US-Vietnam/1949-50
US-Vietnam/1949-50
>Edwin Moise wrote:
At 10:12 AM 4/2/2000 +0200, you wrote:
> Could someone out "there" tell me the extent of US-DRV secret relations
> in late 1949 and early 1950 (I'm not concerned here about earlier
> contacts in Bangkok and southern China). I know Mark Bradley has
> written on this subject; and I look forward to reading his book.
> Based on recently released VN and French sources, it is clear that the
> Americans were interested in finding a way to work things out with the
> DRV following the Chinese communist victory in October 1949, apparently à la Tito.
> I would be grateful for some more detail here. What recently released VN
> and French sources are these, and what do these sources say?
Ed Moise
From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: US-Vietnam/1949-50
Based on known information so far, the U.S. government had no interests in making any compromise with Ho and the Vietminh after 1946. We know of the meeting of Abbot Moffat with HCM, etc. in which HCM offered the U.S. the use of Cam Ranh bay, etc. in exchange for U.S.' pressure on France to grant VN some measure of independence, to no avail. We know what happened to Archimedes Patti and a number of OSS hands who supported a rapproachment with HCM once they returned to the States (No one from the State Department, or the security agency, had ever availed themselves of his or his group's expertise re: HCM in this period). Patti's first attempt at writing "Why Vietnam" was muzzled in the early 70s.
Nguyen Ba Chung
From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: US-Vietnam/1949-50
Edwin Moise wrote:
> When I saw this, I went and looked at the indicated pages of FRUS. Nothing
> on those pages said Ho had discussed Cam Ranh Bay with any
> American. Nothing on those pages said that Ho had ever met with Moffat,
> though one section did contain instructions to Moffat, indicating what he
> should say to Ho *if* they met. A brief skim of nearby pages, and
> consultation of the index, still showed no indication that Ho had ever met
> with Moffat, and I am inclined to believe that such a meeting would have
> showed up in FRUS, if one had occurred.
>
> So then I looked at the indicated pages of Hess. Hess says pretty much
> what you say, but the only sources Hess cites, in the relevant section, are
> the pages of FRUS you mentioned. So I am seriously wondering what the real
> source of the story of Moffat meeting with Ho might be.
>
As all my books are currently in boxes in storage at a temporary location while I am in the process of moving, I can't check on my notes. It'd be a while before I have access to them unfortunately. When I do, I'll go through it and let you know the answer - whether I find it or my memory fails me. I read these quite a while ago.
As for the summary response to Michel Thompson, I did rely on a copy of Hess in the library to give a brief account. I wanted to quickly go through the Foreign Relations volume to jog my memory, but as luck would have it, it's the copy that the library was missing. So I had to rely on Hess to give the references.
Let's look at the so far non-contesting facts re: U.S. government's view & HCM at the time:
- Ho made an offer for the possible use of Cam Ranh Bay as a U.S. base in 1946.
- The US, officially, at the highest level, considered Ho to be an instrument of international communism, a view contrary to that of A. Patti, head of OSS/Indochina and all OSS reports from the area at the time.
- Once Patti returned from Indochina, he was no longer consulted on the issue of Indochina, or on HCM.
For the isssue that you raise, let me see what can be inferred from Hess, p. 36:
"While in Paris Ho once again sought American support. In meetings with U.S. embassy officials he urged pressure on the French to negotiate in good faith and spoke of his government's interest in foreign investment capital. The Vietnamese leader promised an end to France's special economic privileges and talked of the possibility of a U.S. naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. A few State Department officials believed that the United States should use its influence to moderate French policy. Most notably, Abott Low Moffatt called for "express[ing] to the French, in view of our interest in peace and orderly development of dependent peoples, our hope that they will abide by the spirit of the [Ho-Sainteny] agreement."
Clearly, Moffat was in the thick of it, and on Ho's side re: the implementation of the Sainteny agreement which the French government later simply ignored. Would it be a reasonable assumption that he would have been aware of Ho's meeting with U.S. embassy officials, and therefore of Ho's offer ?
As Hess then took about half a page to describe the *content* of the meeting between Moffat with Ho and Giap in Hanoi (p. 37), I think it's hard to to imagine that Hess, then President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, simply drew it from thin air. It's possible that he made a mistake, or that he had access to other sources that might be available elsewhere.
Until the source for this meeting is located, your objection is well taken, and all else, of course, are mere conjecture.
Nguyen Ba Chung
From: mchale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: US-Vietnam/1949-50 - reliability of FRUS
I beg to differ slightly on Ed Moise re: the reliability of the latest FRUS. As you all may know, the FRUS is compiled with the input of an advisory board of non-governmental historians. Some of these historians have complained about the recent FRUS (I am not sure if it is this one), arguing that the high standards of impartiality expected of these volumes may have been slightly compromised. There was, to my recollection, a short article to this effect in one of the past issues of the AMerican Historical Association's PERSPECTIVES.
But Ed Moise is right on target in other areas. these volumes are not expected to be volumes of SE ASian history, but of US diplomatic history.
In my mind, the most worrisome issue is not FRUS itself (Which I confess I rarely use) but the abysmal record of US intelligence agencies, and particularly the CIA, to declassify documents on their activities. In this regard, the State department has a far better record than the CIA.
(Quick note, posters: please post your name at the bottom of your posts!)
Best,
Shawn McHale
From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: US-Vietnam/1949-50
C. Michele Thompson wrote:
> I knew that Ho had offered the US Cam Ranh Bay but I didn't know who the US
> messenger was. Who was Abbot Moffat? Where was he from?
> thanks for this information
> regards
> Michele Thompson
The Moffat episode is documented in "Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1946, vol. 8, The Far East", pp 52-54, 67-69. An summary can be found in Gary R. Hess, "VN and the U.S, Origins and Legacy and Legacy of War", pp 36-38.
Abbot Low Moffat was then an official of the State Department, later head of the Far East division. Ho Chi Minh first made the offer to US embassy officials in the summer of 1946 in Paris, where he was in search of a French implementation of the Sainteny Agreement. Later, when the French government decided to solve the problem by military means, bombarding Hai Phong and killing six thousand Vietnamese, the U.S. sent Moffat as an envoy to Hanoi as a last ditch effort to prevent war. There, he met with HCM and VNG, trying to broker a solution. The U.S. government's instructions to
Moffat at the time, however, doomed any possible deal - not to forget "Ho's clear record as an agent of international communism", and "the least desired eventuality would be the establishment of a Communist-dominated, Moscow-oriented state in Vietnam" (Acheson to Reed, Dec 1946). This view was contrary to that of Archimedes Patti and OSS reports during this period. There, the
First Indochina war began.
Nguyen Ba Chung
From: VSG-owner@u.washington.edu [mailto:VSG-owner@u.washington.edu]On
Behalf Of Edwin Moise
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2000 9:20 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Subject: Re: US-Vietnam/1949-50
I have managed to locate the origin of the story; what Nguyen Ba Chung posted was correct in outline.
Moffat did meet Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi in December 1946; I remain surprised that I did not find any indication of this in my skim, admittedly brief, of the relevant volume of FRUS.
Moffat's record of that meeting does not mention anything like an offer of Cam Ranh as a U.S. naval base. Moffat does, however, say that Hoang Minh Giam (deputy foreign minister of the DRV) made such an offer at a later meeting.
The sections of Moffat's report to the State Department that discussed these meetings are in D. Gareth Porter, ed., _Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation of Human Decisions_, vol. 1, pp. 129-30.
Ed Moise
On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Frank Proschan wrote:
Edwin's problem consulting the relevant FRUS volume for documentation of a critical event strikes a resonant chord. One can search the appropriate volume of FRUS for Laos (and even the microfiche annex) without finding a word mentioning Souphanouvong's midnight escape from a Vientiane prison in 1960. Is it believable that there was no diplomatic correspondence from the US Embassy in Laos to Foggy Bottom or the Pentagon concerning this event (understanding that FRUS fails to include records of intelligence services)? When the volume was published, I phoned to the editor at the State Department to see if he could account for the silence. The reply was something to the effect of "it must have slipped our mind." Have other VSG members noted other startling omissions--i.e., events that are well-known from other sources and would presumably have generated diplomatic correspondence, yet go unmentioned in FRUS? Perhaps one of the historians among us might compile a list of lacunae...
Best,
Frank Proschan (back home again)
From: "Stephen O'Harrow" <soh@hawaii.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: US-Vietnam/1949-50 - reliability of FRUS
Are we talking selective memory here or selective editing (some less charitably inclined might prefer the term censorship) of State records before they reach public accessibility?
From: Christopher Goscha <cgoscha@cybercable.fr>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: US-Vietnam/1949-50
Could someone out "there" tell me the extent of US-DRV secret relations in late 1949 and early 1950 (I'm not concerned here about earlier contacts in Bangkok and southern China). I know Mark Bradley has written on this subject; and I look forward to reading his book.
Based on recently released VN and French sources, it is clear that the Americans were interested in finding a way to work things out with the DRV following the Chinese communist victory in October 1949, apparently à la Tito. Is this Jessup and Bullit missions? Is this really true?
Surely something has been written on this and I'm just too out of the loop to know it?
Thanks in advance,
chris goscha
From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@CLEMSON.EDU>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: US-Vietnam/1949-50
At 10:12 AM 4/2/2000 +0200, you wrote:
>Could someone out "there" tell me the extent of US-DRV secret relations
>in late 1949 and early 1950 (I'm not concerned here about earlier
>contacts in Bangkok and southern China). I know Mark Bradley has
>written on this subject; and I look forward to reading his book.
>
>Based on recently released VN and French sources, it is clear that the
>Americans were interested in finding a way to work things out with the
>DRV following the Chinese communist victory in October 1949, apparently à la Tito.
I would be grateful for some more detail here. What recently released VN and French sources are these, and what do these sources say?
Ed Moise
From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@CLEMSON.EDU>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: US-Vietnam/1949-50
At 05:29 PM 4/3/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>C. Michele Thompson wrote:
> >
> > I knew that Ho had offered the US Cam Ranh Bay but I didn't know who the US
> > messenger was. Who was Abbot Moffat? Where was he from?
> > thanks for this information
> > regards
> > Michele Thompson
>
>The Moffat episode is documented in "Foreign Relations of the
>U.S. 1946, vol. 8, The Far East", pp 52-54, 67-69. An summary can
>be found in Gary R. Hess, "VN and the U.S, Origins and Legacy and
>Legacy of War", pp 36-38.
>
>Abbot Low Moffat was then an official of the State Department, later
>head of the Far East division. Ho Chi Minh first made the offer to US
>embassy officials in the summer of 1946 in Paris, where he was in
>search of a French implementation of the Sainteny Agreement. Later,
>when the French government decided to solve the problem by
>military means, bombarding Hai Phong and killing six thousand
>Vietnamese, the U.S. sent Moffat as an envoy to Hanoi as a
>last ditch effort to prevent war. There, he met with HCM and VNG,
>trying to broker a solution. The U.S. government's instructions to
>Moffat at the time, however, doomed any possible deal - not to
>forget "Ho's clear record as an agent of international communism",
>and "the least desired eventuality would be the establishment of a
>Communist-dominated, Moscow-oriented state in Vietnam"
>(Acheson to Reed, Dec 1946). This view was contrary to that of
>Archimedes Patti and OSS reports during this period. There, the
>First Indochina war began.
When I saw this, I went and looked at the indicated pages of FRUS. Nothing on those pages said Ho had discussed Cam Ranh Bay with any American. Nothing on those pages said that Ho had ever met with Moffat, though one section did contain instructions to Moffat, indicating what he should say to Ho *if* they met. A brief skim of nearby pages, and consultation of the index, still showed no indication that Ho had ever met with Moffat, and I am inclined to believe that such a meeting would have showed up in FRUS, if one had occurred.
So then I looked at the indicated pages of Hess. Hess says pretty much what you say, but the only sources Hess cites, in the relevant section, are the pages of FRUS you mentioned. So I am seriously wondering what the real source of the story of Moffat meeting with Ho might be.
Ed Moise
From: "Frank Proschan" <proschan@indiana.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: US-Vietnam/1949-50 - reliability of FRUS
Edwin's problem consulting the relevant FRUS volume for documentation of a critical event strikes a resonant chord. One can search the appropriate volume of FRUS for Laos (and even the microfiche annex) without finding a word mentioning Souphanouvong's midnight escape from a Vientiane prison in 1960. Is it believable that there was no diplomatic correspondence from the US Embassy in Laos to Foggy Bottom or the Pentagon concerning this event (understanding that FRUS fails to include records of intelligence services)? When the volume was published, I phoned to the editor at the State Department to see if he could account for the silence. The reply was something to the effect of "it must have slipped our mind." Have other VSG members noted other startling omissions--i.e., events that are well-known from other sources and would presumably have generated diplomatic correspondence, yet go unmentioned in FRUS? Perhaps one of the historians among us might compile a list of lacunae...
Best,
Frank Proschan (back home again)
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073