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[pensive piano music plays]

[Keith Kay] A lot of people say that Vietnam was television's war.

No other war had been shown in this detail.

I'm losing too many men. If we were to stay here too much longer,

we-- we wouldn't have much left of this platoon,

let alone the company.

[Kay] Jack Laurence was a television correspondent,

and we were working together.

We decided that the war could speak for itself

if the people who were fighting it could speak for themselves.

So we focused on the kids in the field.

I can't say that I'm scared stiff, but I'm scared.

I mean, after a while,

you know what's gonna come, and you can't do nothing about it,

and you just look to God. It's about the only thing you can do.

[Kay] And what they were doing was following orders.

They didn't understand the orders,

but they understood that they were bound by oath

to carry out those orders, and they did.

The rifles have been jamming.

The-- The mud's been, uh... slowed everything down,

and the artillery comes in everywhere,

and, uh, it just gets pretty futile and frustrating sometimes.

[Kay] And they were kids, and we were kids.

And we felt an affinity for them.

We were told about these kids who would sit on top of their bunker

and sing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone,"

so we went up and did a story on these kids who did it.

And even in the V-ring, life goes on at Khe Sanh.

♪ Young girls, picked them, every one ♪

♪ When will they ever learn? ♪

[plane engine roars overhead]

[Laurence] I notice you sing out, "When will they ever learn?"

Uh, this is probably the favorite song around the V-ring.

Do the words have special meaning, or...

or is it just a good song for homesick soldiers?

"Homesick Marines," I'm sorry.

Well, I suppose it's a little bit of both. I mean, it sort of makes sense,

uh, to us anyway,

that people should catch on to what's going on here,

and... all this protesting back home kind of bothers us.

But you'd think they'd learn after a while about these wars and stuff.

[pensive piano music resumes playing]

[Kay] We never learn from history.

You know, history repeats itself.

When-- When you see Afghanistan and Iraq,

it's the same scenes that I shot in Vietnam,

this time being shot by some other photographer.

[sweeping sentimental music plays]

[camera shutter clicks]

[camera shutter clicks]

[Kay] As a journalist, we were trying to show what this war did to kids.

[explosion]

[Kay] We didn't care about the generals or the commanders.

We didn't care about the politicians.

We just wanted to show what it was doing

to people that we were standing or crouching beside.

[intriguing music plays]

[air raid sirens wail]

[reporter] What sort of a president do you think you personally would make

for South Vietnam?

[Nguyễn Văn Thiệu] The most important for me, if I were to be elected,

and as I think for any future leaders,

is, uh, to organize the stronger political life

in-- in Vietnam.

Because, uh, if we have a not stronger political life,

we cannot win the war against Communists.

[George J. Veith] In September of '67, there was an election

for the presidency and vice presidency of South Vietnam.

[reporter] Despite well-publicized threats of Việt Cộng terror tactics,

83% of the nation's registered voters flocked to the polling places

to cast their ballots.

Thiệu wins the presidency,

and former premier Kỳ, the vice presidency.

[Tuong Vu] President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu

was born of an ordinary family in southern-central Vietnam.

[intriguing music swells and intensifies]

He joined the National Vietnamese Army under French leadership.

Thiệu, different.

This guy is different.

He's a soldier.

Poor, like the other soldiers.

Coming from the rank to become a general,

Thiệu is the smartest general in the South.

The smartest one.

He was also politically astute.

He was able to bring order into the country

after four years of chaos,

after the coup of Ngô Đình Diệm.

And he also oversaw the creation of a new republic

with the most democratic constitution Vietnam ever had.

[Nhã] When Mr. Thiệu became president, I became his chief of staff.

I was focused on how we could leverage the help of the Americans,

but also tell the Americans,

"Let's agree on a common strategy and how to execute that."

But by that time, the politics got involved.

This fella, Thiêu, um,

most of the people think--

I'm not very good at evaluating,

but most of the folks think, Westmoreland and-- and Bunker and them...

they think that Thiệu is going to be better than Kỳ.

And I've been suffering a terrific onslaught.

Our own people plucking that we ought to get out of the war,

and that they're not dependable, and that the generals are taking over,

and-- and, uh, it's been quite a problem for me in my own group.

Johnson recognizes that the country is turning against the war.

[suspenseful classical music plays]

His public approval, approval of his handling of the war,

they're in the 30s by late 1967.

And so Johnson tries to get out a better message,

and he does that by bringing home William Westmoreland

to tell the people that the war really is going better

than you've been led to believe.

The enemy has not won a single significant victory in the South

during the last one and a half years.

[Selverstone] Johnson gets a bump from that progress campaign,

and so he goes into 1968 thinking that maybe he can turn this thing around.

And then comes the Tết Offensive.

[suspenseful music continues]

[horns honking]

[reporter] The Tết Lunar Holiday.

For Asiatics, it's Christmas and New Year's, and 4th of July,

all rolled into one, with a little touch of Memorial Day too.

[Col. Phạm Bá Hoa, in Vietnamese] Each side had self-declared a ceasefire

for people to celebrate Tết.

Half of the army was allowed to go home on leave for the Tết holiday.

[in English] The Americans, as well as South Vietnamese,

believed that Communist forces would respect the Tết holiday truce.

And in fact, they didn't.

[ominous music plays]

[in Vietnamese] At this time, I was very well-versed in this mission

because I was a liaison for the Deputy Commander.

The goal was eight points in Saigon.

The attack on the US Embassy was approved in the final days,

so the ninth target was the US Embassy.

[Dũng] All the entry points into Saigon had many checkpoints.

This was to tightly control people coming in and out.

Anyone who wanted to enter needed identification documents.

In just a short period of time,

there were several hundred fake ID cards to make.

There would be major events happening.

I had taken photos of each person.

I had a premonition

that this meeting with this person would probably be the last.

[people chattering]

[Peter Arnett, in English] January 30, the city of Saigon was bustling.

There were firecrackers exploding,

and just lots of noise and traffic flowing around.

About 3:30 in the morning,

I heard the, uh, rattle of machine gun fire

and the noise of explosions.

[guns firing]

[dramatic music plays]

The phone goes, and it's the office, Ed White at the overnight desk.

And he said, "Peter, get here."

"The VC are attacking the city. They're shelling it."

We heard the sound like... [mimics plane engine whirring]

You know? That means it's already passed over your house.

And we heard, "Boom."

All over the city, everybody was so scared.

[automatic weapons fire rapidly]

[man] I was surprised. Everybody was surprised.

We expect they will do something.

But we didn't expect, uh, so large an operation

that they-- they are able to-- to penetrate up to that.

They have spies. They have the Việt Cộng in-- in place to do things.

The 1968 Tết Offensive was directed at attacking the urban centers,

and specifically the South Vietnamese centers of government.

84,000 North Vietnamese and NLF forces hit five of the six major cities,

the major district capitals, the province capitals.

[Vu] Suddenly, they just showed up in large numbers

and attacked the prominent cities, including the American embassy in Saigon.

[Ngọc, in Vietnamese] To prepare to attack the US Embassy, we gathered 15 people.

Seventeen, including a male driver and a female liaison.

If we didn't have this woman guide to lead them,

how on earth would they know how to find the US Embassy?

[tense percussive music plays]

[reporter, in English] About 15 Việt Cộng commandos were now on the embassy grounds.

They had rushed in under a Việt Cộng mortar and rocket attack

that scored at least two hits on the new, $3 million, eight-story building.

[Arnett] I started walking up to the embassy.

I noticed in the distance the bodies of three American military police.

There was a dead American Marine there,

and a lot of damage, and a couple of wounded.

And I take a call from George Jacobson,

who was living in a wooden villa in the grounds of the embassy.

I did not see any VC in the building,

except that I knew that there was at least one VC in my house.

They put riot gas into the bottom floors of my house,

which, of course, would drive whoever was down, uh, below up top where I was.

Uh, they had thrown me a pistol about ten minutes before this occurred.

And with all the luck that I've had, uh, all of my life,

um, I got him before he got me.

- [man] With the pistol, and he had what? - I'm sorry.

- An M16. - And you got him.

None of the raiders lived to tell of their exploit.

By eight o'clock, five hours after they first broke in,

almost all of them were dead.

[Arnett] General Westmoreland arrived at the embassy,

and walking around the carnage, the VC bodies and wreckage,

said, "This has been a great victory for us today."

The enemy exposed himself by virtue of this strategy,

and he suffered great casualties.

And I was thinking at the time, "Huh?"

Nearly all 40 province capitals were attacked by the Việt Cộng

and North Vietnamese troops.

It's a real disaster,

especially after Johnson and his team have been telling the country

that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

[tape machine clicks]

I don't think it's a last-gasp, uh, action.

I do think that it represents, uh, a maximum effort

in the sense of, they've poured on all of their assets...

It's-- It's largely a propaganda effort,

and a publicity effort, and I think they'll gain that way.

I imagine our people across the country this morning will-- will feel

that, uh... that, uh, they're much stronger

than they had previously anticipated they were.

And in that sense, I think they gain.

[reporter] How long you been fighting in Saigon?

It's broke out about six, seven days ago. I've been fighting ever since then.

- You been fighting out in the field too? - Right.

- Which do you prefer? - The field. [laughs]

- Why? - I don't know.

You can't find 'em around here.

The Tết attacks lasted all the way, uh, until March of 1968.

This is the first time

that the North had actually captured

South territory and held it,

major cities like Huế.

[gentle wistful music plays]

[Veith] If Huế fell,

the historical imperial seat of South Vietnam,

it would crush morale,

and the whole part of the country could fall.

[reporter] The 324th Division of the North Vietnamese Army

had been given the task of taking Huế.

[inaudible]

[reporter] The citadel itself was seized by a North Vietnamese battalion.

[Kay] On one side of the river,

there was the citadel that was surrounded by North Vietnamese,

and very heavy fighting there.

And on the other side of the river was a warehouse building

that was the US presence on that side of the river.

And their mission was to recapture the city.

[bombs exploding]

[Mike Nakayama] It was pretty bad.

There were something like 10,000 North Vietnamese.

And here you're looking at Marines that are going in,

not knowing what they're going to face,

what that force was.

And so they got chewed up.

[guns firing]

I was actually a replacement

for so many of, you know, the Marines that were killed.

[reporter] Colonel Cheatham, what's the objective and your...?

What are your men about to do?

Well, I've-- I've got two companies here

that are just about to clear the next two blocks up.

What kind of fighting is it going to be?

It's house to house and from room to room.

- Kind of inch by inch? - That's-- That's exactly what it is.

They were fighting just to get across the street.

[soldiers yell indistinctly]

[reporter] As the Marines advance building after building,

the North Vietnamese retreat building after building,

giving up nothing without a fight.

You know, this just went on day after day.

It's been like this all weekend in Huế,

one nasty little firefight right after another.

Rounds going overhead.

[guns firing heavily]

[melancholic music plays]

What do you think of at a time like this?

Well, keeping down.

Bullets are flying over here too fast.

[C. Jack Ellis] I was a platoon sergeant.

My outfit was gonna defend Huế.

And I remember not being able to get the wounded out.

And that's when I first saw

my fellow soldiers being wounded in combat,

being killed in combat.

And when you are a small unit leader,

you know, a part of you gets wounded as well,

and a part of you dies.

Because now you-- you are close to these men.

[reporter] Many homes were entered and searched for block after block.

Wherever the Communists went, the people fled.

[woman] Civilians had been kidnapped by the Communists.

When the Communists first entered Huế,

they came into their homes and then took them away,

and they haven't heard from them since.

[Hoa, in Vietnamese] Thanks to the strong support of the US,

Huế was able to successfully push out the Communists.

Huế suffered the most during the Tết Offensive.

The fighting in Huế was the most horrific.

[Kay, in English] It was just a... a very gruesome, ugly battle.

But from my own position,

it was the first time I thought,

"God, we can really lose this war."

And it was all new.

And your thinking of the war becomes all new.

[soldiers speak indistinctly]

[man] Are you finished? We want to get the hell out.

By the time Communist forces had to withdraw from the city,

Communist forces on the ground ended up killing off any witnesses

in addition to actual prisoners of war.

[Thuy] They were killing those people on their way out of the city,

and nobody could know where they were.

[tender music plays]

Until a year later, they discovered three mass graves in Huế.

I accompanied officials to dig up the grave.

That was the most horrifying scene I have ever seen.

There was almost 1,300 bodies.

[Vu] Many of them were soldiers and officers and political leaders

of the province.

But they also killed many who they thought were anti-Communists,

even though they were ordinary people.

[Thuy] Even after one year in the grave,

I could see that some dead bodies were still in high school uniforms

with their arms tied in behind their back.

Here are the people who claim to come to liberate the South.

Why did they need to kill those people?

[Vu] The Communists tried to claim that they were killed by American bombs

and South Vietnamese bombs.

But people who had hands tied behind their backs,

you know, that-- that was not American bombs.

[Lien-Hang] We still don't know how many were killed by Communist forces

when they left the imperial capital of Huế,

but anywhere from 2,800 to 6,000 South Vietnamese civilians were killed.

That's one of the most brutal examples

of the Vietnamese civil war that was taking place.

[Thomas Bass] The Tết Offensive is a massive and major turning point

in the war.

[droning somber music plays]

It's in some ways a great military defeat for the Communists.

[Vu] It was a suicide attack.

More than 40,000 Communist troops,

ultimately, about a third of their forces,

they exposed themselves, and they were destroyed.

President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu oversaw military efforts

in response to the Tết Offensives.

The South Vietnamese military fought bravely

and regained the territory lost to the Communist forces on the ground.

The Tết Offensive helped rally South Vietnamese to the government,

and we could see a spike in recruitment afterwards

of people volunteering to serve in the army.

The Tết Offensive has exposed the insurgency.

It's to the point where they had been, if not destroyed, certainly devastated.

The problem is that's not the narrative that occurs back home.

[Veith] From the American perspective,

you had Westmoreland and the US government

touting how we are winning the war.

Suddenly, you had this massive attack across the country,

which gave lie to that.

[intriguing music plays]

[news anchor] I think the greatest victory that the Tết Offensive had

was on the American public.

I think it killed once and for all in the minds of the people of America,

and also in the Johnson administration,

the idea that a military victory was possible in Vietnam.

[Dan Rather] As 1968 unfolded,

President Johnson felt himself caught in a vice.

[tape machine clicks and whirs]

I don't admit that this is a Communist victory.

And I don't think anybody but a goddamn Communist admits it.

- [man] Yeah. - [Johnson] That's what I think.

And I just think they're using us, just playing games around us...

And nearly everybody I talk to tries to find out

what's wrong with our boys, our country, our leadership, our men.

Our president's a liar. Westmoreland's no good.

[Rather] One of the roles a journalist is supposed to play

is to bear witness to what's really going on

as opposed to what somebody in power wants to convince you is going on.

[mysterious chiming music plays]

Walter Cronkite was managing editor and anchor of the CBS Evening News.

One of, at the time, three major networks.

More than anybody else on the air, television,

he was seen as a trusted source.

He had demonstrated time and time again

that he wasn't trying to sell anything ideologically or politically.

After the Tết Offensive, his correspondents, including this one,

had time after time told him, "Walter, this is not going well."

Cronkite finally said, "Well, I want to go to Vietnam and see for myself."

[announcer] Tonight, "Report From Vietnam"

by Walter Cronkite.

If the Communist intention was to take and seize the cities,

they came closer here at Huế than anywhere else.

The destruction here was almost total.

There's scarcely an inhabitable building in the city of Huế.

[gentle nostalgic music plays]

The boss at CBS News at the time was a very strict journalism devotee

and would not permit any of us

to ever do anything like an editorial comment at all.

But now I came back and suddenly he said, "You know what?"

"We may have a responsibility here we haven't recognized."

"I think you, Cronkite, ought to do a piece

saying just exactly what you think about the situation out there."

And so I sat down and wrote my piece.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders,

both in Vietnam and Washington,

to have faith any longer

in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.

For it seems now more certain than ever

that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

[helicopter whirring]

It is increasingly clear to this reporter

that the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate not as victors

but as an honorable people

who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy

and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

[soft, sad music plays]

He didn't say we're losing the war.

What he said was, "It's a standoff."

"The US forces can't prevail here."

The fact that Walter Cronkite would say this directly made a big impact.

[Bass] Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said,

"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Walter Cronkite admitted the obvious, that our soldiers were dying for nothing.

[Kay] Vietnam was the first war

where mothers could actually see what their sons were doing at work.

And we talked directly to the mothers, and they were saying, "Not this."

All I can say is I-- I'm not as patriotic as I used to be after losing Billy.

And I have a son that's...

Well, he's just determined he's going to go over.

[Kay] The US lost the mothers,

so we lost the war.

[news anchor] This morning, the New York Times revealed

that General Westmoreland is asking for 206,000 more men in Vietnam.

The Times report says a divisive internal debate has begun

at high levels of the administration because of this request.

The Tết Offensive was a tremendous setback for the United States,

and it was compounded by the fact

that Westmoreland then went

and asked Washington for 206,000 more troops.

This is a measure now of how things have changed,

because now this message is harder to make stick.

[Viet Thanh Nguyen] The Tết Offensive was very effective in helping to mobilize

anti-war feeling in the United States.

And so in 1968, the anti-war movement grew

simply out of opposition to these human consequences.

[musical arrangement turns sweeping and hopeful]

[Chic Canfora] Seeing the graphic images of the Tết Offensive

marked a turning point in the American conscience

during the Vietnam War.

It certainly was the catalyst for me,

and, I think, hundreds of thousands of American students like me,

and millions of young people around the world,

to see those graphic images and just say, "Enough."

- [people scream] - [sirens wail distantly]

[woman] Life and death is-- is a much more serious matter than this,

and if we're-- if we're this confused as to our objectives and their objectives

and what this whole thing is about,

that we've got to stop the-- the agony of this conflict

and try to-- to get some reason into it.

[Lien-Hang] 1968 was a pivotal year,

and, of course, the deadliest chapter in terms of the war in Vietnam.

[Haeberle] I was a photographer, 31st Public Information Office.

We were attached to the 11th Infantry Brigade,

which was attached to the Americal Division.

[gentle nostalgic music plays]

My role in the Army was to document operations.

I went on different patrols with different units.

Usually, a journalist or writer would accompany me,

and then that writer would have to go ahead and write a story

about the photographs that I've taken.

It was mainly to show how good we're doing,

what we could do humanitarian-wise.

[man] Charlie Company was in the Americal Division,

and they were assigned

to a peculiarly troublesome, rebellious section

in Quảng Ngãi Province.

Captain Medina was a company commander, respected.

[Haeberle] I knew Captain Medina from our station in Hawaii.

He was strict, but he seemed dedicated to the service.

He just... had a good way with the troops.

Medina's the captain,

he's the head honcho, put it that way,

and there were three lieutenants underneath him

that had platoons assigned to 'em.

Lt. William Calley, he's in charge of the 1st Platoon.

From my understanding, he was not well-respected.

[Eckhardt] Lt. Calley was not a particularly strong leader.

Not a strong person. That's the problem.

[Haeberle] In Vietnam, a big thing is body count.

Everybody wants to know the body count.

Charlie Company, they were getting a bit harped on

because they haven't had any kills.

They were taking more casualties than they were getting enemy kills.

During the operation, Charlie Company walked into a minefield,

and they lost a few of their men

and their favorite sergeant to a booby trap.

It just became a hard situation.

[Eckhardt] Guerrilla war is terrible.

What do you do with the tragedies when you see your buddies killed?

No one belittles the emotion.

But you don't kill for revenge.

From a sergeant on up, you expect people to control that.

But Lt. Calley's men were not disciplined,

and in the military, the slippage of discipline is disastrous.

[ominous music plays]

[Haeberle] They had sub-hamlets. There was Mỹ Lai 1, 2, 3, and 4.

On March 15th,

we were told a Việt Cộng battalion was supposed to be in Mỹ Lai 4.

Captain Medina briefed his people that night, emotionally.

[Haeberle] Charlie Company was expected, you know, to do some damage

when they hit the village.

[sweeping dramatic classical music plays]

[in Vietnamese] I was born in the village of Sơn Mỹ.

I had just turned 11 years old.

[Mân] I was 13 years old.

I lived with six siblings

and an older sister who had business far from home.

[Haeberle, in English] Lt. Calley and 1st Platoon and part of 2nd Platoon

went on the first lift.

They were the ones who went directly into the hamlet of Mỹ Lai.

[anxious droning music plays]

Jay Roberts, an Army reporter, and I

were on the second lift of the choppers going in,

and the pilot came over the radio and said we're entering in a "hot zone,"

which means there's a lot of firing going on.

- [helicopter whirring] - [indistinct radio chatter]

When the chopper put down,

all I could hear was enormous amount of gunfire.

So we jumped out of the choppers,

and we tried, you know, ducking down in a rice field.

But we realized we weren't receiving any fire.

Everything being fired at was within the village.

[ethereal music plays]

[Công, in Vietnamese] The US Armed Forces bombarded the village

with their artillery.

First, they started killing people walking on the road,

people going to school, people going to the market.

After that, they marched in a horizontal line

and advanced into the village.

As they entered each house, they killed everyone in it.

They consolidated people and began to kill everyone.

[Haeberle] I noticed a whole group of people surrounded by a couple of GIs.

They looked more to me like civilians.

As I walked, maybe about five yards ahead, I heard firing.

[guns fire rapidly]

I looked over my shoulder.

There was two soldiers there, firing into 'em,

and one was Lt. Calley.

I couldn't understand.

You got somebody captured, why would you fire into 'em?

You know, you should interrogate 'em.

People were trying to get up and run.

I mean, just killing everything in their path along the way.

[Công, in Vietnamese] They captured our relatives

and led them to Mrs. Ly's ditch.

The ditch was completely full of blood and dead people.

They captured 102 people and led them to the watchtower at the village gate,

and they killed them there in Mr. Nhiều's rice paddy.

All 102 of them.

[Haeberle in English] Jay and I started back toward the village.

And I happened to stumble over this woman

I previously witnessed being shot in the head.

[somber music plays]

Jay and I looked at each other,

and I said, "What the hell is going on here?"

"We have to find Medina. This is all wrong."

Because the GIs that have done the shooting,

they're like... almost like zombies. They're not saying anything,

they're just shooting and shooting and shooting.

We spotted Medina on the outskirts of Mỹ Lai.

He was there with his command group.

We tried talking to him,

but he was on the radio all the time. There was no chance.

I remember Sergeant Minh, interpreter, Vietnamese,

he was trying to talk to Medina too.

He was just standing there, shaking his head,

"Why are they killing my people? They're not soldiers."

Jay and I decided to go into the village to see what was going on.

That was a nightmare. Bodies all over the place.

[in Vietnamese] At eight o'clock in the morning, soldiers came to my family.

They sat us in the front yard and killed three cows in the barn.

They proceeded to burn our house and our barn.

They shoved the six of us, including my mother,

into an underground shelter.

In the moment, my mother sensed the Americans' intent to kill.

So, she told us, her children, to go down to the shelter first.

She would enter behind us to shield us from bullets.

Once everyone was inside, they threw in grenades to kill us all.

I fainted and blacked out.

I had my four-year-old niece, my older brother's daughter.

The bullet entered here. I still have the scar.

I picked her up, and her head was twitching as the bullet went in here.

I just laid there dazed,

and the American soldiers thought I was dead.

There were no more stray bullets.

Only after they passed me,

I was able to crawl under the body of a woman.

Sorry.

[breath catches]

[Haeberle] I noticed a small child that was walking out,

like he was looking for his mother in the group.

And I was going to take another photograph.

A GI came right along beside me.

As I was about ready to take the picture, he shot this kid.

[gun fires]

I asked him why.

He just looked at me, turned around, walked away. Never said a word.

Never said a word.

[Eckhardt] You always have villains and heroes.

The villain is Lt. Calley. The hero is Hugh Thompson.

[ethereal music plays]

[Haeberle] Thompson realized what was going on,

and he tried to put a stop to this.

He put his little bubble chopper down in between the American troops

and some people he was going to try to rescue from a bunker.

Thompson came up and he says,

if he got fired on, those people got fired on,

the helicopter crew would open up and start shooting.

Americans against Americans.

[Eckhardt] He flies back to his base,

pounded on the table and said, "Stop the killings."

And the orders came down from above to stop.

That occurred about 10:00 or so.

And that's how it ended.

Uh, basically, within two hours,

uh, 500 people were killed.

[Công, in Vietnamese] After the Americans withdrew,

relatives from another village came.

When I came to,

I saw the bodies of my mother and siblings lifted out.

We staged the parts in a basket in the yard.

We picked up flesh, arms, heads, legs.

No one was left intact.

I was very emotional and at a loss for words.

I could only cry.

[Mân] At whatever time of day it was, the Americans left.

When I met my brother,

he told me he heard our father died in the ditch by the tree.

He was shot dead where the gas station is right now.

When I arrived, I carried my niece back home.

We buried her, and I notified others.

There are things that I have forgotten, but my mind will never forget that event.

The utter destruction,

annihilation, and death was horrific.

[Haeberle] In basic training and all your training,

you're trained to kill, you're trained to follow orders.

But they don't teach you anything about the people you're going to war with.

In fact, Westmoreland made a comment

that life doesn't mean anything to these people.

Life's cheap to 'em.

Well, the Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life

as does the Westerner.

That's bullshit.

They cherish life.

[in Vietnamese] To our knowledge, no opposing force fought against them.

There wasn't a single semblance of resistance.

[Haeberle in English] It's basically poor intelligence.

The Việt Cộng were not at Mỹ Lai 4. They were at Mỹ Lai 1.

[Mân in Vietnamese] To me, if you say this village was Việt Cộng,

they weren't here.

If it was Việt Cộng, shoot the Việt Cộng. Why would you shoot the villagers?

And the little babies in their cribs, why were they shot?

The cows were not Việt Cộng, but they were shot.

The pigs were not Việt Cộng. Why'd they shoot the pigs?

[helicopters whirring]

[melancholic music plays]

[Haeberle] Jay had to go back and write a story, and the story was,

"128 Việt Cộng killed, three weapons captured."

- [interviewer] That's the story? - That's the story.

If Jay put anything else in other than "a great success,"

I don't think that would have been published.

But it was... It's all civilians.

I had black and white Leica to record and document the operation.

All army photographs,

they were sent to our sergeant, he looked 'em over.

Then they had to be sent to, uh, an officer,

and he looked 'em over.

So I didn't want to record

any of the killings that happened there that day

with the black and white.

They seen that, they could have destroyed that automatically.

I was taking the killing photographs with my own personal camera.

[interviewer] Did you immediately understand

the significance of the images you were taking?

[Haeberle] I don't think at the time, no.

I'm just trying to figure out, "Why is this happening? Why is this happening?"

"Could I have done anything?" I doubt it.

I could have been fragged, you know?

Where they, uh, don't like somebody,

a grenade would go off next to 'em and kill 'em.

If I photographed you shooting somebody, bang, I'm gone.

Jay Roberts and I talked about this.

If we get questioned,

it's our responsibility to turn the information over to 'em.

But nobody came to talk to us about anything.

I knew I was about to rotate out of there in a couple weeks.

And so when I got back home,

I got all the color chemicals, then I processed it on-- on my own.

[Eckhardt] Mỹ Lai was not appropriately known or a year.

[news anchor] The villagers' version of the incident was given

by survivors yesterday.

The Army's investigation apparently was touched off

by letters written by a former soldier

who was not, however, an eyewitness to the incident.

I first learned of it from a fellow I had served with.

Uh, on my return from Vietnam,

I wrote letters to, uh, the President,

Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs.

[stately somber music plays]

Well, it got to the Army, and the Army took it seriously,

and they investigated.

I think I probably was the first one

who saw this criminal investigation report.

It was just appalling.

Sixteen were eventually charged.

Lt. Calley was charged

with killing about 100 individuals.

[Bass] And as the rumors got out,

this young, scrappy journalist by the name of Seymour Hersh

decides to investigate it.

So he tracks down Lt. Calley,

and he, uh, gets the story out of him

and writes it up.

[Eckhardt] And, uh, what really put gasoline on the fire

was, uh, Haeberle's photographs.

[Haeberle] A warrant officer came to talk to me

'cause he knew there was a photographer on the mission,

and explained to me what more happened there that day.

Gang rapes?

Raping a young girl as young as ten?

It was disgusting.

So I thought, "Well, it's time to let the public know about this."

I took 'em to a friend I had at the, uh, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

They published 'em.

And all hell broke loose.

[reporter] With us, also, the man who took the pictures,

former Army combat photographer Ronald Haeberle.

Was there an order to destroy the entire village?

I did not hear this order, just from general talk among the soldiers,

"We had to do it. It had to be destroyed."

Haeberle's photographs are... repulsively graphic.

And it, uh, churned America, as it undoubtedly should have.

Captain Ernest Medina was charged

with the responsibility for the entire thing,

because he didn't intervene to stop it.

I did not order a massacre,

and I did not see a massacre take place.

[Eckhardt] Captain Medina was acquitted, and the only person convicted was Calley.

[Haeberle] And Calley, he was sentenced to life.

But it was reduced down and down and down.

He spent some time in the brig, not much.

But mainly it was house arrest.

The facts are only about 10% of the unit actually shot.

90% didn't because there was no other--

there was no reason to shoot, so they didn't.

Calley was far, far from representative of the larger American experience.

[solemn ethereal music plays]

That said, I think what is common

is the damage that war does to participants

and the dehumanization that is almost a necessary component of war,

that pushes away empathy

and pulls in aggressive violence

that is dehumanizing for all who are involved.

Actually, we were surprised that anybody cared,

'cause it was normal.

The stuff that was going on, "Why are they picking Mỹ Lai?"

You know, go in a village and shoot what moves,

and there's no consequence.

Mass executions, that was abnormal.

But I saw what were just downright war crimes

quite often when I was in the infantry.

[solemn music intensifies]

[Camil] I thought that Lt. Calley was a scapegoat.

I thought basically he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

He was doing what we all did.

The only difference between what Lt. Calley did and what I did is,

me, I'd walk into a village, and as we're walking,

I'm shooting whoever I see to shoot.

What he did is they gathered all the people,

they lined them up next to a ditch, and then they shot them down.

Now, in both instances, the people are dead.

My feeling is we're all guilty, all of us.

I'm guilty of a cover-up.

Other people have more serious, uh, crimes against them than that,

but the whole group, and I'll take it right up to the top,

we're all guilty.

We'll include Westmoreland on that too.

America's hero of Vietnam, General William Westmoreland,

was told that he's to return to a desk job in Washington,

and the world speculated that this was the first move

in a new assessment of our role in a savage and unpopular war.

[Bass] After the Tết Offensive,

Westmoreland is removed.

He gets kicked upstairs to become the Army Chief of Staff,

in other words, a paper-pushing job in Washington, DC.

[droning morose music plays]

He's replaced by Creighton Abrams.

[Selverstone] And at this point, Johnson himself is under siege.

[tape machine clicks]

I'm afraid the people are going to interpret this

as representing a change in strategy

and tactics and everything else...

I've got to find some alternatives to turn some of this thing around a little bit.

If we don't, uh, we're going to be in trouble,

and Vietnam is the only thing, and it's just murdered me.

[gentle bittersweet music plays]

The country begins to wonder,

"Wait a second, have you sold us a false bill of goods?"

People begin to doubt Johnson's credibility

at a time when Johnson is heading into a presidential election campaign.

Already the anti-war forces have mobilized around a candidate,

Senator Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota.

But it's a real black eye for Johnson,

the sitting President of the United States,

who's being challenged for the nomination by a member of his own party.

And then Bobby Kennedy announces his candidacy.

[Kennedy] I am announcing today my candidacy

for the presidency of the United States.

I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man,

but to propose new policies.

[Selverstone] So now Johnson has to confront not only McCarthy,

but the entire Kennedy mystique.

[Baca] When I worked at the White House,

I was so grateful to President Johnson

for-- for responding to the needs of Mexican-Americans

and other people of color.

The Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act,

the housing assistance, you know, all of that.

But when he started pursuing the war in Vietnam,

and more and more of our young people were being killed,

I was getting very concerned.

So I had a-- a conflict,

which is probably why it wasn't so difficult for me

to quit my job and go work for Bobby.

[crowd cheers]

[Canfora] Bobby Kennedy became what all of us were hoping for in America.

He was youthful. He was fun.

And he didn't believe that we should be in Vietnam.

And that was-- that was it for us.

And we wanted him to succeed in his candidacy.

I have traveled,

and I have listened to the young people of our nation

and felt their anger about the war that they are sent to fight

and the-- about the world that they are about to inherit.

[Baca] Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, they did not like each other.

It was really emotional.

[Kennedy] He's mean, bitter,

a vicious... animal, in many ways.

He's got this other side of him in his relationship with human beings,

which make it very difficult unless you want to kiss his behind

all the time.

All of it makes Bobby look like a great hero

and makes me look like a son of a bitch,

and 95% of it is completely fabricated.

So for Johnson, the only thing worse than not being re-elected

was actually running against Bobby Kennedy and losing the Democratic nomination.

[Selverstone] Johnson was just being hammered by the public

because of the way he was handling the war,

but also because of the way that he was handling everything else

that was going on in the country.

[Baca] Johnson was an incredibly smart politician.

And he knew there was danger of him losing the primary.

And then Johnson announced that he was going to give a speech.

[announcer] Now we switch to Washington and the President of the United States.

With America's sons in the field far away...

[gently suspenseful classical music plays]

With America's future under challenge right here at home...

With our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day,

I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time

to any personal partisan causes

or to any duties

other... than the awesome duties of this office,

the presidency of your country.

Accordingly,

I shall not seek

and I will not accept

the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

[music intensifies]

[Logevall] All across the country, in America's living rooms,

people look at each other, husbands and wives and others,

look at each other and say, "Did he just say what I think he just said?"

Wow. [clears throats] Excuse me. Wow.

[chuckles]

How do you feel as you're watching this

when President Johnson said he was done?

I think it's one of the great dramatic moments

in American political life.

I don't agree with Mr. Johnson on so many things,

but tonight I think he realized, himself,

that this country is deeply divided.

He took the only course he could.

[Logevall] He had said to Lady Bird,

"I'm going to be crucified on Vietnam, whichever way I go."

"Vietnam will be the end of me."

This, in a way, showed that he was right.

1968 is a year of-- of tremendous turmoil,

really from the beginning to the end,

but especially in the middle months,

and there are people who wonder

if the, sort of, edifice can be kept intact.

[sad ethereal music plays]

[reporter] This is Gary Shepard in New York with a late bulletin.

Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

was shot in the head

and is now in critical condition in a Memphis, Tennessee hospital.

The latest reports from Memphis say Dr. King was hit by gunfire

while standing on the balcony of his hotel room

just before seven o'clock Eastern Standard Time.

I have some very sad news for all of you,

and I think, uh, sad news for all of our fellow citizens,

and people who love peace all over the world,

and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed

tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

[people wail and exclaim]

Can you tell me what effect Martin Luther King's death has had on you?

Well, it shook me up pretty good.

- You ashamed it happened in America? - No, uh...

It shouldn't have never happened anywheres.

I've, uh, lived overseas, and, uh...

people aren't-- aren't real proud of we Americans overseas,

and to have something like this happen

doesn't make us look any better in the eyes of the other people.

I hate to hear about, uh, everybody getting killed back in the world

because it's just like fighting in two worlds.

We fight one war over here, we get back, we have to fight another one.

[Ellis] Now, I'll never forget, we had been on a mission,

and we came back to the base.

He had already been assassinated f-four or five days when I got back.

And when I heard about it,

it was like my heart, like, just sunk.

He had been speaking for us, uh, young, Black soldiers,

speaking on our behalf.

He had been killed not on the battlefield in the jungles of Vietnam,

but on-- on the streets of America.

[Eldson J. McGhee] You know, we was, uh, children,

so we wasn't involved in the Civil Rights Movement,

and we wound up in the military being drafted.

We didn't feel like there was any justice at all

killing this man that was a-- a nonviolent advocate

for basic civil rights.

[Ellis] After Dr. King's death,

that's when I think this whole thing about communism went out of the window.

There's no communist worse than what's happening back in our--

in-- in our country.

[pastor] Grant, O lover of peace,

that we will effectively negotiate for a peaceful settlement in Vietnam.

To end the brutal slayings and criminal atrocities committed

in the name of democracy.

What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness,

but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another,

and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country,

whether they be white or whether they be Black.

- [distant singing] - [crowd cheers]

[dialogue inaudible]

♪ ...is Robert Kennedy ♪

[audio fades]

[Baca] After Lyndon Johnson pulled out of the race,

it was a-- a close campaign.

[tense music plays]

Bobby could carry that primary, but he had to win California.

That night, I was at the Ambassador Hotel.

[crowd] We want Bobby!

[Baca] But when he was declared the winner,

you know, we knew we were going to go all the way.

We knew that he was going to be our president.

[Kennedy] What I think is quite clear

is that we can work together in the last analysis.

We are a great country, an unselfish country,

and a compassionate country,

and I intend to make that my basis for running

over the period of the next few months.

[crowd cheers wildly]

My thanks to all of you.

And now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there.

Thank you very much.

[news anchor] Kennedy left the platform quickly.

He went through a side door into a pantry next to the hotel kitchen.

[Baca] As soon as he finished his remarks, I made my way to the second ballroom.

By the time I got downstairs, it had happened.

- [man 1] No! - [man 2] A doctor! A doctor!

[people scream and exclaim]

[Baca] I lost my hero.

My hero had been killed.

I can't talk about Bobby Kennedy. [inhales sharply]

[tender music plays]

[sighs and sniffles]

I'll probably need a Kleenex, but...

[tender music plays]

- [man 1] What happened? Do you know? - [man 2] Somebody said he's been shot.

[Canfora] The reality of what that war represented

and what conversations about the war resulted in began to hit us.

Imagine being 18 years old, as I was,

and having witnessed, at the age of 13,

the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Not long after, the assassination of Martin Luther King,

and then Bobby Kennedy.

It was a tough pill to swallow

that anybody who was effective at speaking out against war,

anyone who was effective at change, was killed.

Robert Kennedy had fueled the hopes of a great many people,

maybe especially young people.

And there are deep divisions in the Democratic Party,

and these are for everybody to see in Chicago.

[Baca] I was convinced to go to Chicago.

You know, I didn't have a job after Bobby's death.

You know, it was like a powder keg.

It really was.

[Rather] You had two almost literal battlefields.

One was the convention center itself,

where they were trying to control reporters, including myself.

- Take your hands off me. - [Cronkite] Dan Rather?

Unless you intend to arrest me, don't, uh-- don't push me, please.

I know, but don't push me. Take your hands off me unless you plan to arrest me.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute!

[spacey music plays]

Walter, as you can see...

[Cronkite] I don't know what's going on, but this...

These are security people, apparently, around Dan.

- We tried to talk to the man. - He's obviously getting roughed up.

We got bodily pushed out of the way.

This is the kind of thing that's been going on outside the hall.

This is the first time we've had it happen inside the hall.

[Rather] On the outside of the convention hall,

there was a virtual civil war going on

between the Chicago police and the protesters who had come,

and the police responded brutally.

[reporter] At nightfall, hundreds of helmeted police

closed in on Lincoln Park

as the demonstrators surged through the streets,

protesting the park curfew.

Police used their nightsticks, tear gas, and chemical mace freely.

[Baca] One night, I joined in on this big march.

We were marching to headquarters,

and then later I saw the police rushing the crowd and swinging their batons.

There had been no warning, and I started to cry

'cause I thought, "Oh, my God, I was just in that crowd."

[crowd chants] The whole world is watching!

The whole world is watching!

[Rather] The saying at the time was, "The whole world is watching,"

and indeed, the whole world was watching.

[Canfora] We saw the brutality in graphic images on television

of the Chicago police beating anti-war protesters.

It was the moment that we knew this was dangerous work,

that the silent, peaceful anti-war marches and protests were ineffective.

But we also saw that... more militant actions

and the growing strength of the movement in numbers

was going to be met with excessive police force.

[people shouting]

[Baca] That made me even more committed to opposing the Vietnam War.

But it looks as if the forces that wish to continue that war

are going to win the election and be put in power.

[Canfora] I didn't understand at the time

that there would be war policies far more dangerous

than the policies we were seeing out of Lyndon Johnson.

[Nixon] I say the time has come for the American people

to turn to new leadership,

not tied to the policies and mistakes of the past.

I pledge to you, we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.

[bold tense music plays]

[Ken Hughes] Nixon promised the American voters one thing,

that he was putting peace first.

But behind the scene,

he was throwing a monkey wrench into the prospects of peace

in order to win the 1968 election.

It's important for us all to learn these terrible lessons of history

to protect ourselves from the most unscrupulous politicians.

[announcer] Richard M. Nixon.

[Hughes] The ones who would put their careers

over the lives of American soldiers.

[crowd cheering]

America's in trouble today not because her people have failed,

but because her leaders have failed.

And what America needs are leaders to match the greatness of her people.

[cheering]

Tonight, I, again, proudly accept

that nomination for President of the United States.

[people cheer wildly]

[spacey forlorn music plays]

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