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TOP SECRET - Sensitive their recommendations tended toward immediate and forceful military measures. The State-ISA planning group, on the other hand, viewed it as a contingency planning exercise and its scenarios and recommendations stressed a more deliberate, cautious approach, carefully tailoring proposed U.S. actions in SEA to the unique political context of each country. Ambassador Lodge, in turn, developed yet a third "carrot and stick" approach, stressing a diplomatic effort at persuasion, i.e., combining a threat of punitive strikes with an offer of some economic assistance to the DRV. These divergences in approach and concept persisted, though varying in degree and emphasis, throughout the planning period.

By June, with increasing recognition that only relatively heavy levels of attack on the DRV would be likely to have any significant compelling effect, with a greater awareness of the many imponderables raised by the planning effort, and with the emergence of a somewhat more hopeful situation in SVN and Laos, most of the President's advisers favored holding off on any attempts to pressure North Vietnam through overt military operations. Only the JCS, Ambassador Lodge, and Walt Rostow continued to advocate increased military measures, and even Rostow qualified his recommendations with the claim that a firm public stance, and supporting actions giving the impression of increased military operations, would be the best assurance of avoiding having to employ them. Moreover, most of the advisers recognized the necessity of building firmer public and congressional support for greater U.S. involvement in SEA before any wider military actions should be undertaken.

Accordingly, with the political conventions just around the corner and the election issues regarding Vietnam clearly drawn, the President decided against actions that would deepen the U.S. involvement by broadening the conflict in Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam. In his view, there were still a number of relatively mild military and intensified political actions in the South open to him that would serve the national interest better than escalation of the conflict. iiTOP SECRET - Sensitive