The Wheeler Report
The Wheeler Report
Following the Battle of Ap Bac in early January 1963, in which South Vietnamese troops and U.S. military advisers came under heavy attack, Army Chief of Staff General Earle G. Wheeler led a fact-finding mission to Vietnam to assess the situation. Three days after he returned to the United States, Wheeler briefed the president on the state of the U.S. advisory mission in Vietnam. In the process, he gave President Kennedy a series of recommendations for improving South Vietnam's military capabilities in its war against the Communist-dominated National Liberation Front, or Vietcong.
President John F. Kennedy was the thirty-fifth President of the United States, 1961-1963.
Biographical sketch from American President.
General Earle Wheeler was Army Chief of Staff from 1962-1964. He was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1964-1970.
Biographical sketch from the Arlington Cemetery Website.
Dean Rusk was the Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969.
Biographical sketch from the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
.jpg)
David Halberstam was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist known for his early work on the Vietnam War.
Biographical sketch and obituary from the New York Times.
U.S. Army General Paul Harkins was the first Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) commander, 1962-1964.
Biographical sketch from the U.S. Army Pacific.
JFK Daily Diary, February 2, 1963.
Meeting Tape 71.2, John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. Raw audio file available at the Miller Center's White House Tapes website.
Michael V. Forrestal, "A Report on South Vietnam," February 1963. Source: The Pentagon Papers.
Report by a team headed by the Chief of Staff, United States Army (Wheeler) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, January 1963 | Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.
Battle of Ap Bac, January 2, 1963. Source: ehistory @ OSU | United States Military Academy.Bibliographies
Bibliography - Vietnam Conflict, Miller Center of Public Affairs.
Bibliography of the Vietnam War, Prof. Edward E. Moise, Clemson University.
Vietnam War Bibliography, Richard Jensen, University of Illinois-Chicago.
Scholarship
David M. Toczek, The Battle of Ap Bac, Vietnam: They Did Everything but Learn from It (Westport, CT. 2001).
Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (Oxford: 1986).
William M. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War (Kansas, 1998).
Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (Berkeley, Calif., 2005), 141-179.
John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power (New York: 1992).
Archives
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston, MA.
Virtual Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University.
U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian, Vietnam, January-August 1963.
Documents Relating to the Vietnam War, Mt. Holyoke College.
January 15, 1963, Conversation Tape 69.1 and 69.2, WhiteHouseTapes.org.
President Kennedy met with his senior military advisors immediately preceding their departure on a fact-finding trip to Vietnam. The Wheeler Mission, named for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, had been proposed by the Joint Chiefs the previous week following the Battle of Ap Bac, the first major confrontation betwen South Vietnamese and Vietcong forces.
October 2, 1963, Meeting Tape 114/A49, JFKL.
Just prior to a discussion of a possible troop withdrawal from Vietnam, Kennedy and his advisers discuss media coverage of the war in Southeast Asia.
The Wheeler Report
See Stephanie van Hover, Marc J. Selverstone, and Patrice Preston-Grimes, "Window Into the White House," Social Education, vol. 72, no. 3 (April 2008), 130-135.
Teaching with the Tapes
Chester Pach, "The United States in the 1960s," Ohio Univesity.
Jeff Woods, "White House Tapes," Arkansas Tech University.