnam. Certainly the existence of these forces reflects
in part an indigenous South Vietnamese Communist movement,
but much of the recruiting was through kidnapings and
terrorism. Recent statements by a captured Viet Cong leader
indicated that the percent of volunteers had declined to less
than 50% by 1966.

5. Hanoi began sending in organized units of the North
Vietnamese army in 1964 -- a year before the introduction of
U.S. units. In 1967 North Vietnamese troops constitute over
50% of regular combat battalions, and North Vietnamese are
also being used as replacements in Viet Cong units.

6. In 1964 alone, 436 South Vietnamese hamlet chiefs,
school teachers, etc., were killed outright by the VC. More
than 1,350 civilians were killed in terrorist bombings, and
at least 8,400 were kidnapped.

7. The Lao Dong Party, the Communist Party of North
Vietnam, directs both North Vietnam and the Viet Cong and
sees the war as an integral part of the worldwide Communist
revolutionary struggle.

Since the "facts" about a war can never be completely
known, and are never interpreted in the same way by all
conscientious observers, we may have to expect "conscientious
dissent" as a valid indication that we are indeed a free
society with a well developed moral conscience. Some claim
that dissent was greater in many of our previous wars including
the Revolutionary War. Needless to say, there is no indication
of dissent against the war effort in North Vietnam, the USSR,
or Communist China. Absence of dissent in the U.S. would be
neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for proving we
are right.

The real cause of our disagreement over the war in
Vietnam may not be the immediate "facts," but basic attitudes
concerning the state of the world. For some two decades we
have periodically been assured that Communism is no longer a
threat and that Communist states seek only their own security.

Some among us have been so anxious for Communism to change
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from an aggressive ideological movement to benign national
bureaucracies that they have forgotten the past and future
importance of our own firm defensive arrangements in bringing
about such an evolution. As a result, it is hard for them to
accept the Viet Cong as anything but a local revolution with
little international significance. ,

I feel this is a very dangerous assumption. The
Communists continue to believe that they will eventually rule
the entire world and that it is their duty to seize whatever
opportunities they can to achieve that result. In spite of
sharp differences among themselves, the USSR, Communist China,
North Vietnam, and most other Communist Parties join together
in support of the war in Vietnam as another step in the world-
wide "socialist" revolution. Communist agents are attempting
to instigate similar guerrilla wars in Laos, Thailand,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, and many countries in Latin
America, Success in Vietnam will not insure automatic
Communist victory elsewhere, but it would certainly strengthen
the hand of Communist cadres and weaken the position of free
world governments in the lesser developed areas.

As to the interests of the United States, we are only a
few of the three billion people on this earth. We know that
we cannot live as an isolated island. If we abandon our
commitments and our allies, the spectre of such totalitarianism
will indeed haunt and quite possibly overwhelm the world. The
result may be much more serious conflict than we face in
Vietnam. If we hold fast, the prospects for a thriving free
world community and a working detente with the Communists
will be good.

The above notes represent my personal beliefs concerning
the war. I would appreciate hearing more from you concerning
your own doubts. I will suggest the preparation of a new
white paper -- and I am enclosing some State Department infor-
mation notes on Vietnam.

Sincerely,

Harold Brown

Mr. Elliott C. Levinthal

Director, Dept of Genetics

Stanford University School of Medicine
Palo Alto, California 94304