Original subtitles

♪ ♪

(audience applauding)

ANNOUNCER: Tonight, from Atlanta, live and in color:

"The Nixon Answer."

Tonight, Richard Nixon in person

is going to face a panel of citizens

asking the questions they want answered.

Thank you very much, thank you. (chuckles)

Hi, how are you?

(applause continues)

I thank all of you in the studio audience for your warm welcome,

and I just hope my campaigning's

a lot better than my putting. (all laugh)

And so we'll start over on this side

with Mr. Murphy from Atlanta.

REG MURPHY: Mr. Nixon, General Curtis LeMay became

Governor Wallace's running mate today,

and he immediately said that he would use a nuclear bomb

to win in Vietnam.

How do you feel about the use of nuclear weapons

in Vietnam or elsewhere?

I do not believe that nuclear bombs

or nuclear weapons should be used in Vietnam,

I do not think they're necessary to be used in Vietnam,

and we should not risk a nuclear war in Vietnam

by any matter or means.

(audience applauds)

MORTON HALPERIN: We learned pretty quickly

that his secret plan was to threaten the North Vietnamese

with nuclear weapons.

That was his plan.

And he was convinced that the way

to make the threat credible was for the North Vietnamese to fear

that he was crazy and might actually do this.

♪ ♪

(explosions pounding)

♪ ♪

WALTER CRONKITE: Richard Nixon goes over the top

with 287 electoral votes,

and that seems to be the 1968 election.

(crowd cheering and applauding)

DICK FERNANDEZ: After his election,

there was a feeling in the anti-war movement of exhaustion.

We felt devastated by the Nixon election.

And there were a lot of questions like,

what should we be doing, what needs to be done,

and what do we do next?

We didn't know at that time that they were

already planning to blow up Vietnam.

♪ ♪

NIXON: Dr. Kissinger is a man who is known

to all people who are interested in foreign policy

as perhaps one of the major scholars in America

and the world today in this area.

And I trust, under his direction,

he will develop new ideas

and new policies for the critical

problems America has in the field

of foreign policy around the world.

(Nixon murmuring)

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am honored by the confidence

that the president-elect has expressed in me.

And I shall serve the president-elect

with all my energy and dedication.

HALPERIN: Kissinger and I had been colleagues together at Harvard.

I came into the government in '66,

and I very quickly came to believe that we had no idea

what we were doing in Vietnam,

and that it was hopeless, and that we should get out.

Which, of course, Kissinger knew.

Kissinger and I taught a seminar at Harvard

called the Defense Policy Seminar.

There's actually a very famous "New York Times" picture

of the last class of the seminar in 1968,

'cause I alerted "The New York Times" to the fact

that this was going to be Henry's last class.

The photographer walks in and Henry says,

"This will be good for my megalomania."

After the class was over, Kissinger asked to talk to me.

He said that he wanted to ask me to come and work for him

in the White House, and I immediately said yes.

Kissinger had a sense of urgency because by Inauguration Day,

Nixon wanted a paper on options

for what should be done in Vietnam.

We looked at a range of options all the way towards

the one that I favored, which was announcing

that we would withdraw all our forces.

The paper went to Nixon and his response was,

"This is a good options paper,

"but the option that I'm interested in

is not in the paper, and that's the option of escalating."

♪ ♪

I was surprised by the escalation request,

mostly because I thought it was infeasible,

that the country wouldn't stand for it.

And I said to Kissinger,

"If you go in this direction, it will become Nixon's war."

And Kissinger went off and talked to Nixon,

and came back and said,

"He will be proud to have it called Nixon's war."

("All Along the Watchtower" playing)

TOM WELLS: Nixon wanted to end the war quickly.

And the way he hoped to do that was by threatening

the North Vietnamese with a major escalation of the war.

And he had this idea that somehow he could convince

the North Vietnamese that he was capable of anything--

to blow them to smithereens.

(flashes popping)

DANIEL ELLSBERG: H.R. Haldeman,

who became Nixon's chief of staff,

revealed in his memoirs

that during the '68 campaign,

Nixon had discussed with him how

he expected effectively to win the war in Vietnam.

(bomb releasing and exploding)

Nixon's secret plan was to threaten the North Vietnamese

that he would go to a much higher level of escalation than

President Johnson had ever managed,

including the use of nuclear weapons.

But how to make the North Vietnamese

believe that he would do it?

He said, "We'll get the word to them

"that this guy is unpredictable,

"crazy, we can't control him,

and he has his finger on the nuclear button."

And Nixon said to Haldeman,

"Ho Chi Minh will be in Paris

the next day to negotiate."

And in his own mind, the word was used, madman.

He said, "I call it the Madman Theory, Bob."

♪ ♪

And, by the way, privately, I believe

Nixon was that crazy.

FERNANDEZ: My name is Dick Fernandez.

I am a minister in the United Church of Christ.

I worked for eight years as a director

of Clergy and Laity Concerned during the Vietnam War.

In February of 1969, there were a group of us

that went to see Kissinger:

Coretta Scott King,

William Sloane Coffin at Yale,

Rabbi Abraham Heschel.

And as we came in the door, you had these two Jewish men

who had both escaped Nazi Germany

and Poland, respectively.

You could kind of tell there was this recognition.

We said we wanted the war to end, and as our meeting went on,

at one point, Kissinger said,

"You know, I've just been here six weeks-- it takes a while."

He said to us, we need to be patient with them.

Rabbi Heschel, he kind of looked at Kissinger,

and he said, "You know, Mr. Secretary,

the children of Vietnam are dying, so you should hurry."

You could have heard a pin drop.

We didn't know at that time

that they were already planning to blow up Vietnam.

SAM DONALDSON: It has now come to Richard Nixon

as it came so often to his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson:

the sight of hundreds of sign-carrying women

marching in front of the White House,

demanding an immediate end to the war in Vietnam.

It was all very peaceful and quiet.

So was Lyndon Johnson's first anti-war demonstration.

CAROLYN EISENBERG: Nixon is acutely aware of the fact

that Lyndon Johnson's presidency

had been essentially destroyed by the anti-war movement.

That's not lost on him at all.

And he doesn't want to be in that spot.

So from the very beginning, Richard Nixon is always paying

attention to the anti-war movement.

CORA WEISS: Women Strike for Peace

was a gathering of housewives, that's for sure.

And we were all over the country.

We began getting worried about the Vietnam War.

It was a war of atrocities.

We committed crimes against humanity.

It was horrible.

And we were going to work

to try to prevent this war from escalating and end it.

DONALDSON: Today, they marched from the White House

to Capitol Hill; at the Capitol,

the women took turns

listening to anti-war congressmen...

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM: The war should be ended immediately.

We really need a complete re-evaluation

of what this nation's priority is going to be.

And until we end the war in Vietnam

and address ourselves to the domestic war at home,

we are going to continue to be in trouble in our country.

DAVID HAWK: In the early '60s,

what I was most concerned about was really

the Civil Rights Movement.

I went to Mississippi in the summer of 1964

as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer.

And being concerned with

the issue of poverty in America, you could see

easily who was getting sent to Vietnam

and where in American society the draftees

were coming from-- the small towns,

the farms, and the ghettos.

And I went from concern about civil rights at home

directly into concern for the escalation

of the war in Vietnam,

and many, many of my colleagues

and friends from the Civil Rights Movement

also transitioned into the anti-war movement.

I became the anti-war and anti-draft coordinator

for the National Student Association,

and I organized a "We Won't Go" letter

addressed to Nixon, advising him of how deep

and how wide opposition to the war was on the campuses.

And to our surprise, we were invited to meet

with Henry Kissinger and Nixon's chief domestic adviser,

John Ehrlichman, and had that meeting

in the Situation Room in the White House.

ROGER BLACK: Dr. Kissinger

repeated a, a number of times that, that we really

should give them, give them more time, be patient.

Dr. Kissinger said that

if we came back a year from now

and the war was still in the same position,

he would really have no moral argument against us.

HAWK: Kissinger left the room after 20, 30 minutes,

and John Ehrlichman took the floor

and was so hard-line, it shocked people.

He said, "If you think

"that you can break laws you don't like,

"you're going to force us to up the ante

"to the point where we have to give out

death sentences for traffic violations."

I mean, this was so off the wall and over the top

that everybody's jaw just dropped.

(laughs): "What is this guy talking about?"

(guns firing)

It was clear to everybody that the war was going to go on.

(explosion pounds)

These guys were not going to end it,

and they might even be worse than the last bunch.

ROGER MORRIS: I'm Roger Morris.

I was on the National Security Council staff

under Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon.

Nixon intended to be very much his own secretary of state,

as well as his own president.

In foreign policy, it would be, in the end, Henry and Dick.

As early as the spring of 1969, we knew that Nixon was making

(chuckling): very, very definite and often somewhat

furtively menacing approaches to the Soviet Union,

what struck me at the time as almost childish,

if not adolescent, playing with the whole issue:

"You'll have to get on board here

"with pressuring the North Vietnamese to end the war

or terrible things will happen."

STEPHEN BULL: I was a very, very strong supporter

of Richard Nixon.

He was my boss, I admired him.

And whatever his decision was, I was going to support it.

President Nixon wanted the Russians

to believe that he would do anything.

He wanted to make them think that he was a madman.

However, my personal observation was, it was a bluff.

He wasn't going to do anything,

he was never going to use nuclear weapons,

but he wanted the threat to be out there

to force them to the table.

ELLSBERG: By May of 1969,

Henry Kissinger had told Dobrynin,

the Russian ambassador, Soviet ambassador,

that if the North Vietnamese did not agree to Nixon's terms,

we would move to measures of the greatest consequence,

the gravest consequence.

HALPERIN: I found out about the threats in which Kissinger

says to the Russian ambassador, Dobrynin,

"The president wants you to tell the Russians

"that the North Vietnamese have nothing to gain by waiting,

"that if they wait, things will get much worse.

There will be terrible destruction."

It did everything

but use the word "nuclear weapons," but it was clearly

meant to be a nuclear threat.

Which, of course, I found very disturbing.

EISENBERG: In May of 1969,

you have the Battle of Hamburger Hill.

It's very close to the Laotian border, in a mountainous region.

Groups of soldiers are sent up the hill

to get the North Vietnamese out,

but they're in a terrible position.

The enemy troops are on the top and they're just killing them.

But their officer cannot bear to give up.

Hamburger Hill was a term that the men used

because they were being ground up like ground meat.

Eventually, they actually take the hill,

and of course, by that point, enemy's either dead

or they've crossed back over the border into Laos.

So it's really a big nothing in terms of what they're achieving.

CRONKITE: Today, a squad leader wounded in those assaults,

Sergeant Ken Tepper, talked about the fight.

It seemed so useless, because they just,

they just kept sending us up there,

and they were just slaughtering us.

My best friend was right behind me with his machine gun.

He got killed right there, got a bullet through his head,

and it was, it was pretty awful.

And I cried that night, and many guys did.

EISENBERG: Nixon sees this,

and he sends a message to Kissinger.

"How in the world do people like that get put on the television?

How did we allow that to happen?"

The absolute disconnection, both of them,

between the things that they're deciding to do

and the human costs of it,

whether it's to our own soldiers or it's civilians,

has absolutely no part in their thinking.

They don't care.

(hammers pounding)

SAM BROWN: I was teaching

a seminar at Harvard at the time.

In the seminar, I said, "Let's play a 'what if?' game.

What if you wanted to end the war in Vietnam?"

We were casting about to see what other people were thinking.

Jerry Grossman, who was a businessman,

but deeply committed against the war,

had come up with this idea of a national strike.

Jerry came to the seminar and pitched this.

And over a period of weeks, we carried on

a conversation about, how is that going to work?

Who's going to be attracted to that?

Will people be put off by the word "strike"?

And also, the question was, could you pull it off?

That is, would people actually walk off their jobs?

We began to think, on the other hand, maybe we can

use that idea, reframed,

saying not, "We're gonna strike that day,"

but we're going to take some time to contemplate that day.

We're going to set aside business as usual.

And from that came the idea of the Moratorium.

HAWK: We thought there was a lot more latent opposition

to the war that could be mobilized at the local level.

Since I had this active network of student leaders,

we decided to bring some of them back

to Washington, and Sam came down and laid out the idea.

BROWN: You know, we were basically political people.

We didn't think revolution was in the air.

We didn't think that the United States

is going to change overnight.

So we wanted to find a way that made people

feel comfortable, that made them feel like,

"Oh, I've been thinking about the war,

"and maybe now I can actually do something

right here in my hometown."

So that was the intent of the Moratorium.

HAWK: We decided to give it a try,

and set October 15

as the target date.

BROWN: Yeah, well, we didn't know any better.

Nobody had told us we couldn't do it,

so we just sort of set out to do it.

("The I-Feel-Like- I'm-Fixing-to-Die Rag" playing)

♪ Well, come on, all of you big strong men ♪

♪ Uncle Sam needs your help again ♪

♪ Got himself in a terrible jam ♪

♪ Way down yonder in Vietnam ♪

♪ Put down your books and pick up a gun ♪

♪ We're gonna have a whole lot of fun ♪

♪ And it's one, two, three ♪

♪ What are we fighting for? ♪

♪ Don't ask me, I don't give a damn ♪

♪ The next stop is Vietnam ♪

♪ And it's five, six, seven ♪

♪ Open up the Pearly Gates ♪

♪ Well, there ain't no time to wonder why ♪

♪ Whoopee! We're all gonna die ♪

DAVID HARTSOUGH: I'm David Hartsough.

And I was a lobbyist working on ending the war.

My job was to help educate Congress

and bring pressure on Congress about the war,

and trying to bring the truth to Congress.

I was living the Vietnam War day and night,

and feeling a heavy responsibility on my shoulders.

Every week, 300 American soldiers were dying,

and thousands of Vietnamese.

Quakers decided somehow we had to publicly help

the American people understand the reality

of what the war was costing in lives,

and came up with the idea

of reading the names of the American war dead

on the Capitol steps, which we proceeded to do.

MAN: Joe Mac Kemp.

Kent Alan Leonard.

HARTSOUGH: We got through 50, 60 names,

and we were arrested and taken off to jail.

The next Wednesday, again, we went back

and continued reading the names of the war dead.

And we were again arrested and taken off to jail.

Vacate the lane forthwith

or subject yourself to arrest. (woman reading names)

HARTSOUGH: So I went to see Congressman George Brown

of Southern California, and I said,

"George, is there anything you could do to help us?"

He sits back on his swivel chair and says,

"Yeah, I think I'll join you."

(laughs)

REPORTER: For the fourth straight Wednesday,

a group of Quakers tried to read from

the Capitol steps the names of Americans killed in Vietnam.

They were joined today by members of Congress

who sat with them on the steps.

HARTSOUGH: The congressmen,

they had congressional immunity,

so we got arrested and they just continued

reading the names, for hours and hours and hours.

That got publicity, and more members of Congress joined us.

Charles Diggs from Detroit.

Ed Koch, who later became mayor of New York City.

Shirley Chisholm of New York.

♪ We shall not, we shall not be moved ♪

♪ We shall not, we shall not be moved ♪

♪ Just like a tree ♪

♪ That's standing by the water ♪

♪ We shall not be moved ♪

HARTSOUGH: I like to believe that our courage

gave these congresspeople the courage to do

what they believed was right.

And their courage gave courage

and encouragement to the media to begin sharing this

terrible story of how many Americans

and how many Vietnamese were dying every single week.

Orrie Julius Buskey, Reuben Butcher...

HARTSOUGH: Congresspeople inserted all 40,000 names

of the American war dead into the Congressional Record,

so that became public knowledge,

and people began

reading the names of the war dead all over the country.

MAN: Nathaniel Collins.

Thomas Edward Collins.

Farrell Richard Carew.

Randall Vincent Cook.

Joseph Henry Cooper, Jr.

HARTSOUGH: The message we were trying to send out was,

this war has to end.

This madness has to end.

JOHN LENNON: One, two, three, four!

("Give Peace a Chance" playing)

♪ Everybody's talking 'bout Bagism, Shagism, Dragism ♪

♪ Madism, Ragism, Tagism, this-ism, that-ism ♪

♪ Ism, ism, ism ♪

♪ All we are saying ♪

♪ Is give peace a chance ♪

(exclaiming)

♪ All we are saying ♪

♪ Is give peace a chance ♪

We tried to do it in New York, but the American government

wouldn't let us in.

So we ended up doing it in Montreal, instead,

and broadcasting across the border.

♪ And Fishops and Rabbis and Popeyes and bye-bye, bye-bye ♪

♪ All we are saying ♪

♪ Is give peace a chance ♪

Okay, beautiful!

Yeah! (all cheer and applaud)

CHRISTIAN APPY: By the middle of 1969,

many Americans, middle Americans,

were beginning to think, you know,

"Maybe it doesn't make sense for us to be continuing

"to send our sons

to fight this war that seems unwinnable."

(explosion pounds)

NIXON: After five years

in which more and more Americans have been sent to Vietnam,

we finally have reached the point where we can begin

to bring Americans home from Vietnam.

APPY: He did realize that he could no longer escalate

the war of American ground troops in Vietnam.

Those soldiers had to be brought back.

He wanted to bring them back

as slowly as possible, but he understood

that the American public could no longer tolerate

large numbers of American body bags coming home.

♪ ♪

BROWN: You could not forget

that June issue of "Life" magazine.

I think "Life" may have had a circulation

of five or six million or something.

It seemed like it came

to every home in America,

and suddenly, here are these pictures,

and you have a face and a name.

Not just, oh, last week, people died,

which is horrifying, but it had become so normalized.

That magazine brought back to reality

that that new normal was terrible.

It was devastating.

(firing)

HAWK: Nixon announced the withdrawal

of 25,000 troops,

but the rate of withdrawal they were talking about

meant the war would go on for another four or five years.

We wanted to indicate that won't do it.

The war's gone on too long already.

Just simply end it-- end it!

Bring them home-- immediate withdrawal.

("Volunteers" by Jefferson Airplane playing)

JOAN LIBBY: I was student body president at Mount Holyoke,

and I hated the war.

I met David Hawk, who was looking to hire people

who were good organizers and could get things done.

(chuckles): And of course, at 21,

you knew that you could get anything done.

And I said, "I'm in."

I remember I packed my things in a cardboard box

and went on an airplane, you know, I had no suitcase, even.

And it's a beehive.

It's frenetic, it's organized.

REPORTER: At 26, Sam Brown is the oldest of the four

Moratorium organizers, and has a master's degree from Rutgers.

David Hawk is a quietly intense young man

with the best connections to the radical left.

He graduated from Cornell, went to Harvard Divinity School,

and expects to go to prison in a few months

for refusing the draft.

At 22, Marge Sklencar is extraordinary.

She's been accepted at Yale Law School,

works 18 hours a day, handles the money,

breaks up the arguments, and knows everyone.

David Mixner was recruited by Brown for his long experience

in student organization and his knowledge of Capitol Hill.

♪ We're the volunteers of America ♪

MIXNER: My family has always had a great military history.

All my uncles served in World War II,

my father, and there was real pride in that.

And then I had four members of my family die in Vietnam.

And my best friend from high school

and elementary school died in Vietnam.

All before they were 22.

It's something you never forget,

and my sister and I became outspoken

opponents against the war.

And then I got a draft notice.

There was no question in my mind-- I wasn't going.

The only question in my mind was whether to go overseas or jail.

And I dreaded telling my father.

But I said, "Dad, I got drafted."

And he sort of turned pale and I said,

"I know you're not going to like this, but I ain't going."

I said, "I sent a letter to the Salem County draft board,

saying, '(muted) you and (muted) your war, I ain't going.'"

And that's exactly what I wrote.

And he said, "Of course you're not going.

We've given enough already."

And he says, "You'll go when the Rockefellers

start sending their sons."

Shocked the (muted) out of me.

LIBBY: I was from this working-class town

called Revere, Massachusetts.

I did have a sense from my lower-middle-class upbringing

and my father that I wanted to do something

that would convince people who were like my parents

to turn against the war.

My father was in World War II and was a master sergeant,

and came back from the war and became a police officer.

My family is Jewish, and my father

had been with General Patton

and had helped liberate concentration camps.

So the notion of conscience was for me

very important.

And when I thought about Vietnam,

I didn't want to say I just, you know,

finished college and went to grad school, honey.

I wanted to know that I did what I could,

in the smartest way I knew how,

to end the war in Vietnam.

I was not going to be the bystander.

MIXNER: Mary McGrory was a Pulitzer Prize columnist

at the "Washington Evening Star" at the time.

Her column was in, like, 400 papers around the world.

I mean, she was a star.

And she was passionately committed against the war.

She fell in love with the Moratorium.

And she arranged a lunch with Ehrlichman.

And the lunch went well, and then he said,

"You've got to call this off.

"This is treasonous, this is undercutting our troops.

And if you don't, we'll put you in jail."

BROWN: One of us said,

"Eventually, you'll have to put us all in jail."

And he made some joke in a kind of mock German accent about,

"Well, we'll build the walls higher and higher."

(chuckles): That's pretty unnerving, thank you.

MIXNER: I was very much in the closet as a gay man.

And I was living in total fear of that coming out.

And before he left, he patted me on the knee

and he said, "David, don't forget,

we know all about you-- all about you."

And I knew what he was talking about.

And it was, uh, scary.

FERNANDEZ: Over the July 4 weekend, a large group of us gathered

in Cleveland, Ohio, to plan a march on Washington.

We called our coalition the New Mobilization Committee

to End the War in Vietnam,

or simply the Mobe.

REPORTER: The New Mobilization is a big, floppy umbrella,

a loose, sometimes quarrelsome coalition

of old left, new left, and ordinary liberals.

It does not include the Yippies

nor the Students for a Democratic Society.

Its 60-member-plus steering committee

does include a member of the Communist Party

and two members of

the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party.

FRANK JOYCE: If you can't handle a meeting that lasts 18 hours,

you're not ready to be in the movement.

Now, that's kind of a joke and it's kind of funny,

and it's also kind of true, because

we had really incredibly intense

and lengthy discussions and debates

at any Mobe meeting that I was ever at.

WEISS: I had to fight

all the way for my points,

and I frequently won.

My role, which I gave to myself,

was to make sure that any demonstration that was planned

would be safe for families.

If I couldn't bring my children,

I wasn't going to go to the demonstration,

and I wouldn't let them move off that issue

until they agreed.

I said we would triple our numbers

if we let the whole family come,

or quadruple our numbers.

And violence was not going

to win us any friends.

MARGERY TABANKIN: Cora was one tough cookie.

She was one of the only people, in combination

with this incredible guy,

Reverend Dick Fernandez,

who was, like, the gentle giant of the anti-war movement.

They were the only people who could actually hold together

all the different wings of what was now a really massive

anti-war movement in the country.

FERNANDEZ: At the Cleveland meeting, we agreed

to organize major anti-war demonstrations in November,

a three-day protest in Washington

and a large march and rally in San Francisco.

We were able to figure out a way to lock arms

going toward the fall, fanning out across the country

to stir up interest for the fall anti-war protests.

WEISS: The public and the press spoke of November and October

as the Moratorium days,

not distinguishing between the two.

We all wanted the war in Vietnam to stop.

And we appealed to the conscience

of the American people.

All of the leaders had some contact with religion.

I couldn't believe it.

Dave Hawk and Sam Brown both went to theological seminary.

Marge Sklencar had spent a year in a nunnery.

Even Dave Dellinger, from the New Mobe,

went to theological seminary.

I mean, God must have been on our side!

ANTHONY LAKE: I'm Tony Lake.

Vietnam was very much a part of my early life.

I served in Vietnam for two years at the American Embassy,

and then as the vice consul in Hue in Central Vietnam.

In 1969, Kissinger convinced me

to become his special assistant.

He told me that he was going to end the war in Vietnam,

and he knew I was passionate by then in my belief

that the war was a horrible mistake.

And he was offering me the opportunity

to work to try to end it.

And so I agreed.

I flew with Kissinger to the secret meetings.

The State Department was being completely cut out,

including the Secretary of State.

I did not believe that was the right way to run a railroad,

but I wasn't going to violate the secrecy

that Kissinger had sworn me to.

MORRIS: Kissinger asked Tony Lake and me to be his,

what he called his special project staff

in those talks with the North Vietnamese.

It was a stunning venture for me,

meeting in safe houses in Paris, completely off the record.

LAKE: The strategy was to convince the North Vietnamese

to withdraw their forces from South Vietnam.

How do you do that?

Well, the answer was to threaten them,

and Kissinger began implementing threats

built around the ultimatum that

if they did not withdraw their forces,

or agree to withdraw their forces, by November 1,

then there would be measures of great force taken against them.

The threats were never specific.

It was simply "measures of great force."

And it was clear from the face

of the North Vietnamese negotiator

that he was not particularly intimidated by the threat.

They'd built their whole lives around Vietnamese independence.

I did not believe that any blow

short of the almost complete destruction

of North Vietnam was going to deter

these people and those leaders who had spent their lifetimes

fighting against foreign domination of their country.

MORRIS: The approaches to the North Vietnamese

had not yielded very much of any value.

So, if I had to characterize the late summer of 1969,

it would be a kind of frustration and dismay,

and that inevitably made for the planning

for a resort to extreme violence.

WELLS: The plan for a dramatic escalation of the war

was known as Operation Duck Hook.

And I'm not sure how they came up with that name.

It's a golf term for slicing it to the left

when you hit a golf ball.

EISENBERG: Duck Hook was a plan that Kissinger

and his staff are working on.

For Kissinger, the idea is that

you're going to hit North Vietnam very hard,

very dramatically, get a lot of casualties,

scare them out of their wits,

and then pray

that the North Vietnamese will now accept their terms.

MORRIS: A special working group was assembled

and came to be known in some quarters

as the September Group.

It was strictly select people from the NSC staff

handpicked by Kissinger.

Its marching orders were very clear, and had been cast

by Kissinger himself, which was his famous remark,

"I can't believe that a fourth-rate power

like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point."

We'd formulated plans for a very, very punishing blow.

And those plans were very sophisticated

and detailed in military terms.

LAKE: The military planning was being done

in the military section of the NSC staff.

I do remember looking at a draft,

and I do remember

that it referred to the bombing of the dikes

around the Red River in North Vietnam, and being appalled

at the thought of the devastation that would cause.

ELLSBERG: The plans for escalation,

code-named Duck Hook,

called for all kinds of escalations and options,

including going into Cambodia and Laos,

and possibly a full invasion of North Vietnam.

Definitely for an expansion of bombing

to all areas of North Vietnam, up to the northernmost areas

on the border with China,

including the use of nuclear weapons.

♪ ♪

Only a handful of people in the White House

and the Pentagon knew that the war was on the verge

of becoming much larger and possibly nuclear.

MORRIS: The massive, savage blow that we contemplated

in the September Group was going to kill

hundreds of thousands of people.

It was going to risk confrontation

with the great powers.

It was an extraordinarily risky and punishing option.

I think Kissinger and Nixon were ruthless.

I think, in many respects, they were savage.

I think they were expedient.

I think that for both men, the end justified the means.

And I think that they were, if not blind,

relatively insensate to the sheer depth and breadth

and horror of the human cost.

HARTSOUGH: When I heard that there were some young people

organizing what they called the Vietnam Moratorium,

and their office was over on Vermont Avenue,

I went over to visit them.

And it was really inspiring.

They were in touch with student groups and church groups,

community people, all over the country.

("Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds playing)

LIBBY: The people in the office were fantastic.

They were bright and they were funny,

and they all came from somewhere different.

You got there early and fueled yourself on coffee

and soda and cheap food,

and worked until midnight, 1:00, or 2:00, every day.

There was George Wiley,

who ran the Poor People's Campaign.

There were numerous people out of the Civil Rights Movement,

like Fannie Lou Hamer.

Paul Newman came in to kind of cheer us up at times,

but also to use his network to help raise money

and visibility and keep things going.

MIXNER: Bill Clinton was working

with Senator Fulbright as an intern.

He came over, and Clinton and I hit it off instantly

and became friends.

Big country man, big hillbilly.

And I mean, it was so clear that he wanted to be president.

BROWN: A regular volunteer in our office, Betty Ann Ottinger,

Dick Ottinger's wife, was den mother to us all.

She was ten or 15 years older,

and she was in the office every day.

Wife of a congressman.

♪ ♪

MIXNER: I was put in charge of labor.

The big unions had been very pro-war, the rank and file.

But these were the people we needed.

A man named Bill Dodds was Walter Reuther's top aide

at the United Automobile Workers.

And I went to Bill, and Bill had behind him

Ben Shahn's lithograph of Gandhi,

and I knew I was in the right place.

And I said, "Bill, we're not going to stop this war

"until labor comes.

"And the only one that can make it a reality

"is Mr. Reuther and his brother Victor.

How do we do this?"

He said, "First of all,

"you have to understand there is strong support

"in the UAW members for the war, so if it's not done right,

Mr. Reuther could get hurt very badly."

But we hammered out an agreement where Walter Reuther would be

the first major labor leader to come out against the war.

So Sam Brown came with me, and we met with Mr. Reuther,

and outlined what he would do and what he wouldn't do.

And I'll never forget, he hugged us and said,

"I'm so proud of you.

"You remind me of Victor and I in the early years

of the labor movement."

And I said, "I can't think of any greater compliment

that you could have given us, Mr. Reuther."

And we're walking through the door,

and he has his arms on Sam and my shoulder,

he said, "Did I ever tell you about going to the dentist?"

And I thought, "What the (muted) is this?

Is it some sort of joke?"

And he said, "I hated to go to the dentist

"more than anything in the world.

"But finally, I got this toothache

"that I couldn't live with.

"So I went in and I got in that chair.

"And that dentist came at me

(drill whirring) "with that buzz saw towards my tooth.

"And I grabbed him by the (muted)

"and squeezed them hard and looked him in the eyes and said,

'We're not going to hurt each other, are we, Doctor?'"

I knew what that story was about.

It was, like, "Don't you (muted) me,

or I'll have you both by the balls."

And I said, "Mr. Reuther, that story is not wasted on us."

And he said, "I thought you would get it, David.

I thought you would."

♪ Come, senators, congressmen, please heed the call ♪

♪ Don't stand in the doorway ♪

♪ Don't block up the hall ♪

MIXNER: We got a huge number of endorsements

which had never before come out publicly

as a unified opposition to the war.

Congressman Don Riegle,

Congressman Pete McCloskey.

Senator Hatfield, McGovern.

And we got it being for immediate withdrawal.

We didn't budge on that.

And I remember one senator saying,

"David, you can't do that."

And I said, "Well, we have to."

And they said, "Well, how would you do it?

It's just not practical."

And I said, "It's real easy, stop making it complex.

"You put them on ships and planes,

and you point them East, and you bring them home."

♪ For the times, they are a-changin' ♪

Sit down, please-- good.

REPORTER: Mr. President, what is your view, sir,

concerning the student moratorium

and other campus demonstrations

being planned for this fall against the Vietnam War?

I understand that there has been and continues to be

opposition to the war in Vietnam

on the campuses and also in the nation.

As far as this kind of activity is concerned, we expect it.

However, under no circumstances

will I be affected whatever by it.

(reporters talking)

HAWK: As soon as he said,

"Under no circumstances will I be affected by it whatsoever,"

we knew that it was much too harsh and cavalier a statement.

So we seized on it. (laughs)

BROWN: Good morning.

I'm Sam Brown, one of the co-coordinators

of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee.

HAWK: We immediately called a press conference,

which was extremely well attended, with TV cameras

and national reporters.

BROWN: And we intend

to build a movement which will make it imperative

that the United States withdraw from Vietnam.

HAWK: Our response to Nixon ended up on

the front page of "The Washington Post."

At which point, newspapers editors around the country

realized that the Moratorium was a big national story.

♪ ♪

LAKE: I was there when Kissinger told Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin

that the train has left the station, i.e.,

that we were now going to go after the North Vietnamese

with measures of great force, if the Soviets didn't help us

by making the North Vietnamese agree.

WELLS: If the North Vietnamese did not come to

satisfactory peace terms by November 1,

they were going to dramatically escalate the war:

Operation Duck Hook,

what Kissinger called "a savage punishing blow,"

possibly even using nuclear devices.

ELLSBERG: We had no notion that as of October 1969,

the possibility of nuclear war lay weeks ahead.

(bell tolling)

REPORTER: The Mennonite bell at Bethel College was rung once

for each of the American men killed in the war.

It is still ringing tonight.

It will still be ringing tomorrow.

(bell continues)

(crowd cheering, shouting)

A dove was released

above Chicago's Civic Center this afternoon,

symbolizing, in its flight to freedom,

the hopes of 5,000 peace demonstrators

gathered in the plaza below.

(crowd singing "Let the Sunshine In")

REPORTER: They came across the Charles River from Harvard

and they marched from M.I.T. and Boston University.

They came from almost all of the city's

colleges and universities, and despite their numbers,

their marches were peaceful.

Perhaps 100,000 came.

At any rate, never before

has Boston seen so many demonstrate

so peacefully for peace.

("Chimes of Freedom" by the Byrds playing)

LIBBY: It was a really beautiful day.

All of a sudden, it is real.

And that was, like, jubilant.

♪ Far between sundown's finish ♪

♪ And midnight's broken toll ♪

♪ We ducked inside the doorway ♪

♪ Thunder crashing ♪

♪ ♪

♪ As majestic bells of bolts ♪

♪ Struck shadows in these sounds ♪

♪ Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Flashing for the warriors ♪

♪ Whose strength is not to fight ♪

♪ Flashing for the refugees ♪

♪ On the unarmed road of flight ♪

♪ And for each and every ♪

♪ underdog soldier in the night ♪

♪ And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing ♪

MELVIN SMALL: Nothing like this had ever been seen before.

On October 15, 1969,

there were demonstrations, vigils,

marches, appeals,

in at least 200 cities,

involving at least two million people,

and maybe as many as three million people.

And it went from the East Coast, from Maine,

from New England, all the way

to the Golden Gate Bridge.

(song ends)

The word "protester" generally evokes an image

of long hair and love beads.

But today, the crowds that marched

and chanted and cheered the speeches looked more

like a cross-section picked by the Census Bureau.

I speak for Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace,

of which I am a co-founder,

and which has some 2,600 executives

who have endorsed and who support the Vietnam Moratorium.

We're proud, we business executives,

to stand behind them and support them

in this remarkable popular effort

which they have launched and which is now taking on

the proportions of a tidal wave.

MAN: Alan Robert Haugen, Grass Valley.

WOMAN: Roy Lockhart, Vallejo.

MAN: Gary Allaen Machado, Oakland.

HAMER (on loudspeaker): Bring those men home from Vietnam!

I am sick of the racist war

in Vietnam when we don't have justice

in the United States. (crowd cheering)

♪ All the world over ♪

♪ So easy to see ♪

♪ People everywhere just wanna be free ♪

♪ Listen, please, listen, that's the way it should be ♪

♪ Peace in the valley ♪

♪ People got to be free ♪

We ask every citizen to examine his own conscience.

♪ See that train over there? ♪

GAME ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the fourth game

of the 1969 World Series.

The amazing New York Mets,

underdogs when this series began,

now lead the Baltimore Orioles two games to one.

(bat hits, crowd cheers)

("Chimes of Freedom" by Bob Dylan playing)

♪ Far between sundown's finish ♪

♪ And midnight's broken toll ♪

♪ We ducked inside the doorways ♪

♪ Thunder went crashing ♪

♪ As majestic bells of bolts ♪

TABANKIN: The brilliance of the Moratorium

was that it put front and center

real Americans from real America.

What a brilliant idea to mainstream it and give it a face

in the public that was not as threatening

and was more understandable to the average person.

"This is for everybody."

♪ And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing ♪

♪ ♪

(song ends)

EISENBERG: Nixon is very disturbed by the Moratorium,

even though he announces that he's paying no attention to it.

And he's very, very worried about the second demonstration

that's coming in November.

WELLS: Nixon was concerned that the

protests in the fall of '69 undercut the credibility

of his ultimatum by convincing the North Vietnamese

that he would not have enough domestic support

to carry out his ultimatum,

and that if he dramatically escalated the war,

the country might explode.

SMALL: Nixon folded.

He did not go through with Operation Duck Hook

because he didn't think the American public would settle

for the kind of military escalation that he had in mind.

LAKE: I know that Kissinger was very unhappy,

but do not ask me to get into the mind of Richard Nixon

and tell you exactly what was going through it.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

WILLIAM BURR: Nixon and Kissinger ordered a secret worldwide nuclear alert,

in the hope that it would lend credibility

to their prior warnings to Moscow and Hanoi.

It was to be what Nixon called "a special reminder"

of how far he might go.

♪ ♪

JOE URGO: After serving in Vietnam,

in 1969, I was assigned to a base in Atlantic City.

And we had nuclear bunkers with nuclear weapons at this base.

In the fall of 1969,

between the October 15 Moratorium

and the November 15 Moratorium,

all of a sudden, we go on this alert.

We had F-106 fighter interceptor jets,

and the planes are sitting out on the taxiway

loaded with nuclear weapons.

Nobody was explaining anything to us,

and I was freaked out by this--

seeing those planes out of the hangar

loaded with nuclear weapons.

♪ ♪

ELLSBERG: Nixon ordered

a Strategic Air Command-- SAC-- alert

that would make it look as though

we were on the edge of launching nuclear war,

done in a way that would not be visible to the American people,

Nixon demanded, but would be visible to the Soviets.

BURR: There was a risk that the Soviets could see

the nuclear alert as threatening,

but it was a risk that

Nixon and Kissinger apparently thought was worth taking.

It involved military operations around the world

carried out between October 13 and October 30, 1969.

The activities included movements of aircraft carriers

and ballistic missile submarines

to destroyers and to the shadowing

of Soviet merchant ships sailing towards Haiphong Harbor.

Beginning on October 27, the SAC plan put six B-52s

in the air for 18-hour stretches each day

for three days in a row,

all over Northern Alaska.

Nixon assumed that he could bend Cold War adversaries

to his will by making them fear that he was crazy enough

to launch a nuclear attack.

It remains to be learned what exactly Moscow

made of the alert.

What is known is that the nuclear ploy

failed to move the Soviets, and that failure marked

a turning point in the administration's strategy

for exiting from Vietnam.

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Tonight I want to talk to you on a subject of deep concern

to all Americans and to many people

in all parts of the world: the war in Vietnam.

EISENBERG: Nixon had planned to give a speech on November 3,

and the speech that he had intended to give

was supposed to be announcing his escalation of the war.

But that's no longer in the hopper,

and so now he is very clear that he's going to direct

his November speech really to the question of

how to defuse the peace movement.

In San Francisco a few weeks ago,

I saw demonstrators carrying signs reading,

"Lose in Vietnam-- bring the boys home!"

As president of the United States,

I would be untrue to my oath of office

if I allowed the policy of this nation to be dictated

by the minority who hold that point of view

and who try to impose it on the nation

by mounting demonstrations in the street.

HAWK: In Nixon's November 3 speech,

he made very clear that the war was going to go on,

and that he was going to attack the opponents of the war.

And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority

of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support.

Let us be united for peace.

Let us also be united against defeat.

Because let us understand:

North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States.

Only Americans can do that.

♪ ♪

BULL: I believe the "silent majority" speech

gave permission of those who were being cowed by the left

to stand up and say,

"No, you violent, anti-American people are wrong.

"We're standing up for America,

and we're standing up for this president."

I remember him being in a very good mood the next morning.

His desk was covered with a mountain of telegrams

congratulating the president on his speech and pledging support.

SMALL: Now, obviously a lot of people sent in telegrams

and letters to the White House,

but a lot of the letters that arrived at the White House

were a part of a secret program run by

the Republican National Committee.

EISENBERG: They want to make sure that the White House

is flooded with telegrams and phone calls

that will express vast enthusiasm

for what he's just said.

They've already developed a network for doing it.

They have a whole set of organizations that are in place

to get their members to make phone calls,

to send these telegrams, so that's a setup by them.

APPY: As a backlash to the anti-war demonstrations

of the fall of 1969, many powerful people

around the country who supported the war rallied around Nixon.

And he began to really successfully turn the debates

around Vietnam into a debate around patriotism,

and cast anti-war activists as unpatriotic,

playing a kind of divisive politics

that the Nixon administration was really expert at doing.

A massive anti-war march with a quarter-

to a half-million people

is supposed to come down Pennsylvania Avenue

and past the White House November 15.

SMALL: Nixon is going into an offensive mode

against the demonstrators,

and he knows that on November 15,

there is going to be a mass demonstration

led by the New Mobe.

♪ ♪

EISENBERG: The positive coverage that had been the case

with the Moratorium,

Nixon doesn't want that to happen again.

PAT BUCHANAN: So I wrote Nixon a memo,

and I said, "It's time to attack the media."

And I said, "The vice president of the United States

ought to deliver this speech,"

and so I wrote that Agnew speech.

And there was one editor for that Agnew speech:

Richard Milhous Nixon.

And he said, "This'll tear the scab off those bastards."

And we broke out laughin'. (laughs)

And it did. (laughs)

How many marches and demonstrations would we have

if the marchers did not know that the ever-faithful

TV cameras would be there to record their antics

for the next news report?

(audience cheering and applauding)

EISENBERG: They get Agnew to give a major speech

attacking the media, and they put pressure on the media

to run Agnew's speech in its entirety, which they do.

SMALL: Nixon has his vice president, Spiro Agnew,

go on the attack directly against the media.

He attacked the elitism of the Eastern elites,

the people in Washington and New York.

He earlier had called them

"the nattering nabobs of negativism.

Who elected these people to tell you what to think?"

AGNEW: The views of a majority of this fraternity

do not-- and I repeat, not-- represent the views of America.

(audience applauds)

SMALL: It is interesting to note that journalism scholars

think this is the beginning of the American people

beginning to lose faith in their media.

♪ ♪

BROWN: A day or two before the November march,

Bill Ayers, who was then with the Weathermen,

he came into the office to say that their intent was

to mount an attack on the Justice Department

during the demonstration.

But he knew that we had been very successful

raising money, and that if we gave them, as I recall, $20,000,

they would call off the demonstration

at the Justice Department.

Straight-out blackmail.

Extortion, whatever.

This was hard to believe that it was actually taking place.

Of course, we said, "Go away, get out of here."

But we knew that that was a potential

for incredible trouble.

BILL DOWNS: It's estimated that some 3,000 troops

will be bivouacked here under canvas during the crisis period.

Marines from the 2nd Marine Division,

which will be flown in later tonight,

making up the total of 9,000 troops activated.

They have been especially trained

in civil disturbance and mob control.

They brought their duffle bags, their M-16s...

MIXNER: They played for keeps.

I remember the trucks coming in,

federal troops with their bayonets and their gas masks,

and they put buses around the White House.

BULL: In preparation

for this huge demonstration that was expected,

President Nixon had the White House ringed by buses,

parked bumper to bumper.

There were troops in full gear-- full military troops,

not National Guard.

And it certainly was pretty stark

and quite tangible evidence

that this country was close to a revolution.

BRENDA CAVANAGH: There were many, many buses

with protesters from all over the states going to Washington.

My sister, Jill, was four years younger than me.

So she was 17 at the time.

And we took a bus to Washington.

Of course my sign was my husband, Dick Genest.

He was in the 197th Artillery of the National Guard.

There were five members of the New Hampshire National Guard

in his convoy coming home.

They hit a mine and killed them all instantly.

♪ ♪

(voice breaking): I'm sorry. I'm going to cry.

The pain never goes away.

It just takes part of your heart.

It's cut out.

That's the only way to describe it.

(drum beating)

STEWART MEACHAM: In this march we will carry the names of those

who are the victims of U.S. military policy in Vietnam.

We will carry the names of the Americans.

We will carry the names of the towns and the villages

that have been bombed and burned out of existence.

Through this march we commit ourselves

to continue our protest and our resistance

to this vast inhumanity until it has been ended.

(drum beating)

BOY: Well, my brother Mike was killed in the war.

And our, our whole family is here.

MAN: I'm here because there are a whole lot of

soldiers over in Vietnam

that would like to be here themselves.

And they can't be here so I'm here protesting.

WOMAN: I keep thinking of the man whose name I'm carrying

and of the candle I'm carrying for him.

It keeps flickering out.

And I see the candle as symbolic of his life.

And I'm just very moved by this one man.

(drum continues)

SUSAN MILLER: Between 47,000 and 50,000 people marched.

The March Against Death

lasted for 39 hours day and night.

It took between three and four hours

to walk the distance from Arlington, past the White House,

over to the Capitol grounds.

It was not a short walk.

And it was freezing.

I have never been so cold in my entire life.

(beating drum)

APPY: At one point during the candlelight ceremony

out in front of the White House, Nixon turned to his aides

and said "Can't we get some helicopters

to fly over that demonstration and blow out the candles?"

Which shows you the level to which he was concerned about it.

♪ ♪

PROTESTERS: ♪ We shall live in peace ♪

♪ We shall live in peace ♪

♪ Someday ♪

♪ Oh, deep in my heart ♪

♪ I do believe ♪

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ Someday ♪

♪ ♪

(car honking)

MARY POSNER: About 35 of us got to Washington, DC,

any way we could to participate in the national mobilization.

Me and a few other students

crashed someplace in Washington, DC.

I have no idea who with.

And we got up early on the morning of November 15,

and made our way to the Mall,

and it was just this huge, huge crowd.

And we just knew we were a part of this

amazing group of people who all believed what we did,

which was a great feeling to know that

that many people were against the war.

("Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival playing)

♪ Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes ♪

♪ Ooh, they send you down to war ♪

♪ And when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?" ♪

♪ Ooh, they only answer, "More, more, more" ♪

♪ It ain't me, it ain't me ♪

♪ I ain't no military son, son ♪

♪ It ain't me, it ain't me ♪

WEISS: It was a very peaceful bipartisan demonstration.

Charlie Goodell, a Republican member of the Senate,

and George McGovern, a Democratic member of the Senate,

literally held hands leading the demonstration.

(crowd chanting indistinctly)

DAVID CORTRIGHT: The march was led by

a contingent of active-duty service members

and then behind us was a group of veterans.

So if you look at the photos from those days,

you can see, there we are with our

short hair and these caps that say "G.Is. for Peace."

We are definitely unmistakable.

We're active-duty people in the military,

we have to follow orders and do our duty in the military,

but we're also citizens, and we oppose this war

and we're going to speak out against it.

♪ So if you love your Uncle Sam ♪

♪ Bring 'em home, bring 'em home ♪

♪ Support our boys in Vietnam ♪

BOTH: ♪ Bring 'em home, bring 'em home ♪

KIRKPATRICK: ♪ Richard Nixon thinks he's slick ♪

BOTH: ♪ Bring 'em home, bring 'em home ♪

KIRKPATRICK: ♪ We've got to outwit that Tricky Dick ♪

BOTH: ♪ Bring 'em home, bring 'em home ♪

Last month, the president of the United States

said nothing you young kids would do

would have any effect on him.

Well, I suggest to the president of the United States,

if he wanna know how much effect you youngsters

can have on a president,

he should make one long-distance phone call

to the LBJ Ranch and ask that boy

how much effect you can have.

(cheering)

BULL: There were about a half a million demonstrators

from all over the country that gathered in Washington.

And it just annoyed the heck out of me

that here are these guys coming after President Nixon.

I felt, and I think so many others of us felt,

that they were wrong and we felt that they were

left-wing useful idiots of the growing left-wing movement

in the United States.

APPY: Nixon of course said that he would pay no attention

whatsoever to these demonstrations.

In effect, the only college students he was interested in

were the ones playing football on television.

But he was in fact deeply obsessed

with the anti-war movement

and was paying serious attention to the November demonstration.

The White House became a kind of bunker and fortress,

and he had military personnel stationed throughout

the White House itself for fear that these demonstrators

might actually assault the center of power.

(chanting): One, two, three, four, Tricky Dick, stop the war.

KISSINGER: You know, the White House was ringed by students.

(chanting continues)

There are facilities

in the White House in case of a bombing attack.

And I moved into one of these facilities for a few days

and slept in the basement of the White House.

MAN: When do you want it? PROTESTERS: Now!

MAN: What do you want? When do you want it?

LAKE: They were extremely concerned about their security

and they were concerned by the size of the demonstration,

and how it was helping keep

the issue of Vietnam front and center.

(protesters chanting)

I found it extremely painful.

My wife, many of my friends,

were outside the White House demonstrating,

while I was inside.

And I wanted to be outside.

RICHIE HAVENS: ♪ A long ♪

♪ Way from my home ♪

♪ Which is freedom ♪

♪ Freedom ♪

♪ Freedom! Freedom! ♪

♪ This land is your land ♪

♪ And this land is my land ♪

♪ From California ♪

♪ To the New York island ♪

♪ From the redwood forest ♪

♪ To the Gulf Stream water ♪

♪ This land was made for you and me ♪

(crowd cheering and applauding)

CORETTA SCOTT KING: My dear peace-loving friends.

I want to thank you for providing me

with one of the most awe-inspiring experiences

of my life.

There is only one other experience

that reminds me of this one today

and that was the March on Washington in 1963.

(cheers and applause)

SEEGER: ♪ All we are saying ♪

♪ Is give peace a chance ♪

♪ All we are... ♪

HAWK: We were concerned to make it

a hugely successful event.

And it was! (laughs)

Primarily, in my opinion, thanks to the music,

which was out of this world.

You know, a couple of hundred thousand people singing

"Give Peace a Chance" within earshot of the White House.

That was the high point of Saturday.

PROTESTERS: ♪ Is give peace a chance ♪

SEEGER: Are ya listening, Nixon?

PROTESTERS: ♪ All we are saying ♪

SEEGER: Are ya listening, Agnew?

PROTESTERS: ♪ Is give peace a chance ♪

SEEGER: Are ya listening in the Pentagon?

PROTESTERS: ♪ All we are saying ♪

♪ Is give peace a chance ♪

♪ This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius ♪

♪ Age of Aquarius ♪

MEL WAX: Here in San Francisco,

Moratorium Day protesters

assembled early for the seven-mile march

through downtown San Francisco to Golden Gate Park.

Estimates of crowd size vary,

but all agree it was the largest peace demonstration

ever held in Western United States,

and it was peaceful.

CROWD: ♪ Let the sunshine in ♪

♪ The sunshine in ♪

♪ Let the sunshine in ♪

What do you want?

CROWD: Peace!

ABERNATHY: What do you want?

Peace!

ABERNATHY: When do you want it?

CROWD: Now!

ABERNATHY: When do you want it?

CROWD: Now!

ABERNATHY: Who is the one callous individual

who is going against the current of history and social change?

Nixon's the one!

Who writes himself telegrams?

(crowd laughing)

(guitar playing)

♪ It's always the old to lead us to the wars ♪

♪ It's always the young to fall ♪

♪ Now look at all we've won with a saber and a gun ♪

♪ Tell me, is it worth it all? ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Call it peace or call it treason ♪

♪ Call it love or call it reason ♪

♪ But I ain't marchin' anymore ♪

♪ No, I ain't marchin' anymore ♪

Thank you very much.

(cheers and applause)

CARL REINER: I have three words for you:

Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

(cheers and applause)

("Find the Cost of Freedom" by Crosby, Stills and Nash playing)

(crowd clapping to beat)

♪ Find the cost of freedom ♪

♪ Buried in the ground ♪

♪ Mother Earth ♪

♪ Will swallow you ♪

♪ Lay your body down ♪

♪ Find the cost of freedom ♪

♪ Buried in the ground ♪

♪ Mother Earth will swallow you ♪

♪ Lay your body down ♪

We love you. Right on!

(cheers and applause)

And so it went off, the largest political demonstration

in American history.

Almost without violence.

Late in the afternoon,

several thousand demonstrators, led by a hard core

of militants, clashed with police

outside the Justice Department.

They were driven off with tear gas.

(shouting, screaming)

BROWN: A group of people did go attack the Justice Department,

but it was isolated.

FERNANDEZ: This was not a Sunday school picnic.

People were upset and angry.

We were part of a long train of people,

tried to make things right.

And I thought it was a terrific day for American democracy.

("Something in the Air" by Thunderclap Newman playing)

♪ ♪

♪ And you know that it's right ♪

♪ We have got to get it together ♪

♪ We have got to get it together ♪

♪ Now ♪

MILLER: We had brought 500,000 people

to Washington, which at that time

and for quite a long time to come,

was the largest demonstration that had ever been organized.

(song resumes): ♪ And you know that it's right ♪

♪ We have got to get it together ♪

♪ We have got to get it together ♪

♪ Now ♪

(song ends)

The White House acknowledged that the latest protests

generally were peaceful, but stressed again

that President Nixon does not intend to let policy

be made in the streets.

♪ ♪

JOYCE: It quickly set in that the war raged on.

That, however proud of ourselves we might have been,

we obviously, at that point, hadn't stopped the war.

ELLSBERG: The demonstrations in October and November of 1969

did not have the appearance of changing anything

because the war went on as before.

And none of the people who participated knew

that the war had been within days or weeks

of erupting enormously and becoming much bigger.

(explosion echoes)

The bottom line is, I believe we would have had

the first nuclear attacks since Nagasaki in 1969

had it not been for the October 15 demonstrations

and the demonstrations in November.

HAWK: At the time we had no idea.

It was only decades later, when the archives were released,

that we realized what, in fact, we had accomplished.

FERNANDEZ: We now know we had a big impact on Nixon and Kissinger.

What they thought they could get away with in November,

namely blowing to bits Vietnam,

and maybe even using nuclear weapons,

they had to take it off the table.

There were too many of us who were saying no now.

POSNER: And when I heard that news,

I, I just cannot express what that meant to me.

That after all these years,

I finally knew that what we did

had made such a significant difference.

MILLER: Nobody understood at the time

that we had prevented an escalation of the war

and actually saved people's lives.

It tells me that this was the most amazing

and most important thing I'd ever done in my life.

RIEGLE: The people stopped the war and made the Congress stop the war.

And that's what finally brought the war to the end.

They thought they could strongarm and bomb North Vietnam

into submission, and that didn't work.

And what we found was the limits of U.S. power

when you're trying to do the wrong thing in the wrong place.

MORRIS: And the absolutely torturous, haunting reality

hanging over all of this are the casualties.

We must remember that when Nixon is inaugurated

and Henry Kissinger hired, the names on that long black wall

in Washington were only half as long as they ended up being.

And absolutely agonizing,

the mounting casualties on the Vietnamese side.

And the price of Nixon's "peace with honor"

would be enormous.

And, I think, in the end, unforgivable.

♪ ♪

JOYCE: When I talk to young activists today,

one of the points I make is, you will not know in the moment

the real impact of what you are doing.

And you may not know it in a week.

You may not know it in a month.

You may not know it in a decade,

but you are having an impact.

It does matter.

WEISS: Never give up.

It's very important.

It's easy to get tired.

It's easy to get discouraged.

But we can't afford that.

So don't give up.

We didn't give up until it was over.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

ANNOUNCER: Next time...

The sun's energy is absorbed

and transformed into heat.

MAN: Mária Telkes was a solar evangelist.

WOMAN: She really imagined this as revolutionizing

the way that people lived.

WOMAN: Nothing else would even get close

to the Dover sun house.

WOMAN: She's laying the foundation

for pretty much everything now

that we do with solar.

ANNOUNCER: "The Sun Queen,"

next time on "American Experience."

Made possible in part by Liberty Mutual Insurance.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪