"[Gunfire]" "Barry:" "Goldwater:" "This is probably the least understood war we've been in in our history." "It's become a very difficult subject to talk about." "It's just such a dramatic story." "We still seek no wider war." "It's not even a declared war." "Well-- There's no declaration of war." "That to me is the most obscene part of the whole thing." "There are those that are terribly frustrated because they said we've got to win it and there are others that said we never should have been in it." "The time has come for action." "Man:" "Lots of mistakes were made, and in the end, the American public got fed up with it." "I was wondering if he knew that the country would be quite so ripped apart as it has seemed to have been more than I can remember in a long time." "Man:" "It's that America that is captured in the Cavett interviews." "It's the America that is wounded, scarred by this commitment in Southeast Asia, and it's now trying to figure out a way to get out." "Announcer:" "This program was made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from..." "Announcer:" "Ladies and gentlemen" "Dick Cavett." "[Applause]" "I think everybody realizes by now that there has never been anything in our history to parallel the Vietnam War." "All the analogies to other wars seem to be inadequate." "Cavett, voice-over:" "Between 1968 and 1975, when my show aired on ABC, the Vietnam War was raging in Southeast Asia, and the reaction at home was intense." "While I set out to do an entertaining talk show, you could not keep Vietnam out of the conversation." ""Bob Hope entertained the boys in Vietnam this Christmas." "What did you do, Mr. Allen?"" "Uh, this past Christmas?" "I tried to entertain our deserters in Canada." "[Laughter]" "[Applause]" "Did I hear a boo up there from somebody?" "Audience members:" "Yes." "These are" "Yeah, yeah?" "You know, you can come down here." "If you disagree with me on any subject, we can come down here and sock each other in the mouth a couple of times." "I must say it was kind of hard hosting a show with such a gigantic controversial subject, but I didn't mind having a variety of opinion." "I think it makes it a lot more interesting." "We've gone completely down the wrong path." "It's a disaster." "I have my opinions and my feelings on this war, and I supported it from the start," "I supported it while I was there, and I support it now." "White America right now is spending $30 million a day in Asia." "Black and white boys are dying unjustly for nothing just to free somebody else." "Are you proud of the record that our bombers have made over there, the type of destruction that's been done?" "No, I'm not." "They haven't done enough." "Man:" "There are 3 fire zones in Vietnam-- free fire zone, limited fire zone, and a no fire zone." "Different man:" "What does free fire zone mean?" "Free fire zone means you can shoot anything that wiggles." "Men, women, children, right?" "Anything." "And that's the policy which you're here to defend tonight?" "I'm throwing myself in front of the show to tell you that we have a message and we'll be right back." "[Applause]" "Cavett:" "Debate over the war took a startling turn for all of us when top-secret government documents were suddenly leaked to the press." "This weekend, portions of a highly classified" "Pentagon document came to light for all the world to see and brought cries of outrage from Washington." "The "New York Times" began publishing parts of a voluminous report that the Pentagon had drawn up on the causes and conduct of American involvement in Vietnam." "Boy, that phrase "The Pentagon Papers"" "really came in like a bomb when that happened." "The papers themselves are part of a 47-volume" "Pentagon history entitled-- the exact title is" ""History of the United States Decisionmaking Process on Vietnam Policy," which was commissioned by former secretary of defense Robert McNamara." "Now the study was begun in 1967, and it was completed a year and a half later." "It represents the work of some 36 government and civilian officials." "Most of them were authorities on the Vietnam War, and the report was classified top secret." "The data was so overwhelming that the readers of the Pentagon Papers concluded from reading it that the government was misleading itself all along and that the government was not sure of what was going on, but despite that, the government kept giving" "the American people the sense that all was under control and that there was reason for optimism." "We will stand in Vietnam." "Cavett:" "Until I got into college," "I don't think I ever read an editorial." "I was about as ignorant as you could get of world affairs, and then I heard some-- I hear it in almost" "Lyndon Johnson's accent" "[Texas accent] "Viet Namm"..." "[Normal voice] began to come into currency." "Didn't know what it was, and like most Americans, probably didn't know where it was, what it was, what the significance of it was." "The leak of the Pentagon Papers forced Americans, including me, to look at our involvement in Vietnam in a completely new way." "Most of us associate the war with the 1960s and 1970s." "In point of fact, as they say, it began with a bit of cloak and dagger at the end of the Second World War." "Prior to World War II, Vietnam had been a French colony." "After the war, Vietnamese patriots, led by Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, declared their independence and began an insurgency to drive out the hated French." "In September 1945, Major Peter Dewey, an American working for the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA, arrived in an area of Vietnam known as Cochinchina to assess the situation." "I think Dewey's an absolutely fascinating figure." "Here's somebody who has a Yale degree, who was fluent in French." "Dewey, I think, saw already in 1945 this thing is just not going to go well because Ho Chi Minh and his revolution are going to be extremely difficult to stop, and then he becomes this-- basically the first American" "to be killed in this conflict." "Shortly before his death, he filed one final report." ""Cochinchina is burning." ""The French and British are finished here, and we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia."" "Cavett:" "Major Dewey's final words were prophetic to say the least." "If only U.S. officials had heeded his warning back in 1945, things might have turned out very differently." "The Pentagon Papers also revealed that between 1946 and 1954, America provided the French with weapons and millions of dollars to fight Ho Chi Minh and keep Vietnam out of Communist hands." "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." "Man:" "At that time, Communism was a worldwide threat." "It was a threat to the stability of the global system that we put in place after World War II, and the United States was prepared to use force to defend it." "And so this was about containing Soviet and Chinese Communist expansionism." "This was about the domino theory." "You have a row of dominoes set up, and you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that certainly it will go over." "Asia has already lost 450 million of its peoples to the Communist dictatorship." "We simply can't afford greater losses." "The minute the first domino fell, they all would fall, and that's why a country like Vietnam that was of no strategic value to the United States-- had no economic value to the United States-- suddenly became important because it was a domino." "And therefore it was imperative" "Eisenhower believed-- for the United States to buck up the French." "And then, of course, after the French were defeated, he makes what I think is a fateful decision." "He and John Foster Dulles, his secretary of state, decide that they will try to succeed where the French have failed." "The task becomes to build up a non-Communist regime in the southern part of Vietnam that with American support will be able to compete toe to toe with Ho Chi Minh and his government, which now is in control in the North." "The men on one side are fighting, and the men on the other side don't care and are deserting." "Cavett:" "Why is this?" "Why?" "Because the men on the other side feel they're fighting for freedom." "They're fighting for freedom from domination by the white man and by the westerner, and if they felt about Communism the way we do, obviously the ones on our side would be the ones who are really fighting for freedom." "And there hasn't been any freedom." "There's been a dictatorship." "In 1961 when General-- when Kennedy sent" "General Taylor, Taylor came back and said," ""There's no use pouring money in there unless we get political change."" "And then Diem staged a big campaign, a big propaganda campaign, and we gave him all that money and our boys and our help without demanding political changes." "And that's what got us into the war." "[Applause]" "Our concern is to find the most effective way of sustaining the progress of the people of South Vietnam." "Logevall:" "Kennedy expanded American involvement in Vietnam very dramatically." "The increase in the number of advisors, a vast increase in the amount of American equipment-- helicopters, aircraft, artillery, ammunition, all kinds of military firepower." "This under JFK--this same Kennedy who privately," "I believe, continues to have real misgivings about whether this thing can be won." "Why does he do this?" "He's gearing up to run for reelection in 1964." "Charges of being soft on Communism are starting to be used." "And he grasps, I think, that he needs to-- to affirm American support for South Vietnam." "We want to see a stable government there carrying on a struggle to maintain its national independence." "We believe strongly in that." "We're not going to withdraw from that effort." "In my opinion, for us to withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam but Southeast Asia." "So we're going to stay there." "The president really didn't want Vietnam to dominate his agenda." "Well, it didn't dominate John F. Kennedy's agenda, but it sure would dominate LBJ's agenda." "My fellow Americans, as president and commander in chief, it is my duty to the American people to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order" "the military forces of the United States to take action in reply." "Logevall:" "It's a small attack, but it was the first incident of its kind that pitted North Vietnamese units, if you will, against U.S. ones." "It happens in August of 1 1964, just before a national election, a presidential election." "LBJ wants the authority to do what is necessary so that there are no surprises in Vietnam before the election." "He wants to show strength and decisiveness." "I think there was generally support for the president, for our efforts." "The Congress passed the resolution known as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which authorized the president to take whatever action was necessary, including military action." "Now that passed with only two dissenting votes." "I was in the Senate when that resolution was adopted, voted for it-- as did most all the other senators." "Uh, the Tonkin Gulf resolution, I guess, is the most, uh-- oh, significant resolution of that kind." "It's often pointed to as the thing that made it possible for us to be in all of this chaos in Vietnam now." "Uh, and you were one of two--I believe, only two who voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution." "If the Johnson administration had told the American people 5% of the facts about the Tonkin Bay incident, the resolution never would have passed, and I think the second thing I want to stress in my conversation with you is watch out" "for the development of government by secrecy and executive supremacy." "You had it manifested in the Tonkin Bay resolution." "You just were not told the facts about America's aggression in Tonkin Bay." "Wayne Morse is probably-- if you can really define a great man-- and, oh, don't we need some-- he would be almost the definition of it." "Here was an honest, brilliant man with the power of oratory." "I look back at that stunning appearance he did on the show of mine, and I remember the audience falling dead silent as he talked about why we're mistaken with this war." "We're a very proud people, and it's good that we're proud, but we can't run away from the facts just because we may have a false sense of pride, and the difficulty with our Vietnam policy is" "that we have been the outlaw in Southeast Asia." "We have been the aggressor." "[Applause and whistling]" "We violated one section and article after another of the, uh, charter of the United Nations." "We practically tore up the, uh--the Geneva Accords." "We have to face up to the fact that we cannot conduct a unilateral military course of action around the world without the world organizing against us." "We've got to get out of Asia." "[Applause]" "Announcer:" "Arriving to make known his new decisions on Vietnam, President Johnson explains his actions in these historic words." "I have asked the commanding general," "General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression." "He has told me, and we will meet his needs." "Naftali:" "LBJ had private doubts about the war in Vietnam." "His doubts came from the fact that the U.S. military would ask for a little bit and say, "It'll be enough,"" "and then it turned out not to be enough." "Unfortunately, he wasn't in the right political environment to say, "You know, maybe it's time for us to rethink containment."" "LBJ wasn't able or willing to do that, and by the time he was able to do that, it was too late." "He had put in 500,000 troops." "How is it and why is it that they proceed to do this, given what they themselves can see privately are the problems and the difficulties?" "I think the reason they proceed is fundamentally because it's a hope." "That's really all it is, that if they just apply a little more power or ultimately actually a lot more power-- but if they apply American military power in the way that it can be applied, somehow this thing will turn out OK." "Naftali:" "Robert McNamara was a scientist in a job that requires an artist." "He lacked the imagination to think beyond numbers and doctrines and axioms." "I mean, he knew we were losing, but he still stayed as secretary of defense." "You can't do that." "You can't." "When the wrong course of action is taken, in your view, or when you can't bring a success and you're in a high position like that, leave office." "It's a gift to the people of the United States." "They trust you with the lives of their children." "Don't--don't abuse it, and I think the hardest thing for us in uniform to accept, who fought in that period, was that he didn't really believe in it." "Crowd, chanting:" "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" "Jane Fonda:" "Anyone that is speaking out against this is speaking out as a patriotic American citizen, is speaking out in--in support of--of--of democracy." "I think--we have-- we have an obligation to do this, all of us." "We're being not told the truth." "In 1964 when I can remember campaigning against Goldwater in Atlantic City for Johnson, the irony of it is that I was campaigning for the deescalation of the war when the decision was already made by the person that I was campaigning for" "to escalate the war." "Cavett:" "What about the people who say," ""What business do you actors have going out and influencing people?"" "Well, I think-- Just stick to your makeup." "Well, I think they ask that question-- and the fact that they would ask that question is the essence of the problem in the country right now because it assumes that--what I call a kind of a mythology of expertise," "that, uh, certain people are experts on politics and certain people aren't, and I guess, uh, what's really gone wrong in the country and particularly-- and naturally you have to-- you have to talk about the war" "over the past 10 years-- we've all left it up to the experts." "We all left it up to McNamara or to Johnson, whatever" "[Applause]" "Beatty basically understands the argument of David Halberstam's book "The Best and the Brightest,"" "which is the best and the brightest of this country-- at least as they were understood at the time-- got us into this war and didn't know how to get us out of it." "You know, we can't blame what's happened on Johnson and Nixon and the leaders." "We have to blame it on ourselves." "We weren't--I don't know about you." "In 1963, I wasn't objecting to the war." "I was busy trying to be a movie star and this and that." "So I think we're all at fault in the country and that I think the problem now in the country is-- is, uh, is an indifference, and I think that indifference is the result of the fact that we have been lied to by our leaders" "for 8 years, and we've lied to each other." "When Warren Beatty says to Dick Cavett in effect that Americans are to blame, that we're all to blame for this war," "I think he's speaking a--a kind of profound truth, that the circle of responsibility was wide." "Congress is not asking tough questions." "It's in part about the press failing to really hold the administration accountable, and finally--and I think this is what Warren Beatty was getting at--in terms of those critical early years when Vietnam is made into a large-scale American war," "the American public is not willing to really say," ""Look." "Why do we need to send American ground troops to this effort?"" "And for all of our adult lives, we've been told "Well, uh, those people know things," ""and if you knew what the president knew, then you wouldn't be saying what you're saying."" "Well, we finally found out that we were right." "Our instincts were right." "We shouldn't have been killing those people, we shouldn't have been bombing those people, and it's up to people like you and me and the rest of us to say what we think and not be ashamed of what we think" "and not--not defer to experts." "There are no experts, I think, when you're talking about questions of--of compassion and--and--and humanity." "Sorry." "All right." "We need to take a message." "We'll be right back." "[Applause]" "Now, I'm not defending everything that was done in Vietnam." "Don't--don't misunderstand me, but I think the strategic equation was we believed we had a mission to stabilize the world." "We were in favor of freedom and democracy and peace." "They were in favor of Communism, atheism, and war." "If you put it in that context, the lines are pretty clear, and I think it wasn't just those of us at West Point." "I think the majority of Americans saw it that way in '63, '64, '65." "And it wasn't until really after the summer and fall of 1966 that opinion began to change." "You know, I tried to think back over how--how it happened that little by little I became, uh, concerned to the point where I wanted to take a direct political, emotional stand in certain issues." "It started, I guess, about 4 years ago." "I--I was living in France, and stories started coming in, as they do easier in France than they do in America, about what's been going on in Vietnam, and, you know, I found it very difficult to believe," "and I said to my French friends," ""If the Marines and our government are doing these things," ""uh, they must be OK." "I mean, we're Americans, so they must be OK."" "Then I started finding out more things." "I started seeing film." "I started hearing G.I.s talk, and I began to realize that maybe they weren't OK and that maybe as Americans we are just as capable of atrocities, of mistakes as all the other people in the world." "We're are no better, but we're no worse." "And it's important for people to realize that--that just because the system says something is right-- that it's right, maybe it's wrong." "Well, once you face that, you have to start reexamining a lot of things." "Many of us are old enough to remember the arrival of the phrase "the antiwar movement,"" "and it was colorful, spectacular, upset people." "People said, "The antiwar movement is just a bunch" ""of smelly hippies, and you can't tell the boys from the girls because their hair's too long,"" "all that sort of stuff, but it also had some very effective victories, and it became a vast movement." "Clark:" "The antiwar movement was my generation." "I was wearing a uniform." "I was married, and, you know," "I was getting ready to go to Vietnam." "I looked at them with respect, but I don't think they really understood the total context of what we were trying to do over there." "It forced a lot of Americans to look inside and ask themselves what does it mean to be patriotic." "And they didn't have the same answer." "Parents and kids disagreed with each other." "Grandparents and parents disagreed with each other." "Kitchen table conversations around the country became heated, and there was a national divide." "Cavett:" "If you were to compile a short list of absolutely key moments in the Vietnam War, you would have to include Walter Cronkite's extraordinary broadcast in the wake of the Tet Offensive." "That surprise attack by the Communists caused the CBS anchor to do something he had never done before-- step outside his role of impartial newsman and deliver an editorial." "For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." "This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation." "and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of 100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000 more American troops to the battle," "and with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster." "I mean, Walter Cronkite in Vietnam is a guy who, in 1965, is sort of on the team, goes out to Vietnam, does sort of good guy, you know, G.I. Joe interviews." ""Soldier, where are you from?" "Do you like it out here, soldier?"" ""No, Mr. Cronkite, but I feel we kind of got to do the job out here."" ""That's all right, soldier." "What's your hometown?"" "And then of course later," "Walter is a guy who goes out at Tet and declares the war over." "It's the first time in American history that a war has been declared over by an anchorman." "That was a huge impact when Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, uh, couldn't apparently take it any longer and said, "I'm going to have to," uh" "When he went out there and did that" "Tet reporting, it had a powerful effect on Lyndon Johnson, who didn't like most television reporters but liked Walter, you know, thought Walter cared about his country, in the phrase of Lyndon." "And in addition, you know, if Walter, you know--he knew that if he'd lost-- he said, "If I've lost Walter Cronkite," "I've lost Mr. and Mrs. average American."" "He also believed a little bit, you know-- he never believed the negative reporting that people like me were doing from there, but he believed that if Walter Cronkite was reporting negatively, then there had to be something to it." "I think Lyndon Johnson, in a fascinatingay, did anticipate that Vietnam would be his undoing." "This is one of the tragedies of Johnson." "Because he saw that Americans were very much divided on this issue, and I think he feared that he would lose a full-scale national debate on the war." "Good evening, my fellow Americans." "I have lived daily and nightly with the cost of this war." "I know perhaps better than anyone the misgivings that it has aroused." "There is divisiveness among us all tonight." "The house divided against itself is a house that cannot stand." "Accordingly," "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president." "Cavett:" "I was shocked by Johnson's words." "I could imagine his staying on, winding up the war, and so on, but apparently, that was not to be." "It's a shame because it's such a cliché now, but he was such a potentially great president with his voting rights and all the various things that he did do well, but this botched his presidency tragically." "Nixon:" "The time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and the policies of the past." "And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next administration will to be bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam." "Then Richard Nixon gets elected, promising to end the war." "Now he doesn't tell people how, and he lets this myth of having a secret plan propagate, but he doesn't how to do it." "Mr. Allen?" "Yes?" "Oh, yes." "I was wondering about you on New Year's and your resolutions." "Because I remember you had made some once in the past that were remarkable." "New Year's resolutions for this year?" "Do you go in for that?" "Uh, I sometimes go in for it." "I--my only New Year's resolution this year," "I think I'm going to try and sleep through the Nixon administration, you know?" "[Laughter]" "[Applause]" "I see." "Uh... let me, um" "Will you welcome one of the greatest exports ever to come out of San Francisco, the great Jefferson Airplane." "[Drumming begins]" "Newscaster:" "Now from the White House, here is the president." "Since I took office 4 months ago, nothing has taken so much of my time and energy as the search for a way to bring lasting peace to Vietnam." "I know that some believe that I should have ended the war immediately after the inauguration by simply ordering our forces home from Vietnam." "This would have been an easy thing to do." "It might have been a popular thing to do, but I would have betrayed my solemn responsibility as president of the United States if I had done so." "¶ Look what's happening out in the streets ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ Hey, I'm dancing down the streets ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ Ain't it amazing all the people I meet?" "¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ One generation got old ¶" "¶ One generation got soul ¶" "¶ This generation got no destination to hold ¶" "¶ Pick up the cry ¶" "¶ Hey, now it's time for you and me ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "¶ Who will take it from you?" "¶" "¶ We will, and who are we?" "¶" "¶ Got a revolution, got a revolution ¶" "¶ We're volunteers of America ¶" "¶ Volunteers of America ¶" "¶ Volunteers of America ¶" "¶ Volunteers of America, yeah ¶" "¶ Got a revolution ¶" "Cavett:" "Richard Nixon, that great war ender, implemented a policy of withdrawing troops even as he escalated bombing raids to scare the North Vietnamese into negotiating on our terms." "On April 30, 1970, he announced the invasion of Cambodia to disrupt Communist supply lines." "College campuses across the country exploded in protest." "On May 4, the Ohio National Guard shot and killed 4 unarmed student demonstrators and wounded 9 others at Kent State University." "I do sit here night after night and not give my opinion at times when I would like to because it does bore somewhat, and it is more interesting to see what the guests have to say, I think." "But it seems to me that when you equate, as he did, at least in the public's mind, the war over there, where soldiers are shooting at enemy soldiers, with our other enemies of America on the campus," "that a terribly unfortunate equation has been made there, which in some minds that are unable to make distinctions can result in shooting of soldiers by other soldiers' enemy and shooting by National Guard people of teenage girls and young men," "and I just think it's terrible." "Well, I think the situation in Kent is tragic and terrible." "I couldn't use strong enough language to say how I feel about it, and I was just sick when I heard it." "I just--I went to my room and went-- and knelt in prayer." "And I said, "Oh, God, what's happening to us that this could happen in America?"" "Yeah." "That, uh, that--that they would shoot some of these kids, but I also see that some of these things at the universities are not becoming dissent anymore, they're becoming mob action, and this is very dangerous." "And this is going-- and the violence" "[Applause] and, uh, the violen-- the violence that some of them are protesting in Vietnam, they are using violence here." "I know there are dangerous elements, and I think those who break in and burn up, say, a professor's papers that he's worked his lifetime on and so on, I hope they get the limit of the law" "in their punishment." "Uh, On the other hand, I wonder what you say to the students who say, "We have politics" ""and politicians and the administration" ""on the one hand saying lower your voices, violence is not the answer."" "On the other hand, the same administration downgrades the Paris peace talks and widens the war." "I am going to take the president at his word that he's not widening the war, that he actually is trying to shorten the war and bring American troops home." "Naftali:" "This interview is a week after the president has announced that the United States has invaded Cambodia, which for many Americans was the final straw." "This was the escalation that wasn't supposed to happen in a period of declining American commitment in Vietnam." "The country is at a boiling point." "Logevall:" "There's no question the administration miscalculated and did not anticipate what the response would be to the Cambodian incursion, to the expansion of the war." "I mean, What--what-- what what they're-- what they're doing-- what the administration is doing is expanding the war even as it's contracting the war." "I know that viewers constantly disturbed by the fact that there is a great deal of opinion expressed on shows like this." "And, uh, why don't we have someone on to give the administration's side?" "It happens that a lot of our guests are in show business, and a lot of the guests on a show like this do have opinions that are critical of any current administration, it seems, and certainly this one." "I--I would like the administration's view to be told." "If Herb Klein is listening right now," "I would like to invite someone to come on this show and say whatever he would like to say because a lot of us are very confused and would like to know." "[Applause]" "I watch you often." "In fact, I was watching you the other night, and, uh" "You were." "your very fine interview with Dr. Graham." "You knew that you would the Herb Klein" "I was talking about then." "I had some suspicion." "When you looked out and said" "Yeah." "I wonder, I guess right off the bat, if the president had any idea of the upheaval that would be caused in this country by the, uh, Cambodian move." "Well, I think no one could anticipate the amount of upheaval because there were other things that added into it since." "The Kent State incident would be one of those things." "On the other hand, if you recall what the president said, that he felt that the decision he had to make in cleaning out these sanctuaries, which have been Communist strongholds, was one in which he was moving" "in a way which he felt, uh, had to be divorced from politics." "He would rather be feeling that he is doing the right thing for American boys than to worry about the political consequences at this point." "Hoes the president ever discussed with you the possibility of abandoning the war there?" "The reason that you say you can't withdraw right now is that to do so would be to allow perhaps the greatest bloodbath that ever took place." "You'd just welcome the Communists to come in and run over the area." "[Applause]" "It--it should be understood that the only key objective we really have is to bring-- we'd like to negotiate a peace as rapidly as possible, and we'd like to see that the people of South Vietnam have a free choice of their government." "Can--can you stay with us for a bit?" "Sure." "The gentleman who can join us now is a gentleman who was decorated in Vietnam as a war hero, and, uh, he--it might be interesting to talk to him." "All right." "I understand he's an opponent, as a matter of fact, at this point, isn't he?" "I--I--yes, he is." "Yes." "Well, I heard that we've booked a guy on the show who was actually there and in the war and I thought," ""Oh, we've had several of those before,"" "but I wasn't quite prepared for the fineness of the impression" "John Kerry made when he came on." "With all due respect to the director of communications," "I think the time has come for this country to try and cease to operate on the basis of its paranoia to Communism." "And quite frankly, when I was in Vietnam," "I have to say to you that I just could never feel that I was there fighting to save that country, to make it safe for democracy." "The only feeling you could have was that you were like the German, that you were there occupying another country." "And really this feeling of imperialism is one that actually does pervade much of the world now when they look at the United States of America." "[Applause]" "I think what you have to recognize is, uh, the policy's changed since then, and the policy is to build up the ability of those people to defend themselves in their own area." "Mr. Klein, this is really the tragedy because the fact of the matter is that really the only change in the policy has been a change from admitting that we were there to try and defend that country from Communism to changing it" "so that we can get out of there somehow to save face for the United States of America." "Naftali:" "The problem is that Richard Nixon and his then national security advisor Henry Kissinger are going to try to find a way to get out of Vietnam without losing Vietnam." "You have two powerful people in the White House who are playing Risk, the game of Risk, to try to control the outcome of the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia, and they forget that it's not a board game." "The objectives were never very clear to start with, and, uh--I mean, in the broadest sense, they were to contain the advance of Communism, but when you got down deeper and looked at it, it became difficult." "We could be involved in Southeast Asia for the next decade if our objective is the establishment of a government which would perfectly meet some blueprint of our own devising in South Vietnam." "This is a country with an unstable political history." "It's a country with an unstable political future." "There are divisions in that country that are not going to be healed by anything that we do." "At some point, these people are going to have to settle their own political future without our interference." "[Applause]" "In 1967, Secretary of Defense McNamara assigned his officials to write a top secret history of how we got into Vietnam." "Composed over two years, it was 7,000 pages in length, full of secret documents." "Well, one copy has been leaked to The "New York Times,"" "which yesterday began publishing a digest of it." "Cavett:" "And now we return to the bombshell that was the Pentagon Papers." "The reaction of the president and his cronies was strange." "While there were many strange things going on in the Nixon White House, this was just one of them." "A name has now come out as the possible source of the "Times" Pentagon document." "It is that of Daniel Ellsberg, 40 years old, one-time Marine, later a top policy analyst for the Defense and State Departments during the Vietnam buildup and now a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." "Will you welcome, please, the man who, uh, made the whole thing possible" "Dr. Daniel Ellsberg." "[Applause]" "Logevall:" "Ellsberg himself has turned against the war and is feeling that this thing has to be ended." ""What can I do as somebody who was supportive" ""of the war effort, who understood what was" ""happening and turned against it," ""what can I now do to somehow help bring this into an end?"" "I think that the very revelation of the papers strikes at the system of secrecy which has, in fact, been essential to perpetuating this particular policy." "It's a policy that, I think, no president has felt confident he could afford to expose to the public in a frank way and get public support." "Could I ask you a kind of broad question, then, of going back a bit about when does the public have the biggest gripe coming about being knowingly deceived?" "That's--that's very hard to answer." "Uh, we're talking about a record of 25 years of untruth covering 5 administrations." "One can ask which years did that untruth involve the public in more or less killing and dying than in other years." "And obviously that's been very high in the last few years." "I think they have a gripe going back to the Truman administration, though, when it comes to Truman's involvement of this country in the support of what the administration clearly recognized internally as American involvement in a French attempt to reestablish" "its colonial rule over Indochina." "Yeah." "No one wants responsibility for losing the war or for failing, as we have brought failure on ourselves in Indochina-- no newspaperman, no congressman, no president, no member of the public, and that fear of responsibility" "has kept people who had the power to get us out from using that power as they should have, I think." "Cavett, voice-over:" "The reaction to Ellsberg was, um um, from one extreme to the other." "Guests were divided on it, too." "My friend, as he became, Barry Goldwater, uh, was radically opposed to the release, and he was hardly alone." "A man like Ellsberg, um-- well, what kind of a man do you think he is?" "Well, I'd compare him to Benedict Arnold." "[Laughter]" "R-really?" "Well, it's against the law to take top-secret material." "That's as plain as that." "It's like saying you can't drive 100 miles an hour down Broadway, but you do it." "Now you know you're violating the law when you do it," "But in a case like Ells--Ellsberg-- whatever his name is-- deliberately taking what he knew to be top-secret materials, I don't care what his motivation was." "I'm certain it wasn't money, and I have to--if he wants to--to--to keep saying he was motivated patriotically, I'd have to question, uh, his idea of what patriotism is." "Oh, I had people write in and say," ""It's obvious you're a Commie," on the one hand, and people writing in and saying," ""I'm glad you agree with me and other right-wingers,"" "believe it or not." "My favorite piece of hate mail is from Waco, Texas, a prominent capital of hate mail, I learned." "I remember it accurately." "My secretary tried to hide from me." ""Dear Dick Cavett, you little sawed-off faggot, Communist shrimp."" "And there was a return address, and I wrote back, "I'm not sawed-off."" "[Laughter]" "It's a strange feeling I got yesterday when looking at the front page of The "New York Times"" "and saw Johnson and Nixon walking towards the library." "And they looked so proud and happy, what great things they have done." "Johnson--Johnson lengthened the war 6 years." "Nixon has started 3 wars since he's in there." "[Laughter and applause]" "You still--at one point, you had stopped reading the papers, you said." "It was just--it was too much bad news." "Well, I don't read the news at night when I go to bed because it's just a remake of what's been going on all day." "Now, uh..." "[Laughter]" "I don't want to hear it over again." "Yeah." "You know, and they show you a battlefield." "There are boys laying there dead and injured." "I don't want to see that when I go to bed at night." "I have enough problems going to bed without that." "[Laughter]" "Now we're finding that one of the terrible ironies of this war is that if it's, uh-- maybe the only thing worse than having to go to war is, in this case, to come home from it." "Uh, after looking forward to the glorious day when they get back home, a lot of the veterans have found that things turned pretty sour very fast for them." "Um, they've described themselves as confused and disoriented and unable to adjust and strangers to their friends and to their parents, uncomfortable among their old friends, unemployed, um, treated as undesirables in many cases." "They've said, some of them, that they've gotten heroes' welcomes that nauseated them because they didn't feel like heroes and confusion, uh, on the other hand at people who called them murderers and didn't want them around." "We're not sure what will happen tonight." "We're not here to prove anything." "We're not here to debate the rightness or the wrongness of the war." "That's been done everywhere, as you know, um, but we're going to talk to 4 guys who've been there." "If we come up with any kind of common denominator, maybe that's all to the good." "I don't know what will happen tonight." "I know they don't all agree with each other." "When you went over, you felt you were and we were and you were going to help?" "Right." "Uh, when I went over there" "I was over there December 13, '67, and I came back January 30, '69" "I was one of the lucky ones to be there for the big show, '68, the Tet Offensive, where a lot of people got rubbed out, you know?" "And, uh, I say this, you know-- we keep sending all this money over there to troops." "The war could have been won by 1965 if the people in the White House-- the governors and what else have you up there-- would stop playing around." "While they're trying to get a vote through or decide, there's guys 18 to 25 years old dying out there." "And, uh, the decisions are too long." "They play around too much, while--they're playing with our lives." "I was actually ashamed of taking part over there in Vietnam and being in the Arm--being in the Army." "Like I say, that's how I feel." "I was ashamed of being over there and ashamed of being in the Army, for going over there." "And, uh, I never-- I'd go to jail before I'd go there again." "That's how I feel." "Cavett:" "We've always heard that, um, demonstrations in this country hurt the morale of the guys over there." "Who wants to say whether it did or not?" "Does or not?" "I know--well, one demonstration-- sir, I was in Vietnam when the November 1969" "Moratorium Demonstration, where everybody stuck a little ballot in a coffin with the names of somebody that was killed there, and that was something that I resented very intensely because I knew a lot of people that were killed there," "and I resent anybody using their names because they felt a lot of different ways about the war-- using their names for any reason at all, for any political reason." "You know, you got to understand something about this war." "There are guys that are fighting this war that go out in the field, and that's it, man." "You are out in the field." "You don't have hot meals." "You don't have the life of Riley." "You're out there." "You're humping the bush, that's all, and you're fighting every single day." "It--it's no picnic." "Everybody--they're so willing to commit our guys, you know?" "Support our boys in 'Nam." "That's what--that can be taken two ways." "Support our boys in 'Nam." "As President Nixon would say, you know, keep them over there and wave the flag for what they're doing, but the guys over there, when they hear" ""Support our boys," that means one thing." "At least it did with the Marines I was with" ""Bring me home."" "And if we think that when the last troops are out of Vietnam that the war is really over, it really isn't." "It's going to live in the hearts and minds of the people who've been there for the rest of their lives." "It's going to affect their children." "It's going to affect our entire culture and our society." "There's a legacy from this war." "There have been legacies from other wars, but this is a very special legacy." "Crowd: ¶ O beautiful for spacious skies ¶" "Everybody sing!" "Clark:" "In 1982, I was at the opening day of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial." "I was in uniform as an Army Lieutenant Colonel." "I'd finished my battalion command." "I was wearing my Purple Heart." "It had been, uh, 12 1/2 years since I'd been shot." "I was basically over my wounds, and I looked, and there were all these people, and they were wearing grubby jungle fatigues and old field jackets and they had" "1st Cave patches on them and FTA and long hair, and they were out there, too." "I didn't understand it." "I didn't understand it." "Those were our people that were damaged by the war." "They are the ones that didn't have the support system, the mentoring, the supportive family, the career opportunities, the--the sense of purpose that I carried to it." "They were just there because the country asked them to be there, and there was a terrible impact." "Crowd: ¶ Shining sea ¶" "I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia." "Cavett:" "The Vietnam War officially ended in January of 1973." "National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and his Vietnamese counterparts from the North and South signed peace accords in Paris." "However, the North Vietnamese broke the ceasefire almost immediately." "Fighting continued until 1975 when the North finally conquered the South and reunited the country under Communist rule." "Suppose a parent of someone killed in the Vietnam War said to you, "Mr. Kissinger," ""tell me one reason since politics deals in results," ""tell me one result that we have of that that makes it worth the death of my son."" "Well, of course, you have to remember when we came into office," "32,000 had already been killed." "True." "And, uh, when we were in office, to be sure, 14,000 more were killed." "However, 9,000 of those in the first year, no matter what we did, would not have been able to change the situation." "So what we intended to do is to extricate the United States from this war without at the same time creating such a crisis of confidence in the United States." "We attempted to achieve what we considered an honorable solution in which we withdrew about 150,000 troops a year, and the one requirement we made is that we would not overthrow a government that our predecessors had put into office." "We hadn't put it into office." "When you watch the Kissinger interview, you'll notice he talks about how people didn't understand what he and Nixon were doing and how they felt they had to do this to withdraw, and Kissinger in this interview with Cavett" "doesn't seem to show any emotional intelligence about the consequences of his strategic thinking." "Can't you just about give a yes/no answer to the Vietnam War was not worth it?" "Uh, you have to ask yourself when-- at what point?" "If I go back to '65, was it worth it to put 550,000 troops into Vietnam?" "Mm-hmm." "I would have to say probably not." "Uh, was it worth it for us to attempt to extricate ourselves honorably," "I would have to say in retrospect, yes." "Mm-hmm." "That was the problem that we faced." "Yeah." "Logevall:" "In terms of what the war means for Americans today, I think it continues, um, to be to some extent an--an open wound in the American body politic." "Naftali:" "Indeed, one could argue that some of the divisions in our country today are a product of the Vietnam period." "Because the Vietnam quagmire always comes back whenever people begin to doubt that there's an exit strategy." "One of the lessons for everyone, including the military, of Vietnam was don't get into something unless you know how to get out of it." "I served at West Point, and when we were sending fine young men over to that war-- and I served in that war, and I saw fine young men not come home." "Cavett:" "Yeah." "If you look at my postmortems, they involve the fallacy of bad policymaking by politicians who simply didn't understand the world they were living in." "As I understood it, they thought that incremental resistance would just sort of let the problem go away." "Yes, and you get in deeper and deeper, and the outcome is inconclusive and the sacrifices grow." "Clark:" "How much did we learn?" "Not enough." "And to see us go into Iraq in 2003 or Afghanistan in 2001 and end up in a counterinsurgency campaign and not have appreciated those lessons and have to relearn them the hard way was a very painful thing to see." "Leaving here, you meet a mother who says," ""You're General Haig, aren't you?" ""You and your friend Kissinger" ""I'd like to get you in the same room." ""My son had his brains blown out in Vietnam." "What did he die for anyway?"" "Well, I would probably say the same thing that Solzhenitsyn said to the European press before he came to America, and they said "What are you going to tell the young people of America about this war?" Mm-hmm." "And he said, "I will tell them they fought for freedom."" "Had we not gone into Vietnam, we would not be free today?" "No, that's not-- that's not the issue." "The issue is that those young patriots who served and the families of those young patriots must be proud of the sacrifices they made." "Now what we have to do as a people is dedicate ourselves to not putting in positions of political power unqualified men and women who get us into these difficult situations and then don't have the courage to get us out properly." "I've had so many compliments about" ""You were brave enough to have this on about the war and that"" "and first one to have veterans and the first one to-- the phrase "cutting edge" inevitably comes up." "I didn't consciously do that." "I--I just couldn't imagine how you could not." "Announcer:" "This program was made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from..." "To find out more about this program and watch streaming video, visit..." "This program is available on DVD." "To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS."