1530 Hours Local, 17 December 1965
Room 1D1024, The Pentagon
Washington, DC
Power in the Pentagon is situated on the Third floor E Ring between corridors 8 and 9. From here, the Secretary of Defense (SecDef) exercises direction, authority, and control over the Department of Defense (DoD) which encompasses the departments of the Army, the Navy (including the Marines and Naval Aviation), and the Air Force in addition to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the unified and specified commands, and various other defense agencies. What this means is that the SecDef has 3,374,808 men and women to assist him in his duty to support and defend the United States Constitution and to ensure the security of the United States, its possessions, and other areas vital to its security. Right now, like it or not, an area called South Viet Nam, which was 12,500 miles from the SecDef's office, has been declared vital to the security of the United States. This Asian country half way around the world currently had 460,202 of the SecDef's military people stationed there. An additional 40,000 were cruising around offshore in the South China Sea, while 35,000 more were at a half dozen air bases in Thailand.
The SecDef's main office is located in Room 880. His Deputy SecDef is on the same floor in Room 944. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose job is to administer to the JCS while advising the president through the SecDef, is located almost directly beneath in 2E872. Scattered about are the offices of the Chiefs of Staff of the Army (3E666), the Air Force (4E924), and the Chief of Naval Operations (4E660). The Commandant of the Marine Corps is a half-mile away in the Navy Annex on Columbia Pike.
Down the corridor two hundred feet to the right from the SecDef was the office of USAF Major General Albert G. "Whitey" Whisenand who held the position of Director of Operations and Planning, Special (Detached). Whitey Whisenand's job was unique in that he worked directly for the SecDef, not for his service chief or any other military boss.
As a two-star, Whitey was old in grade at age 55. He had flown his first airplane, a 3,000lb P-26, for the Army Air Force in 1933. In WWII he flew Mustangs. He flew his last fighter for the USAF, a 12,000lb Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, in Korea. On his 83rd mission he crashed and burned on takeoff when his water injection failed. He had been medically grounded since. At 55, he looked a senatorial 60 due to his expanding girth and white hair. He was not tall. Due to his burn scars, he had a slightly rosy and grainy textured matte around his upper cheeks and eyes making him appear forever as if he had just removed his oxygen mask after a long flight. The rest of his face was smooth and pink. His eyes were pale blue and generally compassionate. He hid a high IQ and an enormous interest in what made people tick behind his normal expression of benign curiosity. He sat at his large oak desk sipping steamy Brenny's coffee from a chipped Aynnsley bone china mug and thought of the odd position he was in.
His job for the SecDef was threefold:
**Evaluate target requests sent from MACV in Vietnam via CINCPAC in Hawaii to the Pentagon to the president for approval.
**Generate other targets to fulfill the president's requirements.
**Rank order the results and weigh them against public opinion then throw out or re-file those targets that might cause public unease.
He spent long hours with an Air Force colonel and a Navy captain determining which among the targets were best suited for air attack that would hurt the enemy, but not damage the U.S. image. SEA, meaning Southeast Asia, was the term used to encompass all areas where the war was being fought; Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam. The enemy was considered to be all communist forces in SEA whether NVA (North Vietnamese Army), VC (The Viet Cong in South Vietnam supported from the North), or the PL (Pathet Lao communists) in Laos.
Once they arrived at the final list, Whisenand then had to present the results and his recommendations to the SecDef who would add his own ideas before carrying the whole package forward to the president who had his own ideas.
The president would then confer, almost always at a Tuesday luncheon, with the SecDef and other civilian cabinet members and advisors who had their own ideas. The results were sent back with the SecDef to be implemented. Whisenand was in the return chain for information purposes only. He could not protest any decision he felt to be faulty or out of line with sound military precepts.
It all went back to early 1965 when the war in South Vietnam had reached crisis proportions and airpower was selected as an interim answer. The previous CINCPLAN 37-64, a three-phase, 28-day attack against 94 targets in North Vietnam, which the JCS was sure would have effectively stopped communist supplies to the south, was rejected.
Instead, the SecDef and the President decided to gradually bomb northward from the 17th parallel DMZ, the demilitarized zone, toward Hanoi in the hopes the communists would, at some point, realize the pain wasn't worth the gain trying to take over South Vietnam.
The program, code-named Rolling Thunder, set in motion highly limited air strikes. The policy, as stated by the president and as written by his Secretary of Defense, was that the Rolling Thunder air strikes were for three combined and mutually supportive reasons.
** To penalize Ho Chi Minh for supporting aggression in South Vietnam.
** To cut the infiltration of men and materiel into South Vietnam.
** To raise the morale of the South Vietnamese.
The strikes were supposed to roll thunder further north each time the communists did something the White House didn't like. They were dictated in size, weapons, and time on target by the White House, a methodology Whitey was finding out was killing fighter pilots.
Whitey suspected no war had been run quite like this, by committee--civilian at that--since the time of George Washington. And considering Valley Forge, not then either.
In addition to advising the SecDef, Whitey Whisenand was on the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) board, a highly classified agency trying to set up clandestine reconnaissance in North Vietnam and Laos. The NRO used teams on the ground, Compass Cope drones at low altitudes in the air, U-2s at high altitude, and satellites in space. They were having a hard time getting support for all but the satellites. The SecDef loved satellites. His idea was to build an electronic fence between North and South Vietnam that ran east and west along the 17th parallel at the DMZ. Satellite coverage would relay information instantly to Washington where he could absorb it, and relay orders back to the field commanders exactly how to react to enemy actions. Whitey despised this arrangement of excessive civilian control and the SecDef knew it.
Whisenand knew he would never get his third star because he was too old. In truth, there was no job for him. He was only on active duty at the sufferance of some highly placed admirers in the Congress who felt his contribution to the intelligence community belonged in the military. Whitey was independently wealthy, and he liked the United States Air Force. He was good at what he did, and saw no reason to retire merely to seek employment elsewhere.
He was the top Intel specialist in the USAF, and, it was said, he could spot a camouflaged gun emplacement at ten feet from a three-inch negative. He could identify all the Spoon Rest and Fan Song Russian radars by their transmission sounds, and had a feel for enemy intentions that made some think he personally paid agents inside their cabinets to provide information.
Whisenand knew his time with the SecDef was limited. Whitey was sure that sooner or later his intellectual temperament and dislike of autocratic persons would prevail and he would inform the ex-Detroit whiz kid exactly where his and the president's air war plan should be stuffed.
He sighed, put his coffee cup down, and picked up his latest target request list. He stared at it for a moment and threw it down as he looked at the chart board his Air Force and Navy assistants, fighter pilots themselves chafing to get to Vietnam, had shown him. Draped with black crepe paper, it listed shootdowns. They had been told they would be in deep kimchi for negative thinking if the SecDef ever saw it. They felt it was the only way they could call some attention to and show some tribute, albeit minor, to the aircrew who had paid such a high price to obtain a goal that didn't seem to be understood by their commander-in-chief. Whitey had them leave the board in his office. He looked at it and his face tightened.
...........................................................
AIRCRAFT SHOT DOWN OVER NORTH VIETNAM....148
PILOT/NAV MIA, KIA, POW....................102
SUCCESSFUL RESCUES........................46
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"Those POWs are rotting in cells in the Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi," Air Force Colonel John Ralph had said.
"Boss," Navy Captain Jerry Paulson had said to Whitey, "we've got so many guys in there now, the troops over at Casualty Recovery have got a new name for the place."
"Oh? What's it called?" Whitey had asked.
"The Hanoi Hilton."