Ellsberg Says Anti-War Moratoriums Delayed Mining of Haiphong for Two and a Half Years

Daniel Ellsberg '52 told the Nieman Fellows Monday that anti-war protests in 1969, especially the September and October anti-war moratoriums that year, apparently "derailed a plan to mine Haiphong in the fall of '69, and postponed it for what turned out to be two and a half years."

"That probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives in North Vietnam," Ellsberg said.

Ellsberg told the Niemans he learned of a 1969 plan to mine Haiphong from an article in the July 1974 issue of the Washington Monthly, written by Roger Morris, a former National Security Council aide.

Morris's account says that then national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger '50 had the council prepare a study in 1969 of the possible mining of Haiphong.

But Ellsberg said he "had been told throughout this period, a tacit assumption between my informants and me: since Hanoi is not going to meet the Nixon-Kissinger terms they are going to carry out their plan--the plan is to mine Haiphong and to wipe out North Vietnam."

Ellsberg quoted "authorities in Washington" as telling him that G. Gordon Liddy, then counsel to the Committee to Re-elect the President, ordered "11 Cuban-Americans," including several of the Watergate burglars, to "incapacitate me thoroughly" in May 1972.

Ellsberg said this order--alluded to in CRP deputy director Jeb Stuart Magruder's "An American Life"--was an effort to prevent him from publicizing plans to mine Haiphong. Then president Richard M. Nixon announced the mining of the harbor on May 8, 1972, explaining that it was necessary to keep supplies from the "international outlaws" who had launched an offensive five weeks before.

Liddy's group attempted to assault him during a May 3, 1972 Washington anti-war rally he addressed from the steps of the Capitol in Washington, Ellsberg said.

Ellsberg said he saw Frank W. Sturgis, a Central Intelligence Agency employee who was later convicted for the Watergate break-in, taking part in the disruption. When police arrived, Sturgis flashed his CIA credentials and persuaded them not to make any arrests, Ellsberg said.

In his talk to the Niemans, Ellsberg speculated that a 1969 mining of Haiphong would have been followed by an invasion of North Vietnam and ultimately the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

In support of a belief that the 1969 moratoriums induced the administration to put off escalation plans, he cited a memo from presidential appointments secretary Dwight Chapin to Magruder, published in Magruder's book, in which Chapin said that a November 3 presidential announcement of escalation would make it "hard to contain" the moratorium scheduled for November 15.

"There was astonishment that Nixon announced no troop cut in that particular speech," Ellsberg told the Niemans. "He sure didn't announce escalation--but that's what he was considering. And I think that Chapin gives a hint as to why they decided to postpone that."

Ellsberg made public his off-the-record remarks to the Niemans Tuesday, in protest of an off-the-record Faculty Club meeting Tuesday night between the fellows and CIA director William E. Colby.

"Nieman fellows who attended that meeting said last night that Colby declined to discuss specific CIA activities, citing 'national security reasons." They said Colby defended covert CIA activities and the secrecy of the agency's budget on the same grounds.

Colby made few references to the 150-person anti-CIA picket line outside the building, they said.

One said, "He turned down questions about Chile and whether CIA agents are converging on Cyprus and so on."

"I wouldn't call him evasive for a CIA director," another said