probably has been a good year to be a vietnam historian. has america's understanding of the war changed over 50 years? the crucial i think shift has been more recent and certain kinds of ways. during the war itself, the way academic historians talked and wrote about the war was during a critical mode. vietnam was a mistake, books were set up to understand how that mistake might work. ofwas a different way thinking about the war. that was a position that maybe in fact it was a necessary role -- war and there was some sort of strategic point. that set up a contentious set of debates between historians who want to recover something out of vietnam that is more positive, and what has continued to be a mainstream historical perspective in many ways, the war was fundamentally wrong and ineffective -- ineffective. the younger generation comes into all this. i feel like these debates was about our generation or a generation behind us. the younger people come to it from a different perspective. the first set of kids i was teaching, their parents may

he explains why teaching the vietnam war has changed, and reflects on u.s./vietnam relations today. we interviewed him at the american historical association meeting and washington, d.c. this is about 15 minutes. >> my father teaches history at the university of chicago and is -- and as a specialty, so it is a history of vietnam and human rights. i want to talk about vietnam with you. it is the anniversary year. probably has been a good year to be a vietnam historian. how has america's understanding of the war changed over 50 years? >> you know, i think the crucial shift has been more recent and certain kinds of ways. during the war itself, the way academic historians talked and wrote about the war was during a critical mode. vietnam was a mistake, books were set up to understand how that mistake might work. the reagan era brought a different way of thinking about the war. that was a provision is -- revisionist notion that there was a war. and that there was some sort of strategic point. that set up a contentious set of debates between historians who want to recover something out of

vietnam war has changed and reflects on u.s. vietnam relations today. we interviewed him at the american historical association's annual meeting and washington, d.c. this is about 15 minutes. susan: mark bradley teaches history at the university of specialty, as a studies the history of vietnam and human rights. i would like to talk to you about vietnam. it's an anniversary year. it's a good year to be a vietnam historian. lots going on. how has america's understanding of the war changed over 50 years? mr. bradley: i think the crucial shift has been more recent and -- in certain kinds of ways. wayng the war itself, the academic historians wrote about war, vietnam was a mistake. it was in a critical mode. the reagan era brought a different way of thinking about the war. that was a kind of revisionist notion that maybe in fact it was a necessary war. that there was a strategic point in being in vietnam. relatively contentious debates between historians who want to recover something from vietnam as something popular, and something that continues to be a ma

troops into south vietnam. this was another step that lansdale opposed to going to help the people of south vietnam but he wanted toen take the lea. he didn't think the the war shd be americanized and begin his advice was ignored and he went back to vietnam from 1965-1968. he was there during the tet offensive and final that in the summer of 1968 feeling dejected, defeated and demoralized because he tried to tell general mormon and others there were not going to win the war with firepower, that they cannot simply kill the vietcong faster than it would be replaced. the only way to w when he said s to stand up a stable legitimate a popular government insight saigon the command the allegiance of his people and his advice was ignored and old when he was not terribly surprised when in 1975 north vietnam invaded every quickly occupied south vietnam. question i raised in my book, the reason it's called "the road not taken" is because what would happen if hisis advice had been listened to? i can't see to it and it'd be

supported south vietnam. that's not at all unusual. that's actually. common in iran where we supported the government and iran supported some of the insurgents and various islamist groups like al qaeda supported other insurgents. that's par for the course. civil wars are just one kind of war work. >> host: the next golfer max boot is from hedgesville west west virginia. you are on you are booktv. >> caller: hello, thank you. i have a simple question. i think you are comparing contemporary wars like iraq and afghanistan to the draft during the vietnam war and now we have volunteer armies but i wonder if the author here had come across in his research any data that would show how many people volunteered for vietnam versus were drafted? >> guest: i don't know the figure off the top my head are there were certainly a lot of volunteers earlier in the war. was pretty much all volunteers before they started using draftees and later on there were a number of soldiers and officers who volunteered for more than one tou

third tour in vietnam. >> wow. >> third tour in vietnam but he had a drinking problem. and he used to back -- i found out fairly soon -- some booze in his back pocket and beer and everything else so i had to deal with that. the men in the platoon and i would say the platoon i took over was a favorite of the battalion commanders. for some reason or another. i think what i heard is that it had been in some fairly severe fire fights and so on and so forth and they had been lucky enough not to lose too many but they had a lot of young soldiers wounded and returned to duty. and the non-commissioned officers that were then serving were what they called in those days instand bakes, noncommissioned instand bakes, that is they went through a crash course to become non-commissioned officers. sot bakes, that is they went through a crash course to become non-commissioned officers. so i had an e-6 who for all intents and purposes was my platoon sergeant who would have been in the army about two years. he was an e-6. >> so about the same time you'd been in the army, maybe a little le

vietnam fall to the communists. the sense in the 1950's that democrats were not tough enough on communism, and so that is one of the reasons they fought in vietnam. it basically showed a lot of people that democrats cannot effectively manage foreign policy and the war effort in vietnam. it created aays, sense that democrats were weak on national security, and that image has been propagated for 50 years. i am not going to say richard nixon fixed the war, although he obviously got the u.s. out of vietnam, but there is a sense that democrats created this problem and it undermined them politically for a long time. host: i want to share with you a a few by pat buchanan who joined as a couple weeks ago. among the things he talks about, the surging antiwar unit, which your father may the democrats , angry. johnson was seen as an american lackey. he said the american establishment the best and the , brightest had been broken at the wheel of vietnam. your thoughts. guest: i think vietnam did destroy a lot of the establishmen

hanoi, capital city of vietnam.ly and damp and in the summer, hot, humid and subtrap cal. the buildings are french. but its heart and soul is always, always vietnamese. americans coming here as veterans of the war are shocked by how friendly the place is. people are genuinely happy to see you. this is hanoi's old quarter, but it's looking less and less old these days. >> in the irish-czech themed pub next door. fewer remember what they called the american war. those years were a defining time for everyone who lived through them. though there are a lot of conflicted feelings back home, for most the war has become a distraction and not even a memory. they improved a lot with the hard line economic policies. more and more tourists every year. western chains inevitably are everywhere and president obama is visiting for the first time, taking another step on the long path towards normalizing relations between the two countries. that is good. ooh, hot. ooh, i hit that chili hard. ♪ [ bells ding ] ♪ [ horn honks ] [ thunde

was going to bomb north vietnam. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] that started the whole idea that the u.s. would be using their power to go directly against vietnam. it started with the gulf resolution passed in congress. at the time, it said that the president of the united states can take any action anywhere in defense of america's interests against the communists. that was a big statement, but most of the reporters did not take that up. i think the people at cbs knew it. the people at washington post did, but that was it. host: he began by saying that the tet offensive proved the u.s. government was lying to the american people. why? >> at that time, we were told -- at that time, it was already 25,000 american deaths into the war. we have been experiencing over a period of three years what it was like to fight that war. to realize that you could take a mo

they wanted out of vietnam. they didn't care if it was withdrawal or escalation but they wanted to bring the troops home. one thing about mccarthy gets credit for is he didn't run on the anti-war platform. he ran on a senate protest vote to send a message to washington about how you feel about the war effort about the johnson administration and it was incredibly successful because he was bringing in not just those had opposed on the left but moderate conservative voters who supported the effort but didn't support the same goals as anti-war activists but were upset with how it was going. so it was a big coalition in new hampshire. host: four days after that robert f kennedy enters the race. we showed that you on march 16, 1968. johnson announces march 31 he will not seek re-election. hubert humphrey enters the race but not until april 27 which is a key thing to keep in mind. senator kennedy won the california primary on the evening of june 4 and then tragically shot after midnight dying the following day. hubert

the people in vietnam, the officers, majors, kernels.hey would tell us what it is that we had covered that day. and it had nothing to do with what we had seen and heard. there was the credibility gap. the government itself, the lyndon johnson administration, was up against it. that was one of the reasons the president felt he had to get out, which is what he did on march 31. he felt he no longer had -- whether it was qualified or not is irrelevant -- he made up his mind that he could no longer lead the country. that the war had, in effect, brought him down. lyndon johnson was a very proud man. he had done, in his life, great things on the legislative front, domestic front. his great society. there, war was always pulling him down. ultimately, it dragged him down, and the american people have to face the loss of a president, the loss of innocence. the loss of media -- our own government was lying to us. i was a moscow correspondent. i assumed the russians would lie to me, but i never assumed until that point that my own government was goi

survived vietnam. had been at one point in time these old instant ncos, but now were into their fifth, sixth year. so had really learned combat and then everything else after that. i had a very good core, as you can imagine, of leaders. noncommissioned officers in particular, but i also got to choose my lieutenants. so that was a great thing. and then we got to train together before the enlisted forces came. >> right. >> so we got to do tactical exercises without troops, that is, we got to go out, we got to do sand table exercises. we got to go through manual battle drills, all by ourselves, impart one another what we -- your standards and everything else to get ready. and then we were ready. we thought we were when the first recruits came in. >> okay. >> unfortunately, the recruits weren't necessarily ready for us. first of all, there's two significant differences that i saw right away. the first was the criminal element, a large criminal element that you had to weed out. and in the early '70s, the ar

this was still when the vietnam war was going on, of course. so, there was a recruiting problem, to say the least. and so the first thing i had to worry about, before i get to the recruits themselves, are the leaders. obviously, because we wanted to set up what they called a provisional company, so how you got your leaders and where you got them from, i was the first to go through all this, so when you're first in the boat, there's a big advantage to doing that because you got a lot of support behind you. the division doesn't want you to fail. nobody wants you to fail. so, they're going give you whatever you say you need. and i said, well, the very first thing i do is i need to interview everybody that comes down and is going to be part of my unit. when does an infantry company commander get to do that? when does a battalion commander do that? these days, when does a division commander get to do that. so i got to interview all of the leader, the officers and the noncommissioned officers that became part of the company, so that was a great boon.

disturbing film about one of the most shocking atrocities of the vietnam war the massacre it was a major war crime and once it came to light the story sparked international outrage adding to the growing pressure in america and around the world to bring an end to the war in vietnam in march one thousand nine hundred sixty eight charlie company a platoon of american infantry landed by helicopter on the edge of the village of near the northern coast of south vietnam the platoon believed vietcong forces were in the area but they faced no resistance yet five hundred four innocents women children and old men were brutally dragged into ditches and machine guns in the special film reporter josh rushing in. veteran of the marine corps himself took a former member of charlie company back to me live for the first time to meet survivors of that horrific atrocity and now fifty years on from the massacre itself today's rewind is a moving emotional return to the scene of one of the most shocking events of the vietnam war from two thousand and eight here is heart of darkness. these grenades killed all o

in vietnam we had the tradition that we let bygones be bygones but in our hearts we cannot forget if i didn't care i would have come back and i know words don't heal your heart but that's that's all i can do now each man is deeply shaken. you should educate your younger generations your children not to do it again and not to make war anywhere in the world. well those are fine words. i wouldn't want war i would stop war today if it was possible. now that i'm older i can see this but when i came to vietnam i was very young i have never acknowledged to any great extent that i was it me why but i'm here today to tell you what was done here was wrong. i can't fix your heart i can't bring your people back to life. i'm sorry. he says he knows one reason charlie company could fire into groups of unarmed villagers the training they got before we came to be and almost didn't think of the vietnamese as people. think keeps a few photos of the party they held when the murder charges were dropped but they had little to celebrate in the years that followed many of his fellow soldiers members of his

>> i was in vietnam. tell me a little bit about what she had done. >> she said she was primarily teaching filipino teachers english as a second language, whatever that -- i don't know -- okay. >> and what's her name? >> her name is barbara, b-a-r-b-a-r-a. barbara babko, raised on a chicken farm up in north carolina. >> okay. >> you had a lot in common? >> yeah, we did. >> okay. and how were things at north georgia? >> oh, they were great. they were great, and i really liked the cadets and taught military history, map reading and scrub tactics, all of which i really enjoyed and was the faculty adviser for our order of columbo mountain platoon. now this is, by the way, before your time, but there was a korean world war ii and korean war veteran with the mountain ranger camp when i was going to school, and in fact, he was still there when i came back. we got these gung-ho cadets and formed the klum bo platoon and we went doing patrols up in the mountains and taught them rappelling and also taught barbara rap

saigon was the capital of south vietnam. and even though the vietcong weren't able to make it into the american embassy and take it over and they were defeated and their bodies were dragged out, the very symbolism of them coming into saigon said, wow, this is much more of a war than we are realizing it is. it is right in our faces. they have cut down our defenses. they're going after our embassy. and we're saying that there's light at the end of the tunnel? so in effect, while the tet offensive didn't bring down the saigon government, one could argue that it brought down the american government. and perhaps nobody was more important in articulating that sense that something seriously was wrong than the person who was considered the most trusted man in america at the time, and that was walter cronkite, yes. walter cronkite does a special report from vietnam, and this is what he had to say and conclude. >> we are closer to victory today. is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimist who have been wrong in the past. t

policies to end the bloodshed in vietnam and in our cities. policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world. i run for the presidency because i want the democratic party and the united states of america to stand for hope instead of despair, for sreconciliation of men, instead of the growing risk of world war. i run because it is now unmistakenly clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who are now making them. for the reality of recent events in vietnam has been glossed over with illusions. report of the riot commission has been largely ignored. the crisis in gold, the crisis in our cities, the crisis in our farms and in our ghettos have all been met with too little and too late. no one who knows what i know about the extraordinary demands of the presidency can be certain that any mortal can adequately fill that position. but my service on the national security council during the cuban m

on the edge of the village of new lie near the northern coast of south vietnam the platoon believed the vietcong forces were in the area but they faced no resistance yet five hundred four innocents women children and old men were brutally dragged into ditches and machine guns in the special film reporter josh rushing a veteran of the marine corps himself took a former member of charlie company back to me live for the first time to meet survivors of that horrific atrocity and now fifty years on from the massacre itself today's rewind is a moving emotional return to the scene of one of the most shocking events of the vietnam war from two thousand and eight here is heart of darkness. these grenades killed all of. the banks. they ordered all of the families to sit or stand in the did then they shot and after five minutes they shot the second time they heard we being shot a third time. talk about the end of my six year old son and i we laid down and use their rights to cover. three or four bodies were found on the. bottom. of this dark on the backs of that day march sixteenth nineteen sixty

i have just introduced a resolution in recognition of the vietnam veterans memorial. its traveling replica, which is one part of the wall that heals exhibit and the vietnam veterans for their devotion to to our neighbors, community and country. i thank you, mr. speaker, and say once again, welcome home, vietnam veterans. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from florida, mr. utherford, for five minutes. mr. rutherford: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to honor the life of master sergeant william r. "bill" fash, who died on march 15, 2018, while serving his country in iraq. his dedication to this nation and its freedom will never be forgotten. the master sergeant spent his life helping others. as a teenager he worked as a rife guard for jacksonville beach ocean rescue with where he developed his passion for search and rescue missions. at the age of 15 he saved the life of a surfer who was drowning after having a seizure in the water. after this experience he knew he wanted to jo

now, my story in vietnam was truly a success story. i went into hue as an e-4 draftee and shortly thereafter, i was hired as the youngest photographer ever hired at "life" magazine. but like many vets, in spite of my success, i came back and spent decades not talking about vietnam. as the 50th anniversary of tet approached, i began to wonder what had happened to the veterans that i had photographed as young men, and by chance, i learned of one veteran and reached out to him, and one led to another which led to another, and i began to capture audio interviews with them in which i asked -- i asked them to explain to me, tell me about hue and then tell me about how it affected their life following hue. as we approached the 50th anniversa anniversary, i reached out to senior management at the newseum and told them i thought there was an opportunity here for a historic exhibition. once they realized what we had, they seized the opportunity and put together an exhibit in less than three months. normally it would be a year to 18 months for an

with the lamp being vietnam. china has always been the number one enemy of vietnam. every hero has been fighting china.they had colonized at 1000 years. the idea that vietnam would be a pawn of china is foolish. more importantly, and then i will stop with this, inside vietnam, there was also this thing that vietnam has what i call, a market dominant minority. it is a tiny, one percent outsider chinese minority. they were not vietnamese. who controlled about 70 percent of the countries wealth. this is true of all the southeast asian countries. my point is that most of vietnam capitalists were not even vietnamese. and the us missed this. we come in and we're going to support capitalism. they failed to see that from the point of view of the vietnamese people, we are asking them to fight and die basically to keep this presented minority wealthy. the wreck was originally going to be about how our blindness to these incredibly important tribal and group identities are responsible for some of our greatest foreign policy disasters. and how they get to the domestic partner? i

he announced an end of the escalation of troops to vietnam and a halt to the bombing of north vietnam in a sense that we have to find a way out of this situation. and then he said the following: >> in the divisions, i should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. with americans sons in the field far away. with america's future underchallenged here at home. without the hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance everyday, i do not believe that i should devote an hour of our day in my time to any personal partisan cause z or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office. the presidency of your country. >> and what he was about to say was a political bombshell. >> accordingly, i shall not seek and i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. >> nobody knew about this. johnson basically decided to opt-out and to quit. it was a shock and a surprise. i remember listening to this on the radio in the car. everyone was startled. we knew stuff was going on but no

then i would be deployed to vietnam. this was really important in my story because it sets the stage for what happens later. so i went to fort sill, my wife was pregnant -- >> where did you meet? >> we met in rhode island, high school sweet hearts. >> you got married after? >> right after west point. now, she's pregnant and i'm going to be heading to vietnam. we're at fort sill. we basically have a few days to get back to rhode island. we get back and she's able to get to the hospital. i drove and she flew. by the time i was somewhere in route between oklahoma and rhode island, she gave birth to a baby boy. so now i have a son with orders to go to vietnam. and three weeks later, i left. so that was -- >> very hard. >> that was a very tough thing to do. left for vietnam like a lot of the other guys and it was -- very different. >> '67. >> it was '67. it was alonely trip. he was all replacements. it was a quite flight and it was just -- nobody knew where we were going and what we were going to be doing. >> and the war was

then he undermined it with vietnam.ultimately in history transcended all of his accomplishments and turned young people away from him and from the democratic party as it had existed for those 30-plus years in which johnson was the final president. if you look at johnson as sort of a shakespearean figure, one could say that he destroyed the liberalism that he loved so much. you just put him into othello or hamlet or lear, and there you have it, lyndon johnson destroying that which he loved so much. four years after his historic 1964 landslide, it was lyndon johnson and his policies who ended up so dividing and the crippling the democratic party that it took a full generation and fundamental demographic change for the party to begin to recover. of course, waiting in the wings at that moment in time was richard nixon. richard nixon was a very, very shrewd politician. he was there looking at all of these trends, looking at how the democratic party was dividing. he said, why not exploit these divisions for our political gain

in she vietnam war they were the agency. it rae create itself as a futuristic science fix version of its. so somebody has to decide darpa is the agency to solve or problems and that has to come from above hem. >> two more question cozy then we'll wind up. >> thank you. sharon, i've read your book and i loved it. >> thank you very minute. >> read your other ones, too, and will continue reading. i'm going address my question about the presidents, though. when you were talking about robert dole losing an important function, i thought you were talking about miss vie viagra ads which many of us will remember. and eisenhower had a famous affair with his driver, was it? and of course the revelations of kennedy and lbj and the other presidents and now with our current situation with the payoffs and such. i'm curious if was nixon really as straight as his reputation leads to us believe and. >> some are some indications in his own awkward way, he would reach out to other women when things got very tense at home. pat nixon -- you look

the fact is we're spending $30 billion a year in vietnam. several billions of dollars are in the form of an outflow that cannot be stopped. if the war -- and secondly, the gold crisis is basically a lack of confidence in the united states and the policies that are being followed by the united states at the moment. and so there is no question that the gold crisis that we're facing is intimately, irrevocability tied to what's going on in south vietnam. >> senator, will you go into wisconsin and other states to campaign for senator mccarthy? sen. kennedy: yes, i shall. clark. clark. and then i'll come back to you. >> if negotiations begin, will you withdraw? sen. kennedy: i do not plan to. i would -- i think that there is not only a question of negotiations, it's a question of what our position is at the time of negotiations. i think, as i have said before, that the state -- the message that was sent to ho chi minh in february of 1967, which was the basis of our negotiations, was a mistake. so i, i think that it's a question of what our negotia

troops in vietnam numbers, 400,000. the broadway hits of 1966 were "cabaret," "sweet charity" and angela lansbury. >> a new comedy is on the scene. an experimental piece of prop created by megan terry with input from cast members. now, it's a product of the experimental off-broadway open theater and it was the first rock musical written and performed in the united states, and the first protest play about vietnam. it premiered at the experimental theater club on may 18, 1966, and a milestone in interactive theater in that the actors are going out to the audience and interacting with them. so the war is coming here in this way. 1967, meanwhile, number of troops reaches 500,000. half a million. a quarter of whom were draftees, who accounted for 30% of the casualties. young people could get deferments if they were enrolled in college so the bubbling of these draftees were from working class families including blacks, hispanics, native americans, and these numbers are going up, and as the numbers go up, the protests increase

but in my case vietnam has made me who i am. the worst day in business since vietnam, it's a walk in the park. it's hard to have a bad day. there is a marine who signs e-mails ain't had a bad day since '68. this gives the opportunity to hear an interpretation of how the battle changed their lives for puerpetuitperpetuity. >>> tonight on american history tv in primetime landscape historian talks about his book the white house easter egg roll, a history for all ages on how presidents and first families have hosted the annual white house tradition since 1878 and the changes made along the way. american history tv in primetime begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. book tv is in primetime with a look at the future. steven pinker explores the thought processes behind extremism in his book "enlightenment now." then greg easterbrook introduces policy reforms to address economic inequality, climate change and more. and andrew keen with "how to fix the future." after that artificial in "the future computed" and will show general r

is who maybe i am, and the worst day in business since vietnam is a walk in the wa park. it is a hard to have a bad day. there is a marine who signs his e-mails who says ain't had a bad day since 1968. this exhibit gives the public an idea to look at these men and at 18 and get an interpretation of how the battle of hsai changed their lives into perpetuity. >>> tonight on american history tv and primetime, landscape historian jonathan policeka talk about his book "the white house easter egg roll" a history of all ages of how presidents and first families have hosted the white house tradition since 1878 and the changes made along the way. american history primetime begins at 9:00 p.m. on c-span3. >>> book tv is looking at the experimental cognitive scientist peter tinker who is exploring the authoritarian iism in his bk "enlightenment now." and author greg easterbrook is going to address economic inequality and climate change and more in "it is better a than it looks. ooh "and later andrew keen with how to fix the future andf that, microsoft president brad smith discusses

the vietnam veteran and the vietnam memorial would be different. think there was a candidate who really wanted to unite people. it is so hard to do it and it is getting harder and harder to keepkeep lack and what together, young and old, the working kind, we keep talking about noncollege people as opposed to college people, what a ridiculous separation to we got to stop that but we know it it -- we know what it was about. the elite, a tremendous advantage over other people. it is not only the advantage of attic -- education. they were snotty about it or they look down on those people. thate that about the fact bobby said hello to the cops. he was not a snotty liberal who thinks i'm better than you because i have a better education than you. it is a real problem in this country. it hurt a lot of the democratic campaign in 2016, elitism. i think it killed them. chris matthews of nbc news and msnbc. thank you for stopping by. 1968, america in turmoil, we will continue the conversation and focus on the role of the media. the assassination of dr. king a

i give an interesting example of vietnam. most people know that the united states saw vietnam too much through a cold war lens and underestimated the extent to which the vietnamese people were fighting for their independence and sovereignty as opposed to cold war marxism. but here's something that i bet most of you don't know. and most experts don't know and that is there was a different ethnic problem we completely missed and that completely undermined all of our effort inside vietnam and that is we couldn't tell -- we didn't care about the difference between the vietnamese and the chinese. i was -- it's funny as an anecdote i was gelling on tv and something in d.c. said don't use the example bass americans don't know the difference between chinese and vietnamese so we always -- our foreign policy, we assume that vietnam was a pawn of communist china. if anybody -- you could see mcnajera talking about if you just paid a little bit of attention though history of vietnam you would see that is impossible. china is this gargantu

a mention of richard nixon, the issue of vietnam. let's listen. [audio clip] >> now, i have told nixon and i repeat to you that i'm trying as hard as i know how to get the peace in vietnam as quickly as i can. for that reason, i am not running. now, when i have anything that i believe justifies or warrants a consultation, i will initiate it. mr. scully: as you hear that conversation, your reaction, james jones. former rep. jones: well, in october, maybe 10 days, two weeks before the election, we were pursuing, or the president was pursuing, a peace agreement in paris and we had the north vietnamese, south vietnamese, et cetera. and the president really thought he was going to reach an agreement. along about that time, our intelligence sources intercepted a phone call from president -- vice president agnew's campaign stop in albuquerque, new mexico, to madam chinault in washington. and shortly thereafter, she had a phone call with the president of vietnam, hold out, hold off, nixon will give you a better deal. then all of a sudden, the negotiations

so he really thought that he was going to be able to get a peace agreement in vietnam. that was the real reason that we started talking about not running. he had mentioned several times, different reasons why he shouldn't run, which i thought were bogus. but for example, he said that his father and grandfather had both died at age 64 and that he was going to die at age 64 and he would be president and he didn't want to die in office. it turned out he did die at age 64, but i think he did not take care of his health as he should have. i never verified whether his father and grandfather died at that age. but, that was one of the excuses. another excuse was that he never appreciated and knew his daughters while they were growing up as much because he was always on the run, always doing things political. and he really wanted to know his grandson, grandchildren who at that time, he had one and he just doted over that little boy. that was another reason he said he did not want to run. but, the final analysis he thought very much if he were a candidate for reelection that he m

i wrote harry every single day that he was in vietnam. every time i put the baby down at night i would -- you know, i didn't have a whole lot to say but i would just -- i would write a letter every day when he was gone. >> that's outstanding. that's -- do you still have those letters? >> harry could not save those letters from where he was being out in the field. >> sure. >> but i saved -- i still have all his letters from vietnam. >> wow. that's wonderful. was he able to call any? >> i think harry called once or twice on that mars system. just maybe once or twice. >> okay. >> and it was really hard. it was hard. >> sure. now, did you follow the news of the war? >> yes. >> okay. >> yeah. >> and how was that? >> well, i mean, everybody was -- you know, everybody was against the war in vietnam. including the news. so, you know, i would watch it and you know, they would show things and it would scare you. and then for a while i wouldn't watch it because it just wasn't worth it. so -- >> uh-huh. okay. and did you hear of any casualties overse

vietnam, urban unrest, law and order. the republican party ultimately capture the nomination of 1964 signaled where the energy at the grassroots, ideologically, where flowing.y was it was flowing to the right of the republican party and it was the goldwater-type conservatives that were on the ascendance and prevailed for the most part in 1968. was richardplayer nixon. he lost the california governorship in 1962. that famous speech, "you won't xon to kicki around anymore." that actually made him look like a victim? guest: it made him look like a has-been. there is a rule in american politics, you're not finished until you say you are finished. if you say you are finished, you are finished. in 1962 said he was finished. he thought he was finished, but he wasn't. his backers in california said, california. this is the scene of your demise. go to new york and you could rise back up. that is what he did. what happened between 1964 and 1966 that laid the groundwork for his primary campaign in 1968? guest: he did a brilliant thi

vietnam fall to communists.he sense in the 1950's that democrats were not tough enough on communism, and so that is one of the reasons they fought in the anon. it basically showed a lot of people that democrats cannot effectively manage foreign policy and the war effort in vietnam. it created a sense that democrats were weak on national security, and that image has been propagated for 50 years. i am not going to say richard nixon fixed the war, although he obviously got the u.s. out of vietnam, but there is a sense that democrats created this problem and it undermined them politically for a long time. i want to share with you a view about the past beginning, who joined us -- cap beginning, who joined as a couple -- pat buchannon, who joined as a couple weeks ago. unit, whichantiwar may the democrats angry. johnson was seen as an american lackey. the best and the brightest had been broken at the wheel of vietnam. your thoughts. didt: i think vietnam destroy a lot of the knewlishment because they that they were no

withdrawal, wouffer it happened for vietnam.ost: let me ask about another key player in this period, william f. buckley. who was he? guest: well, big buckley emerged as probably the leading voice on the conservative side of politics. he was a very young man in 1950, i believe, when he wrote a book after having graduated from yale. he took his alma mater to task or its liberal inclinations. and then five years later became a very young, he was 30 years old, very young editor of the brand-new magazine, national review, which emerged as the leading voice of conserve tism in america. i will say i knew him a bit. i actually ended up corresponding with him when i was in college. i was in a research project that one of my professors at the university of washington organized, and we went off and interviewed various members of a 1947 commission on the american press that was underwritten by henry luth. i flew to new york from seattle, met with henry, and met with a woman. scommoip henry luth was? guest: i'm sorry, he was the founder and

these young men being taken out of school and shipped to vietnam. or deciding they will not go to vietnam and becoming draft doctors. there was a lot of turmoil involving war, involving racism, and the future of what this country was going to be. this is where our leaders like bobby kennedy gets murdered as soon as he got elected. it was very traumatizing. host: professor joseph i will let you take this one. good morning. caller: good morning. to everybody in whatever way you celebrate today. i want to say that when they started killing off all of the civil rights leaders with the king,ys, martin luther and malcolm x., they swept under the rug and said they were all bunch of criminals. then they started to lock us up. .t would not matter if you are black, you could walk across the street sideways and get locked up. you were the enemy against them, now the police shoot and murder people. i never thought i would live to see anything like this in my lifetime. my grandmother told me, she never thought she would live to see a black man in the white house