Wise Men
WISE MEN
WISE MEN (1968). The term, whose authorship is obscure, refers to President Lyndon B. Johnson's select gathering in March 1968 of certain experienced officials (including several from earlier Democratic administrations) to advise him on Vietnam War policy following the enemy's Tet Offensive. A majority favored de-escalation. The term was later generalized to describe participants in President Jimmy Carter's similarly soul-searching Camp David conference in July 1979 and retrospectively by historians of other like groups, as in Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas's The Wise Men (1986) and Robert D. Schulzinger's The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs (1984).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. 2d ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986.
FraserHarbutt