Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #398… NYT, 7 April 1967…”…he has linked his personal opposition to the war with the cause of Negro equality.”… but first…
Good Morning: Day THREE HUNDRED NINETY-EIGHT of a daily journal of an American battle fought fifty years ago…
7 APRIL 1967… HEAD LINES and LEADS from The New York Times on a rainy and foggy Friday in NYC…
Page 1: “Berliners Applaud Humphrey Speech On War in Vietnam”... “In a speech before the city’s House of Representatives he drew applause when he said that the American commitment in Vietnam war was proof that the United States would meet its commitments to protect West Berlin and Western Europe.”… Page 1: “U.S. Discount Rate Is Reduced to 4% To Loosen Credit”... “The Federal Reserve Board voted unanimously today to reduce the discount rate from 4 1/2 to 4% thus closing a period of tight money that began 16-months ago.”… Page 1: “Moon Sites Picked for Apollo Landings”– the smoothest and safest possible sites. Detailed analysis of recent moon photographs indicates that the most hospitable area may be a broad plain in the southeast part of the Sea of Tranquility… The surface there is flat with few dangerous boulders and no deep craters.”… Page 1: “Soviet Affirms Party Rule Over the Military Forces”…”The Soviet Defense Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda added fuel to speculation about the Kremlin’s forthcoming choice of a successor to the post of Minister of Defense. The paper published an article emphasizing the necessity of Communist Party, or civilian, control of the country’s armed forces under the changed conditions of modern warfare. the article follows by six days the death of Marshal Rodion Malinovksy a professional soldier who had been Defense Minister since 1957.”…
Page 1: “1500 of Foe Raid City in Vietnam Freeing Captives”... “An enemy force estimated at 1,500 soldiers was reported today to have carried out a series of daring attacks on Quangtri, the capital of South Vietnam’s northernmost province and to have freed 200 to 300 prisoners. The enemy killed 90 to 100 South Vietnamese soldiers and at least 8 Americans in early morning thrusts. Thirteen Americans were said to have been wounded. The attackers suffered light losses. The attackers struck at five locations in the city including the civilian prisons.”… Page 3: “Parents Accept Medal for Death of GI”... “President Johnson presented the Medal of Honor today to the parents of a dead war hero and at the same time assailed the advocates of a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam. The ceremony in the White House garden honored Army Specialist 4 Daniel Fernandez of Los Lunas, New Mexico, who died before he was 21 when he threw himself across a live grenade February 18, 1966 and probably saved the lives of four comrades. Mr. and Mrs. Jose I. Hernandez accepted the award for their son…. The President noted that Specialist Fernandez died less than three weeks after ‘we, in our ceaseless search for peace, had made our longest pause in the bombing of North Vietnam. ‘The question that haunts me today should concern every American. It is this: Was that grenade on one of the sampans that we let pass unmolested during that 37 days? If if was then Daniel Fernandez died as more than a hero of battle, he died a martyr in the search of peace. And those who are urging an unconditional cessation of bombing should ask themselves, what are the consequences? It is one thing to talk abstractly of peace and war. It is something quite different to think of a young man who will dream no more.”… Page 4: “The American death toll last week remained high at 194 dead, well above the average 172. In March the weekly average was 217. Enemy killed was reported at 2,373 (2,783 the week before)…American troop strength in Vietnam rose to 435,000. THE LITTLE BOX: The Department of Defense released the names of 14 troops who were Killed in Action… Page 7: “Liu Piao Absence Is found Puzzling”... “Western political analysts of Chinese politics are puzzled by the long absence from public view of Defense Minister Lin Piao, the heir apparent Mao Tse-tung.”… Page 9: “Premier of Laos says Laos cannot block Hanoi’s troops, the North Vietnamese are too strong.”…
7 APRIL 1967… The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized) VIETNAM: Communist forces have during the last two days launched a series of heavy–and obviously well-coordinated–attacks against allied positions in South Vietnam’s two northernmost provinces. These actions may be the opening gambit in a Communist plan to pin down and overextend major allied forces in the area. We have been expecting something of the sort. Captured documents, defector reports have for several weeks been pointing to Communist preparations for something big south of the Demilitarized Zone... COMMUNIST CHINA: The campaign against Lie Shao-chi continues to mount and is now beginning to involve other key officials. Posters attacking both foreign minister Chen Yi and the finance minister have been put up nearly every day this week. Other posters denouncing three top military men have appeared since Tuesday…There is every indication that the fight at the top continues…
State Department, Office of Historian FRUS, 1964-68, Volume V, Document 130, A memorandum for the record by LGEN Goodpaster (I think) detailing his visit with General Eisenhower at his residence at Palm Desert on 6 April 1967. This is a great conversation between two old generals that is worth a read. Paragraph 4 is especially interesting… Ike makes the case for getting out of the “gradualism” mode to go big on the bombing or don’t go at all… key it up at…
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d130
7 APRIL 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (8 Apr reporting 7 Apr ops) Page 2. “In the air war over North Vietnam the United States Command announced today that Navy A-6 Intruders bombed the sprawling Thai Nguyen steel plant complex yesterday for the sixth time in less than a month. Pilots returning to the carrier Enterprise reported their missions were successful although no bomb damage from their raid 35 miles north of Hanoi was immediately available…Bad weather limited the number of United States mission flown over North Vietnam Thursday. But A-6 Intruders from the Enterprise dropped 500-pound bombs on Loidong, a petroleum trans-shipment point 6 miles northwest of Haiphong, North Vietnam’s major port.” (Bear#52mk81MILKY)
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 7 April 1967.
(1) CDR CHARLES E. HATHAWAY, Commanding VA-195, embarked in USS Kitty Hawk, was leading a flight of A-4Cs on an armed reconnaissance mission in the area of Cap Mu Ron and Highway 1. After bombing a truck park he led the flight out of the area but returned later to strafe the same truck park. His Skyhawk was hit by ground fire on his second pass and trailing 200-feet of flame forced to turn seaward and eject over the Gulf. He was rescued by helicopter to fly again. He was on his 281st mission.
RIPPLE SALVO… #398… At the same time the President was pleading with Americans to “follow me” in order to sustain our country’s will to win the war in Vietnam– and Ho Chi Minh was counting on winning a long war by outlasting the will of the American people– the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior joined the anti-war crowds to lead them in a cause that made Ho Chi Minh very happy, and left LBJ dumbfounded. Here is what The New York Times had to say about this incredibly important moment in American history… NYT, 7 August 1967, Page 36. Lead editorial titled:
“Dr. King’s Error”…
“In recent speeches and statements the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has linked his personal opposition to the war in Vietnam with the cause of Negro equality in the United States. The war, he argues, should be stopped not only because it is a futile war waged for the wrong ends but also because it is a barrier to social progress in this country and therefore prevents Negroes from achieving their just place in American life.
“This is a fusing of two public problems that are distinct and separate. By drawing them together, Dr. King has done a disservice to both. The moral issues in Vietnam are less clear cut than he suggests: the political strategy of uniting the peace movement and the civil rights movement could very well be disastrous for both causes.
“Because American Negroes are a minority and have to overcome unique handicaps of racial antipathy and prolonged deprivation, they have a hard time in gaining their objectives even when their grievances are self-evident and their claims are indisputably just. As Dr. King knows from the Montgomery bus boycott and other civil rights struggles of the past dozen years, it takes almost infinite patience, persistence and courage to achieve the relatively simple aims that ought to be theirs by right.
“The movement toward racial equality is now in the more advanced and more difficult stage of fulfilling basic rights by finding more jobs, changing patterns of housing and upgrading education. The battlegrounds in this struggle are Chicago and Harlem and Watts. The Negroes on these fronts need all the leadership, dedication and moral inspiration that they can summon, and under these circumstances to divert the energies of the civil rights movement to the Vietnam issue is both wasteful and self-defeating.
“Dr. King makes too facile a connection between the speeding up of the war in Vietnam and the slowing down of the war against poverty. The eradication of poverty is at best the task of a generation. This ‘war’ inevitably meets diverse resistance such as the hostility of local political machines, the skepticism of conservatives in Congress and the intractability of slum mores and habits. The nation could afford to make more funds available to combat poverty even while the war in Vietnam continues, but there is no certainty that the coming of peace would automatically lead to a sharp increase in funds.
“Furthermore, Dr. King can only antagonize opinion in this country instead of winning recruits to the peace movement by recklessly comparing American military methods to those of the Nazis testing new medicines and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe. The facts are harsh, but they do not justify such slander. Furthermore, it is possible to disagree with many aspects of the United States policy without white washing Hanoi.
“As an individual, Dr. King has the right and even a moral obligation to explore the ethical implications of the war in Vietnam, but as one of the most respected leaders of the civil rights movement he has an equally weighty obligation to direct that movements effort in the most constructive and relevant way.
“There are no simple or easy answers to the war in Vietnam or to racial injustice in this country. Linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions, but to deeper confusion.” ...end Editorial…
Dr. King was not deterred….
CAG’s QUOTE for 7 April 1967… On the 100th anniversary of American participation in World War I, I turn to a favorite American hero…Sargent Alvin York… “There had to be something more than man power in that fight to save me. There can’t be no man in the world make me believe there weren’t. And I’m a-telling you the hand of God must have been in that fight. It surely must have been divine power that brought me out. No other power under heaven could save a man in a place like that. Men were killed on both sides of me and all around me and I was the biggest and the most exposed of them all. I have got only one explanation to offer, and only one: without the help of God I jes couldn’t have done it....There can be no arguments about that. I am not going to believe different a long as I live.”… (“Alvin York,” by Douglas V. Mastriano, pg. 138)
Lest we forget… Bear
