in any case, i think that nixon's view of melvin laird, nixon and kissinger's i should say view of melvin laird was somewhat similar to what john kennedy thought about avril harriman, that he was the crocodile on the side of the creek who could bite your head off if you did it wrong. 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 certain 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 with the character of melvin laird, who, by the way, played a very important role in watergate, not only with nixon in convincing him to finally yield the tapes in 1973-'74, but also with gerald ford. >> time for one, maybe two questions. yes? >> my name is mark gellar, i'm with the program at cal state fuller ton. we've been asking similar questions. i'll try it again a different way. could we actually have won the vietnam war?

in melvin, it was who john kennedy bought i had. . if you did it wrong. so laird's positions and how he did it and how he related to the president's and that's why certain things happen the wi they did dear during, his xhi testimony the ar war, but the way the nixon administration went about doing that had a lot to do with the character of melvin laird who, by the way, played a very important role in water date and not only nixon and convincing him to yield the tapes in 1973 and '74, but also with gerald ford. >> i've got time for one por. >> my name's mark kellar and i'm at cal-state fullerton. we've been asking similar questions and i'll try again a different way. could we have one of the how and what with would it took hook? >> that issa way to approach it. 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

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 be won militarily and that's important to remember when blame is on other people and wanted what they are suggesting they wanted this either decent chance. >> i will also agree that the war was not winnable. >> >> i'm the moderator so i won't answer the question. please thank the excellent panel and thank you a

colleague here from the nixon library, did the oral history interview with former secretary of defense melvin lairdand he 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. i was struck this morning by the notion that was expressed on one of the panels that it was not proper to apply that, that it was somehow wrong to do psychological analysis of the activities of a president. the president, of course, being the most important officials in the united states government. okay. let's not even talk about war fare but let's definitely talk about why people do things and the kinds of things that they do. and let's take the pentagon papers because they have been in the newspapers a lot of late. the first thing that happens when the new york times leaked 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

. >> 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