Following the liberation of Phuocbinh, capital of Phuoclong province, by the forces of the Provisional Revolutionary Government on January 7, the hawks in Washington came out in force. Not only did they issue threats, some veiled and some not-so-veiled, but the White House and the Pentagon have set to persuade Congress to step up allocations for the war.

A U.S. Seventh Fleet task force headed by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise set sail from Subic Bay in the Philippines on the day that Phuocbinh fell. A United Press International report from Saigon quoted American diplomatic sources as having said that the ships would sail into Vietnamese waters to demonstrate support for South Vietnam and as a warning to North Vietnam. Speculation and rumors about resumption of direct U.S. involvement were sparked off around the world.

The White House issued denials, disclaiming any intention of defying legislative bans on U.S. reentry into the civil war. The mission of the six-ship naval task force, a Pentagon spokesman insisted, was “not connected with anything going on in South Vietnam.” The spokesman pointed out that the ships were headed in a southwesterly direction, not west toward the South Vietnamese coast. He did acknowledge that the departure of the ships on “an operational mission” had been speeded up from earlier plans, but gave no reason for this.

Just in case anyone missed the real point of the exercise and for some reason took Washington’s denials at face value for a change, the opinions of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were leaked to the press. Quoting “administration officials,” the January 11 New York Times reported that Kissinger had “expressed regret to the Pentagon” that the naval task force “had not been used to signal American determination to North Vietnam....” Kissinger reportedly learned of the task force’s movements too late for him to arrange for the ships to sail toward North Vietnam in “a psychological demonstration of strength.”

Kissinger issued the ritual denial – there was “no basis of fact” to the report, said a State Department spokesman – but the January 12 New York Times said that other officials had reaffirmed that Kissinger’s regrets had been relayed to the Pentagon. According to one report from “well-placed officials,” when Kissinger was informed that the task force had not been directed toward Vietnam, he responded, “Why the heck didn’t we?”

Even while denying the story about Kissinger expressing regrets, State Department officials suggested that the deployment of the naval task force might have been discussed at a White House meeting on the morning of January 7. President Ford met with Kissinger and Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, deputy director of the National Security Council, to review, among other things, the Vietnamese situation. “All sorts of contingencies” are discussed in such a meeting, said a senior State Department official.

At a news briefing on January 8, one day after the liberation of Phuocbinh, administration officials announced that Ford had decided to ask Congress for at least $300 million in military aid for Saigon in the current fiscal year in addition to the $700 million already appropriated. They also said that Ford would be asking for $1.3 billion in military aid for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Preparing the ground for even further increases, a State Department spokesman revealed that “the President and the Administration have under intensive consideration the question of going forward with a supplemental request.”

The columnists and editorial writers chimed in dutifully. The U.S. “cannot cut and run,” editorialized the January 8 Christian Science Monitor. Any supplementary aid request from Ford, they said, should be looked at “responsibly.”

One “high Administration official” quoted by the January 9 New York Times also speculated that public knowledge of the supplemental request “might serve as a useful signal to Hanoi.”

As though there were any shortage of such “signals.”

• Stockpiles of U.S. ammunition in Thailand were being moved to South Vietnam, according to a U.S. military spokesman in Bangkok quoted by the January 10 Washington Post. “We don’t routinely send shipments to South Vietnam,” the spokesman said, “but there is some shipping going on now.” The report was routinely denied by the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

• Marine and air force units at the U.S. base in Okinawa, Japan, had been put on alert since January 6, the Washington Post reported on January 10. Marine authorities denied the report and air force officials declined to comment. In addition, amphibious ships carrying marines had docked at Subic Bay naval base. A spokesman for the base admitted this, but said that their presence was “not unusual.”

• On January 11 Washington admitted that U.S. planes are doing reconnaissance of North and South Vietnam. The question was raised when Nhan Dan, the official Hanoi newspaper, said that “manned and pilotless reconnaissance planes from U.S. bases in Thailand” had guided the heavy retaliatory bombing raids against Locninh, the PRG administrative center thirty miles from Phuocbinh. According to a PRG spokesman, 200 incendiary bombs were dropped on the town. Dozens of persons were killed, and hundreds of houses, two pagodas, and a Catholic church were destroyed.

The Nhan Dan report was officially denied by the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, the January 12 Washington Post reported, “but sources acknowledged that American planes had been flying reconnaissance missions along the North Vietnamese coast and over South Vietnam and Cambodia ever since the Paris cease-fire agreement was reached two years ago.”

The deployment of the naval task force, the soundings about supplemental aid for Thieu, the shipment of ammunition stocks to Saigon, the mobilization of the marines, and the admission about flights of spy planes over Vietnam, all these actions had the same purpose – putting pressure on Hanoi and the liberation forces, and trying to create a climate in the United States that would allow Washington to escalate its military intervention.

The actual fall of Phuocbinh was only incidental to the process. In fact, plans for the Pentagon’s propaganda offensive had been made well before the capture of the provincial capital, according to the January 9 New York Times:

“A Pentagon memorandum written several weeks ago called for a broad publicity campaign to convince congress and the public that an emergency effort was needed or the Saigon government would run out of ammunition in 30 days.

“Senators and Congressmen were to be encouraged to visit South Vietnam, reports and assessment from the field were to be shown to them, material was to be leaked to reporters and certain Congressional committees were to receive special attention.”

The usual denials were forthcoming. “When asked about the memorandum, a ranking Pentagon official responded that it had ‘no status’ and that ‘there is now no calculated campaign, but one may develop.’“

However one interprets the “no status” category, Phuocbinh was certainly seized by the Pentagon as the cue to fully develop its campaign.

“... Phuocbinh, a military debit, is about to be converted into a political asset by allied planners,” wrote the January 12 Washington Post. “They are displaying Phuocbinh as a grim example of the fate that awaits more important South Vietnamese towns, cities and provinces unless the new Congress provides more aid.” Phuocbinh was portrayed as the opening of a big new offensive by the liberation forces.

The reality is somewhat different. Phuocbinh was an isolated pocket of Saigon military resistance in a province almost totally under PRG control.

“The communists controlled everything but the towns anyway,” said one analyst quoted by the January 4 Washington Post. “Phuoclong was like an overripe fruit waiting to be plucked off, and they could have done it any time during the past two years.”

An article in the January 10 Washington Post gave an interesting insignt into the extent of PRG control in the area. A former U.S. civilian aid official told of a checkpoint on the only road from Saigon to Phuocbinh where, after the cease-fire, “the Vietcong stopped buses and herded passengers into a movie theater to watch ‘The Defense of Hanoi’ and ‘The Life of Ho Chi Minh.’“

Apart from the general stepping up of military activity during the dry season, one reason for the removal of this outpost now rather than at some other time was given by Nhan Dan on January 6. Nhan Dan accused Thieu of sending troops and tanks to comb the countryside of Phuoclong province and other regions, burning rice harvests that the Saigon army could not seize.

In a dispatch from Saigon to the January 12 Washington Post, Philip A. McCombs reported that most “Hanoi-watchers” there agreed that a general offensive was not in the offing. McCombs reported that the number of PRG troops in South Vietnam was about the same as at the time of the cease-fire.

According to analysts there, he said, the current fighting “has limited military objectives.” He also pointed to the importance that Hanoi is currently attaching to its own economic development. The general opinion was that “Hanoi is unlikely to order any vast escalation of its military activities in the South if it would jeopardize the long-term development of the North.”

The North Vietnamese themselves denied charges by Washington and Saigon that a general offensive had been launched. In a statement broadcast by Radio Hanoi and quoted in the January 5 Washington Post, a spokesman for the North Vietnamese Foreign Ministry said the charges were “a trick aimed at misleading public opinion and covering up U.S. and South Vietnamese systematic violations of the Paris agreement on Vietnam.”

“It is also aimed at pressing the U.S. Congress to increase aid to South Vietnam,” the broadcast said.

Thieu exploited the capture of Phuocbinh to the full. He issued a statement praising the “heroes” of Phuoclong and called for three days of national mourning and prayer to “acknowledge the noble sacrifice” of the defenders. To show how seriously he took the occasion, he ordered closed for this period all night clubs, bars, tea houses, and massage parlors.

No special prodding was needed for Thieu to step up the aid campaign from his side. On January 3 he presented a medal to visiting U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond. The next day as he was leaving, the senator popped up on cue with a fiery denunciation of the North Vietnamese and an appeal for more aid. Their propaganda offensive got another push with a meeting in Saigon on January 8 between Thieu, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, and Carlyle E. Maw, the U.S. deputy secretary of state for international security affairs. The U.S. press has also been playing up the military situation in Cambodia as part of the campaign.

At first glance, Ford’s prospects for getting his aid proposals through Congress don’t seem promising. Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield told reporters January 9 that Congress would resist Ford’s proposals. “Additional aid means more killing, more fighting,” he said. “This has got to stop sometime.”

However, Chairman John C. Stennis of the Senate Armed Services Committee said that if “there is real proof” of need for additional aid “then I would take the lead in helping get more money. It doesn’t look good over there.”

In the past the White House has been very adept at digging up the kind of “real proof” to crumple the token resistance of Congress. Often it hasn’t even bothered with that. The January 12 Washington Post reported that “for years the executive branch played a shell game with Congress on Indochina money and policy, even many officials privately concede. Fund requests were split into multiple compartments, making it difficult for Congress to add up the costs and the administration used a corps of experts to find legal loopholes in congressional restrictions.”

According to figures recently compiled by Representative Les Aspin, the U.S. Congress has now authorized more than $6 billion in U.S. military and economic aid to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia since the January 1973 “cease-fire,” plus about $2 billion more spent for U.S. support forces in the area.

“This must be the most expensive cease-fire in the history of man,” Aspin said. “It must also be the phoniest.”

Just as congressional restrictions haven’t had much effect in curbing Washington’s ability to fund its puppet in Saigon, regard for legal niceties in the past hasn’t deterred the warmongers in the White House and the Pentagon from their military adventures either. In spite of congressional prohibitions against U.S. combat activities in Vietnam, and in spite of a reassurance by a Pentagon spokesman that “if the United States was contemplating any military action in South Vietnam it would first consult the Congress,” the recent menacing gestures by Washington might be intended to pave the way for new assaults on the Vietnamese people.

Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1975/IP1302.pdf#page=3&view=FitV,3