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

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