Declaration of Honolulu, 1966

The unscheduled conference was hastily called by President Johnson in an attempt to upstage hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Vietnam War.

[3] Johnson in his speech called for a relentless drive to eradicate the Viet Cong, saying in his Texas twang that he wanted "coonskins on the wall".

[4] By contrast, the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara during an "off-the-record" chat with a group of journalists at the conference spoke about the war in very jaded terms.

[5] The conference with its emphasis on ending poverty and building infrastructure in South Vietnam gave a misleading picture of American strategy.

The purpose of Ky's nocturnal visit to the presidential bedroom was to watch Johnson call up Humphrey as he was sleeping in Washington and ordered him in a brusque manner to go to South Vietnam at once.

South Vietnam by 1965 devolved into almost feudal state, becoming an alliance of warlords as each corps commander ruled his own area as his own fiefdom.

[8] Johnson's remarks to Kỳ praising him as a strong leader at the conference persuaded the latter that he now had the support of the United States to assert the authority of the national government over the warlords.

[3] In particular, Kỳ wanted to bring down General Nguyễn Chánh Thi, the commander of I Corps, who ruled northern South Vietnam as his fiefdom.

President Johnson petitioned the North Vietnamese leadership to discuss a Tet cease-fire for the upcoming 1968 new year observance and a bilateral conference to encourage a resolve for the Vietnam civil conflict.