what about mel laird? have any of you looked at the mel laird papers? there are surprises in there? are we learning more about his ro role? certainly on capitol hill he was a very astute politician and turned out to be i think a fairly good bureaucratic in-fighter. what insights have you learned? >> yes, i am now with bill looking at mel laird's papers concerning the early period of the war during 1969. let's remember that laird and his biographebiographer, sort o official biographer, argue that secretary laird played an important role in bringing the bar to an end by insisting on the deamericanization which is confused with vietnamization, build up of the south vietnamese and that was his plan and it worked in the end. i'm simplifying the argument, and that was an important role, but at the same time nixon and kissinger bypassed him. they saw vietnamization as part of the solution as i tried to explain. that is, if you're going to withdraw and if you haven't won an agreement that is necessary to preserve south vietnam, then there's the danger of south vietnam falling and, therefore

so laird's positions and what laird did and how he related to the president's enterprises was of huge importance to the white house. and that's why things happened the way they did during that period of the vietnam war. and i think jeff is right about laird's commitment to de-americanizing the war but the way that the nixon administration went about doing that had a lot to do about the character of melvin laird, who, by the way, played an important role in watergate, not only convincing him to yield the tapes in 1973, '74, but also with gerald ford. >> okay. time for one, maybe two questions. >> yes? >> my name is mark. we've been asking similar questions so i'll try to get it a different way. can we actually have won of the vietnam war? how and what did it look like. >> okay. that's an impossible question to answer. my answer would be no and i could list some reasons. i think, though, one way of approaching this is to ask did nixon, kissinger, and laird and others believe the war could be won? we have to define what that meant. do you mean militarily? >> they did not believe it could

. >> 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 t

diddis innon, kissinger and laird other ands believe the war could be won. z we have to be won. they did not believe it could be won militarily and this san important point to remember when blame is thrown at others for losing the war. they did not believe that by 1968 and '69. they or eventually it was at the end of the interval. >> i would say the worry was not punable of. please join me in thanking this excellent panel for sharing theiren sights with us. and thankal of you for yr cag ren chem bell, meredith scott. >>> here's i new website for american history of it where you can watch the videos of upcoming projects and aa tweet social media from face book, at twoer and four and online at c-span.org/history. before he won a pulitzer prize for his write, world war i veteran and author ernest hemingway served as a spay for the iz, mill he speaks about the larger than previously acknowledged impact of hemming weigh's espionage to the war and his connection to the soviet union. this is about 1:20. >> well, good morning. welcome back. it was a lovely day. i think it's been a great

laird explained how he had to deconstruct this nixon order to go attack north korea. so the historian has to explain these kinds of purposes and actions and standard activities. plus i was struck this morning by the notion that was expressed on one of the panels that it was not proper to apply psycho history or it was somehow wrong to do psychological analysis of the activities of a president. presidents, of course, being the most important officials in the united states government. okay. let's not een talk about warf e warfare, but let's talk about why people do things and the kinds of things that they do and let's take the pentagon papers because they had been in the news a lot of late. the first thing that happened where "the new york times" leaked and published the pentagon papers was that henry kissinger demanded to know whether he was on any of the distribution lists for any of these papers so that was by way of determining whether there was any proof that he could have had a role in this. a few years ago we got the telephone tapes of mr. nixon's conversations t

laird is by the servicers and trusties, the entities that specialize in tearful services and foreclosuresou asked earlier, is this jut a matter of the volume of foreclosures? it is also a matter of the bottom of originations. the production machine was running at 126% of capacity. they were having some problems documented and archiving documents. when things turn bad andç the have to recreate that chain of title and you have to lookç at the documentation around the assignments, who owns the loan, some of the documents were missing or was not prepared. çit does not mean the sale did notç happen, but there is no evidence of it. >> are we talking about criminal problems, or are we just talking about other problems flowing over -- >> sometimes there is no çdistinction. if you have intent to compromise the integrity of the public system, that is criminal. >> [inaudible] >> that is an excellent question. that is one question i asked as we were going through this. are these minor violations, is this is sort of jaywalking, or is this much more serious? i think what you see is a series of vio

secretary laird admits this is huge and will likely be negotiated down in size by the various competing interests but is adamant about one thing. he says something must be done now before something catastrophic happens. >> the very same voters that might say, well, why do we have to do this will say, i don't understand why there's no water coming out of my tap. who wasn't thinking about this? that's exactly what the issue is here. >> reporter: in the delta, john ramos, cbs 5? >>> to campaign 2012. it's looking more and more like california may have a big say in the republican race for president. and a new poll shows rick santorum is surging here. romney still the favorite among likely republican voters but look at that, santorum now just six points behind. he jumped 18 points since december. but for now the gop spotlight turns to the deep south, alabama and mississippi holding primaries on tuesday. the strongly conservative states could be the last chance for mitt romney's rivals to halt his momentum. >> you have an opportunity here in mississippi to narrow this race, narrow this race t

paddy's day feast but tim laird. we know him, we love him.. you brought up a good point. i've got my derby hat on. >> ready for derby as well as st. patrick's day. we had some great ideas for your st. patrick's day party, even a twist on the traditional corned beef and cabbage. so that's a wonderful thing i've got to show you there. but first, i've got to start out with our what i call the shamrock smash cocktail. we're going to shake it up. this is a green cocktail, very appropriate. and here's how you make this. very easy. i start out with a shaker of ice, about an houns aounce and of finlandia vodka. that's an ounce and a half. to that a little bit of lemonade goes in. about two ounces of lemonade. >> okay. >> an ounce of orange juice. that goes in. boom. and then about a half ounce of blue curacao, which is a blue liqueur. >> wondering how it turned green. >> exactly. none of these ingredients are green, but the magic you remember from art class. the primary colors. orange and blue make green. we'll see how this works. we'll shake it up a

women generals and admirals, and i credit the president's memorandum on that, and i also credit mel laird, who was the defense secretary at the time, and he was pushing this, and there were -- i forgotten the numbers but it was four or five women -- one of them at least, jean holme, the air force is in that -- >> in uniform. >> and so some barriers were broken there. now, i think some agencies are always going to be harder than others. same thing is true in the corporate world. some companies are slower to move than others. but it's -- you just have to keep the drum beat going and demonstrate people can do a lot of things. back then the navy just decided -- i'm trying to think. in the '70s era, to allow women to be crew on combat ships. and that september a -- sent a ripple through the university. >> -- through the universe. >> i think that was the late 70s. >> the military academy astarted to allow women in 197 5. so sometimes -- i think one of the important things here is the breakthrough that were made. women reported to jobs that women never held, and they proved they could do it. the

that is the greenwich laird of the analysis that we're getting to come parts per billion, whereas oshas