In The Year Of The Pig (1968)
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00:02:00I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm
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00:03:00of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you out of
00:03:30I want to underscore the word makers.
00:03:40And it takes a lot of doing to make peace.
00:03:45It takes a good deal of hard work, building like a mighty cathedral stone by stone, block
00:03:51by block.
00:03:54And I sometimes wonder why we Americans enjoy punishing ourselves so much with our own criticism.
00:04:08This is a pretty good land.
00:04:11I'm not saying you never had it so good, but that is a fact, isn't it?
00:05:11♪♪♪
00:05:39♪♪♪
00:05:59I think the most significant aspect has been the suppression of political activity,
00:06:05who forced people to go underground and to understand politics only as a revolutionary struggle and not on a political struggle.
00:06:15In other words, you can only have a chance to change the regime only by revolution and not by an electoral process or a democratic process.
00:06:25One of the most important things concerning Ho Chi Minh is the fact that he spent so long years out of his country
00:06:34and that nevertheless he has the touch and feel of the peasantry of his country, of the village.
00:06:41For village life in Vietnam is the essential of the life of the nation.
00:06:47And I will just give you one anecdote to show you that connection.
00:06:51When he, for the first time, met a press, gave a press conference in Hanoi in 1945,
00:07:02when he came for the first time as a leader of his nation in front of the public,
00:07:10he said to the people there, I can't tell you what you have to do, but I can show it to you.
00:07:19Put his thumb on the table and said, if everywhere where you put your thumb on the sacred earth of Vietnam there is a plant growing,
00:07:32then we will succeed, if not, not.
00:07:35Now this is again one of the points where Ho, on one hand, is a Marxist economist who knows the importance of the basic production,
00:07:47and on the other hand, a Confucian scholar.
00:07:51Because what you have to have in mind to understand that idea of the thumb on the earth is, in simple Chinese proverb,
00:08:01a thumb square of planting rice is more precious than a thumb square of gold.
00:08:10We are now in a very interesting place about Ho Chi Minh, because in this place, which is now a locksmith, a key maker,
00:08:20was 14 years ago the place where he founded and edited the Paria, the first newspaper he edited.
00:08:33And in this very place, the life of Ho Chi Minh changed, in my opinion,
00:08:39where Ho Chi Minh, who came in 1917 in Paris as a peasant, an Asian peasant, became really a revolutionary and an internationalist.
00:08:54He was born in a poor and little village at Kim Lien, near Vinh, a now destroyed city of central Vietnam.
00:09:04He was the son of a very poor man, but a man who was a Mandarin, a literate man,
00:09:11and this man was condemned by the French because of his nationalism.
00:09:16And all the life of Ho Chi Minh was directed by this very injustice made to his father by the French colonizers.
00:09:28In this family, they were nationalists since the very beginning.
00:09:32He left Vietnam, went on a boat, landed in New York, in London, at Le Havre,
00:09:39and after that in Paris, where he became first a socialist, after that a communist.
00:09:47He went on over to the White House, and it came back with the very tight round hand of Franklin Roosevelt,
00:09:53I want no French returned to Indochina. FDR.
00:10:00And I remember the excitement I felt that this was probably the first clear U.S. policy toward a Southeast Asian state.
00:10:12Now the thing that I think we fail to recognize is that Ho Chi Minh, communist or whatnot,
00:10:19is considered by the people of Vietnam, and I'm speaking now of millions in South Vietnam, as the George Washington of his country.
00:10:28He's the man that they think threw off the French, the colonialism.
00:10:34Just as we had our 1776, they had theirs in the 1940s.
00:10:44He also led an underground movement against the Japanese who had occupied Vietnam and the whole Indochina Peninsula during World War II.
00:10:56And whether we like him or not, whether we like the particular economic system or social system that he might develop or not,
00:11:06we must remember that he is indeed considered by many, the peasants, the small people, the little people in South Vietnam and North Vietnam,
00:11:18as the George Washington of his country.
00:11:23General Gracie was the principal British officer responsible for accepting the surrender of the Japanese in French Indochina, south of the 16th parallel.
00:11:36And that was his mission.
00:11:41But after he arrived in Saigon with his troops, he found that the French were without means of maintaining law and order.
00:11:53And so he, as I understand it and as I recall it, he took the weapons that he derived from the Japanese and turned them over to French military officers and men.
00:12:08If this had not been done, in all probability, the French could not have recaptured their control at Saigon.
00:12:17I met Ho Chi Minh for the first time in Hanoi at the end of 1945, sent there by D'Argenlieu, Admiral D'Argenlieu, High Commissioner sent by de Gaulle in Saigon,
00:12:33wanted me to contact the Viet Minh leader for the first time.
00:12:38I said to him, I am sent to you by the High Commissioner in the name of General de Gaulle to tell you that we want Vietnam to join us in the French Union.
00:12:52Looked at me and he said, the French Union? What's that? Is it a circle or is it a square?
00:13:01That was a test, because there is a Chinese proverb, a lot of Chinese proverbs, which identify heaven and intelligence with the circle and earth and solidity with the square.
00:13:16Is it an idea or is it a fact? Is it somewhere?
00:13:21And so I answered, and I think that it's one of the occasions when Ho Chi Minh has been just a little surprised.
00:13:27I answered, I don't know. He said, but what are you doing here? I said, I come to ask you, because we have to build it together.
00:13:36Towards the end of November of 1946, when the Admiral commanding the French fleet in the Bay of Tonkin, in his words, decided to teach the Vietnamese government a hard lesson,
00:13:50and the fleet stood off of Hai Phong and shell the city until between 6 and 10,000 were killed, he said, I have no army, it's not true now, I have no army, 1945, I have no finance, I have no diplomacy, I have no public instruction.
00:14:15I have just hatred, and I will not disarm it until you give me confidence in you.
00:14:25Now, this is the thing on which I would insist, because it's still alive in his memory as in mine, for every time Ho Chi Minh has trusted us, we betrayed him.
00:14:37Here you had a country which was not really just divided at the 17th parallel, you had fought the Indochina War, and all the best and most talented Vietnamese of a generation had faced in 1946 and 1947 the alternative of the French or the Viet Minh.
00:14:58The best of a generation, the kind of young men who would join up the day after Pearl Harbor in this country, are you going to fight to kick out the French, or are you going to be a French puppet?
00:15:09So the most talented people of the generation all signed up and the Viet Minh won this war, and it was an enormously popular national war, and at the end of it they came up with a dynamic society which had won a war, which was tested, which was tough, which had brought up to the top the very best of a generation.
00:15:28Well, there are some similarities between the French effort in the Indochina War in Vietnam and the Americans.
00:15:38The Americans are just so much more powerful than the French were.
00:15:42They have so much more artillery, they have so much more air power, they have so many more men, they have so much more wealth than the French ever had, so that there are not going to be any Dien Bien Phu's in the American presence there.
00:15:58In Washington, the U.S. Secretary of Defense...
00:16:01The equipment which we have sent to Indochina is highly technical, so we are sending technicians as a temporary training force.
00:16:11We are sending planes, but no pilots.
00:16:14We are not sending combat troops.
00:16:20We have seen no reason for the abandonment of the so-called Navarre Plan.
00:16:27That plan, as you may recall, broadly speaking, was a two-year plan and contemplated a very substantial buildup of local forces and their training and equipment.
00:16:39The French moved into Dien Bien Phu in 1953, in January of 1953, a parachute battalion came into the area.
00:16:47The idea was there were two aspects of it, one to control the piece of ground and then to prevent the Viet Minh from sweeping on into Laos.
00:16:57I do not expect that there is going to be a communist victory in Indochina.
00:17:05By that, I don't mean that there may not be local affairs where one side or the other will win victories.
00:17:13But in terms of a communist domination of Indochina, that I do not accept for the probability.
00:17:18The French generals did not believe that artillery could be brought to bear insufficient quantity,
00:17:25so correspondingly they were not active in their patrolling outside of the particular perimeter.
00:17:30The feature was to keep the focus on the area, not to cause the quick rush of the battle position, but to build the particular battle position.
00:17:40The French miscalculated, as I think did we, in the degree of sophistication of the weaponry that was deployed on the high ground.
00:17:51They didn't think they could get these pieces up there, but they did somehow.
00:17:57The Battle of Dien Bien Phu is a significant phenomenon in military history,
00:18:04and from all of the standpoints that one views war, it achieved a particular political objective in the full Clausewitzian sense of the term.
00:18:16It represented a tremendous logistical effort on the part of the North Vietnamese, or of General Giap,
00:18:25to move the artillery pieces, which changed the balance of this particular battle significantly.
00:18:32The forces of aggression seem to be concentrating just at one point, at Dien Bien Phu,
00:18:37where the resistance is extremely gallant against overwhelming odds.
00:18:43The French began the war as a colonial war.
00:18:46They tried many times to change this very nature of the war, trying to change it in a civil war,
00:18:55between the right and the left in Vietnam, and after that, in international war, a crusade against communism.
00:19:06It was clear that the French were in deep trouble at Dien Bien Phu,
00:19:10and then Admiral Radford thought that if we went in with air, we could knock them out.
00:19:16Senator Morton, as you know from my letter to you, we were very interested in a meeting
00:19:22that was called by Mr. Secretary Dulles and Admiral Radford, in which you played a part,
00:19:28and in which eight members of the Congress of the United States were present, five senators and three representatives.
00:19:33I wonder if you could give us your best recollection of who was at that meeting.
00:19:37Senator Morton, sound one, take one.
00:19:41There was a meeting. I've forgotten the exact date. This can be easily ascertained.
00:19:48I assume that their records have been kept.
00:19:53The burden of it was Admiral Radford's feeling that we should really move in
00:20:01and bring active support to the French, specifically air support from carriers.
00:20:12Carriers were available in the nearby area. How many missions could have been mounted, I don't know.
00:20:20I didn't get into the military details, and it was felt that the artillery that they had on the
00:20:27high ground could be destroyed by air attack.
00:20:32And they failed always, because they were always seen by the Vietnamese as a foreign power
00:20:39trying to get back his colonial power. That is why they lost the war at Dien Bien Phu.
00:20:47Dien Bien Phu has fallen. I join with you in paying tribute to the gallant defenders.
00:20:55May it be given us to play a worthy part to defend the values for which they gave their lives.
00:21:02The defense of Dien Bien Phu of 57 days and nights will go down in history as one of the most heroic of all time.
00:21:13The defenders, composed of French and native forces, inflicted staggering losses on the enemy.
00:21:22In Job's treatment, Job's writing about this, it appears that he was well ready.
00:21:29In Dien Bien Phu, he was ready if he had chosen to assault, and did not some eight weeks before the final movement took place.
00:21:42And I would submit that the reason for this is that Job and Ho Chi Minh understood the political
00:21:48nature of this particular battle, and they wanted the politics, the public opinion in France,
00:21:55and in the rest of the world, among the other powers, to build,
00:21:59to give this a great deal more importance than it had militarily.
00:22:55I think the American people this fall, when they elect a Congress, all the Congressmen,
00:23:08one-third of the Senates, regardless of whether they're going to vote Democrat or Republican,
00:23:14should ask those Senators and Congressmen, say, well, Mr., if we send you to Washington,
00:23:22are you going to continue sending American money to nations which, in turn, shift the sinews of
00:23:35economic and military strength to Red China, which is running the war in Indochina, keeping in mind
00:23:42that if we lose Indochina, Mr. Jenkins, we will lose the Pacific, and we'll be an island in a communist sea.
00:23:51The situation in the area as we found it was that it was subject to the so-called
00:23:56domino theory. That meant that if one nation went, then another nation would go, and so on.
00:24:02We're trying to change that so it won't be the case. That's the whole theory of collective security.
00:24:09Agreement between the Commander-in-Chief of the French Union forces in Indochina
00:24:14and the Commander-in-Chief of the People's Army of Vietnam on the cessation of hostilities in
00:24:19Vietnam, signed in Geneva, July 20, 1954. Article 14. Pending the general elections which will bring
00:24:30about the unification of Vietnam, the conduct of civil administration in each regrouping zone
00:24:37shall be in the hands of the party whose forces are to be regrouped there in virtue of the present
00:24:42agreement. Article 16. With effect from the date of entry into force of the present agreement,
00:24:50the introduction into Vietnam of any troop reinforcements and additional military personnel
00:24:56is prohibited. Article 18. With effect from the date of entry into force of the present agreement,
00:25:05the establishment of new military bases is prohibited throughout Vietnam territory.
00:25:11We support the objectives that are involved in this thing because it was done in the Eisenhower
00:25:18administration in 1954. We were not signers of the so-called Class B treaty or convention
00:25:27at Geneva, Switzerland, but we did make a formal and solemn pledge that we were going to safeguard
00:25:36the independence and the freedom of Vietnam. Now we can renege if we like,
00:25:43but what will happen to our credibility in the world if we take that course?
00:25:49Every day someone jumps up and shouts and says,
00:25:53tell us what is happening in Vietnam and why are we in Vietnam and how did you get us into Vietnam?
00:26:00Well, I didn't get you into Vietnam. You've been in Vietnam 10 years.
00:26:09Saigon was in a state of civil war. The rebel Binh Xuyen movement tried to incite the people
00:26:14to overthrow the government. In 36 hours non-stop fighting, 500 were killed, more than a thousand
00:26:20wounded. Vietnam Premier Diem was still in office when we received these pictures.
00:26:39Unfortunately, the West does not agree about Saigon. General Healy, on the spot commander
00:26:44for France, is instructed to oppose Diem. Malcolm Macdonald has flown there reportedly to do the
00:26:49same, whereas America stands behind Premier Diem. Meanwhile, Saigon suffers the agonies
00:26:54of civil war. In Cannes is the absentee Emperor Bao Dai. First reported to post,
00:27:01Bao Dai may stage a comeback. As it is, Vietnam seems ripe for communist invasion.
00:27:12Diem, I said before, was the man of the hour. Why?
00:27:16Once colonialism came to an end, through the victory of the Viet Minh against the French
00:27:21at Dien Bien Phu, and through the agreement in Geneva, this trend in Vietnamese history,
00:27:28which favored the communists exclusively, could be broken. Since colonialism, the creator
00:27:35of communism, so to speak, was now dead, there was a chance that other forces might be able to
00:27:44compete with Ho Chi Minh. However, under certain conditions, they had to be as nationalistic as
00:27:53Ho Chi Minh, they had to be free of the taint of collaboration with the French, they had to be
00:28:00the opposite of puppets of colonialism. Now, Diem was precisely that man. A lot of it was rather
00:28:09skillfully done in public relations, I think, there's no doubt about that. There was sort of
00:28:13a cult of the little fellow in the sharkskin suit and the little Mandarin who's going to
00:28:18stop the Reds. And there was a great many articles along this line, you know, sort of Ngo Dinh,
00:28:23Diem, our man in Saigon. You have exemplified in your corner of the world, patriotism of the
00:28:30highest order. You have brought to your great task of organizing your country, the greatest
00:28:38of courage, the greatest of statesmanship, qualities that have aroused our admiration
00:28:43and make us indeed glad to welcome you. I thank you very much. Part of my involvement with Vietnam
00:28:51was to be active in founding the so-called American Friends of Vietnam, a private organization
00:28:59dedicated to the promotion of understanding, spread of information, and support of Diem.
00:29:06I was, in fact, more or less running the organization as chairman of the executive
00:29:12committee. The American Friends of Vietnam was a lobby group set up, I think, about 1955,
00:29:19really to a lobby for the Ngo Dinh, Diem regime in this country. And I think the particularly
00:29:25interesting thing about it was it was so much of it and so many of its more distinguished names
00:29:29were liberal names, people like Max Lerner and Arthur Schlesinger, a senator, a John F. Kennedy,
00:29:36people like that. And this gave, of course, the Diem government a very good liberal umbrella.
00:29:42I mean, the sensitivities and the sensibilities of many liberal people who might otherwise have
00:29:47been dubious about that regime were eased off. The Diem regime got, right from the start, I think,
00:29:54the benefit of the doubt.
00:30:00It is on the same plan that the interests of Vietnam are identical
00:30:07with the interests of the people of the free world. It is on this plan...
00:30:13It is on this plan that your and our fight is one and the same.
00:30:28We too will continue to fight communism.
00:30:35It is not, it might be really repeated here, there is no two Vietnams,
00:30:40there is only one Vietnam temporarily divided in Geneva in 1954 between a free zone with the
00:30:46North Vietnam and an occupied zone occupied by the French. But then the French had still,
00:30:52after Geneva, the jurisdiction over South Vietnam because they could not hand it over to a regime
00:30:58which did not exist. It is not even mentioned in the Geneva agreements. The regime of Saigon
00:31:03is only a temporary one in waiting for election. The refusal was amply justified if only because
00:31:12the kind of election envisaged by the Geneva agreement of 1954, a free election, could not
00:31:21have been held. Anyone who thinks that a free election was possible in communist North Vietnam
00:31:29knows little of how communists operate and could have fallen into a Moscow peeping trap.
00:31:37The United States could not agree today any more than in 1956 to legitimizing communist control
00:31:46of all Vietnam by a device of a communist style election. And you ought to have sat with me on
00:31:53the Foreign Relations Committee in 1956 when our intelligence forces brought in their reports
00:32:00warning that if the election called for by the Geneva Accords for July 1956 were held, Ho Chi
00:32:08Minh would be elected president in South Vietnam by at least 80% of the vote. And our country that
00:32:15boasts about believing in self-determination used its power and its prestige and its influence
00:32:23really to get our first puppet government under GM not to cooperate in holding those elections.
00:32:29That's just a matter of historic record. As you know, when Ngo Dinh Diem and Nhu were finally
00:32:36killed in 1963, some 50,000 to 60,000, and the precise number is not readily available,
00:32:44but some 50,000 to 60,000 political prisoners were released from prisons in South Vietnam
00:32:51subsequent to this. Elements of the rotating governments that followed the death of Diem and
00:32:59Nhu have indicated that most of those people were not Viet Cong sympathizers in any way,
00:33:06shape, or form, which would indicate that all political activity that was antithetical to
00:33:13Diem and Nhu was met either with murder in the South or imprisonment. And from 1958,
00:33:22we see the existence, confirmed by some American experts and some broadcast from Manoram, of a
00:33:28national front for liberation of South Vietnam. It was in fact a confederation of all the forces
00:33:34who for years were struggling against the Diem regime, and it was not, as it has been said too
00:33:41much and too often, the political arm of Hanoi. The national front for liberation included the
00:33:48former remnants of the political-religious sects Cao Da and Hao, the Binh Suy and Thu,
00:33:54the former Viet Minh, the Democratic Party, the Radical Socialist Party, and various other
00:33:59elements who are united in the common aim to overthrow the regime, to create a coalition
00:34:05government, a democratic regime in the South, in order to be able to discuss with the North
00:34:11the provision of Geneva. That means the end of the occupation regime in the South
00:34:16and peaceful reunification between the two parts of Vietnam.
00:34:22The front is not what you would call a puppet of Hanoi. The two organizations, and I do stress that
00:34:29they are two organizations, work very closely together. Many of their aims are parallel aims,
00:34:36but their ideas do not always coincide, and indeed sometimes their policies are in conflict.
00:34:44A land reform was a total failure. There were sporadic attempts to try and deal with land,
00:34:50but they never had any real support from Diem. What he did was that he gave to the
00:34:561,200,000 tenants some land. Actually, he didn't give it to them. He sanctioned the fact that
00:35:07the Viet Minh had given it to them, but he made them pay for it now. The downhill trend of the
00:35:18regime is best described by the increase of corruption, by the increase of the influence
00:35:29of a neo-psychopath like his brother Nhu and his wife Madame Nhu, both of whom had a drive for power
00:35:39which I can only describe as pathological. I had once dinner with them, and Nhu told me,
00:35:47you see, we could have an opposition in Vietnam if I led it, but since I am the only intelligent
00:35:55man in South Vietnam, all my mental capacity goes into leading my brother to rule South Vietnam.
00:36:05I have nothing left to organize an opposition. Now, this kind of conceit is, of course, pathological.
00:36:12However, this man gained more and more influence over Diem, together with his wife.
00:36:20This is the kind of psychology you had in a turbulent, changing Asia. I mean, this old
00:36:25sort of Mandarin idea, you know, that I am right, I have almost this divine right to rule.
00:36:30How can you challenge what I say? Because I am incorruptible. Staley bought the strategic
00:36:35hamlet from Nhu. Nhu brought it out as a new little goody, no pun intended, but came up with
00:36:41a strategic hamlet, and this amounted to the same old approach of forced relocation, the living
00:36:47behind bars, the total regimentation of the social and the fabric of the society. One of the more
00:36:53significant things about the strategic hamlet is that they were physically and literally demolished
00:36:59by the Viet Cong after Diem and Nhu were killed. Every stick was taken down, and every piece of
00:37:06wire, and the enemy took this off to make use of it and told the people, return to your ancestral
00:37:11homes. And at that time, they began to take control, effective control over the countryside.
00:37:19Diem was corrupted on vanity and power, Nhu on his own ego, Madame Nhu certainly on power.
00:37:27She was the one who really understood what they were doing the most. She was the most realistic
00:37:33one. She had no illusions about them. She was a smart, strong, dynamic woman, no illusions about
00:37:41herself. And she tended to set policy. She knew what they wanted. She didn't worry about what
00:37:46the Americans were saying, you know, be nice, do this nice popular thing. The important thing to
00:37:50her was the survival of the family, and anybody who got in the way of the survival of the family
00:37:55was a threat. In this affair, I do not think that we should worry too much, because we have
00:38:02the same fate. Whatever happens in my country, we shall not feel it alone. You also, you will feel it.
00:38:11The base of Diem was his army, which was American-supported, and American aid coming through,
00:38:16and there's the police force, and generally, and increasingly, police state technique. But there
00:38:23was no dissent. They controlled the legislature, which was a rubber stamp. About the question
00:38:29of a rubber stamp parliament, I have repeatedly said, but what wrong to rubber stamp the laws
00:38:38we approve? A major policy paper issued by the State Department in December of 1961
00:38:45stated flatly, and I quote, the years 1956 to 1960 produced something close to an economic miracle
00:38:56in South Vietnam. It is a report of progress over a few brief years, equaled by few
00:39:04young countries, end quote. It has been said by Confucius wonderfully well. He said, never
00:39:10have laws too precise, because the precision of the law gives the possibility to get around it.
00:39:17Have laws that are built by governments which are reliable, which know you, which are close to you.
00:39:26And this is how, in the organization of the Vietnamese society, the village was so essential.
00:39:32And I think that this has been the great mistake of Ngo Dinh Diem, to replace the leader of the
00:39:39village, who was the expression of the country, the expression, as they say, of the wind and the water
00:39:47of the locality. He replaced that by appointed village chiefs. Now,
00:39:54when the Viet Cong assassinated village chiefs, they were not at all village chiefs, but people
00:40:02who were not belonging there. And it was a scandal to a village that were then there.
00:40:07And so when the Viet Cong assassinated so many of those people, and I am not a man who likes
00:40:14to hear that people have been assassinated, and some of them might have been very good people,
00:40:22the majority might have been acceptable, if they had been the expression of the village.
00:40:28But at the very point where the Vietnamese nation, the Vietnamese earth,
00:40:34arises and speaks to the government, through the, not chiefs, through the representatives
00:40:41of the village, the elders of the village, at that very point where the life of the country is,
00:40:49Ngo Dinh Diem put, simply, a wet blanket of functionaries. Just at the point where was
00:41:00the life of the country, he brought the extinguishing methods of a government,
00:41:07which was not the government for the Vietnamese.
00:41:11One of the very significant events toward the end of the Diem regime, which indicated
00:41:20the degree of decay, particularly in the morale of the army, was the Battle of Ap Pac.
00:41:28It indicated that militarily the Diem regime was unable to handle the insurrection,
00:41:38and it brought about the discussions in Washington, which eventually led to the decision
00:41:45to put in our own troops and not only our equipment.
00:41:52I think the vice president's journey represented a great public service.
00:41:57There are members from both parties here today to greet him. There were members of both parties
00:42:03in his group going around the world. This was an American effort to indicate our great concern
00:42:10for the cause of freedom in significant and important countries around the world.
00:42:16We visited in several countries where the population would add up to more than three
00:42:25quarters of a billion people. We didn't see all of those people, but we saw a good many of them,
00:42:31as well as their leaders. We never heard a hostile voice, and we never shook a hostile hand.
00:42:40When Vice President Johnson, which was also part of the 61 Arrangement, when he came to Vietnam,
00:42:47he announced a series of things that the United States was going to do,
00:42:52and this is when we made a fundamental change in our policy.
00:42:57I can remember Bernard Fall in 1962 interviewing Pham Van Dam, the prime minister of North Vietnam,
00:43:04Pham Van Dam, the prime minister of North Vietnam, and talking about the American aid,
00:43:11and Pham Van Dam was sort of saying, oh, poor Diem, poor Diem, he is unpopular,
00:43:19and because he is unpopular, the Americans must give him aid, and because the Americans give him
00:43:25aid, he becomes less popular, and because he becomes less popular, the Americans must give
00:43:32him more aid, and because they give him more aid, he becomes even less popular, and Bernard Fall
00:43:36interrupted and said, that sounds like a vicious circle. Pham Van Dam paused and said, no,
00:43:42not a vicious circle, a downward spiral. I'm Roger Hilsman. I was director of intelligence
00:43:51and research in the State Department under John F. Kennedy, and then assistant secretary of state
00:43:56for Far Eastern Affairs under Kennedy, and for a while under President Johnson.
00:44:26The most dramatic was one day in Saigon when a Buddhist parade started off with a sort of a
00:44:37hypnotic chant, the yellow robe priests marching along, and then there's Stepford, a very
00:44:46frail old man in his 70s who turned out to be this priest, Quan Duc, and he assumed the lotus
00:44:53posture, and another priest stepped forward and poured gasoline over him, but I don't think
00:44:59anything really gives the flavor or the fever of that time, other than to point out that when this
00:45:05monk burned himself, Ngo Dinh Diem really believed that American television networks
00:45:12had staged this. They had paid the Buddhists to stage this burning for their own benefit. I mean,
00:45:16after all, the Americans were Diem's allies, and then suddenly a towering flame, and what was in
00:45:23the priests and the nuns in the audience moaned and prostrated themselves toward this burning
00:45:29figure, and he sat there unflinching in the smell of gasoline and of burning flesh in the air for 10
00:45:37minutes. The political effects of this were enormous. It was so dramatic it hit the headlines
00:45:44all over the world. It had enormous political consequences outside of Vietnam and inside of
00:45:51Vietnam. People thought they saw the face of Buddha in the clouds that night. People have
00:46:01spoken very much about the monks who burned themselves, but those monks who burned themselves
00:46:09burned themselves because they were incited to do it. The American idea, which was that
00:46:15sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem, as my colleague Homer Biggert had coined the phrase, I think the
00:46:20idea of that was, well, that he had become an expendable man. American policy had always been
00:46:25that he was the only man we had. Johnson had called him the Winston Churchill of Southeast
00:46:32Asia, which is a unique tribute to Mr. Churchill, and so I think that with this they had changed
00:46:39the American policy view of them that they were expendable, and what happened was, of course,
00:46:44the coup did take place on that day in November, and they were murdered, and it had taken place
00:46:50in an atmosphere where the Americans who had, in a sense, created this regime, who had given it what
00:46:56little sustenance it had, whose invention Ngo Dinh Diem had really always been, had withdrawn, because
00:47:02after all, the VC were about to take the cities without even a fight. I mean, the VC were running
00:47:07rampant over the countryside. The strategic Hamlet program was really finished. It didn't exist,
00:47:11and it was not so much that the Americans had aided the coup or created it, but as they had
00:47:19given all their aid to Siem, they had moved back, and they had said, no, we just support the
00:47:25anti-communist effort. It wasn't that they were on the side of the others, but they were no, they
00:47:29made it very clear that they would stand aside, and with that, they'd spelled the final end of that regime.
00:49:49Now, we've gone in on the assumption, this is the myth, that a friendly government has asked us to come in and
00:50:04prevent a takeover. Well, what friendly government? That government has changed half a dozen times
00:50:10since that time. It changes from week to week. No one knows just what the government is. I am very
00:50:15much impressed by the military and economic and the social programs instituted by General Kahn.
00:50:23I appreciated also the opportunity to talk with the Chief of State, General Mann.
00:50:29In other words, you cannot defeat the Communists without the support of the people.
00:50:38And to have this support, you must bring justice to the people.
00:50:53In other words, equality and freedom. How do you achieve this now?
00:51:01Justice. Banish corruption. Give to the people a higher standard of living.
00:51:23And make them feel free. Would Kennedy have done what Johnson has done? There were two things
00:51:30that he very, very much wished to avoid. One was making this an American war. As he used to say,
00:51:38it's their war, the South Vietnamese. We can give them aid, we can even give them advisors.
00:51:44But they must win it or lose it. And I think he was fully prepared to let them lose it rather than
00:51:50make it an American war. He felt that if we put Americans in there, it would drive, with their
00:51:55white faces, it would drive nationalism into the arms of communism. The second thing he wished to
00:52:01avoid was internationalizing the war, as we called it. By this, we meant bombing the North or attacking
00:52:06the North. First and foremost, because it would not work. And here, 30-some-odd months of bombing
00:52:13has shown that his judgment was right. I think that there's great danger in this country because
00:52:21of the fact that so much of our economy is geared in the military area. There is grave danger of
00:52:30a military-industrial alliance of a kind actually affecting policy.
00:52:40Now, Vietnam is the case in point. Not the only place, because we're spending $50 billion a year
00:52:49outside of Vietnam for our military. And I do think that having dropped more bombs
00:52:58on Vietnam than were dropped by all the Allied powers in World War II
00:53:03in tonnage on that small country, I mean, to me, it's just how silly can you get?
00:53:19Present arms!
00:53:49I think communist aggression must result in communist disaster, and I don't think you're
00:54:09going to get that at the conference table.
00:54:13And the world is watching us in Vietnam.
00:54:19To see if we'll put our money where our mouth is, it's just that simple.
00:54:26And I just wish that we would decide to win the war and that we would step out and close
00:54:32the port of Haiphong and hit every military remunerative target over there, and I think
00:54:37you're a better chance to bring the communists to the conference table than if we do not
00:54:43hurt them.
00:54:44Our American instinct makes us want to jump in with both feet and get an unpleasant job
00:54:49over with as soon as possible.
00:54:51But traditional oriental patience makes them willing to carry on the struggle into generation
00:54:58after generation if necessary.
00:55:04We're fighting a war over there with a commodity most precious to us and held far more cheap
00:55:13ly by the enemy, the lives of men.
00:55:17I don't think it's necessary to have an invasion of North Vietnam, and it would be just exactly
00:55:23what the enemy wants.
00:55:24He'd like us to put down 100,000 men in a field, and they put down 100,000.
00:55:28They're willing to lose half of theirs, and ours is a precious commodity, and I wouldn't
00:55:33trade one dead American for 50 dead Chinamen.
00:55:35We must fight the war from our strength, not the enemy's.
00:55:40We must fight it at least cost to ourselves and at greatest cost to the enemy.
00:55:47We must change the currency of this game from man to materiel.
00:55:51What is the greatest single problem we're facing in Vietnam?
00:55:56Well it's the despicable communist enemy, no question about it.
00:56:00And the sooner we smash him, as we should have done in Korea, if we'd done it in Korea
00:56:04in our first test of arms with communism, we wouldn't be confronted, I don't think,
00:56:09with the situation we have in Vietnam.
00:56:10Do you have respect for the Viet Cong?
00:56:12Do you think they're a good soldier?
00:56:14Well there's no question about it.
00:56:15They're willing to die readily, as all Orientals are, and their leaders will sacrifice them,
00:56:21and we won't sacrifice ours.
00:56:23The only solution I see is to use our strength, our air and naval power, in the most humane
00:56:30possible manner possible to destroy North Vietnamese capability to wage war against
00:56:38the free people of South Vietnam.
00:56:40So I think the sooner that we hit everything we can and hurt them over there, we've got
00:56:45a better chance to win that war, and that's exactly what we should do, in my opinion.
00:56:50So the harbor and Haiphong, and the entire capacity to receive outside help, close it.
00:57:06The power system that fuels every war-making facility.
00:57:10The transportation system, rails, rolling stock, bridges, yards, eliminate them.
00:57:20Every factory and every industrial installation beginning with the biggest and the best and
00:57:25never ending so long as our two bricks still stuck together.
00:57:37And if necessary, the irrigation system, on which food production largely depends.
00:57:43We must be willing to continue our bombing until we've destroyed every work of man in
00:57:47North Vietnam if this is what it takes to win the war.
00:57:51Then there was a little crisis there.
00:57:54The military thought that there was a great infiltration, and Secretary McNamara went
00:57:58out and came back and said, no, there wasn't a crisis at that time.
00:58:02But I thought it was very significant that President Johnson then appointed a committee
00:58:07to prepare a list of targets in the north in case he should decide to bomb the north.
00:58:14The more I thought about this, the more I became convinced that if there were a crisis,
00:58:19he would escalate the war.
00:58:21This is part of the steady escalation that's taken place during the last five years.
00:58:28First we sent in only advisers.
00:58:30Then it developed these advisers were also in combat.
00:58:34Then we sent in the Marines, and the first thing was said that they were there only to
00:58:38defend.
00:58:39Then the next thing was that they would shoot back if attacked.
00:58:43And now there is an admission that we're all in.
00:58:48Some others are eager to enlarge the conflict.
00:58:54They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.
00:59:01They ask us to take reckless action which might risk the lives of millions and engulf
00:59:07much of Asia and certainly threaten the peace of the entire world.
00:59:14A second deliberate attack was made during darkness by an undetermined number of North
00:59:21Vietnamese PT boats on the USS Maddox and the USS C. Turner Joy while the two destroyers
00:59:32were cruising in company on routine patrol duty in the Tonkin Gulf in international waters
00:59:41some 65 miles from the nearest point of land.
00:59:44They put out that propaganda, but they got caught because we were able to disclose within
00:59:50two days that if they would check upon the log of the Maddox, for example, they would
00:59:57find she was only 11 to 13 miles from the bombing of those islands.
01:00:03And of course, that's coverage, and the North Vietnamese knew that it was coverage.
01:00:09Do our naval vessels afford any cover for these operations?
01:00:14Our naval vessels afford no cover whatsoever.
01:00:17Now the sad fact is history will record that the United States was an aggressor in Tonkin Bay.
01:00:24We're violating the rights of North Vietnam, had no right to proceed on the second day
01:00:30to ourselves bomb North Vietnam, the areas where her torpedo boats were kept.
01:00:39But we had a duty.
01:00:40That wasn't self-defense.
01:00:41Bombing, bombing North Vietnam was not within the right of the president to act in self-defense
01:00:47of the republic.
01:00:48My duties on board the seaplane tender were nuclear weapons officer.
01:00:56On August 4th, there was an alleged attack on the USS Maddox and Turner Joy, two of our
01:01:03destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.
01:01:06The destroyer personnel indicated at first that they were under attack and later indicated
01:01:14uncertainty as to whether or not they were under attack.
01:01:19Large numbers of torpedoes were supposed to have been fired.
01:01:24The ship was reporting itself as continuously maneuvering to avoid torpedo attack.
01:01:33And yet there was also indicated in these messages doubt as to whether or not they were
01:01:38under attack at all.
01:01:40And I have a feeling therefore that this harassment attack and this attack with 20 or more torpedoes
01:01:46upon two of our destroyers was designed to force us out in a way lest we precipitate
01:01:53a greater struggle.
01:01:54I have a feeling that they've misread America once again.
01:01:58In the course of our conversation, this chief petty officer told me that he was a sonar
01:02:03man on board the USS Maddox and that he had been in sonar, the sonar room during the attack.
01:02:12He told me that in his estimation there were no torpedoes fired at the ship or otherwise
01:02:20during that alleged attack.
01:02:22And furthermore, he constantly repeated this, sent this information to the commanding officer
01:02:29on the bridge.
01:02:31The North Vietnamese have no submarines.
01:02:34What is the purpose of that movement?
01:02:36This is purely precautionary so that the fleet will be prepared for all eventualities.
01:02:42What sort of eventualities, General?
01:02:44Possible submarine attack.
01:02:45By whom?
01:02:47By anyone?
01:02:48You always contended that in the first incident they were having a...
01:02:52I'm contending that having the Maddox and the Joy there constituted, in view of the
01:02:59knowledge as to what the South Vietnamese boats were up to, an act of constructive aggression
01:03:04on our part.
01:03:06The Vietnamese situation, as I noted on my visit back home last week and this week, has
01:03:14taken on some real spirit and real interest.
01:03:19And I thought perhaps a statement by the joint Senate-House Republican leadership would be
01:03:25timely and quite in order at this moment.
01:03:29As a result of what we have done in South Vietnam, not only has the psychology changed
01:03:35there, but also it has had a most beneficial effect, in my opinion, among other free Asian
01:03:43countries who looked at South Vietnam as a test.
01:03:47Okay, today, today's the day.
01:03:53It's the big one.
01:03:55This is the one we've been waiting for.
01:03:57This is the one you've all been saying to yourself, what this company needs is a good
01:04:01fight.
01:04:03By the grace of God, we're going to get it.
01:04:07From there, we're going to S&D, search and destroy, the thing you guys like.
01:04:13Okay.
01:04:16Some of you, I know this is going to be a shock to you, but it's a switch for old Alpha
01:04:20Troop.
01:04:21We're riding in.
01:04:22And we're not riding in on one of those dusty old APCs.
01:04:25We're going in first class.
01:04:27TWA, teeny weeny airlines.
01:04:32Well, search and destroy is an attempt to, as the first word would indicate, to find
01:04:40the enemy, to search out where he would be, and then to destroy him in his haven.
01:04:49Okay.
01:04:50West of the stream and east of the road.
01:04:55Roger.
01:05:02Go.
01:05:03Go.
01:05:04Go.
01:05:05Go.
01:05:06Go.
01:05:07Go.
01:05:33How much rice do you think is actually in there?
01:05:36Oh, geez, I don't know, about 20 tons, 10 tons.
01:05:43How far back does it go?
01:05:45It's about 30 by 15.
01:05:48Anyway, it's about 12 feet deep.
01:05:51Come on, little man.
01:05:53How do you destroy this much rice?
01:05:56You know, the demo man usually blows it up.
01:05:58You're going to blow it up, are you?
01:06:00If they can't get it out, they'll blow it up.
01:06:02It's unmilled rice.
01:06:13Oh, look at it.
01:06:14Way off the street.
01:06:23Here's all the detachment consists of.
01:06:25Two double-rotor Chinook helicopters.
01:06:27The Chinooks usually are cargo or troop carriers, but not these.
01:06:31They're gunships.
01:06:38The prisoners that we've captured, or have been captured,
01:06:43say that this is the most feared weapon outside the B-52s.
01:06:47That is because the amount of ammunition we carry,
01:06:51the very type of weapons,
01:06:53and the amount of time we can stay up on station.
01:06:57At the present time, we have on this
01:07:00a 140-millimeter grenade launcher,
01:07:02two 20-millimeter cannons,
01:07:04five 50-caliber machine guns,
01:07:06and two rocket launcher pods consisting of 19 2.75 rockets.
01:07:12We usually carry inside two additional M60 machine guns
01:07:16and ammunition for them.
01:07:18Occasionally, the crew rat holes a few things
01:07:20that they don't tell us about until we're airborne.
01:07:23We work at it.
01:07:24We can unload in about 20 to 25 minutes.
01:07:27But we are in danger of burning out barrels,
01:07:29which we frequently do.
01:07:31I was amazed when I came to this outfit
01:07:33of how accurate the 50 calibers were.
01:07:35I figured they would be known more of an area spray weapon,
01:07:38that they can actually walk those weapons right down a trail.
01:07:41Now, the 20-millimeter is, of course, very, very accurate
01:07:44and has quite a range.
01:07:45We can start firing with this machine 4,000 meters away,
01:07:49which is considerable distance.
01:07:51It's the one I fly. It's known as birth control.
01:07:54[♪ machine guns firing and whistling ♪
01:08:13[♪ machine guns firing and whistling ♪
01:08:29You look like you enjoy your work. Why?
01:08:31Well, I've been doing it for 36 months
01:08:33since I've been in the service,
01:08:34and it's the type of work I enjoy outside, moving around.
01:08:39But this particular operation, the Cedar Falls,
01:08:41why are you enjoying this?
01:08:43Well, I think we'll benefit by clearing all this area.
01:08:46It's the first time they've got to push on like this
01:08:48and hadn't walked off and left it.
01:08:50They're completely just going right ahead
01:08:52and pushing on forward instead of walking off.
01:08:54[♪ machine guns firing and whistling ♪
01:09:09Where'd you find these people?
01:09:11They live right in this area here in the village of Dong Lin,
01:09:14between here and the railroad out to the west.
01:09:16Why'd you bring them in here?
01:09:18We've had so much trouble when we moved through this area
01:09:20and a lot of civilians killed as a result of this,
01:09:22and as we made our pass through here,
01:09:24we picked these people up and moved them with us into here
01:09:27so that we could make a careful sweep
01:09:29and probe each and every hut looking for tunnels and caves,
01:09:32possible VC hiding places.
01:09:34We found a few caves and blew them,
01:09:36picked up some weapons, killed a few VC.
01:09:38In the meantime, we're now going to sweep back through
01:09:41and go to the railroad and move back out to the west.
01:09:43What's going to happen to the people tonight?
01:09:45We're going to keep them right here.
01:09:47We've got some chow farm and some water, and we'll feed them.
01:09:49You'd be surprised how they can take care of themselves here
01:09:51with a minimum of resources.
01:09:53They take care of these children here during the night.
01:09:56They huddle real close together, and they'll keep warm.
01:10:01How long are you going to hold on to these people?
01:10:04Well, around noon tomorrow as we move back out to the west,
01:10:07and then these people will be released to go back to their own huts
01:10:11to cultivate their rice or harvest their rice
01:10:14and continue their normal activity.
01:10:18You got some VC suspects out of this group, didn't you?
01:10:20Yes, we just heli-lifted five suspects out of here
01:10:23back to battalion rear CP to be further interrogated.
01:10:26How did you select them?
01:10:28These Chu Hoi people and Vietnamese interpreters that we have with us,
01:10:32they've been in this area two or three years,
01:10:34and they know these people, and from talking to them,
01:10:36they get some ideas.
01:10:38Maybe these people know a little more than they're telling us,
01:10:40and we take them back to get a little higher echelon of interrogation
01:10:43down at Hoi An or Dinh Bon.
01:10:46Some of these people come back to us, even,
01:10:48and we'll put them with our companies to sweep these riverbanks.
01:10:51It's hard to know just who a VC is
01:10:53unless he's carrying a weapon or a cartridge belt
01:10:55or some grenades or something.
01:10:57A person just walking along, you don't know if he's a VC or not,
01:10:59might be in this crowd.
01:11:01But then some of these people that have operated with the VC,
01:11:04and if they defect and come over,
01:11:06we can use these people as scouts,
01:11:08and they go along the riverbanks with us,
01:11:10and they look just like anybody else.
01:11:12But when they have a weapon, then they're free game.
01:11:19How did this man get killed?
01:11:21Well, he threw grenades at the Marines,
01:11:23and instead of just one, he threw three,
01:11:25and the Marines spotted him and started shooting at him,
01:11:27and that's how he got it.
01:11:29Two big holes by his eye and throat
01:11:31were done by .30-06 sniper rifles.
01:11:33All the rest of the holes were done
01:11:35by this new type of rifle we got, the M16.
01:11:39How about all these people who are standing behind me over there?
01:11:42Do you think any of them know this man?
01:11:44Yes, they do, but they wouldn't admit it
01:11:46because they're afraid that we're going to take them back to CP for questioning,
01:11:50and we'll detain them under this RVM program
01:11:54where they'll teach them propaganda for three months.
01:11:56They hold them for three months.
01:11:58That's why they won't admit they know this man here.
01:12:01We've put over about three million of them
01:12:03into what I would call a concentration camp.
01:12:06They call it a refugee center.
01:12:08It's got barbed wire around it. They can't get out of it.
01:12:11We've taken these people from the graves of their ancestors,
01:12:14from their rice paddies,
01:12:16and we say, oh, well, we've pacified X million people.
01:12:19Yeah, we've pacified some more people
01:12:21by putting them in these camps.
01:12:23I'll grind us up in a hurry.
01:12:25I know many people have said, look, we've killed innocent people.
01:12:28Our bombs have killed civilians and babies and mothers,
01:12:32and I suppose there is truth to that.
01:12:35There have been people that have been killed,
01:12:39but your government has not bombed civilians.
01:12:42Your government has not bombed open cities.
01:12:45Your government has sent its bombers in after targets,
01:12:48military targets that have been placed
01:12:51in an area surrounded by civilians.
01:12:56The unfortunate thing is that the enemy
01:12:59is quite frequently located in areas
01:13:02that have people who are not part of the military structure
01:13:06in an immediate sense.
01:13:08They may be sympathizers.
01:13:10They may be supporting through their efforts,
01:13:13their work, and the like.
01:13:15But what occurs when you engage in a search and destroy
01:13:18is the destruction, the needless destruction,
01:13:21of innocent civilians.
01:13:23Now, you might say that they're all part
01:13:25of the entire communist apparatus,
01:13:28but the feature is that if we are going to prevent this war
01:13:31from degenerating into a genocidal activity,
01:13:34then our attempt would be to rehabilitate
01:13:37or to wean those folks away from the communists
01:13:40rather than to destroy them.
01:13:42This is what search and destroy becomes in a very practical sense.
01:13:54Yeah!
01:14:03Of course, they're the subject of our constant concern
01:14:06because they're such a magnificent group of fighting men.
01:14:10Their morale is extremely high.
01:14:12They always have a smile.
01:14:14I was at a very kind of sobering thing last night,
01:14:18a memorial service for four men in the 2nd Squadron
01:14:22who were killed the other day,
01:14:24one of them being a medic.
01:14:26And the place was just packed.
01:14:29We sang three hymns and had a nice prayer.
01:14:32I turned around and looked at their faces,
01:14:34and they were... I was just proud.
01:14:37My feeling for America just soared
01:14:42because of the way they looked.
01:14:45They looked determined and reverent at the same time,
01:14:49but still they're a bloody good bunch of killers.
01:14:54When a captive is taken by the United States or Free World Forces,
01:15:01he is, following interrogation,
01:15:05turned over to the Vietnamese authorities.
01:15:12These prisoners are not being mistreated.
01:15:15They are being handled in accordance with the provisions
01:15:20of the Geneva Conventions.
01:15:22The prisoners were executed in our outfit as a standard policy.
01:15:30We were told by our CO after our first battle
01:15:34that from then on we weren't going to take any prisoners.
01:15:37My name is John Toler.
01:15:39I'm a sergeant in the U.S. Army Special Forces,
01:15:41known as the Green Berets.
01:15:43I'm en route to Vietnam.
01:15:45However, I'm deserting the Army
01:15:47because I'm protesting the U.S. involvement
01:15:51in the Vietnamese conflict.
01:15:53Today your soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Coast Guardsmen
01:15:58are better educated than before,
01:16:01are better informed,
01:16:04have traditional American ingenuity and initiative,
01:16:09are better physical specimens,
01:16:12have high morale,
01:16:14and understand what the war is all about.
01:16:17As I mentioned before about changing the minds
01:16:21of the apathetic populace,
01:16:23the key is the communication.
01:16:25And most of the American soldiers I know can't communicate.
01:16:30They don't really understand the Vietnamese way of life
01:16:33and its goal.
01:16:36And the only way they can communicate
01:16:39is through money or with a gun.
01:16:42So after a while they develop this kind of fear.
01:16:45And so a misunderstanding and a noncommunication.
01:16:48They mistrust the Vietnamese and they kind of despise them.
01:16:53Once we got to Vietnam it was an entirely different story.
01:16:56The officers started referring to the Vietnamese as gooks.
01:17:00They even went so far as to say that the only good gook is a dead gook.
01:17:06They said, you can't trust them.
01:17:08You can't trust any of these sly-eyed bastards
01:17:11because none of them are no good.
01:17:29Actually, it looks like this beach has just about everything.
01:17:32Is there anything that it lacks?
01:17:33American girls!
01:17:35Well, there are girls down the other end of the beach, though.
01:17:38They're all flimmits of me.
01:17:40They're gooks.
01:17:42You know, sly-eyed, they're no good.
01:17:48Same, same slope.
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01:19:10I'm David Werfel,
01:19:12professor of political science at the University of Missouri
01:19:15and a specialist in Southeast Asian politics.
01:19:19I've spent about seven years in Asia
01:19:24teaching, researching, studying.
01:19:28As a matter of fact, I've written particularly about
01:19:31the problem of corruption and fraud in elections.
01:19:34Isn't it true, though, that the censorship now
01:19:36is going to be a little more rigorous as soon as the campaign starts?
01:19:39No, sir, I don't think so.
01:19:42But you have said, have you not,
01:19:44that the Vietnamese press should not criticize the candidates in the election.
01:19:48Why is that, sir?
01:19:51It's our formal and present policy.
01:19:57I don't think it's wise to allow people to use free press
01:20:02to, you know, issue criticism each other
01:20:10because it created more confusion, more division among the people.
01:20:16The elections that were held in 1967 for national office,
01:20:21of course, in the first place, could be participated in
01:20:24only by people living in so-called secure areas,
01:20:28which excluded at least a third of the population
01:20:32that were in areas so thoroughly under the control of the NLF
01:20:36that the government couldn't even pretend to regulate affairs there.
01:20:41But we should call to the attention of the people
01:20:45that the folks that are doing the most to keep us from having
01:20:50a fair and free election in Vietnam today
01:20:55are the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese themselves.
01:21:04Now, this is not to say that the campaign of the election in the South
01:21:10will go off without blemish.
01:21:13This is only to say that an effort is being made,
01:21:17and a strong effort, with our very strong support and endorsement,
01:21:23to conduct an open election in a nation that's under fire
01:21:32from guerrillas and from terrorists and from aggressors and from invaders.
01:21:37And so President Johnson, being true to the origin of the elections in the first place,
01:21:44was very much concerned about how the American people would interpret these elections,
01:21:50and he saw that it was necessary to appoint an official observer team.
01:21:59But, of course, most of the people had never been in Asia before.
01:22:04Almost none of them had ever been in Vietnam before.
01:22:07Very few of them even had any contacts in Vietnam.
01:22:11And so the theoretical opportunity to talk to anybody they wanted to
01:22:15simply could not be utilized.
01:22:18And, in fact, most of those who talked to anyone except embassy people
01:22:23talked to those Vietnamese introduced to them by embassy people.
01:22:34Voting officials, voters, everybody were on their good behavior
01:22:38because the American observers were there.
01:22:41So for them to have expected that they would see fraud with their own eyes
01:22:47was simply absurd.
01:22:50Furthermore, they left Vietnam within 24 hours after the polls closed,
01:22:56and in that period after the polls closed, they did not speak to a single Vietnamese.
01:23:04The possession of a clipped and stamped voting card, of course,
01:23:09was a very important protection for the Vietnamese peasant.
01:23:13It was almost as important as having his registration card.
01:23:18And anyone in Vietnam who does not have an official government registration
01:23:23or identity card is in deep trouble.
01:23:26He's immediately assumed to be a Viet Cong,
01:23:29is taken into the police station for questioning, or worse.
01:23:33I saw even in Saigon, in working class districts,
01:23:38where on election day, rather early in the afternoon,
01:23:42the polling place ran out of ballots.
01:23:49And there were people already lined up wanting to vote at this polling place.
01:23:54When it was announced that they'd run out of ballots,
01:23:57the poor washerwomen and workmen were frightened to death.
01:24:02We've got to vote, we've got to vote, we've got to have our clipped voting card.
01:24:07So in balance, we had a government elected with little more than a third of the vote.
01:24:18Hailed by the United States Johnson administration
01:24:24as being a popular and legitimate government.
01:24:29Nearly two-thirds of the people voting against it,
01:24:32and even that 35%, of course, being to a considerable extent
01:24:37a result of fraud and intimidation.
01:25:17South, North, Central, Central, the ocean.
01:25:21We hold hands, we love each other.
01:25:25We know that life is beautiful,
01:25:27the heart is full of love.
01:25:32It was bad enough for the generals to get away with double voting and ballot box stuffing,
01:25:38but to have the American observers say that they thought it was all fine and dandy
01:25:44made Vietnamese very mad indeed.
01:25:48There were efforts to protest election fraud,
01:25:51there were student demonstrations,
01:25:53and as a matter of fact, at one point it almost looked as if the election would be invalidated.
01:26:02What I think we've come to and what I think the tragedy of Vietnam clearly demonstrates
01:26:07is that we now find ourselves in a world in which the arrangements of power cannot yet be ignored,
01:26:16but in which the instruments of power no longer work.
01:26:21If this lesson has been taught us in Vietnam,
01:26:25then the stubborn little guerrillas out there
01:26:29who sawed off the American giant at the knees
01:26:33and brought him down, almost like David versus Goliath,
01:26:38would have done a great service not only to their own cause, whatever one may think about it,
01:26:42but perhaps to the cause of world peace,
01:26:45and perhaps most particularly to the Colossus himself.
01:26:50Maybe we needed to be brought up short.
01:26:53Maybe what we've been doing in Vietnam all along
01:26:57is an exercise in what Senator Fulbright has called the arrogance of power.
01:27:04We cannot retreat from any place,
01:27:10and I can tell you that we don't intend to retreat.
01:27:14We were asked by the State Department to prepare a letter
01:27:18and send it to Ho Chi Minh through a channel which had been opened and was available to us.
01:27:23We were certain it would deliver the letter directly to him.
01:27:26It was a very conciliatory letter written in the State Department
01:27:30in consultation, word by word, with Secretary Bundy,
01:27:34Secretary Katzenbach, and others,
01:27:37in which we spoke on behalf, this was the actual phraseology,
01:27:42on behalf of high officials of the State Department.
01:27:45All of Asia, free Asia, as well as communist Asia, is watching Vietnam.
01:27:50And if, for example, out of this present struggle,
01:27:54after making this great commitment,
01:27:57after turning around the psychology in Asia,
01:28:00we then agree to a coalition government with the communists,
01:28:03or we force the South Vietnamese into a neutralized position,
01:28:07a neutralized as we did Laos,
01:28:09or if we make any kind of territorial concessions to the Viet Cong,
01:28:16either one of these three courses of action would be interpreted as a retreat
01:28:21and also a defeat, not only for South Vietnam, but for the United States.
01:28:25We had an extended interview, almost two hours, with Ho Chi Minh.
01:28:29It was perfectly clear in the course of that interview that Ho Chi Minh was delivering to us
01:28:34certain information he expected us to deliver back to the State Department.
01:28:39And on the side of Ho Chi Minh,
01:28:41understand that first of all he will bring to the negotiation
01:28:46the prestige of an unparalleled life of devotion to his country.
01:28:52In the history of this century, he will be the great patriot.
01:28:57And be careful here.
01:28:59Don't forget that he is a Marxist.
01:29:02And don't expect him to turn a traitor to the ideal of his life.
01:29:08He was unyielding on the point that the bombing had to halt
01:29:11before his negotiators would enter into any kind of substitute discussions.
01:29:16But I think he was trying to make the point, making it repeatedly,
01:29:19that after that the agenda was open.
01:29:22Now there may be those who say, well, obviously you haven't offered them enough.
01:29:29Well, it's true that we haven't offered them South Vietnam.
01:29:33And it is true that we have not agreed to assure them that we will stop the bombing
01:29:38on a permanent and unconditional basis.
01:29:42We discovered sometime later when the correspondence was made public by Hanoi
01:29:47that four days before our letter could arrive in Hanoi,
01:29:53a letter arrived there sent over President Johnson's signature,
01:29:57which was a very hard-line letter indeed,
01:30:00which restated all the previous conditions regarding cessation of the bombing
01:30:04and even added some new ones,
01:30:06and which was, in our judgment, intended to do what it did do,
01:30:11which was to break off any possibility of negotiation at that time.
01:30:15This letter, we subsequently learned,
01:30:18had been written two days before ours was written
01:30:23in conjunction with the State Department.
01:30:25We found to our surprise and shock, I might say,
01:30:29that Harriman was already saying that he proposed to negotiate the settlement
01:30:34by suggesting that there had to be some reciprocal military action
01:30:38in return for the final cessation of the bombing.
01:30:41In other words, the same point that Johnson had been standing on
01:30:45before he made the speech of March 31st.
01:30:49It was almost as though Harriman turned off his hearing aid
01:30:52when we told him that this would not work,
01:30:54this was not the understanding the North Vietnamese had,
01:30:57and they would certainly repudiate it
01:30:59if he attempted to take that position at the bargaining table.
01:31:02And this, of course, is what did happen in Paris.
01:31:06In the view of the North Vietnamese,
01:31:12the reciprocity means
01:31:16the United States is bombing North Vietnam
01:31:19and North Vietnam must bomb the United States.
01:31:22This, in their view, is reciprocity.
01:31:24Since North Vietnam is not bombing the United States,
01:31:29the United States should not bomb North Vietnam.
01:31:32The general impression that I came away with,
01:31:37and I think here I would speak for my colleague Bill Baggs,
01:31:41was that we were dealing with the State Department
01:31:46on a basis of what we have come to call Fulbright's law,
01:31:51never trust the State Department.
01:31:53Bombing is going on in the South.
01:31:56We haven't bombed anybody's embassy in Hanoi,
01:31:59but they've bombed our embassy in Saigon.
01:32:03Arms continue to flow, men continue to come.
01:32:07We've tried all over the earth to find an answer to the question,
01:32:12what else would stop if the bombing stopped?
01:32:15The niceties of the argument about whether there are two Vietnams or one Vietnam
01:32:21seem quite inconsequential when you're talking to Ho Chi Minh.
01:32:25It would seem incredible that this man does not speak for most of the Vietnamese,
01:32:32not all, but most,
01:32:34and the idea that there could be some arbitrary geographic dividing line
01:32:38that would cut off his influence has been proved an absurdity
01:32:42by the figure and determination of the National Liberation Front
01:32:47that fights in his name in the South.
01:32:52My name's Olivier Todd.
01:32:54I'm a journalist on the non-communist, liberal, left-wing French paper,
01:32:58Le Nouvel Observateur.
01:33:00I first went to South Vietnam when escalation started in 1965,
01:33:04and I first went to North Vietnam at the end of 1967.
01:33:08I'm Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times,
01:33:12assistant managing editor of the Times.
01:33:14I'm Forlay Daniel Berrigan.
01:33:17I'm working here at Cornell teaching and helping with the peace movement.
01:33:22It's about one month since I was in North Vietnam
01:33:25on a project to get the three American flyers out.
01:33:29At the time I went to North Vietnam,
01:33:32the communiques which were being issued by Washington in particular
01:33:36about the American bombing raids on the North
01:33:39gave the impression, although they did not say so specifically,
01:33:43that we were not killing civilians in any substantial numbers, at least,
01:33:48in the course of our very heavy bombing offensive.
01:33:51Indeed, President Johnson himself said that the targets were steel and concrete.
01:33:57I think almost anyone familiar with war
01:34:00would have been somewhat skeptical of the ability to bomb with such precision.
01:34:04And indeed, when I got on the spot in North Vietnam,
01:34:07I discovered, of course, that while the bombs presumably had been aimed
01:34:11toward military objectives as best the aviators could aim them,
01:34:15they indeed did kill many civilians,
01:34:18demolished large areas of civilian housing.
01:34:21Before I left for North Vietnam,
01:34:23I was under the impression that it was a small country
01:34:26that was just sort of vaguely fighting back.
01:34:29But after seeing many battles against American planes
01:34:33from the banks of the Red River,
01:34:36I changed my opinions completely.
01:34:38The anti-aircraft in North Vietnam,
01:34:40in certain packed pockets, as the American pilots say,
01:34:43is absolutely formidable.
01:34:45It's a sort of four-level affair.
01:34:47You have people equipped with submachine guns and rifles
01:34:51shooting at a first level, forcing the planes to go up to a second level,
01:34:55where there they come against the machine guns,
01:34:59a lot of them being Chinese.
01:35:01And then they're forced up to a third level,
01:35:04which is that of the ordinary guns.
01:35:07Most of them, I would say, Russian.
01:35:09And after that, they go up to a level where they meet the SAMs.
01:35:15And I would have been told that these SAMs were antiquated.
01:35:19Well, in fact, they are not.
01:35:21They are formidably powerful.
01:35:23During one week in October,
01:35:25I saw at least 11 planes in five days
01:35:29being shot by the North Vietnamese anti-aircraft defense.
01:35:41When you walk about the streets of Hanoi,
01:35:44you are struck by the fact that you constantly see civilians
01:35:48going about in trucks with guns in their arms,
01:35:53or even walking down the streets with guns strapped to their back.
01:35:58It's unusual to see so many people with guns in their hands,
01:36:01and it's most unusual to see this in a communist country.
01:36:04One evening, on the road to Haiphong,
01:36:07we were bombed 300 yards from where we were.
01:36:10And with my interpreter, we immediately went onto the side road.
01:36:15I was very frightened. I was terribly frightened.
01:36:17But as soon as we bumped into a machine gun nest, fear disappeared.
01:36:22And the government has understood this,
01:36:24and I think this is one of the reasons
01:36:26why it has armed most of the population.
01:36:30We went into the countryside,
01:36:33and we saw great evidence in the cities as well
01:36:36that the people are generally armed.
01:36:38The civilian militia is very large.
01:36:41The women share, for instance, the burden of anti-aircraft gunfire,
01:36:46defense of the city.
01:36:48We saw large numbers of men and women on the roofs of buildings
01:36:52preparing in the early stages of air alarms for the bombardment itself.
01:36:57And they said to us quite openly on several occasions,
01:37:00Look, one of the most practical evidences of the truth
01:37:04that this government speaks for us
01:37:06is that the government has armed us,
01:37:08to the point where if we wanted,
01:37:10we could bring the government down in a day.
01:37:12And they themselves know this.
01:37:15At the time that I was in North Vietnam,
01:37:18there obviously had not been any breaking of the morale of the people,
01:37:22either in the cities or, as far as I could observe, out in the villages,
01:37:26although they had been subjected to an extremely heavy bombardment.
01:37:30At that time, it was reaching the levels of World War II,
01:37:33and of course since that time it's been much, much strengthened.
01:37:37The people of North Vietnam are young for the most part,
01:37:40and the war effort is largely on the backs of teenagers,
01:37:44not because they're running out of manpower,
01:37:46but because this is a young country.
01:37:48There is nothing that has not been attacked,
01:37:51there is no threat that has not been tried to be burned or frayed or broken by us,
01:37:56and yet none of it has happened or it's been repaired in the night.
01:38:00Altogether, I think one can say objectively
01:38:02that there isn't a town left standing apart from Haiphong and Hanoi.
01:38:07So that there are hospitals, there are schools,
01:38:09there is a trusted government,
01:38:13and there are political leaders
01:38:16whom they don't hesitate to call loved and admired,
01:38:21which is to say the war is not working.
01:38:24It's a very simple judgment,
01:38:27too simple for the complexities of our power,
01:38:31perhaps in a deeper spiritual sense too tough to face
01:38:36because it means the end of the giant,
01:38:38it means the last days of Superman.
01:38:41It means that for those with the capacity of overkill,
01:38:46kill is not enough.
01:38:52The real thing required is to live in the real world.
01:38:55As Buber says, it is to be able to imagine the real world and imagine human beings.
01:38:59And as long as the dinosaur couldn't do it,
01:39:01he ended up on the museum shelf.
01:39:03And as long as Superman can't do it,
01:39:05he can raven and destroy,
01:39:07but he cannot give life
01:39:10and he cannot even truly, as we know so bitterly,
01:39:13he cannot live himself.
01:39:15The North Vietnamese always insist
01:39:18that they are winning this war,
01:39:21that they are not simply resisting.
01:39:24And when I talked to Prime Minister Pham Van Dong,
01:39:29he said we are not under bombing,
01:39:32we are facing the bombs.
01:39:34And at first I thought that this was mere propaganda,
01:39:38but seeing the North Vietnamese fighting in the country and in the towns,
01:39:42I think that psychologically it is true.
01:39:45I was most interested to find that when I got to Hanoi,
01:39:49the authorities put no restrictions on what I wanted to send out.
01:39:55Prime Minister Pham Van Dong stressed in his talk with me
01:39:58the parallel between the ancient struggles of the Vietnamese people
01:40:03against the Chinese, the Manchus, and the Mongols,
01:40:06and their contemporary struggles for independence,
01:40:09which began, of course, under the French.
01:40:12Many years ago were continued without interruption through World War II,
01:40:16then resumed again against the French,
01:40:18and are now being carried on against the Americans.
01:40:21Prime Minister Pham Van Dong turned to me at one point and said,
01:40:25Mr. Salisbury, how long do you want to fight?
01:40:27Would you like to fight for 10 years, 20, or 30?
01:40:30You pick the term of yours, we're ready to accommodate you.
01:40:33A rather bold statement, and maybe it had some bravado in it,
01:40:37but this is, again, in accordance with the spirit of the Vietnamese people.
01:40:44There's no one in that society who doesn't remember hunger in his own lifetime,
01:40:48and it was interesting that from the peasants to the young intellectuals,
01:40:53when you pose the very same question,
01:40:56that is to say, what has the revolution meant first of all to you,
01:41:00you'll get the same answer.
01:41:01You'll get the same answer.
01:41:02We now have enough to eat, as simple as that.
01:41:05So that when the North Vietnamese government makes its pledge of honor,
01:41:09that the rice bowl will be filled,
01:41:11this is so great a thing that we can hardly conceive of it.
01:41:13It just seems to be off our radar.
01:41:16I think, you know, for them, the question is, first of all, a very concrete one.
01:41:20That statement is literally true.
01:41:22And then again, it begins to move into the larger areas.
01:41:26The circumference of the bowl expands,
01:41:28and you note that the revolution has meant a passion for education,
01:41:33a passion for grassroots involvement in their own future,
01:41:36their own social structures, their own politics.
01:41:39And that at the other end of that power,
01:41:41which they are trying to move upward
01:41:43after so many, many years of colonial powerlessness,
01:41:48at the other end of that power is standing a man
01:41:50who also has a rice bowl in his hand,
01:41:53and whose poverty is equivalent,
01:41:55whose power has not separated himself from the fate of the majority,
01:41:59who can move in the same cheap cotton clothing,
01:42:02and with dignity among them,
01:42:05and whose power is not an inferior backroom game,
01:42:09or a game of marked cards under a table,
01:42:12or a corrupt double talk such as we've gotten so used to in the chanceries of the West.
01:42:20Yet there is one light of hope,
01:42:23and this is that throughout Vietnamese history,
01:42:28they had catastrophes.
01:42:29They had Chinese, Mongolians, invasions,
01:42:32where whole provinces were destroyed.
01:42:36Of course, you know, you are not the first people
01:42:38who destroyed villages in Vietnam, unfortunately.
01:42:42And so they are used to that,
01:42:44and it's a great tradition that the village is not lost,
01:42:49even when it disappears from the surface of the ground,
01:42:53because the village is down below,
01:42:55down below with the tradition,
01:42:57down below with the people, the ancestors,
01:43:00who have made the country.
01:43:02Literally, the country is handmade.
01:43:05There is not one square foot, I would say,
01:43:08a square thumb of the earth,
01:43:10that has not been built as it is by the peasantry in the past.
01:43:14And this survives.
01:43:16And when, well, after 100 years,
01:43:19a village comes back, the descendants of a village come back to the village,
01:43:23they find the village, and the village starts again.
01:44:16.