Cracking a Vietnam War Mystery

New Book Uses Long-Hidden Communist Sources to Explore a Potential Missed Opportunity for Peace in 1966 Evidence from James G. Hershberg, "Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam" (Cold War International History Project) Stanford University Press/Wilson Center Press, January 2012 National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 369

Washington, D.C., January 15, 2012 – Casting new light on one of the most controversial and enduring mysteries of the Vietnam War, a new book using evidence from long-hidden communist sources suggests that the U.S. Government missed a major chance to open peace talks with North Vietnam in late 1966, more than eighteen months before the opening of the Paris peace talks and more than six years before the accords that finally ended US direct involvement in the fighting. The revelations contained in Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam by James G. Hershberg imply that the United States might have escaped its Vietnam predicament with a far lower toll: the secret Polish-Italian peace attempt code-named "Marigold" by U.S. officials culminated at a time when roughly 6,250 Americans had perished, compared to the more than 58,000 who ultimately died in the war.[1]

At one point the clandestine diplomacy verged on a breakthrough, with the apparent mutual agreement to hold an unprecedented meeting between US and North Vietnamese ambassadors in Warsaw to confirm Washington's adherence to a ten-point formula for a settlement. "I thought I had done something worthwhile in my life," recalled the American ambassador in Saigon at the time, Henry Cabot Lodge, of that moment of seeming success with his diplomatic partners from Poland and Italy. "We had a drink on it."[2] A date was even tentatively set for the enemy ambassadors to meet: December 6, 1966. But before the encounter could take place, the covert effort was first suspended—due, the Poles said, to the U.S. bombing of Hanoi, the first such strikes around the North Vietnamese capital in more than five months—and then collapsed, for reasons which were disputed in acrimonious private US-Polish exchanges at the time. Before long, those arguments seeped into the press, sparking an international scandal and leaving behind a convoluted historical mystery—until now. read more>>>