Damage Limitation Quotes

Komer, Wesmoreland, and the Military Command in Vietnam had been lying about American success in the Vietnam War. The CIA analysts (see {634522}) had figured out that if the Westmoreland numbers of enemy killed were correct, there would have been almost no young men left to fight in North Vietnam, and yet their military was as large and strong as ever. The CIA director sent Carver to Saigon to tell Komer and Westmoreland that CIA was about to issue their findings. Komer was an ultra-hawk, known as “Blowtorch Bob”, who had personally sent many memos to the White House reporting that we were winning in Vietnam and the only question was how soon we could attain total victory. For his work in Vietnam, he was made Ambassador to Turkey. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by LBJ. Some critics believe that Johnson’s after Vietnam treatment of Komer was to assure his silence as he knew everything about the deception and was a major perpetrator of it. Discipline for lying was out of the question with someone who knew all that Komer did.