Assassination Attempt targeting Bob Hope 1964

I hate to get "Off Topic" again but sometimes, you have to do that. Despite the fact that it takes me away from the "flow" of my memories of the combat missions I flew in Vietnam, today's circumstances require that I do so. Please bare with me and know that I will get back to the remainder of my stories from the days when I flew with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade.

As it specifically relates to the reason that I am off topic, know that I belong to a number of military organizations that have web sites where daily communications take place. Day before yesterday, one of them had an Editorial regarding Bob Hope and his incredible record of entertaining troops during his entire career. I wanted to post a reply to that Editorial but there are rules on that site that absolutely, positively forbid "Politicizing" the site.

In view of that, I wanted to respect the rules and respond to that Editorial here because my blog has a link there and they can read my response without any violations of the rules. For those of you who do not like or offended by political history, please disconnect now and do not read further.

As it relates to all of that and to substantiate the source documents, be advised that I read "A Soldier Reports" which is a book written by General Westmorland. I also read "LBJ" which is a book written from the reports of 400 of his staffers. During those reads, I learned alot of things including the content of messages sent from the LBJ White House and Macv Headquarters.

One of the things I learned had to do with an assassination attempt targeting Bob Hope. I lost the books and a number of other things during a tornado and will attempt to do this from memory only, and can not give you a chapter and verse of who said what or the exact day that each of the following events took place. Again, this is from memory only.

Despite not having those source documents at hand, sometime after the farce known as the "1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident"of August 1964, Bob Hope was in Vietnam to entertain the troops. That was most probably in December of 64. While he was there, he was in the Brink's Hotel in Saigon. During that time, the Viet Cong decided to assassinate him. Fortunately for all of us, the attempt failed.

Around that time, McGeorge Bundy had a meeting with the General Grade Officers at Macv in Saigon. I think that McGeorge Bundy was the Secretary of State but he might have been the Secretary of Defense, I just can't remember. Regardless of his station in the government, he was the highest ranking representative of the Johnson White House in Vietnam during that meeting.

General Westmorland reported that Bundy went nuts when he found out about the assassination attempt. Westmorland, as he witnessed Bundy's reaction to the news, described him as the "Most Hitlerian Individual He'd Ever Met". Shortly thereafter, if you will recall, Bundy contacted the LBJ White House and the results ended up with an order to "call up the Reserves". That resulted in a troop concentration in Vietnam that went from 16,000 to a quarter of a million men.

It's real important to note that President Ky or Thieu, ordered an air strike against North Vietnam 48 hours prior to the fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. It is also important to know that the assassination attempt took place roughly 4 months later.

I would suggest that any of you who are that interested in the step by step events that took place during the early years of the Vietnam War, get the two books mentioned above and connect the dots yourself. It certainly opened my eyes and explained many of the orders we had, that to me, didn't make any sense at all.

Above all, please understand that I do not access any situation above and the resulting troop escalations, to be the fault of Bob Hope. I actually had the honor of flying low level recon missions around Long Binh when he came for Christmas in 1970. My specific orders were "shoot to kill" anybody carrying an AK 47 or wearing an NVA pith helmet. Nobody worth shooting showed up

Please excuse any misquoted dates.








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