The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we discuss the lessons of the Vietnam War with former Defense Sec. Robert McNamara. Then four others from the Vietnam era, George McGovern, Sen. John McCain, McGeorge Bundy, and Robert Scheer discuss McNamara's book. Finally tonight, Charlayne Hunter- Gault begins a series of conversations rethinking affirmative action. Tonight's guest is Ruth Simmons, the president-elect of Smith College. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: China's foreign minister said today his country would go ahead with the planned sale of nuclear technology to Iran over U.S. objections. Sec. of State Christopher voiced those objections during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in New York this afternoon. Iran is planning to build two reactors which the U.S. fears could be used for weapons production. Both men spoke at a news conference this afternoon.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: None of our major trading partners in Western Europe, none of the industrialized nations that participate in the G-7, are engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran, because like us, they think it's too dangerous to do so.

QIAN QICHEN, Foreign Minister, China: [speaking through interpreter] We respect the view of the United States, but what we've done is consistent with the international practice.

MR. MAC NEIL: The U.S. recently failed to get Russia to scrap a nuclear deal with Iran. Today's talks between U.S. and China came just before the opening of UN conference on nuclear weapons. One hundred seventy-six countries are considering an extension of the 1970 nonproliferation treaty. The U.S. and other nuclear powers want an indefinite and unconditional extension which is opposed by some third world nations. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros- Ghali opened the conference calling for total disarmament. In Britain today, members of the Greenpeace environmental group broke into that country's largest nuclear power plant. The protest was designed to coincide with the UN meeting. Greenpeace claimed it halted plutonium production, but that was denied by a plant official. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: A federal appeals court in Philadelphia overturned a GM pickup settlement today. The nearly $2 billion involved trucks with so-called side saddle fuel tanks. The tanks were allegedly prone to catching on fire. General Motors had offered $1,000 coupons toward new trucks. The court called it a marketing program to sell more pickups. The U.S. dollar fell again today on foreign exchange markets. Japan's central bank bought dollars to try to stop the fall but it still closed sharply lower. Today is the deadline for filing U.S. income tax returns. It came two days late this year because April 15th fell on a Saturday. New Englanders have another day to file since today is Patriots Day, a holiday in Massachusetts.

MR. MAC NEIL: President Clinton signed legislation today designed to put the nation's capital on the road to financial recovery. The bill allows the District of Columbia to borrow millions of dollars from the federal treasury to pay overdue bills and keep the city operating. It creates a five-member financial control board to oversee spending decisions by the mayor and city council. The district has been teetering on the bring of bankruptcy with a $722 million deficit. Mr. Clinton signed the measure during a White House ceremony.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The health of the city and the security of its citizens have been threatened by the financial crisis, and I applaud all those who have come together to work together to begin the road back. The purpose of the bill I am signing today is just that. It is a road back. The Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Act will speed the district's recovery and return to fiscal health and will help over the long run to improve the delivery of services to its citizens.

MR. MAC NEIL: President Clinton signed an executive order today aimed at reducing the number of government secrets. White House Press Sec. Mike McCurry said it sharpens the definition of terms like "top secret," "secret," and "confidential," but also sets up a mechanism to de-classify secret information after 25 years with exemptions to protect national security.

MR. LEHRER: The Supreme Court announced two affirmative action decisions today. It let stand an appeals court's overturn of an affirmative action plan for the fire department in Birmingham, Alabama. That plan promoted black firefighters as a remedy for past discrimination. The federal appeals court had ruled it illegally discriminated against whites. In another case, the Justices upheld a $425,000 award for a white man who said he was denied a promotion because of his race. The company said preference was given to a black person under the company's affirmative action program. We'll begin a series of conversations about affirmative action later in this program. The Supreme Court today also heard arguments on whether the Endangered Species Act applies to private land. A federal appeals court ruled the law does not prevent logging on land in Oregon which was habitat for the spotted owl. Environmental groups challenged that decision. The Supreme Court is expected to rule by summer.

MR. MAC NEIL: More than 300 people were rescued safely after a ferry begin sinking near the Channel Islands off the Coast of France today. Robert Hall of Independent Television News has this report.

ROBERT HALL, ITN: They had set off on a routine day trip. Instead, they were scrambling for their lives. Fifteen minutes after leaving the Jersey capital, Centelia, 300 people struggling into life rafts as their ferry sank between them. The catamaran, "St. Malo," had been heading for the neighboring islands of Guernsey and Sark. Turning north, she'd struck an underwater reef holing one hull. Here mayday brought every available vessel to her aid, backed by helicopters from the RAF and French Coast Guard. For two hours, rescuers used the shelter of a larger ferry to help the passengers to safety. Many passengers were transferred to three local lifeboats, the most seriously injured airlifted to Jersey, where a long-rehearsed, major incident plan was already in place. Forty people needed hospital treatment, some with broken limbs sustained whilst leaping from the ferry, others, particularly the elderly, simply exhausted. There's little doubt that the design of this ferry and the relatively moderate sea conditions have helped prevent a far more serious incident. Nevertheless, an official inquiry is due to begin within the next 24 hours.

MR. MAC NEIL: Pakistani police shot and killed a suspect today in last month's killing of two America embassy workers. The suspect died in a gun battle with police in Karachi. They said he'd been affiliated with a militant political group. Two Americans were killed when the van they were riding to work in was ambushed by gunmen. An FBI team is working with Pakistani authorities investigating the attack.

MR. LEHRER: This was the day of the traditional Easter Egg Roll at the White House. President and Mrs. Clinton welcomed thousands of children and whistled the games to begin. President James Madison first hosted the springtime event in the early 1800's. Today children rolled eggs with plastic spoons, ate candy, and met with giant rabbits. President Clinton called it an important White House tradition. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Robert McNamara and reaction to him and a conversation about affirmative action. FOCUS - IN RETROSPECT

MR. MAC NEIL: Our lead story tonight is the battle that's erupted around the newly published Vietnam War memoirs of former Defense Sec. Robert McNamara. The McNamara book has provoked argument and controversy reminiscent of the war, itself, one that ended for the United States almost exactly 20 years ago. We start with the memoir and its author, Robert McNamara. He came into office with the new Kennedy administration in 1961 and left in 1968, the last year of President Johnson's administration, to become president of the World Bank. Mr. McNamara, thank you very much for joining us.

ROBERT McNAMARA, Former Secretary of Defense: Thank you, Robin. I'm delighted to be here.

MR. MAC NEIL: Did you expect so much hostile reaction as there's been to your speaking out now?

MR. McNAMARA: Well, I expected and to some degree wanted substantial reaction. The reaction today comes from two different groups. One group has read the book and the other group hasn't. It's the group that's read the book that I am most interested in. I wrote it to draw lessons so we won't make the same mistake again. I think the reaction is beginning to focus on that. I hope it will.

MR. MAC NEIL: But did you dream that there would be so much negative reaction, that people would not be sympathetic to your purpose?

MR. McNAMARA: To tell you the truth, I did. I sent the text to about twenty or twenty-two of my close associates, and the first question I asked them was essentially that. And the majority of them thought there would be substantial reaction, but in the end, they thought it would serve a useful purpose. That's what I hope it will.

MR. MAC NEIL: Many people are saying, reviewers, television interviewers, others, that you should have aired your doubts 27 years ago --

MR. McNAMARA: Yes.

MR. MAC NEIL: -- when it might have stopped the war sooner, they believe, and saved many lives. And I wonder whether that almost universal reaction these last 10 days has made you reconsider the morality of your silence all these years.

MR. McNAMARA: This is going to take a few seconds.

MR. MAC NEIL: Go ahead.

MR. McNAMARA: There are two different problems. I had two fears during my years, '65, 6, 7, 8, as Secretary of Defense. One fear, and I expressed it to President Johnson in December 1965, was that we couldn't win the war militarily. I said to him at that time -- and I quote it in the book -- there's only a one in three chance or at best a one in two chance to win militarily. He said, "Are you saying we can't win militarily?" I said, "Yes." However, the second fear was that if we pulled out of Vietnam, if Vietnam were controlled by the Communists, Chinese and Soviets, it would lead to what Eisenhower predicted in 1954, the fall of the dominoes, in other words, the fear that if we didn't stand firm, the Communists would take control of Southeast Asia, all of Asia, and strengthen their position against the West in Europe and the U.S. That is -- and I couldn't reconcile those two positions accepting only by pushing for action that would hopefully bring negotiations which would permit military disengagement without losing Vietnam. That was the course we were on. It's a very complicated approach, and it was in the end unsuccessful.

MR. MAC NEIL: But I just wonder in the last few days so many people saying, hey, you should have spoken out a long time ago when it might have done some good, have you any second thoughts about that, hearing all that reaction?

MR. McNAMARA: What should I have said? What should I have said that would not have brought aid and comfort to the enemy? I was Secretary of Defense until February 29, 1968. After that, I was an ex-Secretary of Defense. What could I have said that would not have brought aid and comfort? I have no regrets about not speaking out then. I have deep regrets that we ever got involved or that I supported our involvement. And most of all, I want to try to look back on what I think were our mistakes, not all of my associates agree they were mistakes, but I what I think were our mistakes, and try to draw lessons so we won't make the same mistake again.

MR. MAC NEIL: I'll come to those in a moment, but just to pursue this. Would you advise a U.S. official today in a comparable position, tortured by doubts as you were, to put loyalty to his President first, even if he thought the course the country was on was disastrous?

MR. McNAMARA: This is a very good question, and you don't have time for me to answer it, except to --

MR. MAC NEIL: Go ahead.

MR. McNAMARA: Well, let me say that the first point I'd make is the difference between the parliamentary system of government and ours, as you well know, my colleagues, Helmut Schmidt, the defense minister of Germany, and Dennis Healy, the defense minister of Britain, had been elected separate from the prime minister, and they had independent power; I didn't. I was a servant of our President. He appointed me. He was elected by the people. My obligation to our people was to do what their elected representative wanted. Now, if you say, well, when you thought he was committing a crime, which I didn't, but suppose he'd committed one, what would you do, that's a different issue. This was a question of judgment. And a person -- former cabinet minister, who you would know and your audience would know, and I won't name -- called me today just an hour or two before I came on. He said, "Bob, we need to talk about this." He said, "I'm not sure what to do under those circumstances." And to tell you the truth, I'm not either, but that wasn't the real issue at the time. I didn't know what to say that would not give aid and comfort to the President - - to the enemy.

MR. MAC NEIL: Is it a weakness of the -- of the American system, compared with the parliamentary system, where there is a tradition of honorable protest resignations, I mean, you mention throughout the book many times that Munich and the appeasement of Hitler there was a symbol for your generation.

MR. McNAMARA: Yes.

MR. MAC NEIL: And, of course, Anthony Eden famously resigned over that appeasement in Munich, and helped turn the course of British policy at the time.

MR. McNAMARA: British defense ministers resigned over the Falklands.

MR. MAC NEIL: Right.

MR. McNAMARA: It is not our tradition to do that, and generally speaking, it shouldn't be. Now, if you take an extreme case, a war, men are being killed, you think you have the answer by which the war could be stopped, where they won't be killed, shouldn't you resign? That's a very difficult issue. That was not the issue I faced.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, is it one of the lessons of Vietnam then that there's no place in the American system for principle resignation?

MR. McNAMARA: I won't say there's no place, but men I admire, Dean Acheson, for example, believe that when you resign on principle -- there is a place for resignation on principle -- but he believed and I believe in most cases there is not a place for resigning on principle and then attacking the President.

MR. MAC NEIL: How do you answer a question that Max Frankel of the New York Times asks in the New York Times yesterday? And his question was: How, without going cynical, can citizens protect themselves against stubborn ignorance or misplaced zeal of their leaders?

MR. McNAMARA: Be more intelligent themselves and elect more intelligent leaders and, without appearing immodest or unreasonably critical of our people, I don't think today our people are sufficiently informed on the affairs of the world to make intelligent decisions. Let me give you an illustration. What do we know about, what do we think about, and how should we react to Muslim fundamentalism? Our public isn't educated on that? We should be. Our public should be, and our leaders should be. We didn't know, and our leaders were deficient. I was deficient in the 1960's. I didn't understand that Ho Chi Minh was not a Stalin and Kruschev. He was a Tito. He was an Asian Tito. I didn't understand that.

MR. MAC NEIL: But plenty of people were saying that in the 1960's.

MR. McNAMARA: Very, very few at the leadership level and not many in the press. Moreover, I didn't really understand that the war in South Vietnam was not primarily a war of Communist aggression. It was primarily a war of nationalism. And I do not believe today, and I don't think I wanted to believe then that foreign troops can save a nation from its own civil war. We should learn that lesson.

MR. MAC NEIL: Okay. You say you were prompted to write this book because you were heartsick at the cynicism, even the contempt, with which people view their political institutions today. How did you think this book might dispel that cynicism?

MR. McNAMARA: I hope it will explore why the leaders did what they did. My associates were properly described by that pejorative term "the best and the brightest." They were young, intelligent, well educated, hard working, dedicated servants of their people and their government. And they were wrong. Now, I think if our people understand that, then we can talk about why were they wrong, how can we avoid similar errors in the future?

MR. MAC NEIL: As you document, if the best and the brightest that Kennedy and Johnson could muster year after year made the mistakes you admit and that refused to listen to their critics, to use your phrase, "were blind prisoners of their assumptions," and in the process sent nearly 60,000 Americans to their deaths, would that not confirm or deepen people's cynicism about government today?

MR. McNAMARA: No. I hope what it will do is cause us to examine what happened then and try to prevent it in the future. In the last chapter, I list 11 lessons that if we learn, I think, will help us prevent similar situations in the future. And I was fascinated today when Col. Hackworth, who when he resigned from the army had more decorations than any other living soldier, came to exactly that conclusion.

MR. MAC NEIL: What conclusion?

MR. McNAMARA: That McNamara has examined the cause of our error in order that we may understand it and avoid those errors in the future.

MR. MAC NEIL: In your long account of the administration failing to ask the really decisive questions or considering real alternatives, you often mention the contrast with the handling of the Cuban missile crisis, and the lesson I remember from the Cuban missile crisis accounts is the presence of individuals, particularly Robert Kennedy, who dared to ask or to question the conventional wisdom at the time. Now is that the lesson you intend here, that nobody of enough authority could challenge the conventional wisdom and be heard?

MR. McNAMARA: No. No. I don't think that is, although Bobby Kennedy did a wonderful job doing that during the Cuban missile crisis. No, I don't think that's the lesson. The lesson of the Cuban missile crisis versus, versus the seven years I was associated with Vietnam was twofold. No. 1, because Cuba -- the crisis occurred in a short period, 12 days, the entire energy of the upper echelon of the government was focused solely on that, we did nothing. I lived at the Pentagon. I didn't go home for 12 days. We met 18 hours a day. We thought of nothing but that. Every one of us -- Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, all of us, Bobbie -- focused solely on that. At no time during the seven years I was in the government did we focus solely on Vietnam. We had a thousand other things we were doing, serious crises, some of them involving the risk of nuclear war. So that was one lesson. The second lesson was that, that in the Cuban missile crisis we had available to the senior officials, the President, the two secretaries, the national security adviser, able advice of individuals who'd studied our adversary throughout their lives, Tommy Thompson, George Kennan, Chip Bohlen. Tommy Thompson was available 24 hours a day to us for 12 solid days, and we would have acted differently had we not had his advice. There was no individual comparable to Tommy or George or Chip available to us during the seven years in Indochina that had that knowledge of Indochina. We were without the foundation of knowledge there that we had in the Cuban missile crisis.

MR. MAC NEIL: To quote you, "We were wrong, terribly wrong." If your -- what is your message then acknowledging that to the men and women, some of whom you sent to fight, and some of them to die in Vietnam?

MR. McNAMARA: My message is you acted in accordance with your responsibilities as a citizen. You obeyed the orders of your commander in chief, the elected representative of our people. I admire you for it; we owe you respect to it. The most important thing we can do for you, and particularly for those who died, is to review what mistakes we made that caused it, so we won't make them again, and no more will die because of similar mistakes. That's what we can do for them.

MR. MAC NEIL: And what is your message now to those who protested the war? The majority of Americans have never considered them as patriotic as those who fought in the war. Bill Clinton's presidency suffers to some extent from that. What is the message to them now?

MR. McNAMARA: My message is protest actions by your government that you disagree with, and when it comes down to where you're asked to follow instructions by an elected representative of your government, followthem. I asked my son the other day --

MR. MAC NEIL: Who was a war protester.

MR. McNAMARA: He had protested the war. He -- because of the stress and the trauma, the family, he had ulcers, was treated for ulcers at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and, therefore, he was classified 4-F. He said at one point he refused to accept an educational deferment as a privilege. He said, the hell with it, my peers are dying, I'll die, so I'm not going to do that. He took the medical exam, and he was classified 1-A. He later, because of ulcers, was classified 4-F. I said what would you have done if you hated the war, you believed it was immoral, what would you have done if the classification remained 1-A? He said, I would have gone. And I think that was the right thing to do. And I admire those who did.

MR. MAC NEIL: So the people who didn't?

MR. McNAMARA: I --

MR. MAC NEIL: The Bill Clintons of this world.

MR. McNAMARA: I respect -- well, Bill Clinton, I understand had a high draft number finally, and he wasn't called. But people who didn't really protest and protested, I respect them too. I believe that we all have an obligation to serve our government or take the penalty, take a jail sentence, if we violate the law.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, Robert McNamara, thank you very much for joining us.

MR. McNAMARA: Thank you. FOCUS - HEALING THE WOUNDS?

MR. LEHRER: We'll get four reactions now to what Robert McNamara just said, as well as what he wrote and did. Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was a navy pilot and prisoner of war in the Vietnam conflict. He just returned from a trip to Vietnam. George McGovern was a Senator from South Dakota and Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. McGeorge Bundy was national security adviser to President Kennedy and Johnson. He's now with the Carnegie Corporation in New York. Robert Scheer, a columnist for the New York Times now, was a founding editor of the anti-war magazine, "Ramparts." George McGovern, what do you think of Mr. McNamara's explanation for wanting to remain silent until now?

GEORGE McGOVERN, Former Democratic Senator: Well, I don't accept the doctrine that there's no place for a principled resignation in the American governing system. This has happened numerous times. I remember clearly when Elliot Richardson resigned as attorney general rather than to carry out a policy in the Nixon administration that he thought was wrong. Having said that, I want to say that I'm glad that Mr. McNamara wrote this book. I think it helps clarify the historical record when one of the chief architects of the war has the courage to say, however late in the day, and it's awfully late, "I was wrong, I had doubts about it at the time, I wish we had never gotten into Vietnam." We haven't heard that yet from Henry Kissinger, who was a key architect of this policy for years after Mr. McNamara left office. Silence from the Kissinger-Nixon camp, who must have known by early 1969 that we should terminate that war.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. McCain, are you glad Robert McNamara wrote this book?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN, [R] Arizona: [Tempe] Not particularly. I think that what has been studied and learned about this issue is pretty well covered again. I believe that it's important for us to try to put to rest and behind us the division and the terrible tragedies associated with the war. And I think that Mr. McNamara's book contributes little. It's 25 years too late, and frankly, we don't need it. I also agree with Sen. McGovern about principled resignations. I remember that Cyrus Vance resigned over a foreignpolicy disagreement, but in case Sen. McGovern has not read Henry Kissinger's book, Diplomacy, their role and rationale for the way they extracted us from that quagmire is well documented.

MR. McGOVERN: Sen. McCain, if I could just make a quick observation on that, I went to see Mr. Kissinger in March of 1969 at the White House. I had known him before he was appointed by Mr. Nixon. And I said something like this to him: Henry, you folks are not responsible for this war. You've just won an election. You've come into office on a statement that you had a plan to end the war. Why don't you simply announce this war was a mistake and terminate our involvement there? He didn't say the war was worthwhile. What he said is that the domestic political situation wouldn't permit that, that there'd be an upheaval on the part of Mr. Nixon's major backers across the country and that because of domestic political realities that had nothing to do with the realities in Vietnam, we had to stay the course for a time.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. McCain, on that quick answer, and then we're going to come back to McNamara.

SEN. McCAIN: We're not here to debate Henry Kissinger, but the fact is that in his book he states -- and I agree with him -- that we had to get out but we had to get out with some kind of order and we had to get out in a way that would minimize U.S. casualties and not have some kind of rush to the, to the port. So the fact is there was domestic considerations but I think that most military experts, which clearly Sen. McGovern is not, would say that it was a difficult situation and the way we extracted ourselves was the best out of a bad situation. May I quickly add, Sen. McGovern touts his support of the American military men -- I saw him on another program -- Sen. McGovern, those of us in prison did not appreciate it when you said you would go to Hanoi on your knees. We were trying to stay on our feet.

MR. McGOVERN: Sen. McCain, if George McGovern's policies had prevailed, you wouldn't have been in prison in Vietnam, and we wouldn't have had 58,000 young Americans dead in Vietnam.

SEN. McCAIN: If you had been President, I probably would still be there.

MR. LEHRER: Robert Scheer, we just heard Robert McNamara say that he hoped that the writing of his book would help -- would serve a useful purposed -- based on just the exchange we've just heard between Senators McGovern and McCain, is Vietnam too big a sore to ever, ever be cured?

ROBERT SCHEER, Former Editor, Ramparts Magazine: No, I think there are important lessons. Let me just correct about where I write -- for the Los Angeles Times, not the New York Times.

MR. LEHRER: Did I say New York Times? I apologize.

MR. SCHEER: I think the book is a very important one. And I think it's important because it shows how little knowledge -- the abysmal ignorance that was present in the government at that time. First of all, there were Senators Gruning and Moss and Church who were saying all these things that McNamara now says he didn't know, that Ho Chi Minh was an Asian Tito, that there was a sino-Soviet dispute. I mean, the Russians and Chinese had been firing at each other on the border in 1960. The United States government had prevented the Geneva Accords. We presented it precisely because we were afraid Ho Chi Minh would win the election. Eisenhower predicted he would win the election. We installed him in power, this autocrat who McNamara says he detested as an autocrat and later we had killed, as the so called democratic alternative. We knew he wasn't a democratic alternative. Anyone who read Graham Greene's novel in 1954 would have known this whole exercise was absurd. We were blundering to another people's history. And it's amazing to me to read this book, and I've read it very carefully, to see [a] how little knowledge there was in the administration when they came in, and [b] when they got the knowledge, it didn't seem to affect their actions. And the startling thing about this book is that McNamara says he knew all this as early as 1965, and that the war continued for 10 years. And I want to make one comment on Kissinger, if there is a bigger fraud than McNamara in this respect, it's certainly Henry Kissinger, who continued this war for another seven years, extended it to Cambodia, when he says that it is not necessary, and he is trying to get out. And we keep mentioning the casualties. I think before the program ends, we should mention that there were three million Vietnamese who also died in this war. This is one of the major massacres in history, and I don't think we should just sit around in a very gentile way and say, well, you know, it's a duty. I think he was complicitous both in action and through silence and that McNamara bears a serious responsibility, along with Kissinger, for a lot of those deaths.

MR. LEHRER: Does Robert McNamara assume the responsibility correctly in his book, Mr. Scheer?

MR. SCHEER: No, I don't think so. I think the book is interesting in that it shows us that the best and the brightest did not read and did not think very clearly. It makes one suspicious of any government official and I think should lead the citizens to question what they're told is the official truth. But I don't find any sense of contrition in this book. I think it's cold blooded in its rhetoric. There's no real sense of the lives that were lost, the damage to this country, the people, the American military who were killed, or kept prisoner, the Vietnamese who died. I don't find any great -- it's not an important piece of literature in that respect. We don't really have an example of a man wrestling with his soul. What we have, I think, is someone dissembling and trying to put the best spin on what was really an atrocious complicity. He should have resigned, he should have resigned earlier, and he should have criticized the war, and I agree with Sen. McGovern, who was a strong critic of the war, that this would have saved many millions of lives.

MR. LEHRER: McGeorge Bundy, is that -- what do you -- do you agree with Mr. Scheer that what this is all? Is Robert McNamara trying to put a spin on a bad situation?

McGEORGE BUNDY, Former National Security Adviser: I think he's trying to tell it as straight as he knows how. He obviously isn't going to see it the way Mr. Scheer does, and I, myself, don't read the book as Mr. Scheer does or history, as he does, so obviously I'm not going to reach his conclusions. I think Bob McNamara has tried very hard to tell it as he now understands it, and you can quarrel with or differ with his interpretations, but I think it's an honest contribution and a very much -- it will be a very much valued one.

MR. LEHRER: What about Mr. Scheer's point about -- and Mr. McNamara spoke of it too -- about not having the right information? Mr. Scheer said that -- you heard what he said -- that information was available. Mr. McNamara said that it was not. What is your experience about getting information, what the situation really was as far as the war was concerned?

MR. BUNDY: There was plenty of information. There was too much in the sense that as people often used to remark, you talk to different people coming back from Vietnam, and you'd feel that they'd been to different countries. So it was a very serious problem of analysis and of judgment, and there is more to be said on both sides than we've heard or have time for this evening. I think myself that our failure was in failing to estimate the imbalance, just in straight power terms, on the scene in Vietnam without being for or against either side, the evidence now is clear and the evidence then was more clear than most of us in the government recognized that there was an underlying imbalance in which the odds were strongly in favor of a victory by the North Vietnamese.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with Robert McNamara's conclusion that, that he and, and the others there in the Johnson White House were wrong, terribly wrong, and would you accept that yourself?

MR. BUNDY: Sure.

MR. LEHRER: Without question?

MR. BUNDY: I think it's very unlikely that we were right looking at the evidence as we now have it of the extraordinary determination and persistence and readiness for sacrifice and skill in both political and military campaigns that were demonstrated by the North Vietnamese.

MR. LEHRER: George McGovern, what about Robert Scheer's point that he didn't see contrition in the words or even the tone of Robert McNamara and should there be more there?

MR. McGOVERN: I think I saw more contrition and regret than my friend, Bob Scheer, did. There's a -- there are a couple of things that bothered me though about Mr. McNamara's explanation. One is his statement that they didn't have the experts inside the government that they needed because the McCarthy period had driven them out of government, but there were other sources of information, people like Walter Lippman, people like David Halberstam, people like Sen. Fulbright, Sen. Mansfield, and others, who spelled out all of these things that Mr. McNamara now says are lessons he learned belatedly. There's another question that bothers me about Mr. McNamara's explanation of why he didn't speak out. He said under our system he thought he had an obligation to be faithful to the President, the elected President who named him to office. But even after Mr. McNamara left office, left the Department of Defense, this war continued for another five years, and he said nothing during that period. 40 percent of all the Americans who died in Vietnam died after Mr. McNamara left his office. Why didn't he speak out at that point?

MR. LEHRER: Sen. McCain, what is your view about Mr. McNamara's decision not to resign over the public protest and not to speak out until now?

SEN. McCAIN: Well, I think clearly he should have resigned at the time, and I think I must caveat that by saying I think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff who also knew that this war was being conducted in a way that there was no way that there could be a victory should have resigned as well. I think military men, in particular, have the option when they disagree with national policy and know that it's wrong to resign. I think both groups should have and perhaps around 1965, we could have avoided the debacle. If I could just -- I'd strongly disagree with Mr. Scheer's history of the war, and I would point out that after this conventional attack in 1975, when the North Vietnamese overwhelmed South Vietnam, thousands were executed, hundreds of thousands put into reeducation camps, and millions voted with their feet. Not exactly the result that Mr. Scheer and others who protested the war predicted.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think, Sen. McCain, of Robert McNamara's answer to Robin's question about how those who protested the war should be, should be considered now?

SEN. McCAIN: I cherish the right to demonstrate against the policies of one's government. I think it's one of our -- the things that we fight for and still isn't true in the case of Vietnam and many other countries. But at the same time, they should have no doubt as to the effect that it had on the moral of the North Vietnamese. Ho Chi Minh in 1966 said, we won't win the war in the battlefields of South Vietnam, we'll win it in the streets of Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. And he was correct. But at the same time, I would rather have that that I cherish and lose a war than suppress it.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Scheer, what do you think Robert McNamara's book does for -- does it vindicate those who protested against the war? The President and his press secretary said that last week. Do you agree with that?

MR. SCHEER: I do. First of all, to say that Ho Chi Minh was a Tito does not mean he was a democrat. Tito was not a democrat. He was a nationalist Communist who was -- broke with the Soviet Union. And the whole history of Vietnamese Communism would have led you to believe that they would have broke with the Chinese and the Russians and that's what happened. We lost the war in Vietnam and instead of what the hawks predicted, Vietnam and China went to war. The dominoes did not tumble. In fact, these two Communists -- one was supposed to be the puppet of the other -- had a very bloody war. And right now we have both these countries turning to capitalism. So this war that could not be lost, in fact, when it was lost resulted in countries that are not the least bit threatening to the United States at this time, and, in fact, are busily signing contracts with American corporations. I also want to make the point I don't want to dump on McNamara alone, as if he did this war alone; he didn't. The United States got involved under the Eisenhower administration, when we decided not to honor the Geneva Accords and prevent a free election, and you have a guest on your program, McGeorge Bundy, who was certainly as complicitous as, as McNamara, and I don't know why McNamara should take all the heat. And I think there -- by the way -- I think points raised in this -- but I think it's a very important book and should be read - - there are all sorts of intriguing points, one of which is the Gulf of Tonkin, which involved a matter of lying to the United States Congress to get the closest to a declaration of war that they had. To read the McNamara chapter carefully, he says that it's possible that the attack didn't happen.

MR. LEHRER: Let's give Mr. Bundy an opportunity --

MR. SCHEER: He admits that there were cables from the captain of the ship urging that attack not take place and that President Johnson rushed to get on television and that McNamara then told Adm. Sharp out in the Pacific we have to go because the President wants to go on television.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Do you agree with that history, Mr. Bundy?

MR. BUNDY: Not precisely, but it's on an important point, and it is certainly true that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was seized by the President as a time for him to take his resolution on Vietnam to the Congress and he made that decision and arranged that broadcast before there was really absolutely clear-cut evidence as to what had happened out there. And I think that was a mistake. And I remember the episode very strongly but clearly because I can remember saying to the President as he came back and said I'm going to make a speech and we're going to take a resolution up that we ought to wait, and he said, I didn't ask you that, I told you to help me get organized. So he did make a quick decision on an incompletely verified event. That something happened, that there was some attack, one, as McNamara says in his book, and possibly two, rather than two clear-cut ones, that's probably true, in my view, although I've never made the kind of exhaustive study that would allow me to be sure. Let me say one thing.

MR. LEHRER: Yes, sir.

MR. BUNDY: And that is that the real problem about the Gulf of Tonkin resolution is that it was later misused, misused as if the whole question of what we did later to hundreds of thousands of men and airplanes and all the rest had been fully validated and constitutional and a politically satisfactory form by a resolution passed in response to a single, imperfectly verified episode. That was wrong, and I thought it was wrong at the time and did not prevail at the time, and that relatively tricky way of putting in a political base for a large-scale, long-term war came back to haunt the government and the country in later years.

MR. LEHRER: Well, gentlemen, there's much more to be said about this, but we don't have the time to say it tonight. But I'm sure we will as time goes by. Thank you all four very much. SERIES - AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, rethinking affirmative action. This government policy of helping previously excluded minorities get access to employment and education dates back to 1966. But claims of reverse discrimination against white men have now made it a topic of heated debate. President Clinton has asked for a complete review of the government's affirmative action policies. Tonight we begin a series of conversations about whether affirmative action policies should be abandoned, modified, or kept in place. We start with Ruth Simmons, the provost at Princeton University. In July, she'll become the first black president of Smith College. That will also make Dr. Simmons the first black president of any of the seven sisters colleges. Charlayne Hunter-Gault spoke with her recently.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Simmons, thank you for joining us.

RUTH SIMMONS, President-Elect, Smith College: It's my pleasure.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think affirmative action should be continued?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: I certainly think that some form of affirmative action should be continued, without question.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you mean by some form?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: I think that although there have been efforts over the past 25 years to define original measures instituting affirmative action, I'm not sure that those measures have been exactly the right ones. So the debate today gives us an occasion, it seems to me, to think factually about ways of really eradicating some of the negative aspects of affirmative action, or aspects that have proved to be negative over recent years.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I'd just like an example of what you mean.

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Well, let me give you a recent example. A couple of years ago in looking at race relations, for example, on our campus, Princeton, I looked at whether or not we ought to maintain certain separate programs on the campus that have been instituted for minority students, programs that were intended originally to provide the kind of support that students needed to be successful in college. Nevertheless, they were separate programs that were instituted that kept students apart from each other, creating an environment in which today the campuseshave become riven with discord and with disagreement over various kinds of issues and mostly because -- largely because the students are separated into political and cultural enclaves. Well, I don't think it was at all the intent of programs like that to result in a campus environment of that sort, and yet, that has been the consequence. And so I think what we are trying to do and certainly what we've tried to do on the Princeton campus is to look seriously at all of those decisions that were made a decade ago to see if, in fact, we have done something inadvisable.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think there has been affirmative action particularly on campuses that have disadvantaged white males or discriminated against them?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Certainly not to the extent the rhetoric would suggest. That's ludicrous. But certainly there is the perception among those students that there are some things they should not try to do because they don't stand a chance of achieving that, and that's just not right, so --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what is right? What is accurate, the perception or the reality?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: The perception is certainly erroneous. Let me say very clearly that one of the disturbing aspects of the debate about affirmative action is that it's dishonest. That is to say it seeks to suggest to people that somehow minorities and women have unfairly gained positions, have unfairly gained advantages that they did not merit. Secondly, it ignores entirely the tremendous benefits of affirmative action to the nation at large and white males. Let me give you some examples of that. Sometime ago, a colleague of mine said, you know, this affirmative action business is really just awful. I remember the days when a job opened up in a university and all I had to do was pick up the phone and call my friend at Yale, and my friend at Yale would give me the name of the best and the brightest young man coming out of graduate school, and there would be no question of a search, there would be no question of what we needed to do to make the position known to candidates around the country, we'd simply hire someone that was identified for us by a colleague. So what did affirmative action do? In large part in universities, I think to a significantly less extent in other areas of the work force, but certainly to a large extent in universities, affirmative action opened up advertising for a position which meant that a lot of white males who didn't go to the right schools, who didn't have the right colleagues, who didn't have the right mentors got a shot at a job that was then known to them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about those who say we can't use a discrimination to remedy a discrimination, that there's something fundamentally wrong?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: I think there is some element of truth in that, but, look, affirmative action is not a panacea. It's not a -- it is not a perfect world in which we can legislate away some of the horrendous errors of the society. It's not going to happen. And yet, even the Supreme Court has said on occasion that where the public good and where the state -- certain state goals need to be achieved, it is appropriate to think about race. We are a country built on preference in virtually every segment of society. Where are there environments where people are advanced solely on merit? Where are the federal programs that benefit only the people who supposedly deserve that? And what, what does that mean to deserve? What is merit really, on what is it based? These are all pretty much subjective categories. And one can argue them either way depending on where you are.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, that's a good question that you lead me to because even those who say that they were initially in favor of affirmative action to remedy past discrimination believe that it's gone on too long.

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Yes. Well, 30 years is not long considering the very considerable number of years, the centuries even, of discrimination that have been levied essentially against African- Americans, against native Americans in this country.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That would be 200 plus years.

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So are you saying that programs designed to remedy past discrimination, slavery, et cetera, should go on that long?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Well, I'm saying that one might even have a little bit more credibility if more time had elapsed. But when people start to say it's gone on too long after 30 years, when, in fact, what took place to build the system that we have went on so much longer than that, I think it's naive to think that we can correct this with the snap of a finger.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, what would be the test, though? I mean, would it be numbers? What would be the test be in terms of okay, it's finally time, we've achieved true equity in the society? What would be the test?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: I believe -- I like terribly much what President Kennedy had to say about challenging Americans who did not believe that such measures were needed. Let them change their color and step into the shoes of minorities and women if they think it doesn't exist. I think a good test is whether or not the public and especially people who are affected by this feel that change has arrived. I think that, without question, if you were to survey, as has been done, the majority of African-Americans, for example, in this country, to ask them whether or not they believe that affirmative action has now done its job, I don't believe they'd say it has.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But the whites who are surveyed say it has. I mean, and that's what's interesting now about this debate, because it's almost totally polarized along racial lines.

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Well, naturally it would be, because I believe that it is not possible for most whites, except those of extraordinary insight and goodwill, I think it's not possible for them to understand what the reality actually is in this country. We live in essentially a segregated society. How many of them actually walk through inner-city neighborhoods and know the life of a child who is born into segregated -- the segregated United States of today? How many people fully understand what the life opportunities of that child are likely to be? How many students - - people truly understand, although women today leave training programs and educational opportunities fully capable of doing virtually anything in this country? How many people understand why women are still not earning or have the same earning capacity as men? I think we don't -- you know -- should we ask a white male to understand and agree that women have achieved parity before we feel that we need to continue these programs? I'm not sure that's a right -- that's exactly the right test.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about the black young people -- in particular, you mentioned the opportunity that they need to feel that they can look forward to, but there are some now, and a growing number on college campuses who say that affirmative action stigmatizes women, they don't like it.

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Well, I'm saddened when I hear those scholars who say that and students who say that, because I think it's not affirmative action that stigmatizes them, it's the society that they live in, pre-affirmative action, that stigmatizes them. Those students who were not alive in the 40's or 50's or early 60's even are not aware of what stigma really was. This is a country founded on stigma, and it's not just African-Americans or native Americans or Hispanic-Americans who are stigmatized. It's a whole range of ethnic groups and of people with different capacities and people with different origins who are stigmatized in similar fashion.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, what about the flip-side of that, those who argue that, and they cite specific cases in which blacks have been admitted with lower scores and whites who have the same low scores weren't admitted, that the standards have been lowered to the detriment of everybody?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: More shocking misrepresentations. It's just - - it's phenomenal to me that anyone would take the part of those arguments when, in fact, what is well known about the admission of students to colleges in this country, that we have long had a selective system of admissions in most private colleges certainly and to some extent in state colleges, which means simply this: that there are all kinds of preferences given. There is preference given to alumnae children, there is preference given to athletes. Is one to say that because a basketball player scored lower on the SAT's that that person shouldn't get in, when a white male student or an African-American female student scored more than he did on the SAT? I don't think we've taken that in hand in this country. I'm prepared to say that if we want to strike down all such preferences, let's do that. But let's not talk out of both sides of our mouths. We have preferences of all kinds. We admit students because they contribute to a diverse population, and that diversity is made up of many different parts. What I'd like to see the debate concentrate on is how to get back to the original intent, not how to eliminate transforming this society into a just one but how to get back to the original intent of the law.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So what would your final thought be in terms of how to have this debate so that the realities as opposed to the perception, good information as opposed to misinformation, and a constructive debate and dialogue?

DR. RUTH SIMMONS: Well, I would certainly appeal to our leaders in Congress and in the White House to think far more broadly about the implications of any legislation at any plebiscite that might do more damage than anything we currently can imagine. But I also want people to think constantly about that kid in the city. Where is that kid going to go? What are they going to think when they wake up in the morning? Is there an opportunity out there for them, or not? See, that seems to me to be the real test. And I guess I feel so strongly about that because for me as a child, coming up, that's what kept me going. It was just seeing that -- I always believed -- I always bought into the notion that there is somehow a just society at the end of the road. That's what kept me going, so I worry about that, and I'd like for these pundits and philosophers to think more about that very practical matter. What are we going to do for these children? What are we going to do for the future?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Ruth Simmons, thank you. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story this Monday, China's foreign minister said his country will sell nuclear technology to Iran despite U.S. objections. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight, and we'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.