Operation Menu

Operation Menu was the codename of a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia and Laos from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970, during the Vietnam War. The targets of these attacks were sanctuaries and Base Areas of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and forces of the Viet Cong, which utilized them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The effects of the bombing campaign are disputed by historians.

An official United States Air Force record of US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US president Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration. This was four years earlier than previously believed. The Menu bombings were an escalation of these air attacks. Nixon authorized the use of long-range B-52 bombers to carpet bomb the region.

Background
From the onset of hostilities in South Vietnam and the Kingdom of Laos in the early 1960s, Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk had maintained a delicate domestic and foreign policy balancing act. Convinced of the inevitable victory of the communists in Southeast Asia and concerned for the future existence of his government, Sihanouk swung toward the left in the mid-1960s.

In 1966, Sihanouk made an agreement with Zhou En-lai of the People's Republic of China that would allow PAVN and NLF forces to establish Base Areas in Cambodia and to use the port of Sihanoukville for the delivery of military material. The US, heavily involved in South Vietnam, was not eager to openly violate the asserted neutrality of Cambodia, which had been guaranteed by the Geneva Accord of 1954.

Beginning in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized covert reconnaissance operations by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group. The mission of the highly classified unit was to obtain military intelligence on the Base Areas (Project Vesuvius) that would be presented to Sihanouk in hopes of changing his position.

By late 1968, Sihanouk, under pressure from the political right at home and from the US, agreed to more normalized relations with the Americans. In July 1968, he had agreed to reopen diplomatic relations and, in August, formed a Government of National Salvation under the pro-US General Lon Nol. Newly inaugurated President Richard M. Nixon, seeking any means by which to withdraw from Southeast Asia and obtain "peace with honor", saw an opening with which to give time for the US withdrawal, and time to implement the new policy of Vietnamization. Before the diplomatic amenities with Sihanouk were even concluded, Nixon had decided to deal with the situation of PAVN troops and supply bases in Cambodia. He had already considered a naval blockade of the Cambodian coast, but was talked out of it by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who believed that Sihanouk could still be convinced to agree to ground attacks against the Base Areas.

On 30 January 1969, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Earle Wheeler had suggested to the president that he authorize the bombing of the Cambodian sanctuaries. He was seconded on 9 February by the US commander in Vietnam, General Creighton W. Abrams, who also submitted his proposal to bomb the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN), the elusive headquarters of PAVN/NLF southern operations, located somewhere in the Fishhook region of eastern Cambodia.

On 22 February, during the period just following the Tết holidays, PAVN/NLF forces launched an offensive. Nixon became even more angered when the communists launched rocket and artillery attacks against Saigon, which he considered a violation of the "agreement" he believed had been made when the US halted the bombing of North Vietnam in November 1968.

Nixon, who was en route to Brussels for a meeting with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders, ordered his National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, to prepare for airstrikes against PAVN/NLF Base Areas in Cambodia as a reprisal. The bombings were to serve three purposes: it would show Nixon's tenacity; it would disable PAVN's offensive capability to disrupt the US withdrawal and Vietnamization; and it would demonstrate the US' determination, "that might pay dividends at the negotiating table in Paris." He then cabled Colonel Alexander Haig, a National Security Council staff aide, to meet him in Brussels along with Colonel Raymond B. Sitton, a former Strategic Air Command officer on the JCS staff, to formulate a plan of action.

By seeking advice from high administration officials, Nixon had delayed any quick response that could be explicitly linked to the provocation. He decided to respond to the next provocation and didn't have to wait long. On 14 March, communist forces once again attacked South Vietnam's urban areas and Nixon was ready.

Breakfast


In his diary in March 1969, Nixon’s chief of staff, HR Haldeman, noted that the final decision to carpet bomb Cambodia ‘was made at a meeting in the Oval Office Sunday afternoon, after the church service’.

In his diary on 17 March 1969, Haldemann wrote:

''Historic day. K[issinger]’s “Operation Breakfast” finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P[resident].''

And the next day:

''K’s “Operation Breakfast” a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive. A lot more secondaries than had been expected. Confirmed early intelligence. Probably no reaction for a few days, if ever.''

The bombing began on the night of 18 March with a raid by 60 B-52 Stratofortress bombers, based at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The target was Base Area 353, the supposed location of COSVN in the Fishhook. Although the aircrews were briefed that their mission was to take place in South Vietnam, 48 of the bombers were diverted across the Cambodian border and dropped 2,400 tons of bombs. The mission was designated Breakfast, after the morning Pentagon planning session at which it was devised.

Breakfast was so successful (in US terms) that General Abrams provided a list of 15 more known Base Areas for targeting. The five remaining missions and targets were: Lunch (Base Area 609), Snack (Base Area 351), Dinner (Base Area 352), Supper (Base Area 740), and Dessert (Base Area 350). SAC flew 3,800 B-52 sorties against these targets, and dropped 108,823 tons of ordnance during the missions. Due to the continued reference to gastronomic situations in the codenames, the entire series of missions was referred to as Operation Menu. Studies and Observations Group forward air controllers of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam provided 70 percent of the Menu bomb damage intelligence

Nixon and Kissinger went to great lengths to keep the missions secret. The expansion of the US effort into "neutral" Cambodia was sure to cause serious debate in the US Congress, negative criticism in the media, and were sure to spark anti-war protests on US college campuses. In order to prevent this, an elaborate dual reporting system covering the missions had been formulated during the Brussels meeting between Nixon, Haig, and Colonel Sitton.

System
The number of individuals who had complete knowledge of the operation was kept to a minimum. All communications concerning the missions was split along two paths – one route was overt, ordering typical B-52 missions that were to take place within South Vietnam near the Cambodian border – the second route was covert, utilizing back-channel messages between commanders ordering the classified missions. For example: General Abrams would request a Menu strike. His request went to Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), in Honolulu. McCain forwarded it to the Joint Chiefs in Washington DC, who, after reviewing it, passed it on to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird (who might consult with the president). The Joint Chiefs then passed the command for the strike to General Bruce K. Holloway, Commander of SAC, who then notified Lieutenant General Alvin C. Gillem, Commander of the 3rd Air Division on Guam.

During this time Air Force Major Hal Knight was supervising an MSQ-77 Combat Skyspot radar site at Bien Hoa Air Base, RVN. "Skyspot" was a ground directed bombing system which directed B-52 strikes to targets in Vietnam. Each day a courier plane would arrive from SAC's Advanced Echelon Office at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon. Knight was given a revised list of target coordinates for the next day's missions. That evening, the coordinates were fed into Olivetti Programma 101 computers. and then relayed to the aircraft as they came on station. Only the pilots and navigators of the aircraft (who had been personally briefed by General Gillem and sworn to secrecy) knew of the true location of the targets. The bombers then flew on to their targets and delivered their payloads. After the air strikes, Knight gathered the mission paperwork, computer tapes etc., destroying them in an incinerator. He then called a special phone number in Saigon and reported that "The ball game is over." The aircrews filled out routine reports of hours flown, fuel burned, and ordnance dropped. This dual system maintained secrecy and provided Air Force logistics and personnel administrators with information that they needed to replace air crews or aircraft and replenish stocks of fuel and munitions.

Exposure
Although Sihanouk was not informed by the US about the operation, he may have had a desire to see PAVN/NLF forces out of Cambodia, since he himself was precluded from pressing them too hard. After the event, it was claimed by Nixon and Kissinger that Sihanouk had given his tacit approval for the raids, but this is debatable. Peter Rodman claimed, "Prince Sihanouk complained bitterly to us about these North Vietnamese bases in his country and invited us to attack them". In December 1967 Washington Post journalist Stanley Karnow was told by Sihanouk that if the US wanted to bomb the Vietnamese communist sanctuaries, he would not object, unless Cambodians were killed. The same message was conveyed to US President Johnson's emissary Chester Bowles in January 1968. Sihanouk publicly condemned the bombing.

On 9 May 1969, an article by military reporter William M. Beecher exposing the bombing was run in the New York Times. Beecher claimed that an unnamed source within the administration had provided the information. Nixon was furious when he heard the news and ordered Kissinger to obtain the assistance of Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover and discover the source of the leak. Hoover suspected Kissinger's own NSC aide, Morton Halperin, of the deed and so informed Kissinger. Halperin's phone was then illegally tapped for 21 months. This was the first in a series of illegal surveillance activities authorized by Nixon in the name of national security. The administration was relieved when no other significant press reports concerning the operation appeared.

By the summer, five members of the United States Congress had been informed of the operation. They were: Senators John C. Stennis (MS) and Richard B. Russell, Jr. (GA) and Representatives Lucius Mendel Rivers (SC), Gerald R. Ford (MI), and Leslie C. Arends (IL). Arends and Ford were leaders of the Republican minority and the other three were Democrats on either the Armed Services or Appropriations committees.

For those in Washington who were cognizant of the Menu raids, the silence of one party came as a surprise. The Hanoi government made no protest concerning the bombings. It neither denounced the raids for propaganda purposes, nor, according to Kissinger, did its negotiators "raise the matter during formal or secret negotiations." North Vietnam had no wish to advertise the presence of their forces in Cambodia, allowed by Sihanouk in return for the Vietnamese agreeing not to foment rebellion in Cambodia.

Revelations
For four years Menu remained unknown to Congress as a whole although as previously mentioned five Congressmen had been informed. That situation changed in December 1972, when Major Knight wrote a letter to Senator William Proxmire (D, WI), asking for "clarification" as to U.S. policy on the bombing of Cambodia. Knight, who had become concerned over the legality of his actions, had complained to his superior officer, Colonel David Patterson. He then received several bad efficiency reports, which ruined his career, and he had been discharged from the Air Force. Proxmire's further questioning led to hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which eventually demanded that the Department of Defense turn over all records of U.S. air operations in Cambodia. When they arrived, the records did not even mention the Menu strikes. The committee was not convinced and the investigation continued. Less than two weeks later, it opened hearings on the nomination of General George S. Brown for the position of chief of staff of the Air Force. As commander of the Seventh Air Force in South Vietnam, Brown had been privy to Menu and disclosed as much to the committee.

For the next eight days the committee listened to the testimony of administration officials and the Joint Chiefs, who tried to justify their actions. The committee uncovered excuses and deceptions that were perhaps more alarming than those occurring simultaneously in the Watergate hearings. The Menu revelations raised "fundamental questions as to military discipline and honesty, of civilian control over the military and of Congressional effectiveness." It was basically agreed, both by Congress and concerned military officers, that the deception employed during Menu went beyond covertness. According to Air Force historian Captain Earl H. Tilford: "Deception to fool the enemy was one thing, but lying to Congress and key members of the government, including the chief of staff of the Air Force and the secretary of the Air Force, was something else."

Aftermath
The Constitutional issues raised at the hearings became less important when the House Judiciary Committee voted (21–12) against including the administration's falsification of records concerning Menu in the articles of impeachment leveled against President Nixon. One of the key issues that prevented congressional inclusion was the embarrassing fact that five key members of both political parties had been privy to the information and had neither said nor done anything about it.

The result of the attacks themselves are still debated among participants and historians. As for preventing further North Vietnamese offensives, they failed. In May 1969, PAVN/NLF launched an offensive similar in size to that of the mini-Tet offensive of the previous year. It certainly cost North Vietnam the effort and manpower to disperse and camouflage their Cambodian sanctuaries to prevent losses to further air attack. President Nixon claimed the raids were a success, since air power alone had to provide a shield for withdrawal and Vietnamization. They certainly emboldened Nixon to launch the Cambodian Campaign of 1970.

While out of the country on 18 March 1970, the prince was deposed by the National Assembly and replaced by Lon Nol. The Nixon administration, although thoroughly aware of the weakness of Lon Nol's forces and loath to commit American military force to the new conflict in any form other than air power, announced its support of the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. On 29 March 1970, the North Vietnamese had taken matters into their own hands and launched an offensive against the Cambodian army with documents uncovered from the Soviet archives revealing that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within 15 mi of Phnom Penh before being pushed back.

William Shawcross and other commentors asserted that the bombings caused the domino effect in Cambodia that the Vietnam War had been intended to prevent, claiming that there was no doubt they helped set Cambodia on the road to an abyss of violence that Sihanouk had worked for ten years to avoid.

Shawcross was challenged by Peter Rodman as follows: When Congress, in the summer of 1973, legislated an end to U.S. military action in, over, or off the shores of Indochina, the only U.S. military activity then going on was air support of a friendly Cambodian government and army desperately defending their country against a North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge onslaught...What destabilized Cambodia was North Vietnam's occupation of chunks of Cambodian territory from 1965 onwards for use as military bases from which to launch attacks on U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. Cambodia's ruler Prince Sihanouk complained bitterly to us about these North Vietnamese bases in his country and invited us to attack them (which we did from the air in 1969–70). Next came a North Vietnamese attempt to overrun the entire country in March–April 1970, to which U.S. and South Vietnamese forces responded by a limited ground incursion at the end of April...The outcome in Indochina was not foreordained. Congress had the last word, however, between 1973 and 1975.

Kissinger in an interview with Theo Sommer defended the bombing, saying: "Now, with respect to Cambodia, it is another curious bit of mythology. People usually refer to the bombing of Cambodia as if it had been unprovoked, secretive U.S. action. The fact is that we were bombing North Vietnamese troops that had invaded Cambodia, that were killing many Americans from these sanctuaries, and we were doing it with the acquiescence of the Cambodian government, which never once protested against it, and which, indeed, encouraged us to do it. I may have a lack of imagination, but I fail to see the moral issue involved and why Cambodian neutrality should apply to only one country. Why is it moral for the North Vietnamese to have 50,000 to 100,000 troops in Cambodia, why should we let them kill Americans from that territory, and why, when the government concerned never once protested, and indeed told us that if we bombed unpopulated areas that they would not notice, why in all these conditions is there a moral issue? And, finally, I think it is fair to say that in the six years of the war, not ten percent of the people had been killed in Cambodia than had been killed in one year of Communist rule."

Documents uncovered from the Soviet archives after 1991 reveal that the North Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1970 was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge and negotiated by Pol Pot's then second in command, Nuon Chea.

When Phnom Penh was under siege by the Khmer Rouge in 1973, the US Air Force again launched a bombing campaign on Communist forces, claiming that it had saved Cambodia from an otherwise inevitable Communist take-over and that the capitol might have fallen in a matter of weeks. By 1975, President Ford was predicting "an unbelievable horror story" if the Khmer Rogue took power, and calling on Congress to renew air support for the Lon Nol regime, which it refused to do.

Unpublished government documents

 * Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Command History 1967, Annex F, Saigon, 1968.
 * Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Command History 1968, Annex F, Saigon, 1969.

Published government documents

 * Head, William H. War from Above the Clouds: B-52 Operations during the Second Indochina War and the Effects of the Air War on Theory and Doctrine. Maxwell Air Force Base AL: Air University Press, 2002.
 * Nalty, Bernard C. Air War over South Vietnam, 1968–1975. Washington DC: Air Force Museums and History Program, 2000.
 * Tilford, Earl H. Setup: What the Air force did in Vietnam and Why. Maxwell Air Force Base AL: Air University Press, 1991.

Memoirs

 * Westmoreland, William C. A Soldier Reports. New York: Doubleday, 1976.

Secondary accounts

 * Isaacs, Arnold, Gordon Hardy, MacAlister Brown, et al., Pawns of War: Cambodia and Laos. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1987.
 * Morocco, John, Operation Menu in War in the Shadows. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1988.
 * Morocco, John, Rain of Fire: Air War, 1969–1973. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1985.
 * Rotter, Andrew J. ed., Light at the end of the tunnel : a Vietnam War anthology; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991 [isbn 0312045298]; p. 276ff., Shawcross: Bombing Cambodia—A critique.
 * Shaw, John M. The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America's Vietnam War. Lawrence KS: University of Kansas Press, 2005.
 * Shawcross, William, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. New York: Washington Square Books, 1979.
 * Sorley, Lewis, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Harvest Books, 1999.