The 37th president s administration. This portion is about one hour 20 minutes. Right from the beginning and until late in 1971 for a couple of years, i always thought for the pentagon papers to have any effect, they should be the basis for congressional hearing. Precisely because i knew they did not tell the whole story for an adequate story. I knew a lot of what was excluded from them and what you needed was oral testimony preferably under oath. Of people who really knew the decisionmaking at the time and could explain what was the implications of these papers. When things were written down, it was a brief for mcnamara to argue with other people to present mcnamaras preferred policy. It did not usually express what mcnaughton thought was appropriate policy or what he thought to expect work for considerations. He was writing lawyers briefs for mcnamara to present. That was one example. I knew in many other cases that it did not answer many of the questions. What you wanted was testimony in writing and to keep people honest and jog their memories. You needed to be able to show them read these documents and tell us why you wrote this for what is not set in this document and so forth. I always wanted congressional hearings and i had the mistaken belief that congress was more likely to hold those hearings if they had the documents in the first instance and were not scooped by the press, that they could present or medic material. In retrospect, 40 years later that is not the way congress works. In the end, it was very important that they appear in the newspapers. Congress reacts to what the public is concerned about. If you dont have a public concern, they dont investigate and they dont press things. Neil sheehan in urging me not to give it to the congressman first which i was skeptical about i thought they just won a pulitzer prize. I did not think that was the way you do it. He was right. The times had a greater potential for getting those hearings done sensibly giving the documents to congress in the first place. I was wrong about that. I might notethe times did not do it either. The hearings never took place. When the pentagon papers came out, they said we must hold public hearings on the subject. People said that publicly right away. They were in charge but no hearings happened. Nixon wanted them. They did not happen. They both understood each other. The hearings would mainly have incriminated the democrats. Fulbright and mansfield and the other democrats had no interest in pulling mcnamara in front and confronting him with lies he had made to the public and mistakes he had made and it was the democrats that made this so they held no hearings even when there was Public Interest in the thing. Nixon come on the other hand, was very anxious. On the tapes, he says we cannot wait to get mcnamara to answer these questions and it will drive him crazy. It did not happen because the democrats were in control. If the republicans have controlled congress, there would have been hearings. I would have been happy with that. I wanted to the truth out. In short, both in 1971 and 1959, what i believe Hubert Humphrey said i keep forgetting whether it was humphrey speaking to halderman and haig and nixons people about the pentagon papers, one of them made the comment that no good to my credit could have released these. I was a democrat and i am a democrat but i was not a good democrat nor am i now. Im kind of a self hating democrat at the moment. In 1969, i was not a good democrat. I was prepared to see the democrats get the blame which they richly deserved. I did not want to punish them but in terms of ending the war i thought it will only happen if the democrats accept the blame that is rightfully theirs. Early on before nixon has planted his flag on this war quickly. The democrats i talked to were good democrats. They rejected that idea. If i had even then the pentagon papers, they would not have wanted to put them out. In answer to your question, my thought on the pentagon papers was this that if they are the basis for hearings for fulbright, and his initial reaction was very favorable to put them out until he thought better of it. At first, he promised me he would put them out. My thought was that if he gets them out in time, then nixon will proceed will perceive that he has the option of laming this war on democratic deception, democratic incompetence democratic lily liveredness, from his point of view or whatever and say, all right, the war is hopeless i have to get out. My mistake was to imagine that nixon would have picked up that opportunity. Mansfield did give him that opportunity privately and nixon rejected it. He was determined not to give it up. On the other hand, fulbright, it turned out, was much more, when he thought about it, when he saw what the pentagon papers were, could see that there were real dangers in it for the democrats print you tried this in the fall of 1969. So what to you do for the next two years . What you want you what you wanted to have happened in not happened right in fact, what you feared would happen does happen. Now heres where my mistake about nixons policy had an effect. Have i realized that as i was copying the pentagon papers nixon was directing the diuck hook military planning with his november ultimatum. In other words, the war had the potential for exploding very quickly, even that fall or perhaps later. I would have felt more urgent about what i was doing. There is a number of what ifs that fall into that. As it was, i did not know about duc hyookook because he did not carried out and the reason he did not carry it out was because 2 Million People walked in the streets and were in demonstrations on october 5 teen , 1959. It was the october moratorium october, 1969. Another demonstration was scheduled for later and that was large and that led him to give up his escalation planning because he knew that there would perhaps be 10 times as many people out if he escalated. It was not the right time for that. I did not know any of that at the time. The reason i did not know was that halperin had been kept in the dark working for kissinger. I talked about that earlier about come part mentation. Halperin had been identified as someone working for him who thought we are to get out in the interest of the country and of nixon who he was working for. He was not have a touching anything, he just believe we should get out. Therefore, he was not told. People he was working closely next to, tony lake, roger morris and others, did not tell him any of that. They were working sidebyside. Halperin left for related reasons in late august, early september. I believe if he had stayed in the white house even a couple of more months, he probably would have learned of the planning that was going on. If he told me, i would have made every effort to get at that signing and release it with some hope of doing it. I knew all the people. I was trusted by them. I had worked with them earlier. If i had had the duc hook planning, i would not have copied the pentagon papers. That was only history. It ended in 1968. I knew from the beginning that it did not show it nixons planning was. It had only a slow chance a small chance of affecting nixon policy. I described what i thought the chance was. But if i had had documents or information on his current planning, i would have put that out. 1030 pages of that would have been worth more than 7000 pages of history of the democrats. I copied the pentagon papers only because it was all i had. It was the best i had and i hoped that people would see a history that showed four president s in a row and to some extent as early as fdr and then truman, eisenhower, kennedy, and johnson five president s had all planned escalation or involvement in vietnam. It was different from what they told the public. They made secret threats, secret operations with costs higher than they ever admitted to the public and with prospects much dimmer, much less missing than they ever admitted to the public. All of them had done that is a pattern. Perhaps the public could believe what i was told by halperin that another president , the latest president , was doing the same. Thats what i hope was of the pentagon papers. It did not happen. My hopes there were not fulfilled. The public was impressed by how much lying had gone on but all these earlier president s. They still wanted to believe that our current president was telling the truth, that there was a new nixon and he was getting out which was very plausible. How could he not want to get out . In 1968 and 1969, everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt because it was hard to imagine a sane person wanting to do anything else other than get out. If he was not burdened with it like humphrey or johnson but if he was a new person coming in. So, the pentagon papers did not really revealed to them what did not make them inquisitive about what nixons real policy was at the time and for a generation later. Nixons policy hasnt been summed up by nearly everyone journalists, academics, the public, he was trying to get us out as fast as he could. That was an extremely misleading description. Although, not entirely false. He was trying to get u. S. Troops out but not by allowing the communist to achieve any kind of success except to control the parts of the country they were already controlling. It was not to control saigon or to have a coalition government. Nixon, as i understand it, never intended for saigon to become Ho Chi Minh City while he was in office. He hoped to leave a successor republican or democrat, with a strategy that could be persistent, could be prolonged with enough well. Will. It turned out, he had a good basis for doing that. He hoped even more to make it easily sustainable, a cheap sustainable war because the North Vietnamese troops would not either anymore. Tell us about 1970. What effect did kent state have on you . What effect did the escalation in cambodia have in your sense of urgency . There i thought that did have a big effect. It told me the escalation is happening sooner than i expected. Let me go back to 1959 i did not 1969. We came very close, as close as 2 Million People. If the moratorium had not occurred, i believe we would have escalated and probably used Nuclear Weapons in the fall of 1969. Nixon had plans done for Nuclear Attacks a mile and a half from the chinese border. It was in a relatively unpopulated area according to details. The intention was to kill very few civilians but to send a very large signal to the chinese and the North Vietnamese. I think he wanted to use Nuclear Weapons. Actually, and aid to senator haig haig who was later chief of staff, told cy hirsch that he was amazed that 1969 ended without Nuclear Weapons being used. The nato ambassador under nixon was also amazed there had been no use of Nuclear Weapons by the end of 1969. That was because of the moratorium. I did not know that. I thought escalation was likely to occur. Nixon did not hurt and kissinger didnt and they thought their threats would succeed. I thought their threats would not succeed. And therefore there would be escalation eventually. The north would launch an offense. I thought the escalation would come when the north launched an offensive. Which i thought was pretty sure to happen no later than 1972, probably not 1970, a little more likely in 1971 and probably not until 72. As tet was intended to affect our election in 1868, 1972 mightve been a good year. In 1968, 1970 two mightve been a good year. There was a year coming for things would go on as they were, a stalemate at a relatively low level. When you say nixon, when my hearings did not take place in 1969 i sort of gave up on the pentagon papers being very important. I continued to copy them for a while and give them to fulbright. I thought he should have them all and maybe he would eventually use them. I did not feel a great sense of urgency. Weeks would go by when i did not copy. Then something would come up and i would copy some more. Then cambodia happened. That said to me, wait a minute, he is prepared to escalate. Actually, i interpreted that as part of the threat. He wants to make clear that if they have an offensive, he will blow North Vietnam to pieces. What he was really trying to make clear was the threat he had made in 1969. If you dont get the northern troops out, i will blow you to pieces. In either case, i saw it was a demonstration that would lead to further escalation and not effective in my opinion and i was right about that. The North Vietnamese did not ever concede what he was asking. At that point, i did become quite urgent and fulbrights people told me that they would hold hearings. I began looking at the papers and saying here are the witnesses he should call. I worked in the Foreign Relations office for a while. I tried to prepare for hearings. Actually unfortunately the pressure instead of going from mcgovernhat yield of getting the troops out of indochina the political strategy by the democrats was to press the churchcooper bill to get them out of cambodia only. Nixon did agree to that did get them out of cambodia. The air went out of the large movement that responded to kent state. I think the war could have been ended in april, may of 1970 if the 200,000 people, i think in washington than for demonstrations after kent state had closed down washington. It was the one time dishes this is a what if it was the one Time Congress was for once. At the executive because they help they had been misled by the escalation in cambodia. They had not been briefed on it. The one person that has come out that they briefed was ford, the person they expected to forget what he had been told or at any rate would not tell anybody and he didnt. So congress felt totally blindsided on that. They were very angry. I think if people had shut down washington, which you could do it 200,000 people, congress for once would not have been against the Antiwar Movement. They would have been sympathetic area what you could have gotten possibly but no guarantee that there was a chance of cutting off funds for continuing the war. What finally happened in 1970, three years later, in 1973 when they cut off runs for combat operations in indochina instead of just cambodia, i think that could have been done. If i look back at what i could have done, it would have been a good time to put out the pentagon papers and make an allout push. The war was illegitimate in the beginning, look at the papers of 45, 46, 47, 48. That made the greatest impression of me but it was history that never got published too much. Nobody read it very much. What influenced me really never got to the public. The fact that we had begun the war in support of a french imperial reconquest of a commonly of a colony that had declared its independence. That meant for American Values and antiimperialist i deals, it had no legitimacy from the beginning. It was not clearly illegal, by the way, i found. Because the u. N. Charter does allow for convoys four colonies and internal policing. It was not clearly illegal for france to continue to claim ownership of indochina even though they had declared independence. From the point of view of american policy and what fdr was secretly agreeing to do was to let the french back in and harry truman did do an eisenhower did all of these had to be obscured from the American People because sustaining the french empire was not part of american ideals. It was illegitimate from the beginning. To me that meant that 1969 when i read these documents, that it was unjustified homicide which i saw is murder. It was not just an error, not just a bad, incompetent policy. It was mass murder. To be killing people who wanted to be independent in order to sustain control of them whether it was the french or hours. I did not think we had any more legitimate right to run vietnam and the japanese or the chinese for 1000 years before for the french. We had no more prospect. When you went to vietnam in the mid1960s i had a different perception in 1954. Everyone knew that indochina was a french colony. That was no secret. As an historian, how old are you . Im 46. You have to be in your 50s to remember. To make a generalization, historians, its hard for historians to get a feel for what peoples understanding was at the time and how they saw things at the time. You can get it from newspapers to some extent. The public was almost entirely ignorant of the u. S. Role in sustaining the french from 19451954. They did not really think of it as a u. S. french war. All vietnamese, all the vietnamese saw that war not as a french war but which is what all american saw it as that is a french u. S. War. In fact, i have talked to a vietnamese man whos still alive. He would be interesting to interview and hes in your area. Hes in southern california. He was at that time a viet mien political officer and had been an italian commander. He was telling me this was after the war he was he said every french president knew that the americans were supplying 80 of the funding for the french war by the end of it. I said how can you tell me that illiterate french the enemys peasants knew something that essentially no americans know . The fact is that from the time of nixons speech in november 3 when he made it nixons war the possibility of the pentagon papers having an effect did not go down to zero but it went close to zero in my mind, very low. From then on, i thought there was a small chance that the pentagon papers could affect nixon because showing what the democrats had done did not have much bearing. I did not think it would affect his policy. If i leap ahead, i would say it did not affect his policy when it came out in 1971. The media perception was that it affected mainly the democrats and as kissinger put it, it helps us a little bit. Nixon saw the same. In fact, he wanted it out faster. Why did i put it out at all . Because i the spring of 1971, i was feeling that with the attack from the fall of 1970, with the san tei raid, i saw the escalation which had been foreshadowed in cambodia as speeding up and moving toward probably an allout escalation which i wanted to avoid at all cost. S. There was the smallest chance of having some effect on the wall of the war and that was worth me going to prison for the rest of my life. I was urged to do that by mark Raskin Andy Dick Burnett of the institute of policy studies to whom i had given 1000 pages of the pentagon papers when your earlier for an historical project they were putting out, book project. They suggested that i have it to the newspapers. By that time, i had just given up on fulbright, not until then. Until then, i had hoped he would put it out in hearings. I had