Www. Cspan. Org. Up next on the presidency. President ial aides to discuss the role of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during the vietnam war. Alexander butterfield and tom johnson explore the foreign policies of the president s they worked for. Emotional burdens they faced during the conflict. Part of the threeday conference at the lyndon b. Johnson president ial library. It is called the vietnam war summit. You can find Schedule Information at cspan. Org. This program is about an hour. Please welcome the director of the lbj president ial library. Mark on may 22, 1971 the crowd assembled on the university of texas grounds to dedicate this library. 2100 antiwar protesters were kept from interrupting the proceedings by a phalanx of highway patrolman. Their chance of no more war carried by high winds and accompanied by the pounding of trashcan lids were clearly heard. By former president Lyndon Johnson and his assembled guests including president nixon. It was an apt metaphor. The vietnam war had filtered into the administrations of both johnson and nixon. When johnson took his turn at the podium he proclaimed it is all here. The story of our time. With the bark off. There is no record of mistake or an unpleasantness or criticism that is not included in the files here. He wanted us to learn from them to build a better america. The lbj president ial library hosted the historic civil rights summit to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lbj had championed that had signed into law. Four u. S. President s attended the conference. President obama, george w. Bush clinton and carter. Along with many civil rights heroes. Just as we celebrated the feats of civil rights is altogether fitting that we in keeping with president johnsons vision take a substantive unvarnished look at the vietnam war. Our goal is to shed new light on the war and its lessons and legacy. It is also our intent to recognize and courage and sacrifice of the men and women who served in vietnam. The dark cloud of the vietnam war hung over this country long after the last shots were fired area of the passage of years offers greater perspective. To look at it with the bark off may help us to move on stronger and more united. We open this summit with a series of three panel discussions. Commanders in chief. We will explore the role the president s played in the war. How their leadership affected its outcome. H w brands is a bestselling author. Several of his books have been bestsellers and to work finalist for a pulitzer prize. Alexander butterfield joined the air force in 1949 and commanded the squadron of lowlevel Reconnaissance Aircraft in the vietnam war. He was awarded the distinguished flying cross. He went on to serve as Deputy Assistant to president nixon. After serving the white house he was appointed as the administrator of the federal aviation administration. Tom johnson was in the first class of white house fellows in 1965. He remained there for the balance of johnsons administration. He is chairman emeritus of the lbj Foundation Board of trustees. Moderating the discussion is brian sweeney. Editor of texas monthly. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome our guests. [applause] [applause] thank you for that. Thank you to all of you for being here. I take particular pride in having been fortunate enough to having been part of the civil rights event. We learned a lot with the Community Coming together. I like to pay welcome to the patriots who served in the military overseas. Thank you for being here today and being part of this conference. [applause] to give an overview of what role the leaders in the white house plays with the decisions they made that shaped American Foreign policy. Our growing and deeper involvement in vietnam. Through the lens of the johnson and nixon administrations. Going back to the global realignment after world war ii. To the ministration of president truman. Give us a sense of what the world was like starting back down. What was the chain of events that came forward that wouldve put pressure on subsequent administrations to give us a sense of how leaders were thinking at that time. There are two movements that came out of world war ii. The first was the anticolonial movement. Countries that have been colonies of european powers wanted their independence. World war ii taught them that they could demand it. And they can expect to achieve it. That was one aspect of what would be the longrunning vietnam issue. The emerging cold war. The cold war pitted the United States and its allies against the power of the soviet union and its allies and the philosophy of communism. If either of these had been in existence alone than american involvement in vietnam would either not occurred what occurred quite differently. The problem for american president s Truman Eisenhower kennedy Johnson Nixon and ford, in American History we have traditionally supported anticolonial nationalist movements. To the extent that ho chi minh was leading a nationalist movement unites states was inclined to support them. We had supported ho chi minh during world war ii. But they were not silly nationalist, they were communists. Harry truman gave a speech in 1947 in which outlines the truman doctrine. He said the world is divided into the democracy sphere atmosphere of communism. And if you are on the communist side we are against you. Truman was not thinking about vietnam at the time. He was looking about greece and turkey. He laid the philosophical basis for intervention against communism. The korean war broke out in 1950. It heightened the threat of connies imagination. American aid would go directly to in a china. The United States first gets involved in vietnam, headed taken the position it is supporting anticommunist position in vietnam. Dwight eisenhower becomes president in 1953. Eisenhowers the opportunity and the inclination to get more deeply involved. Partly because eisenhower was a military man and he understood what military force can and cant accomplish. He kept his distance. He didnt send troops. John kennedy is now president. By this time the force of the revolution in vietnam is gaining strength. Kennedy, lacking eisenhowers military background, felt greater pressure to follow the advice of his military advisers who said we need to send military force into vietnam. Or we will risk losing vietnam to communism. I will stop here. The premises on which the United States initially sided with the anticommunist forces in vietnam were an artifact of the 1940s. What was not outlandish to believe that communism was it unified threat to the United States and a victory for communism anywhere was a threat to democracy everywhere. By the 1960s that was coming into question. Because harry truman and Dwight Eisenhower and john kennedy had laid down this marker they felt obliged to live up to this promise. I want to reinforce what is justin said. I especially was like to urge you to read a book called the brothers. It is i think the finest book on how we got to where we were and to some extent where we are. John forster dulles actually rejected and went over ho chi minh to try to look at ways of perhaps we can work together. United states and that governments and it was forcefully rejected on our side. The brothers. Alex you had been a military advisers secretary mcnamara. You have been a veteran served overseas. Before you came into the crucible of the white house, what we are personal opinions about vietnam . I was in the junior rotc. And the senior rtc in georgia. Those of us in the south i felt a special obligation to serve. I also felt that president s do the right thing. I have a strong belief. The president s do what was right for the nation. And other president s want to do the right thing. My vietnam experience really began in the fall of 1959. I was a senior aide to a great guy named rosie odonnell. The four start chief of home based in hawaii. He said to me one of your jobs will be to see to it that we never stay on this island more than 30 days. Our beach was the far east. Over 33 months. We made eight or nine trips a year to the far east. We must always hit vietnam. Because of its importance at that time. We would meet with president diem as well as our ambassador and some of their aides. The command, little man, mediumsized men. All the generals. Fred nolting. General odonnell and made. I was like a fly on the wall. The news was never good. It was always a surprise attack or the supplies were still coming down the ho chi minh trail. They needed a more modern type of aircraft. On each occasion we would promise a more advanced training equipment. Some other kind of like airplane. Not a very fast combat airplane. In this jungle warfare everything was different. Radius of turn meant everything. The better the radius of turn. You can operate that over the ground forces. Thats what we did. On the next visit wasnt working out for a well and we said no american pilots will be in there. We said ok will elect american pilots be in the backseat but they cant touch the controls. We recognize that is an ongoing problem. This led right into the best and the brightest area. We were on the phone all the time. He was over in the white house and i was in the pentagon. That is when the best and the brightest were doing their damnedest with this thing trying to figure it out. No one could really get a handle on it. We just underestimated we could not understand, be resolved that they had in the persistence they had. The determination. The vietcong, i am talking about. In an effort to get inside the heads of the president s. What was the options that were available to them. What was their information. I want to jump off on two things. We can never quite get a handle on it. That is one thing i want to explore little bit is this notion of where the president s ever really able to control the events or to the events control them . Did they make proactive decisions or reactive decisions . You mentioned president diem. When you think of the National Tragedy that we suffered with the killing of president kennedy he already had his eye on certain things they were very important, civil rights and the tax bill. But johnson was also trying to manage events in vietnam. The United States was aware of or had approved of the assassination of diem. Can you put yourself inside president johnsons head and say how he was handling this information, what options were available . Tom my role during those years was primarily that of a notetaker. During the past six weeks with the help of a young georgia tech senior i have gone through several hundred of the notes that i took that were transcribed and sent to the obj library. It is taken was 50 years for me to get all of them. Many of them are accepted significantly. There have been deletions made by the cia and others. I am relying on my notes. This is only a small portion of the notes in answering this question. We had treaties that down this to come to the defense of the nations that were signatories to it. The leader of singapore said that he thought that all of Southeast Asia could fall if we did not protect South Vietnam. It was the view of many people at that time. The domino theory. President johnson always worried about china and russia intervening on the side of the North Vietnamese. Especially if we accidentally bombed russian or chinese ships in the hanoi or haiphong harbor. He often said it will be a young pilot from johnson city texas who will accidentally start world war iii. The experience of korea where the chinese came down en masse to support the North Koreans was constantly with him. The worry that we might in a chinese airspace. It was there. Lbj anguished about that war. Every single day. That is not an overstatement. The daily body counts. The calls either to or from the situation room often match 2 00 or 3 00 in the morning. To see if the carrier pilots had returned. The regular tuesday lunch meeting that almost always consisted of the secretary of defense secretary of state the cia director the National Security advisor the press secretary and a notetaker. [laughter] specific bombing targets were reviewed with him. He did not want to bomb the dikes. He did not wish to bomb the cities. He did not wish to bomb the food sources. Only military targets. Deeply personal. He had two sons in law in combat zone areas. Letters and tapes that were sent back to his daughters were at times confiscated by president johnson or one of us and he would listen to them piece of the best report he had in vietnam was chuck robb. He said more than once i am dammed if i do and i am dammed if i dont. As he considered troop escalations, halts, bombing intensification. He wanted his commanders in the field especially general westmoreland to have the troops and the munitions that they needed until with 500,000 troops on the ground general westmoreland in 1968 asked for 200,000 more. At that point on the advice of a group of wise men he assembled and Clark Clifford he said he would not approve that request. Issue out about what was his biggest single word in the war. It was that we might have another incident for the french were overrun by the North Vietnamese. The loss of that base led to the french losing the war. Khe sanh was in such grave danger in 1968 with divisions of North Vietnamese troops assembled in the area. They developed a contingency plan for the tactical use of Nuclear Weapons. My understanding from some of the interviews, governor connally among them, suggested you win the war by winning it. If that required Nuclear Weapons then so be it. So there was a wide range of advice. I assure you from being in the room that president johnson never would have used Nuclear Weapons. He demanded a written letter from all members of the joint chiefs of staff, a formal written document which is here in this library from the joint chiefs of staff assuring him in writing that khe sanh would not be overrun. We had a new fragmentation weapon that was used to have much like the top type of weapon, the socalled barrel bomb. When Lyndon Johnson took off the table the possibility of invading North Vietnam he basically insured that United States could never definitively when the war. It had to keep fighting to avoid losing the war. Johnson did this for very good reasons. He was in the senate in 1951 harry truman allowed the invasion of north korea that brought the chinese into the war. The 1960s china Nuclear Weapons. If the United States found itself directly up against china in the 1960s it could have been world war iii with Nuclear Weapons. He was not going to go there. Weve talked about the possibility of escalation and a land war. Could we come back to an earlier part of the administration, the momentous summer of 1964 were president johnson has not yet run for reelection. He is being very careful about how he is handling things. Moving ahead with the tax bill and the Civil Rights Act. It was a little bit trickier to manage. Did that set the stage for something in terms of the way that we were explaining to the American People what was happening or not happening. What later became known as the credibility gap this erosion of americas belief that what they were hearing was accurate. That the American People were not going to believe despite being told this was a military victory for the north. It was very difficult to accept that. You are a president but not fully present. Still in president kennedys shadow. In a sense of wanting to fulfill some of the legacies that he had set forth. He didnt want to run from any commitments that president kennedy had made. Tom i arrived in 1965. So all of my information is based on the records that are here and are at the pentagon. Clearly the tonkin incidents played a significant role in the decision to dramatically increase and i think we will all go to our graves with different versions of that event. Larry levinson is very trusted attorney, he reviewed that and worked for joe califano, to understand the decisionmaking process and the politics of the time. Senator goldwater was taking such very Strong Military positions. As you know were answered by the little girl pulling the pedals off the daisy. As a Nuclear Mushroom cloud erupted in the background. You had this Incredible Group of people who were just felt weve been successful virtually every war. Americas military power prior to that was just so awesome. It was unbelievable. We never released fully our capability in vietnam. The little statements the johnson made about not sending american boys to fight a war that should be for by asians. That was a significant part of the credit of the issue. Lyndon johnson was a grudging cold warrior. He went into politics for domestic reasons. He wanted to build the great society. He couldnt afford to lose vietnam because he is a once he started losing vietnam he would lose congress. Nor was he willing to go all out and put anything else aside and put the country on a war footing and saying do first. He had two very good reasons for not doing that. A concern that the war in vietnam would escalate into a war between the United States and soviet union and or china. And no point did anybody in the white house think that vietnam was worth a war with the soviet union or china. The other thing, johnson and nixon understood that the