1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,162 WWW.MY-SUBS.CO 1 00:00:14,473 --> 00:00:17,184 Let us never negotiate out of fear 2 00:00:17,851 --> 00:00:20,479 but let us never fear to negotiate 3 00:00:20,687 --> 00:00:22,564 East Germans escape by the tens of thousands 4 00:00:22,981 --> 00:00:25,067 until the communists threw up their wall of hate 5 00:00:26,151 --> 00:00:29,238 The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro 6 00:00:39,706 --> 00:00:44,628 This generation of americans has already had enough, more than enough 7 00:00:45,295 --> 00:00:48,465 of war, and hate, and oppression. 8 00:00:52,177 --> 00:00:56,473 As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men 9 00:00:57,432 --> 00:01:01,270 I have told them that molotov cocktails and rifles 10 00:01:01,937 --> 00:01:04,231 would not solve their problems. 11 00:01:04,982 --> 00:01:09,236 But they asked -and rightly so- what about Vietnam? 12 00:01:10,112 --> 00:01:12,864 If America's soul becomes totally poisoned 13 00:01:14,157 --> 00:01:17,244 part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. 14 00:01:18,120 --> 00:01:21,290 A nation that continues year after year 15 00:01:21,957 --> 00:01:27,838 to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift 16 00:01:28,505 --> 00:01:30,591 is approaching spiritual death. 17 00:01:31,216 --> 00:01:35,178 This need to maintain social stability for our investments 18 00:01:35,596 --> 00:01:40,183 accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. 19 00:01:40,976 --> 00:01:45,772 It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia 20 00:01:46,648 --> 00:01:51,028 and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active 21 00:01:51,486 --> 00:01:53,447 against rebels in Peru 22 00:01:54,865 --> 00:02:00,454 They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to 23 00:02:01,204 --> 00:02:06,251 solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. 24 00:02:07,127 --> 00:02:10,922 Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again 25 00:02:11,590 --> 00:02:15,969 raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos 26 00:02:16,637 --> 00:02:21,099 without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence 27 00:02:21,683 --> 00:02:22,976 in the world today: 28 00:02:24,728 --> 00:02:27,147 my own government. 29 00:02:33,987 --> 00:02:37,949 Two days into office, on the sunday, the day before John Kennedy 30 00:02:38,367 --> 00:02:42,204 was buried, Lyndon Johnson met with his military advisors 31 00:02:42,746 --> 00:02:45,248 and said he was not going to lose Vietnam. 32 00:02:46,458 --> 00:02:48,543 He never agreed with Kennedy's memorandum 33 00:02:49,211 --> 00:02:52,255 to withdraw and 2 days later he issued a new memo 34 00:02:52,798 --> 00:02:56,301 signaling the US would be taking a more hands-on approach. 35 00:03:01,431 --> 00:03:05,602 His foreign policy thinking was profound in a primitive way: 36 00:03:06,478 --> 00:03:08,563 There are 3 billion people in the world, and we only 37 00:03:09,106 --> 00:03:11,733 have 200 million of them. We're outnumbered 15 to 1. 38 00:03:12,401 --> 00:03:13,485 If might did make right 39 00:03:14,236 --> 00:03:16,863 they'd sweep over the United States and take what we have. 40 00:03:17,531 --> 00:03:18,824 We have what they want. 41 00:03:20,909 --> 00:03:23,412 Who is they? His analogies may have been coarse 42 00:03:23,995 --> 00:03:28,125 but, stated in other words, the struggle was not really about communism 43 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:32,963 but was between the 1st world and the 3rd world. 44 00:03:33,922 --> 00:03:36,216 Abandoning Kennedy's attempts at reform, 45 00:03:36,758 --> 00:03:38,719 Johnson made it clear in the new 46 00:03:39,469 --> 00:03:41,430 Mann doctrine that all Latin american 47 00:03:42,097 --> 00:03:43,974 countries would be judged on how they 48 00:03:44,099 --> 00:03:47,477 protected the $9 billion in US investments, 49 00:03:48,019 --> 00:03:49,771 not on the interests of their own people. 50 00:03:50,439 --> 00:03:53,525 The US would no longer discriminate against right-wing dictatorships 51 00:03:53,942 --> 00:03:57,320 and regarded military aid as a wiser investment than 52 00:03:57,654 --> 00:03:59,322 Kennedy's economic aid. 53 00:04:00,490 --> 00:04:02,159 The 5th largest country in the world, 54 00:04:03,034 --> 00:04:06,538 resource-rich Brazil, would be the first to suffer. 55 00:04:08,498 --> 00:04:13,086 in 1964 new democratically elected president Joao Goulart 56 00:04:13,420 --> 00:04:15,172 implemented land reform and 57 00:04:15,714 --> 00:04:17,257 sought controls on foreign capital. 58 00:04:17,799 --> 00:04:21,094 Recognizing Cuba was the last nail in his coffin. 59 00:04:21,636 --> 00:04:23,930 Castro's example could not be emulated. 60 00:04:24,556 --> 00:04:26,433 Johnson sharply reduced US aid. 61 00:04:26,975 --> 00:04:28,185 Inflation sky-rocketed. 62 00:04:28,935 --> 00:04:34,316 The CIA financed large anti-government rallies and the US administration prodded 63 00:04:34,733 --> 00:04:36,818 right-wing officers to overthrow the government. 64 00:04:37,486 --> 00:04:41,281 Within a month, the new regime arrested 50,000 people. 65 00:04:41,865 --> 00:04:42,949 Torture was instituent. 66 00:04:43,492 --> 00:04:46,995 In the next 6 years, $2 billion in US aid flowed into Brazil 67 00:04:47,621 --> 00:04:49,790 and an even more repressive military regime 68 00:04:50,332 --> 00:04:52,417 ruled for the next 20 years, worsening 69 00:04:53,084 --> 00:04:56,671 an already large gap between rich and poor. 70 00:04:57,130 --> 00:04:59,757 The dominoes, in this case the democracies, began falling 71 00:05:00,133 --> 00:05:02,177 once again across south america. 72 00:05:04,262 --> 00:05:09,100 in 1965, Johnson sent 23,000 troops into the Dominican Republic to 73 00:05:09,226 --> 00:05:12,521 crush a popular uprising, seeking to restore 74 00:05:13,480 --> 00:05:16,024 constitutional order after a military coup. 75 00:05:16,566 --> 00:05:17,859 Johnson told his lawyer: 76 00:05:18,485 --> 00:05:20,779 There ain't no doubt about this being Castro now 77 00:05:21,321 --> 00:05:23,198 him moving other places in the hemisphere 78 00:05:23,740 --> 00:05:27,369 might be part of a whole communistic pattern tied in with Vietnam 79 00:05:29,454 --> 00:05:33,041 in Greece, the birthplace of democracy where the cold war 80 00:05:33,583 --> 00:05:37,838 had taken its baby steps and the US had supported a right-wing government 81 00:05:38,296 --> 00:05:41,466 for many years, a new yearning for democracy appeared certain to 82 00:05:42,217 --> 00:05:44,719 bring the veteran liberal George Papandreu 83 00:05:45,387 --> 00:05:46,680 back as prime minister. 84 00:05:53,728 --> 00:05:56,982 Johnson called in the Greek ambassador and actually said: 85 00:05:57,440 --> 00:06:01,820 Listen to me mr. ambassador, fuck your parliament and your constitution 86 00:06:02,779 --> 00:06:07,075 America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. 87 00:06:07,826 --> 00:06:10,245 If those two fleas continue itching the elephant 88 00:06:10,871 --> 00:06:12,622 they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk. 89 00:06:13,164 --> 00:06:14,291 Whacked good. 90 00:06:17,669 --> 00:06:20,380 We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, mr. ambassador 91 00:06:20,964 --> 00:06:24,009 If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, 92 00:06:24,885 --> 00:06:29,806 he, his parliament and his constitution may not last very long. 93 00:06:31,016 --> 00:06:32,225 In fact, it didn't. 94 00:06:32,642 --> 00:06:36,396 The military junta seized power in 1967, banning 95 00:06:37,022 --> 00:06:39,107 mini skirts, long hair and foreign newspapers 96 00:06:39,774 --> 00:06:42,485 making church attendence compulsory while engaging in 97 00:06:42,944 --> 00:06:46,531 numerous incidents of sexually oriented torture and cruelty. 98 00:06:46,656 --> 00:06:48,617 Its new prime minister, who had been a captain 99 00:06:49,159 --> 00:06:51,494 in a Nazi security battalion tracking down 100 00:06:51,912 --> 00:06:55,081 Greek resistance fighters, became the first CIA agent 101 00:06:55,957 --> 00:06:59,044 to become the premier of a European country. 102 00:06:59,878 --> 00:07:04,132 But it was Asia that posed the greatest resistance to US goals 103 00:07:04,716 --> 00:07:08,762 Aside from Japan which was becoming a prosperous client state 104 00:07:09,387 --> 00:07:13,975 red China exploded its first atomic bomb in Oct. of '64 105 00:07:14,643 --> 00:07:16,519 catching Washington totally off-guard. 106 00:07:19,356 --> 00:07:24,277 in Indonesia, sitting astride southeast Asia's principal sea lanes, where 107 00:07:25,028 --> 00:07:29,741 more than 3 million members made its communist party the 3rd largest 108 00:07:30,200 --> 00:07:34,788 in the world behind the Soviets and Chinese, Sukarno having 109 00:07:35,205 --> 00:07:39,918 survived repeated US attempts to remove him further irritated the US 110 00:07:40,460 --> 00:07:43,213 by declaring he would test an atomic bomb 111 00:07:43,755 --> 00:07:45,924 but, he was denied help from China 112 00:07:46,591 --> 00:07:50,095 and when he recognized north Vietnam and then expropriated 113 00:07:50,428 --> 00:07:54,265 US rubber plantations and threatened to nationalize US oil companies 114 00:07:54,891 --> 00:07:57,310 Lyndon Johnson struck hard. 115 00:07:58,061 --> 00:08:01,147 Almost half the officer corps had received some US training 116 00:08:01,564 --> 00:08:04,275 and in Oct '65 with CIA support 117 00:08:04,943 --> 00:08:07,237 general Suharto led the army in 118 00:08:07,779 --> 00:08:09,656 crushing Sukarno's supporters. 119 00:08:10,115 --> 00:08:14,619 In the following months, Suharto's militias and civilian mobs went from 120 00:08:15,036 --> 00:08:18,748 house to house killing a half million to a million suspected 121 00:08:19,082 --> 00:08:20,500 communists and their families. 122 00:08:20,834 --> 00:08:24,337 US, british and australian intell. provided thousands of names of 123 00:08:24,754 --> 00:08:26,840 suspected communists to the army. 124 00:08:27,924 --> 00:08:32,303 Sukarno was forced out finally in 1967 and replaced by 125 00:08:32,971 --> 00:08:36,891 gen. Suharto who enriched himself, his family, cronies, 126 00:08:37,350 --> 00:08:42,814 the Indonesian military and US corp.s for decades until he was overthrown 127 00:08:43,481 --> 00:08:47,068 by the people led by student activists in 1998. 128 00:08:47,736 --> 00:08:52,323 In 1968, the CIA acknowledged the Indonesian massacre ranked 129 00:08:52,350 --> 00:08:55,827 as one of worst mass murders in the 20th century. 130 00:08:56,786 --> 00:09:00,540 President Kennedy's national security advisor McGeorge Bundy 131 00:09:01,082 --> 00:09:04,586 in later crticizing our Vietnam war policy wrote that 132 00:09:04,794 --> 00:09:07,881 Indonesia was the true breaking point in Asia, 133 00:09:08,423 --> 00:09:12,927 far more important to our goals than Vietnam which was, he said, unnecessary. 134 00:09:13,678 --> 00:09:18,683 Yet now in history, even Indonesia's blood bath pales in comparison to 135 00:09:19,350 --> 00:09:21,644 what the US inflicted on Vietnam. 136 00:09:23,855 --> 00:09:27,609 Johnson and his advisors understood very little about Vietnam's history 137 00:09:28,485 --> 00:09:32,489 and its strong resistance to Chinese and French invasions over the centuries. 138 00:09:33,073 --> 00:09:36,576 They totally underestimated the nationalist aspect of Ho Chi Minh's 139 00:09:37,202 --> 00:09:39,954 movement and assumed that if they wreaked enough havoc and 140 00:09:40,497 --> 00:09:42,457 killed enough people the Vietnamese would submit. 141 00:09:42,999 --> 00:09:47,629 Within 2 months of JFK's death in Jan. of '64 Johnson and McNamara 142 00:09:48,254 --> 00:09:51,424 escalated covert military activities against north Vietnam. 143 00:09:52,217 --> 00:09:54,177 Dropping intelligence and commando teams 144 00:09:55,136 --> 00:09:57,555 to destroy bridges, railways and costal installations 145 00:09:58,431 --> 00:10:01,601 kidnapping north Vietnamese and bombing border villages. 146 00:10:02,685 --> 00:10:05,313 Johnson was pathological in his ability to lie. 147 00:10:05,980 --> 00:10:10,151 As with the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003, 148 00:10:10,568 --> 00:10:16,032 it would take years for the american people to discover the false origins of the Vietnam war. 149 00:10:16,825 --> 00:10:20,745 In august '64 Johnson and McNamara used a fabricated incident in 150 00:10:21,287 --> 00:10:25,458 north Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin as an excuse to further escalate the war. 151 00:10:26,209 --> 00:10:29,921 Johnson rushed the congress to authorize direct US military action. 152 00:10:30,463 --> 00:10:33,424 The media echoed the line that a US ship had been attacked 153 00:10:34,217 --> 00:10:38,471 and the House after 40 min.s of debate passed a war resolution 154 00:10:41,307 --> 00:10:43,184 in the Senate, it was 88-2 155 00:10:43,810 --> 00:10:46,437 A few days later Johnson told his undersecretary of State 156 00:10:46,896 --> 00:10:50,817 Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish! 157 00:10:51,484 --> 00:10:54,863 ... and people remember what this resolution really is, 158 00:10:55,613 --> 00:10:57,699 it's a resolution which seeks to give 159 00:10:58,575 --> 00:11:01,202 the president in US the power to make war 160 00:11:02,078 --> 00:11:03,746 without a declaration of war. 161 00:11:07,667 --> 00:11:09,752 In the election of 1964, Johnson 162 00:11:10,628 --> 00:11:12,922 crushed Arizona senator Barry Goldwater 163 00:11:13,673 --> 00:11:16,217 who threatened to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. 164 00:11:22,765 --> 00:11:24,309 These are the stakes. 165 00:11:25,059 --> 00:11:28,521 We must either love each other, or we must die. 166 00:11:32,233 --> 00:11:34,736 The stakes are too high for you to stay home. 167 00:11:35,278 --> 00:11:37,238 It was built as a landslide for peace. 168 00:11:38,364 --> 00:11:42,285 But following the election Johnson began a steady process of escalation 169 00:11:43,161 --> 00:11:45,872 sharply expanding the free firezones in which 170 00:11:46,664 --> 00:11:48,291 anything that moved was considered 171 00:11:49,083 --> 00:11:50,501 a legitimate target. 172 00:11:54,756 --> 00:11:59,135 The US arsenal of accepted weapons grew to include napalm, cluster bombs and 173 00:11:59,552 --> 00:12:02,972 white phosphorus which burned from the skins right through to the bone 174 00:12:03,389 --> 00:12:04,807 causing horrific deaths. 175 00:12:09,187 --> 00:12:10,396 Do you smell that? What? 176 00:12:11,814 --> 00:12:15,526 Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. 177 00:12:20,907 --> 00:12:22,659 I love the smell of napalm in the morning. 178 00:12:24,619 --> 00:12:27,121 Johnson's lies about his plans snowballed 179 00:12:27,997 --> 00:12:33,461 and by july of '65 he'd sent in 75,000 combat troops to Vietnam 180 00:12:34,254 --> 00:12:36,756 more than half a million by the end of '67 181 00:12:37,423 --> 00:12:43,513 The monthly draft reached 35,000 men as the US set out to find Vietnam's breaking point. 182 00:12:44,180 --> 00:12:48,893 Yet, when his Joint Chiefs of Staff at a meeting asked for more fire power or 183 00:12:49,644 --> 00:12:54,691 an all-out war, a witness recalled Johnson started screaming obscenities: 184 00:12:55,358 --> 00:12:59,070 Image that you're me, that you're the president of the US 185 00:12:59,612 --> 00:13:04,325 and five incompetents come into your office and try to talk you into starting WW3. 186 00:13:04,867 --> 00:13:06,160 The risk is just too high. 187 00:13:06,744 --> 00:13:09,455 How can you fucking assholes ignore what China might do? 188 00:13:09,998 --> 00:13:12,834 You just contaminated my office, you filthy shitheads! 189 00:13:13,376 --> 00:13:15,378 Get the hell out of here right now! 190 00:13:16,045 --> 00:13:17,130 The generals got out. 191 00:13:17,755 --> 00:13:22,260 And after a pause, Johnson steadily increased the bombing of north Vietnam 192 00:13:23,136 --> 00:13:26,180 In his inimitable way he explained his strategy: 193 00:13:27,056 --> 00:13:29,350 I'm going up her leg an inch at a time. 194 00:13:30,143 --> 00:13:32,645 I'll get to the snatch before they know what's happening. 195 00:13:33,187 --> 00:13:39,861 The US dropped 3 times as many bombs on tiny Vietnam as it did in all of WW2. 196 00:13:40,945 --> 00:13:45,992 On the ground in a policy sanctioned by Kennedy millions of peasants, some say 5 197 00:13:46,868 --> 00:13:51,456 some 7, were forced out of villages and resettled in barbwired camps. 198 00:13:52,540 --> 00:13:56,502 Tens of thousands of supposed communists were assasinated as 199 00:13:56,919 --> 00:14:01,174 part of a Phoenix program, but it did little to slow the resistance movement. 200 00:14:02,508 --> 00:14:07,555 The murder of civilians became commonplace as the US military leadership exaggerated 201 00:14:08,097 --> 00:14:12,018 body counts to tell the public that the communists were on their last legs 202 00:14:12,560 --> 00:14:14,771 while still asking for more and more troops. 203 00:14:15,855 --> 00:14:18,733 Five south Vietnamese governments came and went, the last 204 00:14:19,275 --> 00:14:21,611 clinging to power through massive corruption. 205 00:14:27,158 --> 00:14:30,870 Anti-war demonstrators protest US involvement in the Vietnam war 206 00:14:31,412 --> 00:14:33,623 in mass marches, rallies and demonstrations. 207 00:14:34,165 --> 00:14:37,877 America's college campuses began to buzz with activists. 208 00:14:38,419 --> 00:14:42,799 In oct. '67 one of the first violent confrontations took place at the 209 00:14:43,257 --> 00:14:45,009 university of Wisconsin in Madison. 210 00:14:46,969 --> 00:14:50,014 Johnson, convinced the communists were behind the anti-war movement, 211 00:14:50,890 --> 00:14:54,394 ordered the CIA to uncover proof with massive surveillence and 212 00:14:55,061 --> 00:14:56,813 other information gathering efforts. 213 00:14:57,688 --> 00:15:04,028 Codenamed Chaos, the CIA's illegal domestic operations lasted almost 7 years 214 00:15:04,904 --> 00:15:09,742 compiling a computer index of 300,000 citizens and organizations 215 00:15:10,159 --> 00:15:13,204 and extensive files on more than 7,000 individuals, 216 00:15:14,080 --> 00:15:16,916 but failed to prove communist involvement. 217 00:15:17,583 --> 00:15:21,295 Among the FBI's principal targets was the Nobel peace prize winner 218 00:15:21,754 --> 00:15:24,048 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 219 00:15:24,465 --> 00:15:25,466 Welcome in Mr. King 220 00:15:26,676 --> 00:15:28,845 I'm here to find out why you've been 221 00:15:29,178 --> 00:15:30,388 tapping my telephones 222 00:15:30,696 --> 00:15:33,199 About a year ago you were told some of your advisors 223 00:15:33,216 --> 00:15:34,008 had communist connection, 224 00:15:34,359 --> 00:15:35,368 but you wouldn't break with them. 225 00:15:35,610 --> 00:15:40,406 Would that ... your planting microphones in hotel rooms I occupied during my travels? 226 00:15:41,524 --> 00:15:45,695 the same procedure on 14 others the panthers, the muslims, the clan 227 00:15:46,779 --> 00:15:50,616 the damage is done mr. Hoover but I might be worthwhile for 228 00:15:50,950 --> 00:15:54,579 the people to know how America's number 1 blackmailer operates 229 00:15:54,996 --> 00:15:56,664 don't give me all the credit. 230 00:15:57,623 --> 00:16:00,793 Black America was in a state of near rebellion. 231 00:16:01,794 --> 00:16:07,675 The summer of '67 surpassed all previous ones with 75 major riots 232 00:16:08,468 --> 00:16:12,930 many lasting 2 days or more. National guard troops were called in 233 00:16:13,598 --> 00:16:17,435 and, with police, killed 26 blacks in Newark and 43 in Detroit. 234 00:16:25,067 --> 00:16:31,949 A Ramparts magazine march 1967 exposé revealed that the CIA had been funding 235 00:16:32,742 --> 00:16:34,285 the National Student Association. 236 00:16:34,827 --> 00:16:39,415 Other liberal groups were exposed as agency fronts with CIA money going 237 00:16:40,291 --> 00:16:44,754 to anti-communist professors, journalists, aid workers, missionaries, labor leaders 238 00:16:45,630 --> 00:16:49,050 and civil rights activists who did the agency's dirty work. 239 00:16:50,218 --> 00:16:55,932 Among the discredited were the Ford foundation, RadioFreeEurope, RadioLiberty 240 00:16:56,682 --> 00:16:58,434 and Congress for Cultural Freedom. 241 00:16:59,101 --> 00:17:03,356 even McNamara with his characteristic rationality was having doubts. 242 00:17:05,566 --> 00:17:09,487 In oct. of '67 100,000 people rallied in Washingtion. 243 00:17:10,238 --> 00:17:11,989 Half marched to the Pentagon. 244 00:17:12,782 --> 00:17:14,951 Armed infantry prevented them from reaching it. 245 00:17:15,535 --> 00:17:19,247 McNamara watched alone from a command post on the roof 246 00:17:19,705 --> 00:17:24,293 listening to chants of "Hey, hey, LBJ how many kids did you kill today?" 247 00:17:25,044 --> 00:17:28,422 Now isolated within the establishment McNamara despaired. 248 00:17:29,215 --> 00:17:31,842 Rumors of a possible mental collapse reached Johnson: 249 00:17:33,010 --> 00:17:35,096 We can't afford to have another forestall 250 00:17:36,097 --> 00:17:38,182 When McNamara argued that more bombing would not work 251 00:17:38,808 --> 00:17:42,979 Johnson was livid, he demanded loyalty, saying of another aide: 252 00:17:43,729 --> 00:17:49,318 I don’t want loyalty. I want loyalty! I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window 253 00:17:50,194 --> 00:17:52,280 in high noon and tell me it smells like roses. 254 00:17:52,947 --> 00:17:54,782 I want his pecker in my pocket. 255 00:17:55,449 --> 00:17:59,078 Johnson arranged for McNamara's ouster to become president of the 256 00:17:59,704 --> 00:18:01,038 World Bank. 257 00:18:01,664 --> 00:18:05,960 In his last cabinet meeting an aide reported that McNamara finally broke down: 258 00:18:07,044 --> 00:18:10,339 the goddamn bombing campaign, it's done nothing. They've dropped 259 00:18:10,756 --> 00:18:14,468 more bombs in all of Europe in all of WW2 and it hasn't done 260 00:18:14,802 --> 00:18:16,012 a fucking thing. 261 00:18:16,887 --> 00:18:20,391 1968 was an extraordinary year of change. 262 00:18:20,933 --> 00:18:23,436 In jan. on the same day north vietnamese 263 00:18:23,894 --> 00:18:26,522 and vietkong forces unleashed a shock attack 264 00:18:26,939 --> 00:18:30,234 on most of Vietnam's major cities and provincial capitals. 265 00:18:30,901 --> 00:18:34,614 The attacks were ultimately repelled with great losses to the Vietnamese 266 00:18:35,281 --> 00:18:37,575 but the mood in Washington was despair. 267 00:18:38,326 --> 00:18:41,704 A bipartisan group of elder statesmen reassessed the situation: 268 00:18:42,580 --> 00:18:44,332 It was time to get out. 269 00:18:45,666 --> 00:18:49,712 Lyndon Johnson, his enormous ego deeply wounded by the doubts of 270 00:18:50,254 --> 00:18:54,508 his leadership, besieged by enemies internal and external, his popularity 271 00:18:55,051 --> 00:19:00,640 plummeting, announced shockingly in march '68 that he would not run 272 00:19:01,307 --> 00:19:02,600 for a second term. 273 00:19:03,267 --> 00:19:10,608 I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for 274 00:19:11,025 --> 00:19:12,652 another term as your president. 275 00:19:13,110 --> 00:19:15,613 The country was stunned. The leader of their war effort was 276 00:19:15,946 --> 00:19:19,992 giving up. To those against the war this was a great victory. But to 277 00:19:20,660 --> 00:19:25,122 many americans as well as neutral countries and allies alike the US now 278 00:19:25,706 --> 00:19:30,044 appeared as a rudderless, immoral country, an emperor without clause 279 00:19:30,836 --> 00:19:33,339 the Chinese said "a paper tiger". 280 00:19:34,674 --> 00:19:39,345 Wrecked by inner demons, Johnson allowed his heart-felt dream of being a great social 281 00:19:39,679 --> 00:19:43,182 reformer to be buried in the killing flelds of Vietnam. 282 00:19:44,308 --> 00:19:47,103 He lamented later in the decade to a historian: 283 00:19:47,687 --> 00:19:51,732 Losing the great society was a terrible thought, but not so terrible 284 00:19:52,358 --> 00:19:57,863 as the thought of being responsible for America's losing a war to the communists. 285 00:19:58,406 --> 00:20:00,574 Nothing could possibly be worse than that. 286 00:20:01,242 --> 00:20:06,914 He was a man, a potential giant, who in denying his compassion suffered from 287 00:20:07,456 --> 00:20:10,518 a truly American obsession: the fear of weakness. 288 00:20:13,587 --> 00:20:18,092 Hoover's FBI was doing everything it could to disrupt the anti-war movement 289 00:20:18,509 --> 00:20:21,887 as it had done for years to the civil rights movement. 290 00:20:22,638 --> 00:20:26,267 Hundreds of agents infiltrated new left organizations. 291 00:20:27,017 --> 00:20:32,940 FBI and CIA news flaks went to great lengths to marginilize the war's critics 292 00:20:33,607 --> 00:20:35,234 and impune their patriotism. 293 00:20:35,693 --> 00:20:39,613 Hoover was especially worried the antiwar protest would merge with 294 00:20:40,072 --> 00:20:41,824 the black liberation struggle, 295 00:20:42,366 --> 00:20:47,163 as a disproportionate number of black soldiers died on front lines. 296 00:20:48,164 --> 00:20:51,542 Forever convinced that communists were behind the civil rights movement 297 00:20:52,293 --> 00:20:54,920 Hoover pursued Martin Luther King with a vengeance 298 00:20:55,463 --> 00:20:57,006 doing nothing to protect him, 299 00:20:57,465 --> 00:20:59,842 even encouraging him to commit suicide 300 00:21:00,509 --> 00:21:03,012 in one notorious anonymous hatefilled letter 301 00:21:03,596 --> 00:21:07,516 until the moment King himself was shot and killed by another 302 00:21:08,267 --> 00:21:12,980 supposedly lone nut assasin in April of '68. 303 00:21:13,647 --> 00:21:16,233 Rage riots once more erupted across America. 304 00:21:18,444 --> 00:21:20,196 The Berrigan brothers who were priests 305 00:21:20,863 --> 00:21:22,823 went to jail for burning draft files. 306 00:21:23,157 --> 00:21:25,868 Benjamin Spock, the world's most prominent pediatrician 307 00:21:26,660 --> 00:21:30,039 W. Sloane Coffin, a Yale university chaplin 308 00:21:30,581 --> 00:21:32,792 Jane Fonda, a young movie star 309 00:21:33,334 --> 00:21:35,836 and heavy weight boxing idol Muhammed Ali 310 00:21:36,378 --> 00:21:37,588 were all speaking up: 311 00:21:37,922 --> 00:21:41,425 I ain't going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people 312 00:21:42,176 --> 00:21:44,929 if I'm gonna die I'll die right now right here fighting you 313 00:21:45,346 --> 00:21:48,641 you my enemy, not no chinese no vietkong no japanese, 314 00:21:49,058 --> 00:21:52,770 you my opposer when I want freedom you my opposer when I want justice 315 00:21:53,103 --> 00:21:56,065 you my opposer when I want equality you want me to go somewhere and 316 00:21:56,524 --> 00:21:58,818 fight for you, you won't even stand up for me right here in America 317 00:21:59,443 --> 00:22:04,698 I'm announcing today my candidancy for the presidency of the US 318 00:22:05,032 --> 00:22:09,745 Throughout America in 1968 a newly charismatic Robert Kennedy 319 00:22:10,287 --> 00:22:13,791 captured the imagination of young and old tired of the war. 320 00:22:14,416 --> 00:22:18,712 Finishing his brother's legacy, he was calling for a new America, 321 00:22:19,129 --> 00:22:23,092 white, black, brown, it didn't matter his eyes had ... 322 00:22:23,843 --> 00:22:27,763 once more the fire of change and reform was afoot: 323 00:22:28,305 --> 00:22:30,182 The country wants to move in a different direction. 324 00:22:30,599 --> 00:22:32,810 We want to deal with our own problems within our own country 325 00:22:33,143 --> 00:22:35,104 and we want peace in Vietnam. 326 00:22:35,521 --> 00:22:40,693 Johnson, secretly hoping to be a last minute choice for president if called, 327 00:22:41,235 --> 00:22:43,279 feared him as much as any man. 328 00:22:44,071 --> 00:22:48,576 But the fates were cruel beyond imagining to the Kennedy brothers, as on this 329 00:22:49,201 --> 00:22:54,039 hot june night of his victory in the california primary he was brutally 330 00:22:54,456 --> 00:22:58,294 gunned down in another strange hard to believe set of circumstances 331 00:22:58,711 --> 00:23:02,673 by a supposedly deranged young Palestinian. 332 00:23:06,260 --> 00:23:10,639 This was a serious and devastating blow to the heart of the reform movement. 333 00:23:11,098 --> 00:23:16,103 Post-war baby boomers had begun flooding college campuses in 1964 334 00:23:16,770 --> 00:23:21,483 imbued with idealism, dismissive of cold war ideology, upset with 335 00:23:22,026 --> 00:23:26,488 their parents' conformist values and fears, their protests spread worldwide. 336 00:23:27,156 --> 00:23:30,117 Students and workers convulsed industrial nations. 337 00:23:30,659 --> 00:23:36,248 Confrontations shook Prague, Tokyo, west Berlin, Rome and Mexico City where 338 00:23:36,665 --> 00:23:39,752 soldiers massacred hundreds of protesting students. 339 00:23:40,169 --> 00:23:43,130 In the summer of '68 at the democratic convention 340 00:23:43,672 --> 00:23:48,594 10,000 protesters were manhandled along with the media by Chicago police. 341 00:23:50,346 --> 00:23:55,184 TV was now presenting a reality the public had never seen before. 342 00:23:55,935 --> 00:24:00,731 American authority figures acting as aggressors both at home and abroad. 343 00:24:01,523 --> 00:24:04,360 It seemed that the country was coming apart. 344 00:24:04,777 --> 00:24:09,949 People spoke of the gulf between the antiwar left and prowar right as a 345 00:24:10,491 --> 00:24:14,536 civil war like the one that had ripped the country apart over 100 years earlier. 346 00:24:18,332 --> 00:24:22,252 It was in the midst of this terrifying turmoil that the anticommunist 347 00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:27,633 hardliner Richard Nixon, so bitterly denied the presidency by John Kennedy 348 00:24:28,050 --> 00:24:34,848 in 1960, found his life's destiny. But he almost lost, stunningly in this climate. 349 00:24:35,391 --> 00:24:37,935 The right-wing segregationist Alabama governor 350 00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:40,646 George Wallace running with the retired general 351 00:24:41,105 --> 00:24:46,652 Curtis Lemay was pulling 21% and threatening Nixon's chances for victory 352 00:24:47,194 --> 00:24:48,946 barely a month before the election: 353 00:24:49,279 --> 00:24:51,031 As far as this problem of law-and-order is 354 00:24:51,573 --> 00:24:53,325 concerned, I'm the only one of the candidates 355 00:24:53,993 --> 00:24:56,620 who has laid out a precise program for 356 00:24:56,745 --> 00:25:01,041 stopping the rise in crime and for reestablishing freedom from fear. 357 00:25:01,583 --> 00:25:06,380 Riding the resentment of what he later called the 'silent majority', Nixon's 358 00:25:06,922 --> 00:25:11,635 law-and-order message resonated with white voters scared of ghetto rebellions 359 00:25:12,177 --> 00:25:14,638 campus disruptions and rising crime 360 00:25:15,305 --> 00:25:19,101 and it eked out the narrowest of victories. 361 00:25:22,521 --> 00:25:25,566 America's in trouble today not because our people have failed 362 00:25:26,442 --> 00:25:29,403 but because our leaders have failed, and what America need's 363 00:25:30,154 --> 00:25:32,698 our leaders to match the greatness of our people. 364 00:25:35,534 --> 00:25:39,371 Nixon was also claiming a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam 365 00:25:40,122 --> 00:25:42,207 refusing to divulge its details. 366 00:25:43,292 --> 00:25:48,630 What Richard Nixon actually delivered to the country was not peace, law or order 367 00:25:49,089 --> 00:25:52,051 but war, chaos and disorder 368 00:25:52,593 --> 00:25:55,971 as the only president to resign his office in disgrace. 369 00:25:57,639 --> 00:26:02,644 Nixon and his national security advisor and later secretary of state Henry Kissinger 370 00:26:03,103 --> 00:26:06,398 actually expanded the war which lasted 7 more years. 371 00:26:07,149 --> 00:26:11,528 Half the total of US casualties from the war occurred under Nixon. 372 00:26:12,404 --> 00:26:13,363 Kissinger later said: 373 00:26:13,822 --> 00:26:17,534 I refuse to believe that a little 4th rate power like north Vietnam 374 00:26:17,951 --> 00:26:19,703 does not have a breaking point. 375 00:26:20,829 --> 00:26:22,998 And he and Nixon set out to find it. 376 00:26:23,665 --> 00:26:27,920 Nixon's secret plan to end the war turned out to be withdrawing US forces 377 00:26:28,670 --> 00:26:32,841 starting April '69 and replacing them with US trained and equipped Vietnamese 378 00:26:33,717 --> 00:26:39,723 while systematically and ruthlessly bombing north and south Vietnam into submission. 379 00:26:40,390 --> 00:26:43,685 Drawing parallels with Eisenhower's nuclear threats in Korea 380 00:26:44,103 --> 00:26:47,481 which, he said, ended that war, Nixon boasted to an aide: 381 00:26:48,065 --> 00:26:51,777 I call it the Mad Man theory. We'll slip the word to them that 382 00:26:52,444 --> 00:26:56,573 Nixon is obsessed about the communists we can't restrain him when he's angry 383 00:26:57,116 --> 00:26:59,076 he has his hand on the nuclear button 384 00:26:59,535 --> 00:27:02,704 Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days, begging for peace. 385 00:27:04,456 --> 00:27:08,919 Two months into office Nixon began a secret bombing campaign inside 386 00:27:09,378 --> 00:27:14,299 neighboring Cambodia to destroy north Vietnamese military sanctuaries. 387 00:27:15,175 --> 00:27:17,678 He took extraordinary measures to hide it from Congress. 388 00:27:18,345 --> 00:27:20,097 Even the crew members involved believed 389 00:27:20,848 --> 00:27:22,808 they were hitting targets in south Vietnam. 390 00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,397 Though most americans remained in the dark about the country they were invading 391 00:27:29,064 --> 00:27:31,150 the truth occasionally seeped out, as 392 00:27:31,900 --> 00:27:36,071 when freelance journalist S. Hersh in nov. 1969 393 00:27:36,822 --> 00:27:41,076 broke the news that a year and a half earlier US forces had massacred up to 394 00:27:41,743 --> 00:27:44,371 500 civilians in the village of My Lai 395 00:27:44,913 --> 00:27:48,083 nicknamed Pinkville for its strong enemy sympathies. 396 00:27:49,835 --> 00:27:53,547 Babies, pregnant women and old people had been scalped and mutilated 397 00:27:54,089 --> 00:27:56,842 as command of the situation broke down. 398 00:27:57,718 --> 00:28:01,889 Not a single shot had been clearly fired at US forces. 399 00:28:02,306 --> 00:28:05,142 Indicative of the growing dehumanization of this time, and 400 00:28:05,684 --> 00:28:09,188 resembling US attitudes towards the Japanese in WW2 401 00:28:09,646 --> 00:28:15,527 65% of Americans told pollsters they were not bothered by the news of massacre 402 00:28:16,528 --> 00:28:20,908 The only officer found guilty was given a partial pardon by Nixon 403 00:28:21,783 --> 00:28:24,286 public opinion strongly in favor. 404 00:28:25,954 --> 00:28:28,165 There were few limits to Nixon's thinking 405 00:28:28,582 --> 00:28:31,335 he and Kissinger planned for a savage attack 406 00:28:31,752 --> 00:28:35,923 possibly using nuclear weapons in the fall of 1969 407 00:28:36,340 --> 00:28:41,470 but were thwarted when millions parti- cipated nationwide in an Oct. moratorium 408 00:28:42,054 --> 00:28:46,642 and 3/4 million protesters flocked to Washington in november 409 00:28:47,059 --> 00:28:51,230 Still, Nixon recklessly put the military on secret alert 410 00:28:51,688 --> 00:28:57,444 flying 18 nuclear armed B-52s over the polar ice cap towards the Soviet union 411 00:28:57,986 --> 00:29:02,491 trying to force them, once again unsuccessfully, to pressure the 412 00:29:02,908 --> 00:29:04,785 north Vietnamese to peace terms. 413 00:29:06,245 --> 00:29:11,375 Le Duan took over the leadership when Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 414 00:29:11,917 --> 00:29:15,629 later told a visiting journalist that the US had threatened to use nuclear weapons 415 00:29:16,213 --> 00:29:18,382 on 13 different occasions. 416 00:29:18,924 --> 00:29:21,343 But that had not changed their policies. 417 00:29:22,427 --> 00:29:25,264 Although they would pay a terrible price for their independence 418 00:29:26,265 --> 00:29:30,852 the Vietnamese understood a basic truth the american leaders never grasped 419 00:29:31,603 --> 00:29:34,231 the Vietnamese foreign minister later said 420 00:29:34,982 --> 00:29:38,068 we knew that they could not stay in Vietnam forever, 421 00:29:38,610 --> 00:29:40,904 but Vietnam must stay in Vietnam forever. 422 00:29:42,447 --> 00:29:46,368 The Vietnam war was about independence and time 423 00:29:47,119 --> 00:29:49,204 not territory or body counts. 424 00:29:49,997 --> 00:29:52,291 America's 6th president J. Quincy Adams 425 00:29:53,041 --> 00:29:54,668 a century before had warned that 426 00:29:55,335 --> 00:29:56,670 a nation should not go abroad, 427 00:29:59,631 --> 00:30:02,676 It was here in Vietnam that the US ran into 428 00:30:03,135 --> 00:30:06,638 its ultimate monster, an enemy that could not be defeated because 429 00:30:07,306 --> 00:30:11,768 they were fighting to protect their homeland against foreign invaders. 430 00:30:12,311 --> 00:30:16,023 The US would win every major battle, but it never won the war. 431 00:30:17,024 --> 00:30:21,278 According to his lawyer John Dean and other insiders, Nixon was 432 00:30:21,611 --> 00:30:25,657 actually obsessed with war protesters and often adjusted his bellicosity 433 00:30:26,450 --> 00:30:28,285 to diminish their outrage 434 00:30:29,036 --> 00:30:32,998 but now stilling himself by drinking heavily and watching the movie Patton 435 00:30:33,874 --> 00:30:34,958 over and over again. 436 00:30:36,001 --> 00:30:37,419 Americans love a winner 437 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,756 and will not tolerate a loser. 438 00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:44,176 Americans play to win all the time 439 00:30:44,426 --> 00:30:45,719 I wouldn't give a hoot and hell for 440 00:30:46,136 --> 00:30:48,472 a man who lost and laughed. 441 00:30:49,723 --> 00:30:54,853 That's why americans have never lost and will never lose a war. 442 00:30:55,729 --> 00:31:01,651 Because the very thought of losing is hateful to americans. 443 00:31:02,402 --> 00:31:07,991 Nixon in april 1970 announced a joint US-south Vietnamese ground invasion 444 00:31:08,325 --> 00:31:11,161 of Cambodia to destroy bases along the border. 445 00:31:12,788 --> 00:31:16,625 6 students were shot and killed by the national guards at Jackson State 446 00:31:16,958 --> 00:31:19,252 in Missisippi and Kent State in Ohio 447 00:31:19,795 --> 00:31:22,881 More than 400 campuses went on strike or shut down 448 00:31:23,632 --> 00:31:30,305 4 million students, 300,000 faculty members, 30 ROHC buildings burned or bombed 449 00:31:31,181 --> 00:31:35,977 more than 700 colleges experiencing some kind of protest activity 450 00:31:36,853 --> 00:31:38,730 Kissinger described Washington as a 451 00:31:45,070 --> 00:31:49,116 the airwar intensified. Nixon said in 1970: 452 00:31:49,658 --> 00:31:52,619 I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out 453 00:31:54,704 --> 00:31:57,749 sounding more like a gangster than a statesman, Kissinger conveyed the 454 00:31:58,083 --> 00:31:59,167 order to bomb 455 00:32:03,004 --> 00:32:08,009 words that could have been spoken by a defendant in the ... at Nuremberg 456 00:32:09,678 --> 00:32:13,932 When Nixon, after he resigned, was confronted with his law breaking he replied: 457 00:32:14,474 --> 00:32:17,310 when the president does it, that means it's not illegal. 458 00:32:18,311 --> 00:32:22,149 By this time, Cambodia had been subjected for 5 years to a 459 00:32:22,691 --> 00:32:25,986 brutal air bombardment and an escalating civil war that left 460 00:32:26,653 --> 00:32:30,782 100s of thousands of Cambodians, many of them civilians, dead. 461 00:32:33,326 --> 00:32:38,457 The communist rebels the Khmer Rouge used his atrocities to recruit angry peasants from 462 00:32:38,665 --> 00:32:41,835 the country side and grew exponentially during the bombing. 463 00:32:42,586 --> 00:32:48,633 They finally seized power in 1975 from a corrupt US backed military dictatorship 464 00:32:48,967 --> 00:32:51,887 and then unleashed new horrors on their own people. 465 00:32:52,971 --> 00:32:56,808 On top of the half million Cambodians killed in the US phase of the war 466 00:32:57,809 --> 00:33:01,855 1.5 million more perished during Pol Pot's monstrous regime. 467 00:33:02,606 --> 00:33:06,776 Perhaps 25% of Cambodia's population died during this period. 468 00:33:11,573 --> 00:33:13,116 Meanwhile in Vietnam 469 00:33:13,783 --> 00:33:18,497 many troops were making individual choices, whether to go into combat or not 470 00:33:19,372 --> 00:33:23,293 Recent surveys estimate that well over 50% of soldiers in Vietnam 471 00:33:23,835 --> 00:33:26,046 use marijuana. 472 00:33:48,735 --> 00:33:54,991 In a remarkable admission in 1971 the armed forces journal revealed that 473 00:33:55,408 --> 00:33:59,120 the conditions of the troops in Vietnam were only exceeded by the 474 00:33:59,579 --> 00:34:05,168 French army mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Russian army in 1917. 475 00:34:05,919 --> 00:34:07,546 Still, Nixon persisted. 476 00:34:08,213 --> 00:34:14,135 By bombing Cambodia and continuing the secret and crippling bombing of tiny Laos 477 00:34:15,011 --> 00:34:19,933 which was started in 1964, Nixon bombed north Vietnamese cities for the first time 478 00:34:20,350 --> 00:34:24,396 since '68. Civilian casualties soared. 479 00:34:26,022 --> 00:34:31,403 And after a landslide re-election over antiwar candidate George McGovern 480 00:34:31,778 --> 00:34:37,659 in 1972, Nixon unleashed a 12-day christmas bombing on the north 481 00:34:38,535 --> 00:34:39,953 the heaviest yet of the war. 482 00:34:41,288 --> 00:34:43,123 The outcry in the world was deafening. 483 00:34:44,541 --> 00:34:48,044 A peace agreement was concluded the next month in Paris 484 00:34:48,837 --> 00:34:53,758 it was essentially the same deal that had been offered to Johnson in '68 485 00:34:54,175 --> 00:34:58,221 and which Nixon had secretly undermined in order to win election. 486 00:34:59,764 --> 00:35:03,810 The US promised to pay the north 3.25 billion dollars in reparations 487 00:35:04,769 --> 00:35:06,170 but later reneged. 488 00:35:06,521 --> 00:35:10,900 Elections were promised, promptly, but south Vietnam dithered and delayed 489 00:35:11,234 --> 00:35:12,902 for the next year and a half. 490 00:35:13,236 --> 00:35:14,946 We today have concluded an agreement 491 00:35:15,822 --> 00:35:21,077 to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in southeast Asia. 492 00:35:21,620 --> 00:35:26,458 Nixon brought home the last american combat troops in march '73. 493 00:35:27,334 --> 00:35:30,712 As it would decades later in Iraq and Afghanistan, 494 00:35:31,254 --> 00:35:35,842 the US invested huge amounts of money into training and equipping a corrupt 495 00:35:36,176 --> 00:35:38,803 south Vietnamese ally to fight for themselves. 496 00:35:39,888 --> 00:35:41,097 It did not work. 497 00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:44,059 Nor did Nixon's mad man thesis. 498 00:35:44,726 --> 00:35:49,397 In april '73 trying to buy time for the south Vietnamese army, he ordered the 499 00:35:49,731 --> 00:35:54,569 most intense bombing of the entire war of both north and south, but 500 00:35:54,986 --> 00:35:59,699 overwhelmed by Watergate revelations, he was forced to rescind the order. 501 00:36:01,785 --> 00:36:05,372 The war dragged on 2 more years until the south Vietnamese army 502 00:36:05,705 --> 00:36:07,582 simply collapsed and fled. 503 00:36:08,249 --> 00:36:12,170 The north Vietnamese forces overran Saigon in april '75. 504 00:36:12,921 --> 00:36:17,967 Disturbing images of fleeing civilians, deserting south Vietnamese soldiers, 505 00:36:18,385 --> 00:36:22,222 their officers a step ahead of them, and US embassy marines beating down 506 00:36:22,764 --> 00:36:29,437 deperate US connected Vietnamese trying to escape on the last helicopters off the embasy roof 507 00:36:30,438 --> 00:36:33,274 would remain indelibly imprinted in the american psyche. 508 00:36:34,150 --> 00:36:38,405 They also added fuel to the already angry hardliners who, like Nixon, 509 00:36:38,863 --> 00:36:42,450 contended that the media had sold out Vietnam. 510 00:36:43,118 --> 00:36:48,498 Nixon, meanwhile, caught at a web of crimes known as the Watergate Scandal 511 00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:53,837 paranoid over his domestic enemies and further revelations that would expose 512 00:36:54,379 --> 00:36:58,967 his illegalities on several fronts, grew increasingly erratic. 513 00:36:59,634 --> 00:37:04,764 His defense secretary instructed military leaders not to respond to Nixon's orders. 514 00:37:06,641 --> 00:37:09,602 The system was truly beginning to crack. 515 00:37:10,019 --> 00:37:12,647 I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. 516 00:37:13,648 --> 00:37:19,320 Vice-president Ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. 517 00:37:20,613 --> 00:37:22,824 Nixon, thus, avoided impeachment. 518 00:37:23,575 --> 00:37:28,621 But over 40 of his people were convicted of crimes, several of them going to jail. 519 00:37:29,497 --> 00:37:33,960 Nixon was pardoned by his newly appointed vice-president Gerald Ford. 520 00:37:35,503 --> 00:37:39,674 As the war, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon faded from american 521 00:37:40,008 --> 00:37:46,347 TV screens, trust between the presidency and the american people was betrayed. 522 00:37:47,098 --> 00:37:51,352 Kissinger, now promoted to secretary of state, came through unscathed. 523 00:37:51,895 --> 00:37:58,151 He and north Vietnam's Le Duc Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace prize. 524 00:37:59,110 --> 00:38:01,529 Knowing that the peace had not yet been achieved, 525 00:38:02,197 --> 00:38:05,909 Le Duc Tho had the grace to turn the prize down. 526 00:38:07,118 --> 00:38:11,164 The US licked its wounds, but few in power reflected on the deeper 527 00:38:11,456 --> 00:38:12,999 meaning of what had occurred. 528 00:38:13,333 --> 00:38:15,627 The Eisenhower dominoe theory proved to be a myth, 529 00:38:16,503 --> 00:38:18,797 the feared virus had not spread. 530 00:38:19,339 --> 00:38:24,511 Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia Taiwan, the Philippines, and 531 00:38:24,928 --> 00:38:30,934 most importantly Japan, all prospered and remained firmly in the western camp. 532 00:38:32,018 --> 00:38:37,065 Worried about US loss of prestige in Asia and clearly not having learned 533 00:38:37,398 --> 00:38:42,195 the lessons of supporting dictatorships, Nixon and Kissinger turned with fresh eyes 534 00:38:42,987 --> 00:38:46,366 to Latin America to reassert US power. 535 00:38:48,451 --> 00:38:53,248 Chile had survived as a model democracy since 1932. 536 00:38:54,123 --> 00:38:56,209 It would not survive Nixon and Kissinger. 537 00:38:56,751 --> 00:38:59,587 When socialist Salvador Allende won the election 538 00:38:59,921 --> 00:39:03,216 of 1970 promising to nationalize US companies 539 00:39:03,633 --> 00:39:07,595 like ITandT that essentially controlled the Chilean economy, 540 00:39:08,346 --> 00:39:13,268 Nixon told his CIA chief: make the economy scream. 541 00:39:14,143 --> 00:39:19,524 The IMF and the World Bank, with Robert McNamara at its helm, 542 00:39:19,941 --> 00:39:21,359 denied loans to the regime. 543 00:39:22,235 --> 00:39:27,699 The CIA funded opposition parties, pushed propaganda and disinformation, 544 00:39:28,157 --> 00:39:32,745 offered bribes, organized demonstrations and strikes against the government. 545 00:39:33,621 --> 00:39:35,915 And finally condoned the murderer of 546 00:39:36,666 --> 00:39:39,085 the most powerful Chilean general 547 00:39:39,419 --> 00:39:41,838 who'd vowed to defend democracy. 548 00:39:42,130 --> 00:39:46,843 When Salvador Allende took his case against the US to a pack general assembly 549 00:39:47,302 --> 00:39:52,223 at the UN in december '72, he was cheered wildly, but 550 00:39:52,557 --> 00:39:55,183 may well have signed his death warrant: 551 00:39:56,144 --> 00:40:00,982 We find ourselves opposed by forces that operate in the shadows without a flag 552 00:40:01,399 --> 00:40:04,360 with powerful weapons from positions of great influence. 553 00:40:05,111 --> 00:40:08,823 We're potentially rich countries, yet we live in poverty. 554 00:40:09,282 --> 00:40:14,203 We go here and there begging for credits and aid, yet we're great exporters of capital. 555 00:40:14,829 --> 00:40:18,666 It's a classic paradox of the capitalist economic system. 556 00:40:20,293 --> 00:40:23,254 The CIA urged its Chilean agents to act. 557 00:40:23,671 --> 00:40:26,758 Military leaders directed by gen. Augusto Pinochet 558 00:40:27,634 --> 00:40:32,221 executed their coup d'etat on sep 11, 1973 559 00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:38,227 As the military closed in, Allende made a final radio address from the presidential palace: 560 00:40:57,163 --> 00:41:01,209 Allende took his own life with the rifle given him by Fidel Castro. 561 00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:06,881 Pinoched seized power. His junta killed or disappeared over 3200 opponents 562 00:41:07,757 --> 00:41:11,594 and jailed and tortured tens of thousands more in a rain of terror known as the 563 00:41:11,928 --> 00:41:13,471 Caravan of Death. 564 00:41:14,430 --> 00:41:19,477 For the Chilean people, 9/11 has a far more tragic meaning than our 9/11 565 00:41:20,228 --> 00:41:23,523 that marked the end of their government at the hands of the US. 566 00:41:24,732 --> 00:41:28,653 Argentina would follow with a terrifying dirty war against leftists 567 00:41:29,737 --> 00:41:37,620 that would last from 1976 to '83 and kill or disappear an estimated 9-30 thousand people. 568 00:41:38,746 --> 00:41:43,418 The new Pinochet regime in Chile was quickly recognized and given aid, and 569 00:41:43,876 --> 00:41:45,837 lasted in power until 1988. 570 00:41:46,796 --> 00:41:49,882 Chile's intelligence service was master-minded 571 00:41:50,299 --> 00:41:53,052 by col. Manuel Contreras who became a 572 00:41:53,386 --> 00:41:55,138 paid CIA agent. 573 00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:58,641 He organized death squads that hunted down political opponents 574 00:41:59,058 --> 00:42:01,144 in Latin America, Europe and the US. 575 00:42:01,894 --> 00:42:06,274 His secret police even sent agents to Washington DC to blow up a 576 00:42:07,066 --> 00:42:09,777 former Chilean diplomat critical of the regime. 577 00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:16,367 Called operation Condore, the assasination ring included the right-wing governments 578 00:42:16,784 --> 00:42:21,497 of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. 579 00:42:22,707 --> 00:42:26,544 Assasination squads tracked down and killed more than 13,000 dissidents 580 00:42:26,961 --> 00:42:28,713 outside their home countries. 581 00:42:29,130 --> 00:42:32,300 Hundreds of thousands more were thrown into concentration camps. 582 00:42:33,509 --> 00:42:38,347 At a minimum, the US facilitated comm.s among these intelligence chiefs. 583 00:42:39,098 --> 00:42:43,561 In an internal CIA history that was de-classified in 2007 584 00:42:44,020 --> 00:42:47,523 it was revealed that under the leadership of counter-intelligence chief 585 00:42:49,817 --> 00:42:52,779 who was obsessed with the idea of Soviet union 586 00:42:53,196 --> 00:42:54,947 infiltrating his organization and 587 00:42:55,281 --> 00:42:58,659 taking over ultimately most of the world, the CIA had been 588 00:42:59,243 --> 00:43:02,955 actively involved in creating and using foreign police forces and 589 00:43:03,498 --> 00:43:04,707 counter-terrorism units, 590 00:43:05,124 --> 00:43:10,588 and training close to 800,000 military and police officers in 25 countries 591 00:43:11,380 --> 00:43:14,092 including secret police and death squad leaders. 592 00:43:15,968 --> 00:43:19,889 After a dismal decade marked by Vietnam, Watergate and 593 00:43:20,681 --> 00:43:23,184 initial congressional investigations into the 594 00:43:23,601 --> 00:43:27,230 activities of the CIA, America felt confused. 595 00:43:28,523 --> 00:43:30,608 What kind of country were we? 596 00:43:31,067 --> 00:43:32,693 The answer was a perturbing one. 597 00:43:33,236 --> 00:43:36,948 Despite the deep drift between left and right, and young and old 598 00:43:37,615 --> 00:43:41,119 Americans were enjoying rising standards of living, 599 00:43:41,786 --> 00:43:44,705 and a loosening of strict sexual gender and moral codes 600 00:43:45,540 --> 00:43:49,043 it was even halting progress in race relations. 601 00:43:49,669 --> 00:43:53,506 No war taxes were levied, and the draft was finally muff ball 602 00:43:54,382 --> 00:43:56,592 Those who could afford a college education, 603 00:43:57,343 --> 00:43:59,428 by-and-large, did not go to Vietnam. 604 00:43:59,846 --> 00:44:01,180 The working class did. 605 00:44:02,473 --> 00:44:06,769 Most Americans happily enjoyed the fruits of the 1960s economic boom, 606 00:44:07,395 --> 00:44:12,859 a boom driven in part by the military- industrial complex with its huge arm sales. 607 00:44:13,192 --> 00:44:19,323 By example, more than 5,000 helicopters out of close to 12,000 were lost in Vietnam. 608 00:44:20,449 --> 00:44:26,122 Between 1951 and '65, the state of California alone received $67 billion 609 00:44:26,664 --> 00:44:30,710 in defense contracts, which helped revitalize the empty American west, 610 00:44:31,377 --> 00:44:34,088 employing huge numbers in new cities and towns. 611 00:44:34,755 --> 00:44:38,676 This, in turn, redistributed the power in Congress with many representatives 612 00:44:39,135 --> 00:44:42,722 throughout the gun belt, becoming dependent on the arms industry for 613 00:44:43,181 --> 00:44:45,057 their positions in government. 614 00:44:45,683 --> 00:44:50,813 And, as it would later in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government would pay for the war 615 00:44:51,272 --> 00:44:56,402 by printing more dollars, straining its ability to convert dollars into gold, 616 00:44:57,278 --> 00:45:01,866 inflating the currency and helping to create a deficit that grew from 617 00:45:02,408 --> 00:45:04,827 $3 billion in the early '60s to a 618 00:45:05,369 --> 00:45:09,207 staggering $25 billion by 1968. 619 00:45:10,208 --> 00:45:12,376 Speculation, ... 620 00:45:14,879 --> 00:45:16,964 productive reinvestment lagged 621 00:45:17,632 --> 00:45:20,259 corruption also abounded in Vietnam where 622 00:45:20,801 --> 00:45:24,513 US shipped huge warehouses of goods to the warzone. 623 00:45:25,056 --> 00:45:29,352 Enormous base camps with giant merchandising centers called PX's 624 00:45:29,977 --> 00:45:33,606 flowered in a primitive landscape like mini Las Vegas's 625 00:45:34,273 --> 00:45:35,775 fueling dreams of consumption. 626 00:45:36,317 --> 00:45:41,239 Black markets thrived as cars, refrigerators, TV sets, food and drink 627 00:45:41,822 --> 00:45:43,991 distorted a 3rd world economy. 628 00:45:44,659 --> 00:45:50,456 Deadly weapons disappeared stolen by racketeering insiders, both US soldiers and 629 00:45:50,790 --> 00:45:55,378 civilians, who greedily sold to both south and north Vietnamese. 630 00:45:55,795 --> 00:46:00,383 Financial scandals, as in most wars, disappeared in the debris and chaos. 631 00:46:01,509 --> 00:46:03,886 Ominous signs began to emerge. 632 00:46:04,428 --> 00:46:08,683 Factories fled either to developing countries or the non-union south 633 00:46:09,558 --> 00:46:13,813 as older northern industrial cities began to decay from unemployment, 634 00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:16,983 poor housing and schools, and drugs. 635 00:46:18,859 --> 00:46:23,239 Real wages not only stagnated, they were actually declined for the next 30 years 636 00:46:23,656 --> 00:46:27,785 as the middle and working class' standard of living steadily eroded. 637 00:46:28,327 --> 00:46:34,583 In 1971, Nixon removed the US from the $35/ounce gold standard and 638 00:46:35,126 --> 00:46:37,336 abrogated the Bretton Woods treaty that 639 00:46:37,670 --> 00:46:39,630 had governed the post-war economic alliance. 640 00:46:40,381 --> 00:46:42,800 OPEC, an organization of oil producing countries, 641 00:46:43,342 --> 00:46:46,304 mostly in the mideast, now felt powerful enough 642 00:46:46,929 --> 00:46:49,223 to punish the US for supporting Israel 643 00:46:49,557 --> 00:46:54,395 in the 1973 war. Oil prices quadrupled in the next year. 644 00:46:54,812 --> 00:46:58,649 The US which, prior to the 1950s, produced all the oil it needed 645 00:46:59,317 --> 00:47:02,028 was now importing 1/3 of its supply. 646 00:47:02,695 --> 00:47:05,865 The country would suffer deep cycles of inflation and recession 647 00:47:06,532 --> 00:47:10,786 with Wall st. profiting from the increasing volatility and insecurity 648 00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:15,166 of a speculative bubble economy, that reached its nadir in the 649 00:47:15,708 --> 00:47:17,668 great recession of 2008. 650 00:47:18,461 --> 00:47:23,341 The Vietnam war would indeed spell the end of the last significant period 651 00:47:24,008 --> 00:47:27,845 of social and political reform the US had seen. 652 00:47:28,512 --> 00:47:32,892 Was the country now a paper tiger living on borrowed money and time? 653 00:47:34,101 --> 00:47:38,564 This question would haunt the national imagination through 1970s 654 00:47:39,106 --> 00:47:41,734 and even the 1980s into the '90s 655 00:47:42,276 --> 00:47:47,865 when, with the fall of the Soviet union, the sense of American domination re-emerged 656 00:47:49,283 --> 00:47:54,747 The accepted mythology of the time was the US lost the war in Vietnam. 657 00:47:55,831 --> 00:47:58,793 But as linguist, historian and philosopher 658 00:47:59,251 --> 00:48:01,044 Noam Chomsky has pointed out 659 00:48:01,420 --> 00:48:06,884 it's called a loss, a defeat, because they didn't achieve the maximal aims 660 00:48:07,343 --> 00:48:11,597 the maximal aims being turning it into something like the Philippines. 661 00:48:12,139 --> 00:48:15,101 They didn't do that. They did achieve the major aims: 662 00:48:15,976 --> 00:48:19,355 It was possible to destroy Vietnam and leave. 663 00:48:20,022 --> 00:48:24,944 Elsewhere he wrote, south Vietnam had been virtually destroyed, and 664 00:48:25,403 --> 00:48:29,448 the chances that Vietnam would ever be a model for anything had essentially disappeared. 665 00:48:30,408 --> 00:48:35,996 When an aging and wiser Robert McNamara returned to Vietnam in 1995 666 00:48:36,747 --> 00:48:41,669 he conceded, somewhat in shock, that despite official US estimates of 667 00:48:42,336 --> 00:48:49,009 2 million Vietnamese dead, that 3.4 to 3.8 million Vietnamese had perished. 668 00:48:49,552 --> 00:48:54,807 In comparison 58,000 americans died in the fighting and 200,000 were wounded. 669 00:48:55,349 --> 00:49:00,062 The US had destroyed 9,000 of south Vietnam's 15,000 hamlets, 670 00:49:00,729 --> 00:49:06,277 in the north all 6 industrial cities, 28 of 30 provincial towns 671 00:49:06,819 --> 00:49:10,322 and 96 of 116 district towns. 672 00:49:11,115 --> 00:49:14,368 Unexploded ordnance still blankets the country side. 673 00:49:14,910 --> 00:49:19,081 19 million gallons of herbicide had poisoned the environment. 674 00:49:19,623 --> 00:49:23,669 Almost all of Vietnam's ancient triple canopy forrests are gone. 675 00:49:24,545 --> 00:49:27,840 The effects of chemical warfare alone lasted for generations, 676 00:49:28,591 --> 00:49:33,304 and can be seen today in the hospitals in the south where agent orange was used 677 00:49:34,180 --> 00:49:39,852 dead fetuses kept in jars, surviving children born with horrid birth defects 678 00:49:40,311 --> 00:49:44,023 and deformities, and cancer rates much higher than in the north. 679 00:49:44,565 --> 00:49:50,154 And yet, incredibly, the chief issue in the US was for many years 680 00:49:50,154 --> 00:49:53,657 the hunt for 1300 soldiers missing in action, 681 00:49:54,325 --> 00:49:58,913 a few hundred of them presumed taken as captives by the north Vietnamese. 682 00:49:59,663 --> 00:50:02,082 High grossing action movies were made out of it. 683 00:50:13,886 --> 00:50:17,264 No official apology from the US has ever been issued, 684 00:50:18,390 --> 00:50:22,645 and absolutely no appreciation of the suffering of the Vietnamese 685 00:50:22,895 --> 00:50:26,607 President Bill Clinton finally recognized Vietnam in 1995 686 00:50:27,483 --> 00:50:28,567 20 years later. 687 00:50:30,110 --> 00:50:34,281 Ever since the war, american conservatives have struggled to vanquish the 688 00:50:34,823 --> 00:50:40,621 Vietnam Syndrome, which became a catch phrase for americans' unwillingness 689 00:50:41,038 --> 00:50:43,332 to send troops abroad to fight. 690 00:50:45,626 --> 00:50:49,713 For a war that so mesmerized and defined an entire generation, 691 00:50:50,130 --> 00:50:54,510 surprisingly little is known about Vietnam today among american youth. 692 00:50:55,302 --> 00:50:56,720 This is not accidental. 693 00:50:57,471 --> 00:51:03,811 There's been a conscious and systematic effort to erase Vietnam from historical consciousness. 694 00:51:05,145 --> 00:51:09,525 It's time that we recognized ours was in truth a noble cause. 695 00:51:10,609 --> 00:51:14,738 We dishonored the memory of 50,000 young americans who died in that cause 696 00:51:15,406 --> 00:51:19,702 when we gave way to feelings of guilt as if we were doing something shameful. 697 00:51:20,786 --> 00:51:24,164 It was not only conservatives who white-washed history 698 00:51:24,832 --> 00:51:28,752 Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, 699 00:51:29,295 --> 00:51:33,674 the brave americans who fought and died there had noble motives. 700 00:51:34,675 --> 00:51:39,805 they fought for the freedom and the independence of Vietnamese people. 701 00:51:40,681 --> 00:51:44,184 The outcome has been shrouded in sanitized lies. 702 00:51:44,602 --> 00:51:49,648 The Vietnam veterans' memorial in Washington, dedicated in nov. of '82, 703 00:51:50,190 --> 00:51:56,113 now contains the names of 58,272 dead or missing americans. 704 00:51:56,530 --> 00:51:57,615 The message is clear; 705 00:51:58,073 --> 00:52:00,576 the tragedy is the death of those americans. 706 00:52:01,452 --> 00:52:06,373 But imagine if the names of 3.8 million Vietnamese and millions of Cambodians 707 00:52:06,915 --> 00:52:09,418 and Laotians were also included. 708 00:52:10,085 --> 00:52:14,423 The supposed shame of Vietnam would be finally avenged by Ronald Reagan, 709 00:52:15,215 --> 00:52:16,300 the 2 Bush's 710 00:52:16,717 --> 00:52:20,429 and even to an extent Barack Obama in the decades to come. 711 00:52:21,513 --> 00:52:26,560 The irony is that the Vietnam war represented a sad climax of the 712 00:52:27,102 --> 00:52:29,980 WW2 generation from which Johnson, 713 00:52:30,606 --> 00:52:33,025 Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. 714 00:52:33,567 --> 00:52:35,653 and all the generals in high command came; 715 00:52:36,195 --> 00:52:40,908 those proclaimed by the mainstream media in the late 1990s as the 716 00:52:41,325 --> 00:52:42,743 greatest generation. 717 00:52:43,535 --> 00:52:47,456 Yet, that same media ignored the arrogance of a generation that 718 00:52:48,207 --> 00:52:53,671 over-confident from WW2, dismissed Vietnam as a 4th rate power 719 00:52:54,129 --> 00:52:55,547 that could be easily defeated. 720 00:52:55,881 --> 00:53:00,803 From, what the ancient Greeks call, hubris or arrogance comes the fall. 721 00:53:01,679 --> 00:53:07,476 And from this initially obscure war came a great distortion of 722 00:53:07,893 --> 00:53:10,187 economic, social and moral life in America. 723 00:53:10,854 --> 00:53:14,358 A civil war that polarized the country to this day, 724 00:53:15,025 --> 00:53:19,822 with much denied, little remembered, nothing regretted and, perhaps, 725 00:53:20,614 --> 00:53:21,907 nothing learned. 726 00:53:22,908 --> 00:53:26,286 History must be remembered, or it will be repeated until the 727 00:53:26,829 --> 00:53:28,580 meanings are clear. 728 00:53:28,914 --> 00:53:31,750 The second president of the US, John Adams, 729 00:53:32,084 --> 00:53:35,337 once said: 'Power always thinks it has a great soul 730 00:53:35,713 --> 00:53:40,975 and that it is doing God's service when it's violating all his laws.' 731 00:53:41,260 --> 00:53:46,432 which makes the details of the oncoming history a sad, inevitable blood bath 732 00:53:47,057 --> 00:53:49,268 that repeats itself again and again 733 00:53:49,685 --> 00:53:52,104 as the USA much too often 734 00:53:52,771 --> 00:53:57,359 stood on the side of the oppressors. Propping up allies with financial and 735 00:53:58,026 --> 00:54:03,031 military aid, war-on-drugs programs, police and security training, 736 00:54:03,699 --> 00:54:09,830 joint military exercises, overseas bases and occasional direct military interventions 737 00:54:10,581 --> 00:54:15,919 the US empowered a network of tyrants who were friendly to foreign investors 738 00:54:16,503 --> 00:54:21,633 who could exploit cheap labor and native resources on terms favorable to the empire. 739 00:54:22,593 --> 00:54:27,097 Such was the British and French way and such will be the American way. 740 00:54:27,973 --> 00:54:31,018 Not raping, looting Mongols; but rather 741 00:54:31,602 --> 00:54:37,399 benign, briefcase toting, Ivy League educated bankers and corporate executives 742 00:54:38,025 --> 00:54:45,365 who would loot local economies in the name of modernity, democracy and civilization 743 00:54:46,033 --> 00:54:49,411 to the benefit of US and its allies. 744 00:54:50,829 --> 00:54:55,876 During the cold war, politicians and the media side-stepped debate over the 745 00:54:56,418 --> 00:55:01,131 basic morality of the US foreign policy by mouthing platitudes about 746 00:55:01,548 --> 00:55:07,012 US benevolence and insisting that harsh, even dirty, tactics were needed 747 00:55:07,679 --> 00:55:09,431 to fight fire with fire. 748 00:55:10,057 --> 00:55:13,352 The Kissingers of the world called it Realpolitik 749 00:55:14,228 --> 00:55:20,776 but even when the Soviet union collapsed in the early 1990s, our nation's policies 750 00:55:21,235 --> 00:55:26,281 did not change, as the US time and again has taken the side of 751 00:55:26,824 --> 00:55:33,038 the entrenched classes or the military, against those from below seeking change. 752 00:55:34,373 --> 00:55:38,085 It was the American war against the poor of the earth, 753 00:55:38,752 --> 00:55:42,881 the most easily killed, the collateral damage. 754 00:55:43,882 --> 00:55:48,011 As was asked at the beginning, was it really about fighting communism 755 00:55:48,595 --> 00:55:51,974 or was it a misunderstood or disguised motivation? 756 00:55:53,392 --> 00:55:58,856 It was George Kennen, America's leading early cold war strategist, who went to 757 00:55:59,523 --> 00:56:03,026 the heart of the matter in a memorandum written in 1948: 758 00:56:04,111 --> 00:56:10,033 'with 50% percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population, 759 00:56:10,450 --> 00:56:13,412 we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. 760 00:56:14,496 --> 00:56:20,085 Our real task is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to 761 00:56:20,627 --> 00:56:22,337 maintain this position of disparity. 762 00:56:23,005 --> 00:56:27,593 To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality, and daydreamings. 763 00:56:28,260 --> 00:56:32,639 We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as 764 00:56:33,056 --> 00:56:37,102 human rights, the raising of the living standards and democratization. 765 00:56:37,769 --> 00:56:40,731 We are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. 766 00:56:41,690 --> 00:56:45,861 The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.' 767 00:56:47,613 --> 00:56:52,534 But George Kennen, who lived to be 101 years old in 2005, 768 00:56:52,951 --> 00:56:55,913 was an intellectual who never sought political office. 769 00:56:56,580 --> 00:57:01,627 Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the barbaric 770 00:57:02,169 --> 00:57:06,840 proportions of the upcoming presidency of Ronald Reagan. 771 00:57:07,299 --> 00:57:09,468 I’m proud to be an American, 772 00:57:10,135 --> 00:57:13,221 where at least I know I’m free 773 00:57:13,639 --> 00:57:18,894 cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land 774 00:57:19,311 --> 00:57:25,442 God bless the USA.