VIETNAM: A Television History is a 13-part documentary film series produced for public television by WGBH Boston, in cooperation with Central Independent Television/United Kingdom, and Antenne-2/France, and in association with LRE Productions. A six year project from conception to completion, the series carefully analyzes the costs and consequences of war in Vietnam for everyone involved, beginning with early history, through the French colonial period, and up to the fall of Saigon and unification of the country in 1975. Executive producer Richard Ellison, chief correspondent Stanley Karnow, and Director of Media Research Lawrence Lichty, with some 60 consultants and four production units, comprised the production team, centered at WGBH in Boston. Its members garnered hundreds of interviews, researched 70 film archives worldwide, and traveled the length of Vietnam to create perhaps the most exhaustive historical documentary series in television history.

EISENHOWER, August 4, 1953

...So when the United States votes $400 million to help that war, we're not voting for a giveaway program. We're voting for the cheapest way that we can prevent the occurrence of something that would be of the most terrible significance to the United States of America, our security!

KENNEDY, September 2, 1963

...If we withdrew from Vietnam, the Communists would control Vietnam. Pretty soon Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya would go.

 

JOHNSON, August 2, 1965

...If this little nation goes down the drain and can't maintain her independence, ask yourself, what's going to happen to all the other little nations?

NIXON, March 22, 1971

...If the United States now were to throw in the towel and come home and the Communists took over South Vietnam, then all over Southeast Asia, all over the Pacific, in the Mideast, in Europe, in the world, the United States would suffer a blow. And peace -- because we are the great peace-keeping nation in the world today, because of our power -- would suffer a blow from which it might not recover.

NARRATOR

First a handful of advisers. Then the Marines. Finally an army of half a million. That was the Vietnam War. It was an undeclared war. A war without front lines or clear objectives. A war against an elusive enemy. A war.

Medic: Speak to me...

Soldier: Yeah, I'm still alive...

Medic: Speak to me...What's your name, tell me what your name is...Where're

you from?

Soldier: Steve, Seattle, Washington.

Medic: Seattle, Washington...It's a good town. Good town, good town. Very

good town.

Soldier: Can I go to sleep, Doc? Can I go to sleep?

Medic: No, don't go to sleep!

CAPT. FRANK HICKEY

We had some precarious situations and we lost some people, but we always won. So to me, we were very successful, you know. But as I think of it now, I don't know what we won. We won a box on a map where the next day we left it and we never came back maybe.

NARRATOR

It was a war that blurred the line between friend and enemy.

NGO THI HIEN

Wherever the Americans went, they burned and destroyed and killed. I didn't see any guerrillas being killed, only villagers.

SGT. THOMAS MURPHY

An eight-year-old or nine-year-old can kill you just as quick as a 25 or a

26-year-old man. Back here in the States, the kids were playing cowboys and indians. Over there they had been playing it for real.

NARRATOR

It was a war with deep roots, deeper than most Americans knew. Ho Chi Minh and his followers fought for decades: against the French, then against the Americans and their South Vietnamese ally.

DO VAN SU

I always believed in my country. But instead of sending my sons out to defend their country, I sent them out to die.

NARRATOR

It was a war that turned South Vietnam inside out. A war that changed the GIs who fought it.

PRIVATE GEORGE CANTERO

"GI, you want Vietnamese cigarette?" For a box of Tide, you could get a carton of pre-packed, pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes soaked in opium. For ten dollars you could get a vial of pure heroin. You could get liquid opium, speed, acid, anything you wanted.

NARRATOR

It was the first television war...

Reporter: What's he got...small arms?

MP: Small arms, automatic fire, grenade launcher...

NARRATOR

...with uncensored battle reports flashed to the folks at home.

Reporter: What's the hardest part of it?

Marine: Not knowing where they are, that's the worst of it.

Reporter: Have you lost any friends?

Marine: Quite a few. We lost one the other day. This whole thing stinks, really.

Crowd: Peace now, peace now...

NARRATOR

It was the first war Americans opposed in huge numbers, openly and passionately.

Crowd (singing): All we are saying is give peace a chance.

Man: Are you listening, Nixon? Are you listening, Agnew?

NARRATOR

The Vietnam War ended when the Communists took Saigon. The end of the war left questions and issues that are still unanswered and unresolved.

REAGAN, August 1980

Well, it's time that we recognized that ours was in truth a noble cause. Let us tell those who fought in that war that we will never again ask young men to fight and possibly die in a war our government is afraid to let them win.

NARRATOR

Vietnam. A noble cause? A shameful venture?

This television series looks back on a hard chapter in America's history. Two and one half million Americans fought in Vietnam. And 58,000 Americans died there.

Why?

America's war in Vietnam lasted 15 years. But the Vietnamese have known war a long time -- more than 2,000 years.

Their traditional enemy was China, their giant neighbor to the north. For centuries, Vietnam was the southernmost part of China's empire. The Vietnamese absorbed Chinese culture and customs, but they never accepted Chinese rule. Today, throughout Vietnam, they commemorate the Trung sisters, who led a rebellion against China in the first century against Christ. The rebellion failed, but the Trung sisters are still heroines -- part of a long line of Vietnamese who fought foreign domination.

PREMIER PHAM VAN DONG

Our history, from the time of the Hung kings and the Trung sisters, to the era of President Ho Chi Minh has been a history of great struggle. Throughout history, the Vietnamese people have always done their best to defend the country and to build the nation.

NARRATOR

They fought for almost a thousand years after the Trungs to evict the Chinese. Then they pushed south to their present borders, conquering other peoples in their path. The country expanded so rapidly that it fragmented in a series of civil wars. Despite their internal conflicts, the Vietnamese regarded them-selves as one country and one people, but they were too weak and divided to fight off the conquering Europeans in the nineteenth century.

Around 1860, the French seized the area near Saigon. They took over central and northern Vietnam during the next two decades, and by 1885 Vietnam had once again lost its independence.

French Indochina at the end of the 1800s: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, which the French divided into three regions: Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin. To the Vietnamese, the division was a deliberate attempt to destroy their national unity.

The Vietnamese resisted. The French called all resisters "pirates", and they sent in the troops for the first "pacification" of Vietnam. They staged public executions. The severed heads were photographed and printed on postcards which soldiers sent home to sweethearts in Paris "with kisses from Hanoi."

It took 20 years to get the Vietnamese resistance under control. Then the French could concentrate on the economics of colonialism, trying to transform Vietnam into a source of profit.

DUONG VAN KHANH

The people here suffered a lot because of high taxes and hard forced labor. They worked from dawn until dusk, but they did not have enough to eat.

NARRATOR

The cheap labor profited a few French companies even though Indochina was a financial sinkhole. The French nation spent millions of francs each year to protect and support the colony, while French companies like Michelin Rubber made millions in profits from factories and plantations.

NARRATOR

There were no major uprisings during these hard years. Vietnamese society was reeling under the impact of Westernization. French culture permeated the cities, bringing Western fashions and ideas.

The Vietnamese elite began to give their sons a Western education. Almost all of those who would lead the next resistance to the French were French-educated.

Among them was Ho Chi Minh.

Ho Chi Minh's early years are difficult to trace. He was always mysterious about himself, giving few interviews, and preferring in later life to present himself as the benevolent "Uncle Ho."

Ho was born about 1890 as Nguyen Tat Thanh, the son of an official who resigned rather than serve under the French. As a young man, Ho left his country, working as a shiphand and cook in America, Britain and France.

In 1917, Ho moved to Paris. He took the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc, "Nguyen the Patriot," and began to agitate for Vietnam's independence. He tried to plead his cause at the Versailles Conference following World War I, but was not admitted. His effort made him famous among the Vietnamese in France.

In 1920, Nguyen Ai Quoc became a founding member of the French Communist Party, the first Vietnamese Communist. He remained in France editing an anti-colonial paper called Le Paria (The Outcast), and supporting himself as a photographer's assistant. His drawings, published in the newspaper, showed he was still concerned with Vietnam, which he had not seen for ten years.

The Communists sent him to Moscow for training in 1923.

He travelled widely, organizing expatriate Vietnamese into a revolutionary party. Reports during the next 17 years placed him in Germany, China, Thailand, France, Russia.

FRENCH NEWSREEL

Pathe Journal presents a review of achievements accomplished under the protection of our flag.

In regions of hostility and misery French civilizers have brought peace, work, prosperity and joy.

The French overseas domain is an essential part of the world's economy, an active force of civilization and a glorious testimony to the grandeur of France.

NARRATOR

brought the end of this "grandeur of France."

Japan, pursuing its conquest of China, wanted to block the transport of war material through Vietnam.

In June 1940, three days after France fell to Nazi Germany, Japan demanded the right to land forces in Indochina.

Japan's arrival deeply impressed the Vietnamese. Asians like themselves had overthrown the European colonials -- for it was clear who was in charge.

NARRATOR

The Japanese supported several Vietnamese nationalist groups. But other groups were both anti-French and anti-Japanese. The most important was the Vietminh, founded in 1941 by Nguyen Ai Quoc. He had returned to Vietnam after 30 years, with a new name: Ho Chi Minh, meaning, "He Who Enlightens."

HOANG QUOC VIET

After the conference to establish the Vietminh, Uncle Ho sent out a letter calling for the support of the population. And it was this that rallied the entire country around the movement. And when people realized that Ho Chi Minh was actually Nguyen Ai Quoc, their trust in the movement was further estab-lished. This was because the name Nguyen Ai Quoc had been widely known in the country. People knew that he was a great patriot.

NARRATOR

The Vietminh organized guerrilla bases, trained cadres, harassed the French and Japanese and spread propaganda, urging the peasants to resist.

INTERVIEWER

Why did the Vietminh fight the Japanese while other Asian nationalists collaborated?

PREMIER PHAM VAN DONG

(Laugh) I apologize, but this is a very funny question. At that time, the Japanese had already overthrown the French and began to dominate our country, so of course we had to fight the Japanese.

NARRATOR

By early 1945, Vietnam was suffering a terrible famine. People blamed the French and Japanese, who were hoarding rice, feeding it to Japanese troops, and even exporting it to Japan -- while an estimated two million Vietnamese out of eight million in the northern areas died.

DR. TRAN DUY HUNG

At that time, in our estimate, at least 40,000 starving, poor peasants arrived in Hanoi to beg for food and to wait for handouts, for alms.

The French did not organize any hunger relief. And the Japanese specifically forbade us to carry out any hunger relief effort of our own.

People dug into the garbage dumps in order to find any edible thing at all. They also ate rats. But this was not enough to keep them alive.

NARRATOR

The Vietminh organized the peasants to seize rice stocks, and gained tremendous prestige. This peasant support gave them a political edge they never lost.

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, March 1, 1945

It's a long tough road to Tokyo. It is longer to go to Tokyo than it is to Berlin, in every sense of the word. The defeat of Germany will not mean the end of the war against Japan...

NARRATOR

As the war in Europe drew to a close, Allied attention turned to Asia and the war against Japan. One of the pressing needs was intelligence. The Vietminh believed Allied statements supporting the rights of oppressed peoples. They had given the Allies information about Japanese troop movements, so the Americans turned to the Vietminh and its leader, Ho Chi Minh.

ARCHIMEDES PATTI (OSS Officer)
I first met Ho on the China border between China and Indochina in the last days of April of 1945.

He was an interesting individual. Very sensitive, very gentle, rather a frail type. We spoke quite at length about the general situation, not only in Indochina, but the world at large.

ABBOT LOW MOFFAT

We knew he was a Communist, but we also felt, as they did, and the way anybody who has known, met Ho Chi Minh, who I've ever talked with, had the same feeling: he was first a nationalist, and second a Communist. That is, he was interested in getting the independence of his people and then he thought probably the best thing for them was the Communist type of government. But he was a nationalist first and foremost.

NARRATOR

The Vietminh agreed to help the Allies. Major Patti sent a training group, the Deer Mission, into the northern mountains.

ARCHIMEDES PATTI

The Deer team went in and they organized. Out of about 500 Vietnamese, we selected, with the help of General Giap, selected 200. We spent the next four weeks training these young men into the art of using automatic weapons, demolition equipment, infiltrating and exfiltrating into various dangerous areas.

There, for the first time, we saw what kind of troops the Vietminh were. They were a very willing, fine young nationalist, really what we used to say "gung ho" type. They were willing to risk their lives for their cause, the cause of independence against the French.

NARRATOR

Before Ho's men could prove their willingness, World War II was over.

The sudden Japanese collapse took many in French Indochina by surprise, but the Vietminh were ready for what they called the "August Revolution." Declaring Vietnam independent, they marched in to take Hanoi peacefully.

Ho Chi Minh formed a government in Hanoi, carefully mixing in members of other nationalist groups. But in the South, away from Ho's moderating influence, his followers started purging rival nationalists.

Still with the Vietminh, and perhaps reinforcing the idea of American support, was the OSS.

ARCHIMEDES PATTI

Two or three days after I met Ho, he asked me to come in and stop and see him at which time he wanted to show me something, and what he wanted to show me was a draft of the Declaration of Independence that he was going to declare several days later. Of course, it was in Vietnamese and I couldn't read it and when it was interpreted to me, I was quite taken aback to hear the words of the American Declaration of Independence. Words about liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness, etcetera. I just couldn't believe my own ears.

NARRATOR

On September 2, 1945, on board the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrendered.

On the same day throughout Vietnam, the Vietnamese celebrated their self-proclaimed Independence Day and the formation of a new country, the Demo-cratic Republic of Vietnam.

In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh read a speech that began, "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights..."

DR. TRAN DUY HUNG

I can say that the most moving moment was when President Ho Chi Minh climbed the steps and the national anthem was sung. It was the first time that the national anthem of Vietnam was sung in an official ceremony.

Uncle Ho then read the Declaration of Independence, which was a short docu-ment. As he was reading, Uncle Ho stopped and asked, "Compatriots, can you hear me?"

This simple question went into the hearts of everyone there. After a moment of silence, they all shouted, "Yes, we hear you!" And I can say that we did not just shout with our mouths but with all our hearts, the hearts of over 400,000 people standing in the square then.

After Uncle Ho finished reading the Declaration of Independence, an airplane, a small plane, circled over us. We did not know whose plane it was. We thought that it was a Vietnamese plane. But when it swooped down over us, we recog-nized the American flag. The crowd cheered enthusiastically.

NARRATOR

Ho appealed to Presi-dent Harry Truman but he would probably have accepted anyone's support. Truman did not respond to Ho's letters. He had been in office only four months in August 1945 and had not had time to formulate a policy on Indochina.

ABBOT LOW MOFFAT

There was quite a division in the State Department over Indochina. Both the Far Eastern office and the European office were in complete agreement that we wanted a strong France recovered in Europe from the trauma of Vichy and the defeat in the war, but the European division felt that to help get the French back on their feet we should go along with practically anything that the French wanted.

NARRATOR

The Allies had worked out a compromise plan to disarm the Japanese.

Above the 16th parallel, the Chinese would take the surrender of Japanese troops. The British would do the same in the South. They arrived in Saigon in early September.

NARRATOR

The British commander, General Douglas Gracey, was a seasoned colonial officer with limited political experience. His orders were to disarm the Japanese, and maintain law and order.

MAJ. PHILIP MALINS

He had absolutely no mandate whatever to start talking about handing over French Indochina to anyone other than the French. He had his straight, strict instructions.

NARRATOR

The Vietminh fought back, but they had few weapons to use against the French troops, and the Vietminh's brutal tactics alienated other southern nation-alists.

The French regained control. In the North, Ho's Vietminh had widespread support, but they also faced a problem: 150,000 Nationalist Chinese troops. The Chinese came to disarm the Japanese. They stayed to loot and disrupt and they threatened to remain indefinitely.

Desperate to expel the Chinese, Ho Chi Minh negotiated with the French. In March 1946, they reached an agreement. The French colonial authorities dis-

played their power as Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, came to confirm the agreement permitting French troops back for a limited period.

In return, France recognized the new Vietnamese state, and the Chinese army left.

Ho Chi Minh was gambling that the French would not try to seize power, and that a long-range agreement could eventually be negotiated.

GENERAL VO NGUYEN GIAP

A truce was concluded. There were to be future negotiations to settle the problems between us and France. Under these conditions, we allowed a certain number of French troops to take the place of the nearly 200,000 troops of Chiang Kai-shek, which were to evacuate our country as soon as possible. So we had some breathing time to consolidate our forces.

NARRATOR

The French in Hanoi greeted the arriving troops as conquering heroes. The Vietnamese stayed home.

Ho Chi Minh travelled to France to continue the negotiations. But the French cabinet had collapsed. There was no one to negotiate with. He had to play tourist until a new coalition was formed. While he waited, the French administration in Saigon, acting on its own, declared the southern part of Vietnam separate from the North. It was a violation of the March agreement and Ho wondered if there was any point to further negotiations. "Should I go back home?" he asked. He was told the new government would straighten it out in Paris.

In 1946, Ho had been famous as a patriot for a quarter of a century, and the Vietnamese in Paris turned out to welcome this first president of an indepen-dent Vietnam. The French greeted the veteran Communist formally, as a chief of state. At the time in France, Communists were part of the government.

In public, relations were cordial, but in fact the French and Vietnamese negotiators were far apart.

NARRATOR

The negotiations, held at the historic Fontainebleau chateau, went badly. The Vietnamese insisted that southern Vietnam was part of their country. The French would not budge.

PREMIER PHAM VAN DONG

When the meeting began, the chief of the French delegation, Max Andre, said to me: "We only need an ordinary police operation for eight days to clean all of you out." There was no need for negotiations.

GENERAL JEAN-JULIEN FONDE

The solution had to come from Fontainebleau. Then the negotiations at Fontainebleau failed. From then on, relationships deteriorated. The climate deteriorated.

NARRATOR

The March agreement was dead. With French and Vietminh forces at close range, the fighting escalated. There were provocations on both sides.

In November 1946, the French shelled Haiphong. Many French officers believed only force would stop the Vietminh.

HENRI MARTIN

When we visited Haiphong afterwards, all the Vietnamese neighborhoods were completely wiped out. There were dead buried under debris...it is difficult to know the exact figure. But the larger part of the city, it seemed to us from what we saw, almost the entire Vietnamese part of the city had been destroyed.

NARRATOR

General Fonde tried to reason with General Giap.

GENERAL JEAN-JULIEN FONDE

"Listen," I said, "I know war: murders, deaths, destruction, bridges blown up, burning houses. This is unthinkable. We have to prevent this." He said to me, "You listen. Politics come before economics. The destruction is not important. The deaths -- one million Vietnamese deaths -- not important. The French will die too. We are ready. It will last two years, five years if necessary. We will no longer give in."

NARRATOR

By late 1946, Ho Chi Minh's government was forced out of Hanoi, out of the cities. The first Vietnam war had started.

The French were confident that they could wipe out Giap's ragtag army quickly. They were a modern army with modern weapons, some bought with U.S. aid.

The Vietminh had widespread support from the peasants.

DUONG VAN KHANH

I heard about Uncle Ho who fought for the rights of the peasants and the workers. So as a peasant who has suffered a lot, I realized that the only correct thing for me to do was to follow the same path.

NGUYEN THI DINH

At first we did not have any weapons except for bamboo spears. But in the northern part of our country, they were producing arms. I was appointed to go there to report on the situation in the South.

Uncle Ho told me that he carried the South in the depth of his heart, and I should tell him what we needed so that the central government could supply us to fight the French and drive them out of the country. I replied that we needed guns. Uncle Ho said that the central government could only give us so many guns because they did not have many. The main thing, he said, was to capture the enemy's guns and use these guns against them.

NARRATOR

The French bogged down in a quicksand war. Again and again they declared an area "pacified," only to find it slipping back into Vietminh control. The guerrillas seemed to be everywhere and nowhere.

In an attempt to take popular support away from the Vietminh, the French created a rival Vietnamese government, the State of Vietnam. As its ruler, the French picked Vietnam's former emperor, Bao Dai. But they placed so many limitations on his regime that to many Vietnamese it did not seem at all independent.

NARRATOR

Nineteen-fifty brought a new source of help to the Vietminh. Mao Zedong's forces arrived at Vietnam's borders, having taken all of China. They extended diplomatic recognition to Ho's government, the first country to do so. The Soviet Union followed quickly. And a week later, the United States recognized Bao Dai's rival state.

Lines were being drawn in a continuing Cold War.

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR II (State Department Counselor)

In the early 1950s, the United States had a concept of communism, interna-tional communism as a hard monolithic block of China and Russia with no crevices in it that were seeking to expand and gain a dominant position in the world. In Europe, they had taken over Eastern Europe, pushed into Czechoslo-vakia; and in Southeast Asia, an area in which we had interests, they seemed to be trying to do the same thing.

PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN, 1950

The cause of freedom is being challenged throughout the world today by the forces of imperialistic communism..

NARRATOR

In May 1950, for the first time, President Truman authorized direct U.S. aid for the French war in Indochina -- $10 million -- the beginning of an American commitment.

PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN

...They have proved time after time that their talk about peace is only a cloak for imperialism.

NARRATOR

The U.S. commitment deepened after North Korean troops invaded South Korea at the end of June, 1950.

DEAN RUSK

It was decided on the very weekend of the North Korean attack that we would step up our aid very significantly to the French and to Southeast Asia. Because we did not know at that point whether or not the Chinese might attempt to move into that area as part of a general offensive in Asia.

NARRATOR

By the end of 1950, the United States had given $150 million in aid to the French forces, including planes, tanks, fuel, ammunition and napalm.

As U.S. strategists looked at Asia, they saw a spreading Communist menace. The fight in Korea had become an international war. And in Vietnam, the Vietminh had linked up with Communist China. Vietminh war capacities improved dramatic-ally.

COLONEL BUI TIN

We used the new weapons to mount offensives against the French. We were able to wipe out two large French units and capture all their weapons.

The way was cleared for communications between Vietnam and the outside world. Then we received military aid from China, especially equipment.

NARRATOR

The defeats on the northern border were a disaster for the French.

The Indochina war was no longer just a colonial conflict. It was still small, but it had become international, supported on both sides by major powers.

By the end of 1953, America was paying 80 percent of the war, over a billion dollars a year. "Le jaunissement" -- France's Vietnamizing of the war -- and other strategies to gain Vietnamese support had failed. The French controlled the cities, but the Vietminh controlled the countryside. The French controlled the day; the Vietminh, the night.

General Henri de Navarre came in as the fifth French commander in five years.

CAPTAIN JEAN POUGET

When General Navarre arrived, he opened a file right away and on that file I wrote "War Goals." We looked for what to tell the troops. Well, until the end this file remained practically empty. We never could express concretely our war goals.

NARRATOR

General Navarre tried yet another new strategy. French units were set up in remote areas, supplied by air. Their mission was to search out and destroy the Vietminh.

The French planned to test their new strategy in a valley set among the western mountains, 170 miles from Hanoi: Dienbienphu. The Vietminh had passed through the valley during a major attack on Laos. The French expected another attack and thought Dienbienphu would be the place to engage them. In November 1953, 12,000 French troops began dropping into the valley, under the command of Colonel Christian de Castries.

The top French command in Saigon was sure that Giap would never be able to mass enough troops around Dienbienphu, never get heavy artillery up the hills, never keep supply lines open. The command at Dienbienphu was equally confi-dent. The artillery officer insisted that no Vietminh gun would be able to fire more than three rounds.

CAPTAIN JEAN POUGET

I saw all sorts of civilian and military authorities go through Dienbienphu. Unless my memory is completely twisted, I don't remember a single one, absolutely not a single one of these authorities who didn't find that Dien-bienphu was a formidable base. It was the great land and air base, it was "untakeable."

NARRATOR

The Vietminh saw Dienbienphu as a great opportunity, but a great gamble, too. Ho Chi Minh's forces had lost heavily in attacks on other French strong points. But they decided to take the risk.

CAPTAIN CAO XUAN NGHIA

From Tahi-nguyen it took us about 45 days. We marched at night and rested during the day. Sometimes we just slept on the roadsides if there were no shelters around.

NARRATOR

The French command was inviting a battle because they thought the Vietminh would never be able to get enough troops and guns to Dienbienphu.

But they did. Fifty-one thousand Vietminh soldiers -- four times the number of French troops -- crossed the mountains, carrying supplies on their backs and bicycles, and hauling guns.

NARRATOR

Both sides had a special reason for wanting to win at Dienbienphu. At this same time, January 1954, the great powers were meeting in Berlin. They set a date and place -- April 26 in Geneva -- to meet and discuss Asian issues, includ-ing the Indochina crisis.

On March 13, Giap launched his attack on Dienbienphu. The battle began with massive "human wave" assaults.

The Vietminh guns blanketed French artillery from positions so well dug in and camouflaged that the French planes could not get at them.

The first post fell within eight hours.

By the next day, March 14, the Vietminh shelling had destroyed the main airstrip.

The French command staff was shocked. Colonel de Castries became withdrawn, uncommunicative. On the second night the artillery commander committed suicide saying, "I am completely dishonored."

Four days into the battle, the Vietminh controlled the entire perimeter. The cost was high: thousands were dead and wounded among the Vietminh.

Giap decided to change strategy.

GENERAL GIAP

This decision on the Dienbienphu front constitutes for me one of the biggest and the most difficult decisions in my fighting life.

COL. BUI TIN

As commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap decided to end this attack based on the human-wave tactic. The entire plan was changed. The attack was stopped and all the heavy artillery pieces were pulled back to a distance. Then trenches and tunnels were dug and the morale of the troops was rebuilt based on the slogan: "Advance solidly, Fight solidly." Shovels became extremely important weapons. All the cadres and soldiers put most of their time and energy into digging trenches and tunnels.

We slowly surrounded Dienbienphu with trenches, cutting into the airstrip so it could not be used again, slowly tightening the noose around the necks of the French.

NARRATOR

With the airstrip out, the French garrison was dependent on parachute drops, but Vietminh anti-aircraft fire forced pilots to fly too high. Supplies began falling into enemy hands.

General Giap's change in strategy was working, and he settled in for a long siege.

For the French, Dienbienphu became a nightmare. The rainy season started early with drenching downpours. French dugouts and shelters collapsed. Clean water became impossible to find. Medical supplies ran out. No planes could land to evacuate the wounded. Men who were wounded in the trenches sunk under the yard-high mud to die.

JEAN POUGET

I arrived during the night of May 2, and Dienbienphu fell on May 7. The memory I keep of it is one block of time. There was no day or night. I never lay down. I never slept. I don't remember eating. At four o'clock in the morning there was a lull. We were 35 left at my post, with one machine gun, one grenade left. So I asked on the radio, I said, "Since you cannot send rein-forcements..." He said, "Where do you want me to get them? You know there is nothing left." "Then give me the authorization to get out." He answered very simply, "No way. You're paratroopers, you're there to die."

We built a barricade with corpses at the entrance since we had no sandbags, and we waited. And we saw the shadows coming one by one, the Vietminh. I decided to throw my grenade and we immediately got return fire. One of my last impressions was to feel the wall of corpses shivering under the burst of fire. Then a grenade must have hit my helmet because the net was burned and the helmet dented. American helmets are very solid. I lost consciousness and when I came to, there was above me, very close, a surgeon's mask from which a voice came: "You are a prisoner of the army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

NARRATOR

Though Vietminh combat cameramen were present at Dienbienphu, scenes of the 55-day battle were restaged by a Soviet director after the French defeat. Some of the film sequences are authentic, some re-enacted.

Dienbienphu cost the French 1,500 dead, 4,000 wounded, 10,000 taken prisoner. Many of the prisoners died in Vietminh camps.

The Vietminh victory at Dienbienphu cost them even more: 8,000 dead, 15,000 wounded.

JOHN FOSTER DULLES, June 1954

You are all aware that the French and their Vietnam ally have suffered reverses, notably the fall of Dienbienphu after a superb defense. The present situation is grave, but by no means hopeless. In the present conference at Geneva, we and other free nations are seeking a formula by which the fighting can be ended and the people of Indochina assured true independence. So far the Communist attitude at Geneva is not encouraging.

NARRATOR

The Geneva Conference bogged down almost immediately. The United States delegation was ordered to watch and not to talk.

U. ALEXIS JOHNSON

My instructions were to go to the meetings. To not participate in them and not to agree to anything but to be there and sit at the table. And I found that a very difficult job, to sit at a table at which people were making discussions and some conclusions were being arrived at, without agreeing to them; in situations in which silence itself tends to give assent. I can tell you that I was very, very unhappy and perspired very, very freely.

NARRATOR

Emperor Bao Dai, head of the State of Vietnam, also sent a delegation to Geneva.

BAO DAI

I was told I should accept the Communists at the conference table. I said, "No, there is only one Vietnamese state. It is I. The Communists are rebels." Given my uncompromising position they turned the political conference into a military conference.

NARRATOR

In June, the French cabinet fell, and a new prime minister took over, a critic of the war, Pierre Mendes-France.

Mendes-France made a promise to the French National Assembly. If he could not resolve the Indochina question at Geneva within 30 days, he would resign.

The United States feared this meant France might abandon Indochina to the Communists.

U. ALEXIS JOHNSON

Washington was not at all clear as to what kind of an agreement Mendes-France was proposing to make or what agreement he would make -- and if the agreement was going to be something with which we could possibly live or acquiesce, or whether or not we were going to have to denounce it and, in effect, walk out of the conference.

NARRATOR

After much secret maneuvering, one week before his deadline, Mendes-France got all the participants in place in Geneva.

On July 20, the day before the deadline, two issues were still unresolved.

PREMIER PHAM VAN DONG

At the conference there were two issues under discussion: One was the temporary demarcation line between the two regions. And the other was the date of the general elections for the reunification of Vietnam. These two issues were closely connected. That was very clear.

NARRATOR

The Vietminh, flush with their victory at Dienbienphu, took a hard line on both issues, but on the last day, the Soviets and the Chinese forced them to compromise.

The Vietminh, who controlled most of the country, would get less than half. The elections to reunify Vietnam would take place; not soon, when the Viet-minh would surely win, but in two years. They had been undercut by their own allies. The Soviets and Chinese had several motives, among them, fear; if Mendes-France failed, France might keep fighting and America might intervene.

PREMIER PIERRE MENDES-FRANCE, July 21, 1954

Reason and peace have won out. After days and nights of hard negotiations, filled with anxiety and hope, the cease-fire has been signed. In my soul and my conscience, I am sure these are the best conditions we could have hoped for in the present state of things.

U. ALEXIS JOHNSON

My own feeling at the end of the conference was that we had probably obtained just about all that could be obtained in the light of the situation on the ground. I don't, I don't think we could have obtained much more. But I must say that very honestly I did not have much optimism that South Vietnam was going to be able to survive.

COL. BUI TIN

We thought that having signed the agreements, the French would now be forced by world opinion to carry out the Geneva accords. And we strongly believed that there would be a general election held in two years, and then the Revolution would certainly win. So we greeted each other, "In two years!" We expected to have a general election and reunification in two years.

NARRATOR

In the fall of 1954, the Vietminh marched into Hanoi, taking back from the French what they had lost eight years before.

To America and the world, it looked like the Vietminh would soon be marching into Saigon, too, as the French pulled out, taking everything: houses, trucks, factories, even their dead.

CREDITS

ROOTS OF A WAR

Written and Produced by JUDITH VECCHIONE

Associate Producer KAREN SHELDON

Film Editor ERIC W. HANDLEY

Production Assistant JACQUES WEISSGERBER

Assistant Editor MAUREEN FAHEY

Camera
DONATO BOTTIGLIONE
JOHN GORDON
JEAN-CLAUDE LARRIEU
CHRIS MORPHET
JOHN PACKWOOD
GERRY PINCHES
DICK WILLIAMS

Sound Recordists
ALLAN BYER
GEORGES JEANNET
ANDREW PARMAR
MICHAEL PENLAND
LAURENT POIRIER
PAUL ROBINSON
STEVE PHILLIPS

Assistant Camera
MIKE BARRETT
BERNARD BLAISE
PHILIPPE MORICE
MICHAEL NEGROPONTE
IAN OWLES
JULIAN WHITE

Assistant Sound Editor JOY MANESIOTIS

Editing Room Assistant ANN BARTHOLEMEW

Sound Mixer FRANK CUNNINGHAM

FOR VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY

Narrator WILL LYMAN

Film Research
RAYE FARR
KAY MATSCHULLAT
BRADLEY BORUM
JANET HAYMAN

Film Archives
ARCHIVES JEAN SAINTENY
ARCHIVES NATIONALES DE FRANCE
AWIF, DDR
BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE, FRANCE
BLACK STAR PHOTO AGENCY
WILLIAM BLUECHEL
BRITISH MOVIETONE FILM ARCHIVE
CBS NEWS
ECP ARMÉES
EDUCATIONAL AND TELEVISION FILMS, UK
THE DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
EMI PATHE' LIBRARY
JANE B. FISHEL
FRENCH EMBASSY, SPI
HANOI DOCUMENTARY STUDIOS
HEARST METROTONE NEWS
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
EDWARD G. LANSDALE
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
L'INSTITUT NATIONAL DE L'AUDIOVISUEL
THE MANSELL COLLECTION LIMITED
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES
NBC NEWS
THE NEW YORK TIMES
NGO VINH LONG
NHK, JAPAN
PARIS-MATCH
PATHÉ CINÉMA, FRANCE
ARCHIMEDES PATTI
PHOTOTHÈQUE-CINEMATHÈQUE ALBERT KAHN
NANCY PIERREPONT
DOUGLASS SCOTT
ROGER VIOLLET
SHERMAN GRINBERG LIBRARIES, INC.
SOVFOTO/EASTFOTO
STUDIO HAMBURG ATELIER GmbH
D.E. TAUNTON
TON THAT THIEN
TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX MOVIETONEWS, INC.
U.S. ARMY ARCHIVE AT TOBYHANNA
THE UNITED NATIONS
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY AND DEPT. OF DEFENSE
UPITN
VINCENT MALLE PRODUCTIONS
VISNEWS LIBRARY
WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
YORK/WILEY PRODUCTIONS, INC.

Special thanks to ABC NEWS

Archivist KENN RABIN

Producer in France HENRY DE TURENNE

Associate Producer in France SERGE GORDEY

Producer in Vietnam MARTIN SMITH

Reporter in England JOHN LAURENCE

Animation Camera EDWARD T. JOYCE RITA NEIMAN

Unit Production Manager JAN LANGMACK

Post Production Supervisors CYNTHIA MEAGER KUHN TONY PRIANO

Production Assistant ALISON SMITH

Publicity SARA ALTHERR

Titles and Graphic Design CHRIS PULLMAN

Translator NGO VINH LONG

Sound Effects CINESOUND EFFECTS LIBRARY, UK

Video Enhancement AUBREY STEWART

Music Composed by MICKEY HART BILLY KREUTZMANN

Music Performed by
VIC FIRTH
MICKEY HART
ZAKIR HUSSAIN
BILLY KREUTZMANN
AIRTO MOREIRA
MERL SAUNDERS
BOBBY VEGA

Music Recorded by PHIL KAFFEL

Director of Media Research LAWRENCE LICHTY

Chief Correspondent STANLEY KARNOW

Executive Producer RICHARD ELLISON

A co-production of WGBH Boston with Central Independent Television, UK, Antenne-2, France in association with LRE Productions

For The American Experience

Coordinating Producer DANIEL McCABE

Executive Producer MARGARET DRAIN

Major funding for the series was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, public television stations, and the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. Additional funding was provided by the George D. Smith Fund, The Christopher Reynolds Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This program was originally broadcast on PBS on October 4, 1983.

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
is a production of WGBH/Boston.

© 1983, 1997 WGBH Educational Foundation
All Rights Reserved

VIETNAM: A Television History is a 13-part documentary film series produced for public television by WGBH Boston, in cooperation with Central Independent Television/United Kingdom, and Antenne-2/France, and in association with LRE Productions. A six year project from conception to completion, the series carefully analyzes the costs and consequences of war in Vietnam for everyone involved, beginning with early history, through the French colonial period, and up to the fall of Saigon and unification of the country in 1975. Executive producer Richard Ellison, chief correspondent Stanley Karnow, and Director of Media Research Lawrence Lichty, with some 60 consultants and four production units, comprised the production team, centered at WGBH in Boston. Its members garnered hundreds of interviews, researched 70 film archives worldwide, and traveled the length of Vietnam to create perhaps the most exhaustive historical documentary series in television history.

NARRATOR

America made a commitment to South Vietnam, and to its President Ngo Dinh Diem in the 1950s under President Eisenhower.

PRESIDENT NGO DINH DIEM, May 1957

Mr. President, it is a great joy for me to be again in Washington, and a great honor to be welcomed by you. I thank you very much.

NARRATOR

By late 1963, Diem was dead, the U.S. government implicated in his downfall. This is the story of the beginning of America's war in Vietnam.

PRESIDENT EISENHOWER, 1953

Now let us assume that we lose Indochina. If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Kra Peninsula, the last little bit of land hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible. The tin and the tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming. But all India would be out-flanked. Burma would certainly, in its weakened condition, be no defense.So you see, somewhere along the line this must be blocked. It must be blocked now. Now that's what the French are doing. So when the United States votes $400 million to help that war we're not voting for a give-away program; we're voting for the cheapest way that we can prevent the occurrence of something that would be of the most terrible significance to the United States of America. Our security!

NARRATOR

America had given France more than $2 billion to stop the Communist-led Viet-minh in Indochina.

But in 1954, after eight years of war and a hundred years of colonial rule, the French were defeated.

The Geneva cease-fire agreement imposed a temporary division of Vietnam. The French could retain their influence in the South. A Communist regime, headed by Ho Chi Minh, took over the North.

To many Vietnamese, the Vietminh were nationalist heroes, finally victorious in the long war against the French, finally in control of their capital city, Hanoi.

To America's leaders, Ho Chi Minh represented international communism directed by Moscow. And, after China's fall to the Communists only five years before, they saw Ho's victory as another threat to the West.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN FOSTER DULLES, March 14, 1955I

I saw everywhere that there were people who were frightened and worried at the evidence, either within their own country or in very close proximity to it, of aggressive Chinese Communist intentions. It would seem as though it was quite possible that the Chinese Communists are not content to stop until it is apparent that they are stopped by superior resistance.

NARRATOR

In the South, American hopes for building an Anti-Communist state centered on Ngo Dinh Diem, a little-known nationalist appointed Prime Minister during the Geneva Conference. Diem had disliked French rule. Now, he was inheriting their shaky bureaucracy, a demoralized army, and a capital, Saigon, seething with fierce political rivalries.

He also faced a two-year deadline. The Geneva agreements called for country-wide elections in 1956. If Ho Chi Minh won, the Communists would control all of Vietnam. The Eisenhower Administration was uncertain about Diem: could he really the southern population and stop the spread of communism?

NGO DINH LUYEN (Diem's Youngest Brother)

It was the end of August 1954, a month and a half after my brother Diem had come to power. I arrived in Saigon to find that my brother couldn't count on his government workers, because everybody was panicky, completely convinced that the end was upon them. The advance, the Communist victory, would be at any moment. The government people had no intention of working. Everybody was trying to figure out how they were going to get out of this hornet's nest.

NARRATOR

Diem had been appointed by Bao Dai, the playboy emperor picked by the French. He had few allies in South Vietnam. As austere Catholic, he had gone to America in the early 1950s and secluded himself in a New Jersey seminary. Father John Keegan.

FATHER JOHN KEEGAN

He was, well, a mysterious kind of person because we didn't know quite exactly what he was all about. He didn't seem to us to be very important. He did dishes with us, and people of importance didn't do that; students did that, or brothers did that, and here was Diem, you know, doing dishes at the tables with the rest of the students. We were impressed with his devoutness. As seminarians, we were up at five-thirty in the morning, and Diem would already be in a pew meditating, reflecting. He would attend mass every morning, you know, quite devoutly, as far as we could see, and stay afterwards and pray. It was almost as though he were living the life of a monk.

NARRATOR

By the fall of 1954, refugees from the North, most of them Catholics, were fleeing towards the South. Many had worked with the French, and they feared Communist reprisals. Many expected that Diem, a Catholic, would favor them.

GEN. J. LAWTON COLLINS (U.S. Envoy to South Vietnam)

About 900,000 Catholics, under their village Catholic priests, moved from north to south. There was only a handful of people that moved south to north to get away from the Diem government. These refugees were settled by parishes in areas that were prepared for them by the South Vietnamese government. But they remained as Catholic enclaves. And, very much as the Southerners following our Civil War objected to the carpet-baggers that came from the North and took over a good many of the political posts in the South, so also the South Vietnamese strongly objected to the Diem adherents who came south.

NARRATOR

The refugees added to the confusion in the South, but Washington saw their value as a solid anti-Communist base for Diem, and as touching symbols of the Cold War.

NARRATOR

American agents assigned to the North used propaganda to spur the migration. Their chief, a veteran CIA specialist, was Colonel Edward Lansdale.

COLONEL EDWARD LANDSDALE

Some people were very reluctant about leaving home, so that the efforts on the propaganda were informative and also, uh, sort of urging them or nudging them real hard to come to a decision quickly, because there would be a period when free movement wouldn't be permitted.

So the orders to these people started turning into sharper and sharper form to get them to move and to overcome their reluctance at a time of great demorali-zation of the people.

NARRATOR

To signal the growing American commitment to Diem, President Eisenhower dis-patched a new special envoy, his World War II colleague General J. Lawton Collins. Collins, instructed to help train an army for Diem, recommended $100 million in aid for the new government.

GENERAL J. LAWTON COLLINS

Well, when I arrived in Saigon, it was chaotic. No question about that. The very day that I arrived the chief of staff of the Vietnamese Army, Hinh, was inveighing against Diem over a radio that was supported, as a matter of fact, by U.S. aid.

NGO DINH LUYEN

All through the night, command cars and machine gun carriers and army armored cars drove around and around the government palace.

GENERAL J. LAWTON COLLINS

Well I put a stop to that right off the bat, I can assure you. Hinh said he was going to stay on, and he hinted that he would start a rebellion. I assured him that if he did that, then all military aid to Vietnam would cease. And so finally, by putting pressure on Hinh, I got him to leave town in, oh, in about a week. And as a matter of fact, he never returned again.

NARRATOR

More challengers emerged from the chaos of South Vietnamese politics. Two of them headed armed religious factions. Another, backed by the French, was a former river pirate, now a notorious gangster and opium dealer.

GENERAL J. LAWTON COLLINS

Bay Vien was his name. He controlled the secret police, mind you, of Vietnam. He also controlled all the houses of prostitution and the gambling joints, and this was the source of his strength.

NARRATOR

Bay Vien tried to make a deal with Diem, but Diem refused. In open defiance of the powerful gangster, he staged a symbolic burning of opium pipes. Then he attacked Bay Vien's headquarters -- located in Saigon's central police station.

NARRATOR

Diem's challenge seemed nearly suicidal to Collins. But Lansdale, now Diem's closest American adviser, believed in him.

COLONEL EDWARD LANSDALE

Diem was laughing at me. We were out on the front porch, and he said, "You are standing about where I think the first shell is going to hit and it's going to be coming in in about 20 minutes and you better get out of here; and I'm not initiating, I'm receiving here." And sure enough, 20 minutes later the firing broke out against him.

NARRATOR

Bay Vien's private army fought Diem's troops through the streets of Saigon. The risks for Diem were enormous. Unless he could consolidate his power, he would lose American support. He had already lost Collins.

GENERAL J. LAWTON COLLINS

I liked Diem, but I became convinced that he did not have the political knack, nor the strength of character, politically, to manage this bizarre collection of people in Vietnam.

EISENHOWER, April 27, 1955

We have called General Collins back here, a man in whom we've had the greatest of confidence and who has been right in the thick of things out there, and who had been supporting, of course, Premier Diem. Now there have occurred lots of difficulties. People have left the cabinet and so on; you know what most of those difficulties are. The strange...and it's almost an inexplicable situation, at least from our viewpoint.

NARRATOR

Diem prevailed.

Blocks of Saigon lay in ruins, but he had crushed his enemies. Their surrender was a personal triumph for him, but it set a dangerous pattern: distrustful and stubborn, Diem would never compromise. He would confront and defy all opposition.

JOHN FOSTER DULLES, May 1955

And the government of Diem, which seemed to be...eh...almost on the ropes...uh...a few weeks ago, I think is reestablished with strength. Vietnam is now a free nation, at least the southern half of it is. And it's not got a puppet government, it's not got a government that we can give orders to and tell what we want it to do or we want it to refrain from doing. If it was that kind of a government, we wouldn't be justified in supporting it.

EVERETT BUMGARDNER (U.S. Information Agency)

In the early days, just after his installation when he took over, we had this group of Americans, all of whom had tremendous ideas of how to further the efforts of the country, of how to get this thing rolling, of how to get the country started, get the government organized and formed and going.

Here you have a president, of the old cloth, who is quite formal, but having to put up with an endless stream of Americans taking up his time.

He didn't want to go out into the countryside; he didn't feel that the Vietnamese wanted to touch him, and see him, and be up close in the American style. We convinced him that he was not too well known and that Ho Chi Minh was very well known by everybody, and therefore that he should build up his popularity.

He made a series of long trips throughout the countryside, got big receptions. There was, of course, an organized claque to get them enthusiastic. And he began to believe in this, that this was a good public relations ploy, that he could succeed in being a popular president.

NARRATOR

Ho Chi Minh's followers believed the country-wide elections in 1956 would bring them to power in a reunified Vietnam. They had withdrawn their troops from the South, but the Geneva agreements allowed their political organizers to remain there and rally support for Ho.

DR. PHAM THI XUAN QUE

I and my family were very happy and supportive of the Geneva agreement because we believed that there would not be any reprisal against the people who re-grouped to the North, and those who remained behind. We thought that in two years we would have a free and fair election in which the people could freely choose their own government.

NARRATOR

The U.S. had opposed the Geneva agreements, but pledged to respect them. Diem, who had condemned the accords, now resisted the nationwide election. Dulles has to decide what to do.

PAUL M. KATTENBURG (State Dept. Aide)

He sat very quietly; we all sat very quietly. I can recall distinctly the clock ticking away on his wall, and his breathing heavily as he read through the paper, turning to us, the few of us who were there at that meeting and saying...(imitates) "I don't believe Diem wants to hold elections; I believe we should support him in this."

EISENHOWER, 1967 Interview

There is this about it. At that time, we had a dictator that was now control-ling more than half the country, and with a great deal of the population, and he would get a hundred percent of the vote!

NARRATOR

The Americans and Diem carried the day. There were no country-wide elections. Vietnam remained divided, and Washington welcomed Diem as a hero.

DIEM AND EISENHOWER, 1959

Eisenhower: You have exemplified in your corner of the world patriotism of thehighest order. You have brought to your great task of organizingyour country the greatest of courage, the greatest of statesman-ship. You are indeed welcome sir.

NARRATOR

Without American support, Diem would never have survived. With it, he seemed to have done the impossible. Washington held him up to the world as a model of anti-communism, the miracle man of Asia.

NARRATOR

Diem welcomed the weapons and the dollars, but he often resisted the Americans' advice. He was polite, but he was rigid and proud, and fiercely nationalistic.

EVERETT BUMGARDNER

I think he looked upon us as great big children -- well intentioned, powerful, with a lot of technical know-how, but not very sophisticated in dealing with him or his race, or his country's problems.

NARRATOR

During the late 1950s, Diem's problems grew. Like a traditional Vietnamese mandarin, he drew his small circle closer around him, relying on his family, especially his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and Nhu's wife. Their secret police, run by Nhu, set out to eliminate Communists and other dissidents.

LE MINH DAO

After the Vietminh army regrouped to the North and the Diem regime took over the South, repression began. Those of us who had directly fought against the French, and people who had helped organize the resistance against them, were the special targets of Diem's revenge.

DR. PHAM THI XUAN QUE

The manners of tortures inflicted upon these people by Ngo Dinh Diem and his hound dogs -- this was our term for the secret police -- were extremely inhumane. We were not Catholics; we only worshipped our ancestors. And so they forced us to throw the altar to the ancestors away and to become Catholics and to de-nounce the Communists.

EVERETT BUMGARDNER

They had, in some provinces, eliminated most of the stay-behind political agents, the ones that had exposed themselves and proselytized the people and began to complain against the government. But in doing this with this heavy-handed police apparatus that he had set up, they also harmed and incarcerated and eliminated a lot of people who were not involved with the Communist movement.

LE MINH DAO

As the Americans and Diem became more and more repressive, people started telling us we'd have to fight. They said we'd be wiped out if we kept to our plan of just political struggle.

NARRATOR (National Liberation Front Film)

This film marked a new phase of the struggle in the South, the formation in 1960 of the National Liberation Front, a Communist-organized coalition of anti-Diem forces.

Denied the election promised at Geneva, and nearly destroyed by Diem and Nhu's police, the Communist leadership and its southern supporters decided to go back to war. It would be, they said, a war of national liberation -- against Diem and against the American presence in Vietnam.

SOVIET PREMIER NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, United Nations Speech, October 12, 1960

You will not be able to strangle the voice of the people, which roars out and will go on sounding: Down with colonialism! The sooner we bury it, and the deeper, the better.

NARRATOR

At the U.N., Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev encouraged wars of national liberation. The new president took over in an atmosphere of grave threats and confrontation between East and West.

John Kennedy was in office only a few months when he suffered a humiliating defeat at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Communist leader Fidel Castro crushed a secret American plan to oust him and then paraded his prisoners for the world to see. The invasion planning had begun before Kennedy took office and Eisenhower joined him during the crisis.

Soon, a badly shaken Kennedy faced questions on another war of national liberation -- in Vietnam.

JFK AT PRESS CONFERENCE, May 1961

The problem of troops is a matter, that -- and the matter of what we're going to do to assist Vietnam to retain its independence is a matter -- still under con-sideration. There are a good many...which I think can most usefully wait 'til we've had consultation with the government...which, up to the present time...which will be one of the matters which Vice President Johnson will deal with -- the problem of consultations with the government of Vietnam as to what further steps could most usefully be taken.

NARRATOR

Kennedy sent his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, to Saigon to reassure Diem. The U.S. seemed to be faltering, and Diem was worried. Johnson performed like a Texas politician on the campaign trail.

NETWORK NEWS, May 1961

Johnson: Tell 'em that in the battle for Britain, when the clouds were over the little island of England, Churchill said, "We'll fight 'em in the alleys, in the streets..."News Commentator: On his tour around Saigon, Vice President Johnson has stopped his motorcade. He talks to just about anybody around. Now he's taking a ride in what's known as a "pedicab." Johnson really enjoys this kind of thing. Nothing phases him; he tries everything.

AMBASSADOR FREDERICK NOLTING

President Kennedy was determined on this one because of a number of early setbacks -- the Bay of Pigs, to begin; the dressing-down, in effect, that he got from Khruschchev in the Vienna Conference when he first...when they first met each other...And finally, the Berlin Wall. So Vietnam was the point.

NARRATOR

Kennedy and his men saw themselves in a struggle with Khrushchev for the loyalty of new nations. To them, "national liberation" was code for "Communist aggression."

PRESIDENT KENNEDY at the U.N., September 25, 1961

South Vietnam is already under attack. Sometimes by a single assassin. Some-times by a band of guerrillas. Recently by full battalions. The peaceful borders of Burma, Cambodia and India have been repeatedly violated. And the peaceful people of Laos are in danger of losing the independence they gained not so long ago.No one can call these wars of liberation. For these are free countries, living under their own governments. Nor are these aggressions any less real because men are knifed in their homes and not shot in the field of battle.

NARRATOR

In October 1961, two key Kennedy advisers, General Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow, arrived in Vietnam. Their visit coincided with a serious flood. They recommended a big increase in military aid, including U.S. combat troops disguised as flood fighters.

Diem said no to me troops. He needed U.S. support, but he wanted to keep control, and he wanted to keep the foreigners out.

AMBASSADOR NOLTING

He feared an overwhelming American influence. That was one of the reasons he didn't want American combat forces. He was, to my mind, prescient in this, and said, in effect, he thought it would be a bonanza for the Vietcong.

NARRATOR

Kennedy, too, was reluctant to send ground troops, but he wanted to be tough. The answer for "little wars" -- guerrilla wars like South Vietnam's -- was counterinsurgency. Special forces, like the Green Berets, were sent to train the troops of threatened countries. They went in small numbers, but they brought with them the best of American military technology.

Counterinsurgency was stylish and exciting, and it suited JFK's needs per-fectly. One of its strongest proponents was Kennedy aide Roger Hilsman.

ROGER HILSMAN

My idea was that the role of the special forces were to train Vietnamese to behave as guerrillas, harassing the supply lines down through the mountains of the Vietcong. And the special -- American special forces were to train their special forces to do that.

NARRATOR

The Communist-led movement in the South, now termed the Vietcong, had made big gains in 1961. With increased U.S. aid and the new counterinsurgency program, Kennedy raised America's ante. He would win this limited war -- with a few American advisers, a lot of American hardware, and a positive attitude...

CAPTAIN EDMOND FRICKE

Ifeel that being humble and putting yourself in their position is the way to do it. I have gone out and helped them pick watermelons. I walk around with my bodyguard, he and I, and we go visit them and drink tea with them in their houses -- in their houses -- and this is an oddity to them because they, they can't imagine that an American can put himself in this position. So there-fore, it's going to be the man who can give them the most, show them that he...they can support them better that will win their confidence and win their support.And, as you know, it's the man who gets the support of this farmer who is going to eventually win this war.SOUTH VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT FILM, 1962Absolute loyalty to the fatherland and the President of the Republic of Vietnam...We swear to sacrifice ourselves to defend our country and the personalist republic regime.

NARRATOR

The ceremonies hid widening cracks inside the regime. In early 1962, two of Diem's own air force officers bombed the palace, hoping to topple the tightly-knit ruling family. Madame Nhu was injured.

INTERVIEW WITH MADAME NHU, 1963

Mme Nhu: Just next to me was a bomb that had fallen. It was fat like this, just like a little pig. It hadn't exploded; it was just there. And I was just there, too.Interviewer: Are you afraid of death?Mme Nhu: Me? Oh, no, not at all...because in my country, death is always just around the corner. If you're afraid of it, you can't do anything.

NARRATOR

The Vietcong had assassinated 500 civilians and Diem officials, and killed 1,500 of his troops in the first half of 1961. VC influence in the country-side was growing.

Diem's brother, Nhu, encouraged by U.S. advisers, promoted a program to isolated peasants from the guerrillas. He ordered the construction of thousands of fortified villages, "strategic hamlets."

SOUTH VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT FILM, 1962

We are building strategic hamlets to bring peace throughout the country. This was their motto and their code of faith. Volunteers from every class and age, men and women and children, began the hard, physical work of construction. First they broke arable land to make the deep moats and the high fences...First came the moat around the entire village. The bamboo spikes, making an ancient but thoroughly efficient protection against invaders, have become the trademark of the strategic hamlets, and each spike is cut and set by willing hands.

NARRATOR

In reality, life inside the spiky perimeter didn't measure up to the ideal. Diem's half-hearted land reform in the '50s had failed, and now the already resentful farmers were forced to relocate to the hamlets, which were targets for Vietcong attacks.

NARRATOR

Defense Secretary McNamara toured some hamlets with Ambassador Nolting in May 1962. Though American officials had private reservations about the program, McNamara publicly praised it.

The Americans were trying to be optimistic.

MAJOR ROBERT RYAN INTERVIEW, 1962

Q: Major, how would you say the war was going in your sector?A: Well, I think here, lately, the...it's going a lot better; I think we're beginning to win the people over; our operations are going better. We're actually getting VC.Q: What evidence do you have that the...you're winning the people over?A: Well, we've got the "strategic hamlet" program going on. And when we go out on these operations, it seems like the people are more friendly. Several times recently we've had people warn the Vietnamese troops that there was an ambush ahead, or something like that. This means the people are getting on our side.KENNEDY PRESS CONFERENCE, December 12, 1962Q: It was just a year ago that you ordered stepped-up aid to Vietnam. Seems to be a good deal of discouragement about the progress. Can you give us your assessment?A: No, we are putting in a major effort in Vietnam. As you know, we have uh, have about ten or 11 times as many men there as we had a year ago. They are...We've had a number of casualties. We've put in an awful lot of equipment. We've been going ahead with the strategic hamlet proposal. In some phases the military program has been quite successful. There is great difficulty, however, in fighting a guerrilla war; you need ten to one, or 11 to one, especially in terrain as difficult as South Vietnam. But I'm, uh...so we're not, uh...we don't see the end of the tunnel; but, I must say, I don't think it's darker than it was a year ago -- in some ways, lighter.

NARRATOR

But there was rising opposition to Diem's government, especially to his brother Nhu, who controlled the secret police and an elaborate intelligence network. Brilliant and eccentric, Nhu was at war not only with the Communists, but with all critics of the regime.

MME. NHU

My husband, he was very unhappy with...on one side his brother, the other side, his wife. He considered both of us babes in the woods. He said to his brother, "You should be a monk," and "You," to me, "just keep quiet -- don't say anything."

NARRATOR

Vietnam had been a concern to the Kennedy Administration, but it was not a major concern. Suddenly, in the spring of 1963, it became a crisis. Buddhist groups, protesting that Diem's soldiers had killed eight worshippers while breaking up a gathering in Hue, began a series of demonstrations.

At first, Diem and his family did not take the Buddhists seriously.

NGO DINH LUYEN

My brother Diem, the president, never stopped giving aid and good advice to the Buddhists. He used to say to them, "Try to do something to reorganize your religion. As it is now, just about anyone can say he's a good Buddhist. All he has to do is shave his head and eyebrows and put on a robe."

NARRATOR

As the demonstrations grew, Diem rejected compromise and met the challengers with force. A Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, countered with a traditional act that horrified the West.

THICH TU HANH

The Reverend Quang Duc decided to dedicate his body as a torch to light the struggle to preserve religious teaching. I saw him step out of his car and assume the lotus position. Then a monk stepped forward and helped the Reverend pour gasoline on himself. At that moment, a flame engulfed his body.

NARRATOR

The photos hit the front pages in America and were on Kennedy's desk in the morning. Quang Duc had become a martyr. Saigon students joined the Buddhists and the protests against Diem exploded.

THICH TU HANH

During the Reverend Quang Duc's cremation, everything was burned except for his heart, which remained intact. His heart was set on fire two more times, but it still did not burn.

MME. NHU, 1963...

What have the Buddhist leaders done comparatively...the only thing they have done, they have barbecued one of their monks whom they have intoxicated, whom they have abused the confidence, and even that barbecuing was done not even with self-sufficient means because they used imported gasoline.

ROGER HILSMAN

The Buddhists bit, tasted a little political blood, bit harder, tasted more political blood, and then finally began to use American television. They would -- none of them spoke English but their signs were all in English.

And every time they planned a demonstration, or a Buddhist burned himself to death they would call up the American press, and they would appear and,...So they learned to use the American press media for political purposes; they learned how to develop political power as they went along.

NGO DINH NHU, 1963

The Buddhist affair and the problems with the students were set up and orchestrated in such a way as to intoxicate public opinion here at home and abroad against the government of South Vietnam...because this government fights the Communists, and because it refuses to be a puppet government.

NARRATOR

In the convulsive summer of 1963, events raced far beyond Washington's con-trol. The Buddhists became the rallying point for long-simmering opposition to Diem. Alarmed, Diem's senior army officers began to talk of ousting him. Ambassador Nolting stood by Diem.

AMBASSADOR NOLTING

I never felt that President Diem was a prisoner of his own family, or of any particular group, Roman Catholic or any other. I felt that he had a very difficult job to govern the country in a way which would not permit the Vietcong to take over.

NARRATOR

But Hilsman and others in Washington had decided that Diem and Nhu should go. Ambassador Nolting, Diem's ally, returned home.

The new ambassador was Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican. Kennedy wanted bipartisan company in the Vietnam crisis.

NARRATOR

Diem and Nhu struck again at the Buddhists even before Lodge reached Saigon. Nhu's special forces raided the temples, sealed them shut, and arrested thousands of Buddhists. Diem's generals, increasingly frustrated, started to plot against the government.

GENERAL TRAN VAN DON

In the Vietnamese army, a majority of the soldiers were Buddhists. I am a Buddhist. I had a lot of trouble with my family, who reproached me for having attacked the pagodas. But it wasn't true. People were saying that the army staged the attacks, but actually it was units loyal to Diem who attacked the pagodas. But that doesn't matter. We were equally responsible. So then we had to do something to show Diem: either he had to change his policies, or we would have to change Mr. Diem.

LUCIEN CONEIN

I talked to, specifically to General Don, and I talked to other generals. And then this was the first indication that I had that there was really something serious going on -- that there was actually a coup, so to speak, being thought of by the senior officers of the Vietnamese army.

NARRATOR

The U.S. was now spending a million and a half dollars a day on the war. There were 16,000 American soldiers in South Vietnam, still called "advisers," but inevitably seeing action. The growing crisis in the cities threatened the Diem government and the whole war effort. The generals, through Conein, secretly asked Lodge for American support in their plot to topple Diem. Suspecting a coup, Diem and Nhu declared martial law. Lodge cabled Washington for instruc-tions.

The prospect of a coup split the Kennedy ranks. But four top advisers took the initiative, cabling Lodge to tell Diem to get rid of Nhu. If Diem refused, Lodge could tell the generals to go ahead.

HENRY CABOT LODGE

I brought up this question of getting Nhu out of the country, and he, he absolutely refused to discuss any of the things that I was instructed to discuss. And it gave me a little jolt, frankly. I think that when an ambassador goes to call on a chief of state and he has been instructed by the President to bring up certain things, the chief of state ought to at least talk about them.

MME. NHU

Without him, the president would not be...I don't think that it would be easy for him to rule, to rule the country -- to govern the country. That's why when it was...requested...he was requested to...to send away my husband, he...he said, it was absolutely a stupid demand because he knew very well that my husband can do without him, but he, he could not do without my husband.

NARRATOR

The Buddhists continued their protests, and the tensions in Saigon now rever-berated in Washington, where Kennedy still had doubts about a coup. The President wavered; then, in a television interview, he sent a subtle but sharp signal to Diem.

JFK INTERVIEW WITH WALTER CRONKITE, September 2, 1963

Kennedy: In the final analysis, it's their war. They're the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it -- the people of Vietnam against the Communists. We're prepared to continue to assist them, but I don't think that the war can be won unless the people support the effort, and in my opinion, in the last two months the government has gotten out of touch with the people.Cronkite: Do you think that this government still has time to regain the support of the people?Kennedy: Yes, I do. With changes in policy and, perhaps, with, in personnel, I think it can. If it doesn't make those changes, I would think that the chances of winning it would not be very good.

GEN. TRAN VAN DON

We wanted to be certain that if we succeeded with the coup we would have American support afterward, that the Americans agreed with us because we needed their aid to continue the war.

I asked Conein what the Americans thought. He said yes, the Americans agree.

LUCIEN CONEIN

I don't have any files on the dates of the conversation, or anything like that. So I don't really know at what point...I know that I gave them a green light prior to the coup -- upon the instruction of my government.

NARRATOR

Madame Nhu toured America, trying to rally support for the beleaguered regime. At the same time, Nhu hinted that he might make a deal with the Communists.

NGO DINH NHU, October 1963

I am an anti-Communist from the point of view of doctrine. I am not an anti-Communist from the point of view of politics or humanity. I consider the Communists as brothers, lost sheep. I am not for a crusade against the Communists because we are a little country, and we only want to live in peace.

NARRATOR

On October 26, Vietnam's national day, Diem reviewed the troops.

HENRY CABOT LODGE

He knew that a coup was being planned. And he was -- I bet you he had every...

every possible resource that he had at his disposal out trying to find out where they were and how to, how to destroy it.

NARRATOR

Lodge, through Conein, had signaled his approval of the generals' plan. But suspecting a double-cross, the generals refused to reveal the date for the coup.

It began on November 1.

LODGE INTERVIEW

LODGE: And it was just a little after one when we heard the first shell go off. And then we went up onto the roof and you could see the planes dropping bombs and you could see the troops starting to come down the street, and the thing was really on.

Q: Do you remember what your own feeling was at seeing all that? Lodge: Well, my own feeling...Well, I'd sort of been living with it for, for many -- several weeks. So I can't say I was surprised. But of course, you're always -- it's always a very interesting thing to see, to see people shooting.

He [Diem] telephoned me, about four o'clock. And he said, "They've started the coup," and he said, "I want to know what the attitude of the United States Government is." "Well," I said, "it's four o'clock in the morning in Washington and I just, I don't know what the attitude is."

"Oh," he said, "you must have an idea." "No," I said, "I haven't." But I said, "I'm very alarmed about your personal safety, and I have taken steps so that you can be made titular chief of state in a new government, or that you can be flown out of the country to some safe place, or else," I said, "I, I offer you asylum here, in the residence."

He said, "No." He said, "I'm going to restore order."

MME. NHU AT PRESS CONFERENCE, Los Angeles, November 1963

Q: Will you seek political asylum in this country if the coup is successful?

Mme. Nhu: Never!

Q: Why?Mme. Nhu: No, because I...I cannot stay in a country of people who have stabbed my government in time of war.

Q: What news do you have of your husband?

Mme. Nhu: And first I do not think that it will succeed. You can be sure that I am sure that it will never succeed. News from my husband? I know ...I know only that he expected the coup.

Q: What of his welfare? Is he all right? Is he all right?

RADIO SAIGON, November 2, 1963

You're tuned to the 8:20 AM spot, the 99.9 FM spot. This is AFRS Radio in Saigon. The time now is one o'clock. The American ambassador and the Commander of Military Assistance Command announce that all Americans are cautioned that a curfew from twenty hundred hours last night to zero seven hundred hours this morning is in effect for the Saigon-Cholon-Gia Dinh area. For their own safety, Americans should stay off the streets, unless movement is absolutely necessary for conduct of official business.

NARRATOR

At three-thirty on the morning of November 2, the generals' infantry and tanks began their assault on the palace.

When they broke through, Diem and Nhu were gone.

MME. NHU, November 1963

I tell you that if really the Ngo family have been treacherously killed, in that effect it will be only the beginning. The beginning of the story.

NARRATOR

As the soldiers sacked the palace, the generals searched for Diem and Nhu. Finally, they made contact and General Minh -- called "Big" Minh -- dispatched a convoy to get them.

GEN. TRAN VAN DON

One of the group who'd gone to get the two brothers, a general named Mai Huu Xuan, came to the door of the office, saluted and said to Big Minh: "Mission accomplished."

HENRY CABOT LODGE

Within minutes after he was killed I got the word. He and his brother left the palace -- the Gia Long Palace -- and went in this underground passageway to this Chinese merchant's house in Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon. And in the morning they went into the Roman Catholic Chinese church, and when they came out there were armed men and an armored car, and they were pushed into the armoured car and, I believe, shot inside the armoured car.

ROGER HILSMAN

In a very real sense, the ultimate responsibility for the coup lay with President Ngo Dinh Diem, because he did things that we told him over and over again that if he did them we would have to publicly disapprove of them, and that this would encourage a coup. And he said, "I know." Now he went ahead and did them, and we had to publicly disapprove of them. There was no choice.

MME. NHU

All that is...how do you say...arrogance, comes from arrogance. The U.S. was convinced it possessed the truth, and was full of contempt.

FREDERICK NOLTING

My own view was that, even at that point, we would have done much better to stick with the constitutional government, or at the very least, to have let them know that our policy was changing. I don't think it was fair, just or honorable to an ally of nine years, to do this behind his back.

NARRATOR

John F. Kennedy's government had been complicit in Diem's overthrow, and that complicity deepened America's involvement in Southeast Asia.

But Kennedy's death in Dallas only three weeks later overshadowed the assassinations in Saigon. It was left for the new president to discover what Kennedy, and Eisenhower, and Diem had created in South Vietnam.

Credits

Written and Produced by ELIZABETH DEANE

Associate Producer JUDITH VECCHIONE

Film Editor CAROL HAYWARD

Production Assistant KARAN SHELDON

Assistant Editors
DANIEL EISENBERG
STEPHANIE MONROE
ALEXANDRA ANTHONY

Camera
JEAN-MARIE ESTÈVE
BOYD ESTUS
JOHN GORDON
GERRY PINCHES
CARLO POLETTI

Sound Recordists
PIERRE BEFVE
ALLAN BYER
FURIO d'ORTANO
JOHN FITZPATRICK
JOHN H. MOSS
STEVE PHILLIPS

Assistant Camera
BERNARD BLAISE
LUCIO GRANELLI
ROGER HAYDOCK
GREG KELLY
JULIAN WHITE
DICK WILLIAMS

Electrician SERGE PINSON

Sound Editor BILL ANDERSON

Assistant Sound Editor DANIEL EISENBERG

Sound Mixer FRANK CUNNINGHAM

FOR VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY

Narrator WILL LYMAN

Film Research
RAYE FARR
KAY MATSCHULLAT
BRADLEY BORUM
JANET HAYMAN

Film Archives
ARCHIVES JEAN SAINTENY
ARCHIVES NATIONALES DE FRANCE
AWIF, DDR
BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE, FRANCE
BLACK STAR PHOTO AGENCY
WILLIAM BLUECHEL
BRITISH MOVIETONE FILM ARCHIVE
CBS NEWS
ECP ARMÉES
EDUCATIONAL AND TELEVISION FILMS, UK
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
EMI PATHÉ LIBRARY
JANE B. FISHEL
FRENCH EMBASSY, SPI
HANOI DOCUMENTARY STUDIOS
HEARST METROTONE NEWS
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
EDWARD G. LANSDALE
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
L'INSTITUT NATIONAL DE L'AUDIOVISUEL
THE MANSELL COLLECTION LIMITED
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
NBC NEWS
THE NEW YORK TIMES
NGO VINH LONG
NHK, JAPAN
PARIS-MATCH
PATHÉ CINÉMA, FRANCE
ARCHIMEDES PATTI
PHOTOTHÈQUE-CINEMATHÈQUE ALBERT KAHN
NANCY PIERREPONT
DOUGLASS SCOTT
ROGER VIOLLET
SHERMAN GRINBERG FILM LIBRARIES, INC.
SOVFOTO/EASTFOTO
STUDIO HAMBURG ATELIER GmbH
D.E. TAUNTON
TON THAT THIEN
TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX MOVIETONEWS, INC.
U.S. ARMY ARCHIVE AT TOBYHANNA
UNITED NATIONS
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY AND DEPT. OF DEFENSE
UPITN
VINCENT MALLE PRODUCTIONS
VISNEWS LIBRARY
WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
YORK/WILEY PRODUCTIONS, INC.

Special thanks to ABC NEWS

Archivist KENN RABIN

Producer in France HENRI DE TURENNE

Associate Producer in France SERGE GORDEY

Producer in Vietnam MARTIN SMITH

Reporter in England JOHN LAURENCE

Animation Camera
EDWARD T. JOYCE
RITA NEIMAN

Unit Production Manager JAN LANGMACK

Post Production Supervisors
CYNTHIA MEAGHER KUHN
TONY PRIANO

Post Production Assistant ALISON SMITH

Publicity SARA ALTHERR

Titles and Graphic Design CHRIS PULLMAN

Translator NGO VINH LONG

Sound Effects CINESOUND EFFECTS LIBRARY, UK

Video Enhancement AUBREY STEWART

Music Composed by
MICKEY HART
BILLY KREUTZMANN

Music Performed by
VIC FIRTH
MICKEY HART
ZAKIR HUSSAIN
BILLY KREUTZMANN
AIRTO MOREIRA
MERL SAUNDERS
BOBBY VEGA

Music Recorded by PHIL KAFFEL

Director of Media Research LAWRENCE LICHTY

Chief Correspondent STANLEY KARNOW

Executive Producer RICHARD ELLISON

A coproduction of WGBH Boston with Central Independent Television, UK, Antenne-2, France in association with LRE Productions

For THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Coordinating Producer DANIEL McCABE

Executive Producer MARGARET DRAIN

Major funding for the series was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, public television stations, and the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. Additional funding was provided by the George D. Smith Fund, The Christopher Reynolds Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This program was originally broadcast on PBS on October 4, 1983.

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
is a production of WGBH/Boston.

© 1983, 1997 WGBH Educational Foundation
All Rights Reserved

==

VIETNAM: A Television History is a 13-part documentary film series produced for public television by WGBH Boston, in cooperation with Central Independent Television/United Kingdom, and Antenne-2/France, and in association with LRE Productions. A six year project from conception to completion, the series carefully analyzes the costs and consequences of war in Vietnam for everyone involved, beginning with early history, through the French colonial period, and up to the fall of Saigon and unification of the country in 1975. Executive producer Richard Ellison, chief correspondent Stanley Karnow, and Director of Media Research Lawrence Lichty, with some 60 consultants and four production units, comprised the production team, centered at WGBH in Boston. Its members garnered hundreds of interviews, researched 70 film archives worldwide, and traveled the length of Vietnam to create perhaps the most exhaustive historical documentary series in television history.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

January 20, 1961: Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet anyhardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty...

September 2, 1963: ...These people who say that we ought to withdraw from Vietnam are wholly wrong, because if we withdrew from Vietnam, the Communists would control Vietnam. Pretty soon Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya would go, and all of Southeast Asia would be under the control of the Communists and under the domination of the Chinese...

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, August 3, 1965

If this little nation goes down the drain and can't maintain her independence, ask yourself, what's going to happen to all the other little nations?

TIGER SQUADRON HELICOPTER GUNSHIP CROSSTALK

Voice #1: This is Roger 26 receiving fire 9:00, yellow smoke, 200 meters, automatic weapons, over.

Voice #2: This is 21...

NARRATOR

Lyndon Johnson inherited America's commitment to an anti-Communist government in South Vietnam, and 16,000 military advisers. Some were more than advisers in the war against the Communist-led insurgents, the Vietcong.

 

TIGER SQUADRON CROSSTALK

Voice #2: Tigerlee, Tigerlee, Tiger 6, Tiger 6

Voice #1: This is 26.

Voice #1: This is 26. We have some people running along the dikes. Actually the canal is perpendicular to the one you're attacking now. They have on black uniforms, estimate approximately three zero. Do you have them in sight? Over.

Voice #2: This is 23. Roger. We have them in sight. We are engaging them at the present time.

Voice #1: Roger.

Voice #2: Good job. I saw you splatter one right in the back with a rocket.

Voice #1: Roger. Got lucky I guess.

NARRATOR

Johnson's main concern at the time was not this growing war in Asia, but another war at home.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, January 1964

And this administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

NARRATOR

Few American presidents have been as successful as Johnson in promoting their

programs in Congress. He later called his "The Great Society."

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, June 1964

We are going to build a great society, where no man or woman are the victim of fear or poverty or hatred. Where every man and woman has a chance for fulfill-ment and prosperity and hope.

NARRATOR

But there was Vietnam. As Johnson took office, peasants, often helped by the Vietcong, destroyed the strategic hamlets designed to isolate them from the Vietcong. President Diem had built them, but now Diem was dead. And the structure he had created with American support was being smashed.

General Minh had ousted Diem with American approval. He lasted three months. General Khanh, with American blessing, took over in a bloodless coup. The political turmoil deepened.

NARRATOR

President Johnson offered America's full support to this new, untried leader.

 

ROBERT MCNAMARA

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. General Taylor and I have known General Khanh for a considerable period of time. He has our admiration, our respect and our complete support.

NARRATOR

McNamara barnstormed South Vietnam with Khanh, trying to promote him to his own people. Privately McNamara was gloomy. He warned Johnson that the Vietcong controlled 40 percent of the countryside.

 

ROBERT MCNAMARA

We are here to emphasize that the United States will maintain its interest and its presence in your country. There is no question whatsoever of our abandon-ing that interest. We'll stay for as long as it takes. We shall provide whatever help is required to win the battle against the Communist insurgents.

NARRATOR

To the Communists in Hanoi, America's presence in the South was yet another act of foreign aggression. They recalled 1,000 years of struggle against foreign invaders: Chinese, Japanese, French. And now they faced Americans.

 

NARRATOR

Ho Chi Minh stepped up his support for the Vietcong at the same time Johnson renewed the American commitment to defeat them. Each responded to the chaos in the South with new resolve.

 

COLONEL BUI TIN

During the final months of 1963, Diem was shot and Kennedy was assassinated. So the situation in the South changed. Just at that time, President Ho Chi Minh called on all Vietnamese to double their efforts to help the people in the South. The resistance forces in the South were still very weak and badly equipped. In certain areas, they had trouble recruiting troops. Therefore, we decided that well-equipped and larger forces had to be sent to the South.

NARRATOR

Hanoi decided to escalate the war. And the Vietcong stepped up their attacks in the countryside.

 

JAMES THOMSON (National Security Council Staff)

When Lyndon Johnson inherited the presidency, he inherited many things, but one of them was the legacy of the Vietnam War and the Democratic president's felt-need not to lose one square foot of territory to communism, particularly in Asia. To draw the line, to hold the line and to keep the presidency there-by, because if you lose, the final domino in the domino sequence is not some Asian country, it's the presidency itself.

 

NARRATOR

In 1964 the pressure on Johnson to hold the line against communism came from Republican conservatives. In July they nominated Senator Barry Goldwater for president. He was an outspoken anti-Communist.

 

SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER, July 1964

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice...

NARRATOR

Johnson wanted a big victory. And he wanted to keep Vietnam out of the campaign. As early as May he had his aides draft a resolution of Congressional support for the war effort.

 

JAMES THOMSON

It was discovered, however, in researching the Senate that the introduction of such a resolution would cause a very major filibuster by two or three strong opponents of the war at the time and, therefore, do more harm than good, create not consensus but conflict. Therefore, by June 15, 1964, the idea of a resolution had been shelved.

 

NARRATOR

In late July, the U.S.S. Maddox, a destroyer on an intelligence mission, sailed into the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam. It was later joined by the U.S.S. Turner Joy. These two destroyers became involved in an incident which brought the Congressional resolution off the shelf. The Navy explained the incident this way:

 

U.S. NAVY FILM

In international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, destroyers of the United States Navy are assigned routine patrols from time to time. Sunday, August the 2, 1964, the destroyer Maddox was on such a patrol. Shortly after noon, the calm of the day is broken as general quarters sound.

In a deliberate and unprovoked action, three North Vietnam PT boats unleash a torpedo attack against the Maddox. At once, the enemy patrol boats are brought under fire by the destroyer.

NARRATOR

The film charged an unprovoked attack. But it left out crucial facts. Early in the morning of July 31, unmarked South Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked two North Vietnamese island bases -- part of a covert operation supported by the CIA. The next night the Maddox was cruising up the coast, at one point as close as five miles. It changed course. And early on August 2 was ten miles off one of the islands raided earlier. North Vietnam's patrol boats attacked the Maddox six hours later.

Hanoi linked the Maddox to the South Vietnamese raids.

 

NARRATOR

At the time Secretary McNamara stressed that the Maddox was simply on a routine patrol.

 

ROBERT MCNAMARA

No, it has no special relationship to any operations in that area. We're carrying routine patrols of this kind on all over the world all the time.

U.S. NAVY FILMFollowing the Sunday attack, the Maddox is joined by the U.S.S. Turner Joy. As directed by the President of the United States, the Maddox and Turner Joy resume patrol operations in the Gulf of Tonkin. On the night of August the 4th, North Vietnamese patrol boats strike again, as filmed in this re-creation.

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, August 1964

The Determination of all Americans to carry out our full commitments to the people and to the government of South Vietnam will be redoubled by this outrage. Yet our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risk of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.

NARRATOR

For the first time, American aircraft bombed North Vietnam. The retaliation came after the second incident -- an incident Hanoi has always denied.

 

GENERAL PHUNG THE TAI

On the night of August 4, the United States made public that so-called "Gulf of Tonkin incident." But the story was a fabrication, created by the U.S. National Security Council. Even as the National Security Council met, American aircraft were being sent to destroy several areas of our country. In reality, the second Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.

 

RAY CLINE

At that time, I felt it was questionable whether the second incident took place. I simply was not sure. It was not until after a number of days of collation of reports from the field had taken place that many of the reports which seemed to relate to the second incident were proved either to be unsound or to relate to the first incident.

This is what intelligence analysis is all about, and in a military situation, quite often the commanding officers -- in this case, the President of the United States -- don't wait for the details to be settled if they feel they are in a critical situation with a danger of military conflict. They make decisions without waiting for the intelligence detail.

 

BILL MOYERS (Presidential Aide)

He felt that it represented, if not an escalation of the war on their part, at least a punch in the nose in a way that would humiliate a great power if it didn't respond. All of this went through his mind. And he also saw it as one dramatic way in which after weeks and months of seeming indecision, he could convey to Hanoi, to Saigon, and to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, that you were not dealing with a softie.

 

MAN-ON-THE-STREET INTERVIEWS

First Man: Well, I think that President Johnson has done the correct thing. I really do.

Second Man: I don't think that he could have done otherwise. Especially whenthey attacked the American flag, yeah.

Third Man: I'm behind him on it. I'm not for Johnson. I'm for Goldwater. But I'm behind him on this.

JAMES THOMSON

The minute incident number one happened, the attack on our ships, the resolution was brought right back off the shelf, put right to Congress and of course, after incident number two, sailed through with virtually no dissent. A blank check.

 

NARRATOR

Senator William Fulbright, persuaded that the second incident had occurred, whisked the resolution through Congress in two days.

 

SENATOR WILLIAM FULBRIGHT, September 1964

Well, I think it's a very clear demonstration of the unity of the country behind the policies that are being followed by the President in South Vietnam, and more specifically, of the action that was taken in response to the attack upon our destroyers. It shows a practically unanimous approval. It was unani-mous in the House, and only two dissented in the Senate.

SENATOR WAYNE MORSE

Being in the minority never proves that you're wrong. In fact, history is going to record that Sen. Greuning and I voted in the interest of the American people this morning when we voted against this resolution.

And I'd have the American people remember what this resolution really is. It's a resolution which seeks to give the President of the United States the power to make war without a declaration of war.

NARRATOR

Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Congress gave the President full authority for military action in Southeast Asia. Backed by both political parties, Johnson had removed the war as an issue from the campaign.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, October 1964

In the White House for the last 20 years, five Presidents from both parties have adopted a bi-partisan foreign policy. That bi-partisan foreign policy has kept us out of war and it's kept us at peace, and it's left your boy at home. And that's the way it ought to be...

And that's the way it's going to be after November the 3rd.

BILL MOYERS

Johnson didn't seek a wider war. He didn't want a wider war. He knew the war would engulf everything that he wanted to do in this country. At the same time, he also knew that if he didn't fulfill what he thought was an honorable commitment from the United States to South Vietnam, his administration could be lost as well.

Barry Goldwater began after the nomination to try to be Mr. Moderate, Mr. Respectable. He tried to stand more in the center of the Republican Party than on the far right.

And the President said to me one day, "We've got to remind people of what Barry Goldwater was B.C. -- Before the Convention."

 

LYNDON B. JOHNSON CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL

Girl in Campaign "Daisy Commercial": Five, seven, six, six, eight, nine, nine.

Commercial Voice: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one,zero.

Lyndon B. Johnson: These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God's children can live. Or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.

Commercial Voice: Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are toohigh for you to stay home.

NARRATOR

Thus Johnson portrayed Goldwater as irresponsible and himself as the candidate of restraint. He won a landslide victory.

On the eve of the election, the Vietcong attacked an American airbase near Saigon. They destroyed aircraft used in operations against them. More planes had been sent after the Tonkin incidents. Escalation was breeding escalation.

 

AMBASSADOR MAXWELL TAYLOR

I recommended a retaliatory air strike for the bombing of Bienhoa airbase which was occupied largely by American aircraft, and the losses in personnel were all American. This was the first time the enemy had ever, had ever attacked a major military installation of the Americans. It was a change of tactics. It shouldn't be shrugged off, I thought, as just another thing -- incident of the war. It was something new, and it was an excellent reason to have a retaliatory strike.

 

NARRATOR

American carriers were poised. But President Johnson refused his ambassador's recommendation to bomb North Vietnam. The Vietcong attacked again.

 

NGUYEN THANH XUAN

At the end of November, I was given the order to attack the Brink's Hotel which housed high American officers. All the crimes committed by the Americans were directed from this nerve center. I sat in a nearby cafe to wait for the explosion, which occurred at exactly five forty-five on the afternoon of December 24, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Army of Vietnam. Our commanders had ordered us to attack the place when the most Americans were there. And it was precisely as we had expected, since they were at the Brink's Hotel to plan their Christmas activities. Many Americans had also gone there from the Rex Hotel. As a result, the attack succeeded and we were never detected.

 

NARRATOR

The Christmas Eve attack was the second major assault on Americans in two months. Ambassador Taylor called once more for a bombing strike against the North. Again, Johnson refused.

 

MAXWELL TAYLOR

Again, recommended retaliation, got turned down. I felt reasonably sure, who wants to bomb Santy Claus?

 

NARRATOR

Four days after the Vietcong team blew up the Brink's Hotel, two Vietcong regiments prepared to strike the village of Binh Gia near Saigon. They inflicted the first of a series of devastating defeats on Saigon's army.

 

GENERAL WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND

This was the use of battalion sized units, reinforced battalion sized units, by the enemy, and the successful use that I feared would spread and was perhaps the beginning of a gradual movement toward a major effort, using not guerrillas, not small units, but large units.

 

DEAN RUSK (Secretary of State)

It was not until we were presented with a larger war that the decisions then had to be made as to whether we would let them get what they were after or whether we would make a greater effort ourselves.

 

NARRATOR

National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy already favored a greater effort when he arrived in Saigon in early February 1965. He had recently urged the President to bomb North Vietnam.

 

MCGEORGE BUNDY (February, 1965)The President has asked me to extend the New Year's greeting to all the people of Vietnam and to express his conviction that the Year of the Snake can be one in which security and prosperity grow in Vietnam.

NARRATOR

While McGeorge Bundy was in Saigon, the Vietcong attacked an American outpost at Pleiku, in the Central Highlands. It was the third attack on Americans in three months. Eight died. One hundred twenty-six were wounded.

 

MCGEORGE BUNDY

We found our friends in Washington on the wire, and they wanted our recommen-dation. It took us a little while to concert a view which was that this episode did call for a reply.

 

NEWSREEL, February 1965

In the first raid, land-based planes were forced back by the weather, but the carrier jets completed their strike with the loss of one American plane. Later, photo-reconnaissance flights prove that much of the staging area had been completely destroyed.

The confrontation between the Reds and the West was the most critical since the Gulf of Tonkin incident last summer, when the U.S. replied just as swiftly to North Vietnam PT boat attacks.

 

NARRATOR

A few days later, Johnson gave the green light to sustained bombing in North Vietnam. He hoped to bolster Saigon's morale. But there was a coup attempt in Saigon on February 19. The bombing was to begin the next day coordinated with the Saigon government. Ambassador Taylor cancelled it. The government was in turmoil. In fact, it had been in turmoil for months. When Khanh took advan-tage of the Tonkin incidents the previous August to tighten his grip, students had rioted. Buddhists also protested. But demonstrating Buddhists threatened the Catholics. They staged a sit-down strike. After ten days, Khanh formed a triumvirate to try to rule South Vietnam. Four days later, Khanh resigned. He said he was ill.

 

SAIGON INTERVIEW, September 1964

Reporter: Who is the man who can lead Vietnam to victory?

Nguyen Oanh: Well, I think you've got me there.

NARRATOR

Acting Prime Minister Nguyen Oanh, a Harvard-educated economist, lasted three days. Then Khanh returned.

 

GENERAL KHANH, August 1964

Although I have not yet quite recovered from my illness, I do my best to return today to assume the responsibility of leading the government in these critical times.

NARRATOR

A week later, in mid-September, there was a coup attempt.

 

JACK VALENTI

The thing that worried Johnson -- and constantly worried him -- was the instabili-ty of the South Vietnamese government. I guess you might call -- the coat of arms of the Vietnamese government was a turnstyle, for God's sake. And, and I remember very vividly somebody would come in his office and say, "Looks like there's a coup beginning in Vietnam." There'd be another coup. You know, coups were like fleas on a dog, and Johnson said, "I don't want to hear any more about this coup shit. I've had enough of it, and we've got to find a way to stabilize those people out there."

 

NARRATOR

That proved difficult. Khanh turned the government over to civilians in the fall, but continued to intrigue as head of the armed forces. The political turmoil intensified. In February, with Ambassador Taylor's approval, Khanh's own military colleagues rebelled against him and banished him to the United Nations. Though a stable government remained elusive, the campaign of bombing North Vietnam began. It was called "Rolling Thunder."

 

WILLIAM BUNDY

We thought that at a certain point -- and in conjunction with a situation within the South that was turned around -- it would be a decisive thing in getting Hanoi to say, "Alright, we can't get there now, we will fall back, not abandon the objective of taking over the South, but drop it for now." We never had the view that bombing would bring about quick results; certainly not on the essentially measured scale that was actually carried out. We thought it would cut down the amount of the infiltration -- that by hitting the supply lines, you'd make it much more difficult.

 

GEORGE BALL

I had been a director of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey at the, toward the end of the Second World War. And we'd made a detailed study of the effects of strategic bombing on not only the German war economy, but on the psychology of the German people. I was convinced that we were not going to achieve our will by bombing the North; that in the first place, it was a fairly primitive industrial society, and that there weren't the kind of targets that were adapted for strategic bombing. And secondly, I was convinced that we would never break the will of a determined people by simply bombing; and in fact, we would probably tend to unite them more than ever.

 

NARRATOR

The Thanh Hoa Bridge, 80 miles from Hanoi, was an important target in the spring of 1965. It was bombed and repaired, year after year.

 

GENERAL WILLIAM WESTMORELAND

When the bombing program started, I realized that the airfields -- and we had three jet-capable airfields -- were extremely vulnerable. If that strategy was to be a viable one, we had to protect those airfields. I feared that the Vietnamese did not have the capability of protecting the American aircraft on those airfields, and therefore, my first request for troops was associated with protecting the airfields.

 

NARRATOR

The President granted Westmoreland's request with little debate. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines landed to protect the air base at Danang. The decision to deploy these first Marines was not part of a plan for a massive troop buildup. But 200,000 troops would be committed by the end of the year.

 

AMBASSADOR MAXWELL TAYLOR

My opinion was: Let's not bring any ground forces in until we have to. Once you get into this business, how do you turn back?" No one was blind about the danger of that first soldier, marine coming ashore. I certainly wasn't. Once that decision was made and the Marines started coming ashore, as far as I was concerned, that's that. Let's go, boys, as fast as we can receive these troops logistically and have a real mission for them.

 

NARRATOR

Three weeks after the Marines landed, the Vietcong attacked the American Embassy in Saigon.

 

NEWSREEL, March 1965

Voice #1: We need a stretcher over here!

Voice #2: Stretcher?

Voice #3: Right over here is one!

Voice #4: I want some help over here!

PRESS CONFERENCE, April 1965

Reporter: Mr. Secretary...more Americans?

Robert McNamara: No, principally logistical support, arms, munitions, training assistance.

Reporter: As many as 5,000 sir? We've heard this report...

Robert McNamara: No, I'm not discussing primarily additional personnel.

NARRATOR

In early April, Johnson tried to keep the troop deployments a secret. In fact, two additional Marine battalions had already hit the beach as Secretary McNamara spoke. Others followed, week by week, with little fanfare. Seventy-two thousand troops were committed that spring.

 

DEAN RUSK

One of the reasons for this gradualness in our buildup of resistance in South Vietnam was due to the fact that we did not want to present Moscow and Hanoi with a major new situation during any given week, which would require them to go through an orgasm of decision-making based upon worldwide strategic considerations. And so each week was not all that different than the week before.

 

NARRATOR

In early April, Johnson also changed the mission of troops. The passive defense of air bases lasted less than a month.

 

NEWSREEL, April 1965

Reporter: When the Marines were first landed at Danang, we were told that the objective was to defend the air base. How do you resolve that, sir with your statements in Saigon that their objective is to kill the Vietcong -- to seek them out and kill them?

General Wallace Greene, Jr., Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps: Well, I did say that; I think that goes along with our objective, our mission, our assignment to defend that big complex at Danang and Phu Bai. You can't defend a place like that by sitting on your ditty-box. You've got to get out and aggressively patrol. And that's what our people are doing. And the one thing I emphasized to them while I was out there was to find these Vietcong and kill them.

NARRATOR

A U.S. president, for the first time, had authorized ground troops for offensive operations in Vietnam. Their patrols were limited to a 50-mile radius of coastal bases. Johnson was moving with caution. But these additional troops -- and their expanded role -- were also designed to show Ho Chi Minh his determination. Five days after he committed them, Johnson made Ho an offer.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON AT JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

The vast Mekong River can provide food and water and power on a scale to dwarf even our own T.V.A.

NARRATOR

Johnson offered Ho a vast development project to benefit all of Southeast Asia if Ho would abandon his goals.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON

And we remain ready with this purpose, for unconditional discussions.

BILL MOYERS

Coming back in the helicopter from that speech in 1965 at Johns Hopkins University -- where he had promised a T.V.A. for the Mekong valley, if only Ho Chi Minh would be reasonable -- he leaned across to an assistant, put his hand on his knee, and said, "Old Ho can't turn that down. Old Ho can't turn that down." You see, if Ho Chi Minh had been George Meany, Lyndon Johnson would have had a deal.

 

PRESS CONFERENCE, April 1965

Reporter: Mr. Secretary, what is your reaction to the announcement from the Communist side, rejecting our offer of negotiation?

Robert McNamara: Well, we regret that. As President Johnson said Saturday, there've been many disappointments over the past week; that is one. We stand ready and willing to talk anytime, any place.

Reporter: Has our bombing attack really hurt the North Vietnamese?

Robert McNamara: I don't think there's any question but what it has. In particular, during the past two weeks, we've concentrated on bridges and the routes of communication and destroyed many of these, and this can't help but delay the movement of men and material to the Communists in the South.

NARRATOR

This film was staged by the East Germans. But the message was true. The bombing campaign was not working. Supplies from North Vietnam were reaching far into the South.

 

BILL MOYERS

In the spring of 1965, every report -- the CIA, the military, the embassy, independent observers who had been there -- were saying Vietnam is on the verge of collapse. And the President says, "I feel like a hitchhiker caught in a hailstorm on a Texas highway. I can't run, I can't hide, and I can't make it stop."

 

NARRATOR

By the spring of 1965, the war had changed. Large units of Vietcong replaced guerrillas as the main fighting force. In June they destroyed the military outpost of Dong Xoai. And much of the village. Saigon lost 800 of its best troops. The army of South Vietnam was near collapse. The civilian government

did collapse at that time. And the military took over.

 

NGUYEN CAO KY

I asked all of them -- 60 or 70 of them, you know, in the room. I said, "Okay -- ah, one more time. Anyone want to be prime minister?" And they said no. So Thieu said, "I propose Ky." And all of them just stood up and accept the offer. But then I, I didn't give them the answer. I said, "I have to go back and talk with my wife first." And when I told her about that offer, you know, she was not excited. She said, "Oh no! Not that job! Not as a prime minister!" Ha, ha. I'm not a good politician. I'm not a good diplomat. You know, I think all I know, the only thing I can do well is, you know, flying the airplane. I said, "Well? What can I do now?"

 

GENERAL WILLIAM WESTMORELAND, July 1965

I feel it's important at this juncture that we prepare for the long pull.

NARRATOR

The situation was desperate. Westmoreland conferred in July with Secretary McNamara and General Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He had asked for an immediate troop increase to 125,000 men, 200,000 by year's end.

Johnson approved the request while McNamara was in Saigon. The President then had a series of high level meetings staged as a genuine debate, to seek consensus on the decision he had quietly made.

 

JACK VALENTI (Presidential Aide)

I remember him turning to Wheeler, and he said to him, "You're asking for 200,000 more men now. What happens if in two, three, four years you ask me for 500,000 men?" (A very prophetic statement.) "What do you expect me to do? How can I respond to it? What makes you think Ho Chi Minh won't match us for every man we send in?" And another time to the group he said, "We've got two questions that we've got to answer. Can Westerners fight a war in Asian jungles? And, number two, how on earth can we fight a war under the direction of others whose governments topple like bowling pins?" He said, "Now somebody answer those questions for me."

 

GEORGE BALL (Undersecretary of State)

In explaining to the President the concern that I felt about a mounting escalation, I said to him, "You know, once on the tiger's back, we can't pick the time to dismount. You're going to lose control of this situation, and this could be very serious."

 

BILL MOYERS

Secretary McNamara framed the three options. Option number one was to cut our losses and get out. Option number two was a middle course. Option number three was to give the military in Vietnam what it wanted. Listen to the way the first option was phrased: "cut our losses and withdraw under the best condi-tions that can be arranged. Almost certainly, conditions humiliating the United States and very damaging to our future effectiveness on the world scene." Now you're president, and you have this memorandum from the secretary of defense, and it says you can cut our losses and withdraw under the best conditions; however, it's going to make a fool of you in the world. I mean, that was an option the very framing of which presumed its rejection.

 

GEORGE BALL

Our reputation as a nation consisted of many things. Not the least of which was that we had some sense of perspective and, therefore, had some judgment. While many of our allied countries were beginning to think that we had, we were out of our minds to pursue such a futile war.

 

DEAN RUSK (Secretary of State)

Peace has been maintained because people in certain other capitals would say to themselves, "Now look, comrades, we'd better be a little careful here because those damn fool Americans just might do something about it." If that question in their minds got to be a sense of certainty that we would not do something about it, then I think we'd be exposed to very great dangers.

 

GEORGE BALL

I found him the most sympathetic of all of the people in the entourage. He was the one who seemed to take my cautionary views most seriously. He was the one who seemed to be probing more and more deeply for a way out. But he could never reconcile extrication with his personal commitment that he would not be the first president to lose a war.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, July 28, 1965

We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences that no one can foresee. Nor will we bluster or bully or flaunt our power. But we will not surrender. And we will not retreat. We intend to convince the Communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power. I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me, and we will meet his needs.

 

NARRATOR

There was no major address before Congress. Johnson already had his Tonkin Gulf Resolution. And there was no major announcement on prime time television. Johnson disclosed his decision in a press conference at midday.

 

MCGEORGE BUNDY (National Security Adviser)

I think it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the President wanted as low-keyed an announcement as he could get, and as little energetic public debate as possible.

 

DEAN RUSK

We did make a deliberate decision not to create a war fever in this country. You didn't see members of the armed forces or units of the armed forces parading through American cities. You didn't see pretty movie stars out selling bonds in factories and things like that -- all the things we did during World War II -- because we felt that in this nuclear world, where thousands of megatons are lying around in the hands of frail human beings, it's just too dangerous for an entire people to become too angry.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, August 3, 1965

We are going to do everything we can with our left hand, to negotiate an agreement that will allow people to breathe free independently. Independent of any ideology of ours, or of anyone else's. Give them the right of choice. And if we do that, we'll come home tomorrow.

NARRATOR

As Lyndon Johnson spoke on the White House lawn, a Marine rifle company left Danang for a cluster of hamlets nearby. Vietcong from this area had recently hit Danang in a mortar attack. And they had shot seven marines on an earlier sweep.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON

If I resist them, if I deter them, if we keep our commitment that three presidents have made -- President Eisenhower, President Kennedy and the present president -- then the people say, "Well, you should come on home. What happens there doesn't matter." If you stay there, there's some that say, "Well, you ought to get it over with in a hurry." So some want to go and blow up every-thing. Some want to come and blow up nothing and leave and get out and forget them.

We're trying to do the reasonable thing, to say that power and brute force and aggression are not going to prevail. You can't do this thing by force. Now let's sit down and reason it out, and let's try to allow these people a choice. That's what I'm trying so hard to do, and that's what I need your help on.

Why, oh why, oh why don't people concern themselves with a country that's trying to maintain her independence from aggression? That's being invaded?

NARRATOR

Johnson called it invasion. Hanoi called it liberation. In the fall of 1965, three North Vietnamese regiments massed in the Central Highlands. Nearly two years had passed since Johnson renewed the U.S. commitment to defend South Vietnam. Nearly two years had passed since Ho Chi Minh renewed his commitment to liberate the South. Now their two armies braced for battle. Westmoreland feared the North Vietnamese would cut South Vietnam in two. He would block them with his skytroopers, the First Air Cavalry.

 

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON

Now, America wins the wars that she undertakes; make no mistake about it. And we have declared war on ignorance and illiteracy. We have declared war on poverty. We have declared war on disease. And we have declared war on tyranny and aggression. And we not only stand for these things, but we're willing to stand up and die for these things.

 

NARRATOR

Westmoreland sent the Air C