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According to one top Administration source, the President felt that "there was a massive act of deception" on the part of the North Vietnamese. Nixon believed that a reaction was called for, something that would be dramatic enough to drive the North Vietnamese into a more tractable position in the Paris bargaining. Both he and Kissinger ruled out "picking away with a few Phantoms." Looking back over the record of Johnson's bombing policy, Nixon apparently concluded that his predecessor had not been forceful enough. With the Johnson bombing raids, explained one Administration official during the attacks, "the U.S. sent the wrong message. The U.S. unfortunately communicated that this country was afraid to conduct a sustained, hard, coordinated air and naval operation against the enemy. Now we are sending the right message. The new raids are a signal of this country's determination to increase the level of military impact—war—on North Viet Nam."
The bombing did have military objectives to be sure—mainly to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the weaker supply and staging positions they were in when the bombing was stopped in October. The Communists had been extremely active in building up their supplies during the November and early December hiatus. But the main aim was diplomatic. Nixon wanted to get the North Vietnamese talking again in terms he wanted to hear. There was also the possibility that, in preparing to go ahead with an imprecise settlement, the bombing was a kind of farewell present to Thieu, a last equalizer to set the stage for his going it alone against the Communists. Explained Kissinger before the halt was declared: "The bombing is not an end in itself, and we are trying very hard to put this thing together again."
Ultimately the pragmatic, if not the moral test will be, of course, whether the bombing really helped to put "this thing" together again. Much of that precarious hope—and the controversy about the blitz—rode on the huge wings of the B-52. The planes usually fly in groups of three, bombing in patterns. In the South, the planes lay down those patterns with precision because they can zero in on a grid of numerous American radar beacons. In the North, there are no such guides—and not quite such accuracy. Certainly the B-52 seems a cruel weapon to use against pinpoint targets in crowded metropolitan and suburban areas. The Administration argued, somewhat lamely, that B-52s were needed because they could bomb in the seasonal bad weather. Yet the fact that Nixon chose to use them is proof to some of his critics that he was trying to terrorize the North Vietnamese into new concessions.