Faulty weapons, cover-ups, and atrocities that shock the conscience. We've spent decades trying to make sense of the Vietnam War, with unanswered questions going as far back as the day the U.S. got involved.
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00:00Faulty weapons, cover-ups, and atrocities that shock the conscience. We've spent decades
00:05trying to make sense of the Vietnam War, with unanswered questions going back as far as
00:08the day the U.S. got involved.
00:11And we might as well start with the one that started it all, the infamous Gulf of Tonkin
00:15incident. What we know is that on August 2, 1964, the USS Maddox fired on two small North
00:21Vietnamese boats in its vicinity. It's not clear if the boats intended to attack. Two
00:25days later, the Maddox saw signs on its radar that the crew interpreted as more boats. The
00:29ship's intelligence officer also received messages that he interpreted to mean an imminent
00:33attack.
00:34But when President Johnson was told this information, he ordered retaliatory bombings, regardless
00:39of the fact that no attack had actually happened yet.
00:41The Johnson administration pretty much dismissed evidence indicating that an attack actually
00:47hadn't taken place.
00:48It would later emerge that the intelligence officer was probably mistaken, and that the
00:52dots seen on the radar weren't boats at all, let alone ones shooting dozens of torpedoes
00:57at them as the sailors first leaved.
01:00In 1995, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara met retired General Vo Nguyen Giap and tried
01:05to settle the question once and for all. He asked if the attack on August 4 had actually
01:09occurred. And as historians have long suspected, the general said that no, it had not.
01:14The M16 rifle was the standard-issue weapon for the troops arriving in Vietnam as early
01:19as 1965. And that was a big problem, since the M16s turned out to be a disaster on the
01:24battlefield. Soldiers in a foreign country found themselves saddled with a weapon that
01:28jammed, failed to eject its cartridges, and needed to be fixed in the middle of battle.
01:32While they believed the weapons were essentially self-cleaning, this was untrue, and even less
01:37self-cleaning in the humid climate of Vietnam. Morale plummeted, and parents on the home
01:42front complained to Congress about their sons' useless weapons. That's right, the Army failed
01:46so badly here that soldiers told their moms.
01:50Many signs point to the U.S. government knowing about the issues with the weapon before even
01:53issuing them. The M16 was tested before deployment, and it failed some of those tests. The fact
01:59that it was picked anyway might be because of how closely related it was to the M14,
02:02the rifle it was replacing. The Pentagon was allegedly resistant to change, so going with
02:07something similar made sense for them. Risks be damned. It wasn't until around 1968 that
02:13the M16 got the necessary improvements to be useful in Vietnam.
02:17Peace talks to end the war, known as Operation Marigold, were spearheaded by diplomats from
02:21Poland and Italy, along with a bit of quiet involvement from the Soviet Union. The main
02:25figure was Polish diplomat Janusz Lewandowski. Poland was a communist country at the time,
02:31so it had direct links to North Vietnam. The U.S., on the other hand, did not have any
02:35such diplomatic relationship, and both sides refused to come to the table until the other
02:39agreed to compromise.
02:41But thanks to Lewandowski's work, the U.S. and North Vietnamese ambassadors to Poland
02:45agreed to meet in Warsaw in 1966. Days before this historic meeting was to take place, the
02:50U.S. resumed bombing around Hanoi. Why this happened is unclear, though it's been blamed
02:55on simple incompetence. There was also a miscommunication about where the two men were supposed to
02:59meet. As a result, the planned meeting never happened, and the war continued on.
03:04By the time Richard Nixon became president in January 1969, it was clear the Vietnam
03:09War was not going well. Yet, Nixon didn't move to end U.S. involvement until well into
03:13the 1970s. Nixon was afraid that when U.S. troops left South Vietnam, it would immediately
03:18fall to North Vietnam, which would reflect badly on his leadership. So while he did reduce
03:23the number of U.S. troops in the country significantly, he did not talk about leaving altogether until
03:27he won re-election in 1972. That's three years of misery just for Nixon's benefit.
03:34Nixon would occasionally second-guess this decision for being too evil. Letting men die
03:37just so he could stay in power was hard on his conscience. Imagine that. But his Secretary
03:42of State was Henry Kissinger, who had no such qualms. Kissinger made sure Nixon stuck to
03:47the plan, making a senseless war last that much longer. If you're wondering why Kissinger
03:51won a Nobel Peace Prize but is today mostly remembered as committing war crimes, let's
03:55just say that Kissinger's reputation is as soiled as Nixon's nowadays.
04:00March 16, 1968 saw one of the lowest moments in U.S. military history, the My Lai Massacre.
04:06Soldiers belonging to Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the My
04:10Lai village and killed 300 unarmed civilians, including women and children. Not everyone
04:15in the village was slaughtered, and there are many first-hand accounts from survivors.
04:18It was abundantly clear that there was no way to justify the slaughter as an acceptable
04:22part of the war. It was just mass murder.
04:25"...said shoot everything, man, woman, children, and the whole bit, everything that could aid
04:31the V.C., you know, every living thing."
04:33Over 18 months later, the world was shocked to learn what happened at My Lai. Despite
04:36the horror, only one soldier was convicted for his actions in the village, Lieutenant
04:40William L. Cawley, who was sentenced to life but released on appeal in 1974.
04:45Blame for the massacre was placed on seemingly everyone and everything. The soldiers said
04:50they had been given permission to kill by their commanding officers. Over the previous
04:53months, Charlie Company had lost several members to mines and booby traps, all while never
04:57succeeding in engaging the enemy. They were frustrated and had already murdered one civilian
05:02woman in anger, and Cawley was said to have been bullied relentlessly by his commanding
05:06officer, building up even more stress. All of this built up to a horrific release of
05:10frustration as the division essentially lost their minds, taking that out on innocent villagers
05:15with a heartless massacre.
05:17The event that came to be known as the Green Beret Affair involved the U.S. Army and the
05:21CIA, and both parties blamed the other for what happened. On June 20, 1969, a Vietnamese
05:26man going by the name Thai Hoc Chuyen was drugged by several Green Berets, taken out
05:31into the South China Sea in a boat, and shot in the head. His weighed-down body was then
05:35dumped overboard. Chuyen was supposed to be assisting the U.S. forces, but was suspected
05:40of being a double or possibly even triple agent. Eight Green Berets were eventually
05:45arrested for Chuyen's murder, but the case against them fell apart when the CIA refused
05:49to let any of their employees testify. It turned out that while Green Berets do not
05:53normally fall under the CIA's purview, they were indeed working for them in this instance.
05:57However, the CIA denied they told the men to eliminate the alleged double agent. It
06:02denied even knowing him at all. On the other hand, the Green Berets said the CIA made it
06:06very clear Chuyen needed to die.
06:08The one small silver lining about the Vietnam War is that it never went nuclear-level bad,
06:14though it wasn't for lack of trying on the part of some in the U.S. military. In 1968,
06:19General William Westmoreland was in charge of the military in Vietnam. He had long planned
06:23for a major battle to take place at a location called Khe Sanh. But when the North Vietnamese
06:27finally attacked the location, U.S. troops had to be pulled away just days later to defend
06:32against the slew of attacks now known as the Tet Offensive.
06:35Westmoreland refused to abandon his original plan for Khe Sanh. Rather than lose the strategically
06:39important location, he wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons, or at least have them on
06:43hand in case they became necessary. He worked with other generals in the Pacific Theater
06:47on a plan to move nukes from Guam into the jungles of South Vietnam, codenamed Fracture
06:52Jaw. The problem was that the generals involved hadn't bothered to ask their commander-in-chief
06:57what he thought of the plan. When Lyndon B. Johnson learned what was up on February 2nd,
07:011968, the operation was well underway, and he was furious. Despite this, the generals
07:06in Asia continued planning for another 10 days before finally ending work on Fracture
07:10Jaw.
07:11Fighting traditional wars is almost impossible in the thick jungles of Vietnam. Rather than
07:15adapt to the terrain, the U.S. military attempted to change the landscape completely by carrying
07:20out Operation Ranch Hand, dropping what were known as rainbow herbicides on the country
07:25to clear huge areas of vegetation. The most infamous of these herbicides was Agent Orange,
07:30which was successful when it came to killing plants, and also turned out to be very effective
07:34at killing people.
07:35Dow Chemical and the other companies who produced the rainbow herbicides are certainly touchy
07:39about their involvement. To this day, Dow has an official statement on their website
07:43saying they were forced to make the herbicide due to the Defense Production Act, and that
07:47it was all the military's fault for the terrible health problems that it caused. However, there
07:51is evidence these companies both knew and hid how dangerous Agent Orange was from the
07:56government.
07:57By 1965, internal documents show that Dow knew that Agent Orange's ingredient, dioxin,
08:01was toxic. They even organized meetings with the other companies producing it to talk about
08:05how toxic it was. Despite that, they kept this knowledge from the government and publicly
08:09claimed the herbicides would not harm humans.
08:11And it gets worse. Almost a decade earlier, Dow knew how to lessen the amount of dioxin
08:15in Agent Orange without affecting its herbicidal abilities. It simply didn't do it.
08:21The conspiracy theory that the U.S. government knowingly abandoned POWs in Vietnam was so
08:25widespread that it was the basis for the plot of Rambo First Blood Part 2. This conspiracy
08:30wasn't created out of thin air, as there are many soldiers who went to Vietnam and remain
08:34unaccounted for.
08:36As of 2022, the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency listed 1,244 Americans as still unaccounted
08:43for in Vietnam. However, almost 500 of those individuals are considered non-recoverable,
08:48meaning there is evidence pointing to the fact they died, but it can't 100% be proven
08:53because finding their remains may not be possible.
08:55In 2023, four more sets of remains were recovered and identified, with the U.S. government promising
09:00to never stop searching. It's worth noting that there are thousands — yes, thousands
09:05— of firsthand accounts seeing POWs alive in Vietnam after 1973, when all captured troops
09:11were allegedly returned to U.S. forces.
09:14General John D. Lovell commanded the 7th Air Force in Vietnam, and in 1972, it appeared
09:18the campaigns he was leading were doing well. So it was shocking for him when he was suddenly
09:22told to return to the U.S., where he was hauled in front of Congress to be dressed down and
09:26demoted two stars before being forced to retire. He died seven years later, but well into the
09:3121st century, his family still had questions about what exactly happened and why he was
09:36punished. Lovell wanted to make sure more of his pilots came back from bombing missions
09:40alive, so he asked that the rules of engagement be made a bit looser. Lovell claimed he was
09:44told that was fine, but for various political reasons, this could not be put in writing.
09:48His version of events is backed up by several tapes recorded by President Richard Nixon
09:52in the Oval Office. After a misunderstanding of one of his orders, Lovell was accused of
09:56telling his subordinates to falsify reports to make their bombing raids look legal, even
10:00if they weren't. This would have been raids that were illegal even under the looser rules
10:04of engagement.
10:05While Nixon is also on tape expressing anger at what was happening to the general, Lovell
10:09was thrown under the bus by his superiors. One possibility is that they were trying to
10:13keep any information about other bombing raids from reaching the public. Which, considering
10:17everything else that got covered up about Vietnam over the years, is pretty easy to
10:21believe.