FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2010
KLMNO
EZ SU POLITICS & THE NATION BY CRAIGWHITLOCK A
Push to restore a general’s honor hits resistance 6
Family of Vietnam-era commander fears time is running out as arguments over wartime decisions reemerge on Hill
n official push to rehabili- tate the reputation of a long-deceased Air Force general has hit a wall in
the Senate, where some of the most influential names in U.S. foreign policy are tangling, once again, over fateful decisions from the VietnamWar. After years of trying, the family
ofGen. JohnD. Lavelle thought it had achieved a breakthrough in August, when the White House formally asked the Senate to re- store his honor, 38 years after the four-star commander was fired and demoted in rank to major general for allegedly ordering rogue bombings of North Viet- nam. Lawmakers on both sides of
the aisle said they were sympa- thetic to the family’s argument— that the bombings were carried out on secret orders from the chain of command, all the way up to President Richard M. Nixon— and pledged prompt action. But the Lavelle case has now
boggeddownonCapitolHill.And unless the Senate acts in the waning moments of its lame- duck session, the general’s ailing 92-year-old widow and children fear that their efforts to clear his name will fail. “Neither the Lavelle children
normy firm are going to permit a second injustice to be suffered by General and Mrs. Lavelle in the Senate Armed Services Commit- tee,” said Patrick A. Casey, a law- yer representing the general’s family. “The staff has been given the truth; we expect a public vote whileMrs. Lavelle is alive.” Standing in the general’s cor-
ner are the Obama administra- tion, the Pentagon, the Air Force and a former CIA director who once sided against him. Also ex- pressing sympathy: a president’s uncensored voice from the grave. In a series of Oval Office con-
versations thathesecretly record- ed, Nixon can be heard lamenting
to his aides how Lavelle was unfairly taking the blame for the bombings. “It’s just a hell of a damn. And
it’s a bad rap for him, Henry,” Nixon told his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, on June 14, 1972. “Can we do any- thing now to stop this damn thing?” “All of this goddamn crap
about Lavelle!” Nixon shouted four months later toGen. Alexan- der M.Haig Jr. “All he did was hit the goddamnSAM[surface-to-air missile] sites and military tar- gets.” Lavelle’s case,however, has run
into resistance from key Nixon- era figures, including Kissinger. They have argued that Nixon’s comments are being distorted and that he did not give orders for the bombings in question. In a telephone interview,
Kissinger acknowledged speak- ing to Senate committee staffers about the case. Although he said he did not try to torpedo the nomination to restore Lavelle to his former rank, he complained that the Obama administration was “dumping” on the Nixon White House by erroneously blaming the former president for Lavelle’s actions. “I do not oppose the nomina-
tion of General Lavelle. I have a strong view on a related subject,” Kissinger said. “What has been said is that President Nixon went outside the chain of command and authorized military action” in the form of bombings against North Vietnam between Novem- ber 1971 and February 1972. “I am opposed to the proposi-
tion that it was ordered by Presi- dent Nixon. That argument is totally false, demonstratively false,” he added. “If General Lavelle thought he had other au- thority, I do not know. I cannot comment on that.” Attorneys for the Lavelle fami-
ly, however, say that WhiteHouse tapes show that Nixon did issue the orders,andthat Kissingerwas well aware.
on
washingtonpost.com Past and present
For more on Gen. Lavelle’s case, including
photographs, documents, and audio of President Richard M. Nixon’s taped conversations, go to
wapo.st/lavelle.
“sympathetic” to the White House’s request to restore Lavelle to the rank of a four-star general and that they would “act expedi- tiously.” Asked to explain why the com-
mittee still had not acted four months later, McCain’s spokes- woman, Brooke Buchanan, said the panel was “actively working to evaluate the merits on the nomination.” “The facts surrounding Gener-
al Lavelle’s retirement were part of a complex historical record that included numerous Senate hearings, various testimony and conflicting accounts,” she added. She did not respond to a question about whether McCain’s views had been affected by his father’s role. Lavelle, nicknamed “Smiling
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Gen. JohnD. Lavelle was demoted in 1972 for allegedly ordering rogue airstrikes.His family says he was following secret orders.
They cite a Feb. 3, 1972, meet-
ing that Nixon had with Kissinger and Ellsworth F. Bunker, ambas- sador to South Vietnam. Accord- ing to a tape of the conversation, Nixon said he wanted his military commanders to expand the rules of engagement for airstrikes in North Vietnam, but to do so in secret. “You tell them I don’t want to
beat around any more. Tell ’em,” Nixon said. “Do it, but don’t say anything.” In addition, attorneys for the
Lavelles say the general was per- sonally given the go-ahead for the airstrikes by Defense Secretary
MelvinR.Laird. Ina2007letter to Air Force Magazine, Laird ac-
knowledged as much, saying it was “certainly true” that he had given Lavelle “new orders” re- garding the bombings. The Lavelle attorneys also say
the general received separate au- thorization in classified message traffic from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military superi- ors.
Among those superiors: Adm.
JohnS.McCain Jr., thecommand- er of U.S. forces in the Pacific. Today, his son, Sen. JohnMcCain (Ariz.), is the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee. In August, McCain and Sen.
Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the com- mittee chairman, issued a joint statement saying that they were
Jack,” became commander ofU.S. air operations in Vietnam in July 1971. At the time, peace talks were underway and rules of engage- ment prohibited pilots from fir- ing on targets in North Vietnam unless they were under attack or tracked by radar. In April 1972, the Air Force announced that the general was retiring for health reasons. In fact, word soon leaked out that he had been demoted for ordering 28 unauthorized bombing mis- sions. Although Lavelle avoided
court-martial, the Senate denied a request to allow him to retire with his four stars. He died in 1979, insisting to the end that he was merely following orders. Lavelle’s children say a reverse
vote by the Senate would finally lift the stain on his reputation, adding that the sting of what
happened 38 years ago has never gone away. “You don’t forget it, ever,” said one of his daughters, Jere Enloe, of Orlean, Va. “The pain was unreal.” But doubts about Lavelle per-
sist. Charles A. Stevenson, a Johns Hopkins University lectur- er who worked as a staffer for a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1972, has urged lawmakers to oppose Lavelle’s restoration of rank. The evidence cited by Lavelle’s
attorneys, he said in an interview, is ambiguous, at best.He pointed to other White House tapes and government records that demon- strate that Nixon and Kissinger desperately wanted to avoid bombings in North Vietnam be- fore the president’s historic trip to China in February 1972. Stevenson also noted that Nix-
on blewa lot of hot air in his Oval Office meetings. “Nixon said an awful lot of
things to his staff, that his staff wisely did not implement,” Ste- venson said. “Nixon had a prac- tice of saying outrageous things as if they were orders.” Other former players in the
Lavelle case, however, have changed their minds and now say it is time to correct an injustice. Former CIA director R. James
Woolsey led the Senate’s investi- gation into Lavelle in 1972, when he served as chief counsel to the Armed Services Committee. He has met with the committee’s present-day staff to argue on Lavelle’s behalf. If the panel had known in 1972
what it knows now, he said, it would have “definitely” sided with the general. “I don’t think the committee
ever felt thatLavelle was trying to cover up,” Woolsey said. “They thought that on his own he had stretched the rules of engage- ment, when in fact he was told to by the secretary of defense.”
whitlockc@washpost.com
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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