All language subtitles for PBS.American.Experience.The.Movement.and.the.Madman.1080p.WEB.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org_track3_[eng]

♪ ♪

(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.

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.

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,

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.

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 ♪

♪ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

and I do remember

that it referred to
the bombing of the dikes

around the Red River in North
Vietnam, and being appalled

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.

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,

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.

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)

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: 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.

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.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪