Late that afternoon of the twentieth, the breakthrough occurred. Henry Kissinger called the JCS war room — where I was meeting with the Joint Staff — on a secure phone. He was sitting next to the president in the Convention Hall in Kansas City and wanted to hear the WSAG recommendations. He would then brief the president and we could expect an early decision. I explained the two different approaches that had divided the WSAG between the JCS and the theater commander on one side and the position of the acting secretaries of defense and state on the other. Secretary Kissinger responded immediately by saying, “I will recommend to the president that a heavily armed patrol be sent into the DMZ to cut down those trees with axes and chain saws. Hold the line while I get the president’s answer.”
Less than a minute later Kissinger was on the secure line again. “The President directs the Joint Chiefs of Staff to order the Theater Commander to proceed with his plan of going into the DMZ with the necessary protective force, and remove those trees,” he said. “In doing so, he wants to be assured that all U.S. and UN forces in Korea will be alerted to respond to any reaction that the North Koreans might take in response to our operation.”
I immediately informed the other chiefs and called Stillwell. It was agreed that the operation would take place at 1000 (2100 Washington time), which was then about four hours away. Stillwell said his people would be ready in every respect for any eventuality. I advised him that the JCS would be meeting in the war room with the acting secretary of defense present to monitor the operation, which had been nicknamed Paul Bunyan.
By 2100 on the evening of 20 August, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plus the members of the Joint Staff who were associated with operations, had gathered in the war room. Acting Secretary of Defense Clements joined us, along with certain selected civilian members of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. We had General Stillwell on the loudspeaker telephone, and the large electronic charts in the war room were displaying the situation throughout the Pacific Command, Korea, and the DMZ. General Stillwell was airborne in his helicopter, which was to be his command post while directing the operation. He had put all of the military units in the UN command in DefCon 2, the highest condition of readiness short of general war. Ammunition had been broken out and distributed to the troops, all of whom were in full battle gear with helmets, armored vests, and weapons at the ready. A U.S. Army infantry division, backed up by an ROK division, had been moved into fighting positions just south of the DMZ so that if any enemy troops broke through the DMZ they would be covered by heavy weapons fire. Spotting planes and command helicopter were overhead and communications had been tested and contact established among all units. The combat units in the reserve marshaling areas were equally ready.
Dick Stillwell reported that his troops were ready to go, and morale could not be higher. He reassured the chiefs that he was still firm in his conviction that there would be no belligerent action on the part of the North Koreans but that he was also fully prepared to respond appropriately to any hostile reactions by the North Koreans. As H-hour approached, the tension in the JCS war room was tangible. The North Koreans had given no hint of what their reaction might be. We were presuming they wouldn’t start shooting, but we were also aware of the unpredictability of these strange people, and the possibility that a nervous trigger finger might start a firefight. On the dot of H-hour, 1000 Korean time, the engineers, along with their protective patrol of about three hundred American soldiers in armored vests and with heavy automatic weapons, entered the DMZ. They went directly to the poplar tree, and as the infantrymen set up in a defensive perimeter, the engineers turned to with their chainsaws and cut down the tree in about twenty minutes. Then the group marched out of the DMZ.
How did the North Koreans react when our patrol entered the DMZ? A large number of North Korean troops had gathered along the fence on their side of the DMZ and in their observation posts. However, they were not in military formation, nor did any of them display a weapon. They were all obviously unarmed. It was clear that the North Koreans did not want to start an incident and were being careful not to be misunderstood as being aggressive.
Secretary Clements was pleased with the outcome. He was impressed with how smoothly the Joint Staff had worked and with the close coordination between the JCS Command Center in Washington and the forces in the field. It was a good lesson, too, for the number of civilians from the OSD staff who were present to see how a military operation works in the U.S. Military Command system. The force commanders in the field conduct the operations and the JCS is kept informed. If help is needed, or if events go awry, the full support of the Department of Defense is available to the theater commander. In a matter of two hours the business was all wrapped up: The F-111s were prepared to fly back across the Pacific to their U.S. bases, the squadron of F-4 Phantoms would leave the next morning for Okinawa, the B-52s would have completed their training flights on the South Korean bombing range, and the Midway and its cruisers and destroyers would return to Japan for a port visit in Yokosuka and liberty in Tokyo.
By the next day there were no tag ends in Washington. The president and Secretary Kissinger had been informed of the resolution of the incident. There was little left to do except to write a report and be prepared to brief the president in detail upon their return to the White House.
As a footnote, twenty-five years later, the Korean national television corporation in Seoul contacted me to request an interview on my role in the “ tree chopping” incident. The producer explained that the Korean people still considered this episode the major crisis in their post — Korean War history. Gen. Dick Stillwell had very generously attributed much of the credit for the favorable outcome of the event to the steadfastness of the JCS and the acting chairman. The producer for the program came from Korea to the U.S. with his staff to film a two hour segment in my living room. Their deep appreciation for the strong support of their U.S. allies was openly evident and unmistakably sincere.
KISSINGER AND THE CRUISE MISSILE
In early 1976, President Gerald Ford was running hard for renomination and facing a very strong challenge from Ronald Reagan. He was very anxious to consummate some sort of a SALT II agreement to show progress in his administration for arms limitation. At that time, Henry Kissinger was in Europe negotiating with the Soviets on these issues and Kissinger cabled back from Vienna the outlines of a new treaty to which he had tentatively agreed. This agreement would ban the deployment of the U.S. Tomahawk missile on submarines and limit its deployment on surface ships to only ten cruisers with ten Tomahawks each.
Kissinger had previously sent the outline of this agreement to the Pentagon for comment. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the JCS Gen. George S. Brown both indicated their agreement by initialing the draft. General Brown had previously shared this information with me, aware that the Navy was the principal service affected. I told him that the Navy would definitely oppose such an agreement, as Tomahawk was very important in the future plans of the Navy. It was essential to provide our submarines, cruisers, and destroyers with standoff weapons. This was absolutely necessary to provide them with an offensive capability into the twenty-first century and thus extend their useful life in the fleet.