How the 1962-1963 New York Newspaper Strike was a
Major Contributor to the Vietnam War
During the
Kennedy Administration, American military advisors flooded Vietnam to help the
South Vietnamese win the war. The American strategy to win where the French before
them had failed was based on two ideas.
The first was that the US was helping the South Vietnamese to be independent
instead of keeping them as a colony, so the South Vietnamese soldiers would be
grateful and fight for their freedom. The second was that the increased
mobility provided by helicopters and the greater firepower of American
airplanes would enable the Vietcong to be
defeated in short order.
The Vietcong were fighting a guerrilla war, so the
tactics of the Americans and South Vietnamese was to try and get the communists
to come out and stand and fight so they could be destroyed by superior American
and South Vietnamese firepower.
On December 28, 1962,
US intelligence detected a radio transmitter and about 120 Vietcong soldiers in
the hamlet of Ap Tan Thoi.
Immediately after New Year's Day, 1963, the South Vietnamese and Americans set
out to destroy the enemy forces,
converging on the hamlet from three directions using supporting artillery, M113
armored personnel carriers, and
helicopters. But on their way to Ap Tan Thoi, the lead elements of the force were pinned down near
the hamlet of Ap Bac by a well-entrenched Viet Cong force that had been informed of the South Vietnamese battle
plan.
In the course of the battle, not only did the Viet Cong not
flee, but they stood their ground and defeated the South Vietnamese and the
American advisors. The South Vietnamese lost 83 dead and more than 100 wounded.
Americans lost three dead, eight wounded. Five helicopters were lost. The Viet Cong lost 18 dead and 39
wounded.
Up to this point in
the war, the American/South Vietnamese strategy and assumptions were that if
they could get the Viet Cong to stand and fight at a time and place of our
choosing, they would be defeated. The fact that this American/South Vietnamese
initiated battle had ended in defeat set alarm bells ringing. Further
complicating the situation, neither the South Vietnamese government nor the
leading Americans in Saigon; General Paul D. Harkins nor Ambassador Frederick
E. Nolting, Jr. would admit to the defeat and claimed
the battle had been a victory.
American
newspaper reporters, who learned of the battle and spoke to Colonel John Paul
Vann, an American advisor to the South Vietnamese, reported the defeat and
described the South Vietnamese troop's
lackluster performance. The news of the Battle of Ap Bac, with pictures of the five
downed helicopters and reports of the 3 American dead appeared on page 2 of the January 5, 1963,
New York Times. In the paper two days later, Arthur Krock's "In
the Nation" column quoted President Kennedy's speech on the Senate floor
in 1954 when he said, "I am frankly of the belief that no amount of
American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is
everywhere, and at the same time, nowhere, 'an enemy of the people' which has
the sympathy and covert support of the people."
The report of the Battle of Ap Bac remained essentially
secret for 25 years until it was featured in Neil Sheehan's book A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and
America in Vietnam. The reason that this important information never made
it into the debates over the war is that the pressmen and the distributors of New York Times were on strike from
December 8, 1962 until March 31, 1963. The article about the Battle of Ap Bac
ran only in the international and newly inaugurated West Coast editions with
their small circulations. Had the New
York Times, considered the newspaper of record for the federal government
especially on international affairs, been
printed and distributed in its usual millions, the opinion leaders in media
heavy New York City and the decision-makers in Washington, D.C. would have
known about the Battle of Ap Bac.
Great historical events often turn on small twists of
fate.