Focus 580; Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975

This is our telephone talk program My name's David Inge and we're glad to have you with us this morning in the first hour of the program today we'll be talking about the Vietnam War. And our guest is the author of a newly published history of the war. His name is AJ Langguth. He's professor of journalism and the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Southern California. He covered the war for the New York Times. He his association with Vietnam dates back to 1964 when he first became the Times correspondent in Southeast Asia. And then after that he served for a period of time as the Saigon bureau chief. He also went back on special assignment for the paper Sunday magazine on two occasions in 1968 to cover the aftermath of the Tet Offensive and in 1990 to report on the American invasion of Cambodia and during his time there in Vietnam he came to know a number of the principals. On the U.S. and the South Vietnamese side more recently he's been able to go back to Vietnam and also to go to China and to talk to some people's talk to some people who were in leadership positions

in the north people that previously he would not have been able to talk with. He's also been able to take advantage of some material that would not have been available to earlier historians and writers and all of this has gone into the book which is titled Our Vietnam the war 1954 to 1975. Simon and Schuster is the publisher will be talking this morning about the book and about the war and you are certainly welcome. That is you folks who are listening are certainly welcome to call in with whatever questions comments you have. We ask only that callers just try to be brief in their comments and we ask that so we can accommodate as many different folks as possible. Keep things moving along. But anyone is welcome to call if you're here in Champaign Urbana where we are the local number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line that's good for anyone anywhere that you can hear us and it would be a long distance call for you. You may use that number that's 800 to 2 2

9 4 5 5. Again here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 W I L L that's what you get if you match the numbers and letters on the phone. Three three three. Wy lo and toll free 800. Two two two W while I'm well Jack Lang at hello. Hello. Thanks very much for talking with us today well thanks for having me on your program. We have now a number of books about me and books have been written by historians political scientists and also by journalists. Right. And I'm wondering what how you think perhaps your approach to the subject as a journalist is different perhaps from the way that say an historian as an academic historian might approach the same material. Well I've been pleased that the scholars who've written on the war and I have reviewed the book mentioned its strong narrative because that's what I tried for I wanted it to be a story I teach a lot of students who were not born when the war ended. And I wanted a book that they could pick up in one volume and learn about the the

people the events the decisions. And try to make it as vivid for them as I could and I'm fine of course that the people who lived through it are also interested in hearing how someone sees it it's a kind of story. I do think that one thing it does set the book apart from other writing is the this is the fact that you did have an opportunity to talk with people people who were military political commanders in the north who in previous histories to previous writers just weren't available. No that's right. To go back to Hanoi was an amazing experience because after all these are the people who are our enemies. And when I went down to the south I meant the only one who called the coachmen city the people there so referred to it as Saigon. But to talk to the colonels and majors who were out in the field fighting our boys and finding them so receptive and so agreeable was really quite amazing to me.

This is something that I've heard other writers talk about. And when one here veterans soldier people who are soldiers who have gone back on a number of them have gone back on humanitarian missions and so forth it seems that again and again that's what people comment about they they may on some level fear or believe that they're they'll encounter some sort of hostility. And it's seems to be rather remarkable that they don't. Well I was cynical about it. When the war was going on we hear this report that the man was telling his people that the Americans were a great nation and that they shouldn't hate Americans. The government was wrong and someday the government would understand it was wrong. Don't hate the Americans and I thought that was propaganda for our peace movement at home in the United States. But it turns out that that's what he was saying and that's what was believed. And of course it's also complicated or improved by the fact that 20 no more than that about 50 percent. Hard to tell for sure 50 percent of the population has been born since the war ended.

So for them America is if it's a villain the toll it's a very distant one. Well certainly both sides sustained very significant losses much more significant on the side of the Vietnamese. Are there still as you travel in Vietnam today. Do you still see signs and scars and evidence that this war took place. Well one of the first things they did in my I went five times to Hanoi the first trip they insisted in the nicest possible way that I go off to a few sites and one of them was an orphanage devastated by the Christmas bombings and Nixon and Kissinger in 1972. And there were pictures of the children who had been killed by the bombing in some of their mothers. And when I came out it was that anomaly. People were still they knew who I was they knew I was an American. They were still smiling and greeting. They want you to remember this. But they don't want you to dwell on it now because it's an agrarian society. A lot of the bombs you know

fell in the forests and in the plains farmland. So you still see some some wreckage and there are still land mines throughout the country that are a constant menace much as in Cambodia. But a lot of the rebuilding has taken place and I don't think you would realize just how hideously the country was bombed in the 60s early 70s. WE SHOULD I think perhaps talk just a minute or two to take a step back from 1954 and talk a little bit about how it is things got to be they were got to be the way they were then in 1954. Yes. Vietnam was a colony of France. There was an independence movement there. The Viet Minh would lead by the men. After almost immediately after the war they declared independence from France the French wouldn't have any of it. And so the French and their supporters began to fight the Viet Minh and their supporters.

That eventually the French suffered this very serious defeat that DMB on food and there was a peace conference in 1954 and that at that point the country was divided between the north and the south with this so-called DMZ the demilitarized zone in between. And so that sort of that's how we get to 1054 and eventually we get to the U.S. involvement. That's right I tried to sketch this in briskly so that the reader understands that it didn't start in 1954 that really started with that you could say with the French colonization and you make a point that the North Vietnamese tried to make a Robert McNamara when he was back the secretary of defense under both Kennedy and Johnson was back in Hanoi three years ago in 1997 for a conference that he called on missed opportunities and he wanted to begin the missed opportunities on both sides with 1961 and they said no no you see Mr. Secretary the big missed opportunity was 1945 when. We thought with the help you had

given us to fight the Japanese. We thought that you understood that we were not going to be a colony again and that we would resist this. You have an anti colonial history yourself and we were surprised and shocked that you acquiesced in the French returning to their colonies. Of course the reason was that the people who Harry Truman inherited as advisors and chose his advisors were the eastern establishment people who thought much more about Europe and the dangers that communism posed right after World War Two to Europe then the colonies in Asia. And if it required for France to be strong again and resist communism if it required them to re conquer their colonies that was a price that we thought could be paid there. That gets at the very question that was in my mind and that is in the United States was there ever any serious consideration of supporting the independence movement in the. Well when the Vietnamese from the north get together they lament

maybe more than any single fact the death of Franklin Roosevelt because he had a visceral feeling for the fact that these colonies and he included the British in India that these should not revert to their pre World War 2 status. Had he lived he would have had to fight his own State Department. That was what was quite a bit more conservative on this issue but he would have prevailed. As it is however as we know he he he died before the war could be ended and he hadn't laid down in concrete the tracks he wanted for some sort of protectorate for for in the China it would have made all the difference of course. When this division was made between the north and the south the prime minister of the South became this man Mr DMN that they missed or that the United States then supported that. And here again is one of those places where one asks why it is exactly we made some of the decisions we did maybe not so surprising that we would

support the South. But why it is that we supported him and continue to support him in the face of his rising unpopularity and his his refusal to go along with the elections that were supposed to take place. In the entire country in 1956. Well that's right that's the other thing that the North Vietnamese tried to impress on McNamara was that the other big mistake made before he even probably knew where Vietnam was was the 956 were in reneging of the agreement reached in Geneva two years before that the country would be unified by a nationwide election. We had agreed to appoint Nordin ZM a mandarin Catholic to head the government and we were pleased with the way he was maneuvering to consolidate his position. When he decided two years later in 56 that he would not join in sponsoring these elections that he would make himself president of the country and go on as an

independent unit which was never intended to be a Washington went along because we had the mistaken idea that somehow the Chinese would use a united Vietnam as a stalking ground for exporting communism throughout that whole region. Now the fact is that the Vietnamese and the Chinese although both were ruled at the time by communist leaders had 2000 years of empty that. The enemies were terrified about the Chinese coming back into their and ruling them as they had for a thousand years. We just misunderstood the dynamics of that region. Perhaps at this point I should introduce Again our guest We're speaking with A.J. Lang if he covered the war in Vietnam for the New York Times he served as the time Saigon bureau chief in 1965. He went back again for the paper two times on assignment in 68 and 70. He's now a professor of journalism in the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Southern California and he's authored a recent published history of the Vietnam

War published by Simon and Schuster. And the title of the book is Our Vietnam the war in 1914 one hundred seventy five questions are welcome 3 3 3 W I L L or 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 1:58 W while the as we talked the United States initially supported them although became increasingly unhappy with him. In part because his people became increasingly unhappy with him. Eventually he was assassinated during a coup a military coup in 1960. 3 How much did the United States know about that. Well we knew everything about it we bet this and in fact it would not have happened without the United States encourage men. But the problem was that the CM was cracking down starting in from 56 forward he's cracking down not only on dissidents rebels and the rest but even people who had fought against the French during that earlier period the Viet Minh.

And as a result in the north they were getting these alarming signals. The leader of a shadowy figure who really emerges I think in my book more clearly than I've seen in past writing is Manimal as one L and then D. And he went to the Politburo in the north and said look if you don't take charge of this. Rebellion that's growing against ZM it's going to go on anyway and we're going to lose any leadership role and it was that time in 59 60 that the North started to support the rebels but a lot of the rebels were made by the CM's own army they go into these villages they would rape pillage do the things that soldiers do when they're out of control and the countryside was aghast. Now it was complicated by the fact that ZM was in fact a Roman Catholic in a country that was 80 percent or so Buddhist and this festered and grew until by 1963 we couldn't ignore it any longer that's the period when Buddhist monks were setting themselves on fire.

Horrifying pictures that really made the United States recognize for the first time that something was going on in this country that we were supporting. And we had better take a closer look at it. It was then that Kennedy reluctantly after a lot of debate over a period of months agreed that the CIA could go forward with its encouragement for the coup d'etat that ultimately led to the murder of both Salman and his brother knew. I think that's interesting you pointed to that to those images that people perhaps will recall certainly Vietnam is a case where people believe that the media and coverage of the war had a great deal to do with turning American popular opinion against it. And perhaps they think about the images of. But this is the case I think when even earlier on here we see just how powerful media can be in getting people to focus on a particular story. Yes it's true I think that commentators have mentioned I certainly agree that there was a turning point when all of a sudden those of us who wrote for the press became less

important in informing the public than the broadcasters did the television people Morley Safer was there as a young reporter when I was and his pictures of the Marines setting fire to what was supposedly an enemy village with their Zippo lighters to the grass huts that upset people in a way that no account I think could have done it. It was irrefutable. Lyndon Johnson was furious felt that it was taken out of context but thought that safer had perhaps even bribed the Marines to do it. It was a standard operating procedure and we had written about it. But all of a sudden the American public get two day delay because the film had to be shipped to San Francisco in the New York office and the American public was seeing it at home. And this was an amazing change. We have a caller to bring into the conversation when we do that they are in Urbana and it's. Line number one. Hello. Hi. Your brief recap of the 1954 Geneva accord may be inadvertently fail to mention that

part of the agreement was that the Vietnamese would be allowed to vote for reunification and the later six years eight years after the Accord which the agreement was or which promise was broken. And I wonder if someone could comment on that. Well yes it actually was two years and the agreement was structured in such a way that the North agreed to send back to the north some of its cadre who had been fighting the French the United States helped a number of perhaps as many as 800000 people from the north who didn't want to live under Holcim In these were largely Catholics to go south. So this transfer was arranged. Now the people from the south who are being shipped North couldn't understand why they had to since they had felt they had won against the French why they had to be the one who were who were dispossessed there were quotas in the various provinces and they would stand on the pier as they were going to ship out to go north and hold up two

fingers indicating that just two years and then they'd be back united with their families. But of course that didn't happen. So it wasn't even as long as I think the caller saying it was it was supposed to happen in 56. You know yeah yeah I well I think it's. I think that's an extremely important point because that's kind of my understanding is one of the you know kind of underline the issues which led to the conflict and to the U.S. invasion of the South. Was this issue about unification and the fact that that promise had been broken time and again and that the North Vietnamese had sought for a long time well into the early 60s to have a political settlement to the conflict. That's right. Now what I think that's an important point to amplify otherwise it all seems rather mysterious and and unequivocal as to what you know what is the nature of the conflict and I think losing that kind of

perspective reminds me a little bit of the current loss of perspective in for instance in Colombia and also in the Middle East. Well I think that you're right and what was astounding to me in researching the book was finding that people like McGeorge Bundy was a very smart man but absolutely ignorant of this part of the world. He astounded Walter Lippmann the political columnist well into the middle 60s when he didn't know when South Vietnam had come into being he didn't understand that had there been a a two year provisional government just designed to save face all around. And Lippman couldn't believe that someone was making these life and death decisions didn't appreciate the point you just made. Yeah I think it's I think it's rather curious that that sort of ignorance. I think it's still around today I mean I think for instance probably a number of people think that the Vietnam conflict was occurred because the North invaded the South when in fact the Vietnam conflict at least in

its highest escalation point was a result of the US invading the South. And whatever the Presidents Kennedy first and then Johnson and Nixon spoke about it they talk about an invasion and they wouldn't countenance continence the idea that it was in fact a civil war. So I think it's interesting how the official point of view gets propagated into. You know into the media and even to the state you know we hear a lot of myths and nonsense. Even to this day about the Vietnam War so I appreciate your attempt to hopefully set the record straight a little bit. Anyway fine thank you and thank you. Well one of the things certainly is true when you point out that the course of the war and the American involvement in it was determined to a great extent by American presidential politics and by these three individuals who were president. And there I'm I'm interested in your observations about John Kennedy and

what this is again. I suppose one of those great what if questions what would have happened if he had. And what the course of the war would have been at the. In one thousand. Just to give people some numbers to think about in barely in one thousand sixty there were only 900 military U.S. military advisors. By the end of 1962 it was only eleven thousand. Then though seven years later in 1969 this is when Nixon was president and announced the first troop withdrawals there were more than five hundred and forty thousand U.S. military personnel there so that was an astounding sort of increase over those years. What what do you think and I know from having looked at the book that Kennedy when he got into office and started looking at what was happening in Vietnam was surprised and realized that he that this was not a good situation. What do you what do you think might have happened had he. Lived the thing with Kennedy is that he was elected with

about apparently about one third of what we're going to find out of the popular vote that perhaps Gore is getting over Bush. A very narrow nationwide margin and he was conscious of this as a politician would be that there were certain decisions he felt he could make and couldn't make. He appointed a lot of Republicans to his inner circle McGeorge Bundy was Republican McNamara Douglas Dillon secretary of treasury. He kept on Allen Dulles the Republican head of the CIA and his own instincts were pretty good I would think I've been reading now as you can imagine an awful lot at the library is not of the classified documents he had been there as a young congressman to Indochina and with his brother Robert. He was kind of polishing his foreign policy credentials because he's going to be running for the Senate and became apparent to him that the French were losing and that it was going to be very difficult for white faces to continue any sort of

successful camp military campaign in an Asian country. But when Iraq when he came into the White House he was confronted with the fact that we were there in numbers. And I think what he was really trying to do and it's quite clear because he'd confide this to his political cronies not to Dean Rusk or to McNamara the functionaries from the cabinet but to his political cronies he said. You know I'm going to get out of there. We're not going to send large numbers of troops and I'm going to be a hated man in 1065 after I've been re-elected. But I can't do it. Until then the backlash would be so strong in number the Democrats are thinking of how the Republicans used the battle cry who lost China in 1948 again in 1052 And so he. Luckily for me I don't feel with the what ifs I just tell this is what happened and let the reader draw her his own conclusion. But it if we want to speculate it seems to me that Kennedy if it got any kind of margin

of victory in 64 would have used that mandate to ease out there. There were always excuses you could always find some reason for saying well we did our best but the country is so fragmented and so hopeless that now we're going to pull out. Yeah I realized that's where we keep this sort of discussing the same issue but continue to have question in my mind and we've talked about the fact that the people who were in the circles of policymakers perhaps had a very poor understanding of Asia. But it just it seems still seems surprising to me given the American experience in Korea and. The unwillingness on the part of some people to get involved militarily and in Asia. Again why it is we did what we did. Well the experience in Korea according to the people who watched Dean Rusk with disapproval in his own State Department he had not predicted that the Chinese when he was a lower level functionary in the State Department during the Korean War had

not predicted that the Chinese would come into that conflict and he had been in his own view badly burned by it he was a man of very limited self-confidence and early on he was willing to turn all the decisions over to McNamara who was a boardroom bully. There's just no kind a way to put it. McNamara knew how to go into a meeting and dominated with his experience in the automobile industry but he knew nothing about Asia and I've talked to him about this and he said well you know I didn't I admit I didn't know anything about that part of the world but Dean Acheson the former secretary of state and Robert Lovett all the people who were democratic. Paul and Republican Republican policy mavens from the establishment they all said it was essential to hold on the South Vietnam so I just went in and tried to do what they said needed doing. So there was no independent judgment except the president himself.

And by the time you get to to Lyndon Johnson he's inherited these advisors Kennedy had I think a very good grasp of who could do what and he didn't have much regard for Dean Rusk and he I think knew McNamara's limitations. Johnson comes in he inherits these people and all of a sudden he's taking them very very seriously. He knows nothing about this part of the world. His only interest is his biggest domestic program and he's terrified that if he opens up the Vietnam war it will derail the things he wants to do in the Great Society in the anti-poverty programs and civil rights legislation. And so he tries to sneak the war past the American people. And what's the great irony there is of course it turned out that the war did the rail all of those other things because it turned out to and this is something that that I think people perhaps don't have. To the extent that they should for all of those people who attack the anti-poverty efforts of the Johnson administration say well it was a failure because you know the government can't solve problems and it wasn't the right approach and so on and so forth that

in fact what happened was that the increasing demands of this war and the cost of the war meant that the anti-poverty programs were never fully funded so perhaps we'll never know whether they would have worked or not because they really weren't given a chance. And of course that was the crowning bitter irony for Johnson was that against his will he had to start cutting back on the very programs he believed in to to find the money for this war that he hated. We're a little bit past the mid point again I just want to introduce our guest We're speaking with Jack Lang with He is professor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Southern California. He is also the author of a recent book that's titled Our Vietnam it's a history of the Vietnam War from the. From 1950 forward in 1905 published by Simon and Schuster Jack Lang have covered the war in Vietnam for the New York Times. He served as the Times Saigon bureau chief in 1965. He went back to times on special assignment for the paper

in 68 and 70 and then more recently has been able to go and spend some time there in Vietnam talking with people that he would not before when he was there as a reporter would never have been able to talk to people who were political military leaders in the north and all of that is in the book and your questions are certainly welcome we have another couple of people lining up here. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign Urbana toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5. I'm next caller is in champagne. That would be. The line number one. Hello. Thank you good morning. Yeah you were just talking about the costs of the war and you know other than in human terms reasons Dave of course I mean you know the millions of Southeast Asians that were killed as well as the you know three times as many U.S. servicemen have died from the after effects of the war since they came back or that actually died over there as well but in terms of the financial costs it's my

reckoning that we ran up a debt from that the not only stop the Great Society but we still hadn't paid that off by the time Reagan came into office and and ran up the debt even more so we're in a sense we're still paying off of the financial cost of that war. Well there's a might say there's one other cost that we should consider to get the Paris agreement in 1972. Kissinger agreed to reparations for Vietnam that laid the toll there. Thomas negotiator asked for 8 billion dollars to repair the country because of our bombing some of it would go north some of it would go to the south. Finally the figure that was arrived on was three point to five billion. And Nixon agreed to this because he said it would show the world that Communism failed and was turning to us for money. An odd reading it seems to me but nonetheless he sent a letter mediately after the peace accord was signed in Paris a

promising three point two five billion for the country and another billion up to a billion and a half in food and commodities. We used to read nig from that we used the excuse that the war continued. Of course it continued continued in the south with our government that we were supporting it continued in the north we knew it was going to. So that was just hypocrisy. The fact remains that on the books is this three point two five billion dollar debt and I don't expect to see it paid in my lifetime because I think that the emotions run too high. But when I think how long it took for the Japanese Americans to get some sort of acknowledgement of what they went through I do believe that one day the president States whoever she or he may be he will make good on that on that. Well and three point two billion dollars even in those days compared to the damage we've done is a mere pittance. That's right. Thank you.

Thanks for the call. Let's go to next caller in Chicago and its line for. Hello to you touched on this momentarily just a few minutes ago but I think possibly the major reason for being in Vietnam and what really screwed up our foreign policy was a lying campaign of the Republican Party and and the and their cohorts suppressed the China lobby and so on blaming the Democrats losing China and this spread to their campaign in Europe where they claimed that it was the Democrats Roosevelt who lost Poland to this to the Communists. And of course the public being the public and pretty damn stupid about the whole thing as is usually the case believed it and this is what it essentially destroyed the Democratic Party for a good man. The years as far as national campaigns for

concerned the presidency and so on. This is right. Kennedy was afraid of what Johnson was afraid of what. Carter was afraid of and so on and. And they're still afraid of it. The latest in the Democratic Party for the most part. Well the only thing I would disagree with what you're saying is I don't think the public is stupid. I think when they're informed when we're informed we do pretty well. But when when you say that. We're not. It's it's a problem. The fact is that in the case you're talking about the Republicans made hay out of who lost China. It was a major issue after all this had been our ally during the war this is a huge country and all of a sudden with not much preparation we find the public is informed that it is now a communist country and sees us as an enemy. Eisenhower told his cabinet that one of the things they had to avoid when he came in and seven in 52 partially because of that who lost China rallying cry they had to be

careful that no one be able to say who lost Vietnam. So yes you're right it's been a it's been at the consciousness of leaders on both sides for many years and it still is not only that but. During the campaign about who was trying to say the Republicans went after the experts on that. State Department on Asia and we've lost most of our expertise on Asia and this is one of the things that. That we can trust in conducting policy in that part of the world. You know this is Robert McNamara's point and it's a very attractive one for him because then he can say well you know we because of the McCarthyite smears and innuendo we lost all these people who might have saved us. But the fact is there were plenty of people left in the government and he heard in person from some of them. And he didn't want to hear it. So it's just too convenient. Yes there were some careers ruined and there's no

doubt that damage was done. One of the things that happened apparently was one more reason that made Rusk so timid. He had seen men as self-confident as George Marshall and or had just been torn apart in the public by McCarthy and his allies and he had made him even more anxious to hunker down and not take on what I consider to be the responsibility of a secretary of state. I appreciate the comments of the callers were growing short of time we have a couple of other people. Well I hope you'll forgive me if I go on and we'll go next we've got somebody on a car phone so we'll go there to Tuscola line one. Hello. Oh yes I want to ask you a question since you're a journalist and you talk about how and I believe this your view quite accurately if people are informed. I'm just wondering why it was not journalism up in a little higher level to reveal some of these big weaknesses that we have concerning why we got into the war. And you know I mean you mentioned

comments in quotes that we should never get in things and yet I and and you you mention many of these other things about the inexperience of some of our leaders but how come. The New York Times or other people didn't bring out some of these things. And do you think there were restrictions on this or were you inhibited from doing that and if you weren't have it why didn't you have get this information. I think that's really a good point. No there were no inhibitions by the newspaper or by any of the news organizations that I'm aware of. The thing is this a lot of what is in my book comes from the fact that I can go now to the all of us can to the Boston Library of the JFK Library and down in Austin the LBJ Library and they roll out on dollies boxes of classified documents and I would sit there reading these things the debates the deliberations interest thinking how these would have been front page stories all through that period from 61 to the end of

the war if we had had them available now the closest that happened. You remember the Pentagon Papers where McNamara ordered a review of the war for internal purposes. And I'm a man named Dan Ellsberg leaked it to the New York Times and The New York Times ran it but that was already 1971. Yes if if that material had come out I think the public would have had a spirited debate. Maybe we would still would have gone into Vietnam. There was after all there was a movement for protecting the south from communism. But I think if they had understood just how tenuous that original commitment was and how dubious the chance of victory was that we would not have been spared the whole affair but that material was classified. Let's talk again with another caller this is Bourbonnais. That's line two. I'm grateful for the author's admission of the Kennedy approved murder of the president GM and his brother. If I'm correct the SOB that ma'am president had a

mother brother this brother was the Roman Catholic God specific soul that's very fully what became of this problem and I'll disconnect and listen thanks. Yes he is the senior brother. There were several brothers one was murdered by the Viet Minh or died in their prison in any event. He was the oldest brother the next was the brother who became archbishop and one of the plans had been that one of the contingency plans had been that perhaps. ZM President Sam and his brother knew could be shipped first to the Philippines and then to Rome and given safe haven with his brother through the Catholic Church. Nobody really believed that this was going to happen I think Kennedy who knew ZM and who had a more sensitive nature than he sometimes cared to acknowledge. I think he hoped against hope that Sam could be spared. But there were plenty of acknowledgments

too through the CIA that if the generals overthrew this man and his brother that they were going to kill him. That they the real reason was and knew had a really active secret police and they knew all the financial fiddles and all the other things that these generals had done. And if they had been left alive in exile they would have been able to disgrace the ruling junta that had overthrown them. So we knew they were going to die. On the other hand when it actually was announced and it was first announced that they had committed suicide even though their hands were tied behind their back. Kennedy did bolt from the meeting and took a moment to compose himself because he had met Sam and he thought that in many ways he had been a decent leader and had tried hard for his country. We had but 10 minutes left our guest is AJ Langguth. He covered the war in Vietnam for the New York Times. He's now a professor of journalism in the Annenberg School for Communication at

University of Southern California and is author of A New History of the war. It's titled Our Vietnam the war in 1914 1075 published by Simon Schuster. The full scale involvement in the War of the United States in the war came during the Johnson administration and the event that really made that possible that that paved the way for that was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Yes. And I'd like to talk a bit about that in that event and what you can say about the motivation of Lyndon Johnson here. What this was. It happened in 1964 the North Vietnamese patrol boats fired on an American destroyer. Then President Johnson said that there this was on August 2nd then he said there had been a second attack a couple of days later which turned out not to be correct but based on that the Congress endorsed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and that essentially gave the president the authority to go ahead and become militarily involved to the degree that we did. What

can you talk about about what happened and why you think Lyndon Johnson did what he did. Oh yes it's a fascinating story to me. And in the final piece of the puzzle came when I was in Hanoi a couple of years ago this is what happened. We thought our policy makers believed that policy out of Hanoi I was as closely held as it is in Washington that there was somehow a Pentagon equivalent in Asia. Well there wasn't. And what because of bad communication and because the problems different commanders would be given instructions and then considerable autonomy so the. The chief in charge of Tonkin Gulf patrols fired on August 2nd ordered his men to fire on some spy units that we were sending into that area. And Giap and the general from the north was appalled. It was a folly it was.

It was going to invite wreak criminal nation. He gave an immediate order sent it down to this man don't do this again. So when on October 4th there were reports by nervous sailors U.S. sailors that they were being menaced Jap for one knew that it was impossible because they just weren't going to repeat that mistake. Johnson had a wonderful opportunity. He was running against Barry Goldwater. Barry Goldwater was a hawk and widely perceived as perhaps a dangerous man with the nucular button. So he had he Johnson had resisted earlier provocations in the south some bombings of U.S. installations because he wanted to show that he was not going to be rushed into. Precipitous action but this gave him a wonderful opportunity. It was a clear cut aggression at sea. The original attack. Still he held back and he didn't do anything. He didn't know what to do but when there was this

shadowy report of a second one he dusted off a resolution that he had had Bill Bundy in the State Department drop some months before authorize it really open and that it was it was kind of a nonspecific declaration of war a blank check. He dusted it off had it rewritten and hustled it over to the Congress. Well they were still feeling that the North was foaming its nose at the United States not only having had the first attack but now was doing it again despite our. Dire warnings and it passed with the exception of two votes going to Alaska and Wayne Morris and they have Oregon where the only two people in the Senate who rose up and said you know this is madness we're declaring war with this blank check and it's not just war itself but it's we're going to vote him all the money he needs. We just shouldn't be doing this. But Fulbright who later became a leading critic of the war rammed it through Johnson's behest through the Congress and it became the only

real legal authorization for the war for the rest of the time we were there. Another very important turning point came in January nine hundred sixty eight with the Tet Offensive. And it was this this very successful operation by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong that then I think persuaded a lot of people in this country that there was no winning this war and all that would happen was it would simply grind on for a long time without any decisive result and one another of the results. The things that happened just a couple of months later Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not run again. Yes. Did the Vietnamese in that you talked to did they say that they believe that this was going to be as important for them as it turned out to be. Well I think they they hoped that it was going to be even more important. We forget maybe and many at the time we didn't know that they had big big

hopes for this now they were always operating under a policy that you fought and you tried to negotiate at the same time but you never negotiate until you were in a position of strength. So what this was what they really hoped and this was a decision by this man was one because by this time and this is what I think I know we didn't understand the CIA certainly didn't that hole had taken himself off the out of the scene he told his pullet bureau I'll be your flag I'll be your icon but you make the decisions from here on in. And Jap had been against the Tet Offensive. He thought it was premature because it. Wasn't supposed to be just the offensive which was a great success in that they stood up and took all of these province capitals. If only for an hour or two all over the country at a time when it was more than just said there was light at the end of the tunnel and all the sudden they were popping up with inside the embassy compound walls in Saigon so it was a great success on that level but was also supposed to be not only that it was supposed to be a great

uprising in which the people themselves would come forward and acknowledge that they were on the side of the Communists that the war was over that they would no longer be vassals of the puppets American puppets. And instead of that the people just cowered in their houses and didn't want to be part of it. So the general uprising that they hoped would be the final propaganda coup did not happen. So it was a it was a mixed bag but in terms of its effect on the American public to me there was no question that to see this demonstration of support spread out through all of South Vietnam on one day was devastating. There is so much more that we could do if we had more time and I'm sorry to say that we don't. And I would certainly recommend to people that they look at the book just as final question I might ask. You know I'm sure that you spend a lot of time thinking about the war you covered part of the war. As a journalist

but I wonder whether as a result of going back over the material looking at things you hadn't seen before to produce this book that you came away with an understanding of the war that you had not had before. Yes I think the main one was never believe it when we're told. Well policy might not make sense to you but the people making it know more than we do. They've got more information. They simply did not. And I don't think it has to leave us cynical but it can certainly leave us skeptical about confiding all decisions to our government. We've got to examine them. One of the time if we had done that properly in 19 61 62 we could have averted the war. Well I want to say thank you very much for talking with us today. We appreciate it. I was happy to have the chance. Our guest A.J. Lang if he covered the war in Vietnam for the New York Times he was the Saigon bureau chief there in 65. He's now professor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at University Southern California. And the book is Our Vietnam

the war 954 to 975. It's published by Simon and Schuster.