- 11 hours ago
- #thevietnamwar
- #vietnamwar
Documentary, The Vietnam War - Se1 - Ep02 - Riding the Tiger (1961-1963)
#TheVietnamWar #VietnamWar
#TheVietnamWar #VietnamWar
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00Major support for the Vietnam War was provided by members of the Better Angels Society, including Jonathan and Jeannie Levine, Diane and Hal Brierly, Amy and David Abrams, John and Catherine Debs, the Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, the Montrone Family, Linda and Stuart Resnick,
00:00:25the Perry and Donna Gokin Family Foundation, the Lynch Foundation, the Roger and Rosemary Enrico Foundation, and by these additional funders.
00:00:36Major funding was also provided by David H. Koch, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Park Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Charitable Trusts,
00:00:53the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Ford Foundation Just Films,
00:01:03by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by viewers like you. Thank you.
00:01:08Bank of America proudly supports Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's film, The Vietnam War.
00:01:20Because fostering different perspectives and civil discourse around important issues furthers progress, equality, and a more connected society.
00:01:29Go to bankofamerica.com slash betterconnected to learn more.
00:01:40Bank of America
00:01:42I was assigned a listing post at Contien in the fall.
00:02:10That was like getting a death sentence at a trial.
00:02:16Because that's just three Marines out there with a radio.
00:02:20And that's the scariest thing I did.
00:02:22You're listening for the enemy.
00:02:25They call you on the radio every hour.
00:02:28Delta-Lim, Papa-3-Bravo. Delta-Lim, Papa-3-Bravo. Delta-Lim, Papa-3-Bravo. Delta-3.
00:02:33If your sit-rep is Alpha Sierra, key your handset twice.
00:02:36If your situation report is all secure, brake squelch twice on the handset.
00:02:42And if it's not, they keep thinking you're asleep.
00:02:45So they keep asking you,
00:02:46If your sit-rep is Alpha Sierra, and then it finally dawns on them,
00:02:48maybe there's somebody too close for you to say anything.
00:02:51So then they say,
00:02:52If your sit-rep is negative, Alpha Sierra, key your handset once,
00:02:55and you down here squeeze the handle off the, you know, and two on the radio,
00:02:59because they're so close that you can hear them whispering to one another.
00:03:05And that's scary stuff.
00:03:07That's real scary stuff.
00:03:08And I'm scared of the dark, still.
00:03:12I still got a nightlight.
00:03:13When my kids were growing up,
00:03:16that's the first time they really found out that Daddy had been in a war,
00:03:23when they said,
00:03:24Why do we need to outgrow our nightlights?
00:03:27Daddy's still got one.
00:03:28Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike
00:03:41that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans
00:03:47born in this century, tempered by war,
00:03:53disciplined by a hard and bitter peace,
00:03:56I still believed very much in this concept of an heroic America.
00:04:05America being a really special country,
00:04:08the best country in the world, the best democracy,
00:04:11all the things that we believe about it,
00:04:13which, and I didn't really see anything wrong with that.
00:04:19I was sure that we were right to be in Vietnam,
00:04:24you know, because it started under Kennedy,
00:04:26and to me, JFK was God.
00:04:29Anything that he thought was right, I thought was right.
00:04:34At 43, John Fitzgerald Kennedy
00:04:37was the youngest man ever elected President of the United States.
00:04:42He had promised bold new leadership,
00:04:45and to his supporters,
00:04:46his inauguration seemed to signal a new day.
00:04:50To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free,
00:04:57we pledge our word
00:04:59that one form of colonial control
00:05:02shall not have passed away
00:05:05merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny.
00:05:10We shall not always expect to find them supporting our views,
00:05:15but we shall always hope to find them
00:05:19strongly supporting their own freedom.
00:05:22And to remember that in the past,
00:05:26those who foolishly sought power
00:05:29by riding the back of the taiga
00:05:32ended up inside.
00:05:41The new president gathered around him
00:05:44an extraordinary set of advisors
00:05:46who shared his determination to confront communism,
00:05:51including Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
00:05:54National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy,
00:05:58his deputy, Walt Rostow,
00:06:01Special Military Advisor General Maxwell Taylor,
00:06:05and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,
00:06:08who had given up his post
00:06:10as president of the Ford Motor Company
00:06:12to serve his country.
00:06:14He was a pioneer in the field of systems analysis.
00:06:20Like the president who picked them,
00:06:23all of Kennedy's men had served during World War II.
00:06:27Each had absorbed what they all believed
00:06:29was its central lesson.
00:06:32Ambitious dictatorships needed to be halted in their tracks
00:06:35before they constituted a serious danger
00:06:39to the peace of the world.
00:06:42Meanwhile, in South Vietnam,
00:06:44the National Liberation Front,
00:06:47labeled by its enemies the Viet Cong,
00:06:50was determined to overthrow the anti-communist
00:06:53and increasingly autocratic government
00:06:56of Ngo Dinh Xiem.
00:06:58In North Vietnam,
00:07:01unbeknownst to Washington,
00:07:03Ho Chi Minh,
00:07:03the father of Vietnamese independence,
00:07:06was now sharing power
00:07:08with a more aggressive leader,
00:07:10Lei Zouan,
00:07:11who was even more impatient
00:07:13to reunify his country.
00:07:15None of us knew anything about Vietnam.
00:07:38Vietnam, in those days,
00:07:41was a peace on a chessboard,
00:07:43a strategic chessboard,
00:07:45not a place with a culture and a history
00:07:48that we would have an impossible time changing,
00:07:55even with the mighty force of the United States.
00:07:58Over the next three years,
00:08:01the United States would struggle to understand
00:08:03the complicated country it had come to save,
00:08:07fail to appreciate the enemy's resolve,
00:08:10and misread how the South Vietnamese people
00:08:13really felt about their government.
00:08:17The new president would find himself
00:08:20caught between the momentum of war
00:08:22and the desire for peace,
00:08:25between humility and hubris.
00:08:28Between idealism and expediency.
00:08:32Between the truth and the lie.
00:08:34And so, my fellow Americans,
00:08:41ask not what your country can do for you,
00:08:48ask what you can do for your country.
00:08:52Ask what you can do for your country.
00:08:54And so, my fellow Americans,
00:08:57ask not what your country can do for you,
00:09:02ask what you can do for your country.
00:09:05I grew up in Missouri near Kansas City,
00:09:16a little community called Fairmount.
00:09:19I was born in 1948,
00:09:21and there were lots of kids being born in those days
00:09:23from the guys who were lucky enough
00:09:25to come home from World War II.
00:09:27My dad was a pilot in the Army Air Corps,
00:09:29and all of dad's friends were World War II vets
00:09:35or Korean vets,
00:09:36and all of my male teachers were veterans,
00:09:39and even my pastor had been a chaplain.
00:09:43Well, they were my heroes,
00:09:44and I wanted to be like them.
00:09:55For all of John Kennedy's soaring rhetoric,
00:09:58for all the talent he gathered around him,
00:10:00the first months of his presidency did not go well.
00:10:05He approved a CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba
00:10:08at the Bay of Pigs that ended in disaster.
00:10:11He felt he'd been bullied
00:10:15by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
00:10:17at a summit meeting in Vienna.
00:10:20He was unable to keep the Soviets
00:10:22from building the Berlin Wall.
00:10:26And in Southeast Asia,
00:10:27he refused to intervene
00:10:29against a communist insurrection in Laos.
00:10:33Critics accused him of being immature,
00:10:36indecisive, inadequate to the task
00:10:38of combating what seemed to be
00:10:40a mounting communist threat.
00:10:44There are just so many concessions
00:10:46that we can make in one year
00:10:47and survive politically,
00:10:49he confided to an aide
00:10:51in the spring of 1961.
00:10:54In South Vietnam,
00:10:56Kennedy felt he had to act.
00:10:59After the president received reports
00:11:02that the Viet Cong might be in control
00:11:04of more than half
00:11:05the densely populated Mekong Delta,
00:11:08he dispatched General Maxwell Taylor
00:11:11and Walt Rostow to Vietnam.
00:11:15They urged him to commit
00:11:17American ground troops.
00:11:19Kennedy refused.
00:11:21It would be like taking a first drink,
00:11:23he said.
00:11:24The effect would soon wear off
00:11:26and there would be demands
00:11:27for another and another and another.
00:11:30Instead, in the midst of a cold war,
00:11:34with its constant risk
00:11:36of nuclear confrontation,
00:11:38the president supported
00:11:39a new, flexible way
00:11:41to confront and contain communism.
00:11:44Limited war.
00:11:45This is another type of warfare.
00:11:49New in its intensity,
00:11:52ancient in its origin.
00:11:54War by guerrillas,
00:11:55subversions,
00:11:57insurgents,
00:11:58assassins.
00:11:59War by ambush
00:12:00instead of by combat.
00:12:03By infiltration
00:12:04instead of aggression.
00:12:06To fight his limited wars,
00:12:09Kennedy hoped to use
00:12:11the elite Green Berets,
00:12:13special forces trained
00:12:15in guerrilla warfare,
00:12:17counterinsurgency.
00:12:19They were meant to be dispatched
00:12:21to hot spots around the world.
00:12:24Khrushchev said,
00:12:26we're not going to destroy you
00:12:27with nuclear weapons,
00:12:28we're going to destroy you
00:12:29with wars of national liberation.
00:12:32Everybody talked about the fact
00:12:33that communism was spreading
00:12:37and it had to be stopped.
00:12:39You went to command
00:12:40in General Staff College
00:12:41and you were playing on maps
00:12:43with nuclear weapons
00:12:45and so forth.
00:12:46And I escaped from that
00:12:48by getting into special forces.
00:12:51So that instead of planning
00:12:53what we were going to do
00:12:54if World War III broke out,
00:12:56we were actually doing stuff.
00:13:00And Vietnam was a place
00:13:01where we were going to draw the line.
00:13:03Kennedy sent the Green Berets
00:13:07to the central highlands of Vietnam
00:13:09to organize mountain tribes
00:13:12to fight the Viet Cong
00:13:13and to undertake covert missions
00:13:16to sabotage their supply bases
00:13:18in Laos and Cambodia.
00:13:21But Kennedy understood
00:13:23that counterinsurgency alone
00:13:25would never be enough.
00:13:27So he doubled funding
00:13:29for South Vietnam's army,
00:13:31dispatched helicopters and APCs,
00:13:33armored personnel carriers.
00:13:38Kennedy also authorized
00:13:40the use of napalm
00:13:42and the spraying of defoliants
00:13:45to deny cover to the Viet Cong
00:13:47and destroy the crops that fed them.
00:13:51A whole array of chemicals
00:13:53was used,
00:13:54including one named
00:13:56for the color of the stripes
00:13:58on the 55-gallon drums
00:14:00in which it came,
00:14:02Agent Orange.
00:14:03and the president quietly continued
00:14:06to increase the number
00:14:08of American military advisors.
00:14:11Within two years,
00:14:13the number he had inherited
00:14:15would grow to 11,300.
00:14:20Empowered not only to teach
00:14:21the Army of the Republic of Vietnam,
00:14:24the Arvin,
00:14:25to fight a conventional war,
00:14:27but to accompany them into battle,
00:14:29a violation of the agreement
00:14:31that had divided Vietnam
00:14:33back in 1954.
00:14:37The administration did its best
00:14:39to hide from the American people
00:14:41the scale of the buildup
00:14:43that was taking place
00:14:44on the other side of the world,
00:14:46fearful that the public
00:14:47would not support
00:14:48the more active role
00:14:50advisors had begun
00:14:51to play in combat.
00:14:55Mr. President,
00:14:56our Republican National Committee
00:14:57publication has said
00:14:59that you have been
00:15:00less than candid
00:15:01with the American people
00:15:03as to how deeply
00:15:05we are involved in Vietnam.
00:15:08Could you throw
00:15:08any more light on that?
00:15:10We have increased
00:15:10our assistance
00:15:11to the government,
00:15:13its logistics.
00:15:14We have not sent
00:15:14combat troops there,
00:15:16though the training missions
00:15:18that we have there
00:15:19have been instructed
00:15:20if they are fired upon
00:15:21to, they would, of course,
00:15:23fire back
00:15:24to protect themselves,
00:15:25but we have not sent
00:15:26combat troops
00:15:27in the generally understood
00:15:28sense of the word,
00:15:29so that I feel
00:15:31that we are
00:15:32being as frank
00:15:34as we can be.
00:15:36I think what I have said to you
00:15:38is a description
00:15:39of our activity there.
00:15:46I was a child
00:15:47of the Cold War.
00:15:49When I got off
00:15:50the plane in Saigon
00:15:51in a humid evening
00:15:53in April of 1962,
00:15:55I really believed
00:15:56in all the ideology
00:15:57of the Cold War,
00:15:59that if we lost
00:16:01South Vietnam,
00:16:02the rest of Southeast Asia
00:16:03would fall to the communists.
00:16:06There was an international
00:16:07communist conspiracy.
00:16:09We believed fervently
00:16:10in this stuff.
00:16:12Neil Sheehan
00:16:13was a 25-year-old reporter
00:16:15for United Press International,
00:16:17UPI.
00:16:19He had served
00:16:20three years in the Army,
00:16:21in Korea and Japan,
00:16:23before deciding
00:16:24to become a newspaperman.
00:16:26Vietnam was his first
00:16:28full-time overseas assignment,
00:16:30and his only worry,
00:16:31he remembered,
00:16:32was that he would get there
00:16:33too late
00:16:34and miss out
00:16:35on the big story.
00:16:37Sheehan and other reporters
00:16:39rode along
00:16:40as the Arvind mounted
00:16:41a series of helicopter assaults
00:16:43on enemy strongholds
00:16:45in the Mekong Delta
00:16:46and elsewhere
00:16:47and brought terror
00:16:49to the Viet Cong.
00:16:51American pilots
00:16:52were at the controls.
00:16:55It was a crusade,
00:16:56and it was thrilling.
00:16:59And you'd climb aboard
00:17:00the helicopters
00:17:01with the enemy soldiers
00:17:02who were being taken
00:17:03out to battle.
00:17:04And they'd take off
00:17:06and they'd contour fly,
00:17:07they'd skim across
00:17:08the rice paddies
00:17:08and about three or four feet
00:17:10above the paddies
00:17:10and then pop up
00:17:11over the tree lines
00:17:13that line the field.
00:17:15It was thrilling.
00:17:16I mean,
00:17:16it was absolutely thrilling.
00:17:18And you believed
00:17:19in what was happening.
00:17:21I mean,
00:17:21you had the sense
00:17:21that we're fighting here
00:17:23and someday we'll win
00:17:25and this country
00:17:26will be a better country
00:17:27for our coming.
00:17:29The new M113
00:17:31armored personnel carriers
00:17:32were capable
00:17:33of churning
00:17:34across rivers
00:17:35and rice paddies
00:17:36and right through
00:17:37the earthen dikes
00:17:38that separated
00:17:39one field
00:17:40from the next.
00:17:43The Viet Cong
00:17:43had nothing
00:17:44with which to stop them.
00:17:47We were just
00:17:48overwhelming them
00:17:49with force,
00:17:51with firepower,
00:17:52and the firefights
00:17:54would be over
00:17:55in a pretty short time.
00:17:56Some people
00:17:57are running
00:17:58along the dikes.
00:17:59Actually,
00:18:00the canal
00:18:01is perpendicular
00:18:02to the one
00:18:02you're attacking now.
00:18:04They have all black uniforms
00:18:05and I estimate
00:18:06approximately 3-0
00:18:07that's what was
00:18:11causing us
00:18:11to win.
00:18:12See,
00:18:12we were winning
00:18:13one after the other
00:18:15and we were not
00:18:17meeting a heck
00:18:18of a lot
00:18:18of resistance.
00:18:20Captain James Scanlon
00:18:21had been stationed
00:18:22in West Germany
00:18:23and had seen
00:18:24for himself
00:18:25the brutality
00:18:26with which
00:18:26the communist
00:18:27East Germans
00:18:28dealt with anyone
00:18:29who dared
00:18:30try to escape
00:18:31to the West.
00:18:31He was now
00:18:34in the Mekong Delta,
00:18:35an advisor
00:18:36to the 7th Division
00:18:37of the Arvin
00:18:38and had begun
00:18:39to see evidence
00:18:40of Viet Cong brutality
00:18:41as well.
00:18:46Those of us
00:18:47who talked
00:18:47to the people
00:18:47who fled
00:18:48East Germany,
00:18:50we saw the need
00:18:51to stop
00:18:52the growth
00:18:53of communism,
00:18:54to stop the dominoes
00:18:56from being tumbled.
00:18:58That was a worthy cause.
00:18:59As the Arvin
00:19:02and their advisors
00:19:03pursued the Viet Cong,
00:19:05the government
00:19:06of Ngo Dinh Xiem
00:19:07had launched
00:19:08an ambitious program
00:19:09meant to gain control
00:19:11of the countryside
00:19:12by concentrating
00:19:13the rural population
00:19:15into thousands
00:19:16of fortified settlements,
00:19:18ringed with barbed wire
00:19:20and moats
00:19:21and bamboo spikes
00:19:22meant to keep out
00:19:23the Viet Cong.
00:19:25They were called
00:19:26strategic hamlets.
00:19:28Part of the effort
00:19:29to win
00:19:30the hearts
00:19:30and minds
00:19:31and loyalty
00:19:32of the Vietnamese people.
00:19:35The French
00:19:36had tried something
00:19:37like it
00:19:37a decade before.
00:19:39They had called it
00:19:40pacification.
00:19:43President Siem's
00:19:44strategic hamlet program
00:19:45is making substantial progress.
00:19:48About 1,600
00:19:49of the some 14,000
00:19:52hamlets
00:19:52have been fortified
00:19:55to date.
00:19:55By the summer of 1962,
00:19:59news from South Vietnam
00:20:00seemed so promising
00:20:02that Defense Secretary
00:20:04Robert McNamara
00:20:05made sure
00:20:06the Pentagon
00:20:07was prepared
00:20:08to implement a plan
00:20:09for a gradual
00:20:10withdrawal
00:20:11of American advisors
00:20:12to be completed
00:20:14by 1965.
00:20:16So far as most Americans knew,
00:20:19the United States
00:20:20was achieving its goal,
00:20:21a stable,
00:20:23independent,
00:20:24anti-communist state
00:20:25in South Vietnam.
00:20:28It was
00:20:29a struggle
00:20:30this country
00:20:31cannot shirk,
00:20:32the New York Times said,
00:20:34and the United States
00:20:35seemed to be winning it.
00:20:37But that same summer,
00:20:42Ho Chi Minh traveled
00:20:43to Beijing
00:20:44in search of more help
00:20:45from the Chinese.
00:20:47The American buildup
00:20:49in South Vietnam
00:20:50had alarmed him
00:20:51and the other leaders
00:20:52in Hanoi.
00:20:54Ho told the Chinese
00:20:56that American attacks
00:20:57on North Vietnam itself
00:20:58now seemed
00:21:00only a matter of time.
00:21:01The Chinese promised
00:21:04to equip and arm
00:21:05tens of thousands
00:21:07of Vietnamese soldiers.
00:21:10Meanwhile,
00:21:11the Politburo in Hanoi
00:21:12had directed
00:21:13that every able-bodied
00:21:15North Vietnamese man
00:21:17be required to serve
00:21:19in the armed forces.
00:21:28Inspired by their president's call,
00:21:31thousands of young Americans
00:21:33would join the Peace Corps
00:21:34and other organizations
00:21:35to help project
00:21:37American ideals
00:21:38and goodwill
00:21:39around the world.
00:21:52We were not only there
00:21:54in Vietnam
00:21:54to stop communism,
00:21:57but there had to be
00:21:59something positive.
00:22:01We're trying to find out
00:22:03what the Vietnamese people want
00:22:04and help them get it.
00:22:07And that was very simple,
00:22:08but if you think about it,
00:22:10also very complex.
00:22:11But it went to the heart,
00:22:13I thought,
00:22:13of what we were trying to do.
00:22:17Pete Hunting,
00:22:18a 22-year-old
00:22:19from Oklahoma City,
00:22:21would go to Vietnam
00:22:22right after college
00:22:23to do what he could
00:22:25to help poor villagers
00:22:26in the countryside.
00:22:27I was a soldier
00:22:29in the fight
00:22:30and I fought
00:22:31till we won
00:22:32My uniforms,
00:22:34my dirty overhaul
00:22:36Dear Margo,
00:22:38I finally finished up
00:22:40my work in Fan Rang
00:22:41last week
00:22:41and spent a month
00:22:42working on a windmill
00:22:43I'd promised the people
00:22:44of One Handler.
00:22:46It cost a lot of money too,
00:22:48which I paid
00:22:48out of my own pocket.
00:22:49Well, I'll give you
00:22:51my sweat,
00:22:52I'll give you my blood.
00:22:54I'm in soaring spirits today,
00:22:56despite all the natural disasters,
00:22:58political intrigues,
00:22:59and subversive activities.
00:23:02Pete Hunting worked
00:23:04for the International
00:23:05Voluntary Services,
00:23:07a non-profit organization
00:23:09committed to improving
00:23:11agriculture,
00:23:12education,
00:23:13and public health.
00:23:14He was one of hundreds
00:23:16of dedicated aid workers
00:23:17in South Vietnam.
00:23:18My plow and my hoe
00:23:20is my gun.
00:23:23Those don't make no...
00:23:24Latest news on this side
00:23:25of the world
00:23:25is that I'll almost
00:23:26definitely be extending
00:23:27over here
00:23:28for another two years,
00:23:29providing the country
00:23:31stays in one piece
00:23:31that long.
00:23:35Two years after he arrived,
00:23:38Pete Hunting was driving
00:23:39in the Mekong Delta
00:23:40when he ran
00:23:41into a Viet Cong ambush.
00:23:44He was shot
00:23:45five times in the head,
00:23:47the first American
00:23:48civilian volunteer
00:23:50to be killed
00:23:51in Vietnam.
00:23:52in the Mekong Szka,
00:23:54the first American
00:23:56war 욕
00:23:56to be killed
00:23:57in the Mekong system.
00:23:59کہ
00:23:59were going to be lost
00:23:59in the development
00:24:00of the B Kong South Tout
00:24:13People used to joke in Vietnam about winning the hearts and minds, and you hear that expression.
00:24:27But that should not be a joke. It's a serious, serious problem.
00:24:31If you pull off a military operation, and it may be successful on the military basis,
00:24:37but you destroy a village, and then you've created a village of resistance.
00:24:45Few advisors understood the unique challenges of fighting an insurgency in Vietnam better than Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann.
00:24:55A career soldier from Virginia, he was the senior American advisor to the 7th Arvin Division in the Mekong Delta.
00:25:04Small, wiry, and abrasive, John Paul Vann was convinced he knew how to defeat the Viet Cong.
00:25:13John Paul Vann was simply the most remarkable soldier I ever met, period.
00:25:21The biggest challenge of John Paul Vann's life was somehow saving Vietnam, winning.
00:25:31That, to him, was the ultimate challenge.
00:25:34When it became clear to Vann that the tactics the Americans had taught the Arvin were beginning to make more enemies than friends,
00:25:44he sought out newspapermen to spread the word.
00:25:48He was able to explain to us what was going on.
00:25:53The important thing was not to alienate the population.
00:25:57That if you got sniper fire from Hamlet, you sent in riflemen to take out the sniper.
00:26:02You didn't shell the place because you were going to kill women and kids and destroy houses,
00:26:07and you were going to turn the population against you.
00:26:09Most press coverage of Vietnam was upbeat in the tradition of previous wars.
00:26:18But a handful of young reporters, including Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam of the New York Times,
00:26:25and Malcolm Brown of the Associated Press, who spent time in the field with officers like Vann,
00:26:32were beginning to see that from the Vietnamese countryside,
00:26:36things looked very different than they did from the press offices in Washington or Saigon.
00:26:43So it was terribly important that we not only win the war,
00:26:47but that we as reporters report the truth that would help to win the war.
00:26:52We were very fervent in wanting to report the truth because it was very important
00:26:57to the welfare of our country and to the welfare of the world.
00:27:02Sheehan and his colleagues began asking tough questions
00:27:06about what constituted progress, what victory would look like,
00:27:11and if the people in the countryside, where 80% of South Vietnam's population lived,
00:27:17could ever trust the government in Saigon.
00:27:22I remember going during one of Robert McNamara's visits
00:27:25out to one of these hamlets.
00:27:27The Vietnamese general command of the area was telling McNamara
00:27:30what a wonderful thing this was.
00:27:31And some of these farmers were down digging a ditch around the hamlet.
00:27:37And I looked at their faces, and they were really angry.
00:27:42I mean, it was very obvious to me that if these people could, they'd cut our throats.
00:27:48The Vietnamese people were attacking the people, and they would be
00:27:54in a way of helping them.
00:27:55Farmers resented being forced to abandon their homes and move
00:27:57to strategic hamlets.
00:27:59Corrupt officials siphoned off funds,
00:28:02and villagers blamed the Ziem regime for failing
00:28:05to protect them from guerrilla attacks.
00:28:08As the people's anger grew, so did the ranks of the Viet Cong.
00:28:15It turned out that the Viet Cong were recruiting men right out of those so-called strategic
00:28:20hamlets, and then the whole program fell apart.
00:28:45Nguyen Ngap's father was a postal clerk south of Da Nang.
00:28:52His brothers and sisters taught in South Vietnamese schools.
00:28:56But he joined the revolution, and as a political officer wrote poems, songs, and slogans to
00:29:03inspire the people in the countryside to support the Viet Cong.
00:29:09The Viet Cong cadre would come in and talk to them, and their message is usually ,
00:29:18which means, turn your grief into action, do something about it, join us, we'll fight together,
00:29:27we'll liberate the country from this corrupt, unjust government, we'll throw out the foreigners,
00:29:33we'll reunify the country, and we'll bring in this great regime that will take care of
00:29:39you and bring economic and social justice.
00:29:44The Viet Cong ran rival local governments, complete with their own tax collectors and school teachers,
00:29:51spies and propagandists, and province chiefs.
00:29:59To make matters worse, ARVN troops and American advisers now found themselves confronted by a
00:30:05new threat, battalions of well-armed Viet Cong soldiers, as well as by local guerrillas.
00:30:14We'd armed them.
00:30:16You could hear the arming of the Viet Cong back in early 62.
00:30:21They only had one machine gun per battalion, it was sporadic fire.
00:30:26And as they captured more and more of these American arms, when you made contact, it would
00:30:32build up into a drum fire of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
00:30:43Secretary McNamara decided that he would draw up some kind of a chart to determine whether
00:30:49we were winning or not.
00:30:52And he was putting things in like numbers of weapons recovered, numbers of Viet Cong killed,
00:31:00very statistical.
00:31:01And he asked Edward Lansdale, who was then in the Pentagon as head of special operations,
00:31:10come down and look at this.
00:31:13And so Lansdale did, and he said, there's something missing.
00:31:18And McNamara said, what?
00:31:20And Lansdale said, the feelings of the Vietnamese people.
00:31:24You couldn't reduce it to a statistic.
00:31:29Robert McNamara had vowed to make America's military cost effective.
00:31:34He demanded that everything be quantified.
00:31:38In Saigon, General Paul D. Harkins, head of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, known
00:31:45as Mac V, dutifully complied.
00:31:49He and his staff generated mountains of daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly data on more than
00:31:56a hundred separate indicators, far more data than could ever be adequately analyzed.
00:32:06General Harkins had little use for skeptical reporters like Neil Sheehan.
00:32:11Bad news was to be buried.
00:32:14Harkins ignored the alarming after-action reports John Paul Van and other officers were sending
00:32:21in from the field.
00:32:24I was going to be made head of the Vietnam desk at CIA headquarters.
00:32:29And the first person of importance that I met was General Parkins.
00:32:35And he started out by saying, Mr. Gregg, I don't care what you hear from anybody else,
00:32:39I can tell you without a doubt we're going to be out of here with a military victory in
00:32:43six months.
00:32:46The country's 12 million peasants can scarcely remember what peace was like.
00:32:50They are caught between the predatory guerrillas and the almost equally demanding soldiery.
00:32:54Their lives are lived in a state of permanent uncertainty, punctuated by bouts of violence as government
00:33:00forces come to grips with the black-clad communist rebel forces called the Viet Cong.
00:33:06The country's 12 million peasants can be made in a state of the U.S.
00:33:11The U.S.
00:33:12The U.S.
00:33:13The U.S.
00:33:14The U.S.
00:33:15The U.S.
00:33:16The U.S.
00:33:17The U.S.
00:33:18The U.S.
00:33:19The U.S.
00:33:28The U.S.
00:33:29The U.S.
00:33:30But during the fight against the two sides,
00:33:35when the enemy attacks,
00:33:38the enemy attacks,
00:33:40the enemy attacks,
00:33:42the enemy attacks.
00:33:51Hồ Chí Minh
00:33:53is a person who works
00:33:55in the community,
00:33:56very good.
00:34:00But I know that in Vietnam,
00:34:02people have a tradition called
00:34:04the old people.
00:34:06So, he gave the wife to the old people.
00:34:09He gave the wife to the old people.
00:34:11He gave the wife to the old people.
00:34:13He gave the wife to all the people.
00:34:17He tried to create a life
00:34:20that was very difficult to understand.
00:34:22But he said that
00:34:24that is very difficult to understand
00:34:26with everyone.
00:34:28The people who work in the community
00:34:30are very difficult.
00:34:37Hồ Chủ tịch
00:34:38kêu gọi người dân
00:34:39to protect the country.
00:34:42Hồ Chủ tịch
00:34:43nói thế này,
00:34:44và
00:34:46diễn tranh có thể kéo dài 10 năm,
00:34:4820 năm,
00:34:49hoặc lâu hơn nữa.
00:34:51Sông nhân dân Việt Nam
00:34:53quyết không sợ.
00:34:56Không có gì quý hơn độc lộc tự do.
00:34:59Hồ Chủ tịch
00:35:00tự do.
00:35:03On our side,
00:35:04we were not as committed.
00:35:07And we were...
00:35:09Our leaders were corrupt and incompetent.
00:35:12And so, deep down,
00:35:15we will always have this fear,
00:35:17this suspicion that, in the end,
00:35:20it will be the communists
00:35:22who won.
00:35:24When John Kennedy assembled
00:35:26what he thinks
00:35:27is the best and the brightest,
00:35:2920 years before that,
00:35:31in a cave in the northern part of Vietnam,
00:35:35Ho Chi Minh also put together
00:35:37his best and the brightest.
00:35:39And these guys are at it for a while.
00:35:41And when we show up,
00:35:44they were far along
00:35:45to consolidating their victory
00:35:48over this inevitable conflict
00:35:52between Ho Chi Minh
00:35:54and John F. Kennedy's vision.
00:35:56The more you think about
00:35:58the American strategy,
00:36:00the more you know
00:36:05that it was never going
00:36:06to work out particularly well.
00:36:11I was at the top of my game
00:36:27when I was in combat.
00:36:34You don't have the luxury
00:36:35to indulge your fear
00:36:37because other people's lives
00:36:38depend upon you
00:36:39keeping your head cold.
00:36:40You know, when something goes wrong,
00:36:51they call it emotional numbing.
00:36:54It's not very good
00:36:55in civilian life,
00:36:56but it's pretty useful
00:36:57in combat.
00:37:10to be able to get absolutely very cold
00:37:12about what needs to be done
00:37:14and to stick with it.
00:37:24To me, it's a little bit distressing
00:37:26to realize that I was at my best
00:37:28doing something as terrible as war.
00:37:31President Kennedy,
00:37:32President Kennedy has staked his reputation in Asia
00:37:45on saving South Vietnam from communism.
00:37:47As the army makes a sweep towards a village
00:37:49suspected of harboring Viet Cong,
00:37:51It can't tell whether it will meet resistance.
00:37:59The troops round up all the young men
00:38:01they can find
00:38:02since they can't tell
00:38:03who is a communist
00:38:04just by looking.
00:38:08Those who try to run for it
00:38:09are shot on the assumption
00:38:10they have something to hide.
00:38:17You see, for the Americans
00:38:19who come to Vietnam
00:38:20to fight the war,
00:38:23they look at everyone
00:38:25in the city
00:38:27as a friendly people.
00:38:32But they look at the people
00:38:33in the village
00:38:35as a Viet Cong.
00:38:38Because the Viet Cong have no uniform.
00:38:43How could they win?
00:38:45If they kill one real enemy,
00:38:49they might get only one replacement.
00:38:53If they kill the wrong man,
00:38:55they get ten enemies.
00:38:58And mostly,
00:39:00they kill the wrong man.
00:39:04Each of South Vietnam's 44 provinces
00:39:07had its own chief.
00:39:09Some were simply political appointees,
00:39:12corrupt allies of President Xi'an.
00:39:15Chen Nhat Cho,
00:39:16province chief of Kien Hoa,
00:39:18was different.
00:39:20A privileged judge's son
00:39:22from the old imperial city of West,
00:39:24he and two of his brothers
00:39:27had fought against the French
00:39:29with the Viet Minh.
00:39:31But he had refused to join
00:39:33the Communist Party.
00:39:35He admired their dedication,
00:39:37but disliked the way they punished
00:39:38those who dared differ with them.
00:39:41Instead, he left the Viet Minh,
00:39:44became a major in the army
00:39:45fighting against them,
00:39:47and eventually so impressed Xi'an
00:39:49with his insider's knowledge of communist tactics,
00:39:53that he was promoted to colonel
00:39:55and made chief of Kien Hoa,
00:39:58a Viet Cong stronghold.
00:40:00He was absolutely incorruptible.
00:40:04And people came to really understand
00:40:08that here's a guy who's,
00:40:10even though it's not an elected system,
00:40:13who nevertheless really represents us.
00:40:16Give me a budget that equals the cost
00:40:19of one American helicopter,
00:40:22Cho liked to say,
00:40:24and I'll give you a pacified province.
00:40:26With that much money,
00:40:29I can raise the standard of living
00:40:31of the rice farmers,
00:40:33and government officials can be paid enough
00:40:35so they won't think it necessary to steal.
00:40:38Rather than hunt down the Viet Cong,
00:40:42he sought to persuade them.
00:40:46And I don't want to kill,
00:40:48I want to convert them.
00:40:50When I locate the real Viet Cong family,
00:40:55I try to win over the family.
00:40:58And through them,
00:41:00to win over the guy who left the family.
00:41:03And only after you fail,
00:41:07after you fail those steps,
00:41:12then you will kill him.
00:41:14And after I leave the program,
00:41:18not only the CIA,
00:41:21the Vietnamese as well,
00:41:23they are more interested in the last part.
00:41:27That is a real program.
00:41:29That is a real program.
00:41:40Back home, Americans were paying little attention
00:41:44to what was happening in Vietnam.
00:41:46They were watching the Beverly Hillbillies
00:41:49and Gunsmoke on TV,
00:41:51were interested in whether the Yankees
00:41:54would win the World Series again.
00:41:55and in the recent death of Marilyn Monroe.
00:42:01But some Americans had been growing impatient
00:42:05with the slow pace of social change.
00:42:08We were told in the 50s
00:42:10that we lived in the best country in the world.
00:42:12In the middle of, you know,
00:42:15trying to figure out what it meant
00:42:18to be a citizen of this best country in the world,
00:42:20suddenly the civil rights movement exploded into our consciousness.
00:42:25When the night has come
00:42:31We didn't think we had any power.
00:42:34We didn't think we could be actors in history,
00:42:37that we could affect things.
00:42:39No, I won't be afraid.
00:42:44Oh, I won't be afraid.
00:42:47And suddenly, you know,
00:42:49these young black students in the South were doing exactly that.
00:42:52And it just blew the tops of our heads off.
00:42:54So, darling, darling, stand by me.
00:42:59Oh, stand by me.
00:43:01Oh, stand by me.
00:43:05Oh, stand.
00:43:07Stand by me.
00:43:10Stand by me.
00:43:12Stand by me.
00:43:14Let the sky...
00:43:16Other Americans were concerned
00:43:17about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world.
00:43:23Perhaps it would be a good thing
00:43:25to put Khrushchev and Kennedy on an island
00:43:28and not let either one of them off
00:43:31until they came to an agreement.
00:43:34Stand by me.
00:43:36And all, and all, let's stand by me.
00:43:40And if you were in a cafe when Ziem was giving a speech,
00:43:44somebody would get up and shut the radio off.
00:43:45He'd be coming in over the radio.
00:43:47Somebody would get up and they'd just shut the radio off.
00:43:49I mean, he was not connected to his own population.
00:43:50Ziem was simply the opposite of what democracy was.
00:43:52South Vietnam in the competition against the war.
00:43:56And if you were in a cafe when Ziem was giving a speech,
00:44:00somebody would get up and shut the radio off.
00:44:02He'd be coming in over the radio.
00:44:03Somebody would get up and they'd just shut the radio off.
00:44:06I mean, he was not connected to his own population.
00:44:12Ziem was simply the opposite of what democracy was.
00:44:16South Vietnam in the competition against the dog.
00:44:21That should have been a golden opportunity
00:44:27to have that society open
00:44:31with the free press and free expression.
00:44:34But there was not much choice
00:44:37if the two systems are structurally
00:44:41dictatorial and oppressive systems.
00:44:43One under the Communist Party.
00:44:46One under a family.
00:44:50I see him.
00:44:52I know him.
00:44:54He didn't lead the government.
00:44:57The one who have the control over the government
00:45:01is his brother.
00:45:03Probably new.
00:45:06Ziem's brother, No-Ting Yu,
00:45:09had been the architect of the Strategic Hamlet Program.
00:45:12Ran a personal political party
00:45:15that mirrored the techniques
00:45:17and the ruthlessness of the communists.
00:45:19And supervised a host of internal security units
00:45:23that spied on and seized enemies of the regime.
00:45:29Some reporters who probed too deeply
00:45:32into what Ziem and Yu were doing
00:45:34were ordered out of the country.
00:45:35When an American journalist objected,
00:45:40New's sharp-tongued wife told him Vietnam had no use
00:45:44for your crazy freedoms.
00:45:46Meanwhile, out in the countryside,
00:45:50John Paul Vann and other advisers
00:45:53had begun to notice that the corruption within Ziem's regime
00:45:57had filtered down to the commanders in the field.
00:45:59Troops, who had once been willing to engage the enemy,
00:46:05now seemed strangely reluctant.
00:46:08God, I was told so many times,
00:46:12Diwe, you know, Scanlon, Diwe,
00:46:16um, very dangerous, you know, going out there.
00:46:21John Vann would go out with them at night,
00:46:25and he noticed that somebody would always cough
00:46:29or make some other slight noise
00:46:32when it turned out that the Viet Cong
00:46:34were heading into the ambush site.
00:46:36They did not want to get in a fight.
00:46:38South Vietnamese officers were chosen less for their combat skill
00:46:43than for their loyalty to President Ziem.
00:46:46And their men knew it.
00:46:49What we should have done is either forced the Vietnamese,
00:46:54I mean, really forced them to clean up their act,
00:46:58and if they wouldn't clean up their act,
00:47:00to say, we're out of here.
00:47:02Because we don't bet on losing horses.
00:47:05This is a losing horse.
00:47:08You are not going to win this insurgency.
00:47:11We as Americans should have understood
00:47:13the desire of the Vietnamese people
00:47:15to have their own country.
00:47:17I mean, we did the same thing to the Brits.
00:47:25In October of 1962,
00:47:28the United States and the Soviet Union
00:47:31came closer than they would ever come again
00:47:33to mutually assured destruction.
00:47:37Good evening, my fellow citizens.
00:47:39This government, as promised,
00:47:42has maintained the closest surveillance
00:47:45of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba.
00:47:49Within the past week,
00:47:52unmistakable evidence has established the fact
00:47:54that a series of offensive missile sites
00:47:59is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.
00:48:03The Soviets had secretly placed nuclear missiles
00:48:0890 miles from the United States.
00:48:10The Joint Chiefs of Staff urged President Kennedy to bomb Cuba.
00:48:14He resisted and instead ordered a naval blockade
00:48:20to stop Soviet ships from resupplying the island.
00:48:25For 13 excruciating days, the world held its breath.
00:48:30Finally, in exchange for a private pledge to remove American missiles from Turkey,
00:48:41Khrushchev agreed to remove his missiles from Cuba.
00:48:47Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted so direct a confrontation ever again.
00:48:53From now on, limited wars, like the growing conflict in Vietnam, would assume still greater importance.
00:49:06I'd grown up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.
00:49:09And I remember watching President Kennedy speak during the Cuban Missile Crisis
00:49:17and wondering if I was ever going to kiss a girl.
00:49:19And so this was just continuing that battle against the Russians.
00:49:24Only we were fighting, you know, their proxies, the Vietnamese there.
00:49:29But it was monolithic communism.
00:49:32It didn't matter to me where it was, I was going to go if my government said we needed to be there.
00:49:37We were probably the last kids of any generation that actually believed our government would never lie to us.
00:49:50We had been writing stories about all the flaws on the Saigon side.
00:49:55About how they wouldn't fight, the corruption, they wouldn't obey orders, the disorganization.
00:50:00And then all of a sudden, the Viet Cong for the first time, the raggedy ass little bastards, as the Harkinsons people in Saigon called them, stood and fought.
00:50:13And suddenly, all the flaws on the Saigon side were illuminated by this.
00:50:18Like a star shell, it illuminated the battlefield.
00:50:22Everything came out.
00:50:23A few days after Christmas 1962, the 7th Arvind Division got orders to capture a Viet Cong radio transmitter, broadcasting from a spot some 40 miles southwest of Saigon, in a village called Thun Toi.
00:50:40The village was surrounded by rice paddies. An irrigation dike linked it to a neighboring hamlet.
00:50:49App back.
00:50:51Intelligence suggested no more than 120 guerrillas were guarding the transmitter.
00:50:56John Paul Vann helped draw up what seemed to be a foolproof plan of attack.
00:51:03Supported by helicopters and armored personnel carriers, some 1,200 South Vietnamese troops would attack the village from three sides.
00:51:13When the surviving Viet Cong tried to flee through the gap left open for them, as they always had whenever outnumbered and confronted by modern weapons,
00:51:22artillery and air strikes would destroy them.
00:51:26Vann would observe the fighting from a spotter plane.
00:51:30But the intelligence underlying it all turned out to be wrong.
00:51:36There were more than 340 Viet Cong, not 120 in the area.
00:51:42Communist spies had tipped them off that they were soon to be attacked.
00:51:46And this time, they would not flee without a fight.
00:51:52Among them was Le Kwon Koum, who had been a guerrilla fighter since 1951, when he was 12.
00:52:00At 6.35 in the morning, on January 2, 1963, 10 American helicopters ferried an Arvin company to a spot just north of Tan Toi.
00:52:13They met no resistance.
00:52:14Meanwhile, two South Vietnamese civil guard battalions, approached Ap Back from the South, on foot.
00:52:27The Viet Cong commander let the civil guards get within 100 feet before giving the order to fire.
00:52:49Several South Vietnamese soldiers were killed.
00:52:54Survivors hid behind a dike.
00:53:01Ten more helicopters, filled with troops and escorted by five helicopter gunships, roared in to help.
00:53:11In this area, I had to shoot from five to 10 soldiers.
00:53:15This war spoke once, while it dropped down down to the ground, after strike, and then struck an envoy, and it struck itself.
00:53:22The head was thrown away from the Red mew.
00:53:24They hit the war, then the Dair mew, and the Dair mew, and the Dair mew, and the Dair mew.
00:53:26FUJTG, FUJTG, FUJTG, FUJTG, FUJTG FUJTG!
00:53:36Viet Cong machine guns hit 14 of the 15 aircraft, five would be destroyed, killing and wounding
00:53:47American crewmen.
00:53:57The enemy concentrated their fire on the Arvinds struggling to get out of the downed helicopters.
00:54:04It was like shooting ducks for the Viet Cong, an American crewman remembered.
00:54:10Colonel Vann circled helplessly overhead.
00:54:14He radioed the Arvind commander, urging him to send an APC unit to rescue the men.
00:54:20I got the word from John Vann that American helicopters were down.
00:54:27They were right in front of the Viet Cong positions.
00:54:30We had Americans killed and wounded, and we had to get over there right away.
00:54:36Like Vann, Captain Scanlon was only an advisor.
00:54:40Captain Lee Taumbah, his Arvind counterpart, would have to give the order to advance.
00:54:46Scanlon liked and admired him.
00:54:48I turned to Bah and said, hey, you know, you've got to get over there right away.
00:54:55And Bah said to me, I'm not going.
00:54:58Bah's superiors within the Arvind, far from the battlefield, had told him to stay put.
00:55:05And John Vann, my boss, was screaming at me over the radio to get them over there.
00:55:13It took Scanlon an hour to convince Captain Bah to move.
00:55:18Another two hours were lost before the APCs could make their way through the paddies toward
00:55:23the trapped men.
00:55:27The firing had died down.
00:55:30Everything was quiet.
00:55:31You could see the open expanse of rice fields.
00:55:35And my reaction was, hey, it was all over.
00:55:38The first two APCs dropped their ramps.
00:55:42Infantry squad stepped out, prepared to spray the tree line with automatic fire as they advanced.
00:55:48In the past, that had been enough to make the Viet Cong scurry away.
00:55:54This time was different.
00:55:59Eight of the APCs came under attack.
00:56:02Within minutes, six of their gunners had been killed, shot through the head.
00:56:08And boy, we got raked.
00:56:11So it was like a pool table.
00:56:12We were on the green and they were in the pocket.
00:56:15Sheep matters.
00:56:17When Captain Bah managed to convince a few more APCs to advance, guerrillas leapt from
00:56:23their foxholes and hurled hand grenades at them.
00:56:32None did any real damage, but the drivers were so demoralized that they halted, turned around
00:56:39and withdrew behind the wrecked helicopters.
00:56:43From his spotter plane, Van begged the Arvin to make a simultaneous assault on the enemy
00:56:50by all the remaining ground forces.
00:56:54Arvin commanders refused.
00:56:59At night, the Viet Cong melted away, carrying most of their dead and wounded with them.
00:57:07At least 80 South Vietnamese soldiers had been killed.
00:57:12So had three American advisors, including Captain Ken Good, a friend of Scanlon's.
00:57:19We stacked the armored personnel carriers with bodies.
00:57:26Stacked them up on top until we couldn't stack anymore.
00:57:30And, um, I wouldn't let the Vietnamese touch Americans.
00:57:36So I carried, uh, Americans out and, um, and I was, I was exhausted.
00:57:43And they, uh, told me about, uh, Ken Good getting killed.
00:57:48And Ken and I had worked so hard with our two battalions and, uh, to hear that, uh, he got killed hurt.
00:57:57A great guy.
00:58:02Reporters arrived from Saigon before all of the Arvin dead could be removed.
00:58:10They were horrified at what they saw and tried to find out what had really happened.
00:58:17John Paul Vann took Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam aside and told them.
00:58:23The Battle of Apback had been a miserable goddamn performance.
00:58:27The Arvin won't listen, he said.
00:58:30They make the same mistakes over and over again in the same way.
00:58:36But back in Saigon, General Harkins immediately declared victory.
00:58:42The Arvin forces had an objective, he said.
00:58:45We took that objective.
00:58:47The VC left and their casualties were greater than those of the government forces.
00:58:53What more do you want?
00:58:56When Halberstam and Sheehan reported that Apback had, in fact, been a defeat, the U.S. commander
00:59:03in the Pacific denied it all and urged the reporters to get on the team.
00:59:09Apback was terribly important.
00:59:13They shot down five helicopters, which they previously were terrified of.
00:59:19They stopped the armored personnel carriers.
00:59:23They demonstrated to their own people that you could resist the Americans and win.
00:59:31They shot down five helicopters, and they killed the troops in the U.S. commander in the U.S. commander in the U.S. commander in the U.S. commander in the U.S. commander in the U.S. commander.
00:59:39In Hanoi, the Battle of Apback was seen by Party First Secretary Lei Zouan and his Politburo allies as evidence of the inherent weakness of the South Vietnamese regime.
01:00:00Even when faced with American advisors and weaponry, the Viet Cong had learned how to inflict heavy casualties on Saigon's forces and get away again.
01:00:12In Saigon, President Xi'an claimed the Arvin were winning, not losing.
01:00:19At-back had only been a momentary setback, and he resented Americans telling him how to fight his battles or run his country.
01:00:29The president's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, went further.
01:00:33She denounced the Americans as false brothers.
01:00:37We don't have a prayer of staying in Vietnam, President Kennedy privately told a friend that spring.
01:00:46These people hate us, but I can't give up a piece of territory like that to the communists and then get the people to re-elect me.
01:00:56Buddhist monks and nuns are joined by thousands of sympathizers to protest the government's restrictions on the practice of their religion in South Vietnam.
01:01:12Xi'an began by alienating the rural population, and that started to be a calm.
01:01:19Now he was alienating the urban population.
01:01:22Seventy percent of the population is Buddhist, and the demonstrators clashed with the police during the week-long series of incidents like this.
01:01:31In the months that followed the Battle of Ap-back, South Vietnam plunged into civil strife that had little to do with the Viet Cong.
01:01:42Religion and nationalism were at its heart.
01:01:44A Catholic minority had for years dominated the government of an overwhelmingly Buddhist country.
01:01:54That spring, in the city of Wei, Christian flags had been flown to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the ordination of Diem's older brother as a Catholic bishop.
01:02:05But when the Buddhists of the city flew their flags to celebrate the 2527th birthday of Lord Buddha, police tore them down.
01:02:21Protestors took to the streets.
01:02:23The Catholic deputy province chief sent security forces to suppress the demonstration.
01:02:32The soldiers opened fire.
01:02:35Eight protesters died.
01:02:38The youngest was 12.
01:02:40The oldest was 20.
01:02:44The Diem regime blamed the Viet Cong.
01:02:49Monks throughout the country demanded an apology.
01:02:53They also called for an end to discrimination by Catholic officials.
01:03:07Many Buddhists had come to see Diem's policies as a direct threat to their religious beliefs.
01:03:16My family was against what Diem was doing.
01:03:19My mother was convinced that Diem was destroying the Buddhist faith.
01:03:26She would go to the pagodas and listen to the monks' speeches.
01:03:30And she was just extremely upset.
01:03:35She was not alone.
01:03:37There was a lot of people like her.
01:03:40American officials urged Diem and his brother Niu to make meaningful concessions to the Buddhists
01:03:47for the sake of maintaining unity in the struggle against communism.
01:03:52They refused.
01:03:55On June 10th, 1963, Malcolm Brown of the Associated Press received an anonymous tip.
01:04:04Something important was going to happen the next day at a major intersection in Saigon.
01:04:10He took his camera.
01:04:20To protest the Diem regime's repression,
01:04:25a 73-year-old monk named Quang Duc set himself on fire.
01:04:30As a large, hushed crowd watched him burn to death,
01:04:53another monk repeated over and over again in English and Vietnamese,
01:04:58a Buddhist monk becomes a martyr.
01:05:02A Buddhist monk becomes a martyr.
01:05:05A Buddhist monk, on.
01:05:11I remember they held the ashes of a monk who burned himself to death
01:05:17or was kept in one of the main pagodas.
01:05:20And lines of people came to pass by.
01:05:25And I saw these women, not rich women, ordinary Vietnamese women,
01:05:30take off the one piece of gold they had on their wedding ring
01:05:33and drop it in the bottle to contribute to the struggle.
01:05:38And I thought to myself,
01:05:39this regime is over.
01:05:42It's the end.
01:05:43Soon, other monks would become martyrs.
01:05:53Fresh outbursts by Madame Niu only made things worse.
01:05:59Burning monks made her clap her hands, she said.
01:06:02If more monks wanted to burn themselves,
01:06:05she would provide the matches.
01:06:07The only thing they have done,
01:06:10they have barbecued one of their monks,
01:06:16whom they have intoxicated,
01:06:18whom they have abused the confidence.
01:06:22And even that barbecuing was done
01:06:24not even with self-sufficient means,
01:06:28because they used imported gasoline.
01:06:32They thought she was arrogant.
01:06:35She was power-hungry.
01:06:37They suspected her and her husband of being corrupt.
01:06:41Niu ran the secret police,
01:06:43which arrested and tortured people.
01:06:47People feared the Xi'an regime
01:06:50perhaps more than they feared it.
01:06:53They really hated it.
01:06:56Students, including many Catholics,
01:06:59rallied to the Buddhist cause.
01:07:01So did some army officers.
01:07:05People among the military
01:07:07had to ask the question,
01:07:09can we continue this kind of situation like that,
01:07:12when the whole country was almost burning
01:07:16with the kind of protest from the Buddhists?
01:07:19You see?
01:07:22I first became aware of Vietnam
01:07:24because of a burning monk.
01:07:26We had watched the civil rights movement in the South,
01:07:34and it had set the standard for us
01:07:37to stand up against injustice,
01:07:41allow yourself to be beaten up,
01:07:43allow yourself to be attacked by a dog
01:07:45or hit by a police truncheon.
01:07:48And we had enormous respect for people
01:07:51who were willing to go that far.
01:07:57And then one day in 1963,
01:08:00we saw on television a picture of a monk in Saigon.
01:08:05This was an extraordinary act.
01:08:10Why was a Buddhist monk
01:08:12burning himself on the streets of Saigon?
01:08:16The protests continued.
01:08:22Tensions between Washington and Saigon steadily worsened.
01:08:27The more the Kennedy administration demanded change,
01:08:31the more Siem and his brother knew seemed to resist.
01:08:34The White House announced that a new American ambassador,
01:08:39former Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
01:08:42was being sent to Saigon,
01:08:44a man eminent enough, the president hoped,
01:08:47to make Siem listen more closely to American advice.
01:08:53Siem professed to be unimpressed.
01:08:56They can send ten lodges, he said,
01:08:59but I will not let myself or my country be humiliated,
01:09:03not if they train their artillery on this palace.
01:09:07He did promise the outgoing ambassador,
01:09:10Frederick Nolting,
01:09:11that he would take no further repressive steps
01:09:14against the Buddhists.
01:09:17Then, a few minutes after midnight,
01:09:20on August 21, 1963,
01:09:23with Nolting gone
01:09:24and Henry Cabot Lodge's arrival still one day away,
01:09:29Siem cut the phone lines
01:09:30of all the senior American officials in Saigon
01:09:33and sent hundreds of his special forces
01:09:37storming into Buddhist pagodas in Saigon,
01:09:41Hue, and several other South Vietnamese cities.
01:09:44Some 1,400 monks and nuns,
01:09:48students and ordinary citizens
01:09:49were rounded up and taken away.
01:09:53Martial law was imposed.
01:10:03Public meetings were forbidden.
01:10:06Troops were authorized to shoot anyone found on the streets
01:10:10after 9 o'clock.
01:10:11Tanks guard a pagoda in Saigon
01:10:15during South Vietnam's bafflingly complicated crisis
01:10:18that has the government of President Ngo Dinh Siem,
01:10:21students and Buddhists,
01:10:23and the United States government
01:10:24all trying to guess one another's next move.
01:10:29When college students protested in support of the monks,
01:10:33Siem closed Vietnam's universities.
01:10:36High school students then poured into the streets.
01:10:39He shut down all the high schools
01:10:42and the grammar schools too
01:10:44and arrested thousands of school children,
01:10:47including the sons and daughters of officials
01:10:50in his own government.
01:10:52I participated in the demonstrations.
01:10:54I strongly believe that the government has to be overthrown
01:11:01because it's a dictator government.
01:11:05We couldn't stand it anymore,
01:11:06and this is an opportunity to rise again.
01:11:11Fan Kuang Tui was a law student that summer.
01:11:14His father was a prominent nationalist
01:11:16whom Siem had jailed for calling for greater democracy.
01:11:20I was and I'm still a Catholic,
01:11:25not a very good Catholic.
01:11:27I don't practice religiously, but I'm a Catholic.
01:11:32I was rightly arrested
01:11:34because I did participate in the demonstration,
01:11:37and I was interrogated
01:11:40and briefly tortured, beaten a little bit.
01:11:44Henry Cavett Lodge took over as U.S. ambassador
01:11:50in the midst of the turmoil,
01:11:51and he is reported to have demanded
01:11:53that President Siem's brother, Nhu, be ousted
01:11:55or U.S. aid to Vietnam will be cut.
01:12:00In the wake of the Pagoda raids,
01:12:03a small group of South Vietnamese generals
01:12:05contacted the CIA in Saigon.
01:12:09Siem's brother, Nhu,
01:12:10was now largely in control of the government, they said.
01:12:15What would Washington's reaction be
01:12:17if they mounted a coup?
01:12:20President Kennedy and his senior advisers
01:12:23happened to be out of town.
01:12:25So Roger Hilsman, Jr.,
01:12:27Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
01:12:31and a critic of the Siem regime,
01:12:34took it upon himself
01:12:35to draft a cable with new instructions
01:12:37for Ambassador Lodge.
01:12:39The U.S. government
01:12:42could no longer tolerate a situation
01:12:44in which power lay in Nhu's hands, it said.
01:12:49Siem should be given a chance
01:12:50to rid himself of his brother.
01:12:53If he refused,
01:12:55Lodge was to tell the generals,
01:12:57then we must face the possibility
01:12:59that Siem himself cannot be preserved.
01:13:04The president was vacationing
01:13:06at Hyannisport, Massachusetts.
01:13:09Undersecretary of State George Ball
01:13:11read part of the cable to him over the phone.
01:13:16Since the early 1950s,
01:13:18the United States government
01:13:19had encouraged and even orchestrated
01:13:22other Cold War coups
01:13:23in Iran, Guatemala,
01:13:26the Congo, and elsewhere.
01:13:28Kennedy decided to approve Hilsman's cable,
01:13:34in part because he thought his top advisors
01:13:37had already endorsed it.
01:13:39They had not.
01:13:41And somehow,
01:13:45because of a cable that came out from Washington,
01:13:47Lodge decided that the only solution
01:13:50was to get rid
01:13:51of not just Nodin knew the bad brother,
01:13:55but also of Siem himself.
01:13:57And that started us on this whole business
01:14:00of promoting a coup.
01:14:02And it was not a good idea.
01:14:05I just had a feeling
01:14:07of impending disaster.
01:14:10On September 2nd, 1963, Labor Day,
01:14:14Walter Cronkite of CBS News
01:14:16interviewed President Kennedy.
01:14:19The president used the opportunity
01:14:21to deliver a message
01:14:23to President Siem.
01:14:25Sir President,
01:14:26the only hot war we've got running
01:14:28at the moment
01:14:29is, of course,
01:14:29the one in Vietnam.
01:14:31And we've got our difficulties there,
01:14:33quite obviously.
01:14:35I don't think that
01:14:36unless a greater effort
01:14:38is made by the government
01:14:39to win popular support
01:14:41that the war can be won out there.
01:14:43In the final analysis,
01:14:43it's their war.
01:14:45Hasn't every indication
01:14:46from Saigon been
01:14:48that President Siem
01:14:49has no intention
01:14:50of changing his pattern?
01:14:52If he doesn't change it,
01:14:53of course,
01:14:53that's his decision.
01:14:54He's been there 10 years.
01:14:56As I say,
01:14:56he has carried this burden
01:14:58when he's been counted out
01:14:59on a number of occasions.
01:14:59Our best judgment is
01:15:00that he can't be successful
01:15:01on this basis.
01:15:02But I don't agree
01:15:04with those who say
01:15:04we should withdraw.
01:15:06That'd be a great mistake.
01:15:07That'd be a great mistake.
01:15:08I know people don't like
01:15:09Americans to be engaged
01:15:10in this kind of an effort.
01:15:1147 Americans have been killed.
01:15:15We're in a very desperate struggle
01:15:17against the communist system.
01:15:19And I don't want Asia
01:15:20to pass into the control
01:15:21of the Chinese.
01:15:22Do you think
01:15:22that this government
01:15:23still has time
01:15:24to regain the support
01:15:27of the people?
01:15:27with changes in policy
01:15:30and perhaps
01:15:31in personnel?
01:15:32I think it can.
01:15:34If it doesn't
01:15:35make those changes,
01:15:37I would think
01:15:38the chances of winning it
01:15:39would not be very good.
01:15:42Despite the cable,
01:15:44Kennedy and his advisers
01:15:46were sharply divided
01:15:47about a coup.
01:15:49Robert McNamara,
01:15:51Maxwell Taylor,
01:15:52Vice President Lyndon Johnson,
01:15:54and the head of the CIA
01:15:56all cautioned against it
01:15:58because while none of them
01:16:00especially admired Diem,
01:16:02they did not believe
01:16:03there was any viable alternative.
01:16:07Fritz Nolting was called in
01:16:09and he said,
01:16:10as difficult as they are
01:16:12to deal with,
01:16:13there is nobody
01:16:14with the guts
01:16:14and sang foie
01:16:16in Vietnam
01:16:17of Diem
01:16:18and his brother New.
01:16:19And if we let them go,
01:16:21we will be saddled
01:16:23by a descending cycle
01:16:25of mediocre generals.
01:16:27And he was
01:16:27absolutely correct.
01:16:30But several
01:16:31State Department officials
01:16:32believed that
01:16:34without fresh leadership,
01:16:36South Vietnam
01:16:36could not survive.
01:16:39The debate intensified.
01:16:42My God,
01:16:43the president said,
01:16:45my administration
01:16:46is coming apart.
01:16:47In the end,
01:16:50Kennedy instructed Lodge
01:16:52to tell the renegade generals
01:16:53that while the United States
01:16:55does not wish
01:16:56to stimulate a coup,
01:16:58it would not thwart one either.
01:17:01The generals
01:17:02laid their plans.
01:17:04on November 1st, 1963,
01:17:15troops loyal to the plotters
01:17:16seized key installations
01:17:18in Saigon
01:17:19and demanded
01:17:21Diem and New
01:17:22surrender.
01:17:25The battle for the city
01:17:26went on for 18 hours
01:17:27and most of it
01:17:29was centered
01:17:29on the presidential palace.
01:17:30Just after 6.30
01:17:32in the morning
01:17:33Saturday,
01:17:33the shooting ceased.
01:17:43Diem and New
01:17:45escaped,
01:17:46took sanctuary
01:17:47in a church
01:17:48and agreed
01:17:49to surrender
01:17:50to the rebels
01:17:51in exchange
01:17:52for the promise
01:17:53of safe passage
01:17:54out of the country.
01:17:56They were picked up
01:17:56in an armored
01:17:57personnel carrier
01:17:58and murdered
01:18:02soon after
01:18:03they climbed inside.
01:18:11Madame New
01:18:12survived the coup.
01:18:14She was on
01:18:14a goodwill tour
01:18:15in the United States.
01:18:22The system
01:18:23was overturned
01:18:24on November 1st.
01:18:25I was released
01:18:26on November 4th.
01:18:28And it was
01:18:29the most exciting
01:18:30moment
01:18:31in the life
01:18:33of Saigon.
01:18:35The excitement,
01:18:37you could feel
01:18:38it in the air.
01:18:41I was thinking
01:18:43that, yeah,
01:18:44it's a good thing
01:18:45Diem was making
01:18:47it impossible
01:18:48to win the war
01:18:49because people
01:18:50were so against him
01:18:52that the war
01:18:55would be lost
01:18:56if he stayed
01:18:57in power.
01:18:59My father
01:18:59was a bit worried
01:19:01because he didn't
01:19:01know who was
01:19:02going to replace
01:19:03Diem.
01:19:06Ambassador Lodge
01:19:07reported to
01:19:08Washington
01:19:08that every Vietnamese
01:19:10has a smile
01:19:11on his face
01:19:12today.
01:19:13The prospects
01:19:14are now
01:19:15for a shorter war,
01:19:16he said,
01:19:17provided the generals
01:19:18stay together.
01:19:19certainly officers
01:19:22and soldiers
01:19:22who can pull off
01:19:23an operation
01:19:24like this,
01:19:25he continued,
01:19:26should be able
01:19:27to do very well
01:19:28on the battlefield
01:19:28if their hearts
01:19:30are in it.
01:19:34President Kennedy
01:19:35was not so sure.
01:19:37He was appalled
01:19:38that Diem
01:19:39and Niu
01:19:40had been killed.
01:19:42Three days later,
01:19:43he dictated
01:19:44his own rueful account
01:19:46of the coup
01:19:47and his concerns
01:19:48for the future.
01:19:51Monday,
01:19:52November 4th,
01:19:531963.
01:19:55Over the weekend,
01:19:56the coup
01:19:57in Saigon
01:19:57took place.
01:19:59It culminated
01:19:59three months
01:20:00of a conversation
01:20:01which divided
01:20:02the government
01:20:03here
01:20:04and in Saigon.
01:20:06I feel
01:20:08that we must bear
01:20:09a good deal
01:20:10of responsibility
01:20:10for it,
01:20:12beginning
01:20:12with our cable
01:20:14of August
01:20:15in which we
01:20:15suggested the coup.
01:20:18I should not
01:20:19have given
01:20:19my consent
01:20:20to it
01:20:21without a
01:20:21roundtable conference.
01:20:26I was
01:20:26shocked
01:20:28by the death
01:20:28of Diem
01:20:29and Niu.
01:20:30The way
01:20:31he was killed
01:20:31made it
01:20:32particularly
01:20:32abhorrent.
01:20:35The question
01:20:36now is whether
01:20:36the generals
01:20:36can stay together
01:20:37and build
01:20:37a stable government
01:20:39or whether
01:20:40public opinion
01:20:40in Saigon
01:20:41will turn
01:20:42on this government
01:20:42as repressive
01:20:43and undemocratic
01:20:45in the not-too-distant future.
01:20:51Kennedy
01:20:52would not live
01:20:53to see the answer
01:20:54to the question
01:20:55he had asked.
01:20:56He was murdered
01:20:57in Dallas
01:20:5818 days later.
01:21:01There were now
01:21:0216,000
01:21:03American advisors
01:21:04in South Vietnam.
01:21:07Their fate
01:21:08and the fate
01:21:09of that
01:21:09embattled country
01:21:10rested
01:21:11with another
01:21:12American president,
01:21:14Lyndon Baines
01:21:16Johnson.
01:21:16We thought we were
01:21:35the exceptions
01:21:36to history,
01:21:37we Americans.
01:21:39History
01:21:39didn't apply
01:21:40to us.
01:21:41We could never
01:21:42fight a bad war.
01:21:43We could never
01:21:44represent the wrong
01:21:45cause.
01:21:45We were Americans.
01:21:48While in Vietnam
01:21:48it proved that
01:21:49we were not
01:21:50an exception
01:21:51to history.
01:21:51this is a mean old
01:22:12world to live in
01:22:16all by yourself
01:22:19this is a mean old
01:22:25world to live in
01:22:29all by yourself
01:22:32this is a mean old
01:22:37this is a mean old
01:22:38world to try and live in
01:22:41all by yourself
01:22:46to call your home
01:22:51this is a mean old
01:22:52this is a mean old
01:22:54this is a mean old
01:22:56to try and live in
01:22:57to call you own
01:23:01this is a mean old world
01:23:03This is a mean old world
01:23:04I wish I had someone, someone who'd love me too, I wish I had someone who loved me too.
01:23:26If I had someone who'd love me too, then I'd know I wouldn't be so blue.
01:23:41This is a mean old world to try and live in, all by yourself.
01:23:51Oh, I find myself dreaming, I found the love.
01:24:06Sometimes I find myself dreaming, I found the love.
01:24:18Sometimes I dream I've really found the love.
01:24:27Someone who loved me too, have the stars above.
01:24:33Oh, this is a mean old world to try and live in, all by yourself.
01:24:45Learn more about the film and find additional resources at pbs.org slash Vietnam War.
01:24:58And join the conversation using hashtag Vietnam War PBS.
01:25:02The Vietnam War is available on Blu-ray and DVD.
01:25:05The companion book, soundtrack and original score from the film are also available.
01:25:09To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
01:25:14Episodes of the series also available for download from iTunes.
01:25:21Bank of America proudly supports Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's film, The Vietnam War.
01:25:28Because fostering different perspectives and civil discourse around important issues
01:25:33furthers progress, equality, and a more connected society.
01:25:42Go to bankofamerica.com slash betterconnected to learn more.
01:25:48Major support for the Vietnam War was provided by members of the Better Angels Society,
01:25:54including Jonathan and Jeannie Levine, Diane and Hal Brierly, Amy and David Abrams,
01:26:03John and Catherine Debs, the Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, the Montrone Family, Linda and Stuart Resnick,
01:26:13the Perry and Donna Gokin Family Foundation, the Lynch Foundation, the Roger and Rosemary Enrico Foundation,
01:26:20and by these additional funders.
01:26:23Major funding was also provided by David H. Koch,
01:26:29the Blavatnik Family Foundation,
01:26:32the Park Foundation,
01:26:35the National Endowment for the Humanities,
01:26:38the Pew Charitable Trusts,
01:26:40the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,
01:26:43the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
01:26:45the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations,
01:26:48the Ford Foundation Just Films,
01:26:51by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
01:26:53and by viewers like you.
01:26:57.
Recommended
58:47
|
Up next
55:30
58:09
27:33
59:11
52:34
46:21
25:25
46:04
25:36
21:27
46:04
1:22:18
1:25:15
23:33
23:18
24:17
25:00
Be the first to comment