258 e lusive v ictories
impress upon Hanoi that he would not be bound by the previous
administration’s self-imposed restrictions on air attacks. At the presi-
dent’s behest, the JCS developed plans for a much-expanded air
campaign against the DRV and Cambodia. However, cautioned by
Laird that the raids would trigger massive protests at home without
preventing the North Vietnamese from continuing the war, Nixon
temporized. He settled for bombing areas in Cambodia adjacent to
South Vietnam, which would serve the double purpose of disrupting
enemy military preparations and letting Hanoi know that the rules had
changed. But the president still worried that wider bombing might
arouse the antiwar movement. So, unlike Eisenhower, who made his
intentions quite public, Nixon and his White House aides decided to
proceed in secret. Laird objected to the secrecy but was overruled, the
fi rst step in marginalizing him on critical decisions.
Th e bombing began in March 1969 and continued intermittently for
fourteen months, with the attacks concealed offi cially through an elab-
orate reporting subterfuge by which aircrews would record the
Cambodia missions as raids within South Vietnam. Only once did the
veil over the operation get pulled back, in a report in the New York
Times on May 9, 1969, but it drew little notice. Although the admin-
istration succeeded in keeping the American people in the dark, the
raids failed to have any impact on the communist negotiators in Paris.
In a second attempt to destroy enemy sanctuaries, the administration
decided to launch a ground off ensive into Cambodia in spring 1970. An
American-leaning regime had taken power in Phnom Penh in January
when Prime Minister Lon Nol had seized power during a foreign trip
by head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The new government
demanded the departure of NVA troops, which instead attacked the
ill-prepared Cambodian forces, threatening to overrun the country.
Determined to prevent so serious a reversal, the White House dusted
off old military designs for an assault to destroy communist base areas
that had served as safe havens since American forces had arrived in 1965.
Unlike bombing raids, a ground attack by U.S. and ARVN troops into
Cambodia could not be kept secret. But the administration in early
1970 saw the antiwar movement as a spent force: protest demonstra-
tions in October 1969 drew smaller crowds than organizers expected.
Nixon had followed on November 3, 1969, with his eff ective speech on