On the way back to the Pentagon in the car, I told Bill Clements that the JCS wanted to send additional forces to Korea and needed his authority to do so. It would be justified on the basis that we were simply prepositioning forces to be in a better posture to respond to any eventuality. Bill was reluctant to “escalate the situation” but realized that he would have to rely on the judgment of the Joint Chiefs. So he authorized the JCS to redeploy forces as necessary to improve readiness, but we were instructed to avoid any actions that could be interpreted as being provocative.
On the evening of the eighteenth, the JCS met again. It was decided that, given the forces available, the most effective moves that could be undertaken immediately — without appearing to be provocative, which was now the clearly overriding concern of Clements and Habib — would be to reinforce the U.S. forces in Korea with a squadron of twenty-four Air Force F-4 Phantoms from Kadena Air Force base on Okinawa and twenty F-111s directly from the United States, refueling en route. B-52s based at Guam would also be scheduled to conduct training runs on the strategic bombing target range located just south of North Korea. These would be highly visible on the North Korean radar. The Midway and its accompanying destroyers and cruisers would be diverted from a port call in Yokosuka, Japan, and proceed at high speed to the east coast of Korea off the DMZ, bringing about fifty more fighters and attack planes into the theater. The level of readiness would be maintained at DefCon 3 in the entire Pacific theater.
On the next day, 19 August, the commander, U.S. Forces, Korea, Gen. Dick Stillwell, a tough, combat-hardened army general whom I personally knew and professionally admired, called me on a secure line from Korea to discuss the options available to the United States. He urged that he be given the authority to immediately go back into the DMZ with a heavily armed infantry patrol with engineers and cut down the offending tree as we had originally intended. We both agreed that there could be no other reasonable course of action to this incident. The United States had to go in and do what we had originally intended to do. To do anything less would be to demonstrate a lack of resolution and virtually invite North Korea to take further advantage of our perceived weakness with some further brazen incident. I had to explain to Stillwell, however, that I had assured the other members of the WSAG that the JCS would not make any preliminary moves that could be considered threatening or provocative without getting clearance from the president.
At noon on the nineteenth, the WSAG met in Secretary Clements’s office in the Pentagon. Clements reiterated his position that the United States must avoid any provocative actions that might upset the North Koreans. He thought Stillwell’s proposal, supported by the JCS, to send another patrol in to remove the offending foliage was too risky. We still did not know the underlying reason for the original North Korean reaction. So the discussion that afternoon examined other alternatives. Secretary Clements was being largely influenced by his aide, an Army lieutenant colonel who had served with the MPs in Panmunjom and therefore carried a great deal of weight. The lieutenant colonel suggested that we fill a body bag with napalm and have a helicopter drop it on the tree and then, using tracer ammunition, set it on fire and burn down the tree. The rationale was that we could eliminate the tree without having any U.S. ground forces enter the DMZ. The unorthodoxy of the scheme, the intrusion by a helicopter, and the use of napalm in the DMZ eventually caused his approach to be set aside by Clements, although it appealed to him as being “imaginative.” As an alternative, Bill Clements turned to me and said, “Why don’t we shoot one of your guided missiles from a ship at sea to take out the tree?” I explained to him that we didn’t have a guided missile with the accuracy to take out a particular tree and there was just as good a chance it would take out a North Korean observation point as the offending poplar.
The meeting broke up late in the afternoon at an impasse. Supported by the JCS and Stillwell, I remained firm that our course of action, knowing only what we knew of North Korean intentions, should be to plan to reenter the DMZ with engineers and cut down the poplar tree with axes and chainsaws, providing a heavily armed escort of infantry, strong enough to protect the engineers long enough for them to do the job. That was our original intention and our right under the cease-fire agreement. We had previously gone in unarmed, and the North Koreans had chased us out and killed two U.S. Army officers in the process. To do anything less than our original plan would be a clear sign of lack of resolution bordering on irresponsibility. It would certainly be a capitulation to a blatant violation to the signed agreement and a crime of murder against the UN Forces by the North Koreans. Clements would not agree with this plan without further intelligence, feeling it was too risky. In his view, it invited an armed reaction by the North Koreans. In any case, he felt we should probably take no action until we could fathom the motivations and intentions of the North Koreans. Ambassador Habib, another distinguished public servant with whom I had worked successfully on many other occasions, had also taken the approach that we should do nothing until tempers had cooled off on both sides. He implied that his responsibility in the WSAG was to counsel restraint from rash decisions and precipitous action. I could only reply that unless the U.S. took action, and took it promptly, we would lose the initiative. To wait would give the North Koreans their desired opportunity to barrage us with rhetoric and threats that would somehow make it all our fault. We could not afford to lose this confrontation. Our reputation and our credibility depended upon our being resolute and unafraid to assert our rights.
On the morning of 20 August, I again had a long conversation with Dick Stillwell, who made an emotional appeal for immediate authority to send our troops into the DMZ to cut the tree down. He said the morale of his forces depended on it. They felt that, having been run out of the DMZ, where they had every right to be, it was a point of honor to return, prepared to fight if necessary, to carry out their mission. I reported to Stillwell the substance of yesterday’s discussions at the WSAG, reassured him that the chiefs would do all they could to convince the National Command Authority that the only solution was to move quickly with our original plans. Stillwell was also convinced that there was little chance the North Koreans would react with armed force. It was only the unanticipated opportunity for a surprise attack with superior numbers that had led them to undertake the initial assault on the unarmed patrol. We both considered that the most dangerous course to follow was either to do nothing or to remove the tree by some other means than chopping it down with U.S. Army manpower. Any other action could demonstrate a weakness on the part of the United States, a lack of credibility in our willingness to fight in defense of our allies in South Korea.
Later in the morning of the twentieth, I again met again with Clements and Scowcroft. Ambassador Habib had essentially given his proxy to Clements and was attending the WSAG sessions only sporadically. As forcefully as possible I urged that he agree to propose to the president that we send an armed patrol in that afternoon (Korean time) and chop down the tree. To wait any longer would not only show weakness on our part but also surrender the initiative to the North Koreans, who might, in the absence of any reaction on our part, feel confident in taking some other outlandish action to further embarrass us. He again demurred making any firm recommendation to President Ford until we had better intelligence and a firmer appreciation of the North Koreans’ intentions. I then asked him to allow us to present this alternative to the president as soon as we could arrange secure communications. We would explain to the president the division of the WSAG into two distinctly different views. Bill was perfectly agreeable to go forward with the two alternatives and to get presidential guidance as soon as possible.