NEW YORK – The commander of US forces in Vietnam had devised a secret planto use nuclear warheads against North Vietnam in 1968 during the VietnamWar before President Lyndon Johnson halted the ongoing preparations, theNew York Times (NYT) reported, citing recently declassified documents.

The documents show General William Westmoreland, the Saigon-based Americancommander, sought to have nuclear weapons at hand should the US forces findthemselves on the verge of defeat at Khe Sanh, one of the fiercest battlesof the war, the Times said.

After receiving the approval of the American commander in the Pacific,Westmoreland put together a secret operation, code-named Fracture Jaw.

As part of the operation, nuclear weapons were to be moved into SouthVietnam so that they could be employed on short notice against NorthVietnamese troops.

However, President Johnson’s national security adviser, Walt Rostow,notified the president in a memorandum on White House stationery, promptingthe president to reject the plan.

“When he learned that the planning had been set in motion, he wasextraordinarily upset and forcefully sent word through Rostow, and I thinkdirectly to Westmoreland, to shut it down,” Tom Johnson, then a youngspecial assistant to the president and note-taker at the meetings on theissue, told the New York Times.

The president was worried about “a wider war” which would also involve theChinese like in Korea in 1950, Johnson said.

The president “never fully trusted his generals,” Johnson was quoted assaying. “He had great admiration for General Westmoreland, but he didn’twant his generals to run the war.”

The story of how close the United States came to using nuclear weapons inVietnam is contained in “Presidents of War,” a coming book by presidentialhistorian Michael Beschloss.

“Johnson certainly made serious mistakes in waging the Vietnam War,”Beschloss, who found the documents during his research for the book, said.“But we have to thank him for making sure that there was no chance in early1968 of that tragic conflict going nuclear,” it concluded. – APP