1
00:00:53,316 --> 00:00:56,069
Coming home from Vietnam

2
00:00:56,194 --> 00:00:59,994
was close to as traumatic
as the war itself.

3
00:01:01,867 --> 00:01:04,837
For years, nobody talked
about Vietnam.

4
00:01:07,998 --> 00:01:09,500
We were friends
with a young couple

5
00:01:09,666 --> 00:01:14,263
and it was only after 12 years
that the two wives were talking.

6
00:01:14,379 --> 00:01:17,724
Found out that we both had been
Marines in Vietnam.

7
00:01:17,841 --> 00:01:20,344
Never said a word about it.

8
00:01:20,469 --> 00:01:22,142
Never mentioned it.

9
00:01:22,262 --> 00:01:24,310
And the whole country
was like that.

10
00:01:25,932 --> 00:01:28,685
It was so divisive.

11
00:01:28,810 --> 00:01:33,691
And it's like living in a family
with an alcoholic father.

12
00:01:33,857 --> 00:01:36,155
"Shh, we don't talk about that."

13
00:01:38,653 --> 00:01:40,530
Our country did that
with Vietnam.

14
00:01:40,655 --> 00:01:43,408
It's only been very recently
that, I think,

15
00:01:43,533 --> 00:01:46,207
that, you know, the baby boomers
are finally starting to say,

16
00:01:46,328 --> 00:01:47,545
"What happened?

17
00:01:47,704 --> 00:01:49,001
What happened?"

18
00:01:58,757 --> 00:02:00,725
What we need now in this country

19
00:02:00,842 --> 00:02:05,063
is to heal the wounds
and to put Vietnam behind us.

20
00:02:17,234 --> 00:02:18,486
The killing

21
00:02:18,610 --> 00:02:20,408
in this tragic war must stop.

22
00:02:31,081 --> 00:02:33,709
General Westmoreland's strategy

23
00:02:33,834 --> 00:02:35,507
is producing results.

24
00:02:35,627 --> 00:02:39,757
The enemy is no longer
closer to victory.

25
00:02:47,222 --> 00:02:49,099
No matter how you measure it,

26
00:02:49,224 --> 00:02:52,068
we're better off than we thought
we would be at this time.

27
00:02:57,524 --> 00:03:00,277
You have been less than candid

28
00:03:00,402 --> 00:03:03,906
as to how deeply we are
involved in Vietnam.

29
00:03:04,030 --> 00:03:05,623
We have increased our assistance

30
00:03:05,740 --> 00:03:07,742
to the government,
its logistics.

31
00:03:07,868 --> 00:03:10,246
We have not sent
combat troops there.

32
00:03:10,370 --> 00:03:13,965
You have
a row of dominoes set up

33
00:03:14,082 --> 00:03:16,130
and you knock over the first one

34
00:03:16,293 --> 00:03:18,091
and the last one,
certainly it will go over.

35
00:03:18,211 --> 00:03:20,339
If aggression
is successful in Korea,

36
00:03:20,463 --> 00:03:22,932
we can expect it to spread
throughout Asia and Europe

37
00:03:23,049 --> 00:03:24,221
and to this hemisphere.

38
00:03:59,169 --> 00:04:03,390
Viktor Frankl, who survived
the death camps in World War II,

39
00:04:03,506 --> 00:04:06,430
wrote a book called
Man's Search for Meaning.

40
00:04:09,012 --> 00:04:11,606
You know, "To live is to suffer.

41
00:04:11,723 --> 00:04:16,149
To survive is to find meaning
in suffering.“

42
00:04:16,269 --> 00:04:20,695
And for those of us who suffered
because of Vietnam,

43
00:04:20,815 --> 00:04:25,036
that's been our quest
ever since.

44
00:04:38,416 --> 00:04:42,512
America's involvement
in Vietnam began in secrecy.

45
00:04:42,629 --> 00:04:47,510
It ended, 30 years later,
in failure,

46
00:04:47,634 --> 00:04:50,888
witnessed by the entire world.

47
00:04:53,932 --> 00:04:57,061
It was begun in
good faith by decent people

48
00:04:57,227 --> 00:04:59,730
out of fateful
misunderstandings,

49
00:04:59,896 --> 00:05:04,242
American overconfidence,
and Cold War miscalculation.

50
00:05:04,359 --> 00:05:09,661
And it was prolonged because it
seemed easier to muddle through

51
00:05:09,781 --> 00:05:12,785
than admit that it had been
caused by tragic decisions,

52
00:05:12,909 --> 00:05:15,879
made by five American
presidents,

53
00:05:15,996 --> 00:05:18,795
belonging to both
political parties.

54
00:05:20,917 --> 00:05:22,760
Before the war was over,

55
00:05:22,877 --> 00:05:26,507
more than 58,000 Americans
would be dead.

56
00:05:26,631 --> 00:05:31,432
At least 250,000
South Vietnamese troops died

57
00:05:31,553 --> 00:05:34,022
in the conflict, as well.

58
00:05:34,139 --> 00:05:38,064
So did over a million
North Vietnamese soldiers

59
00:05:38,184 --> 00:05:39,606
and Viet Cong guerrillas.

60
00:05:45,108 --> 00:05:48,112
Two million
civilians, north and south,

61
00:05:48,278 --> 00:05:50,121
are thought to have perished,

62
00:05:50,238 --> 00:05:53,617
as well as tens of thousands
more in the neighboring states

63
00:05:53,783 --> 00:05:55,535
of Laos and Cambodia.

64
00:05:58,288 --> 00:06:02,293
For many Vietnamese,
it was a brutal civil war;

65
00:06:02,459 --> 00:06:05,804
for others, the bloody
climactic chapter

66
00:06:05,920 --> 00:06:09,390
in a century-old struggle
for independence.

67
00:06:14,637 --> 00:06:16,935
For those
Americans who fought in it,

68
00:06:17,057 --> 00:06:19,901
and for those who fought against
it back home,

69
00:06:20,018 --> 00:06:23,488
as well as for those who merely
glimpsed it on the nightly news,

70
00:06:23,646 --> 00:06:27,321
the Vietnam War
was a decade of agony,

71
00:06:27,442 --> 00:06:32,949
the most divisive period
since the Civil War.

72
00:06:33,073 --> 00:06:37,920
Vietnam seemed to call
everything into question-

73
00:06:38,036 --> 00:06:42,507
the value of honor
and gallantry;

74
00:06:42,624 --> 00:06:47,175
the qualities of cruelty
and mercy;

75
00:06:47,295 --> 00:06:51,721
the candor of the
American government;

76
00:06:51,841 --> 00:06:55,596
and what it means
to be a patriot.

77
00:07:02,102 --> 00:07:04,230
And those who lived through it

78
00:07:04,354 --> 00:07:07,233
have never been able
to erase its memory,

79
00:07:07,357 --> 00:07:10,406
have never stopped arguing
about what really happened,

80
00:07:10,527 --> 00:07:16,034
why everything went so badly
wrong, who was to blame,

81
00:07:16,157 --> 00:07:18,831
and whether it was all worth it.

82
00:08:56,132 --> 00:08:59,557
The French conquest of
Indochina began with an attack

83
00:08:59,677 --> 00:09:05,184
on the ancient Vietnamese port
of Danang in 1858.

84
00:09:05,308 --> 00:09:08,733
It took 50 years to lay claim
to the whole region-

85
00:09:08,853 --> 00:09:13,404
Laos and Cambodia, as well as
the 1,200-mile-long area

86
00:09:13,524 --> 00:09:16,698
that would come to be called
Vietnam.

87
00:09:19,530 --> 00:09:22,500
All of it was ruled
by a French governor-general

88
00:09:22,659 --> 00:09:24,912
from his palace in Hanoi.

89
00:09:26,663 --> 00:09:29,963
The French largely lived
on plantation estates,

90
00:09:30,083 --> 00:09:34,304
and in cities, like Saigon,
made to look as much as possible

91
00:09:34,420 --> 00:09:36,514
like those at home.

92
00:09:37,840 --> 00:09:41,014
Most did not even bother
to learn the language

93
00:09:41,135 --> 00:09:43,012
spoken by their subjects.

94
00:09:43,179 --> 00:09:46,774
Instead they installed a series
of puppet emperors

95
00:09:46,891 --> 00:09:48,438
and employed a network

96
00:09:48,559 --> 00:09:52,359
of French-speaking Vietnamese
officials-mandarins-

97
00:09:52,522 --> 00:09:54,524
willing to carry out
their wishes.

98
00:09:57,986 --> 00:10:02,332
The French put their subjects to
work building roads and canals,

99
00:10:02,448 --> 00:10:04,917
railroads and bridges.

100
00:10:21,217 --> 00:10:23,891
The Vietnamese
people did not take easily

101
00:10:24,053 --> 00:10:25,430
to French occupation,

102
00:10:25,555 --> 00:10:28,308
just as they had fought
against earlier invasions

103
00:10:28,433 --> 00:10:30,026
by the Chinese.

104
00:10:30,143 --> 00:10:34,239
By the early 20th century,
nationalism was on the rise.

105
00:10:34,355 --> 00:10:39,612
But anyone who dared resist
colonial rule risked exile,

106
00:10:39,736 --> 00:10:42,159
prison, or the guillotine.

107
00:11:36,125 --> 00:11:39,254
My hatred for them was pure.

108
00:11:39,379 --> 00:11:41,177
Pure.

109
00:11:41,297 --> 00:11:44,392
I hated them so much.

110
00:11:44,509 --> 00:11:45,886
And I was so scared of them.

111
00:11:50,431 --> 00:11:52,650
Boy, I was terrified of them.

112
00:12:01,150 --> 00:12:04,029
And the scareder I got,
the more I hated them.

113
00:12:07,031 --> 00:12:10,251
I was an 18-year-old Marine
rifleman with the ink still wet

114
00:12:10,368 --> 00:12:12,416
on my high school diploma.

115
00:12:12,537 --> 00:12:14,881
I didn't want to shame myself
in front of my buddies.

116
00:12:17,041 --> 00:12:18,918
But I was so scared.

117
00:12:19,043 --> 00:12:21,842
I felt like I was hanging onto
my honor by my fingernails

118
00:12:21,963 --> 00:12:23,556
the whole time I was there.

119
00:12:38,396 --> 00:12:40,524
In the spring of 1919,

120
00:12:40,648 --> 00:12:43,777
as the victorious Allied Powers
met in Paris

121
00:12:43,901 --> 00:12:47,576
to rebuild a world shattered
by the Great War,

122
00:12:47,697 --> 00:12:51,372
President Woodrow Wilson
headed the American delegation

123
00:12:51,534 --> 00:12:53,878
housed in the Hotel Crillon.

124
00:12:56,789 --> 00:13:00,544
One day, a tall, slender,
29-nine-year-old man

125
00:13:00,710 --> 00:13:03,054
appeared with a petition
for the president

126
00:13:03,212 --> 00:13:07,092
he and other Vietnamese
nationalists had written.

127
00:13:07,216 --> 00:13:10,720
Inspired by Wilson's declaration

128
00:13:10,845 --> 00:13:13,689
that the interests of colonial
peoples should be given

129
00:13:13,806 --> 00:13:16,980
equal weight with those
of their European rulers,

130
00:13:17,101 --> 00:13:20,571
the man was asking that this
principle be applied

131
00:13:20,730 --> 00:13:22,403
to his homeland.

132
00:13:22,523 --> 00:13:27,245
The president's secretary
promised to show it to Wilson,

133
00:13:27,361 --> 00:13:30,911
but there is no
evidence that he ever did.

134
00:13:31,032 --> 00:13:33,501
His name was Nguyen Tat Thanh,

135
00:13:33,618 --> 00:13:37,498
but he was now living under
an alias, Nguyen Ai Quoc-

136
00:13:37,622 --> 00:13:40,171
"Nguyen the Patriot."

137
00:13:41,501 --> 00:13:43,754
During his long, shadowy career,

138
00:13:43,878 --> 00:13:47,553
he would adopt some
70 different pseudonyms,

139
00:13:47,673 --> 00:13:50,722
finally settling on
"the most enlightened one"-

140
00:13:50,843 --> 00:13:54,143
Ho Chi Minh.

141
00:13:54,263 --> 00:13:59,440
Ho Chi Minh was a man
who succeeded in projecting an image

142
00:13:59,602 --> 00:14:03,482
of somebody who was totally
dedicated to freeing

143
00:14:03,606 --> 00:14:07,952
his country and his people
from foreign domination

144
00:14:08,110 --> 00:14:12,035
to the point that he
sacrificed his own well-being,

145
00:14:12,156 --> 00:14:16,002
his own life, not having
a family of his own.

146
00:14:17,453 --> 00:14:19,956
To Vietnamese,
that's a big sacrifice

147
00:14:20,081 --> 00:14:22,800
because to us
everybody needs a family.

148
00:14:24,794 --> 00:14:27,468
Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890,

149
00:14:27,630 --> 00:14:30,474
the son of a minor official
in the French regime.

150
00:14:30,591 --> 00:14:33,470
After taking part
in a demonstration

151
00:14:33,594 --> 00:14:35,141
against the puppet emperor

152
00:14:35,263 --> 00:14:37,061
and the Frenchmen
who pulled his strings,

153
00:14:37,181 --> 00:14:41,231
Ho was expelled from school
and marked for arrest.

154
00:14:43,437 --> 00:14:48,694
He left Vietnam in 1911 and
remained in exile for 30 years.

155
00:14:50,319 --> 00:14:53,493
He served as a cook's helper
aboard a French liner,

156
00:14:53,656 --> 00:14:56,330
and visited New York and Boston,

157
00:14:56,492 --> 00:15:01,464
where he worked for a time as a
pastry chef at the Parker House.

158
00:15:01,581 --> 00:15:06,838
He shoveled snow in London,
tinted photographs in Paris.

159
00:15:08,337 --> 00:15:12,513
There, Ho Chi Minh joined
the French Socialist Party.

160
00:15:12,633 --> 00:15:16,012
But when he discovered the
anti-colonial writings of Lenin,

161
00:15:16,137 --> 00:15:18,105
he became a communist.

162
00:15:19,682 --> 00:15:21,525
He was invited
to Moscow to study,

163
00:15:21,684 --> 00:15:24,654
underwent training
as a Soviet agent,

164
00:15:24,770 --> 00:15:28,115
was sometimes criticized
for being a nationalist first,

165
00:15:28,232 --> 00:15:30,030
a communist second,

166
00:15:30,192 --> 00:15:33,071
and then was dispatched to China

167
00:15:33,195 --> 00:15:36,369
to organize a cell
of other Vietnamese exiles

168
00:15:36,490 --> 00:15:41,041
and help establish
the Indochinese Communist Party.

169
00:15:41,162 --> 00:15:44,837
Through it all,
"He was taut and quivering,"

170
00:15:44,957 --> 00:15:48,177
a friend remembered,
"with only one thought-

171
00:15:48,294 --> 00:15:51,093
his country, Vietnam."

172
00:16:04,977 --> 00:16:11,360
By 1940, much of
the world was at war again.

173
00:16:17,740 --> 00:16:21,586
Germany had seized most
of Western Europe,

174
00:16:21,702 --> 00:16:23,579
including France.

175
00:16:27,083 --> 00:16:28,801
Imperial Japan threatened

176
00:16:28,918 --> 00:16:30,966
many of the European colonies
in Asia,

177
00:16:31,087 --> 00:16:34,933
and occupied Vietnam, where
they permitted their allies,

178
00:16:35,049 --> 00:16:36,596
the collaborationist French,

179
00:16:36,717 --> 00:16:39,391
to continue to oversee
their colony.

180
00:16:42,598 --> 00:16:46,102
To some Vietnamese,
the coming of the Japanese

181
00:16:46,268 --> 00:16:50,774
seemed to signal a welcome end
to white colonial rule.

182
00:16:50,898 --> 00:16:54,118
But Ho Chi Minh,
still in exile in China,

183
00:16:54,276 --> 00:16:57,621
saw the Japanese
as alien invaders,

184
00:16:57,738 --> 00:17:00,116
no more welcome than the French.

185
00:17:00,282 --> 00:17:03,411
They were only interested in
exploiting his country

186
00:17:03,536 --> 00:17:09,214
and seizing Vietnamese crops
to fill their own rice bowls.

187
00:17:09,333 --> 00:17:11,631
The time had come, he said,

188
00:17:11,794 --> 00:17:15,298
to rally "patriots of all ages
and all types,

189
00:17:15,464 --> 00:17:19,469
peasants, workers, merchants
and soldiers"

190
00:17:19,635 --> 00:17:23,310
to defeat the Japanese and
the collaborationist French.

191
00:17:27,101 --> 00:17:32,608
In February of 1941, after three
decades away from his homeland,

192
00:17:32,732 --> 00:17:36,737
Ho Chi Minh slipped back across
the Chinese border into Vietnam

193
00:17:36,861 --> 00:17:41,162
and set up headquarters near
the remote village of Pac Bo

194
00:17:41,282 --> 00:17:44,081
in a limestone cave
at the side of a mountain

195
00:17:44,201 --> 00:17:46,875
he named for Karl Marx,

196
00:17:46,996 --> 00:17:52,469
overlooking a jungle stream
he named for his hero, Lenin.

197
00:17:54,837 --> 00:17:57,465
There, he founded
a revolutionary movement,

198
00:17:57,590 --> 00:18:01,220
which he called the
Vietnam Independence League-

199
00:18:01,343 --> 00:18:03,971
the Viet Minh.

200
00:18:16,692 --> 00:18:19,866
To build and lead a
Fighting force for his revolution,

201
00:18:19,987 --> 00:18:22,581
Ho called upon Vo Nguyen Giap,

202
00:18:22,698 --> 00:18:25,076
a one-time teacher
of French history

203
00:18:25,201 --> 00:18:28,876
who had instructed
the children of Hanoi's elite.

204
00:18:28,996 --> 00:18:32,546
Giap was an early convert
to communism,

205
00:18:32,666 --> 00:18:36,011
whose life-long hatred
for the French intensified

206
00:18:36,128 --> 00:18:39,382
when they beat his wife to death
in prison.

207
00:18:39,548 --> 00:18:43,769
Inspired by Napoleon,
Lawrence of Arabia,

208
00:18:43,886 --> 00:18:47,481
and the communist Chinese
revolutionary Mao Zedong,

209
00:18:47,598 --> 00:18:49,896
Giap had already begun
to develop

210
00:18:50,017 --> 00:18:54,238
a distinctive theory of warfare
that relied on guerrilla tactics

211
00:18:54,396 --> 00:18:59,368
until a full-scale conventional
attack could be mounted.

212
00:18:59,485 --> 00:19:03,410
In the fight for independence
which he believed was coming,

213
00:19:03,572 --> 00:19:10,205
his armies, Giap said, would be
"everywhere and nowhere."

214
00:19:10,329 --> 00:19:14,129
The reason Vietnamese
had always resort to guerrilla warfare

215
00:19:14,250 --> 00:19:16,753
was because we were
a small country.

216
00:19:16,877 --> 00:19:22,099
And it was just a way of fight
the weak against the strong.

217
00:19:22,258 --> 00:19:25,762
Don't fight unless you're
sure you can win,

218
00:19:25,928 --> 00:19:29,228
and surprise is a big element.

219
00:19:31,058 --> 00:19:33,607
Choose your own battle.

220
00:19:39,316 --> 00:19:43,446
I had about 26
guys that clay out of 45.

221
00:19:43,612 --> 00:19:45,910
We were always
somewhat understrength.

222
00:19:46,031 --> 00:19:48,284
And this day we were
quite understrength.

223
00:19:49,952 --> 00:19:51,829
My platoon's on point.

224
00:19:56,959 --> 00:19:58,632
Go, 90, 90, 90, 90!

225
00:19:58,752 --> 00:20:01,471
And all of a
sudden the very point man,

226
00:20:01,630 --> 00:20:05,055
the first guy in the column,
said, “VC on the trail.

227
00:20:05,175 --> 00:20:06,427
VC on the trail."

228
00:20:08,429 --> 00:20:10,727
Before I had a chance
to digest this...

229
00:20:12,057 --> 00:20:13,857
he went down,
shot right through the chest.

230
00:20:16,061 --> 00:20:19,611
And what was a very
well-laid ambush erupted.

231
00:20:30,826 --> 00:20:32,999
I knew I'd lost a bunch of guys.

232
00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:37,296
I said a prayer to God saying,
basically,

233
00:20:37,416 --> 00:20:39,839
"If you need any more guys
from my platoon, take me.

234
00:20:39,960 --> 00:20:41,803
Don't take any more of my men."

235
00:20:41,921 --> 00:20:45,346
As soon as I said it,
I freaked myself out and said,

236
00:20:45,466 --> 00:20:46,843
"Holy shit.

237
00:20:46,967 --> 00:20:49,516
Can I take that prayer back?"

238
00:20:59,688 --> 00:21:03,033
By the spring of 1945,

239
00:21:03,150 --> 00:21:08,452
more than three years after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

240
00:21:08,572 --> 00:21:11,701
the United States government
was looking for allies

241
00:21:11,825 --> 00:21:13,873
behind the lines in Vietnam.

242
00:21:13,994 --> 00:21:15,996
The Americans were hoping
to find a way

243
00:21:16,121 --> 00:21:19,375
to undermine Japanese forces
there

244
00:21:19,500 --> 00:21:22,629
when they were contacted
by Ho Chi Minh.

245
00:21:22,753 --> 00:21:24,551
And so it was decided to drop

246
00:21:24,672 --> 00:21:29,644
an OSS team in to meet with
the Viet Minh leadership.

247
00:21:32,137 --> 00:21:35,357
Paul Hoagland was
the medic on the team.

248
00:21:35,474 --> 00:21:39,069
And the first thing he was told
was that he must attend

249
00:21:39,186 --> 00:21:40,984
to their leader, who was
desperately sick.

250
00:21:41,105 --> 00:21:44,109
So he was taken to a grass shack

251
00:21:44,233 --> 00:21:48,579
where a bewhiskered, skinny man
lay on a bundle of straw,

252
00:21:48,696 --> 00:21:50,198
desperately ill.

253
00:21:50,322 --> 00:21:51,915
And that was Ho Chi Minh.

254
00:21:54,410 --> 00:21:59,007
The OSS, the secret
wartime precursor of the CIA,

255
00:21:59,123 --> 00:22:02,218
supplied Ho's ragtag guerrillas
with arms

256
00:22:02,334 --> 00:22:07,135
and marveled at how quickly
they learned to handle them.

257
00:22:07,256 --> 00:22:09,930
Ho Chi Minh began to call
his followers

258
00:22:10,092 --> 00:22:14,268
the “Viet-American Army,"
and praised the United States

259
00:22:14,388 --> 00:22:16,186
as a "champion of democracy"

260
00:22:16,306 --> 00:22:19,435
that would surely help them end
colonial rule.

261
00:22:37,786 --> 00:22:42,337
Meanwhile, Famine gripped
the northern part of the country.

262
00:22:42,458 --> 00:22:44,426
Hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese

263
00:22:44,543 --> 00:22:46,466
were dying of starvation

264
00:22:46,628 --> 00:22:49,802
while Japanese storehouses
were filled with rice.

265
00:22:52,885 --> 00:22:54,925
In those
clays, garbage was collected

266
00:22:54,970 --> 00:22:57,098
by people pushing carts.

267
00:22:57,222 --> 00:23:01,728
And my mother remembers that
every morning she would see

268
00:23:01,852 --> 00:23:03,729
these garbage carts going around

269
00:23:03,854 --> 00:23:06,198
and people picking up dead
bodies and throwing them

270
00:23:06,315 --> 00:23:07,817
on the cart.

271
00:23:07,941 --> 00:23:09,443
It was incredible.

272
00:23:09,568 --> 00:23:13,118
And people who lived through it
never, never forgot.

273
00:23:13,238 --> 00:23:17,618
Duong Van Mai's
father was the deputy governor

274
00:23:17,743 --> 00:23:19,871
of a province east of Hanoi,

275
00:23:19,995 --> 00:23:22,418
the son and grandson
of mandarins

276
00:23:22,539 --> 00:23:25,167
who had all served the French.

277
00:23:25,292 --> 00:23:28,592
He and his wife had 17 children.

278
00:23:28,712 --> 00:23:33,434
Parents who had
children who were, you know, plump,

279
00:23:33,550 --> 00:23:35,973
were very afraid of their
children being stolen

280
00:23:36,095 --> 00:23:38,518
and killed.

281
00:23:38,639 --> 00:23:41,688
And it was really like
hell on earth.

282
00:23:41,850 --> 00:23:45,354
The government didn't have
a clue on how to deal

283
00:23:45,521 --> 00:23:47,569
with this calamity.

284
00:23:49,191 --> 00:23:50,443
But Ho Chi Minh did.

285
00:23:50,567 --> 00:23:52,786
He directed the Viet Minh

286
00:23:52,903 --> 00:23:56,157
to break into the Japanese
storehouses wherever they could

287
00:23:56,281 --> 00:24:00,377
and distribute the rice
to the people.

288
00:24:00,536 --> 00:24:03,005
They were hailed as saviors.

289
00:24:17,845 --> 00:24:21,019
When an atomic
bomb destroyed Hiroshima,

290
00:24:21,140 --> 00:24:24,644
and three days later a second
one destroyed Nagasaki,

291
00:24:24,768 --> 00:24:27,772
Japanese surrender
seemed imminent.

292
00:24:29,857 --> 00:24:33,407
Ho Chi Minh called upon
all Vietnamese to rise up

293
00:24:33,527 --> 00:24:35,404
and take over their own country

294
00:24:35,571 --> 00:24:37,915
before the Free French
could reestablish

295
00:24:38,031 --> 00:24:40,500
their old colonial regime.

296
00:24:40,617 --> 00:24:45,748
They did, in cities and towns
across the country.

297
00:24:49,334 --> 00:24:52,258
On September 2, 1945,

298
00:24:52,379 --> 00:24:55,098
the same day the Japanese
formally surrendered,

299
00:24:55,257 --> 00:24:58,101
hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese

300
00:24:58,260 --> 00:25:02,936
streamed into Ba Dinh Square in
Hanoi to see for the first time

301
00:25:03,098 --> 00:25:06,272
the mysterious leader
of the Viet Minh

302
00:25:06,435 --> 00:25:11,032
and hear him proclaim
Vietnam's independence.

303
00:25:14,693 --> 00:25:19,199
With an OSS
officer standing nearby,

304
00:25:19,323 --> 00:25:23,294
Ho Chi Minh began with the words
of Thomas Jefferson:

305
00:25:23,410 --> 00:25:25,959
"All men are created equal.

306
00:25:26,079 --> 00:25:28,832
"They are endowed
by their creator

307
00:25:28,957 --> 00:25:32,052
"with certain
unalienable rights;

308
00:25:32,169 --> 00:25:34,797
"that among these are life,
liberty

309
00:25:34,963 --> 00:25:37,136
and the pursuit of happiness."

310
00:25:59,738 --> 00:26:01,957
Ho Chi Minh had great hopes

311
00:26:02,074 --> 00:26:07,422
that the U.S. would support the
Vietnam desire for independence,

312
00:26:07,537 --> 00:26:09,289
not necessarily by intervening

313
00:26:09,414 --> 00:26:13,169
but by doing what it could

314
00:26:13,293 --> 00:26:16,843
to support an
independence movement.

315
00:26:16,964 --> 00:26:20,639
Ho Chi Minh's hopes for
American support were calculated

316
00:26:20,759 --> 00:26:23,638
but understandable.

317
00:26:23,762 --> 00:26:27,642
President Franklin Roosevelt had
promised a postwar world

318
00:26:27,766 --> 00:26:30,815
that would "respect the rights
of all peoples

319
00:26:30,936 --> 00:26:33,860
to choose the form of government
under which they live."

320
00:26:36,775 --> 00:26:40,575
But Roosevelt was dead now,
and his successor, Harry Truman,

321
00:26:40,696 --> 00:26:44,542
had inherited
a very different world.

322
00:26:44,658 --> 00:26:46,956
The alliance
with the Soviet Union

323
00:26:47,077 --> 00:26:50,877
that had won the
Second World War had collapsed.

324
00:26:50,998 --> 00:26:54,593
The Soviets now occupied
the Eastern European countries

325
00:26:54,710 --> 00:26:59,261
they had overrun, and hoped to
spread their influence farther,

326
00:26:59,381 --> 00:27:04,012
into Iran, Turkey,
and the Mediterranean.

327
00:27:04,136 --> 00:27:08,437
A new cold war had begun.

328
00:27:08,557 --> 00:27:11,106
French president
Charles De Gaulle warned

329
00:27:11,226 --> 00:27:14,275
that if the United States
insisted on independence

330
00:27:14,396 --> 00:27:17,991
for her colonies,
France might have no choice

331
00:27:18,108 --> 00:27:21,408
but to "fall into
the Russian orbit."

332
00:27:21,570 --> 00:27:24,915
The United States must do
nothing to undercut

333
00:27:25,073 --> 00:27:30,421
the restoration of France's
empire, including Vietnam.

334
00:27:34,541 --> 00:27:38,011
There were hardly any
Americans in Vietnam, you know...

335
00:27:38,128 --> 00:27:41,098
State Department people,
consular officials,

336
00:27:41,214 --> 00:27:43,387
a few businessmen.

337
00:27:43,508 --> 00:27:45,510
Hardly anyone from this country

338
00:27:45,635 --> 00:27:47,387
knew where Vietnam was located.

339
00:27:47,512 --> 00:27:52,188
George Wickes was
part of a seven-man OSS mission

340
00:27:52,309 --> 00:27:55,609
sent to Saigon,
the largest city in the south.

341
00:27:55,771 --> 00:27:59,196
The United States
was officially neutral,

342
00:27:59,316 --> 00:28:01,990
hoping the French
and Viet Minh could reach

343
00:28:02,110 --> 00:28:05,614
some peaceful solution
on their own.

344
00:28:05,781 --> 00:28:09,251
Allied leaders had agreed
temporarily to divide Vietnam

345
00:28:09,368 --> 00:28:11,837
into two separate zones.

346
00:28:11,953 --> 00:28:16,129
Nationalist Chinese troops were
to handle things in the north.

347
00:28:16,249 --> 00:28:19,674
British colonial troops would
try to perform the same task

348
00:28:19,795 --> 00:28:22,594
in the south,
where rival factions,

349
00:28:22,714 --> 00:28:26,810
including the French and Viet
Minh, were already fighting

350
00:28:26,927 --> 00:28:29,806
in the streets of Saigon.

351
00:28:29,930 --> 00:28:32,274
No one was in charge.

352
00:28:32,391 --> 00:28:36,521
On both sides, there was
brutality and atrocity

353
00:28:36,645 --> 00:28:38,147
and violence.

354
00:28:38,271 --> 00:28:40,774
It wasn't quite a civil war

355
00:28:40,899 --> 00:28:42,742
but it was getting very
close to civil war

356
00:28:42,859 --> 00:28:45,157
in the streets of Saigon.

357
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:48,244
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Dewey,

358
00:28:48,365 --> 00:28:51,710
the 28-year-old commander
of the OSS in Saigon,

359
00:28:51,827 --> 00:28:54,421
tried to make sense of it all.

360
00:28:54,538 --> 00:28:57,257
Right from the start he
was in touch with everybody...

361
00:28:57,374 --> 00:29:00,093
not only the French,
but very soon he established

362
00:29:00,210 --> 00:29:04,306
a connection with various
Vietnamese groups.

363
00:29:04,423 --> 00:29:07,393
The Viet Minh soon
established themselves

364
00:29:07,509 --> 00:29:09,932
as the most successful.

365
00:29:10,053 --> 00:29:12,852
Dewey, who spoke fluent French,

366
00:29:12,973 --> 00:29:15,817
brokered talks between
a Viet Minh spokesman

367
00:29:15,934 --> 00:29:19,655
and the senior French
representative in the city.

368
00:29:19,771 --> 00:29:24,527
His efforts infuriated
British general Douglas Gracey,

369
00:29:24,651 --> 00:29:27,530
who commanded
Allied forces in the south.

370
00:29:27,696 --> 00:29:30,540
Gracey was convinced
that French control

371
00:29:30,657 --> 00:29:33,456
should be reimposed
as soon as possible.

372
00:29:33,577 --> 00:29:36,877
By conferring with
the Viet Minh, Gracey said,

373
00:29:37,038 --> 00:29:41,464
Colonel Dewey had become
a "subversive" force.

374
00:29:43,044 --> 00:29:46,514
The violence in and around
Saigon escalated.

375
00:29:48,550 --> 00:29:51,224
Colonel Dewey urgently
cabled his superiors:

376
00:29:51,386 --> 00:29:54,890
Vietnam "is burning," he wrote.

377
00:29:55,015 --> 00:29:57,484
"The French and British
are finished here

378
00:29:57,601 --> 00:30:00,104
and the United States,"
he concluded,

379
00:30:00,228 --> 00:30:02,401
"ought to clear out
of Southeast Asia."

380
00:30:06,735 --> 00:30:11,161
Two days later,
September 26, 1945,

381
00:30:11,281 --> 00:30:12,749
he set out for the airport,

382
00:30:12,908 --> 00:30:17,709
prepared to fly
to OSS headquarters.

383
00:30:17,829 --> 00:30:22,801
At a roadblock, the Viet Minh
mistook Dewey for a Frenchman

384
00:30:22,918 --> 00:30:24,920
and opened fire.

385
00:30:26,588 --> 00:30:29,762
He was killed instantly.

386
00:30:29,925 --> 00:30:33,680
Ho Chi Minh wrote
to the United States

387
00:30:33,803 --> 00:30:37,774
lamenting the death of Dewey,
whom he recognized

388
00:30:37,933 --> 00:30:41,779
as a person sympathetic
to his cause.

389
00:30:41,895 --> 00:30:44,648
It seemed a terrible irony
that Dewey,

390
00:30:44,773 --> 00:30:47,322
who was doing what he could
to help

391
00:30:47,442 --> 00:30:51,117
the Vietnamese independence
movement should have been killed

392
00:30:51,238 --> 00:30:53,457
by the Vietnamese by a mistake.

393
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:09,716
An elderly African-American
woman answered the door.

394
00:31:14,803 --> 00:31:18,683
I think she knew the instant
she saw us why we were there.

395
00:31:21,685 --> 00:31:23,813
And the padre said, uh,

396
00:31:23,937 --> 00:31:28,488
"I'm... I'm terribly sorry
to inform you,

397
00:31:28,650 --> 00:31:33,827
but your son was killed
in Vietnam."

398
00:31:33,947 --> 00:31:34,947
And she just sat down.

399
00:31:34,990 --> 00:31:36,583
Didn't say a word.

400
00:31:38,952 --> 00:31:42,673
Then the... her husband says,
"No, there's a mistake."

401
00:31:42,789 --> 00:31:44,507
He comes back with this letter.

402
00:31:44,666 --> 00:31:46,885
And he said, "Look, see?

403
00:31:47,002 --> 00:31:51,883
We got it yesterday, my... our
son was still alive yesterday."

404
00:31:52,007 --> 00:31:54,977
And the chaplain looked
at the letter

405
00:31:55,093 --> 00:31:57,266
and he said, "It's a week old.

406
00:31:57,387 --> 00:32:01,733
I think your son was killed on
the day he wrote this letter."

407
00:32:09,608 --> 00:32:13,784
In the fall of 1945, a
week after Colonel Dewey's death,

408
00:32:13,903 --> 00:32:16,782
fresh French troops
began arriving in Saigon,

409
00:32:16,906 --> 00:32:20,752
taking over from the British.

410
00:32:20,869 --> 00:32:22,041
They quickly established

411
00:32:22,162 --> 00:32:23,914
control of the city

412
00:32:24,039 --> 00:32:25,336
and set out to reoccupy

413
00:32:25,457 --> 00:32:27,209
the entire country.

414
00:32:29,169 --> 00:32:32,890
Ho Chi Minh hoped somehow
to achieve independence

415
00:32:33,006 --> 00:32:34,974
without a war with France,

416
00:32:35,091 --> 00:32:38,470
and he still hoped the
United States would intervene.

417
00:32:38,595 --> 00:32:42,520
"You never had an empire, never
exploited the Asian peoples,"

418
00:32:42,641 --> 00:32:45,736
he would tell a visiting
American journalist.

419
00:32:45,852 --> 00:32:49,902
"Do not be blinded by this issue
of communism."

420
00:32:50,023 --> 00:32:55,120
He did not want to fight
the French as an enemy of America.

421
00:32:55,236 --> 00:33:01,369
And, in fact, I saw the letters
he wrote to President Truman

422
00:33:01,493 --> 00:33:05,919
saying, "We believe in the same
things you believe."

423
00:33:06,039 --> 00:33:09,259
Those letters I saw
in the CIA files,

424
00:33:09,417 --> 00:33:13,263
they had never been given
to President Truman.

425
00:33:17,509 --> 00:33:22,106
In June of 1946, Ho
Chi Minh returned to Paris

426
00:33:22,222 --> 00:33:25,101
in a fruitless attempt to get
the French to live up

427
00:33:25,266 --> 00:33:28,440
to a promise they had made
of increased autonomy

428
00:33:28,561 --> 00:33:30,780
for his country.

429
00:33:30,897 --> 00:33:32,649
While Ho was away,

430
00:33:32,774 --> 00:33:36,119
General Giap began consolidating
communist control

431
00:33:36,277 --> 00:33:37,620
of the revolution.

432
00:33:37,737 --> 00:33:40,456
He conducted a merciless purge

433
00:33:40,615 --> 00:33:43,494
of members of rival
nationalist parties

434
00:33:43,618 --> 00:33:46,963
and people he called
"reactionary saboteurs"-

435
00:33:47,122 --> 00:33:52,344
landlords and moneylenders,
Trotskyites and Catholics,

436
00:33:52,460 --> 00:33:56,806
men and women accused of
collaborating with the French.

437
00:33:56,965 --> 00:34:01,186
Hundreds were shot,
drowned, buried alive.

438
00:34:14,357 --> 00:34:19,204
On December 19, 1946,
after months of building tension,

439
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:21,493
fighting broke out in Hanoi

440
00:34:21,656 --> 00:34:24,500
between the Viet Minh
and the French.

441
00:34:28,830 --> 00:34:31,959
The Viet Minh proved no match
for French firepower.

442
00:34:36,546 --> 00:34:41,393
Ho, Giap, and their comrades
slipped out of the city

443
00:34:41,509 --> 00:34:45,514
and returned to their mountain
stronghold far to the north.

444
00:34:47,766 --> 00:34:50,861
"Those who have rifles will use
their rifles,"

445
00:34:51,019 --> 00:34:53,021
Ho declared in a radio address

446
00:34:53,146 --> 00:34:55,945
calling for a nationwide
guerrilla war.

447
00:34:56,065 --> 00:34:59,911
"Those who have swords
will use swords;

448
00:35:00,028 --> 00:35:05,205
those who have no swords
will use spades or sticks."

449
00:35:35,605 --> 00:35:38,199
But the country
Ho Chi Minh hoped to unite

450
00:35:38,316 --> 00:35:41,536
was itself bitterly divided.

451
00:35:41,653 --> 00:35:43,906
Families were being torn apart.

452
00:35:44,072 --> 00:35:47,872
Despite her father's position
in the French government,

453
00:35:47,992 --> 00:35:52,919
Duong Van Mai's sister felt
compelled to answer Ho's call.

454
00:35:54,582 --> 00:35:58,177
My older
sister Thang was married

455
00:35:58,294 --> 00:36:03,266
to a man who had great sympathy
for the Viet Minh.

456
00:36:03,424 --> 00:36:06,394
And by that time Ho Chi Minh
had evacuated his government

457
00:36:06,511 --> 00:36:07,763
to the mountain base.

458
00:36:07,929 --> 00:36:11,524
So my sister and her husband
trekked all the way

459
00:36:11,641 --> 00:36:13,860
from Hanoi toward the base

460
00:36:13,977 --> 00:36:17,481
in order to join the resistance
against the French.

461
00:36:20,233 --> 00:36:22,656
So the Vietnam War
was really a civil war

462
00:36:22,777 --> 00:36:24,404
down to the family level.

463
00:36:32,787 --> 00:36:36,382
France poured
thousands of men into Vietnam...

464
00:36:36,499 --> 00:36:40,800
French regulars, European
mercenaries, and colonial troops

465
00:36:40,962 --> 00:36:44,842
from Morocco, Algeria,
Tunisia, and Senegal-

466
00:36:44,966 --> 00:36:49,813
who fought alongside an army
of Cambodians, Laotians,

467
00:36:49,971 --> 00:36:52,815
and anti-communist Vietnamese.

468
00:36:56,686 --> 00:37:00,907
French forces managed to occupy
most of the large towns

469
00:37:01,024 --> 00:37:02,401
and province capitals

470
00:37:02,525 --> 00:37:07,497
and established hundreds
of isolated outposts.

471
00:37:07,655 --> 00:37:12,286
The French also set out to try
to win over rural Vietnamese

472
00:37:12,410 --> 00:37:15,664
through a program
they called pacification-

473
00:37:15,830 --> 00:37:17,878
pacification-

474
00:37:17,999 --> 00:37:22,630
building dikes, schools and
roads, and vaccinating children.

475
00:37:25,506 --> 00:37:27,850
The French
would pacify a village

476
00:37:28,009 --> 00:37:32,139
and during the daytime
they could control it.

477
00:37:32,263 --> 00:37:35,733
But at night the Viet Minh
would come back.

478
00:37:35,850 --> 00:37:40,026
And so it was never
completely secure.

479
00:37:40,146 --> 00:37:43,525
My father would shake his head
and said, you know,

480
00:37:43,691 --> 00:37:45,193
"Pacification is really futile

481
00:37:45,318 --> 00:37:49,539
because it's like trying to hold
sand in your fingers."

482
00:37:53,034 --> 00:37:58,086
The Viet Minh mined roads,
blew up bridges and railroads,

483
00:37:58,206 --> 00:38:03,303
ambushed French patrols,
and then disappeared.

484
00:38:05,672 --> 00:38:09,848
French soldiers sometimes took
revenge on the nearest village,

485
00:38:09,968 --> 00:38:12,346
burning homes, raping women,

486
00:38:12,470 --> 00:38:16,646
executing men suspected
of aiding the Viet Minh.

487
00:38:55,638 --> 00:39:00,439
But the communists proved
every bit as ruthless as the French.

488
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:03,609
"It is better to kill even
those who might be innocent,"

489
00:39:03,771 --> 00:39:09,449
one commander said, "than to let
a guilty person go."

490
00:39:09,610 --> 00:39:11,829
And they specifically targeted

491
00:39:11,946 --> 00:39:15,200
anyone who had links
to the French.

492
00:39:15,324 --> 00:39:18,954
Once my father started
working for the French, then he was

493
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:21,748
a target, especially
the higher he rose,

494
00:39:21,873 --> 00:39:23,716
the bigger target he became.

495
00:39:23,833 --> 00:39:29,886
A Viet Minh agent actually came
in with a pistol to shoot him

496
00:39:30,006 --> 00:39:33,556
but at the last moment
decided not to.

497
00:40:12,632 --> 00:40:15,886
French casualties
continued to mount.

498
00:40:16,010 --> 00:40:18,854
“There are days
when we are so discouraged

499
00:40:18,971 --> 00:40:21,520
that we would like
to give it all up,"

500
00:40:21,682 --> 00:40:23,730
a French soldier
wrote his mother.

501
00:40:23,851 --> 00:40:27,025
"Convoys under attack,
roads cut,

502
00:40:27,188 --> 00:40:30,237
"firing in all directions
every night,

503
00:40:30,358 --> 00:40:32,281
the indifference at home."

504
00:40:41,994 --> 00:40:44,723
While I was there I had
the opportunity to call my mother,

505
00:40:44,747 --> 00:40:46,875
you know.

506
00:40:46,999 --> 00:40:50,003
And I was telling my mother
what was happening over there,

507
00:40:50,128 --> 00:40:53,223
and I was telling her how
she shouldn't believe

508
00:40:53,339 --> 00:40:56,183
what she sees in the newspaper
and sees on television

509
00:40:56,300 --> 00:40:58,894
because we're losing the war.

510
00:40:59,053 --> 00:41:01,727
I said, "And you'll probably
never see me again

511
00:41:01,889 --> 00:41:05,439
"because we're the most northern
outpost that the Marines have,

512
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:06,857
you know."

513
00:41:06,978 --> 00:41:08,997
We could literally... could look
right into North Vietnam.

514
00:41:09,021 --> 00:41:10,981
We could see the sparks
when the guns fired on us.

515
00:41:11,065 --> 00:41:13,193
And I said, "And everybody
in my unit is dying.

516
00:41:13,317 --> 00:41:15,911
I probably won't be
coming back."

517
00:41:16,028 --> 00:41:18,030
And my mother said,
"No, you're coming back."

518
00:41:18,156 --> 00:41:21,877
She said, "I talk to God
every day and you're special.

519
00:41:21,993 --> 00:41:23,791
You're coming back."

520
00:41:23,911 --> 00:41:26,130
And I said, "Ma, everybody's
mother thinks

521
00:41:26,247 --> 00:41:28,420
"that they're special.

522
00:41:28,583 --> 00:41:32,588
You know, I'm putting pieces
of special people in bags."

523
00:41:38,092 --> 00:41:39,778
President Truman's
dramatic announcement

524
00:41:39,802 --> 00:41:41,224
that Russia had the atom secret

525
00:41:41,345 --> 00:41:42,990
caused state departments
all over the world

526
00:41:43,014 --> 00:41:45,733
to stir uneasily.

527
00:41:45,850 --> 00:41:49,855
We were very aware
that there was a Cold War

528
00:41:49,979 --> 00:41:51,822
and that we had an enemy,

529
00:41:51,939 --> 00:41:55,944
and that enemy was
the Soviet Union.

530
00:41:56,110 --> 00:41:59,114
The United States stood
at one pole

531
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:01,374
and the Soviet Union stood
at the other pole.

532
00:42:01,490 --> 00:42:04,460
It was kind of a
Manichean dynamic

533
00:42:04,577 --> 00:42:06,295
that there was evil
and there was good.

534
00:42:06,454 --> 00:42:08,377
And we were good,
and the other side was evil.

535
00:42:08,497 --> 00:42:11,546
It wasn't morally ambiguous.

536
00:42:14,378 --> 00:42:18,508
Just a few weeks after
Russia became a nuclear power,

537
00:42:18,633 --> 00:42:20,476
there was more stunning news-

538
00:42:20,593 --> 00:42:24,143
communist forces under
Mao Zedong seized control

539
00:42:24,305 --> 00:42:26,854
of China.

540
00:42:26,974 --> 00:42:30,820
Separate communist insurrections
were also underway

541
00:42:30,978 --> 00:42:36,485
in the British colonies
of Burma and Malaya.

542
00:42:36,609 --> 00:42:40,284
In January 1950,
Mao formally recognized

543
00:42:40,404 --> 00:42:44,409
Ho Chi Minh's insurgency and
agreed to provide the arms,

544
00:42:44,533 --> 00:42:48,504
equipment, and military training
he had been seeking.

545
00:42:48,621 --> 00:42:52,592
The Soviets recognized
the Viet Minh as well,

546
00:42:52,708 --> 00:42:54,506
and also offered help.

547
00:42:54,627 --> 00:42:58,177
President Truman,
who was being blamed

548
00:42:58,297 --> 00:43:02,018
by his political opponents
for having "lost" China,

549
00:43:02,176 --> 00:43:04,474
and having failed to "contain"
communism,

550
00:43:04,595 --> 00:43:08,020
approved a $23 million
aid program

551
00:43:08,140 --> 00:43:10,859
for the French in Vietnam.

552
00:43:10,977 --> 00:43:15,733
The United States
was no longer neutral.

553
00:43:15,856 --> 00:43:18,700
We were caught
on the horns of a dilemma

554
00:43:18,818 --> 00:43:21,412
of how can we maintain
our friendship

555
00:43:21,529 --> 00:43:25,250
and our alliance with the French
and support them in Indochina

556
00:43:25,366 --> 00:43:28,996
while we, as a former
colony ourselves,

557
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:32,044
sympathized with the Vietnamese
and their aspirations

558
00:43:32,206 --> 00:43:34,083
for freedom and independence?

559
00:43:38,963 --> 00:43:41,358
A highly trained and
well-equipped North Korean Army

560
00:43:41,382 --> 00:43:43,510
swarmed across the 38th parallel

561
00:43:43,634 --> 00:43:45,636
to attack unprepared
South Korean defenders.

562
00:43:47,471 --> 00:43:51,066
In June of 1950, China's ally,

563
00:43:51,225 --> 00:43:54,695
communist North Korea,
invaded South Korea.

564
00:43:56,355 --> 00:43:58,232
President Truman ordered

565
00:43:58,357 --> 00:44:00,576
tens of thousands
of American ground troops

566
00:44:00,735 --> 00:44:02,487
onto the Korean Peninsula.

567
00:44:09,493 --> 00:44:11,370
The United States and its allies

568
00:44:11,495 --> 00:44:15,750
eventually pushed the invaders
back north.

569
00:44:15,916 --> 00:44:18,169
Meanwhile in southern China,

570
00:44:18,294 --> 00:44:20,672
Mao's military was beginning
to turn the Viet Minh

571
00:44:20,796 --> 00:44:24,596
into a modern fighting force,

572
00:44:24,717 --> 00:44:28,767
capable of inflicting a heavy
toll on the French occupiers.

573
00:44:36,145 --> 00:44:37,897
In July, the Truman
administration

574
00:44:38,022 --> 00:44:40,866
quietly dispatched
transport planes

575
00:44:40,983 --> 00:44:43,532
and a shipload of jeeps
to Vietnam.

576
00:44:43,652 --> 00:44:49,375
Thirty-five military advisors
went along to oversee their use.

577
00:44:51,243 --> 00:44:54,122
None of them, and no one
in the American embassy,

578
00:44:54,288 --> 00:44:58,259
spoke a word of Vietnamese.

579
00:44:58,376 --> 00:45:02,597
But the United States was now
officially in Vietnam.

580
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:06,968
In October of 1950,

581
00:45:07,134 --> 00:45:10,138
hundreds of thousands
of Chinese troops

582
00:45:10,304 --> 00:45:12,432
began pouring into North Korea,

583
00:45:12,556 --> 00:45:16,481
driving the allies
back down the peninsula.

584
00:45:16,644 --> 00:45:18,237
As that fighting raged,

585
00:45:18,354 --> 00:45:21,528
Truman continued to increase
military aid

586
00:45:21,649 --> 00:45:24,448
for the French war in Vietnam.

587
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:29,966
If aggression
is successful in Korea,

588
00:45:29,990 --> 00:45:33,164
we can expect it to spread
throughout Asia and Europe

589
00:45:33,327 --> 00:45:34,499
and to this hemisphere.

590
00:45:37,164 --> 00:45:39,633
We are fighting in Korea

591
00:45:39,750 --> 00:45:42,344
for our own national security
and survival.

592
00:45:49,176 --> 00:45:51,270
In the autumn of 1951,

593
00:45:51,387 --> 00:45:53,515
a young Massachusetts
congressman

594
00:45:53,639 --> 00:45:57,485
named John F. Kennedy dined
at the rooftop bar

595
00:45:57,601 --> 00:46:00,195
of the Hotel Majestic
overlooking Saigon.

596
00:46:01,605 --> 00:46:03,573
As he and his party ate,

597
00:46:03,691 --> 00:46:08,037
they could hear the thunder of
guns across the Saigon River.

598
00:46:08,154 --> 00:46:11,158
French commanders
assured Kennedy

599
00:46:11,282 --> 00:46:13,751
that with more American support,

600
00:46:13,868 --> 00:46:16,963
French rule would be
re-established.

601
00:46:17,079 --> 00:46:20,629
But Kennedy spent two hours
with Seymour Topping,

602
00:46:20,749 --> 00:46:22,843
a seasoned American reporter,

603
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:25,554
who gave him a very
different perspective:

604
00:46:25,671 --> 00:46:28,345
the French were losing, he said,

605
00:46:28,466 --> 00:46:32,221
and many Vietnamese, who had
once admired the Americans,

606
00:46:32,344 --> 00:46:36,474
were beginning to despise them
for backing the French.

607
00:46:36,599 --> 00:46:39,819
Kennedy believed the reporter.

608
00:46:39,935 --> 00:46:43,189
Unless the United States could
persuade the Vietnamese

609
00:46:43,314 --> 00:46:46,909
that it was as opposed to
"injustice and inequality"

610
00:46:47,067 --> 00:46:48,535
as it was to communism,

611
00:46:48,652 --> 00:46:51,576
he told his constituents
when he got home,

612
00:46:51,739 --> 00:46:56,961
the current effort would result
in "foredoomed failure."

613
00:47:05,461 --> 00:47:07,304
In 1952,

614
00:47:07,421 --> 00:47:10,721
General Dwight Eisenhower
was elected president,

615
00:47:10,841 --> 00:47:13,594
in part because he promised
to take a tougher stance

616
00:47:13,761 --> 00:47:15,684
on communism.

617
00:47:15,804 --> 00:47:19,104
That year, American taxpayers

618
00:47:19,225 --> 00:47:21,603
were footing more than
30% of the bill

619
00:47:21,769 --> 00:47:24,648
for the French war in Vietnam.

620
00:47:24,772 --> 00:47:26,866
Within two years,

621
00:47:26,982 --> 00:47:30,282
that number would rise
to nearly 80%.

622
00:47:33,781 --> 00:47:36,000
And many
of you ask this question:

623
00:47:36,116 --> 00:47:38,369
Why is the United States
spending

624
00:47:38,494 --> 00:47:40,292
hundreds of millions of dollars

625
00:47:40,412 --> 00:47:44,508
supporting the forces
of the French Union

626
00:47:44,625 --> 00:47:48,175
in the fight against communism
in Indochina?

627
00:47:48,295 --> 00:47:50,514
I think perhaps if we go over
to the map here,

628
00:47:50,631 --> 00:47:54,977
I can indicate to you why
it is so vitally important.

629
00:47:55,094 --> 00:47:57,392
Here's Indochina.

630
00:47:57,513 --> 00:47:58,810
If Indochina falls,

631
00:47:58,973 --> 00:48:02,102
Thailand is put in almost
impossible position.

632
00:48:02,226 --> 00:48:05,275
The same is true of Malaya
with its rubber and tin.

633
00:48:05,396 --> 00:48:10,402
Now may I say that as far as the
war in Indochina is concerned,

634
00:48:10,526 --> 00:48:15,123
that I was there, right on the
battlefield, or close to it,

635
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:17,833
and it's a bloody war,
and it's a bitter one.

636
00:48:23,247 --> 00:48:27,969
By 1953, the French had
been fighting for seven years.

637
00:48:28,085 --> 00:48:31,305
They had suffered over
100,000 casualties

638
00:48:31,422 --> 00:48:34,517
and failed to pacify
the countryside.

639
00:48:34,675 --> 00:48:38,305
Six commanders had come
and gone.

640
00:48:38,429 --> 00:48:40,557
Nevertheless,
the seventh commander,

641
00:48:40,681 --> 00:48:43,685
General Henri Navarre,
assured his countrymen

642
00:48:43,851 --> 00:48:45,319
that victory was near.

643
00:48:45,436 --> 00:48:48,485
"Now we can see it clearly,"
he said,

644
00:48:48,606 --> 00:48:52,406
"like the light at the end
of the tunnel."

645
00:48:54,445 --> 00:48:58,325
Meanwhile, large parts of the
French population were horrified

646
00:48:58,449 --> 00:49:00,952
by reports of French brutality

647
00:49:01,076 --> 00:49:03,750
and the widespread
use of napalm-

648
00:49:03,871 --> 00:49:08,547
gelatinized petroleum
that burned foliage,

649
00:49:08,667 --> 00:49:11,090
homes, and human flesh.

650
00:49:14,048 --> 00:49:17,393
When returning French troops
disembarked at Marseilles,

651
00:49:17,509 --> 00:49:21,889
members of the longshoremen's
union pelted them with rocks.

652
00:49:22,014 --> 00:49:25,063
Parisian leftists began to call
the conflict

653
00:49:25,184 --> 00:49:28,279
"La Sale Guerra"-
"The Dirty War."

654
00:49:36,695 --> 00:49:38,948
The camera was a close-up,

655
00:49:39,073 --> 00:49:42,122
was over the shoulder
of this storm trooper

656
00:49:42,242 --> 00:49:45,746
who had a kid by the scruff
of his shirt and he smacks him.

657
00:49:45,913 --> 00:49:47,033
People screaming...

658
00:49:47,081 --> 00:49:49,129
At that moment in time,

659
00:49:49,249 --> 00:49:51,843
I realized that anybody who
really cared for America

660
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:53,428
was sent halfway
around the world

661
00:49:53,545 --> 00:49:56,924
chasing some ghost in a jungle.

662
00:49:57,091 --> 00:50:00,095
In the meantime,
my country's being torn apart.

663
00:50:00,219 --> 00:50:02,392
So I saw somebody
who looked like my dad

664
00:50:02,513 --> 00:50:03,981
hitting somebody
who looked like me.

665
00:50:04,098 --> 00:50:05,941
Whose side would I be on?

666
00:50:14,066 --> 00:50:16,444
In Korea,
three years of combat end

667
00:50:16,610 --> 00:50:19,454
as United Nations and communist
negotiators at Panmunjom

668
00:50:19,571 --> 00:50:20,572
sign a truce.

669
00:50:20,698 --> 00:50:23,622
In July of 1953,

670
00:50:23,784 --> 00:50:27,129
the Korean War ended
in a negotiated settlement

671
00:50:27,246 --> 00:50:29,169
and a still-divided peninsula.

672
00:50:29,289 --> 00:50:32,589
American policymakers
saw it as proof

673
00:50:32,710 --> 00:50:35,964
that communism in Asia
could be contained.

674
00:50:36,130 --> 00:50:37,941
And in Washington, a
dramatic evening press conference...

675
00:50:37,965 --> 00:50:40,969
That fall, the French
indicated their willingness

676
00:50:41,093 --> 00:50:45,018
to begin talks to end
the fighting in Vietnam.

677
00:50:45,139 --> 00:50:48,643
Ho Chi Minh agreed to meet.

678
00:50:48,767 --> 00:50:52,613
But before the negotiators
were to convene in Geneva,

679
00:50:52,730 --> 00:50:57,702
each side sought to improve
its position on the battlefield.

680
00:50:59,319 --> 00:51:01,822
General Navarre set up
a fortified base

681
00:51:01,989 --> 00:51:04,833
in a remote valley
in northwestern Vietnam

682
00:51:04,950 --> 00:51:09,376
called Dien Bien Phu, where
he hoped to lure the Viet Minh

683
00:51:09,496 --> 00:51:11,498
into a decisive battle.

684
00:51:13,625 --> 00:51:16,720
Navarre was certain that
superior French firepower

685
00:51:16,837 --> 00:51:21,843
and air support would crush
any attack by the Viet Minh.

686
00:51:21,967 --> 00:51:24,516
He and his commanders
saw no need to worry

687
00:51:24,636 --> 00:51:29,016
about the jungle-covered hills
that overlooked his 11,000 men,

688
00:51:29,183 --> 00:51:32,027
dug in on the valley floor.

689
00:51:32,186 --> 00:51:36,407
The artillery commander
was so confident of victory,

690
00:51:36,523 --> 00:51:40,528
he complained, "I have more guns
than I need."

691
00:51:43,655 --> 00:51:46,329
General Giap saw his chance.

692
00:51:46,450 --> 00:51:50,876
"We decided to wipe out at all
costs the whole enemy force

693
00:51:51,038 --> 00:51:53,917
at Dien Bien Phu,"
he remembered.

694
00:51:56,043 --> 00:51:59,718
To do it, he pulled off one
of the greatest logistical feats

695
00:51:59,880 --> 00:52:01,723
in military history...

696
00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:04,889
a feat that would be restaged
in propaganda films

697
00:52:05,052 --> 00:52:08,226
and celebrated for decades.

698
00:52:08,388 --> 00:52:12,234
A quarter of a million
civilian porters-

699
00:52:12,351 --> 00:52:13,648
nearly half of them women-

700
00:52:13,769 --> 00:52:18,491
moved everything he needed
for a siege, from sacks of rice

701
00:52:18,607 --> 00:52:20,735
to disassembled
artillery pieces,

702
00:52:20,901 --> 00:52:23,905
on foot through the jungle.

703
00:52:24,029 --> 00:52:28,751
Giap surrounded the valley
with 50,000 soldiers

704
00:52:28,909 --> 00:52:34,006
and 200 big guns, dug-in
and camouflaged so well

705
00:52:34,122 --> 00:52:38,673
they could not be spotted
from the air.

706
00:52:40,420 --> 00:52:44,266
On March 13,1954,

707
00:52:44,383 --> 00:52:46,636
Viet Minh artillery
on the hillsides

708
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,014
began raining down 50 shells
a minute

709
00:52:50,138 --> 00:52:53,108
on the French troops
huddled below.

710
00:52:55,477 --> 00:52:57,195
The airstrip was destroyed.

711
00:53:00,274 --> 00:53:03,278
The besieged troops could only
be reinforced

712
00:53:03,402 --> 00:53:06,201
and resupplied by airdrop.

713
00:53:09,825 --> 00:53:11,498
The French artillery commander,

714
00:53:11,618 --> 00:53:16,545
who had underestimated
his enemy, committed suicide.

715
00:53:16,665 --> 00:53:19,635
The airlift
to Dien Bien Phu continues...

716
00:53:19,793 --> 00:53:22,171
vital men and supplies
for the heroic garrison

717
00:53:22,296 --> 00:53:23,940
that has defied the massed
Viet Minh onslaughts

718
00:53:23,964 --> 00:53:25,011
for over six weeks.

719
00:53:25,132 --> 00:53:28,136
Today, Dien Bien Phu
is a human dam

720
00:53:28,260 --> 00:53:30,137
trying to stem the red tide

721
00:53:30,262 --> 00:53:32,310
that threatens to engulf
Southeast Asia.

722
00:53:34,016 --> 00:53:36,735
The French government
begged President Eisenhower

723
00:53:36,852 --> 00:53:38,320
to intervene.

724
00:53:38,478 --> 00:53:41,732
He refused to act without
Congressional approval

725
00:53:41,857 --> 00:53:44,701
and support from
European allies.

726
00:53:44,818 --> 00:53:46,912
Britain said no

727
00:53:47,029 --> 00:53:50,829
and the Congress would not
support unilateral action.

728
00:53:50,949 --> 00:53:52,166
The communists

729
00:53:52,326 --> 00:53:54,829
under Ho Chi Minh are able
to claim that they are fighting

730
00:53:54,995 --> 00:53:57,498
for independence and the French
appear to be fighting

731
00:53:57,623 --> 00:53:59,842
for a maintain...
maintenance of colonial rule.

732
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:01,217
I therefore believe

733
00:54:01,335 --> 00:54:04,509
that before the United States
moves in, in any degree,

734
00:54:04,671 --> 00:54:07,174
that independence must be
granted to the people,

735
00:54:07,299 --> 00:54:08,939
that the people must support
the struggle.

736
00:54:10,761 --> 00:54:14,686
"I am convinced,"
Eisenhower confided to his diary,

737
00:54:14,806 --> 00:54:19,528
"that no military victory is
possible in this theater."

738
00:54:19,686 --> 00:54:22,314
Still, without
consulting Congress,

739
00:54:22,439 --> 00:54:26,239
the president had secretly sent
more American transport planes,

740
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:32,038
their markings painted over and
flown by civilian contractors,

741
00:54:32,157 --> 00:54:36,708
to help resupply the desperate
French troops at Dien Bien Phu.

742
00:54:40,499 --> 00:54:42,627
Everyone understood
that in and of itself,

743
00:54:42,751 --> 00:54:46,346
Vietnam didn't mean very much.

744
00:54:46,463 --> 00:54:50,559
But they believed, I believed,
if we lost it,

745
00:54:50,717 --> 00:54:53,516
that the rest of Asia
would tumble to communism.

746
00:54:53,637 --> 00:54:58,438
You have broader
considerations that might follow

747
00:54:58,558 --> 00:55:03,234
what you would call the
falling domino principle.

748
00:55:03,397 --> 00:55:05,900
You have a row of dominoes
set up,

749
00:55:06,024 --> 00:55:07,742
and you knock over
the first one,

750
00:55:07,901 --> 00:55:11,747
and what will happen to the
last one is the certainty

751
00:55:11,863 --> 00:55:14,742
that it will go over
very quickly.

752
00:55:35,929 --> 00:55:41,936
On the afternoon of May
7, 1954, after 55 clays of siege,

753
00:55:42,102 --> 00:55:47,279
the exhausted French forces
at Dien Bien Phu surrendered.

754
00:55:49,901 --> 00:55:54,623
They had lost 8,000 men,
killed, wounded, or missing.

755
00:55:57,492 --> 00:56:01,793
General Giap had lost
three times as many,

756
00:56:01,955 --> 00:56:05,050
but he had won a great victory.

757
00:56:22,142 --> 00:56:26,989
Even Duong Van Mai's parents
could not help but be impressed.

758
00:56:27,147 --> 00:56:29,149
They were very proud

759
00:56:29,274 --> 00:56:31,868
that the Viet Minh had defeated
the French,

760
00:56:31,985 --> 00:56:33,862
this great Western power.

761
00:56:33,987 --> 00:56:37,833
Admiration and respect
on the one hand,

762
00:56:37,991 --> 00:56:40,164
but fear on the other hand.

763
00:56:40,327 --> 00:56:43,001
And fear was the
stronger emotion.

764
00:56:44,706 --> 00:56:47,425
"We have been caught
bluffing by our enemies,"

765
00:56:47,542 --> 00:56:51,217
Senate Minority Leader
Lyndon Johnson said.

766
00:56:51,338 --> 00:56:56,344
"Today it is Indochina,
tomorrow Asia may be in flames.

767
00:56:56,468 --> 00:57:02,475
And the day after, the Western
Alliance will lie in ruins."

768
00:57:02,599 --> 00:57:05,523
We should have seen
it as the end of the colonial era

769
00:57:05,685 --> 00:57:08,780
in Southeast Asia,
which it really was.

770
00:57:08,897 --> 00:57:11,241
But instead we saw it
in Cold War terms,

771
00:57:11,358 --> 00:57:15,955
and we saw it as a defeat
for the free world

772
00:57:16,071 --> 00:57:17,823
that was related to the rise
of China.

773
00:57:17,948 --> 00:57:22,920
And it was a total misreading
of a pivotal event,

774
00:57:23,036 --> 00:57:25,630
which cost us very dearly.

775
00:57:31,711 --> 00:57:33,731
The former home
of the League of Nations,

776
00:57:33,755 --> 00:57:35,883
Geneva, Switzerland,
where East is meeting West

777
00:57:36,049 --> 00:57:37,301
in the international conference

778
00:57:37,425 --> 00:57:40,895
that may decisively affect
the political future of Asia.

779
00:57:41,012 --> 00:57:44,266
The day after the
fall of Dien Bien Phu,

780
00:57:44,391 --> 00:57:48,112
diplomats from nine nations
gathered in Geneva

781
00:57:48,228 --> 00:57:50,981
to settle the future of Vietnam.

782
00:57:51,106 --> 00:57:55,111
The talks dragged on for nearly
two-and-a-half months.

783
00:57:58,196 --> 00:57:59,914
Despite their victory,

784
00:58:00,073 --> 00:58:03,623
Ho Chi Minh and General Giap
could not keep fighting

785
00:58:03,743 --> 00:58:08,874
without more support from China
and the Soviet Union.

786
00:58:08,999 --> 00:58:12,378
But China had lost a million men
in Korea

787
00:58:12,502 --> 00:58:15,472
and did not want to become
involved in another war

788
00:58:15,589 --> 00:58:17,136
along its border.

789
00:58:17,257 --> 00:58:22,980
The Soviet Union was hoping
to ease tensions with the West.

790
00:58:23,096 --> 00:58:27,943
Both of Ho Chi Minh's communist
patrons urged him to agree

791
00:58:28,101 --> 00:58:29,944
to a negotiated settlement,

792
00:58:30,061 --> 00:58:34,316
a partition like the one
that had ended the Korean War.

793
00:58:34,441 --> 00:58:37,786
Ho had no option but to give in.

794
00:58:41,740 --> 00:58:44,459
In the end,
no one was satisfied.

795
00:58:46,620 --> 00:58:51,592
Vietnam was temporarily to be
divided at the 17th parallel.

796
00:58:51,708 --> 00:58:56,134
The 130,000 French-led troops
stationed in the North

797
00:58:56,254 --> 00:58:58,302
were to withdraw to the South,

798
00:58:58,423 --> 00:59:02,223
and somewhere between
50,000 and 90,000 Viet Minh

799
00:59:02,344 --> 00:59:04,972
were to "re-group" to the North.

800
00:59:05,138 --> 00:59:06,856
The two halves
would be separated

801
00:59:06,973 --> 00:59:11,274
by a demilitarized zone
until an election could be held

802
00:59:11,394 --> 00:59:14,568
to reunify
North and South Vietnam,

803
00:59:14,689 --> 00:59:19,741
an election everyone knew
Ho Chi Minn would win.

804
00:59:54,854 --> 00:59:56,454
We had started walking up

805
00:59:56,523 --> 00:59:58,459
and we had probably gotten about
a third of the way up the hill

806
00:59:58,483 --> 00:59:59,951
and then they unleashed on us.

807
01:00:02,862 --> 01:00:04,956
We were in the middle of this
horrible shit sandwich.

808
01:00:05,073 --> 01:00:07,041
That's what we called it.

809
01:00:12,205 --> 01:00:15,960
One of the things that I learned
in the war is that

810
01:00:16,084 --> 01:00:19,679
we're not the top species on
the planet because we're nice.

811
01:00:22,549 --> 01:00:25,678
People talk a lot about how well
the military turns, you know,

812
01:00:25,802 --> 01:00:28,476
kids into, you know,
killing machines and stuff.

813
01:00:28,596 --> 01:00:31,099
And I'll always argue that
it's just finishing school.

814
01:00:39,816 --> 01:00:43,446
Braving the dangers
of the open sea in tiny, rickety craft,

815
01:00:43,570 --> 01:00:46,039
thousands of Roman Catholic
and Buddhist faith

816
01:00:46,156 --> 01:00:48,409
have found life impossible
under the communists.

817
01:00:48,533 --> 01:00:51,958
For them, it's freedom
or nothing.

818
01:00:55,165 --> 01:00:57,088
Under the Geneva Accords,

819
01:00:57,250 --> 01:01:00,049
civilians living in either
half of Vietnam

820
01:01:00,170 --> 01:01:02,298
who wanted to relocate
to the other

821
01:01:02,422 --> 01:01:05,426
would have 300 days to do so.

822
01:01:05,592 --> 01:01:09,438
My mother
and father wanted to stay

823
01:01:09,596 --> 01:01:11,564
and meet my sister Thang again

824
01:01:11,681 --> 01:01:13,979
because they knew
Thang would come back.

825
01:01:14,100 --> 01:01:16,273
But on the other hand
they couldn't risk that.

826
01:01:16,394 --> 01:01:21,241
They were convinced that when
Ho Chi Minh and his government

827
01:01:21,358 --> 01:01:23,452
arrived in Hanoi,

828
01:01:23,610 --> 01:01:27,114
my father would be the first one
to be killed

829
01:01:27,238 --> 01:01:29,081
and all of us would be
persecuted.

830
01:01:31,826 --> 01:01:33,828
And I remember the day we left.

831
01:01:33,953 --> 01:01:37,207
I looked around and I thought,
"I never come back here again."

832
01:01:39,626 --> 01:01:41,503
It was extremely traumatic.

833
01:01:41,628 --> 01:01:46,304
It was like the ground was
suddenly cut from under you.

834
01:01:46,424 --> 01:01:51,851
In the end,
some 900,000 refugees,

835
01:01:51,971 --> 01:01:54,190
including more than half
of all the Catholics

836
01:01:54,307 --> 01:01:55,559
living in the North,

837
01:01:55,683 --> 01:02:00,780
fled to the South, many of them
aboard American ships.

838
01:02:05,151 --> 01:02:08,701
The United States hoped somehow
to encourage the building

839
01:02:08,822 --> 01:02:11,041
of a legitimate government
in the South.

840
01:02:13,243 --> 01:02:17,840
That government was now headed
by Ngo Dinh Diem.

841
01:02:17,997 --> 01:02:20,625
Both a Roman Catholic
and a Confucian

842
01:02:20,750 --> 01:02:22,844
in a largely Buddhist country,

843
01:02:22,961 --> 01:02:27,842
he was a celibate bachelor who
had once planned to be a priest.

844
01:02:27,966 --> 01:02:34,019
The war for us really started
when we became the partner,

845
01:02:34,180 --> 01:02:39,186
or I would say the victim,
of President Diem.

846
01:02:39,310 --> 01:02:44,237
We were going to help him turn
South Vietnam into a democracy.

847
01:02:44,357 --> 01:02:45,859
That's what he said
he wanted to do.

848
01:02:45,984 --> 01:02:46,985
And we believed him.

849
01:02:47,110 --> 01:02:49,408
Like Ho Chi Minh,

850
01:02:49,529 --> 01:02:53,079
Diem had spent years abroad
seeking support

851
01:02:53,199 --> 01:02:56,874
for his own brand
of Vietnamese nationalism.

852
01:02:56,995 --> 01:03:00,374
He was a veteran politician
whose loathing for the French

853
01:03:00,498 --> 01:03:04,173
was matched only by his hatred
for the communists,

854
01:03:04,294 --> 01:03:07,924
who had imprisoned him and
buried alive his eldest brother

855
01:03:08,047 --> 01:03:10,391
and his nephew.

856
01:03:10,550 --> 01:03:13,850
Diem was aloof, autocratic,

857
01:03:13,970 --> 01:03:17,190
mistrustful of anyone much
beyond his own family.

858
01:03:17,307 --> 01:03:21,187
He also proved to be shrewd,
resourceful,

859
01:03:21,311 --> 01:03:25,316
and skilled at exploiting
the weaknesses of his opponents.

860
01:03:25,440 --> 01:03:31,368
But he faced a daunting task
in creating a new country.

861
01:03:31,488 --> 01:03:34,458
The French, who still had
thousands of troops

862
01:03:34,574 --> 01:03:38,044
stationed in the South,
detested Diem.

863
01:03:38,161 --> 01:03:41,916
Several provinces were under
the sway of religious sects

864
01:03:42,040 --> 01:03:44,384
with armies of their own.

865
01:03:44,501 --> 01:03:48,631
Tens of thousands of Viet Minh
soldiers had gone north,

866
01:03:48,755 --> 01:03:50,883
but several thousand cadre-

867
01:03:51,007 --> 01:03:54,307
trained and dedicated Communist
Party workers...

868
01:03:54,427 --> 01:04:00,355
had stayed behind to organize
resistance in the countryside.

869
01:04:00,475 --> 01:04:04,446
And Saigon itself was ruled
by the Binh Xuyen,

870
01:04:04,604 --> 01:04:07,949
a crime syndicate
backed by the French.

871
01:04:08,107 --> 01:04:10,377
And the French
were behind the Binh Xuyen,

872
01:04:10,401 --> 01:04:11,778
sort of supporting them

873
01:04:11,903 --> 01:04:14,952
because they didn't want
Diem to succeed.

874
01:04:15,073 --> 01:04:16,916
And that became
the central contest.

875
01:04:18,952 --> 01:04:22,832
Some in the CIA believed
that Diem could be the savior

876
01:04:22,956 --> 01:04:24,958
of South Vietnam.

877
01:04:25,083 --> 01:04:26,960
Others were not so sure.

878
01:04:27,126 --> 01:04:29,220
“He is a messiah
without a message,"

879
01:04:29,337 --> 01:04:32,261
one diplomat reported
to Washington.

880
01:04:32,382 --> 01:04:35,807
The U.S. ambassador agreed.

881
01:04:35,969 --> 01:04:39,223
On April 27, 1955,

882
01:04:39,347 --> 01:04:43,397
President Eisenhower decided
to end American support

883
01:04:43,518 --> 01:04:46,146
for Diem's regime.

884
01:04:47,313 --> 01:04:50,487
But then Diem made
an all-out assault

885
01:04:50,650 --> 01:04:52,903
on the Binh Xuyen syndicate.

886
01:04:55,321 --> 01:04:57,201
Suddenly
in the middle of the day

887
01:04:57,282 --> 01:05:01,662
we heard gunfire
and then we saw flames

888
01:05:01,828 --> 01:05:04,126
and the neighborhood
was burning.

889
01:05:04,247 --> 01:05:07,127
There are hundreds
of dead and wounded on both sides

890
01:05:07,166 --> 01:05:10,010
as the street fighting continues
for an entire week.

891
01:05:10,169 --> 01:05:12,092
For the United States,
the situation presents

892
01:05:12,213 --> 01:05:13,339
a grave problem.

893
01:05:15,341 --> 01:05:18,185
Diem finally regains control
of Saigon.

894
01:05:19,971 --> 01:05:24,192
In the end,
Diem's forces prevailed.

895
01:05:24,350 --> 01:05:30,198
Eisenhower now saw no option
but to stick with Diem.

896
01:05:30,356 --> 01:05:35,704
The French then announced their
intention to withdraw completely

897
01:05:35,820 --> 01:05:41,918
from South Vietnam, ending
nearly a century of occupation.

898
01:05:42,035 --> 01:05:47,041
Diem became wildly popular
because he seemed to embody

899
01:05:47,206 --> 01:05:49,675
the nationalist cause
in the South.

900
01:05:49,792 --> 01:05:51,669
He succeeded in getting
the French

901
01:05:51,794 --> 01:05:53,717
out of Vietnam all the way.

902
01:05:53,838 --> 01:05:57,263
And Ho Chi Minh had only got
them out of the northern half.

903
01:05:57,383 --> 01:06:03,140
Flush with victory, Diem
called for a referendum in the South.

904
01:06:03,264 --> 01:06:08,646
The CIA warned him not to meddle
too much with the returns.

905
01:06:09,896 --> 01:06:11,648
But when the ballots
were counted,

906
01:06:11,773 --> 01:06:17,451
Diem claimed to have won
98.2% of the vote.

907
01:06:19,405 --> 01:06:24,912
On October 26, 1955,
Ngo Dinh Diem named himself

908
01:06:25,036 --> 01:06:30,634
the first president of the
brand-new Republic of Vietnam.

909
01:06:30,750 --> 01:06:34,550
The election to reunify
the North and South

910
01:06:34,671 --> 01:06:38,266
that had been promised at Geneva
would never be held.

911
01:06:38,383 --> 01:06:44,390
He became our ally,
or rather our master,

912
01:06:44,514 --> 01:06:47,063
because the goal of preventing

913
01:06:47,183 --> 01:06:49,277
the communists from taking
over the South

914
01:06:49,394 --> 01:06:55,902
was so strong that we couldn't
afford for him to lose.

915
01:06:56,025 --> 01:06:58,744
So Diem started
to boss us around.

916
01:06:58,861 --> 01:07:00,784
And this was a typical
relationship.

917
01:07:00,905 --> 01:07:03,249
You need any ally you believe

918
01:07:03,366 --> 01:07:06,290
to be the centerpiece
of your foreign policy.

919
01:07:06,411 --> 01:07:07,879
They understand that right away.

920
01:07:07,995 --> 01:07:10,623
And the tail wags the dog.

921
01:07:15,169 --> 01:07:17,439
From the Far East
comes a distinguished visitor.

922
01:07:17,463 --> 01:07:20,137
President Ngo Dinh Diem
of Vietnam is accorded

923
01:07:20,258 --> 01:07:23,137
one of President Eisenhower's
rare airport greetings,

924
01:07:23,302 --> 01:07:25,646
as he arrives for a four-day
state visit.

925
01:07:25,805 --> 01:07:28,183
President Diem, one of America's
staunchest allies

926
01:07:28,307 --> 01:07:29,479
in Southeast Asia,

927
01:07:29,642 --> 01:07:32,236
will seek an increase in aid
to shore up his country

928
01:07:32,353 --> 01:07:34,151
against increasing
communist pressure,

929
01:07:34,272 --> 01:07:39,699
a request to which the president
lends a sympathetic ear.

930
01:07:39,819 --> 01:07:43,790
Most politicians,
Democrats as well as Republicans,

931
01:07:43,906 --> 01:07:45,783
now seemed to share
the changing views

932
01:07:45,908 --> 01:07:47,785
of Senator John F. Kennedy.

933
01:07:47,910 --> 01:07:51,460
South Vietnam is
"our offspring," he said.

934
01:07:51,581 --> 01:07:53,174
"We cannot abandon it."

935
01:07:53,291 --> 01:07:57,512
If it fell, the United States
would be "held responsible

936
01:07:57,670 --> 01:08:01,846
and our prestige in Asia
will sink to a new low."

937
01:08:02,008 --> 01:08:07,310
There had never before been
a South Vietnamese nation,

938
01:08:07,430 --> 01:08:10,650
but Americans, who had rebuilt
much of their own country

939
01:08:10,767 --> 01:08:14,362
during the New Deal and had
helped rebuild Western Europe

940
01:08:14,479 --> 01:08:15,696
through the Marshall Plan,

941
01:08:15,813 --> 01:08:20,489
were convinced they
could build one nonetheless.

942
01:08:22,695 --> 01:08:26,541
Eisenhower ordered scores
of American civilians

943
01:08:26,699 --> 01:08:30,374
to South Vietnam, full of
plans for economic development

944
01:08:30,495 --> 01:08:34,216
meant to win, he hoped,
the hearts and minds

945
01:08:34,332 --> 01:08:36,005
of the Vietnamese people.

946
01:08:39,003 --> 01:08:42,052
But those civilians would always
be outnumbered

947
01:08:42,215 --> 01:08:43,683
by military advisors,

948
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:48,226
with orders to modernize, train,
and equip Diem's forces,

949
01:08:48,387 --> 01:08:54,144
now called the Army of the
Republic of Vietnam-the ARVN:

950
01:08:54,268 --> 01:08:59,695
Some ARVN officers found
American methods unsuited

951
01:08:59,816 --> 01:09:02,365
to the guerrilla war they
expected to wage

952
01:09:02,485 --> 01:09:04,579
against the communists.

953
01:09:04,737 --> 01:09:07,365
Most American military advisors
were veterans

954
01:09:07,490 --> 01:09:08,742
of the war in Korea,

955
01:09:08,908 --> 01:09:12,538
determined to prepare
South Vietnamese forces

956
01:09:12,662 --> 01:09:18,010
to slow a conventional invasion
from the North.

957
01:09:18,125 --> 01:09:21,720
But no one in North Vietnam

958
01:09:21,838 --> 01:09:25,388
was planning
a conventional invasion.

959
01:09:25,508 --> 01:09:29,388
Ho Chi Minh was focused
on rebuilding his country,

960
01:09:29,512 --> 01:09:33,358
devastated by more
than a decade of war.

961
01:09:35,935 --> 01:09:39,439
The communists imposed
brutal land reforms

962
01:09:39,564 --> 01:09:41,692
modeled on those underway
in China

963
01:09:41,816 --> 01:09:46,447
with a ruthlessness that left
thousands of people dead,

964
01:09:46,612 --> 01:09:49,957
including not only landlords
who had sided with the French,

965
01:09:50,074 --> 01:09:54,295
but also many villagers who had
fought with the Viet Minh.

966
01:09:57,039 --> 01:10:00,760
Ho Chi Minh was still determined
to reunite Vietnam.

967
01:10:00,877 --> 01:10:03,471
But he worried that if he took
direct military action

968
01:10:03,588 --> 01:10:05,056
against the South,

969
01:10:05,172 --> 01:10:09,222
the United States would be drawn
more deeply into the struggle.

970
01:10:09,343 --> 01:10:12,768
He cautioned his comrades
in the South to put their faith

971
01:10:12,889 --> 01:10:16,564
in political agitation
and avoid violence.

972
01:10:19,020 --> 01:10:20,988
But that message rang hollow

973
01:10:21,105 --> 01:10:23,824
among embattled Southern
revolutionaries

974
01:10:23,983 --> 01:10:25,656
struggling to survive

975
01:10:25,776 --> 01:10:30,657
under Diem's increasingly
harsh regime.

976
01:10:30,823 --> 01:10:35,329
In a campaign he called
"Denounce the Communists,"

977
01:10:35,453 --> 01:10:38,707
Diem had imprisoned tens of
thousands of citizens

978
01:10:38,831 --> 01:10:44,964
without trial and ordered
the executions of hundreds more.

979
01:10:45,087 --> 01:10:49,012
Now, the communists took matters
into their own hands

980
01:10:49,175 --> 01:10:52,805
and began attacking
South Vietnamese officials.

981
01:11:32,468 --> 01:11:36,518
As violence in
South Vietnam intensified,

982
01:11:36,639 --> 01:11:39,267
new leaders emerged in Hanoi.

983
01:11:39,392 --> 01:11:42,737
Ho Chi Minh would remain
the face of the revolution

984
01:11:42,895 --> 01:11:46,775
around the world,
but he now began to share power

985
01:11:46,899 --> 01:11:50,073
with men who were growing
impatient with his caution,

986
01:11:50,194 --> 01:11:54,700
men about whom Americans
knew almost nothing.

987
01:11:56,867 --> 01:11:59,746
The most important proved to be
a carpenter's son

988
01:11:59,912 --> 01:12:05,919
from Quang Tri province
in the South named Le Duan.

989
01:12:06,043 --> 01:12:09,468
He had helped found the
Indochinese Communist Party,

990
01:12:09,588 --> 01:12:13,092
survived nearly ten years
in a French prison,

991
01:12:13,217 --> 01:12:16,221
and proved himself a shrewd
political infighter

992
01:12:16,345 --> 01:12:19,770
as he rose to become
First Secretary of the party.

993
01:12:54,675 --> 01:12:58,725
By 1959, Le Duan
and his hardline allies

994
01:12:58,846 --> 01:13:02,692
were gaining influence within
the North Vietnamese Politburo

995
01:13:02,808 --> 01:13:05,402
and beginning to
change its policy.

996
01:13:05,519 --> 01:13:09,274
They now argued that Hanoi
should do everything

997
01:13:09,398 --> 01:13:12,493
within its power to help
Southern revolutionaries

998
01:13:12,610 --> 01:13:14,863
remove Diem by force.

999
01:13:36,509 --> 01:13:40,013
Now, bands of
40 to 50 armed Viet Minh

1000
01:13:40,179 --> 01:13:43,433
began slipping back home
into South Vietnam,

1001
01:13:43,557 --> 01:13:47,357
following jungle paths hacked
through the Laotian mountains

1002
01:13:47,520 --> 01:13:51,991
that the Americans would soon
call the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

1003
01:13:58,030 --> 01:14:01,159
Violence against the Diem regime
steadily accelerated.

1004
01:14:11,127 --> 01:14:16,179
On the evening of July 8, 1959,
at Bien Hoa,

1005
01:14:16,298 --> 01:14:18,096
20 miles northeast of Saigon,

1006
01:14:18,217 --> 01:14:22,347
six American military advisors
were watching a movie

1007
01:14:22,471 --> 01:14:23,973
in their mess hall.

1008
01:14:25,724 --> 01:14:27,726
Viet Minh guerrillas,
who had crept silently

1009
01:14:27,893 --> 01:14:31,397
into the compound,
opened fire through the windows.

1010
01:14:37,111 --> 01:14:39,990
Major Dale Buis
from Pender, Nebraska,

1011
01:14:40,114 --> 01:14:42,208
and Master Sergeant
Chester Ovnand

1012
01:14:42,324 --> 01:14:45,703
from Copper-as Cove, Texas,
were killed.

1013
01:14:47,997 --> 01:14:52,252
They were the first American
soldiers to die from enemy fire

1014
01:14:52,418 --> 01:14:54,261
in the Vietnam War.

1015
01:14:55,838 --> 01:14:58,432
We must prove all over again,

1016
01:14:58,549 --> 01:15:04,181
to a watching world, as we sit
on a most conspicuous stage,

1017
01:15:04,305 --> 01:15:05,898
whether this nation,

1018
01:15:06,015 --> 01:15:10,111
conceived as it is
with its freedom of choice,

1019
01:15:10,227 --> 01:15:14,778
its breadth of opportunity,
its range of alternatives,

1020
01:15:14,899 --> 01:15:17,152
can compete with the
single-minded advance

1021
01:15:17,276 --> 01:15:18,949
of the communist system.

1022
01:15:19,069 --> 01:15:24,667
On November 8, 1960, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected

1023
01:15:24,783 --> 01:15:27,411
president of the United States.

1024
01:15:27,536 --> 01:15:31,291
His vice president
was Senator Lyndon Johnson.

1025
01:15:31,415 --> 01:15:35,340
They had narrowly beaten
Vice President Richard Nixon

1026
01:15:35,461 --> 01:15:38,681
and his running mate,
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

1027
01:15:40,174 --> 01:15:43,098
During the campaign,
both Kennedy and Nixon

1028
01:15:43,219 --> 01:15:47,690
had pledged to hold the line
against international communism

1029
01:15:47,806 --> 01:15:50,400
wherever it seemed to be
a threat.

1030
01:15:50,517 --> 01:15:54,397
But very few Americans knew
or cared about

1031
01:15:54,521 --> 01:15:56,819
what was going on in Vietnam.

1032
01:15:58,651 --> 01:16:00,824
Six weeks after
Kennedy's election,

1033
01:16:00,945 --> 01:16:03,824
at a remote jungle village
called Tan Lap

1034
01:16:03,948 --> 01:16:05,791
near the Cambodian border,

1035
01:16:05,908 --> 01:16:09,708
representatives of southern
revolutionary groups

1036
01:16:09,828 --> 01:16:13,924
met to form a new organization
to replace the Viet Minh,

1037
01:16:14,041 --> 01:16:16,840
dedicated to overthrowing
Ngo Dinh Diem

1038
01:16:16,961 --> 01:16:20,841
and ousting the
foreigners supporting him.

1039
01:16:20,965 --> 01:16:26,438
Behind the scenes, Le Duan and
his communist comrades in Hanoi

1040
01:16:26,553 --> 01:16:30,524
were orchestrating everything.

1041
01:16:30,683 --> 01:16:32,356
The new organization
would be called

1042
01:16:32,476 --> 01:16:36,697
the National Liberation Front-
the NLF.

1043
01:16:38,357 --> 01:16:41,361
The armed wing
of the NLF was called

1044
01:16:41,527 --> 01:16:44,155
the People's Liberation
Armed Forces,

1045
01:16:44,280 --> 01:16:47,750
but its enemies in Saigon
and Washington preferred

1046
01:16:47,866 --> 01:16:49,868
a more disparaging term.

1047
01:16:50,035 --> 01:16:53,380
In their eyes,
the revolutionaries were

1048
01:16:53,497 --> 01:16:56,876
Communist Traitors
to the Vietnamese Nation-

1049
01:16:57,001 --> 01:16:58,469
the Viet Cong.

1050
01:17:48,677 --> 01:17:51,055
Let every nation know,

1051
01:17:51,180 --> 01:17:56,778
whether it wishes us well
or ill,

1052
01:17:56,894 --> 01:18:02,822
that we shall pay any price,
bear any burden,

1053
01:18:02,941 --> 01:18:07,788
meet any hardship,
support any friend,

1054
01:18:07,946 --> 01:18:12,918
oppose any foe,
to assure the survival

1055
01:18:13,035 --> 01:18:14,378
and the success of liberty.

1056
01:18:26,799 --> 01:18:29,268
For me, I'd
always thought of courage

1057
01:18:29,385 --> 01:18:33,856
as charging enemy bunkers
or standing up under fire.

1058
01:18:33,972 --> 01:18:39,900
But just to walk, day after day
from village to village

1059
01:18:40,020 --> 01:18:44,526
and through the paddies
and up into the mountains,

1060
01:18:44,650 --> 01:18:48,871
just to get up in the morning
and look out at the land

1061
01:18:48,987 --> 01:18:52,617
and think, "In a few minutes
I'll be walking out there

1062
01:18:52,741 --> 01:18:55,836
"and will my corpse be there,
over there?

1063
01:18:55,994 --> 01:18:57,371
Will I lose a leg out there?"

1064
01:18:59,206 --> 01:19:02,881
Just to walk felt
incredibly brave.

1065
01:19:03,001 --> 01:19:05,754
I would sometimes look
at my legs as I walked,

1066
01:19:05,879 --> 01:19:08,257
thinking, how am I doing this?