Last month, in Air Force, the journal of the Air Force Association, Patrick Casey, a criminal lawyer, and his father, Aloysius Casey, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, unravelled the truth of one of the demoralizing stories that, three decades ago, marked the end of a losing war. In April, 1972, the Pentagon announced that Air Force General John D. Lavelle, the commander of all air operations in Vietnam, was retiring for “personal and health reasons.” In fact, as it became clear over the next two months, he had been relieved of his command and forced to retire—demoted by two ranks—after an internal inquiry determined that he had ordered bombing attacks on unauthorized targets in North Vietnam.
The news of Lavelle’s dismissal was followed by several hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee and two Pentagon investigations. At that stage of the war, American pilots were authorized to fire on surface-to-air-missile sites and their radar in the North—but only after they had been fired upon or electronically engaged. Once that happened, a rule of engagement known as “protective reaction” came into play, and the missiles and radar became fair game. During the hearings, many Air Force pilots and intelligence personnel came forward to say that they had bombed unauthorized targets and then falsely reported those attacks as “protective reaction”—a phrase that entered the Vietnam lexicon, alongside “free-fire zones” and “pacification.” From late 1971 to early 1972, more than half the missions flown over North Vietnam—twenty-eight missions, involving a hundred and forty-seven flights—had been in violation of the rules of engagement.
I tracked Lavelle down after his firing, and, with his help, published an account of those missions, in the Times, on June 11, 1972. Lavelle told me that he had bombed radar sites, air fields, petroleum storage tanks, and other targets in the North without express orders. I also reported that he had verbal instructions that he thought carried an “implied” authorization. In the early fall, as the Pentagon continued to insist that Lavelle “alone was responsible for the air raids,” he told the Armed Services Committee that he had discussed the SAM sites and radars with Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and various senior commanders, including Army General Creighton T. Abrams, who was then in charge of the over-all war effort. Lavelle said that he and Abrams had agreed that the Air Force could not “just stand around” and wait until a plane was shot down. Abrams denied this; he told the committee that he had approved one early attack that was subsequently determined to be in violation of the rules of engagement, but had not known of any other such missions. (Lavelle later stated that Laird had encouraged him to make a “liberal interpretation” of the rules, and had promised to “back me up.”)
The issue of authorization was lost amid bigger stories—Richard Nixon’s reëlection, the collapse of the Paris peace agreement, and the spreading Watergate scandal—and was never resolved. Lavelle and twenty-three others were accused of court-martial offenses, but the Secretary of the Air Force found no cause to take further action. (“When was the last time you heard of a four-star general being court-martialled?” Lavelle said to me, when we first talked.) In 1978, Lavelle gave an extensive interview to the Office of Air Force History, in which he said that he should not have acted on the basis of private assurances that he would be supported if the missions became known. He added, “Somewhere along there we just should have said, ‘Hey, either fight it or quit, but let’s not waste all the money and the lives the way we are doing it.’ ” A year later, Lavelle died, at the age of sixty-two.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/03/26/070326taco_talk_hersh
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