Viet Policy Debated in Senate

June 10, 1965 - A major debate over the Johnson Administration’s Vietnam policy flared in the Senate today as American troops headed toward deeper involvement in the ground war.

Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-Conn.) a defender of the Administration’s policy, called on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to dispatch a fact-finding mission to South Vietnam to determine the true situation and to lay “the non-facts to rest.”

Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) declared that America’s role in the war has been changing rapidly in the last few weeks and “urgently needs to be discussed.” he recommended a full-dress Senate debate. But Sen. Gale McGee (D-Wyo.) insisted there was “no new dimension in the war.”

The flurry of talk came as President Johnson and his top military and diplomatic advisers thrashed out the Vietnam crisis with Ambassador Maxwell Taylor (left). The emphasis of their discussion was on the seriousness of the present Viet Cong offensive and new coup threats to the Saigon government.

The Administration feels there is no point announcing in advance how U.S. troops may be used in Vietnam because this would only provide free intelligence for the Communists. For this reason, officials tried to play down the significance of the new authority for U.S. troops.

Dodd charged that the Vietnamese struggle could be lost on the home front. He particularly attacked the “noisy minority of defeatists and appeasers” favoring withdrawal. He suggested that they were being misled by misinformation, and he heaped some of the blame for this on the press.

Sen. Jacob Javits (R-NY) insisted, however, that “the record of the press is excellent in reporting on this.” Sen. Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) also rose to defend the press, asserting that reporting by American newsmen in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic has “been outstanding in every respect.”

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