Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0650; The Fall of Saigon--and How It Might Have Been
- Episode Number
- S0650
- Producing Organization
- Southern Educational Communications Association
- South Carolina Educational Television Network
- Contributing Organization
- Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University (Stanford, California)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/514-028pc2tt8x
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- Description
- Episode Description
- A deeply honest exploration of a very painful subject. All three guests have spent time in Vietnam (Mr. Butterfield was there on April 29, 1975, the day Saigon fell); all have studied the political and military history. They and their host all agree that, as Mr. Butterfield phrases it, "We didn't lose the war on the battlefield, we just left." And that, as Mr. Greenway phrases it: "Wouldn't the real moral lesson be: Don't intervene in a situation and take a people under your protection unless you're prepared to stay with them?" Mr. Butler gives a devastatingly simple answer to Mr. Buckley's question why "Vietnamization" didn't hold in the way "Koreanization" held: "There's no Ho Chi Minh Trail in Korea, and it would have been terribly difficult to cut the trail altogether. That's a geographic point." Currently there is only a digitized transcript available for this episode.
- Series Description
- The television series Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. was a venue for debate and discussion on political, social, and philosophical issues with experts of the day. Firing Line broadcasts from 1966 through March 1971 were produced and syndicated by WOR-TV, a commercial station in New York, but some of them were also broadcast on noncommercial television stations. Starting in April 1971, Firing Line broadcasts were produced by the Southern Educational Communications Association, an arm of South Carolina Educational Television. Hoover Institution Library & Archives' Firing Line collection guide can be found at: https://www.hoover.org/library-archives/collections/firing-line.
- Date
- 1985-05-29
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Talk Show
- Topics
- Public Affairs
- Subjects
- Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Foreign relations; United States; Vietnam; Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
- Rights
- Copyright held by Stanford University. This copy is provided for educational and research purposes only. No publication, further reproduction, or reuse of copies, beyond fair use, may be made without the express written permission of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives on behalf of Stanford University.
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Credits
-
-
Guest: Butterfield, Fox
Guest: Butler, David
Guest: Greenway, David
Host: Buckley, William F., Jr.
Producing Organization: Southern Educational Communications Association
Producing Organization: South Carolina Educational Television Network
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
Stanford University
Identifier: 80040.892 (Hoover Institution)
Generation: Proxy
Duration: 1:00:00
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0650; The Fall of Saigon--and How It Might Have Been,” 1985-05-29, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed August 9, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-028pc2tt8x.
- MLA: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0650; The Fall of Saigon--and How It Might Have Been.” 1985-05-29. Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. August 9, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-028pc2tt8x>.
- APA: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0650; The Fall of Saigon--and How It Might Have Been. Boston, MA: Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-028pc2tt8x