issue to something of importance from mr. nixon and then the question is so how did he respond? the first thing he did was to seek prior injunction against the new york times to suppress the public press from reporting immediate story, not simply what american presidents typically do in a leak case which is order an investigation for the leaker, but to actually enjoy american society soss eaty from discussing the subject. it was the same kind of an approach to an issue that mr. nixon displayed when he ordered air attacks on north korea when a reconnaissance plane was shot down. now since i thought about this point earlier, i ran and looked for this little piece of paper

which happens to be the record of the national security council, the first and only national security council, that mr. nixon held in the context of the pentagon papers' leak. >> it was held at 3 time 30 p.m. on the 17th of june 1971. mr. nixon both opened and closed the meeting. >> he opened the meeting by saying probably, logically from the standpoint of a number of u.s. presidents that if you wanted to get something into "the new york times the thing that he needed to do was to declare it top secret. >> he went through a whole litany of things that should be done by the government along the lines of what i've been talking about and he closed the meeting by saying, and i quote, the president said this we have to win and not only a conviction of those guilty, but also the public relations dispute.

it was richard nixon, not the material itself this made the pentagon papers an american political document. it was the administration's response that changed what was simply a historical report into something that became an important artifact of history. it was something that ultimately destroyed his presidency and these are the things that historians have to deal with, and there's no way that they can attempt even to deal with those things without analyzing the standard attitudes and typical responses of officials, including presidents. thank you very much.

>> in 2009 katherine scott earned a ph.d from temple university after writing a dissertation of civil society, congress and the movement to democrat ties the national security state 1970-1978. scott is an adjunct professor with cornell and an assistant historian with the u.s. senate historical office. she has spoken on dissent and national security at many scholarly conferences so it was a natural to rewrite the chapter on nixon's dissent and a richard nixon companion and it was edited by mel small. ladies and gentlemen, katherine scott. >> thank you for that kind introduction, and thank you all for attending our panel today. thanks to everyone who helped organize the conference.

i feel very fortunate to be here and to have been invited to be a part of this companion volume and also to be up here with these three top-notch scholars and more. my talk actually departs a little bit from the topics that they discussed today in that my piece, the chapter that i wrote for this volume examined the literature that was related to the nixon administration's response to dissent about the vietnam war. so my topic is related though not specific to the vietnam war itself and i'm going to talk about the nixon administration's response to dissent. more specifically about the works that have been written about the nixon administration's response to dissent and then i'm going to spend half of the last -- the last half of my talk describing what i think are some of the directions that i think we need to go and some of the

holes that are still left in the literature. >> to what degree is president richard nixon personally responsible for the nixon administration's anti-dissent policies. that has been the question structuring the scholarly debate about nixon and the dissent for decades. for the purpose of the essay that i wrote and the topic i'm giving today i'm giving anti-dissent policies such as wire tapping, surveillance, black bag jobs all in an effort to weaken and discredit the anti-war movement first and president nixon's own political, quote, unquote, enemies. this body of literature has been largely shaped by historian and one-time washington insider arthur schlessinger's book the imperial presidency which was published in 1973.

schlessinger made the case that the executive branch had amassed unprecedented and unchecked powers in order to manage the nation's security. though its publication pre-dated the revelations that came out during the senate watergate investigation, his workplaced in the nixon administration's use of state power within a long history of the growth of the national security state. later the historian was spying to are on american's, published in 1978 which was a work based in large part on his -- on theo's work as a consultant of the church senate investigation into intelligence uses reinforced schlessinger's thesis and the extra constitution. within the broad historical context of the growth of the executive branch in the 20th century.

and of course, richard nixon addressed his dissent in his 1978 memoir defending wiretapping journalists and nfc staff among others, as a legitimate response to in his word, unprecedented levels of domestic terrorism. the administration's dissent policy, it is president insisted, quote, did not involve the use of any measures not previously employed by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. indeed, the president expressed no concern, no remorse, rather, excuse me, no remorse and revealed no inner conflict over his administration's reliance on questionable methods to achieve desired results. in the 1990s, presidential

recordings and documents, their work began to emphasize the personal role that president nixon played in shaping, encouraging and in some cases demanding that his aides go after first dissidents and then later political enemies. these more recent works have had held nixon personally accountable for the political culture of the era and while recent scholarships can boast new and exciting lines of inquiry which i can discuss more in the question and answer period, but i think it leaves some important questions unanswered. first, i argue scholars have focused far too closely on the executive branch's efforts to combat des sent in this era. imagine if we pulled the lens back from the executive branch and examined instead the larger

american government structure itself. for example, in what ways were american political institutions, specifically those outside of the executive branch responsible for the american state's response during the cold war era? in a constitutional government based on a rule of law, and intshlly designed as a system of checks and balances, certainly the legislative and judicial branches both bear some responsibility for the nixon administration's anti-dissent practices. congress and the courts not only legitimized nixon's anti-dissent activities, but demanded that the state aggressively combat civil disorder and urban unrest. for example, in 1968, they

passed the omni bus and safe streets act. conservative democrats who were furious over the johnson administration's in their minds failure to respond forcefully to urban riots and civil unrest inserted title 3 into the bill over the white house' objects. they vastly expanded the executive power to use wiretaps and surveillance, in the name of protecting national security by imposing law and order. similarly, the judicial branch's privileged national security interests over protected individual rights in the 1960s and 1970s. in 1968 supreme court justice hugo black who was a roosevelt appointee televised that the right of free speech was want the right limits.

he explained in this interview, i have never said that freedom of speech gives people the right to tramp up and down the streets by the thousands, either saying things that threaten others with real, literal language or that threaten them because of the circumstances under which they do it. it wasn't in the united states district court that the supreme court began to restrict the state's power to wiretap without limits. secondly, we have dissent in the 1960s and 1970s, and i was difficult to assess public sentiment at any given time. americans of course, did not know about the secret administration and the senate

investigation of the watergate break-in. but in 1970, public opinion poll conducted by cbs news tells us something about how americans felt about civil disorder and especially street heat. weary of civil unrests and protest, an overwhelming majority of americans polled in 1970, 76% said they did not support the first amendment right to assemble and protest government policies, blaming the press for sensationalizing protests and fermenting this disorder, a majority of those polled did not support the freedom of the press. nixon's anti-dissent rhetoric did not seem to offend the americans who reelected him by a landslide in 1972 when he earned an even greater margin of the popular vote than he had four

years before. to explore these questions is not to absolve richard nixon of his role in promoting anti-dissent policies, but we do need to acknowledge that the nixon white house formulated these policies in the context of a political climate that had grown increasingly intolerant of public protests and disorder. his programs were tacitly supported by government officials who, like him, saw limitations during upheaval. they cannot adequately be explained as an evolution of the presidency as schlessinger tried to do although that does tell an important part of the story. >> they did reflect ambivalence, and an underlying of decent in

american history. during times of disorder and perceived threats against national security, the illegal and legal state activities have unbeen hard to distinguish and obviously we continue to grapple with these questions even today in order to better understand our own time since september 11th, but those are some of the things that we continue to look for in the future. thank you. [ applause ] >> i want to remind everybody, we have two very helpful people holding microphones. please have the microphone in your hand before you ask a question. yes, sir? >> i'm retired of whittier college. to professor scott, this may be a bit personal.

you can consider as we are both fellow alumni of temple a couple of years ago in the alumni magazine there was an article by the president about opening their law school in china. would you consider being a guest lex you arer there as richard nixon as i did but was turned down. you may have more luck. thank you. >> are you offering? >> thanks. go owls. >> i'm a senior at harvard university and i had a question for you. if you read the article regarding empire light and imperialism for professor ferguson's writings and he calls it being the imperial project.

how do you feel about having the lens of imperialism put over the vietnam war as historians. >>y started with john. >> you're saying that the question -- let me see if i understand this correctly is how do we feel as historians about whether vietnam was an imperialist project. >> is it possible to call the project? it's an american story. >> yes. i think it's very possible to call vietnam an imperialist policy. they built their entire position on the vietnam war on american imperialism ands that a factor and a theme in the political

conversation about what the meaning of vietnam was. i worked with political groups who used those kind of arguments. i was not entirely convinced if vietnam wasn't imperialist enterprised, but i definitely could see how that kind of analysis applied to the situation that we were protesting from the standpoint of vietnamese who was seeing these farmers come into their country and first one set of them and then another set of them and then the wars just go on. it certainly must have had an imperialistic aspect from their point of view. so i can see how that argument raised. now how i employ that as a historian, that's a different part of the issue because as a historian, i'm outside of the context of personal activity. so i try and analyze the motives

of states and state power, but from that perspective, vietnam looks and feels different. perhaps it's because suddenly you're looking at it and feeling it from the stand point of washington as opposed to the vietnamese village. so you see american concerns about the security in the western pacific. our ideas about cold war -- or the communist and ally might fall in vietnam so a whole different set of factors applies from that kind of a standpoint. >> jeff, you want to say some? >> i think oohi'd like to addre that. i think the word imperial has been politicized too much. you need to define it. it looks leak the sweep of history, 5,000 years ago in earlier civil situationizations,

imperial simply means that one entity dominates another in some way. this is the case with the united states vis-a-vis, vietnam. i try not to use the term that much because it is a word that gets in the way of analysis, but if you think about why the u.s. entered the war and i think there's much documentation about this. it's not terribly contentious. it was because american leaders through always administrations were interested in preserving the credibility of america's will and credibility to control or put down revolutions against an international system that the u.s. favored sometimes called capitalist system or it goes by other names. there were, perhaps, some

security concerns, few of us would argue that there were legitimate effect, but that too, has to do with credibility. it has to deal with the terms. >> here's a big power intervening with another country and what else is this abut that? so, yes, it was tied up with the cold war. it's a complicated topec, but i don't think the cold war can, plain american intervention and vietnam. next? yes, sir. >> there was a phrase used by henry kissinger that was repeated ad nauseam. the phrase was peace with honor.

could you put it in context? did you have an effective effect, what was the desired effect and was it successful? >> it was during the '68 election, am i correct? and from what i know, it was a deliberate slogan to capture the vote of those who wanted an end to the war whether they were to the right or the left. honor was an appeal, i think especially to those right of center who either wanted to get out by using more military first and just want -- it was his way of running that middle line, walking the teet rope during the election. if. >> if you look at it the new

york times does headline, it appears that nixon is for, and it does spar rows as well as hawks. owls -- owls is the other name, right? owls. on the other hand, owl, if you interpret it in a particular way, you're not going give up on the other side. you knew that's what the war was all about. it was about preserbing that of, as and you could protect that, but it was aed if way of a approach, and he believed he could pull it off. >> yes, ma'am. >> my name is gail yates, and i wantedio you to speak more to

nixon's response and the papers being the downfall. rather than the case that if you just let it go maybe it would not have been more important. would you talk about that more? >> certainly. the pentagon papers as a study, as a military analysis, as a strategic study were about decisions that it all happened in or before 1968. so they implicated presidents johnson, kennedy, eisenhower, actually, who wasn't a republican, but mostly democrats, right? fdr and truman. there was no content in the

pentagon papers that caused him to question mr. nixon or his kind of decisions,a you will right? he could have let this go by as an enormous leak and treated it in a standard perspective and he drew attention first to suppress the document which invoked first amendment disputes and freedom of the press issues that were guaranteed to be explosive in american society and moved the conversation up to the level of the united states supreme court where, in fact, it was found against him and second when he could not a sheef what he wanted on the surface. he resorted to suban techniques, most particularly starting a plumber's unit within

the white house which was actually the first -- how should i say? the first active move in the colossus of sub trainian forces that acted throughout the watergate period and undermined his own leadership and presidency, ultimately force him to resign. so in a very real sense, you can trace the downfall of mr. nixon and in the context of the leak of the importance of the pentagon baerps, moved as an american political document is not simply an -- of the vietnam war. >> nixon's concern wuasn't abou

the papers aside from the emotional response to it, it's that it would undermine his effort. >> that was alexander hagues' argument. >> which nixon expected. this jude an right here, he adopts all thing the the pent acknowledges to write in secret. >> to nixon's anti-dissent policies because nobody looks documents unless they disagree with the way things are going. i think he reacted so strongly to it because in his mind this was sort of another case of a dissenter speaking out and sort of disrupting the way he would have liked to pursue things. >> i absolutely agree.

right. >> the discussion about vietnam, and perhaps less well known is melvin laird. at least with kissinger, we have telephone tapes and we have the white house tapes. what about laird? have any of you looked at the papers? are there surprises in there? are we learning more about his role? certainly on capitol hill he was a very astute politician and he's a very good bureaucratic infighter. with, and looking at miller's for, remember andrew's biographer argued that secretary

laird played an important role in bringing a war to an end by insisting on deamericanization which is confused with vietnamization. de-americanization or devietnamization, and that was the plan and they worked in the end on simplifying the argument and that was an important role, but at the same time nixon and kissinger bypassed them. they solved vietnamization as part of the solution as i tried to explain. that is, if you're going to withdraw and you haven't won an glaement is necessary to and therefore, you need grow and she was an important part of this,

but nixon didn't emsta, and each then they withdrew more slowly than laird wanted them to. the other part of it was force, which is -- if i want to judge in the short time i have here. i think it failed their main purpose which was to force the other side to withdraw north vietnamese troops from south vietnam and to give up their insistence of a unified vietnam. that did not happen. but the point is vietnamization took a long time to come into play, by the time they came into play most american troop his withdrawn. okay, this is complicated. >> i have actually a slightly interpretation of laird's role and by the way. theon