General Westmoreland expressed a desire for nuclear weapons to be used in the event of defeat in South Vietnam, but President Johnson quickly cancelled this initiative.
Getty Images President Lyndon B. Johnson, left, and Gen. William Westmoreland leave a helicopter.
Newly declassified documents published in The New York Times show that a top U.S. general planned a nuclear response during one of the most tense moments of the Vietnam War.
The documents reveal a 1968 plan by Gen. William C. Westmoreland to move nuclear weapons to South Vietnam in case they were needed for a quick response. His decision was soon reversed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Wikimedia CommonsGeneral of the Army William C. Westmoreland.
The commander planned to position the nuclear weapons so that they would be available if the United States and its allies were defeated in the battle for the base at Khe Sanh.
The secret operation, code-named “Fracture Jaw,” was approved and organized by General Westmoreland and was already in operation when Johnson's National Security Advisor, Walt W. Rostow, notified the President via a White House memo.
Notification dated February 10, 1968, from General William C. Westmoreland that Operation Fracture Jaw was to be launched.
The battle for Khe Sanh was one of the most brutal battles in the history of the war. But just two days after Westmoreland's call to arms, President Lyndon B. Johnson rejected the plan and ordered the return of the nuclear weapons.
“When he learned that the planning had begun, he was extremely alarmed and he sent a strong signal through Rostow, and perhaps directly to Westmoreland, that it be stopped,” special assistant to the president Tom Johnson said in an interview.
On the same day that General William C. Westmoreland notified the American commander in the Pacific of his approval of the operation, White House National Security Adviser Walt W. Rostow warned the president.
He added that the president feared that the use of nuclear weapons could lead to a wider conflict.
Johnson was pressuring his generals to ensure that defeat at Khe Sanh did not occur. However, he apparently did not expect that one of his generals would consider the possibility
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