Vietnam: Anthology and guide to A television history Episode 6 Amer Enemy 11 Homefront 7 Tet 8 Vietnamizing the War 9 Cambodia and Laos 10 Peace is at Hand 12 End of the Tunnel 13 Legacies Karnow Chapters 14 15 16 1 America's Enemy (1954-1967) Previous 5 of 11 Next HO CHI MINH In a war, it is natural that there are losses and sacrifices. Our people are determined to fight on. We will endure all sacrifice for ten years, 20 years or longer, until complete victory. PREMIER PHAM VAN DONG: Throughout Vietnam's history, this has always been the case. It was so in the past, it will be so in the future. This is something we can be sure of. GENERAL VO NGUYEN GIAP: One of the most essential -- if not to say the most essential -- rule in Vietnamese military science, in war we have to win, absolutely have to win. NARRATOR: In October 1954, after nine years of war, French troops left Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh had led the Communist-inspired Vietminh nationalists to victory. A cease-fire agreement signed at Geneva provisionally partitioned Vietnam into two zones. Ho's forces were to regroup in the North and leave their families and unarmed comrades in the South. A nation-wide election to reunify Vietnam was to be held in two years. Colonial rule was ending. MADAME NGUYEN THI DINH (National Liberation Front): The northern part of the country had been totally liberated. According to the agreement, in only two more years, the South too would be completely liberated. The people in the South truly believed that there would be a national reunification in two years. NARRATOR: The United States, which had largely financed the French war, promised not to disrupt the Geneva agreements by force. Vice President Nixon flew to Saigon to dramatize America's support of South Vietnam's new leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, who had rigged a referendum and set up a separate South Vietnamese state. PHAM VAN DONG: After the Geneva Conference, the United States pushed the French out of the South and backed Ngo Dinh Diem to organize a government there. Ngo Dinh Diem was a cruel and reactionary tyrant. He used extremely barbaric methods to repress the revolutionary movement and to stifle demands that the Geneva agreements be carried out. NARRATOR: The Eisenhower Administration backed Diem's rejection of the nationwide elections called for at Geneva. With American aid and advisers, Diem strengthened his power, using soldiers and police who had formerly served the French. MME. NGUYEN THI DINH: They arrested, imprisoned and assassinated former participants of the resistance against the French. And, they forcibly registered all families whose sons, husbands and other relatives had regrouped in the North. MAJ. DUONG SANG: While I was in the North, I heard that people in the South were being killed in droves, among them members of my family. I was very worried, and my heart ached for them. I went to my superiors and volunteered to return to the South to fight in any way I could. NARRATOR: Ho Chi Minh wanted a political solution. So did the Soviet Union and China, who feared a possible war with America. Rural poverty was all too apparent. A decade earlier, a famine in the North had taken an estimated two million lives. Raising food production was a priority. The Hanoi leadership launched a program to distribute land to the peasants. The estates of rural landlords were shared out among three quarters of the peasantry. The political aim was to break the influence of the old landowning class. HOANG LOC: A land reform team came from the central government to coordinate the program with the local inhabitants. The people in the area would then be invited to meetings where the poor and landless peasants would describe their situation. In this way, we found out how the rich exploited the poor and landless peasants. With help from the government team, we classified the landlords in different categories. Then the landlords were brought before a people's court set up in the village. Those found guilty of actual crimes were sent to jail. NARRATOR: Following Chinese Communist practice, people's courts had to meet fixed quotas of criminal landlords. Thousands of innocent people were arrested, and many -- possibly between three and 15,000 -- were executed. Alarmed by the turmoil, the leadership curbed the excesses, calling them "serious mistakes." North Vietnam's economy, ravaged by war and neglect, was being rebuilt. The Hanoi leadership was coming under increased pressure from southerners to resume fighting. Finally, in 1959, they decided to back armed struggle in the South. MME. NGUYEN THI DINH: The first battle took place in Bentre province. We attacked a company of the regime's self-defense forces, and took over a notorious police garrison. In only three hours, without any weapons of our own, we succeeded in capturing 30 guns. NARRATOR: In 1960, the Communist Party created the National Liberation Front, a coalition of southern forces opposed to the Diem regime. Diem labeled it "the Vietcong." The Front called for Diem's overthrow, an end to foreign interference and the eventual peaceful reunification of Vietnam. The United States sent more aid and advisers. EARL YOUNG (U.S. Province Adviser, Long An): We continually were amazed at the professionalism -- the ability to be good psychologists -- that these people had. They knew exactly how to deal with the Vietnamese farmer. Now this the Americans generally never did, and the Vietnamese government might have but really wasn't that interested, so we found that a whole structure had been superimposed on this province, and it was a Vietcong structure -- Communist Vietcong structure. They had people at every level and they were running a shadow government coincidentally with the government's operation. NARRATOR: To isolate them from the Vietcong, Diem shunted peasants into fortified villages called "strategic hamlets." Many peasants had resented the return of the landlords and the loss of land given to them earlier by the Vietminh. EARLY YOUNG: There were some very substantial grievances which these people had. They had been perhaps moved off their land. They were being taxed unfairly. They were promised things which were never delivered. The Vietnamese military would perhaps molest their women, would steal their chickens, in general be obnoxious. NARRATOR: The Saigon government tried to control the rural population as Vietcong teams assassinated local officials. EARL YOUNG: They would send in a small squad of people -- maybe five or six men in the middle of the night. They would seize the hamlet chief in his house, haul him out to the center of the hamlet and convene the whole village to watch this, and then they would cut his head off. They would make him kneel down and they would shoot him in the head -- whatever technique they wanted to use -- and, of course, this frightened the Vietnamese. Because of the insecurity in the countryside, the normal Vietnamese government civil servant, the teachers, the agricultural advisers, could not go into these hamlets. The provincial junkyard was littered with blown-up ambulances, blown-up education vehicles. They simply put mines in the road and as the government people went out to a hamlet, the Vietcong destroyed them and they put the fear of God in them. NARRATOR (National Liberation Front Film): Saigon's government army swept through the countryside, in search of Vietcong suspects. This film, released by the National Liberation Front in 1963, shows government officials torturing suspects by electrical shocks and hanging. By now the Vietcong force had grown. Their objectives were the capture of government outposts and the destruction of strategic hamlets. Diem's army suffered from poor leadership and internal dissention. In late 1963, the United States encouraged a coup in which Diem's own officers killed him. The Vietcong at first depended on captured or homemade weapons and arms hidden after the Geneva agreements. But by early 1964, as the North Vietnamese commitment increased, men and equipment flowed south along an old supply route, the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Former Vietminh soldiers who had regrouped to the North were returning to fight. They counted on growing support from the southern population. Stepping up sabotage activities, they struck at the heart of Saigon, attacking American installations. LAM SON NAO: When I worked on the docks, I collected information on American facilities, on all their ships and their military warehouses. I learned that the U.S.S. Card was coming up the river carrying all kinds of aircraft to kill the Vietnamese people. I was able to transform my anger into action when I was given the job of trying to blow up the ship. Using commando tactics, we entered into a sewer ...crawling along because it was so narrow. Sometimes we could walk by crouching. After we had placed the two mines, I checked the automatic ignition device again. It was 2 a.m. when I finished checking everything. My comrade and I then began to crawl back to the other end of the sewage system. When the mines exploded at exactly 3 a.m., the whole area was blacked out and the two of us were so happy knowing that our mission had been accomplished. NARRATOR: In August 1964, President Johnson reacted to reports of a naval clash in the Gulf of Tonkin by ordering a reprisal air raid. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, August 1964: Renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas and the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to take action in reply. NARRATOR: U.S. aircraft were bombing North Vietnam for the first time. EVERETT ALVAREZ (POW 1964-1973): Not until I was about halfway to our target area did I start to realize that this was actual combat. And the things that we had trained and prepared for, the eventual, the eventuality like this, I never really, you know, thought that it would really actually happen. But all of a sudden, here we were and I was in it. PHAM VAN DONG: I was visiting Quang Ninh province, when suddenly I saw a formation of airplanes coming from the sea, flying straight toward the mining area. Then a fight broke out between the American airplanes and the Vietnamese air defenses. EVERETT ALVAREZ: I was hit and the weirdest feeling... my airplane started to fall apart, I was over strange territory, you know, foreign territory, enemy territory. PHAM VAN DONG: Shortly thereafter, an American airplane was shot down and its pilot captured. Before returning to Hanoi, I met with this pilot, Everett Alvarez. He was the first American pilot taken prisoner in Vietnam. NARRATOR: A decade after the Geneva agreements, North Vietnam was under attack, its developing economy threatened. A decade during which land under irrigation had doubled, electrical production had increased tenfold. Ho Chi Minh, who had devoted his life to winning independence, declared in 1964, "As long as the country is divided, as long as our compatriots continue to suffer, I can neither sleep well nor eat with any appetite." Ho personified the nationalist struggle, even for Vietnamese who feared communism. He inspired many southerners to fight. TRAN NHAT BANG: I'll always remember August 1, 1964, when this village liberated itself. There were no revolutionary guerrillas or regular forces present. The villagers staged a spontaneous uprising. We were delighted. We convened a meeting of 2,000 people and introduced a revolutionary administration. We organized the people to dig trenches and tunnels to defend themselves against enemy artillery. Everyone dug booby traps and laid homemade mines. We knew that the enemy puppet troops would try to get revenge. NARRATOR: The Saigon government troops faced traps and other primitive weapons. The military force of the National Liberation Front, the People's Liberation Army, drew on experiences gained in fighting the French, paying meticulous attention to detail and planning. American helicopters had given their enemy superior speed and mobility. They devised counter-tactics -- to wait and lure the helicopters within range. By late 1964, Vietcong troops were fighting sustained battles against numerically superior and better-armed Saigon forces. On December 28, some 1,500 Vietcong, armed with machine guns and recoil-less rifles, captured the village of Binh Gia, 40 miles southeast of Saigon. On December 30, after U.S. helicopters flew in reinforcements, Saigon troops recaptured the village. The battle continued for five days. The Vietcong destroyed two South Vietnamese battalions, killing 158 soldiers and five American advisers. By March 1965, U.S. Marines were in Vietnam... the first American combat troops to arrive. They had come as allies of South Vietnam. But to many peasants, they were yet another threatening foreign force. Bienhoa, March 18, 1965. The United States stepped up its bombing of the South, using more napalm and phosphorous bombs. DUONG SANG: Unexploded American bombs and shells were dug up by the old people and the kids -- sawed up in order to get to the gun powder and explosives. They then produced various kinds of explosive devices themselves. In each hamlet and village we had a workshop for producing these devices. LE THI MA: We unscrewed the detonators first of all, then used a saw to cut the bombs in half. We scraped the powder into two large cauldrons, bigger than this one here. Next we melted the powder down into a thick liquid and poured it into a container like this one, until it was completely full. We then made a detonator and inserted it here. We placed these mines along the routes we knew the tanks were going to take. When the tanks went by they would hit this thing here, exploding the mine and causing the tank to turn over. DUONG SANG: We had many old people who took part in the fighting. Have you heard of Mrs. Nguyen Thi Ranh, who was over 80 years old when she became a military heroine? We had many men and women who were more than 50 years old when they became heroes and heroines in the struggle against the United States. The children were even more active and creative. They mostly used homemade weapons, manufactured precisely to fight the enemy in each area. NARRATOR: American pilots had been bombing in South Vietnam since 1961. Vinh Binh province, April 26, 1965. On July 1, the Vietcong mortared the U.S. air base at Danang. American Marines were deployed to nearby Cam Ne, a cluster of hamlets. They drew fire. THOMAS MURPHY: As we started moving, some of those so-called "civilians" quote, unquote, as is on the news, got killed. At this time some of the Marines used cigarette lighters and the hooches went up, grenades, some flame throwers were brought in and that was one way to quiet the fire from the village. COL. RAY SNYDER: I told the squad leaders to approach it on simply a case-by-case basis and use their own judgment, that we were not getting a heavy volume of fire, that they should be able to pinpoint, at least to some extent, the source of the fire. THOMAS MURPHY: I don't think that an order had come down to burn the village, but I think it was just something that was carried on through the operation. NGO THI HIEN: The Americans shelled the village as they arrived. Then they burned down the houses, destroying everything. Nine members of my family were killed. I escaped which is why I'm alive today. But my whole family was wiped out. NGUYEN THI THIEP: Many people were wounded. Where I'm sitting now, one person was shot as she returned from harvesting rice. She was taken to hospital and there she died. NGUYEN THI THE: The Americans came into my house with their interpreters and drove us out. They refused to let us take any belongings with us. THOMAS MURPHY: An eight-year-old or a nine-year-old can kill you just as quick as a 25 or 26-year-old man. Now these people have been fighting this war a long long time. Some of these people were actually fighting wars when they were nine, ten, and eleven years old. Where, back here in the States, the kids were playing cowboys and indians. Over there they had been playing it for real. COL. RAY SNYDER: We did encounter a problem which, which was ultimately to become a very difficult situation in that we had -- I'd gotten a report from one of my squads that they had been fired on from behind. It meant either that our search was not sufficiently adequate or that we were facing some other kind of a problem, and that perhaps they had come from some other area of the village and come in behind us, or whatever. TRAN NHAT BANG: I witnessed the destruction, because I was fighting there. After our clash with the Americans, my comrades and I ran along the communication trenches to our hidden shelters where the villagers could help us. NGO THI HIEN: Wherever the Americans went, they burned and destroyed and killed. I didn't see any guerrillas being killed, only villagers. TRAN NHAT BANG: On that day they couldn't locate any of us guerrilla fighters. Our unit suffered no casualties at all. NARRATOR: In North Vietnam, villagers and militia now faced regular American bombing attacks. Called Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing had started in March 1965. The bombing was planned to last a few weeks -- a few months at most. It continued for more than three years. ROBINSON RISNER (POW 1965-1973): I was going right up Route 1, north from Thanh Hoa. I had to raise up to go over the hill just a little, and when I did, I was receiving automatic weapons fire right down my nose from some fixed positions, and I never quite reached my target. And they just shot me to pieces. NARRATOR: The official list of bombing targets grew, from army and navy bases and radar sites to railways, roads, bridges and anything that resembled a military vehicle. ROBINSON RISNER: When my head emerged above the rice, in the rice paddy, I looked right down a gun bore, and I didn't have my gun aimed at this guy, so I had to make a decision. Am I going to make a fight because this guy was -- already had a gun right in my head and I changed my mind. I remember telling the guys I would never be captured. But I changed my mind, and I dropped the gun without uncocking it. I ground it in the mud with my feet hoping they wouldn't find it, but an old one-eyed villager had seen it, seen me with it, saw me drop it. He came up and while they were forcing me to kneel and tied my arms very painfully behind me, he searched around until he found it. And then he picked it up and I remember still, the water and the mud dripping from it, and he put the barrel between my eyes and I watched his finger almost as though I were fascinated or hypnotized. And I watched his finger curl around the trigger guard knowing full well he didn't know how finely tuned that trigger was and that was the only time out of my entire prison career that I ever wondered for even a milli-second if I were coming back alive or not. NARRATOR: In South Vietnam, American aircraft met less resistance. 1965 CANADIAN DOCUMENTARY FILM: SKYRAIDER MISSION "OK, his bomb bursts... should hit now!" (EXPLOSION) "OK, look out to the right now. OK, right down there. Napalm now! There it goes...Ah, look at it burn, look at it burn! PRESIDENT HO CHI MINH: The American imperialists have invaded the South with their troops and have tried to destroy the North with their aircraft. Thus they have committed untold crimes against the people of both regions. Vietnam is one. The Vietnamese people are one. As compatriots, the people in the North will do everything within their power to support the struggle of the people in the South. NARRATOR: As their troops and supplies moved to the battlefield, Hanoi's leaders repeatedly denied that their army was fighting in the South, claiming that the charge was a myth fabricated by the United States. To stop the flow, America stepped up the bombing campaign. North Vietnam responded by moving its factories into the countryside. The civilian economy was suffering, but the country was being mobilized with Ho Chi Minh's slogan: "Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom." Earlier, Ho's Communist allies had discouraged his efforts to reunify Vietnam. In 1957, the Soviet Union even proposed that two Vietnams be admitted to the United Nations. But with the North under attack, the aid from Communist powers was increased. They sent weapons, fuel, rice, agricultural and industrial equipment. GENERAL VO NGUYEN GIAP: We received help from sister countries -- from the U.S.S.R., from China, which had a stand different from the one she has now. Not only did we enjoy growing international help and support from other socialist nations, but also from the progressive forces in all other countries. 1967 FRENCH NEWSREEL (Subtitles): On December 13 and 14, 1966, the escalation reached the center of the North Vietnamese capital. This is the first film received from Hanoi. Four districts were bombed. Entire neighborhoods of small houses were blown up or destroyed by fire. Despite the French Press Agency reports from Hanoi, Washington only admitted the facts after several denials. DR. TON THAT TUNG: As the bombs were falling our hearts naturally throbbed with fear. But when that happened we either carried the stretcher out to bring in the wounded or went out to visit the injured, and our fear dissipated as a result. My experience was that fear arose when you sat there worrying about things. But when you kept yourselves occupied, you lost your fear. EVERETT ALVAREZ: One evening of July the 6, they came around and gave us new pajamas that we wore. These had numbers stamped, they had stamped numbers on our pajamas. We were always so hopeful and optimistic that this thing was going to end and we figured, ah hah, this is step number one and we're going to be going home guys. We were sort of feeling good about this, and as we started walking, you know, I thought we were going to walk right around the park. But no, as we got to the opening of a big street, I looked -- we could see down, and it was just, I mean this was, this was the New Year's Eve parade. I mean there was just thousands of people in stands and along the streets and as we started to march, I could hear the cheerleaders with megaphones getting the crowd going. And one of the interrogators, we called "the Rabbit," he saw me, and he turned to the crowd and he was leading them in this cheer. The cheer said, "Alvarez, Alvarez, son of a bitch, son of a bitch." So pretty soon the whole cheering section started, you know. You know, I had played sports before, but this was a different sport altogether. But we progressed down, the crowd started to press in, and the guards would come along and they'd tell you to bow to the people, bow to the people. You know, I was just trying to keep my head, not to bow, but I was just trying to head in that direction. And after a few blocks of this the crowds became uncontrollable and they started throwing things. And then somebody hit from behind and I was, I just about went out, next thing I know, I was sort of drowsy and we were led to the infield and sat there, and they brought us all in, we all made it. ROBINSON RISNER: Then they started with my wrists, with my arms behind my back, and wrapped my arms together under the armpits. Well, the two arms were together and they just pulled my shoulders out of joint, you know; that, and they did some similar things to my legs. I tried to endure the pain knowing that an American military man should be able to endure torture until he died, but never to give nothing to the enemy (never give anything to the enemy). And I tried my best, and my best wasn't good enough. And during the night I heard someone screaming in the distance and I thought, my, they're torturing another prisoner, and I felt so sorry for him, you know. And then I could come back more closely to consciousness, and found out that it was me I was hearing in the distance; I was the one who was doing the screaming. And they tortured me all night. And by daylight, they had reduced me to such a place that I would give them more than name, rank, serial number and dates of birth. And they hurt me pretty bad. They pulled my shoulders out of joint, and they did some things to my legs. But I found out that I was not as strong as I thought. I couldn't be tortured to death, that my will would give before my heart stopped beating. It was very disconcerting. I lived in abject misery for the rest of the time I was a prisoner. NARRATOR: The bombing in the South continued without let-up. But it never stopped the flow of supplies and manpower to the Vietcong bases. Many bases were tunnels stretching for hundreds of yards underground. Some, like the major Vietcong base at Cu Chi, only 20 miles from Saigon, were never destroyed. DUONG SANG: We used Ci Chi as a training base and staging area. We enlisted recruits in Saigon and trained them here, in the tunnels. We raised their political consciousness and taught them tactical skills preparing them for big assignments such as attacking large enemy hotels. They learned to use automobiles and Honda motorcycles -- firing hand guns to hit the enemy with a single shot. In the city, we had people who specialized in forging documents. Whenever the enemy produced any kind of document, we were always able to acquire a copy and produce an exact replica, right in the heart of Saigon itself. NGUYEN THI ANH: I lived in Danang along with other sisters who participated in the revolution. We organized clandestine activities, and provided communication between the revolutionary base area and the city. We carried out political struggles against the enemy. NARRATOR: Vietcong spies and agents continually passed useful information to the guerrilla bases. Couriers and saboteurs depended on sympathizers in the local population for their protection. If caught, they expected little mercy. NGUYEN THI ANH: They tried to force me to confess that I was involved with the Vietcong. I refused to make such a statement and so they stuck needles under the tips of my ten fingernails saying that if I did not write down what they wanted, and admit to being Vietcong, then they would continue the torture. But I was determined to say nothing. I was extremely angry at the enemy and I loved my country so much. This was because everyday, bombs and shells and the blood and bones of my people appeared before my eyes. I was extremely outraged and would never come out with any information. They tied my nipples to electric wires, then gave me electric shocks, knocking me to the floor every time they did so. They said if they did not get the necessary information they would continue with the torture. Two American advisers were always standing on either side of me. NARRATOR: Coastal towns and villages in the southern part of North Vietnam were constantly shelled and bombed by American warships and aircraft. People took refuge in tunnels. HO MINH SAC (tunnel builder/manager): We spent more than two years building the whole complex. The largest number of people living in the tunnel at any one time was more than a thousand. The lowest number was more than 200. NGO THI TAM (woman in tunnel): My house had been bombed and I had to give birth to my baby in the tunnel. We remained underground for two months. There was little food to eat or clothes to wear. There was no firewood to cook with and little water to drink. All day long, I was going in and out of the tunnel trying to get water for my child. HO THANH DAM (schoolteacher): They dropped napalm bombs and I was injured. Napalm bombs saturated the whole village, engulfing it in a gigantic fire. When I was hit, the napalm set my whole body on fire. I lost consciousness. Many people died. Their bodies had been torn to pieces. Some of the pieces hung from the branches of trees and other pieces were covered with dirt thrown up by the explosion. Some people were so shocked by the terrifying scene that they turned around and went back into the tunnel. But then the tunnel collapsed and they were buried alive. NARRATOR: B-52 bombers had begun to bomb the South in June 1965. By April 1965, they were bombing the North. GENERAL GIAP: The American Air Force is a very powerful air force, and naturally it influenced the battlefield. It was a great trump card. The Americans counted on their air force to somehow change the course of events. PHAM VAN DONG: It must not be forgotten that General Curtis Lemay had said that the United States should bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age. But they were greatly mistaken. The destruction of the North -- with all the efforts and all the barbarity of imperial America -- only caused the people to be more resilient and more resolute in their determination to resist and to win. The key factor in the struggle was the opening up of a trail -- appropriately called the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" -- to link the North to the South. The United States used every means at its disposal to block the trail. But to no avail. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, developed day by day, becoming a network of roads over which weapons, military supplies and tens of thousands of soldiers were moved into the South for combat. CAPT. TRAN VAN NGO: I left the North, taking three months to reach the South. On the way, we constantly faced flares, all kinds of bombs and rockets. We couldn't stop for any time along the route until we had reached our resting place. Then we would sleep in hammocks, and begin marching again at four o'clock the next morning. NARRATOR: The Ho Chi Minh Trail was not a single trail, but a web of trails, some threading through Laos and Cambodia. They were kept open by armies of women, many drafted into service for two years at a time. Throughout 1967, more and more soldiers were moving from north to south every month. TRAN NHAT BANG: The northern brothers came here to fight because of their sense of solidarity and responsibility toward us. After all, this was not their native village and they did not have to fight here. There were never any problems between us southerners and northerners. We guerrillas fought behind the enemy lines, disrupting his rear. We concluded that only with the regular forces would we be able to fight the big battles. NARRATOR: The North Vietnamese troops were highly disciplined and tightly controlled. As in the Chinese Communist army, each soldier belonged to a three-man cell. CAPT. NGUYEN VAN NGHI: When we encountered difficulties, the three-man cell functioned as one. If one of us was killed, the others suffered terribly. And that made us hate the American imperialists even more. CAPT. TRAN VAN NGO: I killed three American soldiers when the American forces attacked Dsiem Hang. We waited for them in ambush. We engaged them in close combat and I killed them with my bayonet. After this battle, my morale was very high because I had contributed to the liberation of the South. CAPT. DANG XUAN TEO: We had a slogan, "To fight the Americans, you must cling to their belts." If we fought them at a distance we suffered a lot of casualties. CAPT. NGUYEN VAN NGHI: Having fought against American troops many times, I came to the conclusion that they had a lot of bombs and shells -- that they were very powerful as far as war materials were concerned. But they did not fight very well at all. They moved very slowly and really were not that mobile. NARRATOR: In both North and South Vietnam, daily life accommodated to the rhythms of war. DR. TUNG: We always know when they were about to drop their bombs. For example, in the morning, they usually arrived about ten o'clock, just after breakfast. Then they took a break, and went back to their bases for lunch. Then they came back to drop their bombs again at about three in the afternoon. Since this was the routine, we tailored our schedule accordingly. We began our surgery at about five in the morning, and took a break at nine or ten. When the bombs didn't fall on time, we felt extremely uncomfortable, wondering why they hadn't fallen yet. This wasn't fear. We simply wanted the bombing to be over with so that we could get back to our work. NARRATOR: By 1968, Soviet-made missiles and anti-aircraft batteries ringed Hanoi. DR. TUNG: At that time, we were filled with fervor. I can tell you, there's something strange about the Vietnamese. They could never remain long in a bomb shelter. Whenever an airplane was shot down, everybody including doctors rushed out to look at it. NARRATOR: By 1967, nearly every military target in the North had been damaged or destroyed. But the bombing had not broken North Vietnamese moral nor stopped the flow of men and supplies to the South. Operation Rolling Thunder had failed. GENERAL GIAP: They had spread the hostilities over the entire territory of our country. It was absolutely normal and necessary for us to mobilize all our forces -- political and military -- in order to carry on the struggle and to reach final victory. NARRATOR: In January 1968, 20,000 northern troops moved south. They were poised for a fresh ambitious offensive -- the "Tet" offensive. Homefront USA Previous 10 of 11 Next NARRATOR: Washington, Christmas 1963. Five weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy. The new president spoke of the nation's losses and hopes. PRESIDENT JOHNSON: We buried Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy, but we did not bury their dreams or their visions. They are our dreams and our visions today. So let us here on this Christmas night, determine that John Kennedy did not live or die in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time, the ancient vision of "Peace on earth, good will toward all men." NARRATOR: Three months before President Kennedy's death, Martin Luther King, Jr. had focused national concern on civil rights with an impassioned call for racial harmony. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., August 28, 1963: I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today... PRESIDENT JOHNSON, July 2, 1964: I'm about to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. NARRATOR: President Johnson's liberal domestic policies dominated the news and eclipsed Vietnam. But the political consensus he built around civil rights and other Great Society programs was soon threatened by the war. JOHN CHANCELLOR (NBC News): In 1964 and early 1965, the country was going along with the President. The arguments were being made increasingly to the country and through the media that Vietnam was important, that the United States had a commitment there, that something would have to be done. MARINE NEWSREEL, March 8, 1965: NARRATOR: United States Marines head for security duty in South Vietnam. Their landing is at a beach, north of Danang, where they will guard the American jet airfield against attack by Vietcong guerrillas and infiltrators from North Vietnam only 80 miles away. JOHN CHANCELLOR: And I remember having in my mind the thought that, "My God, I hope we're not getting into something here that the country can't handle." WHITE PREACHER, November 1965: If tomorrow they tell you it's a blessed murder, that you are to declare war holy, then there's only one thing to do: Say "No." DEMONSTRATORS: Treason! Treason! Treason! We shall live in peace! We shall live in peace! NARRATOR: Opponents and supporters of the war clashed early in the Johnson administration. At first, the anti-war groups were small and little-noticed. They included civil rights activists, members of old left and women's organizations, pacifists, students and clergymen. WILLIAM SLOAN COFFIN, JR.: So the clergy found themselves in a very difficult dilemma. Catholic bishops were very anti-Communist, so it was very hard to find a Catholic bishop who would say, "I am anti-Communist, but I think this war is evil." Rabbis were very afraid that if they opposed Johnson on the war in Vietnam, Johnson would not support them on Israel. So all these things were very much in the picture when it came to the clergy. WASHINGTON, D.C., January 31, 1967 REPORTER: What is the purpose of your groups picketing the White House, Reverend Newhouse? REVEREND NEWHOUSE: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam are here today holding a silent vigil, we'd like to think, rather than a picket, in order simply to express a cry of anguish about what we believe to be an immoral and self-defeating course, which our country finds itself increasingly bogged down in Vietnam. REPORTER: You're being effectively counter-picketed by an almost equal number of people. Reverend Reynolds, what is the difference in the opinion of your group and that one across the street? REVEREND REYNOLDS: Well, about as much difference as day and night. They believe the war in Vietnam is immoral and inhuman, and we believe it's essential to defend our freedom and to keep our word and our commitments made to the South Vietnamese. It's immoral to keep our boys over there in a battle where they're suffering and dying if we're not going to win! NARRATOR: Despite increasing draft calls, college students could avoid military service if they remained in school. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, February 1967: STUDENT: I don't want to go to Vietnam, because I don't want to get killed. ...if I have to, I will. NARRATOR: Student attendance at Vietnam teach-ins was growing. TEACH-IN, 1967 PROFESSOR MICHAELS: I think we should stop having, letting the President fight an armchair war from the White House and turn it over to our generals in Vietnam who know how to fight a war. PROFESSOR ROSS: As far as I remember American history it's been a traditional principle that civilians exercise control over the military, that we never turn into a warfare state, in which generals have a completely free hand. PROFESSOR MICHAELS: You are not afraid of the Communist menace. I'll put that in quotes if you like. However, I am. In 50 short years, the Communists, who started with 17 followers, have enslaved 40 percent of the earth's people, and 25 percent of the earth's land mass. This is more than Christianity can count standing after nearly 2,000, and you tell us there's nothing to worry about? How can you stand there, insult the intelligence of these, students, feeding them... PROFESSOR ROSS: My apologies... NARRATOR: Blacks were joining the military amid sharpening debate. STOKLEY CARMICHAEL (Black Power activist), May 1967: When they get up on television, and Lyndon Baines Johnson talk all that garbage about he's sending boys over there to fight for the rights of colored people, you ought to know that's a lie. 'Cause we live here with them, and they don't ever do a thing for us. BAYARD RUSTIN (civil rights activist): As the caskets begin to come home, people begin to re-evaluate, and the very fact that there were a disproportionate number of blacks in Vietnam, meant that, very early, a disproportionate number of caskets began to come back to the black community. At that point they began to re-evaluate. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., April 15, 1967: Despite feeble protestations to the contrary, the promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam. The pursuit of this widened war has narrowed the promised dimensions of the domestic welfare programs, making the poor white and Negro bear the heaviest burdens, both at the front and at home. NARRATOR: As the war dragged on into 1967, street rhetoric grew tougher. INTERVIEW WITH MARTHA RAYE, May 13, 1967: REPORTER: How much time have you spent there, Martha? MARTHA RAYE: In Vietnam? Fourteen months. REPORTER: Fourteen months. MARTHA RAYE: Yes, sir. REPORTER: Are you disturbed about the demonstrations like we had a month or so ago, against our partici... MARTHA RAYE: I just don't pay attention to 'em anymore. REPORTER: You don't... MARTHA RAYE: We got too many good Americans. AMERICAN LEGIONNAIRE: 99 percent of the people in this country are terrific Americans and disagree entirely with flag burnings, carrying enemy colors, giving medical supplies to the enemy, et cetera. NARRATOR: A few Congressmen, led by Senator Fulbright, now questioned Johnson's right to wage war without a declaration of war. SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE, August 21-24, 1967: SENATOR FULBRIGHT: Would the President -- if there was no resolution -- be with or without constitutional authority to send U.S. soldiers to South Vietnam in the numbers that are there today? If there was no resolution. NICHOLAS KATZENBACH (Undersecretary of State): It would be my view, as I indicated, Mr. Chairman, that he does have that authority... U.S. SENATOR: That's a difficult doctrine for me to agree to, that the Congress cannot control the President of the United States from the standpoint of the use of the withholding of the troops of this country abroad. I simply can't go along with that doctrine. KATZENBACH: But didn't that resolution authorize the President to use the armed forces of the United States in whatever way was necessary? Didn't it? FULBRIGHT: Well, this is... KATZENBACH: What could a Declaration of War have done... FULBRIGHT: This is... KATZENBACH: That would have, that would have given the President more authority and a clearer voice of the Congress of the United States than that did? SENATOR GORE: Well, it was not the country's decision to land combat troops in Vietnam. The country hasn't made that decision. The President has made that decision. NARRATOR: The administration stood firm, and Congress continued to vote money for the war. Troop levels continued to rise. Though some men fled the country to avoid service, most complied with the draft. Some who opposed conscription on grounds of conscience burned their draft cards. Some joined an anti-draft organization called the Resistance. DAVID HARRIS (anti-draft organizer): The Resistance was founded in an attempt to organize explicit public non-cooperation with conscription through the action of returning draft cards to the government. Very simple, open, public declaration that we would not cooperate, and if the government intended to enforce the Selective Service Act, then it was going to have to send us to jail. Well, October 16 had been the date that we had set when we first had started the Resistance for the first national draft card return, during which all around the country and as it turned out, in 18 different cities, there would be demonstrations at which young people would collect draft cards and give them to the federal government. And in San Francisco, which was one of the two largest demonstrations on that date in the country, we all, 2,000 of us gathered on the steps of the Federal Building in San Francisco. ORGANIZER, San Francisco, October 16, 1967: If it takes our lives to change this country, then that's what's going to happen. DAVID HARRIS: We had this basket, and announced on the bull horn, okay, the time had come, and out goes the basket. There is this scene, of all these hands coming up holding draft cards, dropping them into the basket, and the basket circulates through the crowd, and comes back up to the front, and we sort of look at it and get ready to go inside, and then all of a sudden from the back of the crowd these shouts start coming, "More! Back here! Back here! We want it, send the basket!" It was an attempt to call the question on the rest of the anti-war movement, to say "Put up or shut up," no more of this screaming against the war and then coming home and making sure you have your student deferment in your pocket. If you were going to be against the war, then put your body where your mouth was. DAVID DELLINGER (anti-war organizer): So we coined a slogan "From protest to resistance," which was that you'd keep marching and rallying, but that we would step up the pace of non-violent civil disobedience. NARRATOR: The new tactics were tested in the March on the Pentagon, October 1967. SENATOR JOHN STENNIS: It is clear from the evidence that I have that this is a part of a move by the Communists, especially of North Vietnamese government, to divide the American people, disrupt our war effort, discredit our government before the entire world. The leaders of North Vietnam consider the March on the Pentagon tomorrow as much of their war effort as the guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese army assaulting our troops on the battlefield. Those who participate in these demonstrations tomorrow will be, in effect, cooperating with and assisting our enemy. WASHINGTON, D.C., October 21, 1967 CROWD: God Bless America! God Bless America! PETER, PAUL, AND MARY: "There is no freedom in our land...Every hill and vale and everywhere...Isn't this a time, isn't this a time, a time to try the soul of men, isn't this a terrible time." DAVID DELLINGER: I want to ask you what has happened to a country whose political objectives must be secured at the end of a bayonet! NARRATOR: More than 55,000 demonstrated -- united in opposition to the draft and the war, but divided on many other issues. CROWD: Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace Now! Peace Now! Peace Now! NARRATOR: The protestors, who were mainly students, faced other young Americans who were already in uniform. Most protested peacefully, but 5,000 rushed the Pentagon, some taunting and cursing the troops. More than 600 were arrested during the march. POLICE/DEMONSTRATORS: Take 'em on back, lock 'em up. Look out, look out. NARRATOR: The demonstration had no impact on policy, but it outraged some officials, including the head of Selective Service. GENERAL LEWIS HERSHEY (Selective Service Director): To me a demonstration is some legal thing that you engage in under your right to let people know how you feel about things. Now, whenever we get to a place where the demonstrations more than accidentally, interferes with our operations, I don't think there's any question about it ceases to be a demonstration, and became a violation of the law. SENATOR J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT, November, 1967: I don't recall, since I've been here, as strong a division of opinion as to the wisdom of a policy as now exists with regard to the Vietnamese war. That's true, I believe, in the Committee; I think, from the reports in the newspapers and magazines, that that exists in the country. NARRATOR: The economy was turning sour, and turning some businessmen against the war. Johnson discussed his decision to raise taxes with a group of federal home loan officers. PRESIDENT JOHNSON, October 6, 1967: I know it's not a popular thing for a President to do, to ask anyone to, for a penny out of a dollar to pay for a war that's not popular either. NARRATOR: By late 1967, for the first time, a poll showed that a majority of Americans considered the war a mistake. PRESIDENT JOHNSON, November 17, 1967: We know that most people's intentions are good. We don't question their motives, we've never said they're unpatriotic. Although they say some pretty ugly things about us. And we believe very strongly on preserving the right to differ in this country, and the right to dissent, and if I have done a good job of anything since I've been president, it's to insure that there are plenty of dissenters. SAM BROWN (student peace activist): In 1967, it's reasonable to say that most people who were concerned to try and create a political alternative to Lyndon Johnson because of the war in Vietnam, didn't much care who the presidential candidate was, as long as it was somebody who had a chance of winning. NARRATOR: Early in 1968, voters, shocked by a massive enemy offensive in Vietnam, the Tet offensive, were courted by presidential challenger Eugene McCarthy. EUGENE MCCARTHY, March 1968: I've been saying that I intended to stop the war, and I've been, I think, explaining how, by proceeding to negotiate a coalition government, or at least to be prepared to accept a coalition government. But both the President and Mr. Nixon are talking about ending the war, and are not saying when, or how, or at what cost. And I think that's the issue in the New Hampshire primary. NARRATOR: Senator McCarthy's strong showing in New Hampshire encouraged another candidate -- Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of the late president. His campaign got an early lift from President Johnson's surprise announcement that he would not run for re-election. ROBERT KENNEDY, April 3, 1968: But I need your help. I need your assistance. So, over the period of the next 30 days, will you help me? CROWD: Yes! KENNEDY: Will you tell your friends? CROWD: Yes! KENNEDY: Will you whisper it, or will you yell it? CROWD: Yell it! NARRATOR: War critics Kennedy and McCarthy dominated the Democratic primaries. Under FBI surveillance and troubled by rising violence in the anti-war and civil rights movements, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in Memphis, and foreshadowed his own death. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., April 3, 1968: We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life, longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight, I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man...Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. NARRATOR: King's assassination the next day rocked the nation and sparked riots in more than a hundred cities. Black power militancy increased. Unlike most political leaders, Kennedy had sympathized with King's opposition to the war. April 4, 1967: REPORTER: Senator Kennedy, would you comment on the death of Dr. King? ROERT KENNEDY: I wrote out some words. He dedicated himself to justice and love between fellow human beings. He gave his life for that principle. And I think it's up to those of us who are here, as fellow citizens and public officials, and those of us in government, to carry out that dream, to try to end the divisions that exist so deeply within our country, and remove the stain of bloodshed from our land. NARRATOR: Opposed to both Kennedy and McCarthy, Johnson picked Vice President Hubert Humphrey as his heir-apparent. HUBERT HUMPHREY: We've had some very severe blows lately, and we've got to try to bind up these wounds. And if this means, quite frankly, if it means that I don't have the time for campaigning like an ordinary candidate, that's the way it'll have to be. NARRATOR: Over the next two months, Kennedy and McCarthy continued their rivalry in the Democratic primaries. The contest reached a climax in California. Kennedy won. His assassin was waiting. ROBERT KENNEDY, June 5, 1968: My thanks to all of you, and now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there. NARRATOR: McCarthy's campaign workers were watching reports of Kennedy's victory celebration. MCCARTHY HEADQUARTERS: I don't know who's been shot. "As we get more definite details, we'll bring them to you. If you do not leave the room, we cannot get medical aid to the Senator. Now would you please leave the room." Kennedy's been shot. Shh. Shh. "Are there any doctors? Help clear this room. Are there any doctors? Will you please help clear the room. Help get medical aid to the Senator." They've shot Robert Kennedy. "You saw what happened. I'm sorry, I can't make a comment right now." NARRATOR: To many, Kennedy's assassination two months after King's, seemed confirmation that the country was on the verge of chaos. Then came Chicago. Torn by strikes and braced for violence, Mayor Daley's city welcomed the divided delegates to the 1968 Democratic convention. Relations between the police and the press corps were tense. Vice President Humphrey, choice of the party regulars, was assured of the nomination before he arrived. HUBERT HUMPHREY, Chicago, 1968: Well, say, good to see you... NARRATOR: But Humphrey and the Johnson Administration were still targets of McCarthy's muted attacks. EUGENE MCCARTHY, August 1968: I think the case is rather clear about what's wrong about our involvement in Vietnam. And I think the case is rather clear as to what we ought to be doing about our problems here at home. It calls for some quiet and some restraint, a kind of backing off for a minute to look at America, and to consider what we ought to be doing, and the nation has done that, and with your help, and the help of others in these next three days, I believe that the Democratic convention will do the same here in Chicago. Thank you very much. NARRATOR: Others had a different purpose. DAVID DELLINGER, August 1968: Our position is that whoever the candidates are and whatever the platforms, that we must stay in the streets and stay in active resistance or else there will be no peace. Either in the ghettos or in Vietnam. OUTSIDE CONVENTION HALL, Chicago, 1968 TOM HAYDEN (Students for a Democratic Society): We don't know... REPORTER: Do you have a permit to march on the amphitheater? HAYDEN: No... REPORTER: But you gonna march anyway? Are you expecting trouble? HAYDEN: We expect to march. We expect trouble all the time. NARRATOR: Thousands of highly visible protestors descended upon Chicago -- militants, pacifists, and hippies -- with 500 undercover agents among them. CONFRONTATION IN GRANT PARK You're in an assembly which you have no permit for... PEACE PEACE! You are on our property which you are defacing. If you do not leave, you will be subject to arrest. Everybody... NARRATOR: Some demonstrators were non-violent. Others deliberately provoked the police. FRANK SULLIVAN (Chicago Police spokesperson): These people are revolutionaries bent on the destruction of the government of the United States of America. They're a pitiful handful. They have almost no support. But by golly, they get the cooperation of the news media. They're built into something really big. Gentlemen, the hardcore leadership of this group are Communist. ROBERT GARVER (Chicago policeman): So I told my partner, I says, "Grab your club and jump out swingin' before they tip us because we'd sooner fight than roast." So we jumped out, or I should say I jumped out first, and he stayed in the wagon and called for help. We got out, I grabbed one, I hit another one down, and then somebody grabbed me from the rear and flung me into the crowd, and these dirty hippy son of a so-and-so's, they called me a mother-hunchin' so-and-so, and a white fascist ...They said, "You're gettin' some of your own medicine." And then some citizen -- I don't know who he was, but I wish I could find out -- he stopped his car and jumped out with a little pinch bar, and he started helpin' us, otherwise I think they'd have either killed me or crippled me more than what I am. NARRATOR: Amid the violence, talk of peace. VICE PRESIDENT HUBERT HUMPHREY: Six months ago in Vietnam, the only alternative before us was force -- or withdrawal. And I think that withdrawal would be totally unrealistic and would be a catastrophe. The second alternative which I now speak of is the conference in Paris. The negotiations are underway. They're not making a great deal of progress, but they are underway. Now we've been seeking to get those negotiations for years. The roadblock to peace, my dear friend, is not in Washington, D.C. It is in Hanoi, and we ought to recognize it as such. NARRATOR: Over four days and nights, sporadic battles in the streets were echoed by angry debates on the war inside the convention hall. PAUL O'DWYER (New York delegate): It is altogether too late here for us to begin to discuss the merits of the war in Vietnam. That question has been presented to seven million Democrats across this nation. That question was presented in the states where there are primaries. And the people have found an indictment of that war. NEW YORK DELEGATES ON FLOOR: We want peace now! We want peace now! PETERSON (delegate): Most delegates to this convention do not know that thousands of young people are being beaten in the streets of Chicago. CARL ALBERT: Wisconsin is not recognized for that purpose! JOHN CHANCELLOR: The interesting thing was that the size of the protest against the war became so large that it was impossible to avoid it as a news story. A lot of people say we were manipulated by that. I don't think so. We had learned to avoid manipulation and we were simply responding to masses and masses of people. If you think of the 1968 Democratic convention and the fighting on Michigan Avenue in Chicago between hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands of demonstrators, it was a story of inescapable news value. It had to be covered. NARRATOR: The demonstrators were trying to march on the convention hall without a police permit. Blocked they sat down in the street. CBS NEWS FILM: SPECTATOR: I've never seen anything as horrible in my whole life! CROWD: The whole world is watching! WOMAN: "We shall overcome. We shall overcome." CROWD: The victory is ours! The victory is ours! The victory is ours! JOHN CHANCELLOR: And I remember Walter Mears of the Associated Press writing a lead the night that Hubert Humphrey received the Democratic nomination at that convention. And he wrote something like, "Hubert Humphrey, a man of peace, received the Democratic nomination tonight under armed guard." JERRY RUBIN (Youth International Party): It would have been impossible to hold the Democratic National Convention in any city in the United States, or throughout the world, without demonstrations or disruption. Daley's right on this point. Chicago just happened to be the city. It would have been impossible to hold it anywhere. Because the Democratic party has blood on its hands. And because there's a struggle going on in the world today between young people and between those old, menopausal men who run this country. And it's a struggle about what the future of this country is about. SAM BROWN: Well, Chicago was a sort of sad time, because we'd been involved in the politics and the process of talking to people, and going out and talking door to door. What was quite clear was that a great many of the American people in fact were sympathetic to the anti-war movement. And yet suddenly the image that they got was not of this nice young person coming to their door and saying, "Wouldn't you like to vote for Gene McCarthy," but of people shouting obscenities and disrupting the city. DAVID DELLINGER: But it weakened the anti-war movement around the edges at least, and that became, the edges became what Richard Nixon played on. NARRATOR: The Republican candidate delivered a familiar campaign message to Chicagoans a week after the Democrats went home. RICHARD NIXON, 1968: My friends, let me make one thing clear. This is a nation of laws, and as Abraham Lincoln has said, no one is above the law, no one is below the law, and we're going to enforce the law. And Americans should remember that, if we're going to have law and order. NARRATOR: Handicapped by his support of Johnson's war policies, Humphrey had trouble taking the offensive. AUGUST 1968 HECKLERS: Dump the Hump! Dump the Hump! HUBERT HUMPHREY: I believe the Republican candidate owes it to the people to come out of the shadows. HECKLERS: Boo! HUBERT HUMPHREY: Would you mind bringing your television camera down here? You fellow do an awful lot to promote that with that camera. Come on here, will you? Knock it off, will you please? NARRATOR: While Humphrey tried to separate himself from Johnson, Nixon lumped them together in attacks on the administration's record. RICHARD NIXON, October 1968: Let me tell you what those four years have done to America. The longest war that America's ever had in its history; The worst crime wave we've ever had in our history; The highest taxes we've ever had in our history; The highest raise in the cost of living that we've had in a generation. And the lowest respect for the United States of America in our history. HUBERT HUMPHREY: Let America know that we can't be taken for granted. We're going to have the biggest election surprise that America has known in 20 years. We're going to win this election. Thank you very much! NARRATOR: It was not to be. Humphrey's campaign took off when he called for a U.S. peace initiative, and it accelerated when Johnson declared a bombing halt. But Nixon, promising to end the war with honor, won by a slender margin. NIXON INAUGURATION, January 20, 1969: You, Richard Milhaus Nixon do solemnly swear. I, Richard Milhaus Nixon do solemnly swear. NARRATOR: The "honeymoon" period traditionally granted a new president was charged with the expectation that Nixon would unveil a plan to end the war. But during the first six months of 1969, U.S. casualties were high. Life magazine published portraits of GIs killed in a single week. And week after week, every Thursday night, network news viewers saw the body counts. HENRY KISSINGER (National Security Adviser): I entered government with a conviction that one could create a large consensus behind a reasonable program, which would then impress Hanoi with our determination to be both conciliatory, but also to indicate the limits of our conciliatoriness. That objective we never achieved, because the moderate groups always felt they had to be a step ahead of the administration. DEMONSTRATORS, Newton, Kansas, October 1969: This protest is directed not toward the young men, American or Vietnamese who have fought and died... SAM BROWN: The notion of the moratorium was a pretty straightforward one, which was that we had to take the anti-war movement off the campus and build it back into the community. That meant you had to have language that was moderate and not strident and off-putting, that you had to have people -- events, which moderate people could participate in, it had to be locally organized so that people knew the people who were organizing it, sort of head-land folks had to feel that it belonged to them. FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT, October 1969: STUDENT #1: But there's going to be a wake of deaths. STUDENT #2: There are millions of government officials in all these little towns that support the United States. STUDENT #3: But the problem is, that most of South Vietnam support the Vietcong. NARRATOR: In Washington, the moratorium drew 50,000. Over one million participated nationwide. North Vietnam's Premier Pham Van Dong sent a message of friendship to the organizers. VICE PRESIDENT SPIRO AGNEW, October 1969: And this message from a Communist regime in North Vietnam is a shocking intrusion into the affairs of the American people by an enemy power. I think the leaders of the demonstrations are chargeable with the knowledge of this communication, and responsible to the extent that they must make perfectly clear what these demonstrations are for. NARRATOR: At the same time, supporters of the government staged counter demonstrations. NARRATOR: The moratorium ended with candlelight ceremonies in Washington and elsewhere. BLONDE: All I wanted to say was, that I am for peace. That I'm not exactly sure how it should come about. But I'm saying that because I want peace, I'm standing here, I'm marching, I'm holding my candle. RAY PRICE (aide to President Nixon): What the protesters did not know, could not know, and what most others did not know, was that for months, Nixon had been privately warning Hanoi that November 1 was their deadline. That is, the first anniversary of the Johnson bombing halt, which had produced nothing from North Vietnam. That unless they were ready to negotiate seriously, and showed us that they were by November 1, they would bear some very heavy, unstated consequences. With the implication that these would be military. Now, Hanoi was a diligent reader of U.S. public opinion and of U.S. demonstrations. Nixon was very worried that the October 15 moratorium, just two weeks before this deadline that he had privately given Hanoi, would be seen by them as evidence that he could not deliver. PRESIDENT NIXON, November 3, 1969: So tonight, to you, the great, silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed. For the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand, North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that. HENRY KISSINGER: The majority of the population on the whole supported the administration, so there was a conflict, strangely enough, between what the elite was thinking and what the general public was thinking. It was not that the anti-war movement ever achieved a majority, but when 30 percent of the population and many of those who write for the media and speak publicly, oppose a given cause, confusion is inevitable. NARRATOR: Though Nixon had started major troop withdrawals from Vietnam, mid-November brought another, larger protest to Washington, called the "Mobilization." Vice President Agnew took a tough line. SPIRO AGNEW, November 1969: The American who relies upon television for his news might conclude that the majority of American students are embittered radicals. That the majority of black Americans feel no regard for their country. MOBILIZATION DEMONSTRATORS: One, two, three, four, Tricky Dick, stop the war! SPIRO AGNEW: That violence and lawlessness are the rule, rather than the exception, on the American campus. We know that none of these conclusions is true. Perhaps the place to start looking for a credibility gap is not in the offices of the government in Washington, but in the studios of the networks in New York! JOHN CHANCELLOR: After the Agnew attack -- I'm a pretty careful reader of the newspapers and I was then a contributing editor to the Huntley/Brinkley report -- I used to go around saying to people when they would say: well, what's your reaction to Agnew, I would say, well, a good journalist, when he gets into a serious subject, always thinks twice before using certain words, and I said then, and I believe now, that we were thinking thrice. MOBILIZATION ORGANIZER, November 1969: Members of the press, just so you know now. All these people are going to form outside on the sidewalk. And they'll stand there for a number of minutes for you to take pictures, if you want to, ask questions. They'll then proceed very slowly across the bridge for more pictures and questions. On the other side of the bridge they will not speak to you. Thank you. SPIRO AGNEW: How many marches and demonstrations would we have if the marchers did not know that the ever-faithful TV cameras would be there to record their antics for the next news... NARRATOR: Amid arguments whether peace protests lengthened or shortened the war in Vietnam, the war in America was a continuing story. After the Mobilization, another shock -- Life published pictures of Vietnamese peasants massacred in 1968 by U.S. soldiers in a village called My Lai. The trial of Lt. William Calley and others implicated in the My Lai massacre haunted the news for months. Only Calley was convicted, in a swirl of controversy. Was he scapegoat or war criminal? Was the massacre an isolated case or a common occurrence? Had draft inequities hurt the morale of the Army? The Nixon administration reduced draft calls and instituted a lottery, which was meant to be more fair and more predictable. Men whose birthdates came up with low numbers knew that they would soon hear from their draft boards. JAMES FALLOWS: I was coming back into Boston and I heard that my birthdate, August 2, had come up as number 45 in the draft list. And suddenly I realized that this was something that I had to figure what to do about as I had not really thought I would have to. The course I ended up choosing, and again, that was in the spirit of those times, was to look for the painless way out, namely a physical deferment. And with a combination of just generalized anxiety and with determination to get out, I lost about ten pounds over the next few months. NARRATOR: Helped by a sympathetic doctor, Fallows succeeded in failing his physical. JAMES FALLOWS: Near the end of the induction day as the people from Cambridge were getting ready to go back in to their new lives, the buses started arriving from a white working class district of Boston. And while nine out of ten of my comrades from Harvard and MIT were getting out with their doctors' excuses, the same proportion of people from this part of town were, were marching right through, were going off to the military, were going off to he war. Nobody could avoid recognizing what that meant then. We knew that while we were not going to war, we were seeing the people who were...We were seeing the people who were, were going to be killed. STEVE BELL, ABC news reporter, April 1970: The military command post, just across this road, is outside the town of Ghoda, only a few miles from the Cambodian border. As best we can tell, this is the South Vietnamese Command Post for the operation into the Cambodian Parrots Beak. But the strictest kind of security is being enforced here, even to the point where the one American adviser we've seen warned us not to ask questions. NARRATOR: The same night this story was broadcast on the evening news, President Nixon went on television to announce that he was sending American troops into Cambodia to fight the Vietnamese Communists. PRESIDENT NIXON, April 30, 1970: If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world. It is not our power, but our will and character that is being tested tonight. The question all Americans must ask and answer tonight is this: does the richest and strongest nation in the history of the world have the character to meet a direct challenge by a group which rejects every effort to win a just peace, ignores our warning, tramples on solemn agreements, violates the neutrality of an unarmed people, and uses our prisoners as hostages? RAY PRICE: I don't think he meant it to have an inflammatory effect, but it did, and it sent the country into a spasm of hysteria which then was greatly exacerbated a few days later when four students were killed at Kent State. NARRATOR: On the night of May 2, the Kent State R.O.T.C. hall was put to the torch. Two days later, students confronted Ohio National Guardsmen. Some guardsmen fired into the crowd. Four students were killed. Student protests erupted on hundreds of campuses. Many shut down. PRESIDENT NIXON, May 1, 1970: You know, you see these bums, you know, blowin' up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world. NARRATOR: Nixon's earlier comment on student protests had been widely reported. PRESIDENT NIXON: And here they are, burning up the books. Storming around about this issue, I mean, you name it, get rid of the war, they'll be another one. HENRY KISSINGER: Nixon's handling of the anti-war movement was not generous, and contributed to the polarization of our society. Nixon, when challenged politically, tended to react with certain gut feelings, and he never found the language of respect and compassion which might have bridged -- created a bridge at least -- to the more reasonable elements of the anti-war movement, so that civil war conditions developed. CONSTRUCTION WORKER, May 1970: I got a family, my boy went into the army when he was 18 years old and a day. Suppose they come over and take over the country. What are you going to do then if you don't back up your own president? And I don't care who's president, we back him up. And that's what all the working men do. They love the flag of this country. And they live here. And they're going to do everything they can to protect it. ABC NEWS: This week straight from the heartland. NARRATOR: Television covered the conflict in the cities and on occasion it turned to what ABC News' Don Farmer termed the "heartland." DON FARMER: There are many towns and counties like this one, and these people make up an important segment of American society, but too often their voices seem to get lost amidst the clamor from our urban centers, and so ABC News came here to Grand Island to listen. MAN IN THE STREET: Well, we voted Nixon in as our president and we have to go along with his judgment. WOMAN IN THE STREET: I think probably we do have closed minds of, for a lot of things. We are going by the old rules and regulations and we haven't advanced, and I have two children in college now and they're for this moratorium and all this, and very very concerned with the Cambodia situation. YOUNG WOMAN W/FLAG: One of the reasons I bought the flag is because I have a brother-in-law that's fighting in Vietnam right now, and I feel this is one way that I can tell my feelings about what he's doing over there and show some kind of support. Another reason is because I want my sons to grow up with a respect for the United States flag, and I feel if they see it flown here every day that they will get this respect. NARRATOR: The heartland remained conservative. But some Americans were coming back from Vietnam with changed perspectives. One of them was Lt. John Kerry, here filmed in the Mekong delta with his own 8 millimeter camera. JOHN KERRY: A typical mission really didn't have any sense to it. The logic that was explained to us by the command in Vietnam was that we were quote, "showing the flag in the back yard of the enemy." There were people who believed, there were people who believed that we were fighting communism and that this was terrific and it was important, and who were all swept up in it. But I think most people did not. Most people began to see that we weren't gaining any territory, we weren't winning the hearts and minds of anybody, we certainly weren't securing any particular stronghold or strategic objectives, we were simply doing a very macho kind of public demonstration of our presence. People did not listen to the veterans of the war. The press itself had difficulty in perceiving of a group of Vietnam veterans being opposed to the war. And that it was a story of profound importance, why the war itself was wrong. And why we were not going to be successful, and why we had to recognize that. We just felt that story had to be told, and the only way to tell it was to take it to Washington in that form. VIETNAM VETERANS DEMONSTRATION, April 1971 VETERAN: I volunteered for the whole thing. Volunteered to go into the service. Volunteered for Vietnam. Volunteered for every single mission I went on. I was there ten days and I was in Cambodia. You people don't know that. I was in Cambodia with orders. Talk to veterans. They're here all week. Talk to them. They'll tell you things you won't believe. The House on American Activities Committee has rated our organization the third greatest threat to internal security in this country. Right after the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. Ladies and gentlemen, you know, I did it. You know? I did it because I'm an American. I haven't changed. My politics have changed in that I'm not willing to take it anymore. But, I am still non-violent. I still believe in this system. I'm still visiting my senator. WOMAN: A lot of taxes goes to support just what you're doing today. I wish you'd get out and get a job and work! VETERAN ON CAPITOL STEPS: I'm from upstate New York. And I'd like to turn in my Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. I lost my leg in Vietnam, and I'm totally opposed to this war we're carrying on over there. And Senator Buckley and Congressman James Hanley will receive my medals next week in the mail. NARRATOR: One by one, decorated veterans flung away their medals on the steps of the Capitol. The American war was winding down, GI casualties were decreasing, but those veterans who opposed the war were asking for something more than an end to hostilities. SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE HEARING, April 1971: Lt. John Kerry: We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped their memories of us. And so, 30 years from now, our brothers go down the street, without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask "Why," we will be able to say "Vietnam," and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead, the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning. NARRATOR: Across America, thousands of families by now were visiting the gravesites of their children killed in Vietnam. And millions of Americans were sharing their losses. FAMILY AT GRAVE: Our father, who art in heaven...Hail Mary, full of grace...in his memory. GENERAL WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND (Commander, Vietnam): In 1968 a new phase is now starting. We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view. NARRATOR: Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. A massive Vietcong and North Vietnamese offensive struck the cities of South Vietnam. The attacks spilled into the living rooms of America and split the White House staff. WALT W. ROSTOW (National Security Adviser): Yes, I was optimistic after the Tet offensive -- even more optimistic in a sense than before -- because it's one thing to have confidence that you're going to cope with this maximum effort. It's another thing to see that everyone was coping. You'll see that the cables from Saigon, from Ambassador Bunker, told us that the enemy was defeated on the ground very early. It would take time to mop up. HARRY MCPHERSON (Counsel to the President): For the rest of us who were not in the National Security Council staff -- even though we were reading many of those cables and going down there for such reassurance as we could get -- we were also watching the American television. And American television was showing a different sight. That sense of the awfulness, the endlessness of the war. The unethical quality that did not recognize that when a man was taken prisoner, he was not to be shot at point blank range. The terrible sight of General Luan raising his revolver to the head of a captured Vietcong and killing him. They were awful contradictions -- the cables on the one side, the television on the other. It was very disturbing. NARRATOR: Vietnam was history's first television war. Now as the fighting ripped into Saigon, millions of Americans watched the battle on the evening news. MILITARY POLICEMAN: We've got another, two more alert forces that are trying to push him out this way but he's got -- he's heavily fortified. He's got a lot of ammo. REPORTER 1: What's he got, small arms? MP: Small arms, automatic fire, grenade launcher, and hand grenades. REPORTER 1: You lost any men here? MP: Well, I've got, uh five, five, six, six people I've had wounded. REPORTER 2: Now CIA men and MPs have gone into the embassy and are trying to get the snipers out by themselves. NARRATOR: Nothing dramatized the Vietcong's drive more vividly to Americans than the scene inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital. The center of American power in Vietnam had come under fire. REPORTER 3: General, how would you assess yesterday's activities and today's? What is the enemy doing? Are these major attacks or (explosion)... GENERAL WESTMORELAND: That's EOD setting off a couple of M-79 duds, I believe. REPORTER 3: General, how would you assess the enemy's purposes yesterday and today? GENERAL WESTMORELAND: The enemy, very deceitfully, has taken advantage of the Tet truce in order to create maximum consternation within South Vietnam, particularly in the populated areas. NARRATOR: The consternation was indeed maximum. For years the North Vietnamese and Vietcong had fought mainly in the rice fields and jungles. Now, for the first time, they were fighting in the cities -- in their biggest offensive of the war. They hit nearly every province and district capital across South Vietnam. They hit Westmoreland's own headquarters near the Saigon airport. They hit key targets throughout Saigon, including the government radio station. REPORTER, February 1968: This is the main Vietnamese language radio station in Saigon, and right now there are an undisclosed number of VC inside occupying the station. They're not broadcasting on the air and they're surrounded by South Vietnamese troops. And they're pinned down inside. We think they're going to be throwing, we think they're going to be throwing tear gas any moment now to try to get them out that way. There's been a lot of shooting out the windows from inside up on the second floor. DANG XUAN TEO: A comrade inside the radio station had captured an enemy machine gun and had fought with it throughout the night. By nine o'clock in the morning, he had only 20 rounds left. He was wounded, his leg shattered. He asked me to go and find out whether he should try to hold the place or blow it up. At about ten o'clock in the morning, we had only eight men inside with a very large explosive. They detonated the explosive, destroying the entire radio station and sacrificed themselves in the blast. NARRATOR: U.S. combat troops had been in Vietnam for nearly three years before Tet, 1968. Yet all their superior power had failed to grind down the enemy. The war was deadlocked. In July 1967, Communist planners in Hanoi debated their next move. Some wanted to continue their war of attrition. But Ho Chi Minh approved a bold offensive designed to break the deadlock and open the way to power. The war in 1967 posed a different problem for Lyndon Johnson. He had to raise taxes to continue both the war and his social programs. To rally domestic support, he had to promise light at the end of the tunnel. November 16, 1967 REPORTER: How do you see it, General? GENERAL WESTMORELAND: Very very encouraged. I've never been more encouraged during my entire, almost four years in this country. I think we're making real progress. Everybody is very optimistic that I know of, who is intimately associated with our effort there. GENERAL EARLE WHEELER (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): We feel that on the military side there has been substantial progress over the past two years, that in the last six months, the progress has been even more rapid than in the 18 months before that. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, December 22, 1967: All the challenges have been met. The enemy is not beaten but he knows that he has met his master in the field. NARRATOR: Johnson had orchestrated this campaign of optimism only weeks before Tet. But he had reason to believe an enemy attack of some kind was coming. During the two previous years, the Communists had staged winter offensives along South Vietnam's borders. Now as U.S. intelligence detected large deployments moving south, Westmoreland expected similar assaults. He rushed 6,000 American Marines and South Vietnamese troops to Khesanh, a remote frontier outpost near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. From here he had hoped to control North Vietnamese infiltration into South Vietnam's northern provinces. The North Vietnamese attacked Khesanh in January, several days before Tet. Westmoreland thought this would be a decisive engagement. GENERAL WESTMORELAND, January 22, 1968: I think his plans concerned a major effort to win a spectacular battlefield success on the eve of Tet, which is the Chinese New Year, which takes place at the end of this month. NARRATOR: Johnson was so concerned that he kept a model of Khesanh in the White House. But neither he nor his generals then fully knew the Communists' real purpose in fighting there. GENERAL WESTMORELAND: I did feel it was a target that the enemy was very much interested in, that he would want to seize it. And I wanted to fight him in the hinterland rather than allow him to get down among the people, which would have been very costly in casualties. CAPT. TRAN DINH THONG (North Vietnam): Our objective was to inflict casualties on the enemy of Khesanh, thus compelling him to shift more of his forces there from the southern part of the country. In that way, it would be possible for our people to organize in order to liberate the South. But because we drew larger enemy forces into Khesanh, and allowed them to supply and reinforce themselves, we could not turn the encounter into a final big battle. NARRATOR: Days after they began to shell Khesanh, the Communist commanders issued final orders for their nationwide offensive against South Vietnam's cities. The longest battle was waged for Hue, the old imperial capital. Survivors of the battle tell different stories. One is a refugee with family still in Vietnam. REFUGEE FROM HUE: The night of Tet, the lunar New Year, was different from other New Year's eves. Firecrackers went on longer. They came faster and faster. There were more -- many more -- than on other New Years. The sounds of firecrackers and gunfire interspersed. Nobody realized that it was the gunfire of Communists who were overrunning the city of Hue. PHAM THI XUAN QUE (Vietcong): At that time, I was at the nursing school, now the secondary school for nurses. I was among the students there, and weapons were smuggled into us. At the nursing school we also managed to print a number of leaflets and tracts for the National Liberation Front calling on the population to remain calm and not carry out reprisals when its forces entered the city. For example, when people arrested an enemy agent, they were to turn him over to the cadres. REFUGEE FROM HUE: Communist soldiers came in and asked my father his occupation and his residence. They told my father to describe his background. My father replied that he was deputy district chief of Trieuphong and that he was already old and would retire in one year. They wrote down everything, then went on to other houses. NARRATOR: The North Vietnamese and Vietcong dominated Hue for three days. They rounded up South Vietnamese officials and government sympathizers. Some eluded arrest and fled with other civilians. Many did not. REFUGEE FROM HUE: My father was ordered to attend a study session for ten days, and he was told that he would be released afterward. My mother and I accompanied him to the school. There were about 100 persons there. We stayed there until we saw my father leave. My mother and I were very worried because in 1946, my father's father had been arrested in the same way by the Communists. He never returned. HOANG PHU NGOG TUONG: The people so hated those who had tortured them in the past that, when the revolution came to Hue, they rooted out those despots to get rid of them -- just as they would poisonous snakes who, if allowed to live, would commit further crimes. NARRATOR: Troops of South Vietnam's First Infantry Division joined U.S. Marines in the counter-attack against Hue. Many were fighting for their homes and for an historic city. The Nguyen emperors had built the Citadel, Hue's walled fortress, early in the nineteenth century. They modeled it on the impregnable Forbidden City in Peking, the Chinese capital. The North Vietnamese army set up a command post next to the throne, in the Palace of Perfect Peace. Delta Company, First Battalion, Fifth Regiment, U.S. Marines headed for the Citadel. CAPTAIN MYRON HARRINGTON: I think my most vivid memory as I went in was in talking with one of the other company commanders who had already been participating there in the action for a couple of days, and in a very matter-of-fact way without a great deal of embellishment on his part he just frightened the hell out of me in telling me how bad it was. And I thought in my mind right then and there that, you know, hey, here I am with a fresh company and I knew without having to be told that what my mission was going to be the next day, was going to be to go try to take this fortified tower position along the east wall. And, sure enough, that evening when I went in to be briefed, Major Thompson, he just said, "Delta Company, tomorrow you're going to take that east wall." And I said, "Aye, aye, sir" and went at it. REPORTER, February 1968: What's the hardest part of it? MARINE: Not knowing where they are -- that's the worst thing. Riding around, running in the sewers, the gutters, anywhere. Could be anywhere. Just hope you can stay alive, day to day. Everybody just wants to go back home and go to school. That's about it. REPORTER: Have you lost any friends? MARINE: Quite a few. We lost one the other day. The whole thing stinks, really. NARRATOR: Two days later, on February 14, Delta Company took the fortified tower, then moved on. CAPTAIN MYRON HARRINGTON: We tried our best to avoid malicious damage, if you would. We just didn't shoot at walls just to blow them down. But when we had to shoot at a house, we shot at a house. When we had to destroy a house, we destroyed it. But we didn't go in there with the express purpose that this is a wonderful opportunity to show how great our weapons are and how much destructive power they possess. As a result of their being so entrenched, it required for us to bring maximum fire power at our disposal to eliminate them. But we were fortunate in that we did have the weapons that were capable of routing the NVA and the Vietcong out of their positions. NGUYEN THI HOA: They directed artillery fire into the area where I lived. All the houses and trees were destroyed. They also directed rocket fire against the homes of the people in my neighborhood. The people here use kerosene and gasoline, and so their homes burst into flames when they were hit by the rockets. Old folks -- children and pregnant women who could not flee -- were burned alive in their homes. CAPT. MYRON HARRINGTON: And throughout all of this, you constantly had this fear. Not so much that you were going to die, because I think to a certain degree that was a given. This was combined with the semi-darkness type of environment that we were fighting in because of the low overcast -- the fact that we didn't see the sun -- gave it a very eerie, spooky look. You had this utter devastation all around you. You had this horrible smell. I mean you just cannot describe the smell of death especially when you're looking at it a couple of weeks along. It's horrible. It was there when you ate your rations. It was almost like you were eating death. You couldn't escape it. NARRATOR: After 24 days of fierce fighting, South Vietnamese army units entered the Citadel and raised the flag of South Vietnam. Hue had been saved but destroyed. Seventy-five percent of its people were homeless. Eight thousand soldiers and civilians on both sides had been killed in the fighting. But the final toll was higher. REFUGEE FROM HUE: In 1969, a Communist defected and told the chief of Thua Thien province that the Communists had buried a number of people in the Xuan O and Xuan Doi areas. The province chief ordered the bodies dug up, to exhume the remains of those who had been arrested during the Tet offensive. I, along with others whose relatives had been killed, inspected the remains. The smell was terrible, but we had loved and missed our relatives, and it was our duty to search for them. Those who found the remains of their relatives were gratified, and those who could not were sad. I continued looking along with others. At Phu Tu, eight more tunnels were dug up. Strangely, all the skulls of the skeletons were smashed. Their arms were tied, and their positions indicated that they died kneeling. The skeletons were not stretched out. They were bundled up or huddled. I went on following the search party up until September 1969, but I never found my father's remains. NARRATOR: The bodies found in the mass graves were solemnly buried by the South Vietnamese government -- bodies of officials, army officers, priests, students. Some, who bore no visible marks of violence, had presumably been buried alive. Twenty-eight hundred bodies were eventually found, and the massacre prompted U.S. and South Vietnamese officials to predict a bloodbath if the Communists won the war. For the Communists, however, the Tet offensive fell short of their expectations. CAPT. TRAN DINH THONG: At that time, in the North, we had devoted our resources and our energy to the liberation of the South in 1968, and when this could not be achieved we certainly felt a little let down. MAJ. GEN. TRAN DO: Looking back at it now, it is clear that the first objective -- the liberation of the South -- was not accomplished. But at that time we did attack the command centers of the American forces and the puppet regime in the urban areas as well as in the provinces. We attacked the provincial headquarters, the Saigon presidential palace, the various secret police headquarters and the radio stations. And in Saigon we fought our way into the American embassy, which was the most important American headquarters in the South. We were able to occupy all these places, but we could not hold them. There-fore, we did not gain enough for the people to stage their general uprising. GEN. VO. NGUYEN GIAP: For us, you know, strategy is never purely military. Our strategy is always a general, an integrated strategy: simultaneously military, political and diplomatic. Thus the Tet offensive of 1968 obviously had an objective that was both military and political. NARRATOR: As a military operation, the offensive had failed. The southern Vietcong guerrilla forces had surfaced, to be killed or captured in large numbers. After 1968, the war was increasingly fought by North Vietnamese as a conventional conflict. The political goal of forcing President Thieu to accept a coalition government also failed. NGUYEN VAN THIEU (President, South Vietnam), February 1968: What they have realized in the city that the people was against them. So I believe that the general uprising that they had hoped have not happened. They have met with the anti-Communist sentiment from the people in the city, so they failed in both countryside and city. DEAN RUSK: But even though it was a considerable military set-back for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong out there on the ground, it was, in effect, a brilliant political victory for them here in the United States. I'm not sure I fully understand the reasons why that should have occurred, but it became very clear after the Tet offensive that many people at the grass roots, such as my cousins in Cherokee County, finally came to the conclusion that if we could not tell them when this war was going to end, and we couldn't in any good faith, that we might as well chuck it. GEORGE CHRISTIAN (Presidential Aide): The Tet offensive came as a brutal surprise to President Johnson and all of his advisers. We had been led to believe that the Vietcong were pretty well defanged by that period, that the pacification program had worked very well, that most of the villages in South Vietnam were secure and that it was virtually impossible for the Vietcong to rise to the heights that they did in 1968. NARRATOR: The shock of the Tet attacks forced Johnson, the commander-in-chief, to seek refuge in the military. Johnson, the president, said nothing to the nation. Tet had crystallized the dilemma of the war. Johnson wanted victory. But his enemy, though rebuffed, was still not defeated. Could he win now without expanding the war and committing more troops? GEN. WILLIAM WESTMORELAND: At the time of the Tet offensive, I asked for only those troops that were on the way to me anyway, that had been promised, and had been organized. And I asked that they be accelerated. NARRATOR: Johnson approved this request and sent off an airborne unit. But by now, Vietnam was draining America's overall military force. Johnson's generals pressed him to take a step he had always resisted: to call up the reserves, to gird the nation for a bigger war. GEN. WILLIAM WESTMORELAND: Mr. Johnson then sent a message, "If you need further reinforcements, please call for them." I took no steps in that regard, until General Wheeler came over. He was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And Wheeler told me that it was a good prospect that the reserves would be mobilized, that the strategy would be changed. And if reserves are mobilized and our strategy was changed to be an offensive strategy that would break down some of the geo-graphical barriers of Laos and Cambodia and allow us to take the war to the enemy in a more effective way through the bombing campaign -- what would I want to bring the war to an end? It was in the context, then, of a contingency plan based on an assumption of a decision. And it was not request per se. NARRATOR: But it was presented as Westmoreland's request for 206,000 troops for Vietnam. General Earle Wheeler said they were needed to stop another attack. In fact, Wheeler planned to keep half the troops at home to replenish the depleted reserves. Another adviser wanted to use the troops to invade North Vietnam. WALT W. ROSTOW (National Security Adviser): I thought that the extra troops would be justified, only if we used them in a very active policy to force an end to the war on the ground, through putting forces into North Vietnam as far north as Vien, and blocking off on the ground with U.S. forces the multiple trails in Laos. NARRATOR: Johnson turned the troop request over to Clark Clifford, his new secretary of defense, a trusted adviser and supporter of the war from the beginning. CLARK CLIFFORD: President Johnson appointed a task force as soon as I went into the Pentagon and named me chairman of the task force. The reason was that the military had specifically requested 206,000 more troops to be sent to Vietnam. He wanted that analyzed, he wanted us to determine how the troops could be gathered and sent, what the social, political, economic impact might be on the United States. NARRATOR: The troop request came at a time when Johnson was concerned about Khesanh, where the Marine garrison was still besieged. Johnson believed the North Vietnamese still planned a major assault against Khesanh. The Marines, surrounded and outnumbered, were enduring deadly artillery barrages as they waited for the North Vietnamese to storm the base. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, March 1968: Now to meet the needs of these fighting men, we shall do whatever is required. Make no mistake about it. I don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise. We are going to win! NARRATOR: Johnson did meet the needs of his men at Khesanh. He unleashed the Air Force against the North Vietnamese encircling the base in one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in history. By early March, assured that Khesanh was safe and the Tet offensive repelled, Johnson quietly shelved the request for 206,000 troops. But the troop request had deeply influenced his new secretary of defense. CLARK CLIFFORD: I know for three full days I spent down in the tank with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where you sit with all of the communications devices that go all over the world. We had long talks. How long would it take? They didn't know. How many more troops would it take? They didn't know. Would 206,000 answer the demand? They didn't know. Might there be more? Yes, there might be more. So, when it was all over, I said, "What is the plan to win the war in Vietnam?" Well, the only plan is that ultimately the attrition will wear down the North Vietnamese and they will have had enough. Is there any indication that we've reached that point? No, there isn't. As a result of that kind of interview, and that kind of information, before the final examination was over and we submitted our reports to President Johnson, I had turned against the war. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, March 1968: Well, we don't plan to surrender either, and we don't plan to pull out either, and we don't plan to let people influence us, and pressure and force us to divide our nation in a time of national peril. The hour is here! CLARK CLIFFORD: I then decided that what I must do would be to get all of the strength that I could, because the mere fact that I had reached the conclusion was not very significant, because the decision really lay with President Johnson. HARRY MCPHERSON (Counsel to the President): Clifford said, "I noticed you this afternoon at the State Department and it seems to me you and I are on the same side. And I think we should form a partnership. You should be the partner in the White House and I'll be the partner in the Pentagon. You tell me what goes on over there that you hear, and I'll tell you what happens over here, and together we'll get this country and our president out of this mess." GEORGE CHRISTIAN (Presidential Aide): Harry was our "Secret Dove," Harry was very close to the President. Harry and I were close; Harry was close to other members of the White House staff. CLARK CLIFFORD: We began to develop a group, and I know that after a while the question would be very secretly, "Is he with us?" That means, Is he a part of this group that is organized and dedicated to changing Lyndon Johnson's mind? It was almost like some very similar expression used in the French Revolution, "Is he with us?" HARRY MCPHERSON: Without his having to say so, getting us out of this mess did not mean putting in another two or 300,000 men in order to beat North Vietnam, the Vietcong; it meant to begin the process of de-escalation, as it was called -- disengagement of the United States. I was exhilarated. NARRATOR: On March 10, The New York Times revealed the Pentagon's request for additional troops. The request had been a closely guarded secret. The disclosure stunned members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then holding hearings on Vietnam. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was grilled on live television for two days. SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE, March 10, 1968 SEN. WAYNE MORSE: There is incipient uprising in this country in opposition to this war and it's going to get worse. This talk about sending over 100,000, 200,000 more troops, you're going to create a very serious difficulty in this country if you people in the administration go through with that. SEN. MIKE MANSFIELD: Now, Mr. Secretary, for some years we have been bombing the North. As I understand it, this bombing of the North had three purposes: one, to hurt North Vietnam. That's been done. Secondly, to stop the infiltration of men down across the parallel and the Ho Chi Minh trails. Has that been done? DEAN RUSK: It has not been stopped completely, Senator. We never supposed that it could stop it completely, but we do know that it has had some major impact upon the capacity of the other side to carry out this infiltration and has cost them very heavily. SEN. MANSFIELD: The rate of infiltration in 1965 was about 1,500 a month. In 1966 about 4,500 a month. In 1967 between 5,500 and 6,000 a month. And in 1968, it's my understanding that in January, 20,000 men came down from North Vietnam into South Vietnam. Is that a correct figure or a correct estimate? DEAN RUSK: I would accept those as approximately correct, Sir. SEN. MANSFIELD: Then, the third factor -- in addition to hurt, reducing infiltration -- the third factor was to bring Hanoi to the conference table. Are they any closer to the conference table now than they were when the bombing began? DEAN RUSK: We have seen no evidence that they are prepared to undertake serious discussions toward a peaceful settlement of this situation. NARRATOR: Senators Morse and Mansfield had long opposed the war. But after Tet, supporters like Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota began to abandon Johnson. SEN. KARL MUNDT: As one who has consistently supported the decision of the administration to stay on and press on with this war, I am totally and sorrowfully disappointed by your answer. And I think this is one of the great causes for dissension in this country. I am convinced the majority of Americans would like to see a priority, and unless it is established and announced by this administration, I think we're going to increase the divisiveness which I hate to see developing in this country. NARRATOR: Now Congress wanted a change -- either victory or withdrawal. Congress, also concerned about the cost of the war, forced Johnson to trim his domestic programs. He could not spend more on a limited war, and he feared an expanded war. HARRY MCPHERSON: Johnson's greatest fear, as he once put it, was that an American pilot was going to miss his target in Hanoi or Haiphong harbor and put a bomb down the smoke stack of a Russian freighter with the Russian minister on board and that the pilot would be from Johnson City, Texas. He was, he was extremely disturbed that we might provoke the Russians, or earlier the Chinese, into coming to the aid of Vietnam. And that was one of the, that was one of the tremendous dilemmas he had throughout the war when a great many Americans wanted the United States to go ahead and finish it off. NARRATOR: Johnson also had to consider the war at home. Until then, he had dismissed street demonstrations. But 1968 was a presidential election year, and out of the growing anti-war sentiment, there emerged a peace candidate, thrust into prominence by the shock of the Tet offensive. SEN. EUGENE MCCARTHY, February 1968: I am a candidate for the nomination of the presidency on the Democratic ticket. And I run for that office against an incumbent leader of our party, because I believe as I find many people in this country do believe now, and have for the last five or six months, that we are involved in a very deep crisis of leadership, a crisis of direction and a crisis of national purpose. The entire history of this war in Vietnam -- no matter what we call it -- has been one of continued error and of misjudgment. NARRATOR: Senator Eugene McCarthy nearly beat Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, and the close vote jolted Johnson. At the time, it looked like a vote for peace. In fact, it was a vote against Johnson's conduct of the war. Most New Hampshire voters felt that he wasn't being tough enough. They favored getting out of a war he refused to win. NARRATOR: Johnson was further rattled when Robert Kennedy joined the presidential race. The glamorous Kennedys had always worried him. Robert had switched to a peace platform, and Johnson smelled defeat in Wisconsin, the next primary. The faraway war was taking its toll at home. Johnson turned to a group of elder statesmen called the "wise men." They had consistently backed his war policies. He convened them on March 25. They included establishment figures like former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, former Ambassador to Vietnam Maxwell Taylor, and former National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. MCGEORGE BUNDY: And our recommendation on the whole -- not without dissent and disagreement -- was that there should not be an increase in force levels in South Vietnam, and that there should be a modification of the policy of bombing North Vietnam. CLARK CLIFFORD: Now here was a group saying, Mr. President, stop trying to win the war. Start cutting back. Don't send any more men. We think you ought to get out. It was a very bitter pill for him. MCGEORGE BUNDY: I think he had himself decided really, that he would not do the ground force reinforcement, so it was more our gloominess in a way than our specific recommendations that he may have found troubling. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: To meet price increases... NARRATOR: On the afternoon of March 31, after two months of indecision, Johnson rehearsed an address to the nation scheduled for that evening. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: ...the estimate of those additional expenditures is, so get Clifford in to see what figures...this fiscal year...well you're going to have to get him in the next hour so you can mimeograph because George is going to want them, in that fiscal year. NARRATOR: As late as March 28 his aides were still divided on Vietnam policy. HARRY MCPHERSON: It was a strong "we will be in there, we will be fighting, they will not drive us out, we will save Vietnam" speech. There was a meeting in Secretary Rusk's office. Rusk, Clifford, Bill Bundy, the assistant secretary for the Far East, Rostow and me. Clifford said, "The speech is a disaster." CLARK CLIFFORD: I thought the draft was dreadful. I thought that it was harsh. I thought that it talked about the continuation of the war. It talked about Tet, how Tet could be resolved. There was some suggestion about sending some of the men, not the whole 206,000. To me, it needed much changing and much amendment. HARRY MCPHERSON: The really, the really surprising thing was that Rusk and Rostow did not fight Clifford on that, but began to speak as if, all right, let's, what do we have to put in line to write a different kind of speech? I went back and wrote a different speech -- a very different speech. CLARK CLIFFORD: As a quick illustration, the first few sentences of that speech in the original draft said, "I wish to talk about the war in Vietnam." That was the first sentence. By the time the speech was written and rewritten -- we worked days on it before it was given -- the first sentence read: PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, March 31, 1968: Good evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. CLARK CLIFFORD: And that speech was almost a complete reversal of what the speech started out to be. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Tonight, I have ordered our aircraft and our naval vessels to make no attacks on North Vietnam, except in the area north of the demilitarized zone where the continuing enemy buildup directly threatens allied forward positions and where the movement of their troops and supplies are clearly related to that threat. HARRY MCPHERSON: I had cut off the peroration, the ending of that speech, which was a kind of McPherson effort to write Churchillian. It had been on every draft of every speech from the beginning. Clifford called me just before we met on that Saturday and said, "You know that peroration doesn't belong there anymore. The speech has changed. You can't make the kind of speech we've now got and then end it with the sort of 'we will fight them in the... lanes and the villages and the beaches' language that is in that peroration." So I just cut it off. I didn't have time to write a new one. Johnson asked me, "Where was it? I liked that." And I said, "Well, I didn't like it, it doesn't really fit with the speech. I'll go upstairs and write a new one. And I'll make it short because the speech is already a very long one." He said, "You don't need to worry about time. I may have a little ending of my own." And he walked out of the room leaving me and Clifford. I turned around to Clifford and said, "Good Lord, is he going to say 'sayonara', is he going to quit?" And Clifford looked at me as if I were out of my mind. CLARK CLIFFORD: We'd all assumed of course that he would run. He loved the job. He reveled in it. HARRY MCPHERSON: About five in the afternoon I got back to my office and Johnson called me and asked me what I thought about the speech that he was about to deliver in two or three hours. And I said I thought it was pretty good -- I was really proud and glad that we had turned, changed the speech. He said, "I've got an ending." I said, "I've heard that." He said, "Do you know what's in it?" I said, "I think so." He said, "What do you think about it?" And I said, "I'm very sorry, Mr. President." And he said, "Okay. So long pardner." PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office -- the presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president. CLARK CLIFFORD: As promptly as possible after he spoke, I had a press conference and announced formally that the 206,000 troops were not to be sent. April 11, 1968 This is part and parcel, I believe, of the President's decision to place a limitation at this time upon our troop level at a point not exceeding 550,000. It seemed appropriate that it should be said -- if that's what he meant -- and I assumed that that was what he meant from the tone of his speech on March the 31. There were still those who very much wanted to -- the military still thought the matter was hanging fire. That ended it. After that statement was made publicly, there was no further comment about the 206,000 troops. NARRATOR: The Tet offensive had a further impact. In mid-May, North Vietnamese diplomats arrived in Paris to negotiate for the first time. That week the Vietcong launched a new offensive. Americans fought on, for the same objective: an independent South Vietnam. But after Tet the strategy changed. There were peace talks and the slow withdrawal of American troops. The talking and fighting went on for the next five years. Vietnamizing the War (1969-1973) Previous 7 of 11 Next December 1968 MUSIC FROM HELICOPTER RADIO: "You've lost that lovin' feeling. Ooh that lovin' feeling..." VOICES ON RADIO: "See that last hooch down there? See that last hooch?" "Yeah." "Alright, just this side of it, there are four guys with bushes on them. I want you to kill them." "OK. I'm going to put tracers right here." "Go!" BOB HOPE: I'd planned to spend Christmas in the States, but I can't stand violence. NARRATOR: The Bob Hope Show, Christmas, 1968. ANN MARGARET (singing): "Dallas, Houston, Memphis, Boston, Atlanta, Denver, Frisco..." NARRATOR: Paid with American aid, armed with American weapons, South Vietnamese soldiers on patrol in 1969. CAPTAIN DO CUONG (South Vietnamese soldier): Foreigners didn't understand the psychology of the South Vietnamese soldiers who were carrying the guns and doing the fighting. We felt we had to fight. We were spilling our blood and suffering all kinds of hardships because we felt there was no other choice. PRESIDENT NGUYEN VAN THIEU, June 1969: We never accept any form of government, any form of policy that the Communists would like to impose on us before the decision on all South Vietnamese people can be made through free choice and democratic procedures, without external interference and without atrocities. NARRATOR: Pop singers livened up conscription campaigns, welcoming draftees into South Vietnam's armed forces. The military numbered more than a million, but each week more than 2,000 of its troops deserted. Each week more than 400 were killed. (VIETNAMESE WOMAN SINGING) "We will never forget you and your fight for freedom" was the refrain. The South Vietnamese government was recognized by most Western countries. It had survived for 15 years on more than $100 billion in U.S. aid. It was still totally dependent on America. BUI DIEM (ambassador to the U.S.A.): We had a lot of conversations about the impact of the huge American presence in South Vietnam. We South Vietnamese, we are very concerned about the fact that the Communists are, were very shrewd in trying to take advantage of the American presence in South Vietnam. VICE PRESIDENT NGUYEN CAO KY: They said that we are puppets of American, we are working you know, for America, receive money from America, die for America. While they are the true liberators, you know. So, when you look just at the surface, a lot of people listened to their propaganda and believed it. BUI DIEM: The Vietnamese couldn't think in terms of the Americans intervening in some-thing and not succeeding. When they saw that the Americans build with billions and billions of dollars the air strips in Danang and Camranh -- everywhere around the country -- they couldn't think that the Americans once having committed their troops in Vietnam, having spended so much money in Vietnam, could one of these days leave everything behind and call it quit. NARRATOR: In early 1969, one-third of the forces defending the Saigon government -- half a million men -- were American. ELEVENTH CAVALRY IN FIELD, February 1969: OFFICER: Just pull him over; if anything flies out, watch out. NARRATOR: After four years in Vietnam, American combat troops still pursued -- and often caught -- an elusive enemy. OFFICER: Tell... we'll pick him up there. Hello, got another one over here that's wounded. Send me an aircraft over to pick up the one that's wounded up. We thought he was dead. He's wounded. Soon as you pick the one up on the stretcher come get the other one. Take him in also. The other fellow died but we gotta get him out of here. NARRATOR: Every American had his own version of the Vietnam War. CAPT. FRANK HICKEY: The aviation units in general had a very high espirit de corps. The morale was good. We enjoyed what we did. And part of it I think is due to the fact of the logistics of being a pilot. You know, you go out and you fly your mission everyday, and you take, you know, very precarious chances, but at, you know, you come back home, you have a comfortable hootch. It might be air-conditioned. You got an officers' club across the street where you can get loaded every night and kind of forget about the world. And that kind of made...It was almost like a nine to five job. I mean, if I could put that kind of parallel. Go out and fight, come back and live, almost the way you lived in the states. LT. BOB FRANCO: All of a sudden from up above on my radio I hear our battalion commander telling me that there were three dinks, his exact words, "There's three dinks to your west. Go get 'em." You know, and I said this must be Bunker Hill, you know. So I said to my men, "Okay, the colonel said there's three dinks to our west, we're going east." Because I always felt never follow them cause that's when you're gonna go. LT. PETER PAUL MAHONEY: We were on our way back to our base and we were walking through the vill when a soldier came up to the guy who was in charge of patrol, and he had apparently spotted three VC, or NLF, or whoever they were in one of the houses, so we surrounded the house. BOB FRANCO: And that was, that was the story of go-get-'em, you know. And you don't just go get Charlie. 'Cause he's a little fast. PETER MAHONEY: None of the South Vietnamese who were in the patrol fired at these three guys, and I was scared stiff. I was suddenly, I was feeling alone because I was the only American who was there and so I, I put my rifle on automatic. I jumped up and I just fired the entire magazine at these three guys. I killed two of them and I didn't hit the other one and he got away in the darkness. FRANK HICKEY: There were areas where you weren't supposed to fly over. There were areas where if you took fire you had to call back, maybe all the way back to the commanding general of the division to get permission to fight, to fire back, and to me that was absurd. We're fighting a war. Somebody's shooting at you. You turn around, you shoot back and you kill him. PETER MAHONEY: The Americans gave a medal to the South Vietnamese soldier who was in charge of the patrol. This is part of, this was considered instilling morale in the South Vietnamese soldiers, so he was given a Bronze Star by the American army because this was like the first body count we had in our area in probably eight months, you know, and the South Vietnamese feeling the need to reciprocate that ended up giving me a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. BOB FRANCO: I was a very lucky person to have the people I had with me, because they got me through it. You know, I would say to them, "Look, you have one function. That's to protect me. 'Cause I can get you everything else. I can get you the beer in the field. I can get you the air mattresses." Because the people I sent in the rear still had the respect for me. So anything I needed I called in for and got. FRANK HICKEY: I mean, we had some precarious situations and we lost some birds and we lost some people. But we always won. I mean, we, so to me, we were very successful, you know. But I, I'm, as I think of it now, I don't know what we won. We won a box on a map where the next day we left it and we never came back maybe. But every time we were engaged in that type of an operation, we won. NARRATOR: The peace talks in Paris had not stopped the bombing in South Vietnam. American aircraft dropped six times more bombs on South Vietnam than on the Communist North. Many towns and villages in the South were destroyed in order to drive out the Vietcong, the North Vietnamese and their civilian supporters. The number of northerners captured increased as more of their main battalions moved south. But most of the enemy troops were native southerners fighting in Vietcong units. The destruction -- much of it deliberate -- created more than three million refugees. Most American soldiers served with support units during their one-year tours. Their daily routine could be broken at any time by enemy rocket attacks or terrorism. U.S. bases employed thousands of Vietnamese civilians. The jobs were highly prized. The American-financed war overheated the economy, creating new opportunities, new wealth, and a new commercial class. NGUYEN NHAN HUU: Between 1967 and 1969, when the American forces were still in Vietnam, it was very easy for everyone to make money. Take a certain Mr. A. who worked for the Americans. He could earn much more working for the Americans than an official could earn from the South Vietnamese government. And since Mr. A. had a lot of money to spend, he would spend it in many ways. BUI DIEM: It was so easy for everyone to get a share of the pie. That money was so easily available that it very easily corrupted everyone. MR. NHAN: As for black marketeering, I did not see anything bad at all. When people bought goods from the American supermarkets for resale to make a little profit, then everybody said that this was black marketeering. But, to me, this was not black marketeering. This was only a transaction. NGUYEN CAO KY: The press at the time tried to blame it on Vietnamese official or Vietnamese people. You know that most of the goods came, you know, that selling of the black market came from the various PX. So, it's wartime and a lot of people, both sides, American as well as the Vietnamese, are involving in the black market, you know. So it created a big, upside down society. NARRATOR: Christmas, 1969. Nixon was steadily reducing the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam. In South Vietnam's towns and cities -- swollen with refugees -- the enemy still planted bombs. Civilians still died. But business went on -- all kinds of business. DUONG THI MY TRUNG (prostitute): I answered an ad in the newspaper for a job as a cashier. While I was working there, the woman who owned the establishment bought me a lot of new clothes. Every time I liked something, she bought it for me. I didn't think that she was going to deduct these things from my salary. But after a while, she began to demand repayment. I became very upset and flustered. I didn't know where I would get the money. Then she suggested that I ought to go with a certain man who would give me money so that I could repay my debt to her. PROSTITUTE: The man asked me whether I would like to go some place to enjoy myself. I replied that I didn't know where to go, that since my childhood, I'd always been living with my family. Then he suggested that we go to the town of Cantho. I thought we were going to live together as husband and wife. But to my surprise, he stayed with me for only three days, then told me that he was returning me to the woman who was my boss. NGUYEN CAO KY: Prostitution. Tell me somewhere in this world that there's no prostitution. Tell me some city, some country, where there is no prostitution. So there is prostitution in Vietnam, in Saigon, of course. There is corruption, of course. There is black market, yes. But, because we're living in war for long time. Thirty years. And with the vast, the big presence of foreign troops in, you know, in Vietnam, it created a lot of social problems. LECTURER TO U.S. TROOPS, July 1971: The first problem we have here is VD. Many of the South Vietnamese women suffer from at least one type of VD. Of course, the best protection here is to abstain from all sexual relations with the South Vietnamese women. However, facts have proven that not all of you will choose to do this. SGT. RALPH THOMAS: I don't know if I should tell this story (chuckle), but my first day when I went into town and I got into this Vespa -- they had these little taxis that they called Vespas -- these three-wheeled jobs in which it starts like a lawnmower. I got in and the first thing the guy asked me did I want a girl. I said, "No, I'd like to see the town first." And he said, "Would you like..." and he held up this big pack of what I assumed was marijuana. Now, I know it was marijuana. At the time I just assumed it. PVT. GEORGE CANTERO: "GI, you want Vietnamese cigarette? I trade you one pack of Salem." Or "GI, can you get me Pham? I give you this, and make enormous dope deals." For a box of Tide, you could get a carton of pre-packed, pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes soaked in opium. For ten dollars you could get a vial of pure heroin about the size of say, maybe about that high, the size of a cigarette butt. And, you could get liquid opium, speed, acid, anything you wanted. RALPH THOMAS: If I wanted it, it was available. I could either have drugs, I could have a girl, or I could go to any part of town I wanted to. Now, let's say you can turn down a girl or you can turn down going to a bar. I mean, it, whatever the taxi driver said, offered you, you couldn't turn down every one. I mean it was something he said that you were going to want. BOB FRANCO: The only drugs I actually saw men taking was maybe smoking grass. A little marijuana on a three-day standout. Now, what I would do is when we came, when we came back for a three-day stand-down so to speak, or a three-day rest before going on another operation, I would just say to the men, "Look, go get drunk, do any...find a little Vietnamese girl, whatever you're gonna do. If you're gonna smoke a little dope, don't get caught," you know. "If you do anything worse, don't come back," you know. But they'd, they'd always show up on the third day straight. And, and, they frowned on drugs. My particular company, because they knew out in the field anybody that wasn't alert they could cost the other guy's life. NARRATOR: In 1971, a Congressional study said that drugs in South Vietnam were "more plentiful than cigarettes and chewing gum." Another report estimated 30,000 American heroin addicts in the country. Narcotics were eroding discipline. Drug abuse, concluded an official survey, had become a "military problem." SONG: But the pusher don't care if you live or if you die -- Goddam." NARRATOR: In 1969, more than 9,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam. Nixon aimed to reduce American casualties by Vietnamizing the war, letting the South Vietnamese do the fighting. In 1970, as U.S. troop withdrawals increased, American deaths dropped by more than one-half. PRESIDENT NGUYEN VAN THIEU, January 1970: All of the U.S. troops cannot be withdrawn in 1970. It will take many years. Ambassador Bunker, General Abrams, everyone have assured me that the U.S. people and U.S. Government will continue to stay, to mend, to help the Vietnamese people and army to defend the freedom in Vietnam. U.S. RADIO SAIGON: "Good morning Vietnam. Welcome to the time buster...Today is the day..." NARRATOR: The total number of Americans in Vietnam continued to drop. But among new arrivals anti-war sentiments were spreading, morale was in decline. Vietnam gave the language a new term: "fragging." In more than 200 incidents during 1970, American troops tried to kill or wound their superiors using fragmentation grenades. After five years in Vietnam, America's armed forces had changed. FRANK HICKEY: I had an experience and I'll never forget it. I went in, on payday and the commissaries, well really the PX over there are just mobbed. Everybody has their money for the month, and the lines are really long, and really rank has no privilege. Everybody stands on line. I came in one time and there was a long line and we were all standing there and a couple of black guys came in and they walked in front of the line. So I said to the one fellow, I said, "Hey boy, you'll have to get back on the line." And I didn't mean it in the derogatory sense. Well, the guy went crazy. I mean, he started to yell at me, "Who are you calling 'boy'? I'm," you know, "I'm no boy," and I don't remember exactly all the things he said to me, but I said to him, "Gee," I said, "look, I apologize." And, I was a captain and he was a PFC. I decided it was time to leave. He was really causing a scene. So I walked out the back door and the guy followed me. And I turned around to say, "Hey look, I'm sorry," and the guy hit me. I mean, he punched me. And, he was, I don't know, he was about 5'8", 5'9", 120 pounds. He couldn't have hurt me, but in my mind I said, this guy is a PFC. He just hit a captain. I mean, it wasn't him hitting me. It was the whole relationship that I'd grown up with. You know, enlisted men don't hit officers. I mean you go to jail for that. RALPH THOMAS: The racial polarization was deeper there than I've ever seen. They had black sides of town, white sides of town. And even the Vietnamese accepted it. And woe to the white who walked in a black area unaccompanied, and vice-versa. Woe to the black who would walk into a white area of town unaccompanied. PRIVATE PHILLIP KEY: I just found myself isolating myself from the white soldiers and things. As blacks we began to associate among ourselves. More so, we began to have political education classes. We began to come together to sit down to talk about, you know, some of the problems that we was confronted with. Our, our commitment. RALPH THOMAS: For blacks such as myself, it was reading, after reading Malcolm X and black history. Martin Luther King and other, other more black militants, Eldridge Cleaver, etc. It naturally led into a political reading, and I read Dr. Spock on Vietnam. There was anti-war literature in Vietnam. Readily available. PHILLIP KEY: A lot of guys felt that we shouldn't, you know, risk our life or put our life on the line when there was a war back in America, when we wasn't free, you know, like when dogs were being turned on to our peoples, young children were being bombed in churches. It was very confusing. Most blacks still was, you know, very supportive. Most blacks was very supportive of the system, what they had to do. NARRATOR: The closer they got to combat -- the more blacks and whites needed each other -- the better they got along. SINGER AT THE BOB HOPE SHOW: "How many people here got a lot of soul? You got a lot of soul?" "Yeah." "Right on, right on." NARRATOR: Bob Hope's 1970 Christmas show played to shrinking audiences. In two years, the U.S. force in Vietnam had been reduced by more than 300,000. BOB HOPE: I'm surprised to see you. Where were you fellows hiding when the withdrawals took place? NARRATOR: In Saigon, demonstrators protested against the Thieu government. Many favored an immediate peace. Others denounced corruption or sought to discredit the 1971 presidential election. The army fought on. NARRATOR: Anxious to give South Vietnam a democratic image, American officials searched for an anti-Communist contender to run against Thieu. But Thieu stifled domestic opposition. To Thieu, like his predecessors, the election was a means to control the population and placate the Americans. President Thieu declared that the election and his victory were an expression of civil rights in a free and democratic society. The only effective opposition to Thieu was the Vietcong, which now labeled itself the "Provisional Revolutionary Government." It was active in much of the countryside. JANE BARTON (civilian aid worker): It would get to be about three thirty, four o'clock and people would say, you know, "It's getting late in the afternoon, you'd better go home because the government's going to change." And literally, the Saigon government sort of closed up and went home and the PRG people would come in, help the people, maybe even work at night, you know, helping to sift the rice or put it in bags, talk to the people, bring them movies or just visit. They could because, of course, the PRG in the area were not, as people thought, North Vietnamese that had come south, but were really the people themselves. One of the things that was a problem for a foreign government coming in and trying to control an area where it was not popular was figuring out who, who was against the government. Their way of solving it seemed to be to round up groups of people and interrogate them. NARRATOR: Identifying subversives was part of a broader effort called "pacification," always a key American strategy in Vietnam. In 1968, America's Central Intelligence Agency started the Phoenix program. Its teams scoured the countryside, rounding up Vietcong suspects. WILLIAM COLBY (director, Phoenix Program): They're obviously much more valuable to you alive than dead, and therefore, the incentive was to capture them so that they could be interrogated, so that we could learn more about them. Now, we also had a program of trying to invite these people to rally. We'd put up posters in various parts of Vietnam with a picture of the individual and description of who he was. Wanted posters. Like the old Jesse James ones, but a little different because at the bottom of the poster it said very clearly: And Mr. James, if you will turn yourself in, you will be freed of any punishment for anything you may have done while you were on the other side. And, 17,000 of these people turned themselves in. MAJ. DANG VAN SON (South Vietnamese Phoenix operative): In Cantho province, we organized a unit of Thien Nga -- wild geese -- composed of young, beautiful high school girls. We infiltrated these girls into the local Communist apparatus, and they provided us with information on the Communists. During the time I served in Cantho, almost all the Communist organizations were neutralized. NARRATOR: The Phoenix program was managed by South Vietnamese operating with CIA advisers. Thousands of civilians -- men, women, and even children -- were classified as Vietcong suspects. The system relied on a network of informants and secret agents. Communist officials later conceded its effectiveness. Criticism at the time prompted program managers to turn to public relations. For the news cameras, a search for a husband and wife team of Vietcong terrorists. Despite the public relations, reports of abuses persisted: there were rumors of extortion, blackmail, private revenge, and political assassination. WILLIAM COLBY: Twenty thousand of the names that we had collected we found were killed. Now, it's on that basis that people have made totally false accusations that this was a program of assassination. Not true. What this was was that we had the names from our intelligence collection and when there was a battle outside the village some night, and people were killed on both sides. We went out in the morning to find out who had been killed on which side, and sure enough Mr. Nguyen who was down as the local guerrilla chief, he had been killed in that fight, but he certainly hadn't been assassinated. He had been killed in a military fight, but he hadn't rallied and he hadn't been captured. He'd been killed and so that was the phase used. Killed. CAPT. SIDNEY TOWLE (head of District Intelligence, Vinh Long): The colonel who ran the province who was actually an engineering colonel, created a contest throughout the province, and the contest was among the irregulars in the districts and that was, the team that could bring in the most bodies on a monthly basis would be given cash prizes to the groups. This just seemed to me totally out of line and I think that it increased the possibilities that many civilians were killed who had nothing to do with the war whatsoever. WILLIAM COLBY: Now, I'm not going to say that there was nobody wrongfully killed in all of Vietnam during all the years of the Phoenix program, but I do say that the purpose and the effect of the Phoenix program was to reduce and eliminate as far as possible the abuses on the government, although not on the enemy side. SIDNEY TOWLE: While we were having dinner one evening at our table -- there were five of us sitting in there -- and we had an old French villa we lived in. Well, these irregulars came in with a district village chief just, you know, covered in blood. They obviously had just come back from a battle. They had five or six weapons and they threw the weapons down. They were just disgusted with the whole situation. They were going to prove something. Came up. Threw a bag on the table and the bag had 11 ears in it. And he just looked at us and he said, "You don't need the twelfth ear," and walked out. MAJ. DANG VAN SON: Some Americans now in the United States may misconstrue that this Phoenix program was an extremely vicious program designed to neutralize various Communists factions by means such as assassination and illegal arrests. However, the Phoenix program was an extremely effective program and one which enabled us to distinguish clearly between nationalists and Communists by intelligence methods which we had organized. WILLIAM COLBY: If you torture, you'll get what you want to hear or you'll get something that the fellow invents. If you're clever about your interrogation and use sophisticated systems, you'll learn what the truth is and you'll learn it without any abuse. NARRATOR: Prisoners were held without trial in hundreds of jails and internment camps throughout South Vietnam. JANE BARTON: There was no doubt whatsoever that the Americans were responsible, I feel, for the entire prison system in the province where I worked. The Vietnamese knew that. You know, you, they saw all the results of what happened. They were chained to their bed with Smith and Wesson handcuffs. When they were tortured it was either by Americans in the latter sixties, or in the early seventies there would be American advisers there. SIDNEY TOWLE: My first inkling that anything was going on that I had a problem with was hearing screams from next door and finding out that was their interrogation center and that the way they got their information from these people was with a crank telephone and wiring these people in various manners. JANE BARTON: They had electric, you know, certain devices that gave them electrical shocks at the interrogation center and these electrodes were attached to sensitive parts of their bodies, and the women that were tortured by electricity were the ones that we saw having the seizures. And I remember seeing this 67-year-old woman that was lying on a bare bed frame springs, and they had just put cardboard on the top of it with a hole cut in it through which she was supposed to defecate and she had no clothes and just a blanket that the other prisoners had given her. She had been partially paralyzed because she had such a severe injury to her head. So, I guess that was one of my first impressions was, you know, the real horror of the, of the situation. I mean this old woman being treated like this and how could she possibly be dangerous to the government enough that they had to torture her into being paralyzed. NARRATOR: Operation Wandering Soul. From helicopters came Vietnamese voices pretending to be from beyond the grave. They called on their "descendents" in the Vietcong to defect, to cease fighting. Vietnam was deluged with propaganda. In some provinces up to a million leaflets a day were distributed, exhorting, cajoling or warning the peasants to back the government of South Vietnam. American V.I.P.s -- like Secretary of State William Rogers -- regularly toured South Vietnam to observe the progress and repeated the official claims that pacification was working. But loyalty to the Saigon government was difficult to measure. LT. PETER PAUL MAHONEY: The Vietnamese that we were training were very responsive. They asked questions. They were very interested in, you know, in what was going on, and this, you know, made me feel good because, you know, the standard rap on the South Vietnamese was that they, they just weren't interested. They were lethargic and this particular group seemed like very involved in what was going on. So it made me feel good. It made me feel as if I was accomplishing something. We put them through a six-week training program. At the end of the training program the province chief came down and there was a big graduation ceremony and they all got these little colorful neckerchiefs as sort of souvenirs of the whole thing and, you know. It was like this whole sort of media publicity thing about how, you know, these people have been trained and everything. Then it was about a month after the training program was completed and this graduation ceremony happened that three NLF cadre came into the vill one night, and all 29 of those people's self-defense forces that I trained walked off and joined the NLF, taking all their weapons and all their training with them. NARRATOR: By 1971, South Vietnamese officials were claiming that the government had won over 95 percent of the population. WILLIAM COLBY: Pacification involved a lot of other programs. The development of the land reform program. The building of schools, the development of the whole refugee program and the resettlement of the refugees in the areas from which they had come and were now able to go back, thanks to their having some local security. NARRATOR: Years of fighting had failed to topple the American-supported Saigon government. In March 1972, a dramatic change of strategy: regular North Vietnamese units crossed the demilitarized zone in force. This time they massed tanks and heavy artillery in an all-out offensive. NARRATOR: The swift enemy advance left little time for retreat. Along Route One, American advisers had to blow up their headquarters. Taking their colors, and whatever else they could carry with them, they escaped by air. SGT. THO HANG (South Vietnamese soldier): In fact, we didn't know what was going on. There were American advisers with the 56th regiment. But helicopters suddenly arrived and took them away, leaving behind our commander, who didn't know anything at all. People called this road the "highway of terror." There were refugees every-where. Then Vietcong tanks came. We realized that we couldn't resist, and we fled toward the sea. NARRATOR: Amid the retreat, several South Vietnamese army units stood and fought. With no American combat troops to support them, the South Vietnamese army seemed to be fighting a losing battle. On May 1, the South Vietnamese were forced to surrender the province capital of Quangtri. President Nixon reacted by mining Haiphong harbor and stepping up the bombing of North and South Vietnam. Along with conventional bombs, the planes dropped napalm. The North Vietnamese offensive was blunted. Masses of American equipment, and massive American bombing made the difference. South Vietnamese troops prepared to counter-attack. They still needed American help. With their northernmost province in Communist hands, South Vietnamese tactics included amphibious landings behind enemy lines. The U.S. Air Force and Navy provided air and artillery support. But now the ground war was left to the South Vietnamese. Stopping the northern offensive did not stop civilian panic. People near the battle zone struggled desperately to get away. South Vietnamese troops and their families who travelled with them battled for aircraft space. During and after the spring offensive, battles raged, not only in Quangtri province, but also in the Central Highlands, and in the Mekong delta far to the south. Each week more than 3,000 northern soldiers moved south to join the fight. The fighting in 1972 was the heaviest of the war. Forty thousand South Vietnamese soldiers died. The last enemy holdouts in the city of Quangtri finally surrendered on September 15, 1972. That week, for the first time in seven years, there were no American battle deaths. That week more than 5,000 Vietnamese died. The war had been Vietnamized. Over Quangtri city, once home for 80,000 people, the flag of South Vietnam flew again. CAPT. DO CUONG: After this battle, we became masters of the situation again. The morale of all the soldiers seemed to be high. We seemed to be confident in the fighting ability of the South Vietnamese armed forces -- and in our own unit. We thought that, with continued American help and the support of people everywhere in the world who cherished freedom, we could defend a free South Vietnam by ourselves. NARRATOR: Crowded Saigon had been spared the enemy offensive. Its population had become accustomed to the war. Then, on October 22, Henry Kissinger informed Thieu that the United States had reached a ceasefire agreement with North Vietnam. The agreement was to be initialed by October 31, a week before the American election. Under the agreement, northern troops could remain in the South, a concession that Thieu had always opposed. President Thieu refused to sign. He went on television and told the South Vietnamese to keep fighting. The war continued. Without Thieu's acquiescence, the agreement was impossible. Peace seemed far away. But the South Vietnamese could not easily continue the war alone. The American troop withdrawal weakened the economy. Jobs were scarce. Inflation soared. Dollars were disappearing from a society based on the dollar. The bars, the clubs and the hotels built for the American trade, had seen more lucrative days. But South Vietnam still spent more on imported cosmetics and beauty aids than it earned from all its exports. Saigon beauty parlors still offered the Western look -- surgery to make Vietnamese eyes round. The Vietcong still exploded their bombs. As U.S. bombs fell on Hanoi and Haiphong, the remaining American troops watched Bob Hope's last Vietnam Christmas show. At the time, Ambassador Bunker was urging Thieu to sign the agreement, to trust Nixon. HOANG DUC NHA: Right after the Christmas bombings we were deluged with letters. Almost once every three or four days from Mr. Nixon, care of Mr. Bunker or Mr. Haig that we, the South Vietnamese, should close ranks with the U.S. And, I remember on the 16th of January when Mr. Thieu gave his daughter away in a wedding, Mr. Bunker wanted to see him to communicate the latest letter from Nixon and that really angered Mr. Thieu. He say, on this day, the happiest day of my life, the most important day of my life, I'm still bothered, you know, with that. One day later, that's when the pressure came and say, if you don't sign, we go alone. And, that's what the, that's when our political pragmatism dictate to us. He say okay. You know, we're not going to be dumb enough to stand in front of a steam roller. NARRATOR: America had viewed Vietnam as a crusade, as a challenge, and finally as a burden. Now like the Chinese, Japanese, and French before them, the Americans were leaving. BUI DIEM: The Vietnamese couldn't think in terms of the Americans intervening in some-thing and not succeeding, and so it is a kind of blind trust that the South Vietnamese wrongly or rightly put into the Americans. They couldn't think that the Americans -- once having committed their troops in Vietnam, having spent so much money in Vietnam -- could one of these days leave everything behind and call it quits. Cambodia and Laos Previous 8 of 11 Next NARRATOR: Phnompenh, June 1979, six months after Communist Vietnam had invaded Communist Cambodia, ousting its rulers, the Khmer Rouge. Phnompenh, four years after the Communist Khmer Rouge had defeated an American-backed government: four years of terror that followed five years of war. On the day of victory, the Khmer Rouge began to empty all of Cambodia's cities and towns at gunpoint. They went on to starve or slaughter hundreds of thousands, perhaps two million Cambodians -- nobody knows. The Geneva Conference of 1954 had guaranteed the neutrality of Cambodia and Laos. But neither country could prevent the war in neighboring Vietnam from spilling across its borders. The neutralist government in Laos included members of the pro-Communist Pathet Lao. The Pathet Lao were supported by the North Vietnamese who moved supplies through eastern Laos to the Vietcong fighting in South Vietnam. The United States backed the anti-Communist forces in Laos. JFK PRESS CONFERENCE, March 1981: Here now is the Chief Executive. PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: My fellow Americans, Laos is far away from America. But the world is small. Its two million people live in a country three times the size of Austria. The security of all Southeast Asia will be endangered if Laos loses its neutral independence. Its own safety runs with the safety of us all. In real neutrality, observed by all. All we want in Laos is peace, not war. NARRATOR: To back up Kennedy's words of support for Laos, his administration secretly organized the largest of the hill tribes, the Meo or Hmong. EARL YOUNG (Air America): Now most people don't know that in '61 and '62, there were teams of U.S. special forces in the mountains of Laos -- and it's a very rugged country -- who were training and equipping and leading the Meo guerrilla forces against the Pathet Lao. NARRATOR: Later, the CIA took charge, often using its airline, Air America, as cover. VINT LAWRENCE (CIA): I was working for an airline the whole time I was there basically. That was my cover -- thin though it was. Everybody knew exactly what I was doing. But then no one ever saw me so it didn't really make a whole lot of difference. But that if I were killed, my identification was as an airline employee. NARRATOR: Like the Soviet Union, America supplied its allies -- in the case of the Hmong, covertly. EARL YOUNG: Now it obviously wouldn't have done to publicize in The Washington Post, for example, we had just lost three aircraft in Laos because of enemy groundfire, because we weren't supposed to be there in the first place. So the general subterfuge was that any incident was called "aircraft malfunctioning" or "inclement weather." And so the families of survivors of these people at home would simply be told that unfortunately your husband or your son was killed in a crash in the mountains of Laos. NARRATOR: In 1961, Laos was the major Southeast Asia crisis. But nobody wanted to fight, least of all the big powers. At an international conference in 1962, they patched together another neutralist government giving the pro-Communist Pathet Lao more prominence. But despite early optimism, Laos was still divided, and as the war in neighboring Vietnam escalated, the fragile coalition fell apart. In March 1964, five months before the first American bombing raid on North Vietnam, the United States organized a secret bombing campaign in Laos. Using unmarked planes, they mainly attacked the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the increasingly important Communist supply route from North to South Vietnam. The air war intensified, hitting Laotian villages and driving a million peasants from their homes. For eight years, Laos was the most bombed country in the world. The Pathet Lao forces grew. Equipped with heavier weapons by the North Vietnamese, their guerrillas began to fight in battalion-sized units against their principal enemy, the Hmong. VINT LAWRENCE: When the whole context of the war in Southeast Asia changed, and it became expedient, perhaps, for the Americans to push the Hmong into something other than their traditional way of fighting, this is the place where we sold them down the river. NARRATOR: The United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the war. The Hmong army, suffering heavy casualties, recruited children. HMONG BOY/SOLDIER INTERVIEW: Q: What sort of gun is that he's carrying? A: M- 16. He says can do two things: automatic and semi-automatic. Q: How old is he? A: Ten years old. NARRATOR: In Vientiane, the Laotian capital, the mountain war seemed far away. There were no American combat soldiers in Laos -- only officials, aid workers, military advisers and CIA agents. No troops. Yet American spending was ten times bigger than the Laotian national budget. WILLIAM COLBY (head of Phoenix Program): We provided the logistics, the air support, transport, the communications, ammunition weaponry and so forth, while the North Vietnamese forces grew from seven to 70,000. These tribal forces up in the country that were supported by CIA -- not the Royal Lao army, which stayed right down in the comfortable valley and almost never heard a shot fired in anger. But the forces supported by CIA held that increase force off for about ten years. Now I think that's a pretty good record. NARRATOR: Ammunition was plentiful, but the Hmong were running out of soldiers. The United States covertly imported and paid for 8,000 Thais to fight in Laos. In early 1973, cease-fire agreements were reached in Vietnam and Laos. Two years later, the Communist Pathet Lao took over. Ten years after the 1954 Geneva agreements, neighboring Cambodia was still at peace. Cambodia's ancient grandeur was carved in the stones of Angkor, once the center of an empire that stretched across Southeast Asia. Hindu God-Kings had ruled a powerful state constantly at war with its neighbors. In the fifteenth century, the empire collapsed. Angkor was overrun and abandoned for more than 400 years. In 1960, the last king of Cambodia was cremated. His son, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk had been put on the throne by colonial France. After independence, he abdicated in favor of his father, in order to play a more direct political role. Sihanouk remained chief of state, and skillfully maneuvered to preserve his nation's neutrality. Cambodian folk dancers celebrated the country's abundance of rice and fish. Nearly 90 percent of all peasants owned their land. Cambodia prospered. Unlike Vietnam and Laos, it was at peace. To Cambodia's peasants, Sihanouk was almost divine. Many believed that he was even responsible for the success of their crops. Sihanouk relied on them, rather than on the urban population, for support. But Sihanouk's prestige and popularity could not change Cambodia's geography. In 1963, Sihanouk organized denunciations of America's growing involvement in Vietnam. He feared that the war would spread across his borders as South Vietnamese troops pursued the Vietcong into Cambodia. He was willing to befriend any country or leader that he thought might assure Cambodia's survival. He formed a close relationship with China's Mao Zedong. He also courted leaders of non-aligned nations like Indonesia's President Sukarno. He strengthened his ties with France's President Charles de Gaulle. He also wrote, directed and starred in his own feature films -- all of them glorifying Cambodia. In 1966, Cambodia continued its carefree festivities despite growing dangers within the country and along its borders. Sihanouk had broken relations with America. His officers were becoming restless. They no longer received American military aid. Sihanouk was also beginning to face trouble in the countryside, where small groups of Cambodia Communists, the Khmer Rouge, were recruiting some discontented peasants. Sihanouk continued to juggle. In 1967, he invited Jacqueline Kennedy to Cambodia, hoping to draw America's attention to his dilemma. Sihanouk was concerned by the Vietnamese Communist buildup in the sanctuaries, and he feared a large-scale U.S. attack across his borders. As a counterbalance to this visit he denounced America's Vietnam policy. NORODOM SIHANOUK, November 1967: It would be immoral to support, you know, your aggression, the aggression of the United States against the people of Vietnam. We want to have the right to continue to have the right to be united, to be free, and how could we deny to Vietnam the right to self-determination? NARRATOR: Pursuing their enemy, American and South Vietnamese aircraft often attacked across the Cambodian border. Sihanouk criticized Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who was then trying to repair relations. PRESS CONFERENCE, November 1967: SIHANOUK: There is a contradiction between the declaration of friendship and respect from Mr. Dean Rusk on one hand and on the other hand your forces in South Vietnam continue to come into Cambodia and to kill.. INTERVIEWER: ...what is necessary... SIHANOUK: ...our peasants and innocent peasants, innocent civilian servants. NARRATOR: In 1969, newly elected President Nixon launched secret B-52 bombing raids over Cambodia against North Vietnamese and Vietcong sanctuaries driving them further into the country. Nixon neither informed Sihanouk, nor sought his approval for this escalation. HENRY KISSINGER (National Security Adviser): We had many indirect evidences of Sihanouk's acquiescence in the bombing. Repeatedly, when he was asked at press conferences he would say that of course he did not approve attacks on Cambodia territory, but he did not know what was going on in territory occupied by what he called the Vietminh, which was the earlier name for the North Vietnamese sponsored guerrilla activity. He invited Nixon to visit Cambodia while the bombing was going on. He reestablished diplomatic relations with us. LLOYD "MIKE" RIVES (U.S. Embassy, Cambodia): I didn't know anything about the bombing when I went to Cambodia, and in fact i didn't know anything about it until after it broke in the newspapers. For some reason I was never briefed on what was going on. I was aware of the bombing, but not necessarily in Cambodia, because in my house on the banks of the Bassac River, at night, I not only could hear the bombing, but the whole house shook from the load of bombs when they were dropped, I assumed, in Vietnam. I suppose it eventually, I mean, most of them were being dropped in Cambodia. NARRATOR: In January 1970, Sihanouk departed for a vacation in France -- a trip that would take him on to Moscow and Peking. He wanted help to curb the Vietnamese Communist presence, which was arousing Cambodian hostility. In March, anti-Communist officers unleashed mobs against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong embassies in Phnompenh. They demanded the expulsion of the Vietnamese Communists. NEWSREEL, 1970: NORODOM SIHANOUK: I can say that some officers in our army and many deputies and many members of the government in Phnompenh, they want to be your allies in order to have a bowl of your dollars. They do not take, they don't think about the destiny and the weight of our homeland. They don't mind about it. They are more patriot for dollars than for Cambodia. NARRATOR: A week later, Sihanouk's anti-Communist opponents ousted him and issued orders for his execution. Sihanouk's former prime minister, General Lon Nol, led the new government, which promptly received secret American military aid. LLOYD "MIKE" RIVES: Well after the coup, and of course Lon Nol's government gave the Vietnamese I think 48 hours to get out as I remember, there was wild enthusiasm in Phnompenh itself. All the children from the schools turned out and enlisted and got weapons and went off to the front and that kind of thing -- it was really real enthusiasm. NARRATOR: Within three weeks, the Cambodian army gained 60,000 recruits. They were convinced that U.S. aid would quickly help them drive the Vietnamese Communists out of Cambodia. Sihanouk, now in China, sided with the Khmer Rouge, his former opponents. He became chief of state of a government in exile. TONG TEN: Norodom Sihanouk appealed from Peking over the radio. "Brothers and sisters," he said, "go to the jungles and join the guerrillas." Back in that period none of us even knew who the guerrillas were. I didn't know who the guerrillas were. I didn't know. NARRATOR: In the countryside, several thousand peasants were on rampages, demanding Sihanouk's return. In the town of Kompong Cham a mob killed two members of Parliament. FATHER FRANCOIS PONCHAUD: I saw the livers of the two politicians being carried past my church. Then a little while later, around four or five in the afternoon, the livers of the two men were skewered and grilled in the marketplace of Kompong Cham. Through examples like this, one can understand a little the brutality of the Khmers, who are a race of warriors. And that should not be forgotten. NARRATOR: The next day, Lon Nol's troops shot and killed nearly 100 unarmed peasants. Many Cambodians still displayed Sihanouk's portrait and continued to protest in his favor. The Lon Nol regime whipped up hatred against the Vietnamese. The victims were not the Vietnamese Communists in the border sanctuaries. The victims were Vietnamese villagers and merchants, whose families had lived in Cambodia for generations. Centuries of hatred erupted as Cambodian troops butchered Vietnamese. Taking advantage of Lon Nol's hostility towards the Communist sanctuaries, South Vietnamese army units launched raids into Cambodia. President Nixon also decided to send U.S. ground forces into Cambodia to wipe out the sanctuaries and the elusive Communist headquarters, COSVN. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, April 30, 1970: For the past five years, as indicated on this map that you see here, North Vietnam has occupied military sanctuaries all along the Cambodian frontier with South Vietnam. NARRATOR: As Nixon spoke, U.S. troops were preparing to move into Cambodia. The decision to invade, like the earlier secret decision to bomb, was withheld from the Cambodian government. BRIG. GEN. DOUGLAS KINNARD: When we began detailed planning of this operation, it was evident to us, since we'd never operated in Cambodia, that we needed some kind of map or aerial photo, so I dispatched the G-2 down to pick these up at the headquarters in Saigon and he had great difficulty in getting them. And in a few hours he returned with the photographs and then we found out why: the photographs of course disclosed these huge craters; the B-52 bombing had been going on for some time and we weren't aware of it officially, and indeed I wasn't aware of it at all, and most of us weren't. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, April 30, 1970: Tonight, American and South Vietnamese units will attack the headquarters for the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam. This key control center has been occupied by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong for five years in blatant violation of Cambodia's neutrality. DOUGLAS KINNARD: One of the things that I found interesting was, as I looked at Nixon's speech on the incursion, after we had started it -- a few minutes after we had started it -- was the great emphasis he had placed on the COSVN headquarters, sort of portrayed it as a kind of a Pentagon that we were going to capture. And my guess is that at best it was a foxhole and a couple of radios, but in any case, we knew that in the last 24 hours, it was well out of the area we were going to operate in, which we knew from our normal intelligence means. And so it was never really an objective, although as he portrayed it, it was a major objective to the American people. NARRATOR: More than 20,000 American and 40,000 South Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia. The operation, Nixon said, would protect American forces in Vietnam. The Americans first clashed with their enemy at the Cambodian town of Snoul. Responding to rifle fire, jets and tanks pounded the town for two days. The Americans were meeting little resistance. The body count was four civilians and three Vietnamese Communist soldiers. COL. GAIL BROOKSHIRE, June 1970: My soldiers haven't been looting. They have strict instructions not to. We of course destroy or evacuate any war material -- anything that's obviously identifiable as war material -- or associated with the NVA. As far as civilian property is concerned, our instructions to them, and what we've been doing is just leaving it in place, hoping the civilians will come back in and recover it. NARRATOR: A U.S. spokesman said that the tons of captured enemy equipment had reduced the pressure on American troops in Vietnam. DOUGLAS KINNARD: We did destroy a good number of supplies, and so I think in that very narrow sense, that the operation was probably a success. But of course one must weigh that versus what happened later in Cambodia and what the impact was politically at home, and it turns out to be a rather small part of the equation, a sort of technical... NARRATOR: More than 350 American soldiers had died during the invasion. Within 60 days, as promised, the American forces pulled out of Cambodia. Nixon called the operation the most successful of the war. The U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam were speeded up. HENRY KISSINGER: Whether Nixon and his associates, like myself, were right in ordering the incursions into Cambodia can be discussed forever. But once they had taken place, the only way out was to prevent the Khmer Rouge from taking over the country. NARRATOR: A plan to save American lives had plunged Cambodia into full scale war. As the war widened, the North Vietnamese moved into the interior, helping the Khmer Rouge to organize and expand. Cambodia was now a battlefield. Financed by American money, Cambodia's army, FANK, was now the best paid in Southeast Asia. But it was inexperienced and inefficient as it sought its elusive enemy. COLONEL JONATHAN LADD (U.S. Embassy, Cambodia): My view was that the Cambodians were certainly an amateurish army without much capability but a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. NARRATOR: Some Cambodians had been fighting and training with the American special forces in Vietnam. TRAINING FORCES, July 1970: OK, stop right there...bang...bang... NARRATOR: They became the elite force in Lon Nol's army. TRAINING FORCES: ...at the same time we will yell at the top of our lungs we will move...ARGH! Fear...it makes a man scared...you know, fear. NARRATOR: In October 1970, Lon Nol ended the centuries-old Cambodian monarchy and created the Khmer Republic. The early optimism had crumbled and the economy was in a shambles, but the army, with U.S. aid, had grown four-fold, to 100,000 men. Lon Nol was still opposed by Prince Sihanouk, still in China. NORODOM SIHANOUK, May 1970: We can only fight and fight until, you now, the Americans accept to withdraw from our country. And I am optimistic, so far as the defeat of the Americans is concerned. It will be inevitable. NARRATOR: On January 22, 1971, the Vietnamese Communists hit Phnompenh for the first time, destroying ammunition dumps and oil supplies and wiping out the Cambodian air force. Within days, help arrived. Twenty American soldiers flew in from Vietnam, carrying guns but wearing civilian clothes. JONATHAN LADD: They formed what they called the military equipment delivery team, M.E.D.T.C. By the time they got themselves organized, they replaced my little group of myself and four people with a general and about 113 people. In effect, they took over most of the military activities for the FANK headquarters, which was what I hoped to preclude the Yankees running all over the place, and making decisions and providing all guidance. NARRATOR: Only American airpower and funds kept Lon Nol's army from defeat. No Americans were dying in Cambodia, and they still were in Vietnam. For the moment, Congress went along with Nixon's war. NIXON PRESS CONFERENCE, November 1971: PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Now let's look at Cambodia. We've made a conscious decision not to send American troops in. There are no American combat troops in Cambodia. There are no American combat advisers in Cambodia. There will be no American combat troops or advisers in Cambodia. We will aid Cambodia. Cambodia is the Nixon doctrine in its purest form. Vietnam was in violation of the Nixon doctrine because in Cambodia what we are doing is helping the Cambodians to help themselves. NARRATOR: The doctrine was also tested against the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos. In early 1971, South Vietnamese forces, using American equipment, moved against the Communist supply routes. The Laotian government was not informed in advance. SISOUK NA CHAMPASSAK (Defense Minister, Laos): The prime minister said to me, "I don't know anything about this either. I only just learned about the operation from the American ambassador." I answered, "This is quite serious." He replied, "Yes, quite serious. Military operations are being conducted in our country. It is very serious but what can we do? They have taken the decision. All we can do is to lodge a protest. That is all." NARRATOR: The United States planned the invasion and gave it air and artillery support. But without American combat troops beside them, the South Vietnamese forces fled in disarray. They took 3,000 casualties in the first week alone. In Laos, the Nixon doctrine had failed. But in Cambodia it was still intact. As American aid poured in, corrupt Cambodian officers invented phantom soldiers. A quarter of Cambodia's army existed only as names on pay slips, endangering the lives of those who fought on in understrength units. NARRATOR: In 1973, after three years exile in China, Sihanouk went into the Khmer Rouge zone of Cambodia. NEWSREEL, 1973 CHINESE FILM: NARRATOR: Norodum Sihanouk embraces Khieu Sampan, vice prime minister of the royal government of the National Union of Cambodia, and Commander-in-Chief of the People's National Liberation Armed Forces. The enemies say that Mr. Khieu Sampan has been dead for several years. But here you can see him chatting cordially with Norodom Sihanouk. NARRATOR: Sihanouk also embraced another Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot. Sihanouk knew he was only a figurehead. The Khmer Rouge leaders planned to remold Cambodia into a rural Communist utopia and would spare no life to do it. "When they gain power," Sihanouk said, "they will spit me out like a cherry stone." They were using Sihanouk's prestige to mobilize peasant support. CHHIT DO (Khmer Rouge organizer): The Khmer Rouge leaders said that important cadres like us were Communists. The people believed in Sihanouk, but they said that we who had joined the party should not believe in him. Starting with candidates for party member-ship, there was this kind of education, no one should have faith in Sihanouk. But they still allowed the people to believe in him. You see, there was public education and covert education. If we still believed in Sihanouk, they explained, there was no point in our making revolution. Sihanouk and the revolution they told us secretly, were enemies of each other. TONG TENG: If, at any time, the Khmer Rouge had not aligned themselves with Sihanouk, they would not have been able to carry on their fight. They wouldn't have been able to challenge Lon Nol. That's why they got Sihanouk on their side and put him up front. They made him front man because his subjects had admired and respected him for so long. NARRATOR: In less than three years, the Khmer Rouge forces had grown from 3,000 to 60,000. The Khmer Rouge were no longer completely dependent on their Vietnamese Communist allies. America stepped up the bombing. During six months of 1973, more than a quarter of a million tons were dropped on Cambodia. CHHIT DO: The ordinary people were terrified by the bombing and the shelling, never having experienced war, and sometimes they shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Two hundred to 400 shells would fall in each attack, and some people became shell-shocked -- just like their brains were completely shattered. Even after the shelling had stopped, they couldn't hold down a meal. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute, not talking for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, they would believe anything they were told. And because there was so much shelling, they believed whatever the Khmer Rouge told them. TONG TENG: The fear was pervasive. Everybody was scared. But the real Reds weren't dying. They weren't being hit. The Khmer Rouge, who were doing the fighting, had dug bomb shelters. So whenever the planes came, they jumped into their holes while the people, sometimes didn't even have time to get out of their houses. CHHIT DO: The Khmer Rouge would say that the purpose of the bombing was to completely destroy the country, not simply just to win the war, but to annihilate the population, and that it was only because we were taking cover -- moving around to avoid the bombing -- that some of us were surviving. So they used the bombing, the bomb craters and the bomb shrapnel to educate the people politically, to make the people hate and be enraged at the Americans. HELICOPTER/BOMBING SEQUENCE, August 1973: "OK, we'd like to go ahead and hit that same target again, it looks like it still might be lucrative, we can see some stuff down there, and if it's OK with you we'll just go ahead and put this set of air in on that target and see if we can put the next one on the first target...OK?" "OK...Ol Hotel 4/3, the charlie, charlie 01, will you put some bomb over there, sir? And move to the number 1 target please." NARRATOR: Despite Congressional restrictions, the U.S. embassy in Phnompenh coordinated bombing targets. The extent of Nixon's secret bombing was not uncovered by Congress until July 1973, four years after it had started. Nixon had waged war in Cambodia without Congressional approval. It prompted angry Congressional reaction and led to the first call for Nixon's impeachment. HENRY KISSINGER: No, the President doesn't have the right to bomb a neutral country. The question is, does the President have the right to react against concentrations of enemy troops that have already occupied neutral territory, have established themselves there for three years, and are killing, have expelled the local population and are killing Americans from that territory? All the opinions we received was that this was a clear exercise of the right of war. ROBERT SEMANS (Secretary, U.S. Air Force): On this matter of the bombing of Cambodia, it was considered sufficiently sensitive that I was not privy to the information at the time it was going on, nor at the time that I submitted the reports to the Congress. SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, August 1973: ADMIRAL THOMAS MOORER (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): I'm sure, Mr. Chairman, you will agree, and I think the American people will agree, that we should take whatever action is necessary in order to protect the lives of the American people. And that's what this operation was all about...and it was very effective. SENATOR STUART SYMINGTON: Why didn't you tell us about it and justify it? Why do we have to rely on false information? Why does the secretary of the Air Force have to come before this committee and say he "deeply regrets" and he's ashamed of the fact that he didn't give us accurate information, because he himself was misinformed? NARRATOR: In August 1973, a B-52 dropped its bombs on Neak Luong, the river town just 30 miles from Phnompenh. The bombing was a mistake. More than a hundred villagers were killed and several hundred were wounded. A crew member was fined $700 for the error. The American ambassador, Emory Swank, handed the survivors $100 each. Congress had finally forced a bombing halt on August 15, 1973. EMORY SWANK, August 1973: Mes condoleances personnelles et les condoleances de tous les peuples Americaines. NARRATOR: With the end of American bombing, they tiny Cambodian air force was on its own. The Khmer Rouge had rebuilt their forces and prepared to launch their biggest offensive yet. CHHANG SON (Minister of Information, Khmer Republic): From one-twenty in the morning of the new year, 1975 on, the Communists launched a very fierce attack from every point of the compass against Phnompenh. They used first some 80,000 troops which would increase, as the attack progressed. NARRATOR: Many Cambodian government posts were soon to be overwhelmed. The Khmer Rouge, now close to Phnompenh, fired rockets into the city every day. More than two million refugees had fled to Phnompenh, to escape the American bombing and Khmer Rouge brutality. They survived on meager rations provided by Western aid organizations. The city was slowly starving. CAPTAIN PENG THUON (Khmer Republic Army (FANK)): People were running back and forth every which way, afraid to stay in the same place for long. Sometimes the shells would fall right in the center of town, and everybody would flee to the river bank. Then the shells would fall near the river bank, and everybody would run back to the middle of town. It just went on like this, chaotically. NARRATOR: To skirt Congressional restrictions, the U.S. military chartered civilian planes to fly in a thousand tons of rice, fuel and ammunition a day. They came under constant rocket and artillery attack. Supplies ran low. Lon Nol's air force now strafed their enemy on the outskirts of the city. road and rail links had already been cut. In the countryside, the Khmer Rouge decided to push for the final victory. Phnompenh was being strangled. Rocket attacks against Phnompenh continued daily. A single rocket hitting the center of the city killed 11 people and injured more than 20 others. Government troops became desperate as the areas under their control shrank. In one town, they resorted to cannibalism to survive. Cambodian officers used ambulances to carry ammunition until the International Red Cross stopped them. Phnompenh's hospitals were overflowing with wounded, basketball courts were covered with makeshift beds. Medicine had to be bought on the black market. Blood plasma was running out. The Cambodian army had fewer than 20 surgeons. CAMBODIAN DOCTOR, 1975: I feel this war is a real genocide. Khmer are killing Khmer. At the beginning of the war, of course, there were a lot of North Vietnamese in our country. But now there is only Khmer. Khmer are killing and fighting Khmer. And many, many of we, of us are dead or get casualties, or wounded. I suppose since five years of war, half million of Khmer in this country, among seven million, half million are dead or wounded. NARRATOR: In the once abundant land of Cambodia, there was famine and disease. Volunteer doctors from abroad flew into Phnompenh to help. DR. JOSEPH MURPHY, March 1975: It's worse than I expected. The conditions that I've seen have been pretty bad. I've been helping with the malnutritioned infants. I also assisted on some surgery last night. We did an amputation on one of the soldiers, amputated his arm. The soldier's ten-month-old daughter also had her left arm amputated. As you know, the families follow the soldier/father into the battles and live near them. NARRATOR: Lon Nol was encouraged to leave the country on April 1, by American diplomats who thought negotiations might be possible with Prince Sihanouk. The Khmer Rouge, poised for victory, was not about to bargain. They broadcast lists of traitors to be executed after they won. On April 12, Operation Eagle Pull began. Helicopters evacuated the remaining Americans from Phnompenh to a naval task force in the Gulf of Thailand. Most Cambodian government ministers declined to leave. One who stayed -- and died -- wrote to the American ambassador: "You have refused us your protection, and there is nothing we can do. I hope that you and your country find happiness under Heaven." CHHANG SON: We try so hard to please the Americans, but I now looking back to that time, think we should not have done that much, because the withdrawal of the American was decided upon without taking into consideration all the Cambodian affairs, without taking into consideration even of the Amer-, of Cambodian lives... NARRATOR: An air of death hung over Phnompenh. Less than one week later, the Khmer Rouge overran Phnompenh airport. PENG THUON: The people were fleeing, running across the fields in front of the airport. The planes came and thought that they were Khmer Rouge and bombed them. The bodies were all mixed up. Some soldiers, some ordinary people, some Khmer Rouge. The survivors jumped over the corpses. Then there was shelling and everything was aflame. It was already dusk and people could hardly recognize each other. When everyone was gone, the Khmer Rouge came in. The next morning they went on to Phnompenh. NARRATOR: The Khmer Rouge soldiers had captured Phnompenh. They broadcast appeals to politicians and officers to cooperate. Those who showed up were taken away and executed. FRANOIS PONCHAUD: The Khmer Rouge fired a few shots and shouted, "Leave! Leave quickly! The Americans are going to bomb the city." And having experienced bombing, the people of Phnompenh had reasons to be afraid. It was terrifying, the B-52 bombing; you could see the sky redden at the horizon, then feel the air burst, then hear the explosion. So you can understand why the population in my neighborhood left even though the Khmer Rouge committed no violence. Everyone took his belongings and left. NARRATOR: There were no American plans to bomb Phnompenh. Within two days, its population was driven into the countryside. The war had ended. Starvation and slaughter lay ahead. Peace Is at Hand (1968-1973) Previous 9 of 11 Next RICHARD NIXON, April 1964: The first issue is what the goal of the United States should be. I believe that the goal can be nothing less than victory. RICHARD NIXON, February 1965: What is involved here is, in effect, to let the Red Chinese know in Vietnam as we, in effect, let Khrushchev know in the confrontation in Cuba that the United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country by aggression. RICHARD NIXON, May 1966: A retreat by the United States from Vietnam would be a Communist victory, a victory of massive proportions and would lead to World War III. NARRATOR: By early 1968, America had dropped almost three million tons of bombs on Vietnam -- twice the tonnage dropped on Germany and Japan in World War II. America was trying to stop North Vietnam from sending soldiers and supplies to the South, trying to force the Communist leaders in Hanoi to give up their long-held goal of a unified Vietnam. After the impact of the 1968 Communist Tet offensive, President Johnson ordered a bombing cutback and peace talks began. JOHN NEGROPONTE (delegate to Paris Peace Talks): We all went and stayed in hotel rooms rather than renting apartments or finding other kinds of long-term accommodation. It didn't occur to any of us at the time that five or six years later there would still be a delegation in Paris still going over very much of the same ground. So, I would say that when we first arrived there was an atmosphere of heightened expectation, of early progress. NARRATOR: The Americans brought in South Vietnamese government officials. The North Vietnamese brought in the National Liberation Front, the Vietcong, the Communist-led movement in the South. JOHN NEGROPONTE: The negotiations, one could say, were very stereotyped and were not negotiations in the classic sense of the word. There wasn't the kind of give and take that you would have in a labor negotiation or a business negotiation in the United States, or for that matter even in a more normal international negotiation between governments. They tended both in public and even in private, I should say, to follow a very set pattern. One side or the other would make a prepared statement and then the other side would reply with a prepared statement and then we might adjourn for a break and have tea and some refreshments, and then there would be a little bit of give and take. NARRATOR: As the diplomats haggled over the political implications of the seating arrangements, President Johnson prepared to leave office. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON (Press Conference, October 24, 1968): We want peace very much. We've been doing all we could for several months to try to bring about some kind of an understanding that would result in substantive discussions and ultimate settlement of the Southeast Asia problem. NARRATOR: A few days before the American presidential elections, Johnson halted all bombing of North Vietnam. NIXON CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL, November 1968: RICHARD NIXON: Never has so much power been used so ineffectively as in Vietnam. If after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice and all of this support there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership, not tied to the policies and mistakes of the past. I pledge to you we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. COMMERCIAL NARRATOR: This time vote like your whole world depended on it. NARRATOR: By a narrow margin Nixon won. The 1968 Tet offensive had hit South Vietnam's cities and towns, but now the main fighting had shifted back to the countryside. More than half a million American soldiers were still in Vietnam. Four years since American combat troops had landed in Vietnam. The densely populated Mekong Delta was still far from pacified. During the first six months of 1969, an average of more than 800 Americans were wounded each week. Each week more than 200 Americans were killed. Each week more than 450 of their South Vietnamese allies died alongside them. Each day more than 500 North Vietnamese and Vietcong were counted dead. NARRATOR: In July 1969, President Nixon had good news for the troops. They could soon go home, and leave the fighting to the South Vietnamese. He called the policy "Vietnamization." MELVIN LAIRD (Secretary of Defense): The policy of Vietnamization was to turn over the responsibility for the ground combat and air combat to the South Vietnamese. It was a policy of giving them the equipment and the training so that they could follow up their responsibility to their country. You cannot guarantee the will and the desire of any country, but you can give them the tools to do the job. NARRATOR: The Saigon administration faced a new political challenge -- the Vietcong pro-claimed themselves the Provisional Revolutionary Government. America was still committed to troop withdrawals. HENRY KISSINGER (National Security Adviser): We made up our minds from the beginning that we were going to try to disengage from Vietnam. And, all of the debate afterwards were really about, with the moderate critics, were about rates of disengagement, not about the fact of disengagement. So it had to be a high priority. MELVIN LAIRD: The pressures were on as far as the American people were concerned. The pressures were on as far as the Congress was concerned and, if we wouldn't have moved in the direction of Vietnamization, our whole military force structure would have been destroyed in the United States and we would not have been able to meet the NATO commitments and the other commitments which were treaty commitments that had been made but, had been made by the American government. MORTON HALPERIN (National Security Council staff): The major preoccupation of Kissinger and Nixon was U.S./Soviet relations. They believed that world peace depended on getting the Soviet Union into a relationship with the United States so that it ceased to do things which threatened American security interests. And, it was in this context that they approached every issue from the Middle East to China to Vietnam. Vietnam was important because the United States had made it important. Kissinger was always fond of saying that we inherited 500,000 troops in Vietnam. We didn't put them there. COMING HOME SOLDIERS, July 1969: "Home, I'm coming home, coming home, from across the sea." NARRATOR: For the cameras, U.S. troops celebrated their departure. SOLDIERS: "Home, I'm coming home, no more marching and fighting for me. I am a soldier, a coming home soldier, no purple heart do I wear on my chest. I am a soldier, a coming home soldier, I know that I, I've done my best -- I'm coming home, I'm coming, I'm coming home, I'm coming h-o-m-e." NARRATOR: As the American troops left, Nixon stepped up air and artillery attacks. NARRATOR: Hundreds of miles of tunnels were dug to shelter factories and homes. The songs and poetry of Ho Chi Minh promised victory and independence. The Americans and the American-sponsored government in the South would be defeated. Korean, Australian, Thai and other troops would be driven out. "We will rebuild our land ten times more beautiful," claimed Ho Chi Minh. TUU KY (Ho Chi Minh's secretary): He was really very ill by the end of 1968. It was very difficult for him to move about. And yet Comrade Ho Chi Minh patiently continued his exercise and his walks. Early in 1969 he was still visiting the villages but his health deteriorated after that, although he still continued to work. NARRATOR: Ho Chi Minh died on September 3, 1969. TUU KY: He said that he was only going to visit Lenin and his other predecessors. And by the word "predecessors" he could have meant that he was going to visit past Vietnamese leaders. NARRATOR: Vietnam's Communist Party leader, Le Duan, delivered the eulogy. PREMIER PHAM VAN DONG: This was so painful to the nation and to me personally that I cannot find the words to describe it. But to us, it was not just a painful event. We also faced the problem -- how to continue his work, how to accomplish all the things he wanted us to achieve. NARRATOR: American troops, some just returned from Vietnam, were deployed to Washington -- to protect the capital against anti-war demonstrators. ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION, November 1969: Peace now, Peace now! NARRATOR: Nixon and his aides, claiming that anti-war critics were helping the Communists, ordered illegal wire taps and drew up a list of their domestic "enemies". SONG PROTEST: "All we are saying is give peace a chance" -- Are you listening Nixon? "All we are saying is give peace a chance" -- Are you listening Agnew?" NARRATOR: In a single Washington demonstration, a quarter of a million Americans denounced the war. SONG PROTEST: Are you listening in the Pentagon? "All we are saying..." -- Are you listening Nixon?" NARRATOR: Hanoi radio publicized the protests. ROBINSON RISNER (POW, 1965-1973): If 200 people marched on Washington, they made it 200,000. We learned how to deal with the numbers. Of course, every protest, every anti-war speech made by a person such as McGovern, Jane Fonda, Galbraith, all of those only encouraged the Vietnamese, prolonged the war, worsened our condition and cost the lives of more Americans on the battlefield. ADMIRAL THOMAS MOORER (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): So many people in and out of the government, and certainly I would put the media at the top of the list, seem far more concerned about the lives of the people in Southeast Asia than they were the lives of the young men that were fighting for their country. Let me give you an example of this: For instance, when I was describing the torture that was being inflicted on the POWs in North Vietnam, I've actually had the American citizens tell me, "Well it serves them right -- they had no business volunteering." NARRATOR: Defense Secretary Laird was ahead of the timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal. By April 1970, he had reduced the forces in Vietnam by more than 100,000. Nixon had resumed full scale bombing of the North. American generals had asked Laird to endorse a major offensive against Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. They said it was vital to a continued U.S. force reduction. Laird opposed the use of U.S. ground troops. Nixon made the decision. PRESIDENT NIXON (television address, April 1970): I have concluded that the time has come for action. Tonight American and South Vietnamese units will attack the headquarters for the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam. This key control center has been occupied by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong for five years in blatant violation of Cambodia's neutrality. This is not an invasion of Cambodia. NARRATOR: The control center was never found. The action further divided America. BILLY GRAHAM (University of Tennessee, May 1970): All Americans may not agree with the decision a president makes, but he is our president. NARRATOR: Evangelist Billy Graham, an old friend and supporter, who once told Nixon: "It is your destiny to be president." BILLY GRAHAM: Mr. President, we welcome you and Mrs. Nixon. We honor you as our President (applause) and we pray for you that God will continue to give you the wisdom, the courage and the faith as you bear the heavy responsibilities of your office. NARRATOR: Three weeks earlier, four students had been shot dead by National Guardsmen during demonstrations at Kent State University in Ohio. Campus protests reached a peak. Polls showed that a majority of Americans supported administration policy. But opponents continued their protests, harassing Nixon wherever they could. DEMONSTRATION CHANT (University of Tennessee, May 1970): One, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war... PRESIDENT NIXON (University of Tennessee, May 1970): If we're going to bring people together as we must bring them together, if we're going to have peace in the world, if our young people are going to have a fulfillment beyond simply those material things, they must turn to those great spiritual sources that have made America the great country that it is. I'm proud to be here and I'm very proud to have your warm reception. COMMUNITY SINGING (University of Tennessee, May 1970): "God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with the light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam, God bless America, my home sweet home." ANNOUNCER: This is NBC News. PRESIDENT NIXON, October 1970: I propose that all armed forces throughout Indochina cease firing their weapons and remain in the positions they now hold. This would be a cease-fire in place. I do not minimize the difficulty of maintaining a cease-fire in a guerrilla war where there are no front lines. But an unconventional war may require an unconventional truce. Our side is ready to stand still and cease firing. NARRATOR: By implication, a cease-fire in place would leave North Vietnamese troops in the South. Hanoi's leaders did not respond. In Washington, impatient senators urged ending the war in nine months -- in exchange for the release of U.S. prisoners of war. SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY, June 1971: The only possible excuse for the continuing discredited policy of Vietnamization, the war, now and in the months ahead seems to be the President's intention to play his last great card for peace at a time closer to November 1972. SEN. BIRCH BAYH, June 1971: I cannot, I cannot believe and I do not believe that most of our countrymen believe, that a plan for peace necessitates bombing four countries, invading two, in order to get out of one. SEN. MIKE MANSFIELD, June 1971: There are many who today are disenchanted with the conflict. There were very few at the outset, either Republicans or Democrats, who opposed the ever deepening involvement; indeed, who did not support or acquiesce in it. NARRATOR: Anti-war sentiments grew among academics and opinion leaders. The New York Times published the stolen Pentagon Papers, a secret history of official war decisions. MIKE MANSFIELD, June 1971: We went into Vietnam on the wheels of the same policy and for many of the same reasons that we had gone into Korea a decade and a half earlier. We did so, however, almost as an habituated response with far less understanding of the actual situation in Indochina, unmindful of the changes in this nation, in Asia and in the world. Vietnam was a mistake, a tragic mistake. To persist in it now is to add outrage to the sacrifices of those who have suffered and who have died in this conflict. To persist in it now is to do violence to the welfare of the nation. NARRATOR: Nixon's envoys were a familiar sight on Saigon's boulevards. But behind the diplomatic rituals, Henry Kissinger concealed from South Vietnam that he had been secretly meeting with the Communists since August 1969. Even top U.S. officials had been kept in the dark. WILLIAM SULLIVAN (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State): My first inkling of the secret talks came from conversations that I had quite regularly on the secure telephone circuit with Phil Habib who was the head of our, or the acting head of our delegation in Paris that was meeting with the Vietnamese. He and I comparing notes on various things that were occurring, came to the conclusion that there must be some secret talks taking place elsewhere. Our conclusion, just from the way in which things were evolving at that time, was that they were being carried on by Henry Kissinger. NARRATOR: The adversary in the secret talks was Le Duc Tho, a member of North Vietnam's ruling Politbureau. HENRY KISSINGER: Le Duc Tho had a tendency to make the same speech every day, months on end, and it was sort of like a prayer session at the beginning of a meeting, and it meant, what it symbolized, was that they had all kinds of time, that we were going to have to collapse long before they would even think of yielding. NARRATOR: From Peking, a television spectacular -- a diplomatic bombshell: Richard Nixon, honored guest of the nation he once accused of fomenting aggression in Vietnam. With Mao Zedong, the Communist leader he once reviled. Relations between China and the Soviet Union were in shreds. But both gave aid to North Vietnam. Could Nixon widen the rift to America's advantage? Before China's revolution, China and Vietnam had been traditional enemies. Could China be induced to abandon the North Vietnamese? PRESIDENT NIXON, February 27, 1972: Mr. Prime Minister, our two peoples tonight hold the future of the world in our hands. And as we think of that future, we are dedicated to the principle that we can build a new world. NARRATOR: Nixon offered the Chinese trade, recognition, a counterweight to the Russians. China's isolation was coming to an end. PRESIDENT NIXON: We have been here a week...this was the week that changed the world. NARRATOR: On March 31, 1972, the North Vietnamese launched a new and ambitious offensive. Deploying tanks and large troop units, they poured directly across the 17th parallel into South Vietnam. Refugees and South Vietnamese troops fled before them. By April 2, the Communists had conquered half of Quangtri province. By May 1, they had taken it all. HENRY KISSINGER: After the North Vietnamese had taken Quangtri we had a meeting in May 1972, which we had negotiated to arrange for months. When I arrived there all he did was read newspaper accounts to me. When I said I didn't have to come thousands of miles and negotiate for five months for a meeting to hear newspaper accounts, he said, "If they're true, what difference does it make?" NARRATOR: The South Vietnamese Army was in disarray. In Washington, President Nixon searched for a response that would not require American combat troops. ADMIRAL THOMAS MOORER (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): I was called by the President and he questioned me about the prospects of mining Haiphong harbor. And...which I told him we were already ready, all ready for that, as a matter of fact, by the first time I had recommended it, and I personally made the plan myself when I was commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet eight years before. So there was no planning necessary. We already had the plan. And consequently his next requirement was to ask me can we do this without it leaking? Because I would like to be on the -- announcing it to the nation on T.V. at the same instant that the bombs were falling. NARRATOR: Nixon mined Haiphong harbor and stepped up the bombing. Nearly a thousand U.S. aircraft pounded North and South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese offensive was blunted. HENRY KISSINGER: Then we resumed negotiations. Le Duc Tho was much easier to deal with and made many more concessions after that than he had made in the years before that. NARRATOR: Twelve days after the mining and the bombing, President Nixon was received in Moscow. HENRY KISSINGER: Brezhnev's reaction to the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong was very tough in rhetoric and really inconsequential in action. He made many tough statements but he never did anything. The fact that the Soviets received us after the intensification of the war on North Vietnam must have contributed to the sense of isolation and beleaguerment of Hanoi. NARRATOR: The Nixon-Kissinger global strategy was intact. The United States and the Soviet Union signed a strategic arms control treaty. Nixon faced re-election. The war in Vietnam dragged on. The North Vietnamese clung to a key demand that the Thieu government in Saigon must be dissolved. Then, after more than four years of fighting and talking, a breakthrough. NGUYEN CO THACH (North Vietnamese delegate): On 8 October, 1972, Le Duc Tho have make a proposal. In this proposal we have dropped the demand for the dissolution of the Thieu government and we propose to have the two governments in South Vietnam coexist. HENRY KISSINGER: They dropped the demand that Thieu had to resign on October 8, I believe it was. At any rate, whenever they put forward their comprehensive proposal. And that, as far as we were concerned, was the breakthrough. JOHN NEGROPONTE (Delegate to Paris Peace Talks): I think that the principal element that we brought to it was that we were prepared to settle for a cease-fire in place, and the return of our prisoners of war in exchange for the removal of our military forces. NIXON AT MIA MEETING, October 16, 1972: As you recall...(clapping) NARRATOR: Peace seemed near. Nixon turned against his critics. RICHARD NIXON AT MIA MEETING, October 16, 1972: As you recall, I made the decision to mine the harbors, to bomb military targets in North Vietnam. That decision was the right decision. Those who predicted that it would lead to the dissolution of the summit -- the leaders of the media, the great editors, and publishers and television commentators and the rest -- proved to be wrong. When that decision was made there was precious little support from any of the so-called opinion leaders of this country that I have just described. But what was the most heartwarming thing to me was that those who had so much at stake, those who had suffered so much, the great majority of those whose husbands and loved ones are now POWs or MIAs stood by that decision and I thank you very much for that support. NARRATOR: Nixon sent his diplomats to Saigon with a text of the secret agreement. HOANG DUC NHA (aide to President Thieu): We say, fine, you know, thank you, could, could we see the text? And, we want to have time to study the text. Of course, they gave us the text in English, and at that time I thought I say, if our opposition knew that, that right this moment we were discussing the fate of a country in a text in English, boy, you know, it would be so bad that we shouldn't even think about it! So I ask, I say, where is the Vietnamese text? Oh, we forgot, and I say, what do you mean, you forgot? The other side, I know they don't present a text to you in English. You know between Vietnamese, we know each other, you know, there is something called national pride, and you present your own language. They say, oh this is good translation, and we have our own translators, I don't know what the name, what is the name of the guy he gave; I say, you mean to tell me an American is, you know, understand Vietnamese better than Vietnamese? We want to see the Vietnamese text. JOHN NEGROPONTE: The atmosphere in Saigon when we brought to Saigon the draft of the treaty that we had negotiated with the North Vietnamese was very, very tense and very unpleasant. And this I ascribed to the fact that it came pretty much as a complete surprise to the South Vietnamese. They had been briefed in very general terms in the preceding weeks and months. But no one had ever been so explicit as to show them significant drafts of treaty language. HOANG DUC NHA: We realized that this is a very bad document to start with; number two, it did not change in any way the Communist position, it was just worded differently. Number three, the fact that the Americans, you know, presented to us and told us it was best they could have obtained is very ominous, because, it means that the Americans are out to push us to accept that. JOHN NEGROPONTE: They raised the issue of North Vietnamese troop withdrawal and asked why that had not been dealt with in our document. HOANG DUC NHA: The South Vietnamese government never did accept to have the North Vietnamese army stationed in South Vietnam, nor was it resigned to the fact that there is nothing that could be done about it. HENRY KISSINGER: All of the proposals that we made to the North Vietnamese were seen and approved by Thieu. So that was not a new proposal by us in October of '72. HOANG DUC NHA: We say, well, you know, I'm ready for any contingency, but we're not going to sign it, so please go back to Mr. Nixon, tell him that we're very sorry we cannot cooperate on that one. NARRATOR: Unable to persuade the South Vietnamese to sign, Kissinger returned home. The North Vietnamese, fearing that the settlement was in jeopardy, made the agreement public. JOHN NEGROPONTE: For a moment put yourself in the North Vietnamese shoes. They had gone through this entire negotiating process, they had reached agreement with us. They had even begun giving instructions to their cadre to prepare for a cease-fire. Some of the North Vietnamese leaders might have begun to think that they had been the victims of the biggest con job in history and that we had simply led them down the garden path, and then we're going to welsh on the deal. NARRATOR: Kissinger tried to reassure America and both Vietnams. HENRY KISSINGER (Press Conference, October 26, 1972): We have no complaint with the general description of events as it was given by Radio Hanoi. However, there exists...there grew up the seeds of one particular misunderstanding. The North Vietnamese negotiators made their proposal conditional on the solution of the problem by October 31. We did agree that we would make a major effort to conclude the negotiations by October 31. As far as Saigon is concerned, it is of course entitled to participate in the settlement of a war fought on its territory. Its people have suffered much and they will remain there after we leave. We believe that peace is at hand. NGUYEN CO THACH (North Vietnamese delegate): I think the speech..."Peace is at hand," is first of all for the voters in the United States, to say to them that the Vietnam question is no more, there is no more Vietnam question, so they can elect Nixon as a hero of peace. NARRATOR: As expected, Nixon won by a landslide, but faced a hostile Congress. The negotiations resumed as Le Duc Tho returned to Paris. He faced 69 changes demanded by South Vietnam, presented by Kissinger and Alexander Haig -- among them, the demand that North Vietnamese troops leave the South. HENRY KISSINGER: I presented Thieu's list of changes which he had whittled down already in Saigon because I felt I owed it to him to go through them, and frankly to demonstrate that most of them were unattainable. NARRATOR: Kissinger flew to Florida to see Nixon, worried that the negotiations might collapse. He spoke of resigning. The North was again intransigent. In South Vietnam, too, the agreement was still unacceptable. JOHN NEGROPONTE: In order to reassure Saigon, we had launched a major resupply program called Operation Enhance Plus where we provided several billion additional dollars of military equipment to the Saigon government. If, in the Politburo in Hanoi, it had been a close decision in the first place to enter into this agreement, perhaps after the developments of October and November they were having real second thoughts. WILLIAM SULLIVAN: The North Vietnamese engaged in a number of dilatory tactics. One of them was the question of tying the release of prisoners of war to the release of civilians in the South, but there were others, all of which generally reneged on arrangements that they had previously made and which were significant to the text and to the integrity of the document we had negotiated. NARRATOR: In the South Vietnamese Parliament President Thieu denounced the agreement before U.S. Ambassador Bunker. PRESIDENT THIEU, December 1972: Consequently, the essential basis is first, that the North Vietnamese troops should withdraw totally to North Vietnam and the internal political solution of South Vietnam should be left for the South Vietnamese people alone to decide between themselves. HENRY KISSINGER, December 15, 1972: We are not continuing a war in order to give total victory to our allies. We want to give them a reasonable opportunity to participate in a political struggle, but we also will not make a settlement which is a disguised form of victory for the other side. HOANG DUC NHA (aide to President Thieu): After October, Kissinger refused to go back to Vietnam, so Haig came, and we were told countless times by him, by Ambassador Bunker, that we should modify our position, we should do this, we should do that -- they had obtained some changes, you know, to please us, but they couldn't get everything we wanted. We said, "Well you know there are still some substantial issues that are not resolved, and we are not going to sign it." And when we were threatened of brutal reaction, we said, "Well, we know what brutal reaction means. We accept that." At that time, it was a calculated move from our part. We said, "All right, if we were the U.S. side, they have two options: either do something drastic in South Vietnam, or bomb the North." NARRATOR: In Paris Kissinger's talks with North Vietnam seemed to be collapsing. WILLIAM SULLIVAN: We told them several times. We warned them that our president would resume bombing of the North. They seemed not to believe the nature of this threat. They seemed to believe that the President would be inhibited from the bombing because the electoral trend in the United States had brought in a Congress that was going to oppose bombing and because the general attitude, as demonstrated in public opinion poles in the United States, was opposed to resumption of the bombing. NARRATOR: North Vietnam's leaders made ready for the anticipated attack. Hanoi's population, swollen with refugees from other bombed towns, had to be evacuated. By December 16, one third of the estimated population, half a million people, had left. NARRATOR: On December 18, B-52 bombers were over Hanoi and Haiphong. CAPTAIN MICHAEL CONNERS: For miles and miles you could see the little firecrackers like going off and it was very distinct, very obvious that those were SAMS being shot up, and as you got closer they just started going up around you. And at first you were very afraid because you wanted to move away from every one you saw, but after you calmed down and realized, sure there's a SAM and it's going up, but it's going off there and you kind of ignored it. It took a little while to get used to that. ROBINSON RISNER (POW 1965-1973): We heard the bombs start hitting and we thought this is the first time they bombed the North in a long time. The fighters hadn't even been up for some reason. Well, then when we heard the bombs start landing half a mile short of the prison and walk right by us in a string -- we knew it had to be bombers because fighters don't carry that many bombs. And the jubilation was unbelievable. Guys jumping up and down and clapping each other on the back. People hollering and shouting and the Vietnamese guard excited and poking his gun in the door and telling us to get under our bunks. One of them looked in the door and said, "You know, they are trying to kill you." I said, "They're not trying to kill me, they're trying to kill you." ADMIRAL THOMAS MOORER (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): The targets selected in the 1972 Christmas bombing consisted entirely of military targets. For instance, they would consist of warehouses, command and control stations, missile sites, ammunition storage, communications sites, things of that kind. The accusation that we were conducting carpet bombing, of course, is absolutely false. For that matter, had we conducted carpet bombing, I think that there wouldn't be a Hanoi today. NARRATOR: On December 22, American bombs hit Hanoi's Bach Mai hospital for a second time. Their target may have been a small airfield nearby. DR. NGUYEN LUAN: Cries and moans filled the dark night. We had to use knives, hammers and shovels to break through the concrete walls in order to get to the victims trapped inside. As a surgeon, I operate on people to save their lives. Now I was using my surgical knife not to save people but to cut apart the corpses in the bomb shelter so we could rescue those still alive. NARRATOR: The President ordered a one-day bombing halt for Christmas Day. On December 26, the B-52s resumed their missions. The massive new raids had personally been ordered by President Nixon. His main concern, he said, was not domestic and international criticism, but high B-52 losses. Some of the bombs hit a Hanoi residential district, Khan Thiem. The North Vietnamese believed that the raids were a deliberate act of terror. NGUYEN THI DUC: The shelter collapsed on me. The next morning, I was taken to the hospital. Only later on did I learn that five members of my family had been killed: my mother, my sister, and her husband, my older brother, my younger brother. PHUNG THI TIEM: The most heart-breaking sight was in Sonquan alley. A whole family of seven -- husband and wife and five children -- had been killed. The oldest child was 20 and the youngest two. The whole family was wiped out. It was extremely painful to see. The site of their house is still an empty lot. What an outrage! A family of seven completely wiped out. NARRATOR: The 11-day Christmas bombings were compared to the atomic blast on Hiroshima in World War II. And the tonnage of bombs dropped on the Hanoi-Haiphong area was actually greater, but the targets were more dispersed. The deaths were far fewer. In Hanoi they totalled 1,318. HENRY KISSINGER: Nixon was of the view that something shocking had to be done. That was not my view at the time, but I didn't disagree with it, and I went along with it and I think Nixon turned out to be right. NGUYEN CO THACH: After the Christmas bombing, the first day that Le Duc Tho and Kissinger had met in Paris, after shaking hands, Kissinger had told Le Duc Tho that "I am very sorry. I could not prevent the decision of the President in bombing North Vietnam on Christmas day." So Le Duc Tho say that: "I know who are responsible. All you are responsible. And you are criminals." HENRY KISSINGER: Publicly, he refused to shake hands with me, and in all the pictures that were taken, he never appeared with me. But inside the negotiating room, he moved at tremendous speed and with as much human warmth as he was capable of generating towards a representative of the capitalist system. WILLIAM SULLIVAN: It was a very somber meeting. No jollity, no joking as usually went on, and whenever points were pressed and we seemed to be at a point of suggesting that our patience was running thin, they either made a concession there or moved rapidly onto something else and set that aside. NARRATOR: On January 11, Kissinger cabled Nixon that the agreement was ready. The terms were almost identical to those laid down in October. Le Duc Tho and the North Vietnamese were prepared to sign. The agreement affirmed that South Vietnam was one country with two governments. There were to be moves toward reconciliation. Prisoners of war would be released. American troops would leave. Northern forces could remain in the South. President Nixon sent Alexander Haig and John Negroponte to Saigon with the news of America's decision. JOHN NEGROPONTE: We made it quite clear that this time we really planned to go through with signing the agreement whether they intended to join us or not. ANITA BRYANT (Singing at LBJ Burial, January, 1973): "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..." NARRATOR: Lyndon Johnson, the president who had first sent U.S. combat troops to Vietnam eight years earlier, died the day before the agreement was signed. ANITA BRYANT: "...coming of the Lord...he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...He hath loosed the faithful lightning of his terrible swift sword..." NARRATOR: Fifty-eight thousand American troops had died in Vietnam. ANITA BRYANT: "...His truth is marching on..." NARRATOR: On January 27, 1973, all parties signed the peace agreement. Hanoi celebrated with fireworks. It was also Tet -- the Vietnamese New Year. But to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong, the struggle had not ended. Vietnam was still divided. PHAM VAN DONG, January 1973: Le combat...The war we have fought for so many years continues. It is the same war for peace, and at the same time for independence, freedom and the peaceful unification of our native land. NARRATOR: Nearly 600 American airmen had been taken prisoner during the course of the war. Many had been held in what they called the "Hanoi Hilton." Now they were going home. The Vietnamese photographed their departure. They called the film, "Goodbye Uninvited Guests." North Vietnamese prisoners were also being released. As they crossed the river that divided Vietnam, they discarded the clothing issued to them by the South Vietnamese government they had fought -- a government whose future was still in doubt. The End of the Tunnel (1973-1975) Previous 11 of 11 NARRATOR: Saigon. April 29, 1975. Two years after a cease-fire agreement promised peace in Vietnam; ten years after America sent combat troops into its longest war; twenty years after an international conference divided Vietnam; thirty years after the Communists launched their struggle for Vietnam's independence. After a generation of battle, Hanoi's commanding general proclaimed their Great Spring Victory. Finally, for America, it was the end of the tunnel. PRESIDENT NIXON, January 23, 1973: A cease-fire, internationally supervised, will begin at 7:00 pm this Saturday, January 27, Washington time. Within 60 days from this Saturday, all Americans held prisoners of war throughout Indochina will be released. There will be the fullest possible accounting for all of those who are missing in action. During the same 60-day period, all American forces will be withdrawn from South Vietnam. The people of South Vietnam have been guaranteed the right to determine their own future. CAPT. DO CUONG (Army of South Vietnam): We are absolutely furious about the agreement. It was an injustice -- more of a death sentence for us than a peace agreement. We had never seen anything more illogical. It called for the withdrawal of only the American forces and not the withdrawal of other foreign troops, such as the Vietnamese Communists. NARRATOR: The South Vietnamese government greeted the Paris Accords with a defiant display of flags. The red and yellow banners were put out as symbols of loyalty on orders of the Saigon regime which had signed the agreement under intense pressure from President Nixon. In the countryside, a checkerboard of flags -- often within sight of one another -- marked the territory of the opposing sides. The agreement left Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces in the zones they controlled in the South, awaiting a political compromise. The Communists welcomed the agreement as recognition of their legitimacy. They did not see themselves as aggressors -- to them, the Americans had been the aggressors. COL. BUI TIN (Army of North Vietnam): We always trained our soldiers to love their country, and to hate aggressors. We were not invading any country, and we were determined to prevent any country from invading us and trampling on the land of our ancestors. NARRATOR: Both sides knew the struggle was not over. Two huge armies, one equipped by America, the other by the Soviet Union, stood poised head-to-head over a battered and exhausted land. NARRATOR: At Arlington National Cemetery on February 5, Lt. Col. William Nolde was buried. On the list of Americans killed in Vietnam, he was number 57,597. MINISTER (Funeral of Col. William Nolde, Arlington National Cemetery): May they receive strength at your promises of eternal life. Finally, may we continue to serve unselfishly for the ideals of freedom and peace, for which he sacrificed his life. NARRATOR: Whatever their views of the war, most Americans now believed that the cost had been too great, and the greatest cost had been American lives. They believed that no more Americans should die for Vietnam. A few days later, the American prisoners of war began to come home from Hanoi. They were the center of a month-long celebration, their homecoming played and replayed on national television. The last American fighting men were out of Vietnam. But America was still committed to South Vietnam. At San Clemente in April, President Nixon publicly restated his support for South Vietnam's President Thieu. PRESIDENT NIXON, April 1973: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen. As our joint communique indicates, President Thieu and I have had very constructive talks with regard to how we shall work together in the years ahead -- working for the program of peace which we now hope will all be the wave of the future, not only for the Republic of Vietnam, but for all the countries in Indochina. Mr. President, we have been allies in a long and difficult war. And now you can be sure that we stand with you as we continue to work together to build a lasting peace. NARRATOR: Nixon also renewed a secret pledge to Thieu: he would "respond with full force" if the Communists broke the cease-fire. Thieu expected American air power to save him. But Nixon's own power was under attack in Washington. SENATOR ERVIN, Watergate Hearings, 1973: We are beginning these hearings today in an atmosphere of utmost gravity. The questions that have been raised in the wake of the June 17 break-in strike at the very undergirding of our democracy. The first phase of the committee's investigation will probe the planning and execution of the wire-tapping and break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate complex. NARRATOR: Watergate was undermining the Nixon presidency. Televised hearings revealed the depth of the scandal, linking it in a complex tangle to Vietnam, and to Nixon's covert actions against the anti-war movement. JOHN DEAN (former White House Aide), Watergate hearings, 1973: The White House was continually seeking intelligence information about demonstration leaders and their supporters that would either discredit them personally or indicate that the demonstration was in fact sponsored by some foreign enemy. We never found a scintilla of viable evidence indicating that these demonstrators were part of a master plan. JOHN EHRLICHMAN (former White House aide), Watergate hearings, 1973: Some of these events in 1969 and 1970 included intensive harassment of political candidates and violent street demonstrations which endangered life and property. Taken as isolated incidents, these events were serious. Taken as a part of an apparent campaign to force upon the President a foreign policy favorable to the North Vietnamese and their allies, these demonstrations were more than just garden variety exercises of the First Amendment. JOHN DEAN: I believe that most anyone who worked at the White House during the past four years can attest to the concern that prevailed regarding leaks, any and all leaks. That concern too a quantum leap when The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers in June of 1971. PRESIDENT NIXON, Speech to Former POWs, May 24, 1973: Had we not had secrecy, had we not had secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese, had we not had secret negotiations prior to the Soviet summit, had we not had secret negotiations over a period of time with the Chinese leaders, let me say quite bluntly there would have been no China initiative, there would have been no limitations of arms for the Soviet Union and no summit. And had we not had that kind of security and that kind of secrecy that allowed for the kind of exchange that is essential, you men would still be in Hanoi, rather than Washington today. And let me say I think it is time in this country to quit making national heroes out of those who steal secrets and publish them in the newspapers. HENRY KISSINGER (National Security Adviser): After June 1973 I did not believe that the cease-fire would hold. Watergate was in full swing. We had already acquired intelligence documents in which the North Vietnamese had made the very correct analysis that Nixon would not be in a position to repeat what he had done in 1972, because of his domestic difficulties. The Congressional agitation to end all military activities in Southeast Asia was already in full force, and every day a new amendment was being proposed. So it was just a question of time until one of them would pass, and Le Duc Tho would read them to me. NARRATOR: Nixon and Kissinger were convinced that only the threat of American intervention would deter the Communists from rapidly taking over the South. In June 1973, as the Watergate scandal continued to weaken Nixon, Kissinger initiated a new round of talks with Le Duc Tho, the chief Communist negotiator. The two put their signatures on a renewed cease-fire agreement. But with the prestige of his presidency waning, Nixon lacked the power to stand firm in Vietnam, even though the anti-war demonstrators had dwindled to a dedicated few. DEMONSTRATORS, ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION, Washington, D.C., August, 1973: We shall live in peace... We shall live in peace someday... NARRATOR: He had ended the draft and brought the troops home. Despite the continued bombing of Cambodia, to most Americans the war was finished. Nixon's opposition now centered in Congress, which moved to limit his actions in Southeast Asia. SEN. HUBERT HUMPHREY, June 1973: The Cambodia bombing is illegal. I think it violates the President's powers under the Constitution. It is ineffective and it is immoral. And yet the President stubbornly pursues it -- ignoring the will of the Congress as ex-pressed in votes and ignoring the will of the American people as measured by every public opinion sampling. NARRATOR: On August 15, 1973, American bombers completed their final wartime mission over Indochina. The bombing cutoff was the first decisive step Congress had taken to end the war. The South Vietnamese army, resupplied with American weapons, held its own through the rest of 1973. But some of Thieu's officers were worried that they would lose their momentum without the Americans. GEN. PHAN PHUNG TIEN (South Vietnamese Air Force): When we expressed our concerns to President Thieu, he replied that he agreed with us. But he explained that the Americans had no choice -- they had to keep their armed forces out of the Vietnam quagmire. But he promised that the Americans would punish any Communist violations -- and we believed him. NARRATOR: Late in 1973, President Thieu announced the start of the "Third Indochina War," launching an air and ground offensive against the Communists. Thieu saw no alternative to war. He was convinced that the political compromise called for in the agreement would lead to a Communist takeover. He was determined to fight on, believing that America still stood behind him. The new U.S. ambassador, Graham Martin, encouraged Thieu's confidence in America. Some members of Martin's staff disagreed. FRANK SNEPP (CIA analyst): There was Martin, encouraging Thieu to believe that aid would -- that the cornucopia would be there always; that there would be continuing aid from the United States, even, again B-52s. And he encouraged Thieu to accept this, and as I've said before, Thieu believed it with such conviction that he decided not to retrench, not to pull back until it was so -- much too late. NARRATOR: In Washington, Congress was now on the offensive. REP. PETER RODINO, July 24, 1974: We have reached a moment when we are ready to debate resolutions whether or not the committee on the Judiciary should recommend that the House of Representatives adopt articles calling for the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon... COMMITTEE VOTES: Mr. Danielson AYE Mr. Drinan AYE Mr. Rangle AYE Miss Jordan AYE Mr. Smith NO Mr. Sandman NO Mr. Railsback AYE Mr. Rodino AYE PRESIDENT NIXON, August 1974: To fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress. Therefore, I shall resign the presidency, effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour, in this office. GERALD FORD: Almost immediately after becoming president in August of 1974, I wrote the heads of state of all of our allies, including President Thieu of Vietnam. It was a general letter, but I specifically indicated that I as president, would carry out the policy of my predecessors involving South Vietnam. BUI DIEM (Ambassador at Large): Mr. Thieu brought the letter written by President Ford then, and he read the letter to the whole cabinet meeting in Saigon, and it was quite a strong effect on all those people over there and they thought that, well, even if Mr. Nixon resigned, they can still believe on a commitment from the U.S. to help South Vietnam. NARRATOR: By August of 1974, the military balance had begun to shift against President Thieu. His troops were thinly spread. They no longer had American air support. The American military advisers were gone. Congress had reduced aid, and South Vietnam also suffered from soaring oil prices after the 1973 Middle East war. Gasoline was tightly rationed. Ammunition was scarce. Helicopters lacked spare parts and maintenance, and troop deployment by truck was slow and cumbersome. FRANK SNEPP: In addition, there was the problem of corruption, the siphoning off of material destined to troops in the field. The U.s. establishment in Saigon never had a very good grasp on the subject of corruption because it was, from an intelligence standpoint, strictly off-limits, something verboten. We, of course, realized that if the South Vietnamese looked anything but pristine pure, the U.S. Congress would not vote any additional aid to Saigon. NARRATOR: Some South Vietnamese officers and government officials grew rich by selling stolen gasoline and other supplies. Pilots sometimes demanded bribes to evacuate wounded soldiers. COL. WILLIAM LEGRO: When the military budget was so drastically reduced, the so-called one-time use bandages and syringes for the use of medical drugs, and blood bags, and that sort of thing for transfusions, those were gone. They had to wash the bandages. I don't know what they did for blood bags. Their medical support, which had been pretty good, was getting very, very grim. NARRATOR: More than 31,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in 1974 -- their highest number for any year except 1972. GEN. TRAN VAN NHUT (Army of South Vietnam): The Americans instilled in the Vietnamese soldiers and officers the American way to fight a war. Then, when the Americans withdrew and the supplies reduced, it was only natural that the morale and the combat effectiveness of the troops had to change for the worse. NARRATOR: The Americans had spent lavishly in Vietnam. At Camranh Bay they built a two billion dollar deepwater port. Now, homeless Vietnamese improvised shelters out of its deserted barracks and clubs. Aid had been cut, and the bombing stopped, but Thieu still counted on pledges from two U.S. Presidents, and from Ambassador Martin. Like many Vietnamese, he could not believe the U.S. would abandon its enormous investment in Vietnam. In Hanoi in October 1974, North Vietnamese leaders reached a different conclusion. General Van Tien Dung, a senior strategist, was present. GEN. DUNG: During this meeting, we reached an important conclusion. The American imperialists had already withdrawn their troops from the southern part of Vietnam, and it would be very difficult for them to return. Therefore, no matter how much aid they gave the Saigon regime, they could not prevent the collapse of that regime. NARRATOR (North Vietnamese Film): After 30 years of almost continuous war, the Communists' dream of a reunified Vietnam seemed within reach. This North Vietnamese film depicts the beginning of the 1975 campaign, commanded by General Dung. More than 100,000 fresh troops moved down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, now a modern truck route. They massed in Communist-held areas in the South. Crack units attacked the province of Phuoc Long and easily took its capital city. They were probing -- testing America's reaction. Thieu renewed his appeal for U.S. aid. PRES. THIEU, January 31, 1975: What we need is to have enough means not only to sustain the current situation, but as long as the Communists sustain the momentum of their offensive, I think we still need the means to defend ourselves. NARRATOR: Backing Thieu, President Ford and Ambassador Martin affirmed that America had a moral responsibility to South Vietnam. REP. PETE MCCLOSKEY: The Ford Administration was then trying to get Congress to vote more money for Vietnam and Cambodia, and a number of us went to Vietnam and Cambodia in late February and early March to try to appraise the situation to test against what Martin had been saying, what the reality was. Graham Martin, the ambassador, and his station chief were incapable of giving a fair appraisal to a visiting team of Congressmen. They were so emotionally wrapped up in the desire to save South Vietnam. Martin was saying, "The Vietnamese can stand, all you got to do is give 'em more ammunition and more equipment." NARRATOR: The delegation concluded that South Vietnam had received enough American aid. It would now have to fight alone. At the same time, General Dung deployed three divisions encircling the city of Banmethuot, in South Vietnam's Central Highlands. He was confident that the Americans would not intervene, but he still expected that it would take two years to defeat Thieu's forces. He moved carefully. NGO MINH KHA: In order to allow the tanks to go in, the artillery units shelled steadily for about two days so that the enemy would not be able to hear the rumbling noise of the tanks. NARRATOR: Dung also staged several diversionary attacks around Pleiku, another highland city. The South Vietnamese were lured into defending Pleiku, weakening Banmethuot's defenses. As they left, Dung's troops moved. NGUYEN CONG THANH (Army of North Vietnam): Our unit reached the outskirts of Banmethuot at four o'clock on the afternoon of March 9, 1975. We made camp, rested, ate, and prepared for the next days' attack against the city. We were ordered to fight the enemy at close range -- to "cling to their belts," as we put it. NARRATOR: Within two days, Dung's superior forces had overwhelmed Banmethuot. GEN. PHAN PHUNG TIEN: My own air force unit transported two regiments of special forces to Pleiku in order to retake Banmethuot. But to our complete surprise, on the 14th there was an order to withdraw from Pleiku. Nobody could believe it. NARRATOR: President Thieu made a crucial decision. He ordered his forces to abandon the northern and central provinces and form a new line of defense further south. But, hoping to avoid panic, he did not announce the withdrawal or reveal his plans. As the rumors flew, fear spread. Nobody knew what to believe and nobody wanted to be left behind. KENNETY MOOREFIELD (U.S. Embassy aide): During the withdrawal, the air force, obviously, was using their airplanes to get out any way they could. Mixed in with all of this, as if it wasn't complicated enough, was the panic-stricken flight of tens of thousands of civilians and dependents. In many instances the military forces up there had their own families living with them in the Kontum-Pleiku area, and that meant they had to be extremely concerned about the protection and survival of their own families at a time when they were attempting to retreat whatever their forces were remaining back to the coast. GEN. PHAN PHUNG TIEN (South Vietnamese Air Force): Banmethuot fell, but the government said nothing. We only learned about the withdrawal from Pleiku from rumors. The administration issued no official announcements at all. Because of that silence, people stopped believing in the government. NARRATOR: The official silence panicked the population. Within days, thousands of civilians were streaming toward the coastal city of Danang, desperately seeking safety. The Communist leaders, surprised by the Saigon army's disintegration, now moved swiftly. They set a deadline: victory before the rainy season bogged down their troops. Dung's forces closed in on Danang. SERGEANT THO HANG (Army of South Vietnam): The BBC and VOA broadcasts said that Danang was about to fall, and that news further spread panic among us soldiers. Our officers had fled. We talked things over among ourselves, and then decided: Let's go home. NARRATOR: By March 21, 100,000 refugees, many of them troops and their families, had crowded into Danang. Some soldiers put their wives and children aboard ships headed for safer areas in the South. Many failed to get out. AMERICAN WOMAN, March 1975: The soldiers here are confused, as you walk down the street, you see soldiers with no shoes, just staring into space. There's a -- I think "panic" is a word that describes very well what's happening in Danang. We've heard that a plane ticket now to Saigon is over 100,000 piastres if you can afford it, and of course that means that the rich leave and they take all their belongings. SERGEANT THO HANG: None of the civilian and military planes could land at the Danang airport because every time they approach, crowds chase them in jeeps or motorscooters trying to get on the planes to go to Saigon. NARRATOR: A World Airways jet with company president Ed Daley aboard made a perilous landing at Danang. Daley was flying one last rescue mission, against official American advice. He wanted to save women and children first, but desperate soldiers jammed into the airplane. They scrambled into the baggage compartment and clung to the stairway as the plane took off. It was the last American flight out of Danang. NARRATOR: On the 30th of March, General Dung's forces captured Danang, sweeping across the vast air base where the first U.S. ground forces had landed in 1965. For one of his military camera team, Danang was home. THU VAN: I arrived there on the 31st, the day after liberation. Along the road I saw many corpses of Saigon troops. Their weapons and uniforms, which they had stripped off, were strewn all over the place. As we entered the city of Danang, we encountered a group of disbanded Saigon soldiers. They had been hiding in a graveyard, and they stood up to surrender to us. When I found my family, I saw my mother for the first time in 20 years. Before we could say a single word we embraced each other and wept. During the conversations with my family I learned that all my nephews had become Saigon soldiers. NARRATOR: Many Vietnamese families had members fighting on both sides. Now, some were reunited for the first time in decades. Offshore, refugees from Danang were packed aboard rescue ships. Thousands drowned trying to flee, or were suffocated in the crush. As Thieu's army crumbled, the hysteria spread south. GEN. TRAN VAN NHUT: Confusion spread even further in the army when rumors multiplied that Vietnam would be again partitioned. Soldiers couldn't -- they couldn't understand why were being sent to central Vietnam to evacuate their families. If there was going to be another partition, why should they continue to fight? And why should they leave their families stranded out there? NARRATOR: President Thieu, still believing that America would not abandon him, again pleaded for help. On April 2, he met with Ambassador Martin and President Ford's special envoy, General Frederick Weyand. Weyand promised to recommend more aid. But by now, the Americans were losing faith in Thieu. Weyand reported to Kissinger and Ford at Palm Springs. They concluded that a military deadlock was their best hope. Even if only part of South Vietnam could be defended, the Communists might agree to a political deal -- with or without Thieu. GERALD FORD: General Weyand came back and recommended 722 million dollars in additional military aid and assistance to make sure that the South Vietnamese would have adequate military hardware to create the stalemate. I was always hopeful that there could be a negotiated settlement, even at that late date in March and April of 1975. NARRATOR: Ford again asked Congress for aid. But members of Congress suspected a maneuver to blame them for the impending disaster. They rejected his request. REP. MILLICENT FENWICK, April 1975: We've sent, so to speak, battleship after battleship, and bomber after bomber, and 500,000 or more men, and billions and billions of dollars. If billions and billions didn't do at a time when we had all our men there, how can $722 million save the day? APRIL 11, 1975 Interviewer: Can the South Vietnamese government, under President Thieu, or under any other leader -- whatever the South Vietnamese decide among themselves -- handle this situation? Ambassador Martin: Well, I think the test is that they have handled it. And I think the government can handle it in the future, can become self-sufficient, can keep their freedom, and allow us, when we end our involvement here, to withdraw, as I think we should, leaving South Vietnam economically viable, militarily capable of defending itself with its own man- power, and free to choose its own government, its own leaders, as its people themselves may freely determine. This is a goal which is easily within our reach. FRANK SNEPP (CIA analyst): It seemed to me that there was no question that the South -- what was left of the South -- was in imminent jeopardy, and that there was no way of regaining the northern half of the country. Well, Martin wouldn't believe it, and Martin held to this optimistic view of the military situation almost to the end. And this was one of the problems in his approach to the evacuation question. NARRATOR: Thieu imposed a curfew in Saigon. American civilians began to pack up. Out-going commercial flights were jammed, but the U.S. mission refused to disclose its evacuation plans -- either for Americans or for Vietnamese who might be special targets for the Communists. HENRY KISSINGER (Secretary of State): We had the fear that if we evacuated too rapidly, the South Vietnamese government in its frustration might turn on us and there might be a massacre of Americans. Secondly, we wanted to withdraw at a measured pace, so that the North Vietnamese would be concerned that if they moved too fast, we might intervene in order to save the remaining Americans. HENRY KISSINGER: We assembled a large fleet off South Vietnam for evacuation purposes. And I attempted, a rather forlorn attempt, a rather forlorn negotiation, to ease the transition by creating a coalition government in Saigon and implying that that fleet might be there for purposes other than simply evacuation. And proposed some sort of coalition effort which was not refused initially. NARRATOR: Le Duc Tho, Kissinger's former negotiating partner, joined General Dung in the field. They weighed their options as they braced for battle. If they could crush the Saigon regime, negotiations with the Americans would be unnecessary. Thieu's forces prepared to confront them in Long Khanh province at Xuan Loc, on the main road to Saigon. They moved into position on April 12. General Le Minh Dao defied the Communists. GEN. LE MINH DAO, April 1975: I will hold Long Khanh, I will knock them down here, even if they bring here two divisions or three divisions. NARRATOR: At Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport, the embassy began to evacuate Vietnamese who might be in danger. KENNETH MOOREFIELD (U.S. Embassy aide): I arrived out at the air base, walked into the theater, there were hundreds, maybe several thousands of Vietnamese there, and at that point, of course, we'd been charged with the evacuation of American dependents, that was the only mandate that I had at the time. And there was a palpable sense of hysteria in the air. NARRATOR: At Xuan Loc, South Vietnamese troops held their ground under relentless shell fire, finally yielding as General Dung threw three divisions against them. On April 21, the remnants of Thieu's troops were rescued, as women and children and the wounded struggled for space on the flights out. That same day, pressed to make way for a leader who might reach a deal with the Communists, President Thieu resigned. His successor was the aged, half-blind vice president, Tran Van Huong. The Communists promptly rejected Huong. At daybreak on April 28, South Vietnamese troops faced North Vietnamese commandos at the Newport Bridge. They were at the gates of Saigon. In Saigon and Washington, faint hopes for a political settlement persisted. Huong was replaced by Duong Van Minh, regarded as a figure the Communists might accept. As Minh spoke, a thunderstorm erupted. The Communists had beat the rainy season to the capital. General Dung had met his deadline. The morning of April 29, 1975. Tan Son Nhut airport was under fire, preventing passenger planes from taking off. But Ambassador Martin was still reluctant to begin a full-scale helicopter evacuation. COL. WILLIAM LEGRO (Defense Attache Office): North Vietnamese artillery was falling intermittently on the airfield. We no longer had any capability to use fixed-wing airplanes, that is, for the evacuation because of the artillery fire on the airstrip. I told the ambassador that we didn't have a great deal of time left; that we would probably have to leave that night. He went into my other office where I still had one secure telephone operating, and at that time he got authority to begin the evacuation from the embassy. NARRATOR: The word went out: all Americans and Vietnamese at risk would be taken out by helicopter to U.S. aircraft carriers. Officials quickly designated departure points at the airport, the U.S. embassy, and elsewhere in the capital. KENNETH MOOREFIELD (U.S. Embassy aide): I got together with the Marine captain that was responsible at that point for organizing the convoys of buses that were to go into the city. MAY 1975: Q: How are we getting to the helicopters? A: Oh well, they're going to come in and pick us up from points around Tan Son Nhut. Q: Around Tan Son Nhut...How much baggage, Captain? A: Will you please,...one small handbag. KENNETH MOOREFIELD: I discovered that he did not have a very good knowledge of where some of the pickup points around the city where everyone had been told to form up. So I assisted him in getting some of the buses together... MARINE CAPTAIN: Would the women over here please part? Come on, let's move it. Please stop pushing! One at a time! KENNETH MOOREFIELD: We spent the better part of the morning and the early afternoon running convoys back and forth from Saigon back out to Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base. The people that I described as high-risk Vietnamese were not high risk merely because they'd had a close association with us in the past, but because we believed that if they stayed behind and were captured that their lives would be in jeopardy once the North Vietnamese took over. As a consequence, these people were mortally scared. SAIGON EVACUATION, April 1975 Wally Henderson: While here I met my friend's widow who I've known about for some ten years. Q: Vietnamese friend? Wally Henderson: Yes, yes -- we went to school together at Washington State University. I was very concerned...(starts to cry)...about reprisals to the family and so I returned to help them if I could but I couldn't get anyone out, the widow was gotten out earlier through embassy help, but not the others. KENNETH MOOREFIELD: The embassy was completely surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of Vietnamese at the three entrances. It was impossible if you were Oriental, virtually, to get into the grounds of the embassy at that point in time. NARRATOR: By late afternoon, most Americans and thousands of Vietnamese had reached the U.S. carriers offshore. Thousands more Vietnamese were waiting in Saigon. Some South Vietnamese pilots ditched their aircraft in the South China Sea. KENNETH MOOREFIELD: The feeling in the city was one of almost total chaos at this point. Anarchy, virtual anarchy was beginning to break out and in various streets that we'd attempted to go down, there were armed soldiers in half uniforms -- combined Air Force/Marine/Army types that had obviously begun the task of looting and taking advantage of the disorder and confusion that prevailed at that point in time. GEN. PHAN PHUNG TIEN: After escaping from Vietnam and landing on the American carriers, I must admit that those of us who had been in responsible positions felt kind of ashamed, and dishonored. To me it seemed that everything that happened during the last days of South Vietnam had been arranged in advance, and there was nothing that the Vietnamese officers at the lower echelons could do to prevent the situation from coming apart. COL. LEGRO: I felt that the United States, particularly the Congress because they were making the policy, had betrayed a trust that the United States had given South Vietnam. And since I represented the United States, I also felt that I was personally betrayed; I had also made, implied promises, that the United States would honor the agreements we had made at the time of the cease-fire and then when things got really tough we really just cut and run. COL. BUI TIN (Army of North Vietnam): After reaching the other side of the bridge, we went straight to the Independence Palace. NARRATOR: Communist forces entered the city from six different directions. They had planned a two-year campaign to capture the capital. It took 55 days. NGUYEN CONG THANH (Army of North Vietnam): None of us knew how to get to the Independence Palace. So many streets led to downtown Saigon, and I myself had no idea where it was. So I turned to an old woman and asked: "Mother, where is Saigon?" And she replied, "You're in Saigon." NARRATOR: Inside the palace, Duong Van Minh, president for 44 hours, was waiting. Colonel Bui Tin took the surrender. COL. BUI TIN: When I saw fear on the faces of Minh and the others present, I said: "The war has ended today, and all Vietnamese are victors. Only the American imperialists are the vanquished. If you still have any feelings for the nation and the people, consider today a happy day." That night, when I sprawled on the lawn of the Independence Palace with members of a communication unit, we all agreed it was the happiest day of our lives because it was a day of complete victory for the nation, because the war ended. NARRATOR: The Communists had attained their goal: they had toppled the Saigon regime. But the cost of victory was high. In the past decade alone, one Vietnamese in every ten had been a casualty of war. Nearly a million and a half killed, three million wounded. Vietnam had been a tormented land, and its ordeal was not over. Though American equipment still stocked Saigon's markets, the Americans were gone. They counted nearly 60,000 dead and more than 300,000 wounded. It was their first defeat. The promised end of the tunnel had brought not light but a new uncertainty, new questions: what was America's role in the world? What were the lessons of Vietnam? Matching Map Locations Gulf of Tonkin The site of a North Vietnamese torpedo attack on the U.S.S. Maddox, an American destroyer, on August 2, 1964, and a highly disputed second attack on August 4. In late July 1964, South Vietnamese PT boats had fired upon two Tonkin Gulf islands held by the North Vietnamese, Hon Me and Hon Ngu, setting the stage for increased tension in the area. President Lyndon Johnson will successfully seek a Congressional resolution on August 7 bringing the U.S. into the conflict. Ho Chi Minh Trail The major supply route for Communist forces stretching from Vinh, North Vietnam, through Laos and Cambodia, into South Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was the target of numerous U.S. bombing and napalm attacks throughout the war. Roll over any of the red locations to learn more. Gulf of Tonkin The site of a North Vietnamese torpedo attack on the U.S.S. Maddox, an American destroyer, on August 2, 1964, and a highly disputed second attack on August 4. In late July 1964, South Vietnamese PT boats had fired upon two Tonkin Gulf islands held by the North Vietnamese, Hon Me and Hon Ngu, setting the stage for increased tension in the area. President Lyndon Johnson will successfully seek a Congressional resolution on August 7 bringing the U.S. into the conflict. Bienhoa The U.S. air base at Bienhoa was the target of an intense raid by the Vietcong on October 30, 1964. Launching a heavy mortar attack under cover of night, the communists caught U.S. and South Vietnamese personnel off guard. The attack left 5 American servicemen and 2 Vietnamese dead and 76 wounded. In addition, 6 U.S. B-57s were destroyed, along with 20 other U.S. and South Vietnamese aircraft. Ia Drang Valley The U.S. Army's 1st Air Cavalry honed its aerial reconnaissance techniques in the rugged territory along the Ia Drang Valley. Taking advantage of the mobility of their helicopters, the Air Cavalry could spot North Vietnamese Army units from the air and rush assault troops to the spot to engage them in battle. Khe Sanh The North Vietnamese Army (N.V.A.) waged a losing battle in late 1967 and early 1968 to take Khe Sanh, a heavily fortified U.S. airstrip. Over the course of the nine-week battle, the most firepower ever used against a single target in the history of warfare was unleashed. Although the N.V.A. lost at least 10,000 men, they would later admit the engagement was a diversionary tactic employed to allow other Communist units to drive deeper into South Vietnam. Roll over any of the red locations to learn more. Gulf of Tonkin The site of a North Vietnamese torpedo attack on the U.S.S. Maddox, an American destroyer, on August 2, 1964, and a highly disputed second attack on August 4. In late July 1964, South Vietnamese PT boats had fired upon two Tonkin Gulf islands held by the North Vietnamese, Hon Me and Hon Ngu, setting the stage for increased tension in the area. President Lyndon Johnson will successfully seek a Congressional resolution on August 7 bringing the U.S. into the conflict. Bienhoa The U.S. air base at Bienhoa was the target of an intense raid by the Vietcong on October 30, 1964. Launching a heavy mortar attack under cover of night, the communists caught U.S. and South Vietnamese personnel off guard. The attack left 5 American servicemen and 2 Vietnamese dead and 76 wounded. In addition, 6 U.S. B-57s were destroyed, along with 20 other U.S. and South Vietnamese aircraft. Ia Drang Valley The U.S. Army's 1st Air Cavalry honed its aerial reconnaissance techniques in the rugged territory along the Ia Drang Valley. Taking advantage of the mobility of their helicopters, the Air Cavalry could spot North Vietnamese Army units from the air and rush assault troops to the spot to engage them in battle. Bienhoa The U.S. air base at Bienhoa was the target of an intense raid by the Vietcong on October 30, 1964. Launching a heavy mortar attack under cover of night, the communists caught U.S. and South Vietnamese personnel off guard. The attack left 5 American servicemen and 2 Vietnamese dead and 76 wounded. In addition, 6 U.S. B-57s were destroyed, along with 20 other U.S. and South Vietnamese aircraft. Hue After twenty-six days of intense fighting, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces recapture the city of Hue, the site of an ancient religious citadel. The city had been seized by Communist forces during the Tet offensive. Following the defeat of the Communists, mass graves were discovered. They were filled with the bodies of Communist party "enemies." Saigon During the Tet offensive, a 19-man Vietcong suicide squad occupied the U.S. Embassy and a South Vietnamese radio station in downtown Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. A U.S. assault force defeated the Vietcong in a matter of hours, but a major psychological blow had been inflicted by the insurgent Communist forces. Roll over any of the red locations to learn more. Hue After twenty-six days of intense fighting, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces recapture the city of Hue, the site of an ancient religious citadel. The city had been seized by Communist forces during the Tet offensive. Following the defeat of the Communists, mass graves were discovered. They were filled with the bodies of Communist party "enemies." Saigon During the Tet offensive, a 19-man Vietcong suicide squad occupied the U.S. Embassy and a South Vietnamese radio station in downtown Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. A U.S. assault force defeated the Vietcong in a matter of hours, but a major psychological blow had been inflicted by the insurgent Communist forces. Tet offensive This military action was a major turning point in the way many Americans perceived the war. On the morning of January 30, Communist forces in North Vietnam and Vietcong squads in the South took advantage of a truce during Tet (the Vietnamese new year holiday) to launch a massive offensive. Major cities and provinces were captured, and heavy fighting ensued. Although turned back by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in a matter of days, the Communists nonetheless claimed a major political and psychological victory. U.S. observers were stunned by the size and coordination of the Communist forces. Haiphong Harbor As the war dragged on into the early 1970s, U.S. bombers targeted major cities in North Vietnam such as Haiphong more regularly. The U.S. came under heavy international criticism for endangering civilian populations, but maintained that their bombs were directed solely at military targets. The U.S. mined Haiphong harbor in 1972 to stop military equipment from reaching the Communists. Roll over any of the red locations to learn more. Cambodia Cambodia, Vietnam's western neighbor, sought to stay officially neutral throughout the war. This effort was not successful however, as the U.S. pursued Communist units traveling through and setting up bases in Cambodia. The nation was subjected to heavy bombing, ordered by the Nixon administration, during the final stages of U.S. military involvement. Quangtri Quangtri was the target of the largest one-day U.S. bombing campaign of the entire Vietnam War, on November 7, 1972. The city was of particular strategic importance to the North Vietnamese because of an oil pipeline that originated there and ran to the town of Locninh, 75 miles northwest of Saigon. Cambodia Cambodia, Vietnam's western neighbor, sought to stay officially neutral throughout the war. This effort was not successful however, as the U.S. pursued Communist units traveling through and setting up bases in Cambodia. The nation was subjected to heavy bombing, ordered by the Nixon administration, during the final stages of U.S. military involvement. Phnompenh When Cambodia's capital, Phnompenh, was overtaken by the Communist Khmer Rouge in April 1975, the government of Lon Nol was replaced by that of Pol Pot. After five years of fighting, the Khmer Rouge had succeeded in defeating the government army, and soon began to act out a policy of evacuation and execution of their own countrymen. Phnompenh, along with other cities, was emptied as citizens were resettled in concentration camp-like agricultural "communities" where re-education could begin. Saigon The capital of South Vietnam, and the seat of official U.S. power in the country, Saigon was overrun by North Vietnamese Communist troops on April 30, 1975. As a Communist victory became certain, a massive evacuation began. In just 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and 6,000 Vietnamese out of the city-under-siege and to the safety of aircraft carriers waiting offshore. For every Vietnamese who successfully fled the city, however, dozens more were denied transport. Hanoi In early July 1976, the site of the North Vietnamese headquarters during the war, Hanoi, was named capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. North and South were officially reunified. Efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged city of Hanoi topped the government's agenda in the years immediately following the war. Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) After falling to Communist forces in 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The site of uprisings and violence, Vietnam's most populous city remained unruly and volatile even under Communist rule. Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) After falling to Communist forces in 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The site of uprisings and violence, Vietnam's most populous city remained unruly and volatile even under Communist rule.