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Redeeming the Ship of State: The Mayaguez Incident and the Legacies of the

Nixon Administration

A Paper Prepared for the Student Research Conference at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential

Library, April 27, 2012

By Mattias Fibiger

1

1 Ralph Wetterhahn, The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War (New York: Carroll &

Graf, 2001), xiii.

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It’s hard to escape a sinkhole. In mid-May 1975—less than two weeks after the fall of

Saigon—Khmer Rouge gunboats fired upon and detained an American shipping freighter, the

S.S. Mayaguez, as it traversed the Gulf of Thailand. Cambodian sailors boarded the ship and

made its forty American crewmembers their prisoners. So began the Mayaguez incident. Over

the ensuing three days, the Ford administration orchestrated a chaotic military rescue operation

that ultimately cost the lives of forty-one American soldiers. The United States assaulted Koh

Tang, the small island where it believed the crew was being held, and bombed the nearby

Cambodian port city of Kompong Som without waiting to see whether diplomatic measures

could secure the crew’s release. Meanwhile, at almost the exact moment that the military

operations against Koh Tang and Kompong Som began, the Khmer Rouge voluntarily released

the crew from an entirely different location.2

Dick Cheney, whose long career in Washington included prominent positions in the Ford

White House, once not-so-famously quipped that the Mayaguez incident was “only a footnote” in

history.3 In at least one sense, he was correct. The incident and the minor crisis it provoked were,

for the most part, inconsequential. In another sense, however, they remain worthwhile subjects of

historical inquiry. This paper uses the Mayaguez crisis to cast light on many of President Richard

Nixon’s interconnected legacies: the end of the Vietnam War, the enduring importance of

credibility in international relations, the American public’s post-Watergate disillusionment with

Washington, the increasingly acrimonious contest for power between the legislative and

executive branches of government, and the rise of conservatism as a potent ideological and

2 For a more detailed account of American military maneuvers during the Mayaguez crisis and the exact sequence of events see Wetterhahn, The Last Battle, and U.S. Government Accountability Office, “The Seizure of the

Mayaguez—A Case Study of Crisis Management” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976). 3 Richard B. Cheney, “Forming and Managing an Administration” in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The Ford

Presidency: Twenty-Two Intimate Perspectives of Gerald R. Ford (New York: University Press of America, 1988),

72.

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electoral force. These were legacies with which American policymakers self-consciously

grappled during the Mayaguez crisis—legacies that their decisions simultaneously reflected,

resisted, and reinforced.

Not all of these legacies are Nixon’s alone, but all of them are distinctly Nixonian. While

American presidents and policymakers have invoked the capacious concept of credibility

throughout the postwar period, Nixon and his top national security aide Henry Kissinger elevated

its importance to unprecedented levels.4 The White House and Capitol Hill have long squabbled

over foreign policy, debating everything from the new republic’s relationship with the outside

world to Article X of the League of Nations Charter to the 2011 intervention in Libya.5 But

Nixon and Kissinger, in their determination to conduct diplomacy in secret and concentrate

power in the White House, exacerbated the tension between Congress and the presidency.6

Conservatism existed long before Nixon’s tenure in the Oval Office.7 Nixon, though not himself

a full-fledged member of the conservative movement, played an instrumental role in its rise to

prominence. Just eight years after Lyndon Johnson won election over Barry Goldwater in a

landslide that many commentators labeled the death knell of American conservatism, Nixon won

his own landslide by rejecting the liberalism embodied by his opponent, George McGovern.8

4 Robert J. McMahon, “Bernath Lecture: Credibility and World Power: Exploring the Psychological Dimension in

Postwar American Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History 15, no. 4 (October 1991): 455-471; Robert S. Litwak, Détente

and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969-1976 (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1984); John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National

Security Policy During the Cold War, revised and expanded edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005),

272-307. Gaddis argues that, during the Nixon administration, “the perception of power had become as important as

power itself.” 5 Julian Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—from World War II to the War on

Terrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 6 Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 272-307. 7 Kim Phillips-Fein, “Conservatism: A State of the Field,” Journal of American History 98, no. 3 (December 2011):

723-743. 8 See Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008).

The day after Goldwater’s 1964 defeat, James Reston wrote the following in the New York Times: “Barry Goldwater

not only lost the presidential election yesterday but the conservative cause as well. He has wrecked his party for a

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***

The manner in which Nixon waged and ended the Vietnam War laid the groundwork for

the occurrence of the Mayaguez incident and shaped the Ford administration’s response. From

1969 to 1973, the United States had showered Cambodia with bombs. Nixon and Kissinger

rained destruction on the small country in an effort to stop communists from using it as a

sanctuary and transit point for weapons making their way into South Vietnam. The undeclared

and illegal air war engendered endless terror and dislocation, and it drove much of the

Cambodian population into the ranks of the Khmer Rouge. After the initial wave of bombings in

1969 and 1970, in which 3,875 secret B-52 sorties dropped 108,823 tons of ordnance, the U.S.

pounded Cambodia like a drum to the fluctuating tempo of the war in neighboring Vietnam.

Washington seemed not to notice that the song had ended. American planes continued to ravage

Cambodia’s most populous areas until a Congressional ban took effect in August 1973—eight

months after the Paris Peace Accords formally and officially ended American involvement in the

Vietnam War.9 Historian Ben Kiernan has argued that foreign intervention in Cambodia “was

probably the most important factor in Pol Pot’s rise” to power and that the United States’ role in

that intervention left a powerful legacy of anti-American sentiment.10

President Gerald Ford thus had good reason to believe that the Cambodians were “going

to treat us differently than the Koreans and the Panamanians,” whose ships the Khmer Rouge had

captured and released in the days leading up to the seizure of the Mayaguez. The longer the

American crewmembers were in the hands of the Cambodians, Ford explained to journalist Hugh

long time to come and is not even likely to control the wreckage.” James Reston, “What Goldwater Lost: Voters Rejected His Candidacy, Conservative Cause and the G.O.P.” New York Times, November 4, 1964. 9 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1979), 172. 10 Benedict Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-

79, 3rd edition (New York: Yale University Press, 2008), 16.

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Sidey after the crisis, “the more likely they would be mistreated, killed, or used as hostages.”11

The Khmer Rouge government was brutal and unpredictable. After capturing Phnom Penh in

mid-April—a month before the Mayaguez crisis—it quickly imposed its authority over what was

left of the country. It expelled urban populations and executed officials of the former Lon Nol

government, sometimes massacring their families, including women and children, along with

them.12

American newspapers reported grotesque stories about surgeons being forced to abandon

their patients mid-operation and other convalescents being deprived of the life support

technology upon which their survival depended.13

Delay on the part of the National Security

Council (NSC), which coordinated the American response to the Mayaguez incident, provided

the degenerate regime in Phnom Penh with more time to exact symbolic revenge on the United

States by slaughtering the crew of the Mayaguez as a scapegoat for the suffering imposed on the

Cambodian people during the Vietnam War. The legacy of Nixon’s Vietnam War pushed the

Ford administration toward the use of force during the Mayaguez crisis.

It also shaped the nature of the force Ford chose to apply. As house minority leader and

as Nixon’s vice president, Ford had pushed for the uninhibited use of U.S. air power in Vietnam,

which, he believed, would compel the North Vietnamese government to cease its aggression

against its southern counterpart. He had always thought the United States ought to “use our Air

Force more effectively,” and he had opposed the periodic bombing halts that LBJ announced,

which he equated to “pulling our best punches.”14

Although a Department of Defense (DOD)

report on the possible military means to recover the Mayaguez and her crew indicated that, in

11

Interview of President Ford by Hugh Sidey, May 16, 1975, Box 26, Folder: May 16, 1975 Time Magazine – Hugh

Sidey, Ronald H. Nessen Files, Gerald R. Ford Library (hereafter GRFL). This is not to say that Ford didn’t also have good reasons to believe that the Khmer Rouge would not subject the crewmembers of the Mayaguez to harm,

such as its desire to prevent Cambodia’s cities from becoming the targets of additional American airstrikes. 12 Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, “Reports Hint ‘Blood Debt’ Being Paid,” Washington Post, May 12, 1975. 13 William Safire, “Get Out of Town,” New York Times, May 12, 1975. 14 Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 275.

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accordance with the lessons of Vietnam, “it is unlikely that bombing would have a significant

impact” because “the Khmer leadership are used to an intense level of bombing” and “there is

every indication that bombing has minimum impact on an agrarian society which is under

extensive political control,” Ford nonetheless ordered the military to launch four waves of

airstrikes against the port city of Kompong Som.15

His decision resonated with an emerging

conservative critique of the United States’ role in the Vietnam War: that timidity among the

country’s political leaders had forced the military to fight the war with one had tied behind its

back.16

Ford’s resort to bombing, which, in part, emerged from the legacy of antagonism between

the United States and Asian communist states, reinforced and renewed that antagonism for the

post-Vietnam War era. In the administration’s first public statement on the seizure of the

Mayaguez, White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen explained that Ford believed the incident to

be an “act of piracy.”17

(It was not. The legal definition of piracy makes it clear that it is the

exclusive domain of non-state actors.) In the aftermath of the incident, however, Asian

communist governments issued strong condemnations of American military action. The Khmer

Rouge denounced the United States for its imperialism. China, North Korea, and North Vietnam

dubbed the American reaction to the seizure of the Mayaguez an “act of piracy” in itself, and

Kim Il-sung’s regime called it a “premeditated, villainous provocation against the Cambodian

people.”18

Although it is doubtful that there existed any meaningful chance for a restoration of

15 Possible Scenarios for Recovery of Ship and Crew, Box 28, Folder: Department of Defense – General, National

Security Adviser, NSC East Asian and Pacific Affairs Staff: Files, (1969) 1973-1976, GRFL. 16

See Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2008), 173-177. 17 News Conference at the White House with Press Secretary Ron Nessen #210, May 12, 1975, Box 9, Folder: May

12, 1975 (No. 210) (No. 211) (No. 212), Ronald H. Nessen Files, GRFL. 18 Telegram from Secretary of State Kissinger to Delegate Secretaries, May 19, 1975, Box 3, Folder: Cambodia –

Seizing of the Mayaguez, May 1975 (4), National Security Adviser Presidential Country Files for East Asia and the

Pacific: Cambodia, GRFL.

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normal diplomatic relations between the United States and Cambodia after the Vietnam War, the

Mayaguez incident all but assured that there would be none. The two countries continued to view

each other with suspicion and hostility.

One final legacy of the Vietnam War came to light during the Mayaguez crisis. By 1975,

lies and defeat in Vietnam had undercut public confidence in American foreign policy and

shattered the idea that, with enough money and manpower, the United States could accomplish

any and all of its international objectives. As a result, the American impulse to use force had

been dulled. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller wanted to revitalize it. During one of the four

NSC meetings during the crisis he argued that “We must do as the Israelis do; we need to

respond fast.”19

Rockefeller was referring to Israel’s renown for muscular foreign policy and

effective counterterrorism, which arose in juxtaposition to the US’s failure to accomplish its

objectives in Vietnam. Melani McAlister has shown that “Israel [in the 1970s] came to be

constituted as an icon in the post-Vietnam debate about the nature of U.S. world power” and that

“Israel and its military played a key symbolic role for those who advocated the remilitarization

of U.S. policy.”20

A broad phenomenon, admiration for Israel’s effective application of military

power reached from popular culture to the upper echelons of the American policymaking elite. It

arose concomitantly with the United States’ defeat in Vietnam, and it ties in to the next of

Nixon’s legacies illuminated by the Mayaguez incident: the enduring importance of geopolitical

credibility in international relations.

***

The entire balance of Nixon and Kissinger’s system of détente rested on perceptions. If

19 “Minutes of National Security Council Meeting” in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United

States, 1969-1976. Volume X: Vietnam, January 1973-July 1975 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,

2010) (hereafter FRUS), 998. 20 Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East Since 1945 (Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 157.

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the Soviet Union perceived the United States as weak or indecisive, it might be encouraged to

take risks that destabilized the international equilibrium; correspondingly, communist China

would not view the U.S. as a worthy negotiating partner unless it perceived the American

military’s ability and willingness to, if necessary, stand up to the U.S.S.R. The United States had

suffered a terrible defeat in Vietnam, and the rest of the world’s perception of American strength

had waned. By taking a deliberately strong stand in the Mayaguez crisis, the United States would

acquire needed leverage in other arenas of international competition. It would intimidate the

United States’ adversaries and reassure its allies by demonstrating the country’s enduring

commitment to international engagement. A memorandum on the “Lessons of Vietnam” drafted

by the NSC staff and sent to Ford over Kissinger’s name explained that “we need to shore up our

positions elsewhere once our position in Vietnam is lost. We may be compelled to support other

situations much more strongly in order to repair the damage and to take tougher stands in order

to make others believe in us again.”21

The Mayaguez incident provided the pretext necessary to

make one such tough stand.

The first time the NSC met to discuss the seizure of the Mayaguez, Secretary of State and

National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger laid out his understanding of the crisis: “We have

two problems: The first problem is how to get the ship back. The second problem is how the U.S.

appears at this time.” The problems were separate but interconnected—different symptoms of the

same affliction.

Actions that we would take to deal with one of these problems may not help to deal with

the other. For example, I think that if they can get us into a negotiation, even if we get the

ship back, it is not to our advantage. I think we should make a strong statement and give a

21 Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Ford, May 12,

1975 in FRUS, 956. There is no evidence to suggest that Ford ever read the memorandum, but it is nevertheless

useful and worth quoting because it represents the administration’s overall thinking about foreign affairs in the wake

of the fall of Saigon.

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note to the Cambodians, via the Chinese, so that we can get some credits if the boat is

released. I also suggest some show of force.22

Kissinger, who conceptualized international politics in terms of credibility and prestige,

persuaded his peers that a perception of American weakness had invited the crisis. In order to

cure itself of this troublesome pestilence, an early manifestation of the so-called Vietnam

Syndrome, the United States would have to undertake a therapeutic retaliation.

The members of the Ford administration believed that American allies, both in Asia and

around the world, “would scrutinize our conduct [during the Mayaguez crisis] to determine

whether the fall of Saigon marked an aberration or America’s permanent retreat from

international responsibility.”23

Japan was one crucial regional ally in need of reassurance.

Historian Andrew Gawthorpe has argued that, while the Ford administration believed the country

was militarily inconsequential, “Japanese trade and investment were considered important for the

development and strength of the Asia-Pacific’s non-communist countries.”24

An island with

meager natural resources, Japan’s economy depended almost entirely on international commerce.

The seizure of the Mayaguez tested the American commitment to uphold free trade and maintain

the integrity of international shipping lanes. To respond forcefully was to curry favor with the

Japanese government, which had been irked by the speed and grandiosity with which the Nixon

administration had opened diplomatic relations with China, by demonstrating that American

power still protected the linchpin of the small nation’s prosperity.

The administration did not limit to Asia its efforts to use the Mayaguez crisis to reassure

allied governments of the American commitment to international engagement. A week after the

crisis, Ford traveled to Brussels for a NATO summit. “Understandably,” he recalled in his

22 Minutes of National Security Council Meeting in FRUS, 979. 23 Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 551. 24 Andrew J. Gawthorpe, “The Ford Administration and Security Policy in the Asia-Pacific After the Fall of

Saigon,” The Historical Journal 52, no. 3 (2009): 702.

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memoirs, “the leaders of the NATO countries wanted to know whether this new mood of

isolationism would prevail or whether we would honor our commitments abroad.”25

The

president attempted to mollify those concerns in a May 23 interview with correspondents from

several eminent European news outlets. He explained that “both domestically in the United

States, as well as worldwide, the handling of the Mayaguez incident should be a firm assurance

that the United States is capable and has the will to act in emergencies, in challenges.”26

To the

unsavory authoritarian leaders the U.S. propped up in the name of Cold War expediency, Ford

could be more blunt. The morning after the crisis, he met Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran,

who was on an official visit to Washington. As they prepared for the meeting, Kissinger

recommended that Ford “tell [the shah] you used more force than necessary.”27

In their 11 a.m.

meeting, the president told his Iranian counterpart that “we perhaps overreacted, to show the

Koreans and others our resolve.” He said that the American response to the Mayaguez incident

“showed the world we weren’t hamstrung.”28

In addition to reassuring allies, the Ford administration calibrated its response to the

seizure of the Mayaguez to intimidate American adversaries and preempt additional geopolitical

setbacks. The same day that Ford learned about the capture of the Mayaguez, the New York

Times predicted that North Korea might attempt to exploit the United States’ post-Vietnam

vulnerability by attacking South Korea.29

In a NSC meeting, Vice President Rockefeller argued

that he did “not think the freighter is the issue. The issue is how we respond. Many are watching

25 Ford, A Time to Heal, 285. 26 Interview With European Journalists in The American Presidency Project,

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4934 (accessed February 22, 2011). 27

Memorandum of Conversation, May 15, 1975, in the Digital National Security Archive,

http://gateway.proquest.com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:dnsa&rft_dat=xri:dnsa:article:CKT01623 (accessed February 22, 2011). 28 Memorandum of Conversation, May 15, 1975. National Security Adviser’s Memoranda of Conversation

Collection, Gerald R. Ford Digital Library.

http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/memcons/1553077.pdf (accessed February 22, 2011). 29 Richard Halloran, “A Guerilla War Feared in Korea,” New York Times, May 12, 1975.

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us, in Korea and elsewhere. The big question is whether or not we look silly. . . . If the

communists do not think you will react strong and fast, they will keep on doing this.”30

Like the

other members of the administration, Rockefeller infused the Mayaguez incident with

tremendous symbolic importance. On the very first day of the crisis, the use of force had become

a foregone conclusion.

Concern for American geopolitical credibility, which emphasized the need to mount a

swift and powerful response to the seizure of the Mayaguez, encouraged the Ford administration

to bomb the port at Kompong Som. American sailors had safely recovered the crew of the

Mayaguez before the last wave of American planes dropped their payloads over the port city.

When NSC staffer William Lloyd Stearman suggested calling off the remaining airstrikes,

Kissinger flatly refused. Interviewed for an oral history project, Stearman recalled that

Kissinger’s reasoning “had nothing to do with Cambodia. It was aimed at North Korea. At the

time, we had a lot of intelligence that North Korea was planning to launch a strike against South

Korea because they thought we had been so demoralized by the fall of Indochina. . . . So Henry

was sending a message to Kim Il Sung by continuing the bombing.”31

A close examination of the United States’ conduct vis-à-vis Thailand during the

Mayaguez crisis further elucidates the importance of geopolitical credibility in American

decision-making. Thai Prime Minister Khukrit Pramoj both publicly and privately objected to the

use of American bases in Thailand during military rescue operation. The Thai government had

already bowed to domestic pressure and asked the U.S. to vacate the bases within twelve

30 Minutes of National Security Council Meeting in FRUS, 997. 31 Interview with William Lloyd Stearman in Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of

the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mfdip.2004ste01 (accessed February

22, 2011).

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months.32

If the United States ignored Thai wishes and used the bases to stage a military

operation against Cambodia, pressure would mount to shut them down even more quickly.

Furthermore, an accelerated American withdrawal from Thailand would cement the perception

of a hasty retreat from all of Asia. The Ford administration, however, concluded that the

American base at Utapao was the only suitable one from which to launch a military rescue

operation.

The Ford administration was willing to alienate the Thais in order to establish

geopolitical credibility with a wider global audience, but it did not believe that would be

necessary. American officials thought Thailand’s military leaders would privately appreciate the

show of American toughness (and thus find the United States more credible) even though they

could not express their feelings publicly. Thailand’s left-wing electorate kept the country’s

political figures in check, but its conservative military elite clung firmly to power. Richard M.

Gibson, a State Department official who worked at the Burma and Thailand desks, recalled that

“the Thai establishment . . . [was] trying to walk the middle line. They had such a close

relationship with us and had worked with us so closely over so many years that they didn’t really

want to cut us off and put us too far afield, but they did want to make their peace with the

Chinese and with the other countries in Indochina.”33

The NSC decided to ignore Thai

sovereignty and use the base at Utapao as the center of operations for the military side of the

recovery effort. The Ford administration did not inform the Thai government of its decision—a

courtesy it did extend to the governments of Japan and several western European countries.34

Kissinger recalled being convinced that “whatever later Thai protests or reactions, the Thai

32 “U.S. Agrees to Big Cut In Its Forces in Thailand,” New York Times, May 2, 1975. 33 Interview with Richard M. Gibson in Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the

Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mfdip.2007gib01

(accessed February 22, 2011). 34 Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Thailand in FRUS, 1001.

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leadership—and especially the military leadership—would welcome a strong American stand.”35

Ford wrote in his memoirs that he “didn’t give a damn about offending [the Thai’s]

sensibilities.”36

Although its gaze focused primarily on the outside world, the geopolitical credibility

imperative also looked inward, at American domestic politics. The Ford administration

anticipated domestic opposition to its decision to respond with disproportionate force to the

seizure of the Mayaguez. In a NSC meeting, Kissinger explained that “under certain

circumstances, in fact, some domestic cost is to our advantage in demonstrating the seriousness

with which we view this kind of challenge.”37

American credibility abroad depended on a strong

president’s ability to resist isolationist sentiment at home. This isolationist sentiment emanated

from the Congress and the public, casting light on another of Nixon’s legacies: the increasingly

acrimonious contest between the executive and legislative branches of government for control

over foreign policy.

***

In the midst of the Watergate scandal and the final years of the Vietnam War, a war-

weary and Democratic-controlled Congress began to vie for more influence over foreign policy.

Historian Julian Zelizer has argued that “in the shadow of Nixon’s humiliating downfall—and as

Congress came to be seen as the most secure base for liberal Democrats—conservative

Republicans began to champion presidential power on national security policy.”38

Ford became

increasingly sympathetic to that outlook, and he used the Mayaguez crisis to hedge

Congressional encroachment on what he viewed as legitimate presidential prerogatives.

35 Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 561. 36 Ford, A Time to Heal, 276. 37 Minutes of National Security Council Meeting in FRUS, 1014. 38 Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy, 262.

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As part of its effort to secure more influence over foreign policy, Congress in 1973

enacted the War Powers Act over Nixon’s veto. The law required the president to consult with

Congress before introducing American forces into hostile situations and to submit a formal

report to Congress within forty-eight hours of said forces becoming involved in hostilities.

Without the legislative branch’s seal of approval, the troops could remain in place for a

maximum of sixty days. As house minority leader at the time, Ford voted first to reject the act

and then to sustain Nixon’s veto—losing on both occasions. He believed the law “severely

limited [the president’s] ability to enforce the peace agreement” and virtually assured that “North

Vietnam could violate the [1973 peace] accords with impunity.”39

For Ford, the statute

represented a dangerous trend in which the legislature questioned the executive branch’s

authority over the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. If a squeamish Congress

dominated by pusillanimous liberal Democrats could nullify any international commitment, how

could America’s allies take the president at his word? A few years after leaving the White

House, Ford coauthored a Time article with Nixon in which they proclaimed the War Powers Act

to be one of the reasons why the United States had “not an imperial presidency but an imperiled

presidency.”40

Although the Mayaguez incident was a challenge, it was also an opportunity to

reassert the supremacy of the executive branch in the vital realm of foreign affairs.

On the second day of the Mayaguez crisis, White House aides contacted Congressional

leaders to inform them that the president would, if necessary, use force to rescue the Mayaguez

and her crew. They told the legislators that diplomatic efforts were ongoing but did not alert

them to the concomitant military preparations. Although the senior members of Congress did not

engage in any meaningful consultation in their short telephone conversations with the low-level

39 Ford, A Time to Heal, 252. 40 Gerald R. Ford and Richard M. Nixon, “Two Ex-Presidents Assess the Job,” Time, November 10, 1980,

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,949031,00.html (accessed December 13, 2010).

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aides who called them and sometimes only reached them at home, their brief comments were

taken down and passed along to the president.41

By mobilizing American forces to take part in a rescue operation, Ford triggered the

timer embedded in the War Powers Act. The statute’s reporting clause mandated that the

president give a full report to Congress within forty-eight hours detailing the Constitutional or

legislative authority under which he committed the troops, the estimated scope and duration of

the hostilities, and any other information he deemed pertinent. Administration papers reveal a

policy geared towards ignoring and undermining Congressional influence over foreign policy.

The president sought to act in accordance with, but not pursuant to, the dictates of the War

Powers Act. Ford would abide by all of the law’s provisions, but he would do so of his own

volition—not because of what he viewed as an illegitimate Congressional mandate.42

The legal

sleight of hand had a purpose. By claiming it was acting only out of its responsible desire to run

an open and collaborative government and not out of its duty to comply with the law, the Ford

administration denied the applicability of the War Powers Act in situations that resembled the

Mayaguez incident. It preserved for the future the dubious presidential authority to engage in

unilateral “police actions” without Congressional oversight.

Even as Ford cast symbolic doubt on the War Powers Act’s legitimacy, rejected the law

in principle, and questioned its applicability, administration lawyers maneuvered within it. In

case it faced judicial setbacks and was forced to abide by the statute, the Ford White House

wanted to set a loose precedent for the Congressional power it acknowledged. In a Press Office

briefing paper, the administration announced only its future desire to keep the legislative branch

41 Congressional Contacts of May 13, 1975, Box 122, Folder: Mayaguez Seizure – 5/14/75 (2), John Marsh Files,

1974-1977, GRFL. 42 War Powers Act, May 14, 1975, Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez – General, Ronald H. Nessen Papers, 1974-1977,

GRFL.

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“informed.” It claimed that relaying brief and indirect Congressional commentary to the

president served as a sufficient exchange of views as to satisfy the War Powers Act’s

requirement for consultation.43

Nessen made a similar claim at a press conference when a

journalist asked whether consultation with Congress entailed any measure of approval beyond

notification, saying keeping Congress “informed . . . was considered to be consultation.”44

The War Powers Act did not represent the only block on military action. The Ford

administration also wrestled with the barriers presented by the Indochina force prohibitions. The

Cooper-Church Amendment of 1971 used the Congressional power of the purse to prohibit

funding for military operations in and above Cambodia and Laos without explicit Congressional

consent. The Case-Church Amendment of 1973 did the same for Vietnam. Another

administration briefing paper, however, made it clear that, like the War Powers Act, the Cooper-

Church Amendment would not impede Ford. Administration lawyers argued that

The President, under the Constitution, has the [right] duty to defend American life and

property from acts of aggression. [The] Cooper-Church amendment was not designed to

limit [the] protection of American life or property. It was aimed at stopping American

participation in hostilities which were not principally a threat to American life. (FYI:

Seizure of an American ship and the crew on the high seas is considered an Act of War

and there are no legal restrictions on the President’s ability to act, commensurate with the

situation with which he is faced, according to [Counsel to the President] Rod Hills.)45

According to administration lawyers, the spirit of the law did not prevent the president from

doing all he deemed necessary to rescue the Mayaguez without coming to the legislative branch

for prior permission. They sought to chip away at checks on executive authority and puncture the

inflated interpretation of the Cooper-Church Amendment that existed outside the context of

43 War Powers Act (2), May 14, 1975, Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez – General, Ronald H. Nessen Papers, 1974-1977, GRFL. 44 News Conference at the White House with Press Secretary Ron Nessen #217, May 14, 1975, Box 9, Folder: May

14, 1975 (No. 217) (No. 218) (No. 219), Ronald H. Nessen Files, GRFL. 45 War Powers Act, May 13, 1975, Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez – General, Ronald H. Nessen Papers, 1974-1977,

GRFL.

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Congress’s effort to end the Vietnam War. In so doing, they laid the legal foundation for Ford’s

resort to the use of force.

In the aftermath of the Mayaguez crisis, Ford continued his efforts to preserve sole

executive authority over foreign policy. In a post-crisis media blitz, he cast doubt on the

functionality, wisdom, and applicability of the War Powers Act. White House Counsel John

Marsh prepared some talking points for the president regarding the Mayaguez incident’s

relationship to the executive-legislative balance of power. He argued that “as both Watergate and

Vietnam fades [sic] into the past and as we move further into this Session with the Congress

having to actually deal with many of the difficult questions we face, I think we may see a

reassessment and moderation of the anti-Executive attitude.” Regarding the War Powers Act,

“we sought to proceed here in such a way as to be within the provisions of the Act, even if it did

not apply[,] without admitting that it did.”46

Since the argument that the War Powers Act did not

apply was not exactly foolproof, the White House legal team also argued that the president

abided by the law at every step. Ford had consulted with Congress and submitted a report within

forty-eight hours of American forces becoming involved in combat. The administration’s

position hinged on its interpretation of the word “consult” as entailing giving notification to—but

not receiving permission from—the legislative branch. Ford told Hugh Sidey that “our

interpretation was that it required full notification, which we did.”47

He set a precedent of his

own during the crisis. Future presidents continued to whittle away at the War Powers Act. None

ever again mentioned the reporting clause when they submitted one of the reports that the law

46 John Marsh Draft, May 26, 1975, Box 20, Folder: Mayaguez Crisis, 5/75 – 8/75, John Marsh Files, GRFL. 47 Interview of President Ford by Hugh Sidey, May 16, 1975, Box 26, Folder: May 16, 1975 Time Magazine – Hugh

Sidey, Ronald H. Nessen Files, GRFL.

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required.48

Ford argued that keeping the executive on a legislative leash was dangerous,

unreasonable, and unconstitutional; his successors followed this logic and exploited the law’s “in

every possible instance” provision to argue that they were too busy to consult with Congress at

all.

The Ford administration challenged the idea that the Indochina force prohibitions

remained valid after the end of the Vietnam War. At a late night news conference on May 15,

Schlesinger noted that the Case-Church Amendment “was originally intended to bring a close to

the American combat involvement in support of the regime in Cambodia and South Vietnam.

The original purpose of the legislation thus was served but it was not intended to be an incubus

on American policy when there was subsequent action totally unrelated to the initial purposes of

the legislation.”49

He argued that the spirit of the law had nothing to do with combating piracy,

so it did not restrict Ford’s freedom of action. White House Counsel Phil Buchen used similar

legal logic: “Neither the Cooper-Church Amendment in 1971 . . . nor the prohibitions in later

appropriations acts against U.S. combat activities anywhere in Indochina limited [Ford’s]

Constitutional authority under the circumstances of this case to protect American lives and

vessels from illegal attack and seizure.”50

One of the law’s framers agreed. When Ford met with

Congressional leaders on May 14, Senator Clifford Case told the president that “I do not believe

that the Amendment does apply to the purpose of rescuing American citizens. I believe this

distinction must be made clear.”51

(Ford’s reasons for meeting with Congressional leaders, which

48 John Hart Ely, “Suppose Congress Wanted a War Powers Act that Worked,” Columbia Law Review 1379

(November 1988). 49

Statement by Secretary Schlesinger, May 15, 1975, Box 28, Folder: Department of Defense – General, National

Security Adviser NSC East Asian and Pacific Affairs Staff: Files, (1969) 1973-1976, GRFL. 50 Question and Answer on U.S. Law and the Mayaguez Incident, May 17, 1975, Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez –

General, Ron Nessen Papers, GRFL. 51 Transcript of Bipartisan Congressional Leadership Meeting, May 14, 1975, Box 8, Folder: May 14, 1975 -

Bipartisan Leaders (Memcon – Mayaguez incident), National Security Adviser, NSC Press and Congressional

Liaison Staff: Files, 1973-1976, GRFL.

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will be explored in the next section, had little to do with his desire to comply with the law for its

own sake.) To nip criticism in the bud, the administration cited Case’s voucher of support early

and often. Nessen first drew reporters’ attention to it at a news conference on May 15.52

The ex

post facto declarations of a lawmaker about his work’s intent, however, carry no real

jurisprudential weight or legitimacy. That Senator Case threw his weight behind President Ford

was, along with the allusion to the supremacy of executive authority, just another talking point

for a public relations campaign—one geared toward protecting presidential prerogatives for the

future.

Congress was likely to be much more pliable in the wake of the successful resolution of

the Mayaguez crisis, and Ford worked to parlay his symbolic triumph into tangible legislative

victories. Lawmakers had proposed a series of bills aimed at curtailing presidential authority

over foreign policy. One would have required all executive agreements to sit before Congress for

sixty days, whereupon it could vote to reject them by concurrent resolution. Another would have

required Congressional approval for major overseas base agreements. Ford met with

Congressional leaders on May 16 to try to hedge their intrusion on the legitimate functions of the

executive branch. His talking points harped on the weakening of the “credibility of the United

States abroad” and the deterioration of the president’s “authority to act decisively and with

flexibility in rapidly changing conditions.”53

Neither bill passed. Ford successfully resisted the

legacy of Congressional encroachment on presidential prerogatives by using the Mayaguez crisis

to demonstrate the need for sole executive control over foreign policy. In so doing, however, he

also reinforced the longer-term legacy of the accumulation of presidential power.

52 News Conference at the White House with Press Secretary Ron Nessen #222, May 19, 1975, Box 9, Folder: May

19, 1975 (No. 222) (No. 223), Ronald H. Nessen Files, GRFL. 53 Congressional Meeting on Executive Agreements, May 16, 1975, Box 8, Folder: May 16, 1975 – Key Leaders

(Executive Agreements), National Security Adviser, NSC Press and Congressional Liaison Staff: Files, 1973-1976,

GRFL.

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***

Ford had other worries than shoring up the United States’ geopolitical credibility and

maintaining presidential control over foreign policy. He dealt with these aspects of Nixon’s

legacy, but he thought, too, about his own legacy. His desire to win the 1976 election and to

accomplish the goals he set for his presidency also motivated his decision-making during the

Mayaguez crisis. These two objectives, which can be subsumed under the label of Ford’s

personal credibility, sometimes pushed the president in contradictory directions.54

In addition to global perceptions, Ford was concerned with domestic politics. He had

never won a national election, and, having ascended to the presidency on the wings of Watergate,

he lacked a mandate or a strong sense of legitimacy. His September 1974 decision to pardon

Nixon had diminished his approval ratings, which remained low in the spring of 1975. Indeed,

the most recent Gallup Poll suggested that only thirty-nine percent of Americans approved of the

way Ford was handling his job—remarkably low for a president still in his first year in office.55

The print media, too, had grown increasingly unfriendly to the president. A May 5 Newsweek

article questioned whether the country’s economic, international, and energy woes might cause

Ford to decide against seeking election in 1976. It felt free to do so even though the president

had repeatedly affirmed his intention to run.56

Historian Mark Rozell, in his study of the Ford

administration’s interaction with the press, deemed the period between the fall of Saigon and the

onset of the Mayaguez crisis a “low point.”57

Ford had to regain political ground before seeking

election in his own right in 1976, and the seizure of the Mayaguez provided him with an ideal

54 Fredrik Logevall has done important work to extend the concept of credibility into domestic politics. For personal

and partisan political credibility (of President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democratic Party) see Fredrik Logevall,

Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999); see also Logevall, “Politics and Foreign Relations,” Journal of American History 95, no. 4

(March 2009): 174-178. 55 The Gallup Opinion Index: Political, Social, and Economic Trends, no. 119 (May 1975): 11. 56 “The President Faces 1976,” Newsweek, May 5, 1975, 48-49. 57 Mark Rozell, The Press and the Ford Presidency (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 97.

- 21 -

opportunity to cultivate an image as strong-willed and decisive. As White House Press Secretary

Ron Nessen later recalled, “throughout the crisis, Ford was acutely aware that supporters and

critics at home and friends and enemies abroad were watching his performance closely to

measure his determination and wisdom in dealing with this first international provocation of his

presidency.”58

White House Counsel, speechwriter, and longtime Ford aide Robert Hartmann

made the same point during a NSC meeting: “This crisis, like the Cuban missile crisis, is the first

real test of your leadership. What you decide is not as important as what the public perceives.

We should not just think of what is the right thing to do, but of what the public perceives.”59

Hartmann saved some of his handwritten notes from the NSC meetings on the Mayaguez.

It is impossible to tell exactly when he made the jottings, but they nevertheless provide an

intimate glimpse into the private motivations and concerns of one of the nation’s top

policymakers as the administration dealt with an international crisis. They show that politics

were as important as the safe recovery of the crew. Hartmann postulated a direct relationship

between the outcome of the Mayaguez incident and the president’s chances for electoral survival.

On one small scrap of paper, he wrote, “by Thurs[day] night, we will have lost the 1976

election.”60

On a second piece of paper, he doodled a skull and crossbones and scribbled, “I’m

glad we don’t have a big war on our hands.” His political instincts shone through: “Maybe the

critics of the DOD budget have something.”61

Over and over again, and perhaps inevitably, the

country’s top officials blended decision-making and political gamesmanship. They managed the

seizure of the Mayaguez with American credibility and administration popularity in mind, which

exaggerated the need for a demonstrative response.

58 Ron Nessen, It Sure Looks Different from the Inside (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1978), 117. 59 Minutes of National Security Council Meeting in FRUS, 1017-1018. 60 Handwritten Note, Box 144, Folder: Mayaguez, Robert T. Hartmann Papers, GRFL. 61 Handwritten Note 2, Box 144, Folder: Mayaguez, Robert T. Hartmann Papers, GRFL.

- 22 -

In fact, the Ford administration linked the Mayaguez incident to domestic politics from

the very beginning. Immediately after learning of the seizure of the Mayaguez at a routine

meeting with his underlings at the State Department, Kissinger raced to the White House to offer

counsel to the president. Before discussing what they would later describe as a grave threat to

national security, however, Ford and Kissinger ruminated on the more important issue of the

upcoming 1976 presidential election. The president’s support among conservative Republicans

had waned, and he was facing the embarrassing prospect of a primary challenge from the

charismatic ex-governor of California, Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, despite Ted Kennedy’s

“firm, final, and unconditional” September 1974 announcement that he would not seek his

party’s nomination for the presidency, Ford and Kissinger worried that the Massachusetts senator

would hearken back to Camelot, seize the mantle of his slain older brothers, and make his own

run for the nation’s highest office.62

Ford asked his associates to “look at the alternatives [to his

winning the election]. Reagan would be a disaster. . . . Any Democrat from Kennedy on down

would be a disaster.” With the electoral competition heating up, the president wanted to stay a

step ahead of his political opponents. Kissinger agreed to do what he could to, in the president’s

words, “keep foreign policy meshed with the political thing,” telling Ford, “I think your election

is essential.”63

Kissinger remained the preeminent figure in American foreign policy. Undersecretary of

State for Political Affairs Joseph Sisco, a State Department carryover from the Nixon

administration, remembered that “Ford was not inclined toward perceiving a lot of the

complexities of foreign policy issues,” so he “relied heavily on Henry” when dealing with global

62 R. W. Apple, Jr., “Kennedy Rules Out ’76 Presidential Race,” New York Times, September 24, 1974. 63 Memorandum of Conversation, May 12, 1975. National Security Adviser’s Memoranda of Conversation

Collection, Gerald R. Ford Digital Library.

http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/memcons/1553073.pdf (accessed October 30, 2010).

- 23 -

affairs.64

But Kissinger left Washington for Missouri on the first day of the Mayaguez crisis. His

day-long trip, which had been planned prior to the crisis, was part of a post-Vietnam effort to

shore up public support for American foreign policy and a position of active global leadership.

As it happened, it was also an opportunity for the president to demonstrate his independence

from the increasingly controversial adviser. The media’s long infatuation with “Super K” had

ended, and reporters had begun carping about Kissinger’s “unprecedented authority.”65

Many

longtime Ford advisers—worried about the president’s personal credibility in light of his reliance

on Kissinger—had privately made known their distaste for Kissinger’s habit of “putting the

President of the United States in a pupil’s role.”66

Ordinarily, Ford made frequent speeches and media appearances.67

During the Mayaguez

incident, however, the president eschewed his usual tendency for frequent public speaking. Other

members of his administration made brief statements to give information to the media, but the

president did not make any public appearances until he was sure the crew was safe. As a public

relations strategy, his silence spoke volumes. It denied the cynical media an opportunity to

question his motives for military retaliation and allowed him to appear deeply involved in efforts

to rescue the crew. Whereas other modern presidents fostered a rally-around-the-flag effect by

being extremely vocal during international crises, Ford, as communications scholar Denise

Bostdorff has shown, “delegated rhetorical tasks to other members of his administration who, in

turn, portrayed the president as busily involved in behind-the-scenes efforts at crisis resolution. .

64 Joseph J. Sisco, “Ford, Kissinger and the Nixon-Ford Foreign Policy,” in Thompson, ed., The Ford Presidency,

327. 65

Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Marketing the G.O.P.” Washington Post, November 24, 1974. 66 Hartmann, Palace Politics, 329. 67 Roderick P. Hart, The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1987), 59-60; Ron Nessen, “The Ford Presidency and the Press,” in Thompson, ed., The Ford

Presidency, 184; Robert Orben, “Speeches, Humor and the Public,” in Thompson, ed., The Ford Presidency, 238.

Ford spoke more frequently than any president from Truman to Reagan, giving 1,231 speeches in his 896 days in

office.

- 24 -

. . His surrogate speakers depicted him as an active, competent commander-in-chief who had the

crisis under control.”68

According to Nessen, who served as the administration’s most visible

face during the crisis, “Throughout the Mayaguez episode, Ford appeared cool, precise, and very

low-key. . . . [He] tried to avoid generating a crisis mood.”69

With the eyes of the world upon

him, Ford wanted to appear firmly in control of the situation—a strong leader not made

ineffectual by his inexperience. To his country, he wanted to project a sense of calm—a steady

leader capable of guiding the nation through difficult times.

In the aftermath of the Mayaguez crisis, the Gallup Poll measured an eleven-point

increase in President Ford’s approval ratings, approaching President John F. Kennedy’s thirteen-

point surge following the Cuban missile crisis.70

As the months wore on, Ford brandished his

behavior during the crisis to prove his fitness for office and won a hard fought primary against

Ronald Reagan. In July, he held a White House ceremony for the captain of the Mayaguez and

some of the soldiers involved in the rescue operation. The captain presented Ford with the

Mayaguez’s steering wheel as a token of his appreciation, and the president kept the trophy

where visitors to his office could see it. During the general election campaign, several of Ford’s

television commercials featured a lingering shot of him sitting at his office desk with a phone at

his ear, the large steering wheel displayed prominently in the background. As his signature

jingle, “I’m Feelin’ Good About America,” hummed in the background, a stern voice told the

viewer that Ford could “keep America secure.”71

At campaign events, Ford pointed to the

Mayaguez crisis to draw attention to his strength and capability as a leader. He called the resort

68 Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises, 124, 131. 69 Nessen, It Sure Looks Different, 119. 70 The Gallup Opinion Index: Political, Social, and Economic Trends, no. 120 (June 1975): 1. 71 Videotape of 1976 Campaign Ad, President Ford Committee Materials, Audiovisual Collection, GRFL.

- 25 -

to force one of his “most meaningful decisions.”72

He was especially vocal in an April 1976

speaking tour in Texas. At the Sheraton Inn in Tyler, he claimed that “sometimes people say that

President Ford won’t face up to an issue, that he won’t be decisive.” During the Mayaguez

incident, however, “we took decisive action and the MAYAGUEZ was gotten back. I think that

is indicative of the strength and courage and the right action I can take in this office.”73

The next

day, in Waco, he explained to a crowd that “another criteria by which you can judge the

qualification of a President I think is whether he can act decisively and again act successfully.”

The crisis showed Ford fit the bill: “I decided that the only way we could handle the matter was

by affirmative, decisive, direct action, and we got the MAYAGUEZ back, period.”74

Unfortunately for the president, the Mayaguez incident’s political benefits proved ephemeral. In

the first presidential election since Watergate, the American people rejected the incumbent in

favor of a Democrat and a Washington outsider—Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

Ford’s efforts to use the Mayaguez crisis to prove his mettle as a leader to domestic

audiences dovetailed with his efforts to use the crisis to demonstrate the United States’ military

power and political will to international audiences. But the personal credibility imperative and

the geopolitical credibility imperative did not always comport so cleanly. As suggested by the

title of his autobiography, A Time to Heal, Ford was determined to preside over a post-Watergate

and post-Vietnam period of national healing and intra-governmental reconciliation. The

president sought to resist the expansion of Congress’s power over foreign policy, but at the same

time he sought to show deference to and avoid unnecessary conflict with the institution as a

72 Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a Public Forum in West Bend, Wisconsin, April 2, 1976, in The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=5785 (accessed March 5, 2011). 73 Address of President Gerald R. Ford at the Tyler Sheraton Inn, April 28, 1976, Box H36, Folder: Foreign

Relations (2), President Ford Committee Records, 1975-76, GRFL. 74 Address of President Gerald R. Ford at the Waco Civic Center, April 29, 1976, Box H36, Folder: Foreign

Relations (2), President Ford Committee Records, 1975-76, GRFL.

- 26 -

whole. He was determined to shore up the United States’ geopolitical credibility, but he was

unwilling to cultivate the seeds of division sown by his predecessor and alienate large segments

of the American body politic to do so.

Ford had always understood the value of political symbolism. Upon ascending to the

presidency, he deployed symbols to cultivate an image as a genial leader who represented a clean

break with the dishonest, combative, and aloof administration of his predecessor. He stayed in

his suburban Virginia home to allow the Nixon family enough time to vacate the executive

“mansion,” which he began calling the executive “residence” instead. On his first day as

president, Ford invited a fawning media to come watch him toast his own English muffins for

breakfast. At first, Americans loved that their president was so extraordinarily ordinary.75

Whereas President Nixon—enamored of the spectacle and display of power—had wanted his

White House guards to wear Prussian military uniforms, President Ford ordered “Hail to the

Chief” replaced with the more unpretentious University of Michigan fight song.76

These changes

corresponded with the new president’s plainer style, but they were not thoughtless. Ford’s first

press secretary, Jerald terHorst, wanted to emphasize the sense of openness and candor the new

president brought to the White House. At press conferences he had Ford stand at a slim podium

in front of an open hallway, which contrasted with the bulky, bulletproof podium positioned in

front of a dark blue curtain background that marked the previous two administrations’

interactions with the White House Press Corps.77

During the four-day Mayaguez affair, Ford put

his mastery of symbols to the test.

75 Saul Pett, “Ford’s Daily Routine Doesn’t Vary in First Day of New Presidency,” Washington Post, August 11, 1974. 76 Rozell, The Press and the Ford Presidency, 38; Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974-1980

(New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 7. 77 Jerald F. terHorst, “President Ford and the Media,” in Thompson, ed., The Ford Presidency, 212. The press

conference layout that Ford pioneered remains standard practice to this day.

- 27 -

In the same way that the geopolitical credibility imperative pushed the administration

toward military retaliation, the personal credibility imperative limited the administration’s

options. It led to the symbolic decision to use jets and bombers stationed on aircraft carriers

instead of B-52s to bomb Kompong Som. Schlesinger first advised against employing the B-52s

at a NSC meeting, but his reasoning was based on political rather than military considerations. In

the nation’s collective consciousness, B-52s were indelibly associated with the profligate use of

air power during the Vietnam War. “The B-52’s are a red flag on the Hill,” he explained.

“Moreover, they bomb a very large box and they are not so accurate. They might generate a lot

of casualties outside the exact areas that we would want to hit.”78

Schlesinger managed the crisis

with an eye towards public relations, but he believed that a disproportionate response would

undermine rather than augment Ford’s credibility. Ironically, however, it took a civilian to

convince Ford to use the carrier-based aircraft rather than the B-52s. White House Photographer

David Kennerly had been milling about the room taking photographs. In a massive breach of

protocol, he spoke up and suggested that the seizure of the Mayaguez might have been the act of

a rogue local commander and not the central government. Though the president gave him a

tongue lashing later, the young Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer persuaded Ford that

“massive air strikes would constitute overkill.”79

Ford’s sense of personal credibility also shaped the manner in which he worked to

preserve executive control over foreign policy. Whereas Nixon treated Congress with contempt

and sought to avoid dealing with legislators as much as possible, Ford addressed a joint session

of Congress only three days after he was sworn in as president: “This Congress, unless it has

changed, I am confident, will be my working partner as well as my most constructive critic. . . . I

78 Minutes of National Security Council Meeting in FRUS, 1013. 79 Ford, A Time to Heal, 280; Minutes of National Security Council Meeting in FRUS, 1021-1027.

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do not want a honeymoon with you. I want a good marriage.”80

The former Congressman whose

lifelong political ambition had been to become Speaker of the House emphasized his long tenure

in the House to aid his restoration of cordial relations between the legislative and executive

branches of government.81

He claimed to cherish the separation of governmental powers that the

nation’s founding fathers had engineered. In his interview with Time’s Hugh Sidey, Ford played

the role of guardian of the Constitution, saying, “the Constitution is very clear as to who is

Commander-in-Chief . . . and I don’t want to destroy that co-equal branch relationship.”82

After learning that some members of Congress had taken issue with the administration’s

interpretation of the War Powers Act, the president summoned sixteen senior lawmakers to the

White House to try to smooth over their disagreements. Ford, Kissinger, and Scowcroft sat down

with eleven senators and seven representatives (eight Republicans and eight Democrats) in the

White House Cabinet Room shortly after the military rescue operation commenced. The NSC

staff had predicted many of the legislative branch’s grievances, and Ford came prepared with

readymade ripostes to the lawmakers’ questions. When Senator Mike Mansfield asked about

going into the “mainland” of Asia, Ford explained the need to protect American troops taking

part in the rescue operation. When Speaker of the House Carl Albert brought up the War Powers

Act, Ford claimed that he had and would continue to comply with the law even though

“regardless of the 1973 law, I have the authority as Commander-in-Chief to take this action.”

When Senator Byrd wondered something the president’s advisers had not foreseen—“Why were

the leaders of Congress . . . not consulted about this at least at the time the decision was still

80 Address to a Joint Session of Congress by Gerald Ford, August 2, 1974, in The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4694 (accessed February 22, 2011). 81 Question and Answer on War Powers Act and the Mayaguez Incident, May 17, 1975, Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez

– General, Ron Nessen Papers, GRFL. 82 Interview of President Ford by Hugh Sidey, May 16, 1975, Box 26, Folder: May 16, 1975 Time Magazine – Hugh

Sidey, Ronald H. Nessen Files, GRFL.

- 29 -

being made?”—Ford simply repeated his assertion that he was in full compliance with the law.83

At issue was the implementation of the War Powers Act and whether or not it permitted

Congress any genuine control over foreign policy. According to the administration, Congress

was too large, disorganized, and leak-prone to have any say in foreign policy. The president was

determined to shut it out of what went on behind the scenes. In keeping with his desire to

transcend the divisiveness of the era of Watergate and Vietnam, however, Ford sought to hedge

Congressional encroachment on foreign policy as gently as possible.

His attempts to use the Mayaguez crisis to bridge the gulfs of suspicion between the

American public and its government and between the White House and Capitol Hill

notwithstanding, Ford unwittingly widened these chasms of mistrust that his predecessors had

opened. The administration proved less than forthcoming in explaining the forty-one casualties

incurred during the rescue operation. The government’s first public report indicated that one

American soldier had been killed in action and that information about missing and wounded

soldiers was too tentative to offer any estimate.84

The public and the mainstream media were

exultant.85

As the days went by, however, the Ford administration revised the rescue operation’s

casualty count upwards. On May 18—a full three days after the operation’s conclusion—

Secretary of Defense Schlesinger moved the count to five killed, sixteen missing, and between

seventy and eighty wounded. The casualty count rose again on May 20, when the National

Military Command Center concluded that American losses totaled fifteen killed, three missing,

83 Transcript of Bipartisan Congressional Leadership Meeting, May 14, 1975, Box 8, Folder: May 14, 1975 –

Bipartisan Leaders (Memcon – Mayaguez incident), National Security Adviser: NSC Press and Congressional

Liaison Staff: Files, 1973-1976, GRFL. 84 Department of Defense News Briefing, May 15, 1975, Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez – General, Ron Nessen Papers, GRFL. 85 For two representative newspaper editorials see C.L. Sulzberger, “Just What the Doctor Ordered,” New York

Times, May 17, 1975; “A Lesson in Foreign Policy,” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 1975; For public opinion

measures see Updated Reaction to Mayaguez, Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez – Telephone Call and Telegram Tallies,

Ron Nessen Papers, GRFL.

- 30 -

and fifty wounded.86

The next day, the press dug up information about a helicopter crash that

killed twenty-three American soldiers who were on their way to take part in the rescue

operation.87

The revelation brought forth a wave of criticism from the media. White House Press

Secretary Ron Nessen later explained that the dead airmen would not be included on casualty

reports because they technically were not directly involved in the Mayaguez operation.88

The

government later honored them by engraving their names on the Vietnam War Memorial in

Washington, D.C., which opened in 1982. Over the short term, however, politics interfered with

the Ford administration’s desire to honor the fallen soldiers’ sacrifice.

As claims arose that the Ford administration had been too quick to dismiss diplomacy and

that it had mounted a show of force to punish Cambodia and reestablish American credibility, the

administration mounted a public relations campaign in which it argued that it had acted only out

of military necessity. Nessen’s Press Office prepared some talking points explaining why Ford

had no choice but military retaliation. After giving diplomacy sixty hours to produce results, the

president felt that further delay would have imperiled the crew “and it was necessary to act

decisively to save them.”89

The lives of the crewmembers were at risk in the hands of the volatile

and violent Khmer Rouge, and the solemn duties of the presidency required Ford to act. The

administration denied that it acted for domestic or international political reasons. Shortly after

the crisis, Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren sent a memo to Nessen on ways the president

could answer doubts about the motives that shaped his decisions. Warren suggested Ford say that

“we at the White House and, I am sure, Members of the Congress know from mail, telegrams,

86 Memorandum for the Record: Mayaguez Operation Casualty Count, Box 28 Folder: Department of Defense –

Joint Chiefs of Staff – General, National Security Adviser NSC East Asian and Pacific Affairs Staff: Files, (1969)

1973-1976, GRFL. 87 News Conference at the White House with Press Secretary Ron Nessen #224, May 21, 1975, Box 9, Folder: May

21, 1975 (No. 224) (No. 225), Ronald H. Nessen Files, GRFL. 88 Ibid. 89 Was Military Action Necessary To Rescue Mayaguez? Box 14, Folder: Mayaguez – General, Ron Nessen Papers,

GRFL.

- 31 -

and phone calls the American people do not believe our actions were taken for domestic political

purposes.”90

At press conferences in the week after the incident, Nessen usually made a point to

rattle off the most recent statistics about telegrams and phone calls to the White House that

overwhelmingly favored the president’s actions. (As of May 16, the White House had received

almost 10,000 phone calls and telegrams supporting the president’s decision to use force and a

mere 500 opposed. The Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan houses more than

20,000 pages of public mail supporting Ford’s resort to military action.)91

The Ford

administration managed the remarkable feat of invoking domestic politics in order to deny the

relevance of domestic politics.

***

In his recent presidential address to the Society for Historians of American Foreign

Relations, Thomas A. Schwartz urged his audience to recognize “the ongoing importance of

politics in our work” and acknowledge that “more traditional political explanations may explain

more about American foreign relations than [do] some of the more recent and trendier

undertakings in our field.”92

The Ford administration’s conduct during the Mayaguez crisis

reveals the inseparability of geopolitical and personal credibility. Political rather than military

concerns dominated the administration’s decision-making process. Kissinger, who personified

the concern for geopolitical credibility, insisted on a decisive military response to show the

world that the U.S. was not hobbled by its misadventures in Vietnam. Ford, who embodied the

concern for personal credibility, favored military action to demonstrate his own competence and

90 Memo From Jerry Warren to Ron Nessen, May 17, 1975, Box 26, Folder: May 19, 1975 New York Daily News, Ronald H. Nessen Files, GRFL. 91 WHCF Subject File – ND: National Security – Defense, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.

http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/Finding%20Aids/WHCFND.HTM (accessed December 5, 2010). 92 Thomas Alan Schwartz, “’Henry, . . . Winning an Election is Terribly Important’: Partisan Politics in the History

of U.S. Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 2 (April 2009): 173.

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dynamic leadership. And though each man focused on a different conception of credibility, he

did not neglect the other. Ford recognized that his own political strength depended on America’s

international strength, and Kissinger recognized that America’s international strength depended

on Ford’s political strength. Personal and geopolitical credibility, domestic and international

politics—all were thoroughly interconnected.

This essay, however, suggests a more expansive conception of domestic politics than the

one Professor Schwartz puts forth, which focuses on partisan competition and the imperatives of

winning election. Though winning election and garnering high approval ratings are meaningful

ends for a president, they are not the only ones that matter. The broader political, social, and

cultural milieu in which a president operates often plays a decisive role in official decision-

making. Ford sought to manage and manipulate the Mayaguez crisis to further his effort to win

the 1976 election, but his determination to avoid exacerbating tensions between the Congress and

the presidency and between the public and the government militated against too visible of an

overreaction. In this sense, his conception of personal credibility had two competing dimensions:

a desire to appear tough (and thus stave off the Republican right in advance of the 1976 election)

and a desire to preside over a post-Watergate and post-Vietnam period of national healing and

intra-governmental reconciliation.

By examining the Ford administration’s conduct during the Mayaguez crisis, we can

begin to draw lines of demarcation between the foreign policies of Ford and Nixon, which the

current historiography all too often treats as one and the same. While Ford embraced the basic

tenets of détente and geopolitical credibility, his conception of personal credibility set him apart

from Nixon. Indeed, he tailored his actions during the Mayaguez crisis to transcend some of his

predecessor’s more destructive and divisive legacies.