The inside story of how President Clinton came to his decision to the embargo on Vietnam
by Matthew Cooper
______________________________________
Last Thursday, Bill Clinton had all but decided to lift the economic embargo of Vietnam. Still, he had one last concern. Waiting offstage at a Washington, D.C., junior high school, where he was to give a speech, Clinton called National Security Adviser Anthony Lake at the White House to ask about a report from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, that a living American soldier had been sighted in Vietnam. Don't worry, Lake said, the sighting didn't check out. Clinton was ready to lift the embargo.
The question was when to make the announcement. After a 10-minute ride backto the White House, Clinton met hastily in the Oval Office withadvisers Lake, Ricki Seidman, Dee Dee Myers, Mark Gearan, George Stephanopoulos and David Gergen. The downside of rushing the decision was sheer logistics; for instance, Vice President Al Gore, a Vietnam veteran, was out of town. Despite the hassles, said Clinton's aides, the decision shouldn't languish. "OK," Clinton said, "let's do it." After a polite but cool meeting with veterans leaders, Clinton announced that he would lift the embargo but not open diplomatic relations with Hanoi until it made still more progress toward resolving the fate of Americans missing in action in Vietnam. Aides say that was the president's near obsession as he made his decision, though the lifting of the embargo opens opportunities for American business (story, Page 23). Done deal. The American rapprochement toward Vietnam began before Clinton took office and, in all probability, would have continued had George Bush been re elected. Both Congress and the Reagan and Bush administrations had come to the conclusion that Hanoi had grown cooperative in the search for MIAs. American officials received thousands of Vietnamese documents and have been permitted to excavate sites throughout the country. "We've bludgeoned about all the cooperation we can from the Vietnamese," says former Joint Chiefs Chairman John Vessey, who has served three administrations as an envoy to the region. "It's time for us to put up or we'll see cooperation diminish." Clinton has had a keen interest in the MIA issue, in part because he remains conflicted about not having served in Vietnam, friends say. He privately describes himself as "one of those paranoids" who believes that Americans might have been held in Vietnam after the war. When then Governor Clinton considered creating an Arkansas task force on MIAs in 1989 he asked his top veterans adviser, Hershel Gober: "Do you think there are still men over there?" "I don't know. I hope not," said Gober. "Me too," sighed Clinton. During the 1992 campaign, Clinton vowed not to re-establish relations "until I am satisfied that we have literally run down every last case involving POWs and MIAs." Both Clinton and Vice President Gore entered office opposed to lifting the embargo, Gore says. He told U.S. News they have pursued a "step-by-step approach" designed to "test how much additional information we could pry out of the Vietnamese." They gradually became convinced that lifting the embargo was the way to resolve the remaining cases. The process reached a critical point last summer when a presidential delegation reported that the Vietnamese were making progress. Soon thereafter, Clinton allowed international relief institutions to lend money to Hanoi.
Outreach. But as Clinton pondered staff recommendations, he sought out individuals on his own. Insiders say he was particularly struck by the feelings of Adm. Charles Larson, the commander in chief of Pacific forces, who gave the president his views while they played golf in Hawaii last July. Larson, who oversees MIA searchers, was convinced that there was progress on the MIA question. Then, in a rambling meeting in the family quarters of the White House last September before Colin Powell left his post as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Clinton asked the four-star general whether the military, with whom Clinton has often had strained relations, would object to lifting the embargo. Powell said no. Gore says that veteran leaders privately told him after trips to Vietnam that "they were really, really impressed with what the Vietnamese were doing." This was at odds with their public positions and helped convince the White House the outcry would not be enormous if the embargo were lifted. Clinton mellowed further on the issue after hearing in December from Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, who returned from a trip to Hanoi with an upbeat assessment of Vietnamese cooperation. "The testing phase had run out of steps," Gore says. If there had been voices within the administration urging Clinton not to lift the embargo he might have refrained. There were none. The closest thing to a naysayer was Lake. At a December meeting of the National Security Council, Lake was the most doubtful about lifting the embargo. His sensitivities stemmed from his own Vietnam memories: He resigned from the National Security Council in 1970 in protest of the Nixon administration's decision to invade Cambodia. Colleagues say he was at pains in his current post to make sure that the families of MIAs -- many of whom visited him in his West Wing office -- were treated seriously. Eventually, though, Lake backed a resumption of trade. While some White House political advisers expressed concerns about the political fallout from lifting the ban, their views held minimal sway. In fact, the White House did not poll the question of lifting the embargo. Two other political events helped drive the administration's decision. The most important was passage late last month of a Senate resolution urging an end to the embargo. It was sponsored by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, a decorated Navy officer, and Arizona Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam. While Kerry consulted with the White House, the two moved their resolution independently from the administration. "The White House was truly not involved with this," Kerry insists. It still gave Clinton political cover. Acting early. The looming conventions of several veterans groups also prompted the White House to move up its decision. This month the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans will hold meetings in Washington. Clinton advisers argued that lifting the embargo now would avoid the embarrassment of making an announcement after the veterans conventions passed resolutions calling for a continuation of the embargo. By the beginning of last week, there was little doubt in the White House what Clinton would do. The president himself began to talk publicly about the case for renewing trade with Hanoi. On Wednesday, Clinton received a final NSC memorandum urging him to lift the embargo. Without any special meetings, Clinton decided to make the move. One of the final steps: a call from a senior official to Ross Perot on Thursday to inform him of the decision. Perot did not signal that he would oppose the move. After Clinton made the announcement, he told a senior official: "Gee, I didn't think I'd be doing this, 25 years ago."
Related material can be found on U.S. News Online on CompuServe. For a free start-up kit: (800) 510-4247. THE WAR'S TERRIBLE TOLL Americans killed: 58,183 Americans wounded: 153,303 North Vietnamese killed: 500,000 to 600,000 Estimated Vietnamese casualties: 15 million Americans who served in the war: 3,403,100 America's cost: $179 billion
