The 1,002nd Way

"We're already aiding the Vietnamese in 1,001 ways. But let's not be satisfied when it might prove that the 1,002nd way is the decisive one."

Ever since he spoke those words on his arrival in Saigon last July as the new U.S. ambassador, Maxwell Taylor has been looking for that decisive--and elusive--1,002nd way. As of last week, he seemed to be no closer to finding it than when he started. He was locked in an extraordinary battle with the Vietnamese army he was supposed to be "aiding," most notably with Lieut. General Nguyen Khanh. In a deliberate and perhaps desperate move, Taylor was ready to risk an ultimate break with the Vietnamese army in order to lay down the U.S. law and bring about something like a stable government in South Viet Nam.

Word from Saigon was that Taylor was determined to force Khanh out as army commander-in-chief and was trying to split him off from "young Turk" generals who two weeks ago, with Khanh's backing, had dissolved the Saigon government's feeble legislature (TIME, Jan. 1). Washington, on the other hand, insisted that a compromise was being worked out with Khanh to restore a greater measure of civilian government.

Whatever the outcome of all this maneuvering, it was startling to recall that only last spring Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had said: "If Khanh goes, the U.S. will need a new Secretary of Defense."

Last Battle. The conflict between Taylor and Khanh is partly one of principle, partly one of personality. A soldier for 40 years, Taylor led the 101st Airborne Division at Normandy, was superintendent of West Point, commanded U.S. troops in postwar Berlin and during the Korean war. In 1959, he quit as Army Chief of Staff because President Eisenhower's defense advisers, sold on the massive-retaliation theory, ignored his demands for a "flexible defense" capable of handling everything down to limited guerrilla actions. President Kennedy called him back to duty in 1961, made him his personal military adviser, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Last summer Lyndon Johnson persuaded him to give up that job and go to Saigon as ambassador. "He could have stayed on another two years as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs," says a Pentagon official, "and retired at the end of a glorious career. Instead, he went out to his last battle without much hope of winning."

But Taylor must have entertained at least some hope when he went to Saigon, for he was the chief architect of the current U.S. program there. After a 1961 fact-finding mission to Saigon, Taylor convinced Kennedy that with a drastic step-up in aid the U.S. could still win out in Viet Nam. When he returned to Saigon as ambassador, he began to learn grimly that things were considerably more complicated than that. Moving into a white, French-style villa near a cemetery, he plunged into a 70-hour-a-week work schedule, set about reorganizing the complex and often conflicting U.S. mission, a job that had been started by his predecessor, Henry Cabot Lodge.

Through the summer, until Khanh relinquished power to civilians in the aftermath of August's bloody riots, Taylor went through long and brittle sessions with the testy little general. Khanh never completely trusted the new ambassador; he recalled that on earlier trips to Saigon, Taylor had often been friendly and played tennis with Khanh's rival,

General Duong Van ("Big") Minh. Besides, the inferiority complex that the relatively inexperienced Khanh does not quite conceal beneath his swagger, was aggravated by Taylor--an aloof, coolly analytical intellectual who speaks French, German, Spanish and Japanese and boasts ten tiers of decorations on his four-star general's tunic. Where Lodge for all his Brahmin background had wooed the Vietnamese, Taylor tended to lecture them.

"Never-Again Club." He was having his troubles with Washington too. Taylor started making many decisions of the kind that had previously been referred back to Washington--and his reports were often sketchy. Though Taylor is a member of what is known as the "Never-Again Club" of Pentagon officers who, since Korea, have opposed sending sizable U.S. ground forces to the Asian mainland, he nevertheless favors retaliatory U.S. bombing of Viet Cong supply routes and staging depots. But when Taylor was in Washington last month, President Johnson rejected such a course, insisted that a stable government must first be established.

Determined to stiffen the civilian regime of Premier Tran Van Huong enough to satisfy Johnson, Taylor hurried back to Saigon. He met Khanh and several other young Vietnamese generals at the residence of U.S. Commander Lieut. General William Westmore land, made a strong pitch for political stability. Less than two weeks later, those same officers helped to bring down the civilian High National Council, and Taylor exploded. He warned that U.S. aid might be cut off unless some form of civilian rule were restored, bitterly blasted Khanh and icily told four of the coup leaders, "It appears I wasted my time when I talked to you people."

Only a Beginning. Though even Taylor's fans in Washington agree that he handled Khanh and the other generals clumsily, most U.S. policymakers support him in his basic policy. Taylor insists that he is not pressing for civilian government in Saigon on philosophical grounds; he simply feels that a legitimate government must not be allowed to be toppled by any dissident group that happens to come down the pike--generals, colonels, Buddhists, or whatever. Khanh, he argues, had his chance when he was Premier, and though he looked highly promising at first, he and the other generals simply refused to buckle down to the burdens and responsibilities of day-by-day governing. No one, however, has yet been able to found a civilian Vietnamese government that can do the job either.

If the near miracle of a workable and widely accepted government is ever accomplished in Saigon, that would be a tremendous step forward--but in itself only a beginning. For Washington would still have to face the formidable and nearly forgotten question of where the U.S. is ultimately headed in Viet Nam, of how to pursue and eventually how to end the war.

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