Word: gelb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some of the flaws in the study were openly conceded by Leslie H. Gelb, chairman of the task force that managed it, in a court affidavit. He said that the people who worked on it were "uniformly bright and interested, although not always versed in the art of research. Of course, we all had our prejudices and axes to grind and these shine through clearly at times, but we tried, we think, to suppress or compensate for them. Writing history, especially where it blends into current events, is a treacherous exercise. We could not go into the minds...
...obvious lesson of the Pentagon papers is that bureaucracies do not always function as they are supposed to, especially in their primary role of advising the President. Less apparent are the reasons why. Leslie Gelb, 34, and Morton Halperin, 33, both middle-ranking officials in the Pentagon under Robert McNamara, played key roles in the preparation of the Viet Nam study, and are currently at work on books. Working separately, the two arrived at similar conclusions on bureaucratic breakdowns. Part of the answer, they suggest, lies in the "rules of the game" by which all Washington bureaucrats traditionally play. Some...
...resign, you don't carry your case to the public," says Gelb. "Lower level people in Washington see themselves as understudies. Each is trying to learn the part he hopes to play next, even though he knows that the odds are very much against his getting that future role. It is not really necessary to quit, go public and release classified documents to make your case. Would George Ball have needed to do that? No. His departure in itself would have had enormous impact. If you read his words literally, he felt very strongly. But he didn't take...
...Reasons Gelb: "Whoever plays the game within the consensus can get his little piece of the pie. Those who wanted a serious negotiating effort got a bombing pause and sometimes changes in position. Those who wanted more bombing got that. But a lot of these things are contradictory. Why does everybody get his slice? One, because the guy who is handling a piece of the action is thought to know best. Two, because this is the way to preserve the consensus, and that is the summum bonum...
...paradox and tragedy of Viet Nam, argues Gelb, was that "most of our leaders and their critics did see that Viet Nam was a quagmire, but did not see that the real stakes?who shall govern Viet Nam?were not negotiable. What were legitimate compromises from Washington's point of view were matters of life and death to the Vietnamese." How can this kind of thinking be changed? Gelb contends that a President must demand much more of his security advisers; they must probe more deeply into what really is in the national interest. The President must also take...