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III. Different. Policy Perceptions in Planning

A. Iwo basic approaches: JCS and State-ISA

The principal planning agencies responding to the President's directive regarding Recommendations 11 and 12 were the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of State together with OSD/ISA, and the two efforts took rather different approaches. The JCS responded literally to the instructions and tasked CINCPAC to prepare an action program of border control and retaliatory operations with 72-hour responsiveness and one of "graduated overt military pressure by CVN and U.S. forces" against North Vietnam with 30-day responsiveness. The JCS preparation for near-term implementation of these recommendations went beyond the usual contingency planning as Indicated by their Instruction that CINPAC's plan "permit sequential implementation" of the three actions. The JCS approved the CINCIAC submission, as OPLAN 37-64, on 17 April 1964.

The State-ISA planning activity proceeded under the apparent belief that the actions included in Secretary McNamara's Recommendation 12 vere approved as contingency options, one or more or none of which might be selected for implementation at some time in the future. In fact, State believed the Secretary's categories of action were not in keeping with likely developments _- "that" [cross-border] actions against Cambodia and Laos are dependent heavily on the political position in these countries at the time, and that, in general, it seems more likely that we would wish to hold off in hitting Cambodia until we had gone ahead hard against North Vietnam itself...there appear to be reasons not to open up other theaters until we have made clear that North Vietnam is the main theatre and have not really started on it." Further, it questioned the utility of tit-for-tat retaliatory actions because of (1) the difficulty of responding in kind, or in a fitting manner, to the most likely -- terrorist - variety of VC provocations and (2) their inappropriateness for conveying. "the picture of concerted and steadily rising pressures that reflect complete U.S. determination to finish the job." Accordingly, the State-ISA effort began by developing a political scenario designed to accommodate only the graduated military pressures referred to in Recommendation 12. These were divided into three major categories: (1) covert GVN action against North Vietnam with covert U.S. support; (2) overt GVN action with covert U.S. support; and (3) overt joint GVN and U.S. action. The two categories involving overt activities were conceived of as possible future developments, contingent upon a presidential decision that clearly had not been made.

B. Different Approaches: Perceptions of the Strategic Problem in Southeast Asia

The differences in approach taken in the two planning efforts cannot be explained simply by the-obvious military and political division of labor. It is clear from documents of the period that there was considerable coordination between the two groups, with the JCS planners looking to State and ISA for political guidance and the latter group looking to the former for recommendations for appropriate military actions. More fundamental was the existence of different perceptions of the strategic Rh