Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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The Role of the Polish Intermediary
The part played in Marigold by the DRV is veiled in mystery, because all US transactions in the matter passed through Polish hands. The initiative for the contact can only be traced back as far as the Poles. It begins with Lewandowski's return from Hanoi in late June 1966. Whether he acted on Hanoi's request on Soviet urging, or his own sense of enterprise is not known. The subsequent flow of information on DRV views and reactions came almost entirely through the Polish channel, and the Poles were, intentionally, ambiguous in distinguishing between their own thoughts and Hanoi's.
Drawing conclusions from the story is a compounded problem because the Poles, by their own account, conceived of their function as quite different from neutrally passing messages:
--They acted as brokers, probing us (and perhaps Hanoi) to find elements of "give" that would narrow the gap between US and DRV positions on the terms of settlement. Their most inventive act in this role was producing a Polish formulation of the official US position as a starting point for US-DRY talks. In this way, each side had a glimpse of possible areas of negotiation, without first committing itself to specific language or firm concessions.
--They tried to steer the exchanges away from topics we preferred (especially de-escalation) toward those they said had greater chance of acceptance in Hanoi (the terms of an overall settlement).
--They acted as friends of Hanoi, not neutrals. --Most importantly, they applied pressure on the US to participate in good faith, by the ever present threat of disclosing their version of the matter to influential world leaders or the public at large. Thus our first intimation of Marigold came via the Italian Government, which had been informed in Saigon and Rome by the Poles. We knew immediately, and were forcefully reminded at critical moments later, that US responses which might be viewed by others as reluctance in the pursuit of peace, skepticism about finding a "political" solution, or intransigence on matters of substance, might be used against us.
The only tenable working assumptions on the US Side, therefore, were that the Poles pursued at least three objectives in Marigold -- and most likely a fourth as well: (1) Ending the violence in Vietnam. (2) Doing so on terms relatively favorable to the Communist side. (3) Building a case that could be used against the US, as pressure during the development of the contact or as a source of embarrassment to the US should the whole venture fail. (In addition, the Poles no doubt sought to cast themselves in a role of historical importance.) 1
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