Turning Point: The Vietnam War (2025) s01e03 Episode Script

1
[pensive piano music plays]
[Keith Kay] A lot of people say
that Vietnam was television's war.
No other war had been shown
in this detail.
I'm losing too many men.
If we were to stay here too much longer,
we-- we wouldn't have much left
of this platoon,
let alone the company.
[Kay] Jack Laurence was
a television correspondent,
and we were working together.
We decided that the war
could speak for itself
if the people who were fighting it
could speak for themselves.
So we focused on the kids in the field.
I can't say that I'm scared stiff,
but I'm scared.
I mean, after a while,
you know what's gonna come,
and you can't do nothing about it,
and you just look to God.
It's about the only thing you can do.
[Kay] And what they were doing
was following orders.
They didn't understand the orders,
but they understood
that they were bound by oath
to carry out those orders, and they did.
The rifles have been jamming.
The-- The mud's been, uh
slowed everything down,
and the artillery comes in everywhere,
and, uh, it just gets pretty futile
and frustrating sometimes.
[Kay] And they were kids,
and we were kids.
And we felt an affinity for them.
We were told about these kids
who would sit on top of their bunker
and sing
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone,"
so we went up and did a story
on these kids who did it.
And even in the V-ring,
life goes on at Khe Sanh.
Young girls, picked them, every one ♪
When will they ever learn? ♪
[plane engine roars overhead]
[Laurence] I notice you sing out,
"When will they ever learn?"
Uh, this is probably the favorite song
around the V-ring.
Do the words have special meaning, or
or is it just a good song
for homesick soldiers?
"Homesick Marines," I'm sorry.
Well, I suppose it's a little bit of both.
I mean, it sort of makes sense,
uh, to us anyway,
that people should catch on
to what's going on here,
and all this protesting back home
kind of bothers us.
But you'd think they'd learn
after a while about these wars and stuff.
[pensive piano music resumes playing]
[Kay] We never learn from history.
You know, history repeats itself.
When-- When you see Afghanistan and Iraq,
it's the same scenes
that I shot in Vietnam,
this time being shot
by some other photographer.
[sweeping sentimental music plays]
[camera shutter clicks]
[camera shutter clicks]
[Kay] As a journalist, we were trying
to show what this war did to kids.
[explosion]
[Kay] We didn't care
about the generals or the commanders.
We didn't care about the politicians.
We just wanted to show what it was doing
to people that we were standing
or crouching beside.
[intriguing music plays]
[air raid sirens wail]
[reporter] What sort of a president
do you think you personally would make
for South Vietnam?
[Nguyễn Văn Thiệu] The most important
for me, if I were to be elected,
and as I think for any future leaders,
is, uh, to organize
the stronger political life
in-- in Vietnam.
Because, uh, if we have
a not stronger political life,
we cannot win the war against Communists.
[George J. Veith] In September of '67,
there was an election
for the presidency and vice presidency
of South Vietnam.
[reporter] Despite well-publicized threats
of Việt Cộng terror tactics,
83% of the nation's registered voters
flocked to the polling places
to cast their ballots.
Thiệu wins the presidency,
and former premier Kỳ,
the vice presidency.
[Tuong Vu] President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
was born of an ordinary family
in southern-central Vietnam.
[intriguing music swells and intensifies]
He joined the National Vietnamese Army
under French leadership.
Thiệu, different.
This guy is different.
He's a soldier.
Poor, like the other soldiers.
Coming from the rank to become a general,
Thiệu is the smartest general
in the South.
The smartest one.
He was also politically astute.
He was able to bring order
into the country
after four years of chaos,
after the coup of Ngô Đình Diệm.
And he also oversaw
the creation of a new republic
with the most democratic constitution
Vietnam ever had.
[Nhã] When Mr. Thiệu became president,
I became his chief of staff.
I was focused on how we could leverage
the help of the Americans,
but also tell the Americans,
"Let's agree on a common strategy
and how to execute that."
But by that time,
the politics got involved.
This fella, Thiêu, um,
most of the people think--
I'm not very good at evaluating,
but most of the folks think,
Westmoreland and-- and Bunker and them
they think that Thiệu
is going to be better than Kỳ.
And I've been suffering
a terrific onslaught.
Our own people plucking
that we ought to get out of the war,
and that they're not dependable,
and that the generals are taking over,
and-- and, uh, it's been quite a problem
for me in my own group.
Johnson recognizes that the country
is turning against the war.
[suspenseful classical music plays]
His public approval,
approval of his handling of the war,
they're in the 30s by late 1967.
And so Johnson tries
to get out a better message,
and he does that
by bringing home William Westmoreland
to tell the people that the war
really is going better
than you've been led to believe.
The enemy has not won
a single significant victory in the South
during the last one and a half years.
[Selverstone] Johnson gets a bump
from that progress campaign,
and so he goes into 1968 thinking
that maybe he can turn this thing around.
And then comes the Tết Offensive.
[suspenseful music continues]
[horns honking]
[reporter] The Tết Lunar Holiday.
For Asiatics, it's Christmas
and New Year's, and 4th of July,
all rolled into one,
with a little touch of Memorial Day too.
[Col. Phạm Bá Hoa, in Vietnamese]
Each side had self-declared a ceasefire
for people to celebrate Tết.
Half of the army was allowed
to go home on leave for the Tết holiday.
[in English] The Americans,
as well as South Vietnamese,
believed that Communist forces
would respect the Tết holiday truce.
And in fact, they didn't.
[ominous music plays]
[in Vietnamese] At this time,
I was very well-versed in this mission
because I was a liaison
for the Deputy Commander.
The goal was eight points in Saigon.
The attack on the US Embassy
was approved in the final days,
so the ninth target was the US Embassy.
[Dũng] All the entry points into Saigon
had many checkpoints.
This was to tightly control
people coming in and out.
Anyone who wanted to enter
needed identification documents.
In just a short period of time,
there were several hundred
fake ID cards to make.
There would be major events happening.
I had taken photos of each person.
I had a premonition
that this meeting with this person
would probably be the last.
[people chattering]
[Peter Arnett, in English] January 30,
the city of Saigon was bustling.
There were firecrackers exploding,
and just lots of noise
and traffic flowing around.
About 3:30 in the morning,
I heard the, uh, rattle
of machine gun fire
and the noise of explosions.
[guns firing]
[dramatic music plays]
The phone goes, and it's the office,
Ed White at the overnight desk.
And he said, "Peter, get here."
"The VC are attacking the city.
They're shelling it."
We heard the sound like
[mimics plane engine whirring]
You know? That means
it's already passed over your house.
And we heard, "Boom."
All over the city,
everybody was so scared.
[automatic weapons fire rapidly]
[man] I was surprised.
Everybody was surprised.
We expect they will do something.
But we didn't expect,
uh, so large an operation
that they-- they are able
to-- to penetrate up to that.
They have spies. They have the Việt Cộng
in-- in place to do things.
The 1968 Tết Offensive was directed
at attacking the urban centers,
and specifically the South Vietnamese
centers of government.
84,000 North Vietnamese and NLF forces
hit five of the six major cities,
the major district capitals,
the province capitals.
[Vu] Suddenly, they just showed up
in large numbers
and attacked the prominent cities,
including the American embassy in Saigon.
[Ngọc, in Vietnamese] To prepare to attack
the US Embassy, we gathered 15 people.
Seventeen, including a male driver
and a female liaison.
If we didn't have
this woman guide to lead them,
how on earth would they know
how to find the US Embassy?
[tense percussive music plays]
[reporter, in English] About 15 Việt Cộng
commandos were now on the embassy grounds.
They had rushed in
under a Việt Cộng mortar and rocket attack
that scored at least two hits on the new,
$3 million, eight-story building.
[Arnett] I started walking
up to the embassy.
I noticed in the distance the bodies
of three American military police.
There was a dead American Marine there,
and a lot of damage,
and a couple of wounded.
And I take a call from George Jacobson,
who was living in a wooden villa
in the grounds of the embassy.
I did not see any VC in the building,
except that I knew that there was
at least one VC in my house.
They put riot gas
into the bottom floors of my house,
which, of course, would drive whoever
was down, uh, below up top where I was.
Uh, they had thrown me a pistol
about ten minutes before this occurred.
And with all the luck
that I've had, uh, all of my life,
um, I got him before he got me.
- [man] With the pistol, and he had what?
- I'm sorry.
- An M16.
- And you got him.
None of the raiders lived
to tell of their exploit.
By eight o'clock,
five hours after they first broke in,
almost all of them were dead.
[Arnett] General Westmoreland arrived
at the embassy,
and walking around the carnage,
the VC bodies and wreckage,
said, "This has been
a great victory for us today."
The enemy exposed himself
by virtue of this strategy,
and he suffered great casualties.
And I was thinking at the time, "Huh?"
Nearly all 40 province capitals
were attacked by the Việt Cộng
and North Vietnamese troops.
It's a real disaster,
especially after Johnson and his team
have been telling the country
that there's light
at the end of the tunnel.
[tape machine clicks]
I don't think
it's a last-gasp, uh, action.
I do think that it represents,
uh, a maximum effort
in the sense of,
they've poured on all of their assets
It's-- It's largely a propaganda effort,
and a publicity effort,
and I think they'll gain that way.
I imagine our people across the country
this morning will-- will feel
that, uh that, uh, they're much stronger
than they had previously
anticipated they were.
And in that sense, I think they gain.
[reporter] How long
you been fighting in Saigon?
It's broke out about six, seven days ago.
I've been fighting ever since then.
- You been fighting out in the field too?
- Right.
- Which do you prefer?
- The field. [laughs]
- Why?
- I don't know.
You can't find 'em around here.
The Tết attacks lasted
all the way, uh, until March of 1968.
This is the first time
that the North had actually captured
South territory and held it,
major cities like Huế.
[gentle wistful music plays]
[Veith] If Huế fell,
the historical imperial seat
of South Vietnam,
it would crush morale,
and the whole part
of the country could fall.
[reporter] The 324th Division
of the North Vietnamese Army
had been given the task of taking Huế.
[inaudible]
[reporter] The citadel itself was seized
by a North Vietnamese battalion.
[Kay] On one side of the river,
there was the citadel
that was surrounded by North Vietnamese,
and very heavy fighting there.
And on the other side of the river
was a warehouse building
that was the US presence
on that side of the river.
And their mission was
to recapture the city.
[bombs exploding]
[Mike Nakayama] It was pretty bad.
There were something
like 10,000 North Vietnamese.
And here you're looking at Marines
that are going in,
not knowing what they're going to face,
what that force was.
And so they got chewed up.
[guns firing]
I was actually a replacement
for so many of, you know,
the Marines that were killed.
[reporter] Colonel Cheatham,
what's the objective and your?
What are your men about to do?
Well, I've-- I've got two companies here
that are just about to clear
the next two blocks up.
What kind of fighting is it going to be?
It's house to house and from room to room.
- Kind of inch by inch?
- That's-- That's exactly what it is.
They were fighting
just to get across the street.
[soldiers yell indistinctly]
[reporter] As the Marines advance
building after building,
the North Vietnamese retreat
building after building,
giving up nothing without a fight.
You know, this just went on day after day.
It's been like this all weekend in Huế,
one nasty little firefight
right after another.
Rounds going overhead.
[guns firing heavily]
[melancholic music plays]
What do you think of at a time like this?
Well, keeping down.
Bullets are flying over here too fast.
[C. Jack Ellis] I was a platoon sergeant.
My outfit was gonna defend Huế.
And I remember not being able
to get the wounded out.
And that's when I first saw
my fellow soldiers
being wounded in combat,
being killed in combat.
And when you are a small unit leader,
you know,
a part of you gets wounded as well,
and a part of you dies.
Because now you--
you are close to these men.
[reporter] Many homes were entered
and searched for block after block.
Wherever the Communists went,
the people fled.
[woman] Civilians had been kidnapped
by the Communists.
When the Communists first entered Huế,
they came into their homes
and then took them away,
and they haven't heard from them since.
[Hoa, in Vietnamese]
Thanks to the strong support of the US,
Huế was able
to successfully push out the Communists.
Huế suffered the most
during the Tết Offensive.
The fighting in Huế was the most horrific.
[Kay, in English] It was just a
a very gruesome, ugly battle.
But from my own position,
it was the first time I thought,
"God, we can really lose this war."
And it was all new.
And your thinking of the war
becomes all new.
[soldiers speak indistinctly]
[man] Are you finished?
We want to get the hell out.
By the time Communist forces
had to withdraw from the city,
Communist forces on the ground
ended up killing off any witnesses
in addition to actual prisoners of war.
[Thuy] They were killing those people
on their way out of the city,
and nobody could know where they were.
[tender music plays]
Until a year later,
they discovered three mass graves in Huế.
I accompanied officials
to dig up the grave.
That was the most horrifying scene
I have ever seen.
There was almost 1,300 bodies.
[Vu] Many of them were soldiers
and officers and political leaders
of the province.
But they also killed many
who they thought were anti-Communists,
even though they were ordinary people.
[Thuy] Even after one year in the grave,
I could see that some dead bodies
were still in high school uniforms
with their arms tied in behind their back.
Here are the people
who claim to come to liberate the South.
Why did they need to kill those people?
[Vu] The Communists tried to claim
that they were killed by American bombs
and South Vietnamese bombs.
But people who had
hands tied behind their backs,
you know, that--
that was not American bombs.
[Lien-Hang] We still don't know
how many were killed by Communist forces
when they left
the imperial capital of Huế,
but anywhere from 2,800 to 6,000
South Vietnamese civilians were killed.
That's one of the most brutal examples
of the Vietnamese civil war
that was taking place.
[Thomas Bass] The Tết Offensive is
a massive and major turning point
in the war.
[droning somber music plays]
It's in some ways a great military defeat
for the Communists.
[Vu] It was a suicide attack.
More than 40,000 Communist troops,
ultimately, about a third of their forces,
they exposed themselves,
and they were destroyed.
President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
oversaw military efforts
in response to the Tết Offensives.
The South Vietnamese military
fought bravely
and regained the territory lost
to the Communist forces on the ground.
The Tết Offensive helped rally
South Vietnamese to the government,
and we could see a spike
in recruitment afterwards
of people volunteering
to serve in the army.
The Tết Offensive
has exposed the insurgency.
It's to the point where they had been,
if not destroyed, certainly devastated.
The problem is that's not the narrative
that occurs back home.
[Veith] From the American perspective,
you had Westmoreland and the US government
touting how we are winning the war.
Suddenly, you had
this massive attack across the country,
which gave lie to that.
[intriguing music plays]
[news anchor] I think the greatest victory
that the Tết Offensive had
was on the American public.
I think it killed once and for all
in the minds of the people of America,
and also in the Johnson administration,
the idea that a military victory
was possible in Vietnam.
[Dan Rather] As 1968 unfolded,
President Johnson felt himself
caught in a vice.
[tape machine clicks and whirs]
I don't admit
that this is a Communist victory.
And I don't think anybody
but a goddamn Communist admits it.
- [man] Yeah.
- [Johnson] That's what I think.
And I just think they're using us,
just playing games around us
And nearly everybody I talk to
tries to find out
what's wrong with our boys,
our country, our leadership, our men.
Our president's a liar.
Westmoreland's no good.
[Rather] One of the roles
a journalist is supposed to play
is to bear witness
to what's really going on
as opposed to what somebody in power
wants to convince you is going on.
[mysterious chiming music plays]
Walter Cronkite was managing editor
and anchor of the CBS Evening News.
One of, at the time, three major networks.
More than anybody else
on the air, television,
he was seen as a trusted source.
He had demonstrated time and time again
that he wasn't trying to sell anything
ideologically or politically.
After the Tết Offensive,
his correspondents, including this one,
had time after time told him,
"Walter, this is not going well."
Cronkite finally said, "Well, I want to go
to Vietnam and see for myself."
[announcer] Tonight, "Report From Vietnam"
by Walter Cronkite.
If the Communist intention
was to take and seize the cities,
they came closer here at Huế
than anywhere else.
The destruction here was almost total.
There's scarcely an inhabitable building
in the city of Huế.
[gentle nostalgic music plays]
The boss at CBS News at the time
was a very strict journalism devotee
and would not permit any of us
to ever do anything
like an editorial comment at all.
But now I came back
and suddenly he said, "You know what?"
"We may have a responsibility here
we haven't recognized."
"I think you, Cronkite,
ought to do a piece
saying just exactly what you think
about the situation out there."
And so I sat down and wrote my piece.
We have been too often disappointed
by the optimism of the American leaders,
both in Vietnam and Washington,
to have faith any longer
in the silver linings
they find in the darkest clouds.
For it seems now more certain than ever
that the bloody experience of Vietnam
is to end in a stalemate.
[helicopter whirring]
It is increasingly clear to this reporter
that the only rational way out, then,
will be to negotiate not as victors
but as an honorable people
who lived up to their pledge
to defend democracy
and did the best they could.
This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.
[soft, sad music plays]
He didn't say we're losing the war.
What he said was, "It's a standoff."
"The US forces can't prevail here."
The fact that Walter Cronkite
would say this directly made a big impact.
[Bass] Lyndon Johnson is reported
to have said,
"If I've lost Cronkite,
I've lost Middle America."
Walter Cronkite admitted the obvious,
that our soldiers were dying for nothing.
[Kay] Vietnam was the first war
where mothers could actually see
what their sons were doing at work.
And we talked directly to the mothers,
and they were saying, "Not this."
All I can say is I-- I'm not as patriotic
as I used to be after losing Billy.
And I have a son that's
Well, he's just determined
he's going to go over.
[Kay] The US lost the mothers,
so we lost the war.
[news anchor] This morning,
the New York Times revealed
that General Westmoreland is asking
for 206,000 more men in Vietnam.
The Times report says
a divisive internal debate has begun
at high levels of the administration
because of this request.
The Tết Offensive was a tremendous
setback for the United States,
and it was compounded by the fact
that Westmoreland then went
and asked Washington
for 206,000 more troops.
This is a measure now
of how things have changed,
because now this message
is harder to make stick.
[Viet Thanh Nguyen] The Tết Offensive was
very effective in helping to mobilize
anti-war feeling in the United States.
And so in 1968, the anti-war movement grew
simply out of opposition
to these human consequences.
[musical arrangement turns
sweeping and hopeful]
[Chic Canfora] Seeing the graphic images
of the Tết Offensive
marked a turning point
in the American conscience
during the Vietnam War.
It certainly was the catalyst for me,
and, I think, hundreds of thousands
of American students like me,
and millions of young people
around the world,
to see those graphic images
and just say, "Enough."
- [people scream]
- [sirens wail distantly]
[woman] Life and death is--
is a much more serious matter than this,
and if we're-- if we're this confused
as to our objectives and their objectives
and what this whole thing is about,
that we've got to stop
the-- the agony of this conflict
and try to-- to get some reason into it.
[Lien-Hang] 1968 was a pivotal year,
and, of course, the deadliest chapter
in terms of the war in Vietnam.
[Haeberle] I was a photographer,
31st Public Information Office.
We were attached
to the 11th Infantry Brigade,
which was attached
to the Americal Division.
[gentle nostalgic music plays]
My role in the Army
was to document operations.
I went on different patrols
with different units.
Usually, a journalist or writer
would accompany me,
and then that writer would have
to go ahead and write a story
about the photographs that I've taken.
It was mainly to show
how good we're doing,
what we could do humanitarian-wise.
[man] Charlie Company was
in the Americal Division,
and they were assigned
to a peculiarly troublesome,
rebellious section
in Quảng Ngãi Province.
Captain Medina was
a company commander, respected.
[Haeberle] I knew Captain Medina
from our station in Hawaii.
He was strict,
but he seemed dedicated to the service.
He just had a good way with the troops.
Medina's the captain,
he's the head honcho, put it that way,
and there were three lieutenants
underneath him
that had platoons assigned to 'em.
Lt. William Calley,
he's in charge of the 1st Platoon.
From my understanding,
he was not well-respected.
[Eckhardt] Lt. Calley was not
a particularly strong leader.
Not a strong person. That's the problem.
[Haeberle] In Vietnam,
a big thing is body count.
Everybody wants to know the body count.
Charlie Company,
they were getting a bit harped on
because they haven't had any kills.
They were taking more casualties
than they were getting enemy kills.
During the operation,
Charlie Company walked into a minefield,
and they lost a few of their men
and their favorite sergeant
to a booby trap.
It just became a hard situation.
[Eckhardt] Guerrilla war is terrible.
What do you do with the tragedies
when you see your buddies killed?
No one belittles the emotion.
But you don't kill for revenge.
From a sergeant on up,
you expect people to control that.
But Lt. Calley's men were not disciplined,
and in the military,
the slippage of discipline is disastrous.
[ominous music plays]
[Haeberle] They had sub-hamlets.
There was Mỹ Lai 1, 2, 3, and 4.
On March 15th,
we were told a Việt Cộng battalion
was supposed to be in Mỹ Lai 4.
Captain Medina briefed his people
that night, emotionally.
[Haeberle] Charlie Company was expected,
you know, to do some damage
when they hit the village.
[sweeping dramatic classical music plays]
[in Vietnamese] I was born
in the village of Sơn Mỹ.
I had just turned 11 years old.
[Mân] I was 13 years old.
I lived with six siblings
and an older sister
who had business far from home.
[Haeberle, in English] Lt. Calley
and 1st Platoon and part of 2nd Platoon
went on the first lift.
They were the ones who went directly
into the hamlet of Mỹ Lai.
[anxious droning music plays]
Jay Roberts, an Army reporter, and I
were on the second lift
of the choppers going in,
and the pilot came over the radio
and said we're entering in a "hot zone,"
which means
there's a lot of firing going on.
- [helicopter whirring]
- [indistinct radio chatter]
When the chopper put down,
all I could hear
was enormous amount of gunfire.
So we jumped out of the choppers,
and we tried, you know,
ducking down in a rice field.
But we realized
we weren't receiving any fire.
Everything being fired at
was within the village.
[ethereal music plays]
[Công, in Vietnamese] The US Armed Forces
bombarded the village
with their artillery.
First, they started killing people
walking on the road,
people going to school,
people going to the market.
After that,
they marched in a horizontal line
and advanced into the village.
As they entered each house,
they killed everyone in it.
They consolidated people
and began to kill everyone.
[Haeberle] I noticed a whole group
of people surrounded by a couple of GIs.
They looked more to me like civilians.
As I walked, maybe about five yards ahead,
I heard firing.
[guns fire rapidly]
I looked over my shoulder.
There was two soldiers there,
firing into 'em,
and one was Lt. Calley.
I couldn't understand.
You got somebody captured,
why would you fire into 'em?
You know, you should interrogate 'em.
People were trying to get up and run.
I mean, just killing everything
in their path along the way.
[Công, in Vietnamese]
They captured our relatives
and led them to Mrs. Ly's ditch.
The ditch was completely full
of blood and dead people.
They captured 102 people and led them
to the watchtower at the village gate,
and they killed them there
in Mr. Nhiều's rice paddy.
All 102 of them.
[Haeberle in English] Jay and I started
back toward the village.
And I happened to stumble over this woman
I previously witnessed
being shot in the head.
[somber music plays]
Jay and I looked at each other,
and I said,
"What the hell is going on here?"
"We have to find Medina.
This is all wrong."
Because the GIs
that have done the shooting,
they're like almost like zombies.
They're not saying anything,
they're just shooting
and shooting and shooting.
We spotted Medina
on the outskirts of Mỹ Lai.
He was there with his command group.
We tried talking to him,
but he was on the radio all the time.
There was no chance.
I remember Sergeant Minh,
interpreter, Vietnamese,
he was trying to talk to Medina too.
He was just standing there,
shaking his head,
"Why are they killing my people?
They're not soldiers."
Jay and I decided to go into the village
to see what was going on.
That was a nightmare.
Bodies all over the place.
[in Vietnamese] At eight o'clock in
the morning, soldiers came to my family.
They sat us in the front yard
and killed three cows in the barn.
They proceeded to burn
our house and our barn.
They shoved the six of us,
including my mother,
into an underground shelter.
In the moment, my mother sensed
the Americans' intent to kill.
So, she told us, her children,
to go down to the shelter first.
She would enter behind us
to shield us from bullets.
Once everyone was inside,
they threw in grenades to kill us all.
I fainted and blacked out.
I had my four-year-old niece,
my older brother's daughter.
The bullet entered here.
I still have the scar.
I picked her up, and her head
was twitching as the bullet went in here.
I just laid there dazed,
and the American soldiers
thought I was dead.
There were no more stray bullets.
Only after they passed me,
I was able to crawl
under the body of a woman.
Sorry.
[breath catches]
[Haeberle] I noticed a small child
that was walking out,
like he was looking
for his mother in the group.
And I was going to take
another photograph.
A GI came right along beside me.
As I was about ready to take the picture,
he shot this kid.
[gun fires]
I asked him why.
He just looked at me, turned around,
walked away. Never said a word.
Never said a word.
[Eckhardt] You always have
villains and heroes.
The villain is Lt. Calley.
The hero is Hugh Thompson.
[ethereal music plays]
[Haeberle] Thompson realized
what was going on,
and he tried to put a stop to this.
He put his little bubble chopper down
in between the American troops
and some people he was
going to try to rescue from a bunker.
Thompson came up and he says,
if he got fired on,
those people got fired on,
the helicopter crew would open up
and start shooting.
Americans against Americans.
[Eckhardt] He flies back to his base,
pounded on the table
and said, "Stop the killings."
And the orders came down
from above to stop.
That occurred about 10:00 or so.
And that's how it ended.
Uh, basically, within two hours,
uh, 500 people were killed.
[Công, in Vietnamese]
After the Americans withdrew,
relatives from another village came.
When I came to,
I saw the bodies
of my mother and siblings lifted out.
We staged the parts
in a basket in the yard.
We picked up flesh, arms, heads, legs.
No one was left intact.
I was very emotional
and at a loss for words.
I could only cry.
[Mân] At whatever time of day it was,
the Americans left.
When I met my brother,
he told me he heard our father died
in the ditch by the tree.
He was shot dead
where the gas station is right now.
When I arrived,
I carried my niece back home.
We buried her, and I notified others.
There are things that I have forgotten,
but my mind will never forget that event.
The utter destruction,
annihilation, and death was horrific.
[Haeberle] In basic training
and all your training,
you're trained to kill,
you're trained to follow orders.
But they don't teach you anything
about the people you're going to war with.
In fact, Westmoreland made a comment
that life doesn't mean anything
to these people.
Life's cheap to 'em.
Well, the Oriental doesn't put
the same high price on life
as does the Westerner.
That's bullshit.
They cherish life.
[in Vietnamese] To our knowledge,
no opposing force fought against them.
There wasn't a single semblance
of resistance.
[Haeberle in English]
It's basically poor intelligence.
The Việt Cộng were not at Mỹ Lai 4.
They were at Mỹ Lai 1.
[Mân in Vietnamese] To me, if you say
this village was Việt Cộng,
they weren't here.
If it was Việt Cộng, shoot the Việt Cộng.
Why would you shoot the villagers?
And the little babies in their cribs,
why were they shot?
The cows were not Việt Cộng,
but they were shot.
The pigs were not Việt Cộng.
Why'd they shoot the pigs?
[helicopters whirring]
[melancholic music plays]
[Haeberle] Jay had to go back
and write a story, and the story was,
"128 Việt Cộng killed,
three weapons captured."
- [interviewer] That's the story?
- That's the story.
If Jay put anything else in
other than "a great success,"
I don't think
that would have been published.
But it was It's all civilians.
I had black and white Leica
to record and document the operation.
All army photographs,
they were sent to our sergeant,
he looked 'em over.
Then they had to be sent
to, uh, an officer,
and he looked 'em over.
So I didn't want to record
any of the killings
that happened there that day
with the black and white.
They seen that, they could have
destroyed that automatically.
I was taking the killing photographs
with my own personal camera.
[interviewer] Did you
immediately understand
the significance of the images
you were taking?
[Haeberle] I don't think at the time, no.
I'm just trying to figure out, "Why is
this happening? Why is this happening?"
"Could I have done anything?" I doubt it.
I could have been fragged, you know?
Where they, uh, don't like somebody,
a grenade would go off
next to 'em and kill 'em.
If I photographed you
shooting somebody, bang, I'm gone.
Jay Roberts and I talked about this.
If we get questioned,
it's our responsibility
to turn the information over to 'em.
But nobody came
to talk to us about anything.
I knew I was about to rotate
out of there in a couple weeks.
And so when I got back home,
I got all the color chemicals,
then I processed it on-- on my own.
[Eckhardt] Mỹ Lai was not
appropriately known or a year.
[news anchor] The villagers' version
of the incident was given
by survivors yesterday.
The Army's investigation
apparently was touched off
by letters written by a former soldier
who was not, however,
an eyewitness to the incident.
I first learned of it
from a fellow I had served with.
Uh, on my return from Vietnam,
I wrote letters to, uh, the President,
Secretary of State,
Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs.
[stately somber music plays]
Well, it got to the Army,
and the Army took it seriously,
and they investigated.
I think I probably was the first one
who saw
this criminal investigation report.
It was just appalling.
Sixteen were eventually charged.
Lt. Calley was charged
with killing about 100 individuals.
[Bass] And as the rumors got out,
this young, scrappy journalist
by the name of Seymour Hersh
decides to investigate it.
So he tracks down Lt. Calley,
and he, uh, gets the story out of him
and writes it up.
[Eckhardt] And, uh, what really put
gasoline on the fire
was, uh, Haeberle's photographs.
[Haeberle] A warrant officer came
to talk to me
'cause he knew there was
a photographer on the mission,
and explained to me
what more happened there that day.
Gang rapes?
Raping a young girl as young as ten?
It was disgusting.
So I thought, "Well, it's time
to let the public know about this."
I took 'em to a friend I had
at the, uh, Cleveland Plain Dealer.
They published 'em.
And all hell broke loose.
[reporter] With us, also,
the man who took the pictures,
former Army combat photographer
Ronald Haeberle.
Was there an order
to destroy the entire village?
I did not hear this order,
just from general talk among the soldiers,
"We had to do it. It had to be destroyed."
Haeberle's photographs
are repulsively graphic.
And it, uh, churned America,
as it undoubtedly should have.
Captain Ernest Medina was charged
with the responsibility
for the entire thing,
because he didn't intervene to stop it.
I did not order a massacre,
and I did not see a massacre take place.
[Eckhardt] Captain Medina was acquitted,
and the only person convicted was Calley.
[Haeberle] And Calley,
he was sentenced to life.
But it was reduced down and down and down.
He spent some time in the brig, not much.
But mainly it was house arrest.
The facts are
only about 10% of the unit actually shot.
90% didn't because there was no other--
there was no reason to shoot,
so they didn't.
Calley was far, far from representative
of the larger American experience.
[solemn ethereal music plays]
That said, I think what is common
is the damage
that war does to participants
and the dehumanization that is
almost a necessary component of war,
that pushes away empathy
and pulls in aggressive violence
that is dehumanizing
for all who are involved.
Actually, we were surprised
that anybody cared,
'cause it was normal.
The stuff that was going on,
"Why are they picking Mỹ Lai?"
You know, go in a village
and shoot what moves,
and there's no consequence.
Mass executions, that was abnormal.
But I saw what were
just downright war crimes
quite often when I was in the infantry.
[solemn music intensifies]
[Camil] I thought that Lt. Calley
was a scapegoat.
I thought basically he was doing
what he was supposed to be doing.
He was doing what we all did.
The only difference between what
Lt. Calley did and what I did is,
me, I'd walk into a village,
and as we're walking,
I'm shooting whoever I see to shoot.
What he did
is they gathered all the people,
they lined them up next to a ditch,
and then they shot them down.
Now, in both instances,
the people are dead.
My feeling is we're all guilty, all of us.
I'm guilty of a cover-up.
Other people have more serious, uh, crimes
against them than that,
but the whole group,
and I'll take it right up to the top,
we're all guilty.
We'll include Westmoreland on that too.
America's hero of Vietnam,
General William Westmoreland,
was told that he's to return
to a desk job in Washington,
and the world speculated
that this was the first move
in a new assessment of our role
in a savage and unpopular war.
[Bass] After the Tết Offensive,
Westmoreland is removed.
He gets kicked upstairs
to become the Army Chief of Staff,
in other words,
a paper-pushing job in Washington, DC.
[droning morose music plays]
He's replaced by Creighton Abrams.
[Selverstone] And at this point,
Johnson himself is under siege.
[tape machine clicks]
I'm afraid the people
are going to interpret this
as representing a change in strategy
and tactics and everything else
I've got to find some alternatives to turn
some of this thing around a little bit.
If we don't, uh,
we're going to be in trouble,
and Vietnam is the only thing,
and it's just murdered me.
[gentle bittersweet music plays]
The country begins to wonder,
"Wait a second,
have you sold us a false bill of goods?"
People begin to doubt
Johnson's credibility
at a time when Johnson is heading
into a presidential election campaign.
Already the anti-war forces
have mobilized around a candidate,
Senator Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota.
But it's a real black eye for Johnson,
the sitting President
of the United States,
who's being challenged for the nomination
by a member of his own party.
And then Bobby Kennedy
announces his candidacy.
[Kennedy] I am announcing today
my candidacy
for the presidency of the United States.
I do not run for the presidency
merely to oppose any man,
but to propose new policies.
[Selverstone] So now Johnson has
to confront not only McCarthy,
but the entire Kennedy mystique.
[Baca] When I worked at the White House,
I was so grateful to President Johnson
for-- for responding to the needs
of Mexican-Americans
and other people of color.
The Voting Rights Act,
the Civil Rights Act,
the housing assistance,
you know, all of that.
But when he started pursuing
the war in Vietnam,
and more and more
of our young people were being killed,
I was getting very concerned.
So I had a-- a conflict,
which is probably why
it wasn't so difficult for me
to quit my job and go work for Bobby.
[crowd cheers]
[Canfora] Bobby Kennedy became
what all of us were hoping for in America.
He was youthful. He was fun.
And he didn't believe
that we should be in Vietnam.
And that was-- that was it for us.
And we wanted him
to succeed in his candidacy.
I have traveled,
and I have listened
to the young people of our nation
and felt their anger about the war
that they are sent to fight
and the-- about the world
that they are about to inherit.
[Baca] Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson,
they did not like each other.
It was really emotional.
[Kennedy] He's mean, bitter,
a vicious animal, in many ways.
He's got this other side of him
in his relationship with human beings,
which make it very difficult
unless you want to kiss his behind
all the time.
All of it makes Bobby look
like a great hero
and makes me look like a son of a bitch,
and 95% of it is completely fabricated.
So for Johnson, the only thing
worse than not being re-elected
was actually running against Bobby Kennedy
and losing the Democratic nomination.
[Selverstone] Johnson was just being
hammered by the public
because of the way
he was handling the war,
but also because of the way
that he was handling everything else
that was going on in the country.
[Baca] Johnson was
an incredibly smart politician.
And he knew there was danger
of him losing the primary.
And then Johnson announced
that he was going to give a speech.
[announcer] Now we switch to Washington
and the President of the United States.
With America's sons in the field far away
[gently suspenseful classical music plays]
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.
[music intensifies]
[Logevall] All across the country,
in America's living rooms,
people look at each other,
husbands and wives and others,
look at each other and say, "Did he
just say what I think he just said?"
Wow. [clears throats] Excuse me. Wow.
[chuckles]
How do you feel as you're watching this
when President Johnson said he was done?
I think it's one
of the great dramatic moments
in American political life.
I don't agree with Mr. Johnson
on so many things,
but tonight I think he realized, himself,
that this country is deeply divided.
He took the only course he could.
[Logevall] He had said to Lady Bird,
"I'm going to be crucified on Vietnam,
whichever way I go."
"Vietnam will be the end of me."
This, in a way, showed that he was right.
1968 is a year of-- of tremendous turmoil,
really from the beginning to the end,
but especially in the middle months,
and there are people who wonder
if the, sort of, edifice
can be kept intact.
[sad ethereal music plays]
[reporter] This is Gary Shepard
in New York with a late bulletin.
Civil rights leader
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
was shot in the head
and is now in critical condition
in a Memphis, Tennessee hospital.
The latest reports from Memphis say
Dr. King was hit by gunfire
while standing on the balcony
of his hotel room
just before seven o'clock
Eastern Standard Time.
I have some very sad news for all of you,
and I think, uh, sad news
for all of our fellow citizens,
and people who love peace
all over the world,
and that is that Martin Luther King
was shot and was killed
tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
[people wail and exclaim]
Can you tell me what effect
Martin Luther King's death has had on you?
Well, it shook me up pretty good.
- You ashamed it happened in America?
- No, uh
It shouldn't have
never happened anywheres.
I've, uh, lived overseas, and, uh
people aren't-- aren't real proud
of we Americans overseas,
and to have something like this happen
doesn't make us look any better
in the eyes of the other people.
I hate to hear about, uh, everybody
getting killed back in the world
because it's just like fighting
in two worlds.
We fight one war over here,
we get back, we have to fight another one.
[Ellis] Now, I'll never forget,
we had been on a mission,
and we came back to the base.
He had already been assassinated
f-four or five days when I got back.
And when I heard about it,
it was like my heart, like, just sunk.
He had been speaking
for us, uh, young, Black soldiers,
speaking on our behalf.
He had been killed not on the battlefield
in the jungles of Vietnam,
but on-- on the streets of America.
[Eldson J. McGhee]
You know, we was, uh, children,
so we wasn't involved
in the Civil Rights Movement,
and we wound up
in the military being drafted.
We didn't feel like
there was any justice at all
killing this man
that was a-- a nonviolent advocate
for basic civil rights.
[Ellis] After Dr. King's death,
that's when I think this whole thing
about communism went out of the window.
There's no communist worse
than what's happening back in our--
in-- in our country.
[pastor] Grant, O lover of peace,
that we will effectively negotiate
for a peaceful settlement in Vietnam.
To end the brutal slayings
and criminal atrocities committed
in the name of democracy.
What we need in the United States
is not violence and lawlessness,
but is love and wisdom
and compassion toward one another,
and a feeling of justice toward those
who still suffer within our country,
whether they be white
or whether they be Black.
- [distant singing]
- [crowd cheers]
[dialogue inaudible]
is Robert Kennedy ♪
[audio fades]
[Baca] After Lyndon Johnson
pulled out of the race,
it was a-- a close campaign.
[tense music plays]
Bobby could carry that primary,
but he had to win California.
That night, I was at the Ambassador Hotel.
[crowd] We want Bobby!
[Baca] But when he was declared
the winner,
you know, we knew we were
going to go all the way.
We knew that he was
going to be our president.
[Kennedy] What I think is quite clear
is that we can work together
in the last analysis.
We are a great country,
an unselfish country,
and a compassionate country,
and I intend to make that
my basis for running
over the period of the next few months.
[crowd cheers wildly]
My thanks to all of you.
And now it's on to Chicago,
and let's win there.
Thank you very much.
[news anchor] Kennedy left
the platform quickly.
He went through a side door
into a pantry next to the hotel kitchen.
[Baca] As soon as he finished his remarks,
I made my way to the second ballroom.
By the time I got downstairs,
it had happened.
- [man 1] No!
- [man 2] A doctor! A doctor!
[people scream and exclaim]
[Baca] I lost my hero.
My hero had been killed.
I can't talk about Bobby Kennedy.
[inhales sharply]
[tender music plays]
[sighs and sniffles]
I'll probably need a Kleenex, but
[tender music plays]
- [man 1] What happened? Do you know?
- [man 2] Somebody said he's been shot.
[Canfora] The reality
of what that war represented
and what conversations about the war
resulted in began to hit us.
Imagine being 18 years old, as I was,
and having witnessed, at the age of 13,
the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy.
Not long after,
the assassination of Martin Luther King,
and then Bobby Kennedy.
It was a tough pill to swallow
that anybody who was effective
at speaking out against war,
anyone who was effective
at change, was killed.
Robert Kennedy had fueled
the hopes of a great many people,
maybe especially young people.
And there are deep divisions
in the Democratic Party,
and these are
for everybody to see in Chicago.
[Baca] I was convinced to go to Chicago.
You know, I didn't have a job
after Bobby's death.
You know, it was like a powder keg.
It really was.
[Rather] You had
two almost literal battlefields.
One was the convention center itself,
where they were trying
to control reporters, including myself.
- Take your hands off me.
- [Cronkite] Dan Rather?
Unless you intend to arrest me,
don't, uh-- don't push me, please.
I know, but don't push me. Take your hands
off me unless you plan to arrest me.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute!
[spacey music plays]
Walter, as you can see
[Cronkite] I don't know what's going on,
but this
These are security people,
apparently, around Dan.
- We tried to talk to the man.
- He's obviously getting roughed up.
We got bodily pushed out of the way.
This is the kind of thing
that's been going on outside the hall.
This is the first time
we've had it happen inside the hall.
[Rather] On the outside
of the convention hall,
there was a virtual civil war going on
between the Chicago police
and the protesters who had come,
and the police responded brutally.
[reporter] At nightfall,
hundreds of helmeted police
closed in on Lincoln Park
as the demonstrators surged
through the streets,
protesting the park curfew.
Police used their nightsticks,
tear gas, and chemical mace freely.
[Baca] One night,
I joined in on this big march.
We were marching to headquarters,
and then later I saw the police rushing
the crowd and swinging their batons.
There had been no warning,
and I started to cry
'cause I thought,
"Oh, my God, I was just in that crowd."
[crowd chants]
The whole world is watching!
The whole world is watching!
[Rather] The saying at the time was,
"The whole world is watching,"
and indeed, the whole world was watching.
[Canfora] We saw the brutality
in graphic images on television
of the Chicago police
beating anti-war protesters.
It was the moment
that we knew this was dangerous work,
that the silent, peaceful anti-war marches
and protests were ineffective.
But we also saw
that more militant actions
and the growing strength
of the movement in numbers
was going to be met
with excessive police force.
[people shouting]
[Baca] That made me even more committed
to opposing the Vietnam War.
But it looks as if the forces
that wish to continue that war
are going to win the election
and be put in power.
[Canfora] I didn't understand at the time
that there would be
war policies far more dangerous
than the policies
we were seeing out of Lyndon Johnson.
[Nixon] 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.
[bold tense music plays]
[Ken Hughes] Nixon promised
the American voters one thing,
that he was putting peace first.
But behind the scene,
he was throwing a monkey wrench
into the prospects of peace
in order to win the 1968 election.
It's important for us all to learn
these terrible lessons of history
to protect ourselves
from the most unscrupulous politicians.
[announcer] Richard M. Nixon.
[Hughes] The ones who would
put their careers
over the lives of American soldiers.
[crowd cheering]
America's in trouble today
not because her people have failed,
but because her leaders have failed.
And what America needs are leaders
to match the greatness of her people.
[cheering]
Tonight, I, again, proudly accept
that nomination
for President of the United States.
[people cheer wildly]
[spacey forlorn music plays]