Kennedy hand in document discerned

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32639, 22 June 1971, Page 17

Kennedy hand in document discerned

CN.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW YORK, June 20. Sources close to Mr Lyndon Johnson say that the former President sees “the ghostly hand of Robert Kennedy” in the secret Pentagon study of United States involvement in Vietnam, says “Newsweek” magazine.

“Newsweek” says that although Mr Johnson has refused to comment on the documents published last week in the “New York Times” and "Washington Post,” people in Texas “privy of his feelings” link the report to Mr Kennedy’s Presidential aspirations. “Bobby indeed may well have inspired the report,” the magazine says, summarising views of the Texas sources.

1968 challenge “He was close to . (then Secretary of Defence) Robert McNamara, and he needed an issue for his intended challenge to Mr Johnson in 1968. “He couldn’t find any weakness in the Johnson record on civil rights, race, health, education, environment, or anything else. “He pinned his hopes on Vietnam and Mr McNamara was a Kennedy man,” “Newsweek” quotes the sources as saying.

“In fact, the. whole Pentagon establishment was Ken-

nedy. Johnson left it intact.” “Time” magazine says in an article today that Mr Johnson believes that his greatest mistake in Vietnam was waiting until he had been in office for 18 months before sending more United States troops into battle, because by then he felt Vietnam was almost lost. "Time” gives no source for its information. The “Time” article also says that Mr Johnson believes that he made a mistake in “failing to institute censorship not to cover up mistakes, but to prevent the enemy from knowing what the United/States was going to do next “As for trying to hide the troop build-up, L.BJ.’s

rationale is that he was trying to avoid inflaming ‘hawk’ sentiment in the United

States and to avoid goading Hanoi into calling on the Communist Chinese for help," "Time” says. The sources for the “Newsweek” article say that Mr McNamara, becoming' disillusioned with the war, “went to the Kennedy Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and talked with about 20 Harvard professors round the time he ordered the study. Who wrote what? “Some of those 20 may be among the authors of the re-port-somebody should find out who they are and who wrote what,” the Johnson sources say. “They were already committed. They couldn’t make an objective report.” The Johnson sources

alleged that the over-all effect of the “New York Times” digest of the Pentagon study is "dishonest—one distorted and biased side of the picture.”

Parts of It, they say, “might have been written by John Kenneth Galbraith,” a war critic of long standing.

Campaign ‘lie’ On the question of bombing of North Vietnam, the Johnson sources take issue with what they say is an attempt by critics to make it seem “he had decided in 1964 to bomb in 1965. that his campaign was a lie and that he was trying to put something over on Congress. “That just wasn’t so,” they say. “There are contingency plans for bombing Moscow — that doesn’t mean that Moscow is going to be bombed.”