Others were willing to entertain the importance of the Tet Offensive. "Westmoreland and his staff, the people who were advising him, became fixated on Khe Sanh," says Prince, "to the point where they simply were not capable of entertaining other information." North Vietnamese troops attacked the remote outpost to serve as a diversion in the leadup to the Tet Offensive.īut Prince, a young Army officer fighting at Hue, said Westmoreland had it backward: Khe Sanh was the diversion. Marine carries a 155 mm shell at Khe Sanh in January 1968. agricultural program, Roberts recalls, "which would double the rice yields in Vietnam and would win the peace now that Americans had won the war."Ī U.S. Roberts was heading off to Vietnam, so national security adviser Walt Rostow gave him a story idea. But just six weeks earlier, a top White House official had told New York Times reporter Gene Roberts the war was already over. McNamara told him that the American people would realize that the enemy forces were stronger than they had been told, that the Pentagon was searching for targets but the Vietnamese enemies were still a "substantial force."Ī substantial force. Embassy grounds in Saigon.īack in Washington, President Lyndon Johnson called his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, and asked for an explanation. North Vietnamese troops and their Viet Cong allies swept throughout cities and towns, into military bases, even breaching the walls of the U.S. ![]() A Viet Cong suicide squad seized control of part of the compound and held it for about six hours before being killed or captured.īut then came Tet. Embassy compound in Saigon, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive. military policemen aid a wounded fellow MP during fighting in the U.S.
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