Turning Point: The Vietnam War (2025) s01e04 Episode Script
Why Are We Even Here?
1
[gloomy music playing]
[Chic Canfora] Having grown up
with a mother and father
who both served in World War II,
for me,
war was like the John Wayne movies.
We're gonna hold this town
till the link-up does come,
whenever it is.
Today, tomorrow, till hell freezes over.
[crowd cheering]
[Canfora] It was your duty,
and it was a privilege,
and we were always fighting
on the side of right.
America was always the good guys.
But the harsh reality
of what war really was
was very different from what I'd seen
in my mother's Army scrapbooks,
where my mother was the football queen
at the Army-Navy game.
War is a very scary thing,
especially as we faced
high school graduation.
Gee, I wish ♪
[Canfora] I could name
one name after another
of my brother's friends
who went off to fight.
And their letters to my brother
and to me were very, very different.
To me, the letters always had
the number of days left.
They were counting the days
before they would come home.
For my brother, they were describing
the realities of what they were doing.
Horrific realities.
And the reality
of what that war represented,
and what conversations
about the war resulted in,
began to hit us.
Things were just not right in America.
Everything that I admired
about our country,
everything that I associated
with the American dream,
everything I associated with America,
right or wrong, it was just disappearing.
And it made it a lot easier
to take a stand against my own government.
At that point, you had to make a choice.
Are you willing
to put your life on the line?
And for many of us, it was.
It was worth the risk.
[ominous music playing]
[air raid siren wails]
[soldiers chanting indistinctly]
[jet engine droning]
[missiles firing]
[explosions rumbling]
[jet engine droning]
[Viet Thanh Nguyen]
The United States did an incredible job
keeping track of the amount of bombs
it dropped on Vietnam.
That's how we know
the United States dropped more bombs
on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
than it did
in all of World War II on Europe.
[explosions rumbling]
[Lien-Hang T. Nguyen] You have around
seven million tons of bombs dropped
over the countries of Indochina.
This included anywhere
from 500,000 to 600,000 tons of bombs
dropped over Cambodia,
two million over Laos,
one million over North Vietnam,
and over four million dropped
over South Vietnam.
I shall not seek, and I will not accept,
the nomination of my party
for another term as your president.
[Ken Hughes]
After Lyndon Johnson announces
that he's not gonna seek another term,
he announces that he is going
to stop bombing North Vietnam
if the North Vietnamese will agree
to prompt, productive peace talks.
In May,
the negotiating team meets in Paris.
And in October,
Johnson finally gets the North Vietnamese
to accept his conditions.
[reporter] On the afternoon of October 27,
word came from Paris
that Hanoi would accept
the terms for a bombing halt.
[Hughes] So Johnson agrees
to halt the bombing.
[Johnson] Good evening,
my fellow Americans.
I have now ordered
that all air, naval,
and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam
cease as of 8:00 a.m.,
Washington time, Friday morning.
[C. Jack Ellis] Those of us
who served in Vietnam,
we obviously were hopeful.
[helicopter whirring]
[Ellis] Every day,
young men getting killed,
young men getting wounded.
We just want to get out of here now.
[voice speaks indistinctly on radio]
- [birds trill]
- [insects chirp]
[Ellis] We were fighting not for victory,
we were fighting to go home.
[crowd] Peace!
- [man] When do we want it?
- [crowd] Now!
- [man] What do we want?
- Peace!
- When do we want it?
- Now!
[Hughes] Americans get excited
about there being
a bombing halt and peace talks.
[chanting] now! Peace now! Peace now!
Peace now! Peace now! Peace
[Hughes] This is
shortly before the 1968 election.
[marching band playing patriotic music]
The President of the United States
and his ambassadors
are making a determined
major, massive effort
to find an honorable peace in Paris.
[uneasy music playing]
[Hughes] At this point,
the major candidates
are Hubert Humphrey,
Johnson's vice president,
as the Democratic nominee,
and Richard Nixon for the Republicans.
[Dan Rather] Richard Nixon had run
for president in 1960
and been defeated
by President John Kennedy.
But he had slowly and meticulously
fought his way back
into prominence in the Republican Party.
It's a heartland state.
Uh, whoever wins Indiana has a good chance
to win the rest of the heartland
and therefore the country.
[Rather] But the biggest thing
that Nixon had to sell,
and he sold it very well,
was that he would end the war.
[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.
[rapid gunfire]
[Nixon] I pledge to you, we shall have
an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.
But he really is not forthcoming
with-- with any, um, strategy
for ending the war
throughout the course of the '68 campaign.
If a candidate for president
who might be president says
that, "If negotiations fail,
I will do this or that,"
the people on the other side
of the negotiating table
will say, "Well, we'll wait for him,"
rather than negotiate
with President Johnson.
But peace is too important
for politics as usual.
So I say, let's let
the President of the United States
[crowd applauding loudly]
[Hughes] At the start of October,
Nixon was 15 points
ahead of Hubert Humphrey.
He was winning a landslide.
But the more news came out of Paris
that these peace talks
were going to start,
the more people's hopes got up
for the prospect
of getting some sort of settlement
of the Vietnam War.
And then Johnson learns
that Richard Nixon
might be secretly trying
to torpedo the bombing halt negotiations.
- [people chattering]
- [man speaks indistinctly]
Right!
[tape machine clicks]
We have found that our, uh, friend,
the, uh, Republican nominee,
our California friend,
has been playing on this outskirts
with our enemies and our friends, both,
our allies and the others.
One of his associates said
to a businessman
that we're going to say to Hanoi,
"I can make a better deal than he has
because, uh, I'm fresh and new,
and I don't have to demand
as much as he does
in the light of past positions."
[helicopter whirring]
[soothing hypnotic music plays]
[Hughes] Johnson is stunned.
He thinks that Nixon was trying
to sabotage the peace talks.
He starts checking
his sources of intelligence.
The CIA has a bug in the office
of the President of South Vietnam,
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu.
And Johnson orders the FBI
to put surveillance
on the South Vietnamese embassy
to tell him the names
of everybody who enters and exits
and to tail a lady named Anna Chennault,
who is a unique figure
in Republican politics at that time.
She was the widow
of a very famous World War II aviator
who knew President Thiệu.
[Chennault] The people are
very much concerned.
And the number one question
they ask is this,
"Who is going to win this war?"
[crowd cheering]
[Hughes] She was one
of a few Asian-American delegates
to the Republican convention that year.
And she was Richard Nixon's
top female fundraiser.
Mrs. Chennault is contacting, uh,
their ambassador from time to time.
Seems to be kind of the go-between.
[Hughes] Chennault is telling
the South Vietnamese government
to stay away from these peace talks,
that Nixon can give them a better deal
once he's elected president.
[Johnson] The net of it was
that, uh, if they just, uh, hold out
a little bit longer,
that, uh, he is a lot more sympathetic,
and he can kinda--
they can do better business with him
than they can
with their present president.
I rather doubt Nixon has done any of this.
But there's no question
but what folks for him are doing it.
[somber music plays]
Mrs. Chennault never saw President Thiệu.
Nor did we take it seriously.
Because, hey, we go
through the US Embassy, okay?
That's the official conduit.
The Vietnamese knew their future
was being decided in Washington, DC.
Thiệu always thought that the Americans
are going to screw him somehow,
that they would, you know,
they would sell him out to Hanoi.
[Nhã] And frankly, the reason
the South Vietnamese did not send
a delegation to the Paris talks
at that time was this.
We said to the US,
"What's the strategy between allies?"
"We cannot go there
and you guys just take over,
thinking that, 'This is what is the best
for South Vietnamese.'"
"We need to be aligned."
We never got a good answer.
[Hughes] And on the Saturday
before the election,
November 2nd,
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu announces
that he will not send a delegation
to the Paris peace talks.
[music intensifies]
Up until that point,
Nixon's lead over Humphrey
has been narrowing.
By the time
of the weekend before the election,
Humphrey and Nixon
were only two points apart.
[speaking Vietnamese]
[Hughes] But after Nguyễn Văn Thiệu's
public announcement
that he was boycotting the peace talks,
all of Hubert Humphrey's momentum stalled.
[tense music playing]
[announcer] Here now at CBS News
Election Headquarters is Walter Cronkite.
[Cronkite] What emerges is
that Richard Milhous Nixon,
in a stunning political comeback
almost denied him in the closing days,
perhaps even the closing hours
of the campaign,
has been elected
the 37th President of the United States.
And that's as close
as any election in our history.
[crowd cheers]
[Hughes] Nixon wins
the second-closest election
of that century so far,
and changes changes American history.
Having lost a close one eight years ago,
and having won a close one this year,
I can say this,
winning's a lot more fun.
[crowd laughing and applauding]
[tense percussive music playing]
Ladies and gentlemen
Richard Nixon said that he had a plan
to end the war honorably.
But as soon as he got into office,
he and those around him,
including Dr. Henry Kissinger,
were finding ways to escalate the war
with the belief that they could "win" it.
Henry Kissinger,
who comes in as national security advisor
for Richard Nixon,
is a very important figure
in the latter stage of America's war.
[Hughes] Kissinger is a Harvard PhD
and a Harvard professor
and a renowned foreign policy thinker.
You think American strategy
should be reevaluated
to restore war
as a usable instrument of policy.
American strategy has to face the fact
that it may be confronted with war,
and that if Soviet aggression
confronts us with war
and we are unwilling to resist,
it will mean the end of our freedom.
Nixon and Kissinger were incurably covert.
Both were inveterate manipulators.
Nixon used Kissinger to provide
intellectual heft to his worst impulses.
And Kissinger used Nixon
to accrue unimaginable power.
We wish you well personally.
More than that,
the people of the United States
wish your people well.
We look forward to the day
when they can live in peace together.
Thank you. Thank you, Richard Nixon.
[marching band plays stately music]
[Veith] After Nixon comes into power,
he knows at some point
he's going to have to begin
withdrawing American troops.
He wants to manage that process
in a way that just doesn't leave
South Vietnam hanging.
[troops singing in Vietnamese]
[Nhã] We know, eventually,
that the US will pull out troops.
We realize that it is our duty
to shoulder the responsibility
to fight the war.
But we need help.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Hughes] Nixon asks
all of the relevant agencies
how long it will take to train
and equip the South Vietnamese Army
so it can defend South Vietnam
without American combat troops.
The State Department, the Pentagon,
the CIA, the US Embassy,
they all agree,
South Vietnam will never
be able to stand up to the Việt Cộng
and the North Vietnamese Army
without American combat troops
and American military support.
So Nixon decides
to deceive the American people.
He says that his Vietnamization program
will train and equip
the South Vietnamese Army
to stand on its own,
and he will only keep
American troops in South Vietnam
long enough to make South Vietnam
capable of standing on its own.
[Nixon] In the previous administration,
we Americanized the war in Vietnam.
In this administration,
we are Vietnamizing the search for peace.
[brooding, pulsing music plays]
The policy of the previous administration
not only resulted in our assuming
the primary responsibility
for fighting the war,
but even more significant,
did not adequately stress the goal
of strengthening the South Vietnamese
so that they could defend themselves
when we left.
Now, this is basically fraud.
Nixon has reason to think
that Vietnamization
is never going to work.
[Lien-Hang] But he was able
to announce troop withdrawal
so that it would look
like American boys would come home
and no longer fight this war.
[music intensifies]
The Americans proclaim it
as "the Vietnamization."
It's a catchy phrase
to explain everything,
but in my view, it's pretty offensive
to the South Vietnamese.
[Col. Hoa, in Vietnamese]
The US media's description
of the "Vietnamization" of the war
was not accurate.
The war started with us,
and we gradually scaled up
and matured through and in battles
that built up a force,
relying more on ourselves.
[Tuong Vu, in English]
President Thiệu knew the benefits
of having American troops
fighting on the ground,
but he also knew the disadvantages.
He knew the problem of legitimacy
in the eyes of the world
and in the eyes of their own people.
They were seen now
as the Communists depicted them,
as puppets of the Americans.
[Nhã] Because American go in there,
just like in the cowboy movie,
"Here is the cavalry. They are--
We're going to do the job for you."
"Hey, we will just bomb
the living daylight out of it,
and we're done."
But they don't understand
the country, the attitude,
even the disposition of enemy forces.
The Vietnamese generals understood that,
but they find that American
really didn't want to listen.
Some of the young military leaders
felt like now we are independent,
now we can prove ourselves.
We will no longer be
in the shadow of the Americans.
- [forlorn music playing]
- [heavy gunfire in distance]
[man 1] The Việt Cộng,
they bombed my family.
I was angry, and I vowed to fight
those people who harmed my family.
I was trained
to become a helicopter pilot.
My mission was to insert
and extract the Special Forces.
It was a hazardous mission.
We got shot.
We caught the ground fire every day.
So they named us the Kingbees
because we were not scared of anything.
But many people did not know the truth
because they never followed
our troops into the battlefield.
[guns firing heavily]
[explosion]
[Bửu] They said, "The South Vietnam Army,
they are so coward."
"They didn't want to fight themselves."
But the main forces,
they-- they fought very fiercely.
[Armitage] I volunteered as an advisor
to a combat unit of Vietnamese
because I bought into the notion
of helping those
who wanted to help themselves.
In my view,
they were worthy of air support,
artillery support, logistic support.
They just didn't need our soldiers.
There were plenty of young Vietnamese
who could do it just as well as we could.
[gun fires rapidly]
They achieved a lot of victories
in battles after battles
against the Vietnamese Communists
in the North.
They were the true future of the country.
They were the future.
But I see the danger lurking ahead.
[Vu] Many people were concerned
about the possibility
of American discontinuation
of assistance to South Vietnam
because the Communists
were receiving assistance
from the Soviet Union,
China, and the Soviet Bloc.
So if the Americans left,
South Vietnam would be left alone
to fight the whole Soviet Bloc.
They needed weapons
so that they could have a balance
with the Communists in the North.
But we realized
the pressure in the US politics.
[Nho] We are in serious danger
of being alone.
[beating military cadence]
- [doleful rock music playing]
- [crowd shouting angrily]
[crowd chants] US out of Vietnam,
for they're being murdered!
US out of Vietnam,
for they're being murdered!
[people shout indistinctly]
This was an extremely tense and toxic time
in terms of American public opinion.
When Nixon came in,
there were 550,000 troops,
increasing casualties,
and tremendous demonstrations in the war,
which put great pressure on Nixon.
[crowd shouting]
[reporter] Thousands gathered in Chicago,
New York, Boston, San Francisco,
Ann Arbor, New Haven,
and many other cities.
[Weiner] There were thousands,
then there were tens of thousands,
and then there were hundreds of thousands
of people marching against the war.
I was there. I was 13 years old.
I went with my dad.
[Dick Gregory] For you young folks
have come to the nation's capital today,
using the greatest weapon ever been used
in the history of the world,
a pure moral dedication
[reporter] Entertainment, politics,
and rhetoric proceeded nonstop.
At the time, music was really powerful.
[man] There were a lot of musicians
who went to anti-war rallies.
John Lennon wrote a song with his wife,
Yoko Ono, called "Give Peace a Chance,"
which he sang
at an anti-war demonstration.
[Lennon] Everybody now! Come on!
All we are saying ♪
Is give peace a chance ♪
[Kazin] The fact that a member
of the most popular singing group
in the world at the time, The Beatles,
was siding with the anti-war movement
seemed to give us, kind of, legitimacy
as anti-war people,
which we thought was kind of impossible.
Country Joe and the Fish wrote
a very popular song, "Fixin'-to-Die Rag."
What are we fightin' for? ♪
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn ♪
The next stop is Vietnam ♪
[Kazin] And he sang that song
at the Woodstock Festival
in the fall of 1969,
with 200,000 people present at the time.
Glimpses of ♪
[Kazin] We were listening to protest songs
by people
like Crosby, Stills and Nash & Young.
I'm from England, of course.
I didn't come to America
until December of 1968.
A lot of people,
particularly the young people
in the United States,
were very much against the Vietnam War.
It was just a mess, and we all knew it.
Music brings peace to people,
it enrages people,
it makes them love more.
We have to help people wake up
to what's really happening.
That's what protest is about.
["Kick Out the Jams" by MC5 plays]
I, I, I, I, I'm gonna ♪
I'm gonna kick 'em out ♪
Yeah! ♪
[Canfora] At the same time,
anti-war protesters had grown weary
of petitioning and marching
and waving the peace signs.
[Kazin] The war kept going on,
so there was a sense
of disbelief, frustration.
There's nothing we can do
peacefully anymore, it seemed,
to stop the war.
We're gonna have to escalate our tactics.
"We have to bring the war home."
That's one of the Weatherman slogans.
Right on!
[Canfora] The Weathermen were
inspired by the words
of the Bob Dylan song that says,
"You don't have to be a weatherman
to know which way the wind is blowing."
And they felt
they had to go to war at home.
- [people screaming]
- [whistles blowing]
[reporter]
Shortly after yesterday's explosion,
a letter was received
by the Associated Press in New York
taking credit for the bombing
and signed "Weatherman."
[Kazin] Weatherman was a group
of people who said,
"We have to emulate
the Black Panther Party."
They were a group
that were in favor of Black nationalism,
building their own institutions to get
freedom for Black people in America,
who supported the Việt Cộng,
the North Vietnamese,
who took up arms themselves.
They see our struggle as being,
uh, the beacon light for peace
within the confines of fascistic America.
And on the other hand,
we see their struggle
as being the guiding light for peace
on an international level
to put an end to, uh, US imperialism.
[Kazin] I was not gonna be
a soldier for the United States,
but I was willing to be
a soldier for the revolution, if you will.
We decided we have to think
about arming ourselves
to try to stop the United States
from being able to continue
the war in Vietnam at home.
[explosion]
Blow up ROTC buildings,
maybe blow up draft boards, for example.
[reporter] 12:56 a.m., the explosion
that ripped through a restroom
on the third floor
of the State Department.
No one was hurt by the blast.
Police who were summoned to the scene
described the bomb as being a big one.
Some people were talking
about getting guns
and fighting the police
in the streets with guns.
[woman on tape] Total resistance
to mind-controlling maniacs,
a culture of high-energy sisters
getting it on,
of hippie acid smiles and communes
and freedom to be
the farthest-out people we can be.
[Kazin] Weatherman began
in the summer of 1969.
Just nine months later,
they went underground
because there was a bomb
that some Weather-people were making
in a townhouse
in Greenwich Village in New York,
which blew up in their faces
and killed a couple of them.
[siren wailing]
I only stayed in Weatherman
for six weeks, to be honest,
because I continued
to support their politics,
but I was afraid of dying.
[sparse, tense music plays]
At this point, the polls showed
that even though most people
were against the war,
even more people were
against the anti-war protesters.
Commies run like rats!
Go ahead, commies! Run!
Did you ever do a day's work in your life?
I don't think so. You didn't have to!
If you woulda been working,
you wouldn't have had time
to grow that there hair on top of you.
[chanting] Hồ, Hồ, Hồ Chí Minh!
[Hughes] Many objected to the disorder
[crowd chants] Bring them home now!
[Hughes] the vandalism,
and some criminal civil disobedience.
[Nixon] If he cancels his trip
because of this
[Hughes] Nixon just knew
that if he was attacking
the anti-war protesters,
he would be appealing
to a majority of Americans.
[Weiner] Lyndon Johnson,
and Richard Nixon after him,
were both convinced
that the anti-war movement in this country
were directed and financed
by Moscow and Beijing.
First Johnson, and then Nixon, directed
the American intelligence community
to find the Communist conspiracy
that drove the anti-war movement.
They were bugging phones,
spying on Americans,
warrantless wiretapping,
black bag jobs, burglaries,
break-ins, buggings,
some of it directed
by J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI.
[Kazin] FBI agents came
to my dorm room in college
and questioned me
about my anti-war activities.
This is what an FBI file looks like.
This was something released to me in 1978
under the Freedom of Information Act.
What it shows is
there were undercover agents
who were infiltrating
the anti-war movement,
trying to find out
what we were doing in advance.
There were people in our meetings,
even meetings
as small as nine or ten people,
who were FBI agents.
[Weiner] This went on for years
under LBJ and Nixon.
Did they find
the international Communist conspiracy
that was driving the anti-war movement?
Nope.
Because it didn't exist.
They were willing
to violate the Constitution
and to violate the civil rights
of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
[Thomas Bass] We may now
take it for granted
that mass surveillance
of our everyday activities
is standard operating procedure.
[whirring]
The right to privacy, the rule of law
Our individual acts
used to be considered private affairs.
That all began to corrode
during the Vietnam War.
[John Negroponte] The war was unpopular.
The drain on the budget was unpopular.
But I think,
foremost, the draft was unpopular.
And Nixon understood that.
[ominous music playing]
[Col. Gregory A. Daddis]
By 1969, Nixon has decided
to change the draft system to a lottery,
to tamp down on concerns
that the process is inequal.
And all of a sudden,
the conscription system
becomes a roll of the dice
based on your birthdate.
April 24th.
A bunch of little plastic balls
would be in a canister.
And the first number that came up,
whatever the birthdate was,
you were among the first to be called
to your draft board, to be drafted.
[announcer 1] 31st, February 16th,
March 8th, February 5th,
January 4th, February 10th.
March 30th, April 10th, April 9th.
[Canfora] I was
with my brother and his friends.
Watching all of their numbers called
was just an eerie sort of thing.
When you actually saw
this visual representation of,
"Guess who's next?"
[announcer 1] December 30th.
[announcer 2] December 30, 003.
[Canfora] More people were burning
their draft cards.
And more people were leaving the country.
And more people were willing to go to jail
for defying an order to serve.
Hallelujah ♪
His truth is marching on ♪
[tense music playing]
[Ellis] We began to get
the draftees and replacements.
Now these young men began to protest.
It was a different type of soldier.
Not all, but a lot of them
just couldn't wait to get out,
and every day was agitated
for being there.
[Osnos] When I arrived in Vietnam in 1970,
the drawdown of troops probably meant
that there were around
a couple hundred thousand left.
It wasn't war in the sense
that you could go be a great hero.
It was a slog.
[melancholic music playing]
And so it was a troubled time
in the morale of the American GI.
[Veith] It was obvious
to even the lowest soldier
that we're getting out.
You know, we're leaving.
"Why should I be the last guy killed
on the way out the door?"
[Scott Shimabukuro] You started wondering,
"Damn, well, why are we even here?"
You develop a whole different attitude
once you've been in-country for a while.
You know, when you hear
about somebody getting wounded or killed,
the guys would say,
"Well, hey, better him than me."
And I thought, "Damn,
that's-- that's pretty cold-hearted."
As cold-hearted as it sounds,
you start to understand
and get that mentality,
that "Hey, I'll do whatever it takes
to get my ass out of here in one piece."
[helicopter blades whirring]
The discipline,
the blind following of orders,
everything had changed.
It's the Woodstock generation
coming to Vietnam.
Killing for peace just doesn't make sense.
[Kay] One day, I heard a couple of members
of the squad that we were with
talking to each other,
and I just started rolling on it.
- [soldier 1] Killer, I see
- [soldier 2 chuckles]
[soldier 1] First time we'll ever be
walkin' down a road.
I'm not gonna walk down there.
[soldier 2] I was talking to 'em, we're
gonna do it. Gonna walk down the trail.
My whole squad ain't walkin'
down that trail.
- No!
- That's it.
[reporter] The men were taught
by Captain Jackson,
their former commander,
never to move down a trail,
much less a road.
[Kay] They weren't going to obey
the new captain's orders,
which was to walk down a road.
And they just said,
"No, we're not gonna do it."
[soldier 3] We gonna move
out on the road, period.
Either we gonna move out
and they gonna get left behind,
or I'm gonna take point
and they can follow me if they want to.
Now, it's that simple.
Now, we got a job to do, we gonna do it.
It's not half as dangerous as the crap
we've done out here in the boonies,
walking through 'em.
Least we can see what we're doing.
[soldier 4] We don't use trails. We--
We try to do things, you know, with logic.
And, uh, if you want to find gooks,
there's no problem finding, uh, the enemy.
You can just walk right down a trail,
and you-- you'll eventually find him,
but it'll be on his terms.
We're just gonna refuse to do it.
'Cause it's, uh You may be in jail,
but you won't be dead. [chuckles]
Some called it the war
between the lifers and the grunts,
usually verbal, but sometimes violent,
involving the older men
making careers of military work
and the young draftees committed
to a year of military service in Vietnam.
[Shimabukuro] The guys you served with,
it's like a family,
and you're looking out for that family.
[helicopter whirring]
So anybody who's going
to come from the outside
and jeopardize the safety of your family,
I don't care if it's a first sergeant,
somebody's going to have to teach you
a lesson about that.
And if it takes a fragging to do it,
well, it's gonna take
what it's gonna take.
[solemn music playing]
Fragging is essentially assaulting
your officer one way or another.
Killing them, basically.
Or certainly very badly injuring them.
[reporter] "Grenade, hand, fragmentation,
M26A1," it says.
The GIs call it simply "the frag."
The core of explosives sends thousands
of tiny metal fragments in all directions.
It's very effective against the enemy.
But in recent months, all too often,
GIs have been using them
against their superior officers.
[grenade explodes]
There is even, uh, a pool of money
that gets collected too.
So people are, like, putting up
50 bucks, 30 bucks,
and you get enough people,
that's enough incentive
for somebody to pull the pin.
It happened a couple times
while I was there.
There was a, uh, high-ranking enlisted,
I think he's a top sergeant,
somebody put a Claymore mine
underneath his tent,
and three guys split the money.
No one knows which one did it,
but he was no longer in existence
after that night.
You could kind of call it justice.
So many people were getting killed
because of these guys.
I just don't believe in
anything we're doing here.
I don't like anything that's going on.
And the lifers are shoving
all this shit at me, and
and, uh, I don't like to play their games.
[Col. Daddis] Most estimates agree
that there are over 90 incidents
of fragging in the US Marine Corps.
There are 600 to 800 incidents
in the US Army, if not more.
[reporter] What about drugs in the field?
Drugs in the field?
[exclaims nervously]
Uh, gee, can I say this
without getting busted or anything?
Orangutan! Get your hair cut!
[Col. Daddis] Many American servicemen
were using drugs
as a form of self-medication,
as a way to-- to get through this.
[Dennis Clark Brazil] I started smoking
marijuana literally every day, all day
to help mask and hide
the pain and the fear.
- Paul, let me borrow that bowl from you.
- [Paul laughs]
- [soldiers laugh]
- Cool.
I hope this-- This is probably all CIDs
and we're getting busted,
but I don't care.
Shotgun.
[soldiers laugh]
[soldier] That's pretty good
schwag, though.
[spacey ethereal music plays]
[Kay] Opium was, um
was legal in Laos or Cambodia
and accepted in Vietnam.
With opium, it kills all pain,
psychological and physical,
and you're just in this state
of semi-dreaming.
So a lot of us, myself included,
got very serious opium addiction.
And then heroin became popular,
and in Vietnam, for five dollars,
you could buy, like,
a jam jar full of 99% pure heroin.
[helicopter blades whirring]
[Eldson J. McGhee] I had never had
any experience with drugs
before the military.
No pot, no nothing. I didn't even smoke.
When I was wounded,
they gave me the morphine, right?
And when they stopped the morphine,
I was introduced to heroin,
and it completely ruined my life.
[musical arrangement turns anxious]
[reporter] The GIs are plagued
by low morale,
drug abuse, and drunkenness.
A Congressional investigation reveals
10 to 15% of all US troops
in Vietnam are using heroin.
Other reports show
as many as 50% are using marijuana.
This phenomenon is worrying
to senior military commanders.
Drug testing becomes, uh,
part and parcel of the Army experience.
And it's still in existence today.
In Vietnam, they're bringing in
medical officers and psychologists
to try and get a sense
of-- of what the problem is.
[Meshad] I was there all of '70
to evaluate the mental health
of soldiers in the field.
There were about 15 mental health people,
psychiatrists, social workers, in-country
for all these combat vets.
There was just so much chaos.
So much of the hospital,
when I went flying around
to different units,
was heroin overdose, speed, hashish.
The chances of you coming home
in one piece are getting less and less.
So what can I do?
[tense music playing]
[Shimabukuro]
And then you started wondering,
"What's going on
with the Paris peace talks?"
[siren blaring]
To me, and some
of the other guys I was with,
well, we didn't understand.
"Well, if they're having peace talks,
why are we still fighting?"
"Shouldn't there be a ceasefire
while they're doing this?"
[reporters speak indistinctly]
[inaudible]
[Lien-Hang] So the Paris negotiations
to end the Vietnam War had begun,
but it became just another
theater of battle in the Vietnam War.
[Veith] There was a lot of discussion
about, "How are we gonna hold the talks?"
"Who's going to be there?
What're we gonna talk about?"
And so the Communists really began
to string the talks out.
[Cronkite] Already official peace talks
were underway in Paris,
but only after a ten-week dispute
about the shape of the table,
who would sit where at the table.
The answer was to make it round.
Everyone was equal,
the United States, South Vietnam,
North Vietnam, and the Việt Cộng.
[Shimabukuro] They spent months arguing
where people were going to sit
at this table.
And our attitude was, "That's bullshit."
"I'll go over there, I'll make you sit
wherever the fuck I want you to sit."
"We're dying over here, and you're arguing
where you're gonna sit?"
[Veith] Nixon recognizes
that the peace talks
are largely dead in the water.
He understood that the attention
afforded to the four-party public talks
was too great,
that nothing could actually be decided
while all four sides are posturing,
that there had to be
secret bilateral talks in conjunction.
[groovy brooding music plays]
And these secret talks would only be
between the United States
and North Vietnam,
cutting out
South Vietnamese parties entirely.
[Nhã] We were not told.
Suddenly, you went on-- on your own,
and, you know, "negotiated"
what you Americans think
is best for South Vietnam.
It's a betrayal between allies.
[Lien-Hang] Richard Nixon and Lê Duẩn
could only send men they trust
to negotiate the end
of American military intervention.
Kissinger is Nixon's man.
Lê Duẩn sends Lê Đức Thọ.
He's Lê Duẩn's right-hand man,
and had been since the 1950s.
It took a miracle
to keep these things secret.
It'd just be Kissinger,
myself, one or two others.
[Lien-Hang] And from what we know
of these talks,
they were highly contentious,
neither of them
really wanting to compromise.
[Thành, in Vietnamese]
My father only said,
"You have only one mission."
"Just one mission."
"At the end of negotiations,
the US must withdraw its troops,
and Northern soldiers stay."
[Lord] The North Vietnamese
always insisted
not only did we have
to get out unilaterally,
we had to overthrow the Saigon government
and put in a coalition government
at the same time.
We were not prepared to do that.
[intriguing propulsive rock music playing]
We wanted an agreement
that would at least give
the Saigon government
a chance to survive in the future.
And we certainly weren't going to say
to the world, as an ally,
that not only
will we withdraw unilaterally,
but we'll overthrow our friends
as we exit the scene. [chuckles]
The North Vietnamese were sitting there
saying that we were withdrawing
these troops gradually.
It was happening anyway,
so why should they negotiate?
Why not just wait us out?
[Negroponte] But Kissinger had this theory
that every now and then
you have to convince people
you're gonna go apeshit.
- [missiles whirring]
- [explosion]
You know, you're a superpower,
you've got all this equipment,
and you-- you might annoy us enough
that we respond
in an absolutely extreme way.
The "madman" theory. He believed in it.
[chuckles] And I guess
Nixon believed in it too.
[wistful music playing]
One of the first things that Nixon does
is to start the bombing of Cambodia.
[Lien-Hang] While Cambodia,
as well as Laos,
had been drawn into the Vietnamese War
from the very start in the late 1950s,
this is really the start
of the deadliest chapter
in terms of Cambodian history.
I can't tell you how unprepared
this place was for war.
Cambodia had managed
to remain neutral up until 1970.
It was headed by a very popular,
charismatic, and smart, sly leader
named Prince Norodom Sihanouk,
who realized if Cambodia
gets involved in that war,
it's gonna ruin the country.
So he let the Vietnamese Communists
use the eastern border
for the famous Hồ Chí Minh Trail.
But he also looked the other way
when the South Vietnamese chased
the Communists into Cambodia.
[Veith] So the Communists had used that,
and built base areas in Cambodia
where they stored weapons.
They had hospitals.
They had recuperation.
They had training centers.
[in Vietnamese] We had a difficult time,
especially after the series
of Tết Offensive battles.
There were groups we had to meet with
in the Cambodian jungles
during those years.
[Lord, in English]
They'd come over the border,
kill South Vietnamese
and American soldiers,
and then go back
to these safe bases in Cambodia.
So Nixon and his military advisors felt
that this was obviously inflicting
huge damage on us.
[Selverstone] The secret bombing
of Cambodia goes on for months
after month after month.
Ultimately, over 100,000 tons of bombs
are dropped on Cambodia.
- [air raid sirens wailing]
- [explosions rumbling]
[bombs explode]
[Rather] Now, one can argue
that the bombing runs were necessary,
but to keep them secret, for what reason?
The reason being they didn't want
the American public to know
that the war was spreading.
[dark enchanting music plays]
[Hughes] Nixon kept this bombing secret
from the public and from Congress.
[bombs explode]
The idea was
that the bombing would interfere
with the smuggling of soldiers
and supplies into South Vietnam.
What he did was inadvertently drive
the North Vietnamese
farther into Cambodia,
where they started to clash
with the Cambodians,
destabilized the Cambodian government,
and accidentally precipitated a coup,
a military coup in Cambodia,
that removed their neutralist leader,
Prince Sihanouk,
and replaced him
with a pro-American leader.
[Lord] And now, in the spring of 1970,
Nixon and Kissinger authorize sending
not only South Vietnamese
but American troops into Cambodia
to go after the North Vietnamese
Việt Cộng bases.
[anxious music playing]
Tonight,
American and South Vietnamese units
will attack the headquarters
for the entire Communist
military operation in South Vietnam.
It's hard on all of us.
I know we're all tired of this.
[chuckles ruefully] Tired. But--
[reporter] You want
to get back to Vietnam?
Ah! I never thought
I'd be saying that either.
I want to go to Vietnam for a change
instead of staying in Cambodia. [laughs]
[guns firing rapidly]
[Hughes] This was the single
most unpopular escalation of the war.
[crowd shouting angrily]
[Hughes] It brought out
the largest demonstrations against Nixon.
[protesters chant] Out now!
Out now! Out now! Out now!
College campuses just went berserk.
[uneasy music playing]
[protesters chant] Leave now!
Leave now! Leave now!
Leave now! Leave now!
Leave now! Leave now!
[Canfora] Nixon announced
the invasion of Cambodia on the 30th,
which was Thursday night.
Friday night,
students had started to march
in the streets of downtown Kent,
right outside the bars.
[fire roaring]
There was an action
against the ROTC building
on Saturday night.
It was an old army barracks at Kent State
that was scheduled for demolition.
And it went up in flames.
It was then
that the Ohio National Guard came in.
[bell rings]
On Monday, we were going to join
a national student strike
[chanting] Strike! Strike! Strike!
[Canfora] to end the war in Vietnam.
[chanting continues]
Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!
[Canfora] A National Guard commander
drove up in a Jeep
and started reading the Riot Act.
[commander] Leave this area immediately!
[Canfora] And students just started
taunting them back.
"This is our campus. This is our home."
"You're the invaders.
You leave. We're not leaving."
[guns firing]
[Canfora] The National Guard opened fire
with tear gas.
[crowd screaming]
The more militant students,
including my brother and I,
were in the Prentice Hall parking lot
at a time when some students
picked up some rocks
and started throwing them
in the direction of the Guard.
Students then started throwing
tear gas canisters back.
Eventually, one troop
got down on their knees,
it was Troop G of the Ohio National Guard,
and started aiming in our direction.
It was the first time we had seen them
look through the scopes of their rifles.
My first instinct was to stay back.
But I saw my brother doing the opposite.
He was carrying a black flag.
And he began to walk
in the direction of the Guard.
When I saw the rifles then
all kind of line up and point toward him,
I came up behind my brother, and I said,
"Alan, they're aiming right at you."
"Please come back
to the parking lot with me."
And just as I said that to my brother,
Troop G got up,
and then they formed
this kind of circle, a huddle,
and the next thing I knew,
turned in unison and started firing.
- [guns firing rapidly]
- [people screaming]
My brother's roommate pulled me
behind a parked car,
and that's when I realized
it was live ammunition.
We could hear bullets
zipping past our heads
and thumping into the ground.
And [mutters]
they continued firing for 13 seconds.
Three feet behind me was Bill Schroeder,
who was an ROTC student.
He wasn't involved in the protests,
but he was following along. [sniffles]
And there was blood
all over his shoulder and his neck.
[melancholic ethereal music plays]
To my left, I saw a group of students
carrying a girl into the dorm yard.
I saw one boy lying face down.
He was lying in a pool of blood
that was streaming down the pavement.
A friend of mine came up behind me
and said, "Alan and Tom both got hit."
That was my brother and his roommate.
I learned hours later
that he survived the wound,
and so did Tom.
Four students were killed,
and nine were injured.
[melancholic music intensifies]
[Nash] Can you imagine going to school,
joining a protest
that many other people were joining,
and ending up dead?
Awful.
Those four students went to school
one day and never went home.
["Ohio" by Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young plays]
[Nash] You know, we were just four kids,
just like them.
Crosby called me. He said, "Well,
I showed Neil this picture."
"I saw him take his acoustic guitar
out into the woods."
"And an hour later, he came back
with this song called 'Ohio.'"
"And we need to record it now."
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming ♪
We're finally on our own ♪
This summer I hear the drumming ♪
Four dead in Ohio ♪
[Nash] We were angry.
A lot of people were very angry
about what was happening.
Should have been gone long ago ♪
[chanting] US out of Vietnam,
for they're being murdered!
Well, the appalling thing is that lots
of people said the students deserved it.
When I signed up,
I accept the responsibility
that I would be out there
quelling any riot
or any particular situation
that they needed me in.
And when those kids came out there
and just were involved
in that particular situation,
they also accept
the responsibility on their shoulders
that they might also be shot.
[clerk] of the United States.
[Barry] But that was part of the attitude
that Nixon was promulgating.
[Nixon] When they engage in violence,
when they break up furniture,
when they terrorize their fellow students
and terrorize the faculty,
then I think "bums"
is perhaps too kind a word
to apply to that kind of person.
[Kazin] This seemed to be really a sign
that the government was willing
to do anything
to stop the anti-war movement
from growing.
[people chattering and laughing]
[Hughes] Nixon seemed to have realized
that this frightened protesters
because he said to one of his aides,
"You know, it really dampens protests
if you kill a few."
[tape machine clicks]
Remember Kent State?
Didn't that have a hell of an effect,
the Kent State thing?
Sure did. Gave them second thoughts.
[Kazin] The right to dissent,
the duty to dissent, is necessary
for a democracy to function
in any kind of healthy way.
[singing indistinctly]
And that's something I think
the Vietnam War helped to legitimate
in a way that had not been true before.
[psychedelic ethereal music plays]
[Camil] I was angry
about what happened at Kent State.
They were exercising
their constitutional rights.
But veterans not only
inherited those rights,
but we fought and bled for those rights.
If I'm gonna go halfway around the world
to defend the Constitution,
you better believe that I'm gonna
fucking defend it right here.
After I came back from 'Nam,
I went to the University of Florida.
I had professors that said, "You know,
we're the aggressor in Vietnam."
And they gave me stuff to read.
And so now I'm reading the information
that I didn't have before.
And that information
was actually making me believe
that, "Wow, we are the aggressors."
"We're the bad guys.
We're not the good guys."
It made me lose my respect
for my high school teachers
who said the war was right,
my parents, who said the war was right,
the recruiters who said the war was right,
and my government,
who said the war was right.
[psychedelic music intensifies]
All of those institutions that I trusted,
they led me astray.
[Barry] There was a beginning
of a realization
that this government
was not on our side as veterans.
I started hearing about,
and running into, veterans
who were now coming back.
They were really bitter.
[Camil] It made me really angry
because my idea
of how war is supposed to be
is World War II films.
And you come home, and there's marches,
and-- and you're a hero,
and people are throwing flowers
and are very happy to see you.
We didn't have any of that.
[Shimabukuro] To me,
that's one of the biggest tragedies
of the Vietnam War,
the treatment of the troops.
A lot of the guys were telling me
that people would call 'em names.
[somber dreamy music plays]
[people chatter]
You know, "Oh, you're baby killers."
And, you know, "You're murderers!"
I got spit on coming back.
And, uh, people got that right to protest.
But I didn't thinks
that they should be protesting
against me, against us.
[Whitehurst] They sent us out there,
they paid for the taxes,
they put the guns in our hands,
they-- they reveled in all the life
we took and everything.
And we came home,
and they literally
and figuratively spit on us.
[doctor] Gonna need
the elbow straighter than it is now
[Bửu] I felt very sorry for them.
To tell the truth, I always appreciate
the Americans who came to Vietnam
to fight for the South Vietnam.
[Col. Hoa, in Vietnamese] Even if we're
from two different countries,
we can empathize with each other.
You brothers have regained
the dignity of being a soldier,
not only as soldiers
protecting your country,
but also as soldiers
defending another country.
Your spirit is very noble and respectable,
no matter the circumstances.
[Brazil, in English]
When I got out of Vietnam,
the plane pulled up to the tarmac,
and I come down the stairs.
And then my mom and my dad
and all my brothers and sisters
[breath catches]
they came running out
[sniffles] on the tarmac
and start hugging me and kissing me.
[sniffles]
And I was so happy to see them,
and they were so happy to see me.
But I wasn't the same person anymore.
[sniffles and sobs]
The first couple of nights
that I was back,
my brother said I tried to kill him.
[sobs, sniffles]
I don't remember. [sniffles]
He said he woke up, and I was choking him.
How can you be subjected
to what you've been
subjected to for a year
and then come back and be normal?
[McGhee] So I was at my mom's house again.
I'm-- I'm back home.
I'm fighting in my sleep.
I'm hollering in my sleep.
She heard my nightmares.
It had everything to do with where
I just came from, back from doing.
So she cried out.
She suffered with me.
And that is the truth
of every combat veteran
that don't want to talk about it,
that won't talk about it.
And, you know, the inhumanity of it all,
who'd wanna listen to it?
A lot of times, it-- that-- that--
those issues leads to suicide
because they feel like
they have failed themselves,
they have failed their families,
they have failed their communities.
[Meshad] When I came back in '71,
after I left Vietnam,
they hired me to develop a unit,
the Vietnam Vet Resocialization Unit,
I called it.
I came out to California.
At that time, there were thousands
of Vietnam Air Vets in LA County.
[pensive music playing]
I went all over the city,
and they kept describing this thing,
which we now call PTSD,
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The symptoms were very obvious.
It's traumatic stress.
It's delayed, and when it hits,
you see violence from the anger.
You see isolation. You see divorce.
You see alcoholism.
You see drug addiction.
[pensive music continues]
We had to battle to get that definition.
[McGhee] I was diagnosed
with PTSD in prison.
And that was because of the people
that started being concerned
about the number of Vietnam veterans
that's wound up in prison
and on drugs and homeless.
I was robbing banks.
[prison gate unlocks]
But now, my rehab started in prison.
I was able to apologize
to my family and to my community.
And accept responsibility for my conduct.
And the only way you going to change
is you've got to face facts.
You've got to be able to tell the truth.
You can face the truth,
and you can change things.
[gloomy droning music plays]
[Barry] After I had been home a while,
the vets
that I was interacting with decided,
"We gotta organize this
in such a way people can understand us."
Father of all life
[Camil] Vietnam Veterans Against the War
was made up of people
who'd been to Vietnam,
who came back from Vietnam during the war,
and protested the war.
[Barry] We spent years
trying to convince the public
to listen to GIs who had been in Vietnam.
And then in 1971,
so they started having
what were called Winter Soldier Hearings.
[Shimabukuro]
The Winter Soldiers Investigation
was to expose
what was happening in Vietnam,
what really was going on.
[Camil] I got a telephone call
inviting me to go to Detroit
to testify
at the Winter Soldier Investigation.
[captivating music plays]
And they said, "If there are
any Vietnam veterans that would be willing
to tell the truth about what they did
in Vietnam, come forward."
So I went forward.
[Shimabukuro] Whatever we could say
or do to-- to hopefully end this war
would be a good thing.
[young Shimabukuro] We wanna get
into the atrocities, but we also want
to get into, you know, "What are we
doing over there in the first place?"
How do these atrocities
get to be committed?
You know, they just don't happen.
[young Camil] I saw one case
where there were two prisoners,
and one prisoner was, uh,
staked out on the ground,
and he was cut open while he was alive,
and part of his insides were cut out.
And they told the other prisoner,
if he didn't tell them what they wanted
to know, that they would kill him.
I don't know what he said
because he spoke Vietnamese,
but then they killed him
after that anyway.
[Camil, present day] I came home
from Vietnam in-- in November of '67.
I became against the war in '71.
And I'm embarrassed that it took so long.
You have to be able to live with yourself.
I couldn't live with myself
supporting a lie. How could I do that?
[Nash] When I heard his story,
burning houses with people inside,
cutting off their ears
and wearing them on his belt,
decapitating people,
it was a horrible, horrible story.
And one that I felt
needed to be spoken about,
and that's when I wrote "Oh! Camil."
["Oh! Camil" playing]
Oh, Camil ♪
Tell me, what did your mother say ♪
When you left those people
Out in the fields ♪
Rotting along with the hay? ♪
[Camil] My mother hated it,
uh, because there's a line that says,
"What did your mother say
when you left all those people
in the fields dying along with the hay?"
Something like that.
I just couldn't believe it,
that this famous person
is singing a song about me.
I'm a nobody,
and he's singing a song about me.
[Nash] It was Scott Camil,
who was a very decorated American soldier,
who finally realized that his heart
was telling him that it was wrong.
What incredible courage
to make that change.
And being able to realize,
"What I did, as horrible as it was,
can be somewhat rectified
if I fight with all my might against it."
[crowd clamoring]
[Camil] If you have demonstrations,
if you block the streets,
if you raise hell,
you can get your word out.
And so we decided to march in Washington.
- [man] What do we want?
- [crowd] Peace!
- [man] When do we want it?
- [crowd] Now!
- [man] What do we want?
- [crowd] Peace!
- [man] When do we want it?
- [crowd cheers and applauds]
[bold classical music plays]
[man 2] We're trying to bring home
the fact that the Vietnam veterans
who served in that war
are disgusted with it, are sickened by it,
and want it ended now
before another person dies,
before any more Vietnamese die,
and before any more GIs die.
United States Marine Corps
[Camil] Vietnam veterans marched
on their capital, denounced the war,
and threw their medals away.
Tim Bagwell from Sacramento, California,
still on active duty,
and I say, get the hell out!
[crowd] Yeah!
One Purple Heart.
[crowd cheers]
This is for the brothers
and sisters at camp.
[Ellis] We had each other,
and we had each other's backs,
but our country didn't have our back.
This weekend, portions
of a highly classified Pentagon document
came to light for all the world to see,
brought cries of outrage from Washington.
The New York Times began publishing
parts of a voluminous report
that the Pentagon had drawn up
on the causes and conduct
of American involvement in Vietnam.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Weiner] Back in 1967,
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
ordered up the Pentagon Papers,
as we know them
which was a massive study,
an encyclopedia,
of the history
of American involvement in Vietnam.
And it concluded that the United States
was not going to win the war in Vietnam.
And then in 1971,
some of that information
began to leak out.
[man] I think the, uh, publication
of those documents is long overdue,
and to my mind it indicates
that, uh, something far from the truth
has been disclosed to the American public
in the last, uh, decade.
[Rather] For journalists,
it was the kind of solid information
that's almost impossible
to come by on a regular basis.
The Pentagon Papers demonstrated the fact
that those in power
had continually been lying to people
about what they knew
was the situation in Vietnam.
I feel like everybody
should know what's going on,
and I don't like the idea
of our government having
all these, um, secrets,
separate secrets from the people.
We-- The people that repre--
that are in the government
are supposed to represent us.
[Morton Halperin] We learned
how big the gap was
between what presidents were saying
and what they believed.
[discordant music playing]
That every American president,
from Truman on,
lied to the American people.
The thing, though, that, Henry,
that to me is just unconscionable,
this is treasonable action on the part
of the bastards that put it out!
[Kissinger] Exactly.
[Nixon] Doesn't it involve
secure information,
a lot of other things?
What kind of people would do such things?
[Hughes] In 1971,
Nixon becomes the first president
to have really wall-to-wall recording
of all his conversations
in the Oval Office.
H.R. Haldeman decides
that Nixon needs a voice-activated system
'cause Nixon just will never remember
to turn it on
and will never remember to turn it off.
So this is a great boon for historians
because Nixon put in the system
and more or less forgot about it.
[tape machine clicks]
The prime suspect, according to
your friend Rostow you're quoting,
is a gentleman by the name of Ellsberg,
who is a left-winger
that's now with the RAND Corporation,
who also has a set of these documents.
[Nixon] Subpoena them. Christ, get them.
[Bass] Daniel Ellsberg was one
of the authors of the Pentagon Papers.
[people shouting]
[Cronkite] In Boston, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg,
the man named
as the source of the Pentagon copy
that appeared in the New York Times,
turned himself in today
to federal authorities.
[ominous music playing]
[Ellsberg] How can you measure
the jeopardy I'm in,
whether it's 10 years,
20 years, 115 years,
rather ludicrous, uh, amounts like that,
to the penalty that has been paid already
by 50,000 American families here
and hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese families?
[fire crackling]
And it also was a test
of journalists' freedom and independence
because the Nixon administration
made a tremendous effort
to keep the Pentagon Papers
from being known.
[reporter] How do you characterize
this suit by the government?
As a suit for censorship.
[Rather] And in a famous court decision,
the Supreme Court ruled that the papers
could be published in newspapers.
[intriguing rhythmic music playing]
We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy.
They're using any means.
We are going to use any means.
Is that clear?
[Weiner] Nixon was paranoid.
Now, even paranoids have enemies,
and he certainly had them.
He made lists of his enemies.
Nixon sets up his own little bucket shop,
the White House Plumbers,
to conduct political warfare
against the American people
through espionage, through sabotage,
through bugging, through burglaries.
Plumbers break into the office
of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist
in California
in order to steal
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatric files,
which would then be used
to blackmail Daniel Ellsberg.
Fortunately for Ellsberg,
the, uh, Plumbers found nothing.
Ellsberg releasing
the Pentagon Papers to the public
was an extremely important event.
I think we live
with the consequences today.
We don't believe
a word the government says.
[anxious droning music plays]
[Canfora] When you have American leaders
admitting that the war was unwinnable,
it's a bitter pill to swallow
that they knew.
They knew all along.
We realized that our heroes
were just liars.
I think we recognized
we'd lost our moral compass,
and we haven't recovered.
[Bass] The Pentagon Papers
helped turn the tide in the war.
It also leads directly to Watergate.
[Halperin] Well, Nixon sets up
the Plumbers to go after Ellsberg,
and then the Plumbers are involved
in the break-in at the Watergate.
[reporter 1] On the sixth floor
of the building behind me,
five men with electronic gear
were caught in the offices
of the Democratic National Committee.
[Weiner] Less than a year later
is the Watergate break-in.
Many terrible things happen
in the interim,
but that's when the clock starts ticking.
[reporter 2] The Army One, the helicopter,
just before the Nixons appeared
[Weiner] So, the road to Watergate
begins in Vietnam.
[Nash] It's the empire crumbling.
[bold droning synth music plays]
[protesters shouting indistinctly]
[gloomy music playing]
[Chic Canfora] Having grown up
with a mother and father
who both served in World War II,
for me,
war was like the John Wayne movies.
We're gonna hold this town
till the link-up does come,
whenever it is.
Today, tomorrow, till hell freezes over.
[crowd cheering]
[Canfora] It was your duty,
and it was a privilege,
and we were always fighting
on the side of right.
America was always the good guys.
But the harsh reality
of what war really was
was very different from what I'd seen
in my mother's Army scrapbooks,
where my mother was the football queen
at the Army-Navy game.
War is a very scary thing,
especially as we faced
high school graduation.
Gee, I wish ♪
[Canfora] I could name
one name after another
of my brother's friends
who went off to fight.
And their letters to my brother
and to me were very, very different.
To me, the letters always had
the number of days left.
They were counting the days
before they would come home.
For my brother, they were describing
the realities of what they were doing.
Horrific realities.
And the reality
of what that war represented,
and what conversations
about the war resulted in,
began to hit us.
Things were just not right in America.
Everything that I admired
about our country,
everything that I associated
with the American dream,
everything I associated with America,
right or wrong, it was just disappearing.
And it made it a lot easier
to take a stand against my own government.
At that point, you had to make a choice.
Are you willing
to put your life on the line?
And for many of us, it was.
It was worth the risk.
[ominous music playing]
[air raid siren wails]
[soldiers chanting indistinctly]
[jet engine droning]
[missiles firing]
[explosions rumbling]
[jet engine droning]
[Viet Thanh Nguyen]
The United States did an incredible job
keeping track of the amount of bombs
it dropped on Vietnam.
That's how we know
the United States dropped more bombs
on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
than it did
in all of World War II on Europe.
[explosions rumbling]
[Lien-Hang T. Nguyen] You have around
seven million tons of bombs dropped
over the countries of Indochina.
This included anywhere
from 500,000 to 600,000 tons of bombs
dropped over Cambodia,
two million over Laos,
one million over North Vietnam,
and over four million dropped
over South Vietnam.
I shall not seek, and I will not accept,
the nomination of my party
for another term as your president.
[Ken Hughes]
After Lyndon Johnson announces
that he's not gonna seek another term,
he announces that he is going
to stop bombing North Vietnam
if the North Vietnamese will agree
to prompt, productive peace talks.
In May,
the negotiating team meets in Paris.
And in October,
Johnson finally gets the North Vietnamese
to accept his conditions.
[reporter] On the afternoon of October 27,
word came from Paris
that Hanoi would accept
the terms for a bombing halt.
[Hughes] So Johnson agrees
to halt the bombing.
[Johnson] Good evening,
my fellow Americans.
I have now ordered
that all air, naval,
and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam
cease as of 8:00 a.m.,
Washington time, Friday morning.
[C. Jack Ellis] Those of us
who served in Vietnam,
we obviously were hopeful.
[helicopter whirring]
[Ellis] Every day,
young men getting killed,
young men getting wounded.
We just want to get out of here now.
[voice speaks indistinctly on radio]
- [birds trill]
- [insects chirp]
[Ellis] We were fighting not for victory,
we were fighting to go home.
[crowd] Peace!
- [man] When do we want it?
- [crowd] Now!
- [man] What do we want?
- Peace!
- When do we want it?
- Now!
[Hughes] Americans get excited
about there being
a bombing halt and peace talks.
[chanting] now! Peace now! Peace now!
Peace now! Peace now! Peace
[Hughes] This is
shortly before the 1968 election.
[marching band playing patriotic music]
The President of the United States
and his ambassadors
are making a determined
major, massive effort
to find an honorable peace in Paris.
[uneasy music playing]
[Hughes] At this point,
the major candidates
are Hubert Humphrey,
Johnson's vice president,
as the Democratic nominee,
and Richard Nixon for the Republicans.
[Dan Rather] Richard Nixon had run
for president in 1960
and been defeated
by President John Kennedy.
But he had slowly and meticulously
fought his way back
into prominence in the Republican Party.
It's a heartland state.
Uh, whoever wins Indiana has a good chance
to win the rest of the heartland
and therefore the country.
[Rather] But the biggest thing
that Nixon had to sell,
and he sold it very well,
was that he would end the war.
[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.
[rapid gunfire]
[Nixon] I pledge to you, we shall have
an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.
But he really is not forthcoming
with-- with any, um, strategy
for ending the war
throughout the course of the '68 campaign.
If a candidate for president
who might be president says
that, "If negotiations fail,
I will do this or that,"
the people on the other side
of the negotiating table
will say, "Well, we'll wait for him,"
rather than negotiate
with President Johnson.
But peace is too important
for politics as usual.
So I say, let's let
the President of the United States
[crowd applauding loudly]
[Hughes] At the start of October,
Nixon was 15 points
ahead of Hubert Humphrey.
He was winning a landslide.
But the more news came out of Paris
that these peace talks
were going to start,
the more people's hopes got up
for the prospect
of getting some sort of settlement
of the Vietnam War.
And then Johnson learns
that Richard Nixon
might be secretly trying
to torpedo the bombing halt negotiations.
- [people chattering]
- [man speaks indistinctly]
Right!
[tape machine clicks]
We have found that our, uh, friend,
the, uh, Republican nominee,
our California friend,
has been playing on this outskirts
with our enemies and our friends, both,
our allies and the others.
One of his associates said
to a businessman
that we're going to say to Hanoi,
"I can make a better deal than he has
because, uh, I'm fresh and new,
and I don't have to demand
as much as he does
in the light of past positions."
[helicopter whirring]
[soothing hypnotic music plays]
[Hughes] Johnson is stunned.
He thinks that Nixon was trying
to sabotage the peace talks.
He starts checking
his sources of intelligence.
The CIA has a bug in the office
of the President of South Vietnam,
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu.
And Johnson orders the FBI
to put surveillance
on the South Vietnamese embassy
to tell him the names
of everybody who enters and exits
and to tail a lady named Anna Chennault,
who is a unique figure
in Republican politics at that time.
She was the widow
of a very famous World War II aviator
who knew President Thiệu.
[Chennault] The people are
very much concerned.
And the number one question
they ask is this,
"Who is going to win this war?"
[crowd cheering]
[Hughes] She was one
of a few Asian-American delegates
to the Republican convention that year.
And she was Richard Nixon's
top female fundraiser.
Mrs. Chennault is contacting, uh,
their ambassador from time to time.
Seems to be kind of the go-between.
[Hughes] Chennault is telling
the South Vietnamese government
to stay away from these peace talks,
that Nixon can give them a better deal
once he's elected president.
[Johnson] The net of it was
that, uh, if they just, uh, hold out
a little bit longer,
that, uh, he is a lot more sympathetic,
and he can kinda--
they can do better business with him
than they can
with their present president.
I rather doubt Nixon has done any of this.
But there's no question
but what folks for him are doing it.
[somber music plays]
Mrs. Chennault never saw President Thiệu.
Nor did we take it seriously.
Because, hey, we go
through the US Embassy, okay?
That's the official conduit.
The Vietnamese knew their future
was being decided in Washington, DC.
Thiệu always thought that the Americans
are going to screw him somehow,
that they would, you know,
they would sell him out to Hanoi.
[Nhã] And frankly, the reason
the South Vietnamese did not send
a delegation to the Paris talks
at that time was this.
We said to the US,
"What's the strategy between allies?"
"We cannot go there
and you guys just take over,
thinking that, 'This is what is the best
for South Vietnamese.'"
"We need to be aligned."
We never got a good answer.
[Hughes] And on the Saturday
before the election,
November 2nd,
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu announces
that he will not send a delegation
to the Paris peace talks.
[music intensifies]
Up until that point,
Nixon's lead over Humphrey
has been narrowing.
By the time
of the weekend before the election,
Humphrey and Nixon
were only two points apart.
[speaking Vietnamese]
[Hughes] But after Nguyễn Văn Thiệu's
public announcement
that he was boycotting the peace talks,
all of Hubert Humphrey's momentum stalled.
[tense music playing]
[announcer] Here now at CBS News
Election Headquarters is Walter Cronkite.
[Cronkite] What emerges is
that Richard Milhous Nixon,
in a stunning political comeback
almost denied him in the closing days,
perhaps even the closing hours
of the campaign,
has been elected
the 37th President of the United States.
And that's as close
as any election in our history.
[crowd cheers]
[Hughes] Nixon wins
the second-closest election
of that century so far,
and changes changes American history.
Having lost a close one eight years ago,
and having won a close one this year,
I can say this,
winning's a lot more fun.
[crowd laughing and applauding]
[tense percussive music playing]
Ladies and gentlemen
Richard Nixon said that he had a plan
to end the war honorably.
But as soon as he got into office,
he and those around him,
including Dr. Henry Kissinger,
were finding ways to escalate the war
with the belief that they could "win" it.
Henry Kissinger,
who comes in as national security advisor
for Richard Nixon,
is a very important figure
in the latter stage of America's war.
[Hughes] Kissinger is a Harvard PhD
and a Harvard professor
and a renowned foreign policy thinker.
You think American strategy
should be reevaluated
to restore war
as a usable instrument of policy.
American strategy has to face the fact
that it may be confronted with war,
and that if Soviet aggression
confronts us with war
and we are unwilling to resist,
it will mean the end of our freedom.
Nixon and Kissinger were incurably covert.
Both were inveterate manipulators.
Nixon used Kissinger to provide
intellectual heft to his worst impulses.
And Kissinger used Nixon
to accrue unimaginable power.
We wish you well personally.
More than that,
the people of the United States
wish your people well.
We look forward to the day
when they can live in peace together.
Thank you. Thank you, Richard Nixon.
[marching band plays stately music]
[Veith] After Nixon comes into power,
he knows at some point
he's going to have to begin
withdrawing American troops.
He wants to manage that process
in a way that just doesn't leave
South Vietnam hanging.
[troops singing in Vietnamese]
[Nhã] We know, eventually,
that the US will pull out troops.
We realize that it is our duty
to shoulder the responsibility
to fight the war.
But we need help.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Hughes] Nixon asks
all of the relevant agencies
how long it will take to train
and equip the South Vietnamese Army
so it can defend South Vietnam
without American combat troops.
The State Department, the Pentagon,
the CIA, the US Embassy,
they all agree,
South Vietnam will never
be able to stand up to the Việt Cộng
and the North Vietnamese Army
without American combat troops
and American military support.
So Nixon decides
to deceive the American people.
He says that his Vietnamization program
will train and equip
the South Vietnamese Army
to stand on its own,
and he will only keep
American troops in South Vietnam
long enough to make South Vietnam
capable of standing on its own.
[Nixon] In the previous administration,
we Americanized the war in Vietnam.
In this administration,
we are Vietnamizing the search for peace.
[brooding, pulsing music plays]
The policy of the previous administration
not only resulted in our assuming
the primary responsibility
for fighting the war,
but even more significant,
did not adequately stress the goal
of strengthening the South Vietnamese
so that they could defend themselves
when we left.
Now, this is basically fraud.
Nixon has reason to think
that Vietnamization
is never going to work.
[Lien-Hang] But he was able
to announce troop withdrawal
so that it would look
like American boys would come home
and no longer fight this war.
[music intensifies]
The Americans proclaim it
as "the Vietnamization."
It's a catchy phrase
to explain everything,
but in my view, it's pretty offensive
to the South Vietnamese.
[Col. Hoa, in Vietnamese]
The US media's description
of the "Vietnamization" of the war
was not accurate.
The war started with us,
and we gradually scaled up
and matured through and in battles
that built up a force,
relying more on ourselves.
[Tuong Vu, in English]
President Thiệu knew the benefits
of having American troops
fighting on the ground,
but he also knew the disadvantages.
He knew the problem of legitimacy
in the eyes of the world
and in the eyes of their own people.
They were seen now
as the Communists depicted them,
as puppets of the Americans.
[Nhã] Because American go in there,
just like in the cowboy movie,
"Here is the cavalry. They are--
We're going to do the job for you."
"Hey, we will just bomb
the living daylight out of it,
and we're done."
But they don't understand
the country, the attitude,
even the disposition of enemy forces.
The Vietnamese generals understood that,
but they find that American
really didn't want to listen.
Some of the young military leaders
felt like now we are independent,
now we can prove ourselves.
We will no longer be
in the shadow of the Americans.
- [forlorn music playing]
- [heavy gunfire in distance]
[man 1] The Việt Cộng,
they bombed my family.
I was angry, and I vowed to fight
those people who harmed my family.
I was trained
to become a helicopter pilot.
My mission was to insert
and extract the Special Forces.
It was a hazardous mission.
We got shot.
We caught the ground fire every day.
So they named us the Kingbees
because we were not scared of anything.
But many people did not know the truth
because they never followed
our troops into the battlefield.
[guns firing heavily]
[explosion]
[Bửu] They said, "The South Vietnam Army,
they are so coward."
"They didn't want to fight themselves."
But the main forces,
they-- they fought very fiercely.
[Armitage] I volunteered as an advisor
to a combat unit of Vietnamese
because I bought into the notion
of helping those
who wanted to help themselves.
In my view,
they were worthy of air support,
artillery support, logistic support.
They just didn't need our soldiers.
There were plenty of young Vietnamese
who could do it just as well as we could.
[gun fires rapidly]
They achieved a lot of victories
in battles after battles
against the Vietnamese Communists
in the North.
They were the true future of the country.
They were the future.
But I see the danger lurking ahead.
[Vu] Many people were concerned
about the possibility
of American discontinuation
of assistance to South Vietnam
because the Communists
were receiving assistance
from the Soviet Union,
China, and the Soviet Bloc.
So if the Americans left,
South Vietnam would be left alone
to fight the whole Soviet Bloc.
They needed weapons
so that they could have a balance
with the Communists in the North.
But we realized
the pressure in the US politics.
[Nho] We are in serious danger
of being alone.
[beating military cadence]
- [doleful rock music playing]
- [crowd shouting angrily]
[crowd chants] US out of Vietnam,
for they're being murdered!
US out of Vietnam,
for they're being murdered!
[people shout indistinctly]
This was an extremely tense and toxic time
in terms of American public opinion.
When Nixon came in,
there were 550,000 troops,
increasing casualties,
and tremendous demonstrations in the war,
which put great pressure on Nixon.
[crowd shouting]
[reporter] Thousands gathered in Chicago,
New York, Boston, San Francisco,
Ann Arbor, New Haven,
and many other cities.
[Weiner] There were thousands,
then there were tens of thousands,
and then there were hundreds of thousands
of people marching against the war.
I was there. I was 13 years old.
I went with my dad.
[Dick Gregory] For you young folks
have come to the nation's capital today,
using the greatest weapon ever been used
in the history of the world,
a pure moral dedication
[reporter] Entertainment, politics,
and rhetoric proceeded nonstop.
At the time, music was really powerful.
[man] There were a lot of musicians
who went to anti-war rallies.
John Lennon wrote a song with his wife,
Yoko Ono, called "Give Peace a Chance,"
which he sang
at an anti-war demonstration.
[Lennon] Everybody now! Come on!
All we are saying ♪
Is give peace a chance ♪
[Kazin] The fact that a member
of the most popular singing group
in the world at the time, The Beatles,
was siding with the anti-war movement
seemed to give us, kind of, legitimacy
as anti-war people,
which we thought was kind of impossible.
Country Joe and the Fish wrote
a very popular song, "Fixin'-to-Die Rag."
What are we fightin' for? ♪
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn ♪
The next stop is Vietnam ♪
[Kazin] And he sang that song
at the Woodstock Festival
in the fall of 1969,
with 200,000 people present at the time.
Glimpses of ♪
[Kazin] We were listening to protest songs
by people
like Crosby, Stills and Nash & Young.
I'm from England, of course.
I didn't come to America
until December of 1968.
A lot of people,
particularly the young people
in the United States,
were very much against the Vietnam War.
It was just a mess, and we all knew it.
Music brings peace to people,
it enrages people,
it makes them love more.
We have to help people wake up
to what's really happening.
That's what protest is about.
["Kick Out the Jams" by MC5 plays]
I, I, I, I, I'm gonna ♪
I'm gonna kick 'em out ♪
Yeah! ♪
[Canfora] At the same time,
anti-war protesters had grown weary
of petitioning and marching
and waving the peace signs.
[Kazin] The war kept going on,
so there was a sense
of disbelief, frustration.
There's nothing we can do
peacefully anymore, it seemed,
to stop the war.
We're gonna have to escalate our tactics.
"We have to bring the war home."
That's one of the Weatherman slogans.
Right on!
[Canfora] The Weathermen were
inspired by the words
of the Bob Dylan song that says,
"You don't have to be a weatherman
to know which way the wind is blowing."
And they felt
they had to go to war at home.
- [people screaming]
- [whistles blowing]
[reporter]
Shortly after yesterday's explosion,
a letter was received
by the Associated Press in New York
taking credit for the bombing
and signed "Weatherman."
[Kazin] Weatherman was a group
of people who said,
"We have to emulate
the Black Panther Party."
They were a group
that were in favor of Black nationalism,
building their own institutions to get
freedom for Black people in America,
who supported the Việt Cộng,
the North Vietnamese,
who took up arms themselves.
They see our struggle as being,
uh, the beacon light for peace
within the confines of fascistic America.
And on the other hand,
we see their struggle
as being the guiding light for peace
on an international level
to put an end to, uh, US imperialism.
[Kazin] I was not gonna be
a soldier for the United States,
but I was willing to be
a soldier for the revolution, if you will.
We decided we have to think
about arming ourselves
to try to stop the United States
from being able to continue
the war in Vietnam at home.
[explosion]
Blow up ROTC buildings,
maybe blow up draft boards, for example.
[reporter] 12:56 a.m., the explosion
that ripped through a restroom
on the third floor
of the State Department.
No one was hurt by the blast.
Police who were summoned to the scene
described the bomb as being a big one.
Some people were talking
about getting guns
and fighting the police
in the streets with guns.
[woman on tape] Total resistance
to mind-controlling maniacs,
a culture of high-energy sisters
getting it on,
of hippie acid smiles and communes
and freedom to be
the farthest-out people we can be.
[Kazin] Weatherman began
in the summer of 1969.
Just nine months later,
they went underground
because there was a bomb
that some Weather-people were making
in a townhouse
in Greenwich Village in New York,
which blew up in their faces
and killed a couple of them.
[siren wailing]
I only stayed in Weatherman
for six weeks, to be honest,
because I continued
to support their politics,
but I was afraid of dying.
[sparse, tense music plays]
At this point, the polls showed
that even though most people
were against the war,
even more people were
against the anti-war protesters.
Commies run like rats!
Go ahead, commies! Run!
Did you ever do a day's work in your life?
I don't think so. You didn't have to!
If you woulda been working,
you wouldn't have had time
to grow that there hair on top of you.
[chanting] Hồ, Hồ, Hồ Chí Minh!
[Hughes] Many objected to the disorder
[crowd chants] Bring them home now!
[Hughes] the vandalism,
and some criminal civil disobedience.
[Nixon] If he cancels his trip
because of this
[Hughes] Nixon just knew
that if he was attacking
the anti-war protesters,
he would be appealing
to a majority of Americans.
[Weiner] Lyndon Johnson,
and Richard Nixon after him,
were both convinced
that the anti-war movement in this country
were directed and financed
by Moscow and Beijing.
First Johnson, and then Nixon, directed
the American intelligence community
to find the Communist conspiracy
that drove the anti-war movement.
They were bugging phones,
spying on Americans,
warrantless wiretapping,
black bag jobs, burglaries,
break-ins, buggings,
some of it directed
by J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI.
[Kazin] FBI agents came
to my dorm room in college
and questioned me
about my anti-war activities.
This is what an FBI file looks like.
This was something released to me in 1978
under the Freedom of Information Act.
What it shows is
there were undercover agents
who were infiltrating
the anti-war movement,
trying to find out
what we were doing in advance.
There were people in our meetings,
even meetings
as small as nine or ten people,
who were FBI agents.
[Weiner] This went on for years
under LBJ and Nixon.
Did they find
the international Communist conspiracy
that was driving the anti-war movement?
Nope.
Because it didn't exist.
They were willing
to violate the Constitution
and to violate the civil rights
of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
[Thomas Bass] We may now
take it for granted
that mass surveillance
of our everyday activities
is standard operating procedure.
[whirring]
The right to privacy, the rule of law
Our individual acts
used to be considered private affairs.
That all began to corrode
during the Vietnam War.
[John Negroponte] The war was unpopular.
The drain on the budget was unpopular.
But I think,
foremost, the draft was unpopular.
And Nixon understood that.
[ominous music playing]
[Col. Gregory A. Daddis]
By 1969, Nixon has decided
to change the draft system to a lottery,
to tamp down on concerns
that the process is inequal.
And all of a sudden,
the conscription system
becomes a roll of the dice
based on your birthdate.
April 24th.
A bunch of little plastic balls
would be in a canister.
And the first number that came up,
whatever the birthdate was,
you were among the first to be called
to your draft board, to be drafted.
[announcer 1] 31st, February 16th,
March 8th, February 5th,
January 4th, February 10th.
March 30th, April 10th, April 9th.
[Canfora] I was
with my brother and his friends.
Watching all of their numbers called
was just an eerie sort of thing.
When you actually saw
this visual representation of,
"Guess who's next?"
[announcer 1] December 30th.
[announcer 2] December 30, 003.
[Canfora] More people were burning
their draft cards.
And more people were leaving the country.
And more people were willing to go to jail
for defying an order to serve.
Hallelujah ♪
His truth is marching on ♪
[tense music playing]
[Ellis] We began to get
the draftees and replacements.
Now these young men began to protest.
It was a different type of soldier.
Not all, but a lot of them
just couldn't wait to get out,
and every day was agitated
for being there.
[Osnos] When I arrived in Vietnam in 1970,
the drawdown of troops probably meant
that there were around
a couple hundred thousand left.
It wasn't war in the sense
that you could go be a great hero.
It was a slog.
[melancholic music playing]
And so it was a troubled time
in the morale of the American GI.
[Veith] It was obvious
to even the lowest soldier
that we're getting out.
You know, we're leaving.
"Why should I be the last guy killed
on the way out the door?"
[Scott Shimabukuro] You started wondering,
"Damn, well, why are we even here?"
You develop a whole different attitude
once you've been in-country for a while.
You know, when you hear
about somebody getting wounded or killed,
the guys would say,
"Well, hey, better him than me."
And I thought, "Damn,
that's-- that's pretty cold-hearted."
As cold-hearted as it sounds,
you start to understand
and get that mentality,
that "Hey, I'll do whatever it takes
to get my ass out of here in one piece."
[helicopter blades whirring]
The discipline,
the blind following of orders,
everything had changed.
It's the Woodstock generation
coming to Vietnam.
Killing for peace just doesn't make sense.
[Kay] One day, I heard a couple of members
of the squad that we were with
talking to each other,
and I just started rolling on it.
- [soldier 1] Killer, I see
- [soldier 2 chuckles]
[soldier 1] First time we'll ever be
walkin' down a road.
I'm not gonna walk down there.
[soldier 2] I was talking to 'em, we're
gonna do it. Gonna walk down the trail.
My whole squad ain't walkin'
down that trail.
- No!
- That's it.
[reporter] The men were taught
by Captain Jackson,
their former commander,
never to move down a trail,
much less a road.
[Kay] They weren't going to obey
the new captain's orders,
which was to walk down a road.
And they just said,
"No, we're not gonna do it."
[soldier 3] We gonna move
out on the road, period.
Either we gonna move out
and they gonna get left behind,
or I'm gonna take point
and they can follow me if they want to.
Now, it's that simple.
Now, we got a job to do, we gonna do it.
It's not half as dangerous as the crap
we've done out here in the boonies,
walking through 'em.
Least we can see what we're doing.
[soldier 4] We don't use trails. We--
We try to do things, you know, with logic.
And, uh, if you want to find gooks,
there's no problem finding, uh, the enemy.
You can just walk right down a trail,
and you-- you'll eventually find him,
but it'll be on his terms.
We're just gonna refuse to do it.
'Cause it's, uh You may be in jail,
but you won't be dead. [chuckles]
Some called it the war
between the lifers and the grunts,
usually verbal, but sometimes violent,
involving the older men
making careers of military work
and the young draftees committed
to a year of military service in Vietnam.
[Shimabukuro] The guys you served with,
it's like a family,
and you're looking out for that family.
[helicopter whirring]
So anybody who's going
to come from the outside
and jeopardize the safety of your family,
I don't care if it's a first sergeant,
somebody's going to have to teach you
a lesson about that.
And if it takes a fragging to do it,
well, it's gonna take
what it's gonna take.
[solemn music playing]
Fragging is essentially assaulting
your officer one way or another.
Killing them, basically.
Or certainly very badly injuring them.
[reporter] "Grenade, hand, fragmentation,
M26A1," it says.
The GIs call it simply "the frag."
The core of explosives sends thousands
of tiny metal fragments in all directions.
It's very effective against the enemy.
But in recent months, all too often,
GIs have been using them
against their superior officers.
[grenade explodes]
There is even, uh, a pool of money
that gets collected too.
So people are, like, putting up
50 bucks, 30 bucks,
and you get enough people,
that's enough incentive
for somebody to pull the pin.
It happened a couple times
while I was there.
There was a, uh, high-ranking enlisted,
I think he's a top sergeant,
somebody put a Claymore mine
underneath his tent,
and three guys split the money.
No one knows which one did it,
but he was no longer in existence
after that night.
You could kind of call it justice.
So many people were getting killed
because of these guys.
I just don't believe in
anything we're doing here.
I don't like anything that's going on.
And the lifers are shoving
all this shit at me, and
and, uh, I don't like to play their games.
[Col. Daddis] Most estimates agree
that there are over 90 incidents
of fragging in the US Marine Corps.
There are 600 to 800 incidents
in the US Army, if not more.
[reporter] What about drugs in the field?
Drugs in the field?
[exclaims nervously]
Uh, gee, can I say this
without getting busted or anything?
Orangutan! Get your hair cut!
[Col. Daddis] Many American servicemen
were using drugs
as a form of self-medication,
as a way to-- to get through this.
[Dennis Clark Brazil] I started smoking
marijuana literally every day, all day
to help mask and hide
the pain and the fear.
- Paul, let me borrow that bowl from you.
- [Paul laughs]
- [soldiers laugh]
- Cool.
I hope this-- This is probably all CIDs
and we're getting busted,
but I don't care.
Shotgun.
[soldiers laugh]
[soldier] That's pretty good
schwag, though.
[spacey ethereal music plays]
[Kay] Opium was, um
was legal in Laos or Cambodia
and accepted in Vietnam.
With opium, it kills all pain,
psychological and physical,
and you're just in this state
of semi-dreaming.
So a lot of us, myself included,
got very serious opium addiction.
And then heroin became popular,
and in Vietnam, for five dollars,
you could buy, like,
a jam jar full of 99% pure heroin.
[helicopter blades whirring]
[Eldson J. McGhee] I had never had
any experience with drugs
before the military.
No pot, no nothing. I didn't even smoke.
When I was wounded,
they gave me the morphine, right?
And when they stopped the morphine,
I was introduced to heroin,
and it completely ruined my life.
[musical arrangement turns anxious]
[reporter] The GIs are plagued
by low morale,
drug abuse, and drunkenness.
A Congressional investigation reveals
10 to 15% of all US troops
in Vietnam are using heroin.
Other reports show
as many as 50% are using marijuana.
This phenomenon is worrying
to senior military commanders.
Drug testing becomes, uh,
part and parcel of the Army experience.
And it's still in existence today.
In Vietnam, they're bringing in
medical officers and psychologists
to try and get a sense
of-- of what the problem is.
[Meshad] I was there all of '70
to evaluate the mental health
of soldiers in the field.
There were about 15 mental health people,
psychiatrists, social workers, in-country
for all these combat vets.
There was just so much chaos.
So much of the hospital,
when I went flying around
to different units,
was heroin overdose, speed, hashish.
The chances of you coming home
in one piece are getting less and less.
So what can I do?
[tense music playing]
[Shimabukuro]
And then you started wondering,
"What's going on
with the Paris peace talks?"
[siren blaring]
To me, and some
of the other guys I was with,
well, we didn't understand.
"Well, if they're having peace talks,
why are we still fighting?"
"Shouldn't there be a ceasefire
while they're doing this?"
[reporters speak indistinctly]
[inaudible]
[Lien-Hang] So the Paris negotiations
to end the Vietnam War had begun,
but it became just another
theater of battle in the Vietnam War.
[Veith] There was a lot of discussion
about, "How are we gonna hold the talks?"
"Who's going to be there?
What're we gonna talk about?"
And so the Communists really began
to string the talks out.
[Cronkite] Already official peace talks
were underway in Paris,
but only after a ten-week dispute
about the shape of the table,
who would sit where at the table.
The answer was to make it round.
Everyone was equal,
the United States, South Vietnam,
North Vietnam, and the Việt Cộng.
[Shimabukuro] They spent months arguing
where people were going to sit
at this table.
And our attitude was, "That's bullshit."
"I'll go over there, I'll make you sit
wherever the fuck I want you to sit."
"We're dying over here, and you're arguing
where you're gonna sit?"
[Veith] Nixon recognizes
that the peace talks
are largely dead in the water.
He understood that the attention
afforded to the four-party public talks
was too great,
that nothing could actually be decided
while all four sides are posturing,
that there had to be
secret bilateral talks in conjunction.
[groovy brooding music plays]
And these secret talks would only be
between the United States
and North Vietnam,
cutting out
South Vietnamese parties entirely.
[Nhã] We were not told.
Suddenly, you went on-- on your own,
and, you know, "negotiated"
what you Americans think
is best for South Vietnam.
It's a betrayal between allies.
[Lien-Hang] Richard Nixon and Lê Duẩn
could only send men they trust
to negotiate the end
of American military intervention.
Kissinger is Nixon's man.
Lê Duẩn sends Lê Đức Thọ.
He's Lê Duẩn's right-hand man,
and had been since the 1950s.
It took a miracle
to keep these things secret.
It'd just be Kissinger,
myself, one or two others.
[Lien-Hang] And from what we know
of these talks,
they were highly contentious,
neither of them
really wanting to compromise.
[Thành, in Vietnamese]
My father only said,
"You have only one mission."
"Just one mission."
"At the end of negotiations,
the US must withdraw its troops,
and Northern soldiers stay."
[Lord] The North Vietnamese
always insisted
not only did we have
to get out unilaterally,
we had to overthrow the Saigon government
and put in a coalition government
at the same time.
We were not prepared to do that.
[intriguing propulsive rock music playing]
We wanted an agreement
that would at least give
the Saigon government
a chance to survive in the future.
And we certainly weren't going to say
to the world, as an ally,
that not only
will we withdraw unilaterally,
but we'll overthrow our friends
as we exit the scene. [chuckles]
The North Vietnamese were sitting there
saying that we were withdrawing
these troops gradually.
It was happening anyway,
so why should they negotiate?
Why not just wait us out?
[Negroponte] But Kissinger had this theory
that every now and then
you have to convince people
you're gonna go apeshit.
- [missiles whirring]
- [explosion]
You know, you're a superpower,
you've got all this equipment,
and you-- you might annoy us enough
that we respond
in an absolutely extreme way.
The "madman" theory. He believed in it.
[chuckles] And I guess
Nixon believed in it too.
[wistful music playing]
One of the first things that Nixon does
is to start the bombing of Cambodia.
[Lien-Hang] While Cambodia,
as well as Laos,
had been drawn into the Vietnamese War
from the very start in the late 1950s,
this is really the start
of the deadliest chapter
in terms of Cambodian history.
I can't tell you how unprepared
this place was for war.
Cambodia had managed
to remain neutral up until 1970.
It was headed by a very popular,
charismatic, and smart, sly leader
named Prince Norodom Sihanouk,
who realized if Cambodia
gets involved in that war,
it's gonna ruin the country.
So he let the Vietnamese Communists
use the eastern border
for the famous Hồ Chí Minh Trail.
But he also looked the other way
when the South Vietnamese chased
the Communists into Cambodia.
[Veith] So the Communists had used that,
and built base areas in Cambodia
where they stored weapons.
They had hospitals.
They had recuperation.
They had training centers.
[in Vietnamese] We had a difficult time,
especially after the series
of Tết Offensive battles.
There were groups we had to meet with
in the Cambodian jungles
during those years.
[Lord, in English]
They'd come over the border,
kill South Vietnamese
and American soldiers,
and then go back
to these safe bases in Cambodia.
So Nixon and his military advisors felt
that this was obviously inflicting
huge damage on us.
[Selverstone] The secret bombing
of Cambodia goes on for months
after month after month.
Ultimately, over 100,000 tons of bombs
are dropped on Cambodia.
- [air raid sirens wailing]
- [explosions rumbling]
[bombs explode]
[Rather] Now, one can argue
that the bombing runs were necessary,
but to keep them secret, for what reason?
The reason being they didn't want
the American public to know
that the war was spreading.
[dark enchanting music plays]
[Hughes] Nixon kept this bombing secret
from the public and from Congress.
[bombs explode]
The idea was
that the bombing would interfere
with the smuggling of soldiers
and supplies into South Vietnam.
What he did was inadvertently drive
the North Vietnamese
farther into Cambodia,
where they started to clash
with the Cambodians,
destabilized the Cambodian government,
and accidentally precipitated a coup,
a military coup in Cambodia,
that removed their neutralist leader,
Prince Sihanouk,
and replaced him
with a pro-American leader.
[Lord] And now, in the spring of 1970,
Nixon and Kissinger authorize sending
not only South Vietnamese
but American troops into Cambodia
to go after the North Vietnamese
Việt Cộng bases.
[anxious music playing]
Tonight,
American and South Vietnamese units
will attack the headquarters
for the entire Communist
military operation in South Vietnam.
It's hard on all of us.
I know we're all tired of this.
[chuckles ruefully] Tired. But--
[reporter] You want
to get back to Vietnam?
Ah! I never thought
I'd be saying that either.
I want to go to Vietnam for a change
instead of staying in Cambodia. [laughs]
[guns firing rapidly]
[Hughes] This was the single
most unpopular escalation of the war.
[crowd shouting angrily]
[Hughes] It brought out
the largest demonstrations against Nixon.
[protesters chant] Out now!
Out now! Out now! Out now!
College campuses just went berserk.
[uneasy music playing]
[protesters chant] Leave now!
Leave now! Leave now!
Leave now! Leave now!
Leave now! Leave now!
[Canfora] Nixon announced
the invasion of Cambodia on the 30th,
which was Thursday night.
Friday night,
students had started to march
in the streets of downtown Kent,
right outside the bars.
[fire roaring]
There was an action
against the ROTC building
on Saturday night.
It was an old army barracks at Kent State
that was scheduled for demolition.
And it went up in flames.
It was then
that the Ohio National Guard came in.
[bell rings]
On Monday, we were going to join
a national student strike
[chanting] Strike! Strike! Strike!
[Canfora] to end the war in Vietnam.
[chanting continues]
Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!
[Canfora] A National Guard commander
drove up in a Jeep
and started reading the Riot Act.
[commander] Leave this area immediately!
[Canfora] And students just started
taunting them back.
"This is our campus. This is our home."
"You're the invaders.
You leave. We're not leaving."
[guns firing]
[Canfora] The National Guard opened fire
with tear gas.
[crowd screaming]
The more militant students,
including my brother and I,
were in the Prentice Hall parking lot
at a time when some students
picked up some rocks
and started throwing them
in the direction of the Guard.
Students then started throwing
tear gas canisters back.
Eventually, one troop
got down on their knees,
it was Troop G of the Ohio National Guard,
and started aiming in our direction.
It was the first time we had seen them
look through the scopes of their rifles.
My first instinct was to stay back.
But I saw my brother doing the opposite.
He was carrying a black flag.
And he began to walk
in the direction of the Guard.
When I saw the rifles then
all kind of line up and point toward him,
I came up behind my brother, and I said,
"Alan, they're aiming right at you."
"Please come back
to the parking lot with me."
And just as I said that to my brother,
Troop G got up,
and then they formed
this kind of circle, a huddle,
and the next thing I knew,
turned in unison and started firing.
- [guns firing rapidly]
- [people screaming]
My brother's roommate pulled me
behind a parked car,
and that's when I realized
it was live ammunition.
We could hear bullets
zipping past our heads
and thumping into the ground.
And [mutters]
they continued firing for 13 seconds.
Three feet behind me was Bill Schroeder,
who was an ROTC student.
He wasn't involved in the protests,
but he was following along. [sniffles]
And there was blood
all over his shoulder and his neck.
[melancholic ethereal music plays]
To my left, I saw a group of students
carrying a girl into the dorm yard.
I saw one boy lying face down.
He was lying in a pool of blood
that was streaming down the pavement.
A friend of mine came up behind me
and said, "Alan and Tom both got hit."
That was my brother and his roommate.
I learned hours later
that he survived the wound,
and so did Tom.
Four students were killed,
and nine were injured.
[melancholic music intensifies]
[Nash] Can you imagine going to school,
joining a protest
that many other people were joining,
and ending up dead?
Awful.
Those four students went to school
one day and never went home.
["Ohio" by Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young plays]
[Nash] You know, we were just four kids,
just like them.
Crosby called me. He said, "Well,
I showed Neil this picture."
"I saw him take his acoustic guitar
out into the woods."
"And an hour later, he came back
with this song called 'Ohio.'"
"And we need to record it now."
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming ♪
We're finally on our own ♪
This summer I hear the drumming ♪
Four dead in Ohio ♪
[Nash] We were angry.
A lot of people were very angry
about what was happening.
Should have been gone long ago ♪
[chanting] US out of Vietnam,
for they're being murdered!
Well, the appalling thing is that lots
of people said the students deserved it.
When I signed up,
I accept the responsibility
that I would be out there
quelling any riot
or any particular situation
that they needed me in.
And when those kids came out there
and just were involved
in that particular situation,
they also accept
the responsibility on their shoulders
that they might also be shot.
[clerk] of the United States.
[Barry] But that was part of the attitude
that Nixon was promulgating.
[Nixon] When they engage in violence,
when they break up furniture,
when they terrorize their fellow students
and terrorize the faculty,
then I think "bums"
is perhaps too kind a word
to apply to that kind of person.
[Kazin] This seemed to be really a sign
that the government was willing
to do anything
to stop the anti-war movement
from growing.
[people chattering and laughing]
[Hughes] Nixon seemed to have realized
that this frightened protesters
because he said to one of his aides,
"You know, it really dampens protests
if you kill a few."
[tape machine clicks]
Remember Kent State?
Didn't that have a hell of an effect,
the Kent State thing?
Sure did. Gave them second thoughts.
[Kazin] The right to dissent,
the duty to dissent, is necessary
for a democracy to function
in any kind of healthy way.
[singing indistinctly]
And that's something I think
the Vietnam War helped to legitimate
in a way that had not been true before.
[psychedelic ethereal music plays]
[Camil] I was angry
about what happened at Kent State.
They were exercising
their constitutional rights.
But veterans not only
inherited those rights,
but we fought and bled for those rights.
If I'm gonna go halfway around the world
to defend the Constitution,
you better believe that I'm gonna
fucking defend it right here.
After I came back from 'Nam,
I went to the University of Florida.
I had professors that said, "You know,
we're the aggressor in Vietnam."
And they gave me stuff to read.
And so now I'm reading the information
that I didn't have before.
And that information
was actually making me believe
that, "Wow, we are the aggressors."
"We're the bad guys.
We're not the good guys."
It made me lose my respect
for my high school teachers
who said the war was right,
my parents, who said the war was right,
the recruiters who said the war was right,
and my government,
who said the war was right.
[psychedelic music intensifies]
All of those institutions that I trusted,
they led me astray.
[Barry] There was a beginning
of a realization
that this government
was not on our side as veterans.
I started hearing about,
and running into, veterans
who were now coming back.
They were really bitter.
[Camil] It made me really angry
because my idea
of how war is supposed to be
is World War II films.
And you come home, and there's marches,
and-- and you're a hero,
and people are throwing flowers
and are very happy to see you.
We didn't have any of that.
[Shimabukuro] To me,
that's one of the biggest tragedies
of the Vietnam War,
the treatment of the troops.
A lot of the guys were telling me
that people would call 'em names.
[somber dreamy music plays]
[people chatter]
You know, "Oh, you're baby killers."
And, you know, "You're murderers!"
I got spit on coming back.
And, uh, people got that right to protest.
But I didn't thinks
that they should be protesting
against me, against us.
[Whitehurst] They sent us out there,
they paid for the taxes,
they put the guns in our hands,
they-- they reveled in all the life
we took and everything.
And we came home,
and they literally
and figuratively spit on us.
[doctor] Gonna need
the elbow straighter than it is now
[Bửu] I felt very sorry for them.
To tell the truth, I always appreciate
the Americans who came to Vietnam
to fight for the South Vietnam.
[Col. Hoa, in Vietnamese] Even if we're
from two different countries,
we can empathize with each other.
You brothers have regained
the dignity of being a soldier,
not only as soldiers
protecting your country,
but also as soldiers
defending another country.
Your spirit is very noble and respectable,
no matter the circumstances.
[Brazil, in English]
When I got out of Vietnam,
the plane pulled up to the tarmac,
and I come down the stairs.
And then my mom and my dad
and all my brothers and sisters
[breath catches]
they came running out
[sniffles] on the tarmac
and start hugging me and kissing me.
[sniffles]
And I was so happy to see them,
and they were so happy to see me.
But I wasn't the same person anymore.
[sniffles and sobs]
The first couple of nights
that I was back,
my brother said I tried to kill him.
[sobs, sniffles]
I don't remember. [sniffles]
He said he woke up, and I was choking him.
How can you be subjected
to what you've been
subjected to for a year
and then come back and be normal?
[McGhee] So I was at my mom's house again.
I'm-- I'm back home.
I'm fighting in my sleep.
I'm hollering in my sleep.
She heard my nightmares.
It had everything to do with where
I just came from, back from doing.
So she cried out.
She suffered with me.
And that is the truth
of every combat veteran
that don't want to talk about it,
that won't talk about it.
And, you know, the inhumanity of it all,
who'd wanna listen to it?
A lot of times, it-- that-- that--
those issues leads to suicide
because they feel like
they have failed themselves,
they have failed their families,
they have failed their communities.
[Meshad] When I came back in '71,
after I left Vietnam,
they hired me to develop a unit,
the Vietnam Vet Resocialization Unit,
I called it.
I came out to California.
At that time, there were thousands
of Vietnam Air Vets in LA County.
[pensive music playing]
I went all over the city,
and they kept describing this thing,
which we now call PTSD,
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The symptoms were very obvious.
It's traumatic stress.
It's delayed, and when it hits,
you see violence from the anger.
You see isolation. You see divorce.
You see alcoholism.
You see drug addiction.
[pensive music continues]
We had to battle to get that definition.
[McGhee] I was diagnosed
with PTSD in prison.
And that was because of the people
that started being concerned
about the number of Vietnam veterans
that's wound up in prison
and on drugs and homeless.
I was robbing banks.
[prison gate unlocks]
But now, my rehab started in prison.
I was able to apologize
to my family and to my community.
And accept responsibility for my conduct.
And the only way you going to change
is you've got to face facts.
You've got to be able to tell the truth.
You can face the truth,
and you can change things.
[gloomy droning music plays]
[Barry] After I had been home a while,
the vets
that I was interacting with decided,
"We gotta organize this
in such a way people can understand us."
Father of all life
[Camil] Vietnam Veterans Against the War
was made up of people
who'd been to Vietnam,
who came back from Vietnam during the war,
and protested the war.
[Barry] We spent years
trying to convince the public
to listen to GIs who had been in Vietnam.
And then in 1971,
so they started having
what were called Winter Soldier Hearings.
[Shimabukuro]
The Winter Soldiers Investigation
was to expose
what was happening in Vietnam,
what really was going on.
[Camil] I got a telephone call
inviting me to go to Detroit
to testify
at the Winter Soldier Investigation.
[captivating music plays]
And they said, "If there are
any Vietnam veterans that would be willing
to tell the truth about what they did
in Vietnam, come forward."
So I went forward.
[Shimabukuro] Whatever we could say
or do to-- to hopefully end this war
would be a good thing.
[young Shimabukuro] We wanna get
into the atrocities, but we also want
to get into, you know, "What are we
doing over there in the first place?"
How do these atrocities
get to be committed?
You know, they just don't happen.
[young Camil] I saw one case
where there were two prisoners,
and one prisoner was, uh,
staked out on the ground,
and he was cut open while he was alive,
and part of his insides were cut out.
And they told the other prisoner,
if he didn't tell them what they wanted
to know, that they would kill him.
I don't know what he said
because he spoke Vietnamese,
but then they killed him
after that anyway.
[Camil, present day] I came home
from Vietnam in-- in November of '67.
I became against the war in '71.
And I'm embarrassed that it took so long.
You have to be able to live with yourself.
I couldn't live with myself
supporting a lie. How could I do that?
[Nash] When I heard his story,
burning houses with people inside,
cutting off their ears
and wearing them on his belt,
decapitating people,
it was a horrible, horrible story.
And one that I felt
needed to be spoken about,
and that's when I wrote "Oh! Camil."
["Oh! Camil" playing]
Oh, Camil ♪
Tell me, what did your mother say ♪
When you left those people
Out in the fields ♪
Rotting along with the hay? ♪
[Camil] My mother hated it,
uh, because there's a line that says,
"What did your mother say
when you left all those people
in the fields dying along with the hay?"
Something like that.
I just couldn't believe it,
that this famous person
is singing a song about me.
I'm a nobody,
and he's singing a song about me.
[Nash] It was Scott Camil,
who was a very decorated American soldier,
who finally realized that his heart
was telling him that it was wrong.
What incredible courage
to make that change.
And being able to realize,
"What I did, as horrible as it was,
can be somewhat rectified
if I fight with all my might against it."
[crowd clamoring]
[Camil] If you have demonstrations,
if you block the streets,
if you raise hell,
you can get your word out.
And so we decided to march in Washington.
- [man] What do we want?
- [crowd] Peace!
- [man] When do we want it?
- [crowd] Now!
- [man] What do we want?
- [crowd] Peace!
- [man] When do we want it?
- [crowd cheers and applauds]
[bold classical music plays]
[man 2] We're trying to bring home
the fact that the Vietnam veterans
who served in that war
are disgusted with it, are sickened by it,
and want it ended now
before another person dies,
before any more Vietnamese die,
and before any more GIs die.
United States Marine Corps
[Camil] Vietnam veterans marched
on their capital, denounced the war,
and threw their medals away.
Tim Bagwell from Sacramento, California,
still on active duty,
and I say, get the hell out!
[crowd] Yeah!
One Purple Heart.
[crowd cheers]
This is for the brothers
and sisters at camp.
[Ellis] We had each other,
and we had each other's backs,
but our country didn't have our back.
This weekend, portions
of a highly classified Pentagon document
came to light for all the world to see,
brought cries of outrage from Washington.
The New York Times began publishing
parts of a voluminous report
that the Pentagon had drawn up
on the causes and conduct
of American involvement in Vietnam.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Weiner] Back in 1967,
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
ordered up the Pentagon Papers,
as we know them
which was a massive study,
an encyclopedia,
of the history
of American involvement in Vietnam.
And it concluded that the United States
was not going to win the war in Vietnam.
And then in 1971,
some of that information
began to leak out.
[man] I think the, uh, publication
of those documents is long overdue,
and to my mind it indicates
that, uh, something far from the truth
has been disclosed to the American public
in the last, uh, decade.
[Rather] For journalists,
it was the kind of solid information
that's almost impossible
to come by on a regular basis.
The Pentagon Papers demonstrated the fact
that those in power
had continually been lying to people
about what they knew
was the situation in Vietnam.
I feel like everybody
should know what's going on,
and I don't like the idea
of our government having
all these, um, secrets,
separate secrets from the people.
We-- The people that repre--
that are in the government
are supposed to represent us.
[Morton Halperin] We learned
how big the gap was
between what presidents were saying
and what they believed.
[discordant music playing]
That every American president,
from Truman on,
lied to the American people.
The thing, though, that, Henry,
that to me is just unconscionable,
this is treasonable action on the part
of the bastards that put it out!
[Kissinger] Exactly.
[Nixon] Doesn't it involve
secure information,
a lot of other things?
What kind of people would do such things?
[Hughes] In 1971,
Nixon becomes the first president
to have really wall-to-wall recording
of all his conversations
in the Oval Office.
H.R. Haldeman decides
that Nixon needs a voice-activated system
'cause Nixon just will never remember
to turn it on
and will never remember to turn it off.
So this is a great boon for historians
because Nixon put in the system
and more or less forgot about it.
[tape machine clicks]
The prime suspect, according to
your friend Rostow you're quoting,
is a gentleman by the name of Ellsberg,
who is a left-winger
that's now with the RAND Corporation,
who also has a set of these documents.
[Nixon] Subpoena them. Christ, get them.
[Bass] Daniel Ellsberg was one
of the authors of the Pentagon Papers.
[people shouting]
[Cronkite] In Boston, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg,
the man named
as the source of the Pentagon copy
that appeared in the New York Times,
turned himself in today
to federal authorities.
[ominous music playing]
[Ellsberg] How can you measure
the jeopardy I'm in,
whether it's 10 years,
20 years, 115 years,
rather ludicrous, uh, amounts like that,
to the penalty that has been paid already
by 50,000 American families here
and hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese families?
[fire crackling]
And it also was a test
of journalists' freedom and independence
because the Nixon administration
made a tremendous effort
to keep the Pentagon Papers
from being known.
[reporter] How do you characterize
this suit by the government?
As a suit for censorship.
[Rather] And in a famous court decision,
the Supreme Court ruled that the papers
could be published in newspapers.
[intriguing rhythmic music playing]
We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy.
They're using any means.
We are going to use any means.
Is that clear?
[Weiner] Nixon was paranoid.
Now, even paranoids have enemies,
and he certainly had them.
He made lists of his enemies.
Nixon sets up his own little bucket shop,
the White House Plumbers,
to conduct political warfare
against the American people
through espionage, through sabotage,
through bugging, through burglaries.
Plumbers break into the office
of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist
in California
in order to steal
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatric files,
which would then be used
to blackmail Daniel Ellsberg.
Fortunately for Ellsberg,
the, uh, Plumbers found nothing.
Ellsberg releasing
the Pentagon Papers to the public
was an extremely important event.
I think we live
with the consequences today.
We don't believe
a word the government says.
[anxious droning music plays]
[Canfora] When you have American leaders
admitting that the war was unwinnable,
it's a bitter pill to swallow
that they knew.
They knew all along.
We realized that our heroes
were just liars.
I think we recognized
we'd lost our moral compass,
and we haven't recovered.
[Bass] The Pentagon Papers
helped turn the tide in the war.
It also leads directly to Watergate.
[Halperin] Well, Nixon sets up
the Plumbers to go after Ellsberg,
and then the Plumbers are involved
in the break-in at the Watergate.
[reporter 1] On the sixth floor
of the building behind me,
five men with electronic gear
were caught in the offices
of the Democratic National Committee.
[Weiner] Less than a year later
is the Watergate break-in.
Many terrible things happen
in the interim,
but that's when the clock starts ticking.
[reporter 2] The Army One, the helicopter,
just before the Nixons appeared
[Weiner] So, the road to Watergate
begins in Vietnam.
[Nash] It's the empire crumbling.
[bold droning synth music plays]
[protesters shouting indistinctly]