Secret Bombing of Cambodia

Secret Bombing of Cambodia, United States campaign during the Vietnam War (1959-1975). Conducted under the direct orders of President Richard Nixon, it began in 1969 and continued until 1973. The bombing was carried out initially in areas bordering South Vietnam, but it quickly spread throughout Cambodia. The goal of the United States was to destroy the strongholds of National Liberation Front (NLF) and North Vietnamese forces in Cambodia. Only a few highly placed U.S. officials, including General Creighton Abrams (commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam), Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, and Henry Kissinger (Nixon’s national security adviser), knew of the campaign. Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk agreed to the bombing in the hope of ridding his nation of NLF and North Vietnamese forces. The covert operation violated the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by the U.S. Congress in 1964, which authorized military operations in Vietnam but nowhere else in Indochina. The secret bombing was therefore an illegal widening of the Vietnam War.

When the Vietnamese Communist forces of Ho Chi Minh initiated a war of independence against the French in the late 1940s, they allied themselves with similar national liberation forces in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. During the Vietnam War these alliances enabled North Vietnamese troops to move men and supplies through Lao and Cambodian territory into South Vietnam along what came to be known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The NLF and North Vietnamese army troops set up their headquarters (known as the Central Office for South Vietnam, or COSVN) in Cambodia. U.S. military planners were convinced that the NLF and North Vietnamese forces could be crippled if the Ho Chi Minh Trail could be attacked and COSVN found and destroyed.

COSVN quickly moved its headquarters further into the countryside. U.S. planners learned of the move and escalated their attacks, killing many Cambodian civilians and creating numerous refugees. The U.S. Department of Defense ultimately admitted that the bombing was unsuccessful in its aim to destroy the Communist command center. Military officials envisioned COSVN as similar to the U.S. Military Assistance Command (MACV), which was centralized and susceptible to a knockout blow. In fact, COSVN operations were flexible and could be moved. Since Cambodia descended into civil war shortly after U.S. intervention and was a closed society for many years, the exact number of casualties caused by the bombing is not known, but it is estimated that 100,000 peasants were killed. In the first 14 months of the campaign, 3630 bombing raids were conducted in Cambodia, and 110,000 tons of bombs were dropped. Between July 1970 and February 1971 another 8000 missions were flown. According to the Cambodian government, about 20 percent of all property in Cambodia had been destroyed by 1973.

In 1970 the Nixon administration decided to send U.S. ground forces into Cambodia. The announcement of this invasion was met with widespread opposition in the United States. Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and prohibited any further combat or advisory activity in Cambodia. Even though U.S. troops were quickly withdrawn, the bombing continued. U.S. policies in Cambodia were intended to weaken Vietnamese Communists, to strengthen the position of the South Vietnamese army, and to ward off the Cambodian Communist forces of the Khmer Rouge, but they had the opposite effects. The campaign disrupted a nation that for centuries had known little conflict. The bombing conducted by the United States created deep hatred on the part of the Cambodian peasants whose lives were devastated, and they consequently joined the Khmer Rouge in large groups. Unable to exact revenge on U.S. bombers, they turned on those Cambodians whom they blamed for collaborating with the United States and with the North or South Vietnamese.

The secrecy of the bombing of Cambodia was of the utmost importance to Nixon. The bombing risked congressional disapproval and withdrawal of funding for the entire war effort. Nixon’s unauthorized actions were also potential grounds for impeachment. In order to keep the bombing secret, government officials misrepresented the facts to the Foreign Relations Committees of both the House and Senate, and falsified Air Force records. In May 1973 congressional leaders discovered that the bombing of Cambodia had taken place before 1970 without their authorization and had continued afterward. The following month both the House of Representatives and the Senate enacted legislation to stop the bombing, but Nixon vetoed it. On November 6, 1973, Congress overrode Nixon’s veto and passed the War Powers Resolution, which limits the president’s ability to conduct combat operations. The following week, Congress withdrew funding for all operations in Indochina. Nixon’s strategy in Cambodia had failed.