1
00:00:17,851 --> 00:00:20,979
{\an8}This is my armband.
This is what I came over with.
2
00:00:21,062 --> 00:00:24,107
{\an8}This is the only thing I had
coming on the plane.
3
00:00:25,191 --> 00:00:27,318
It just gives you my name.
4
00:00:30,196 --> 00:00:33,033
{\an8}I remember being held by a woman.
5
00:00:33,908 --> 00:00:36,453
{\an8}I believe she was a Vietnamese woman
6
00:00:36,536 --> 00:00:38,621
'cause I remember I could see her hair.
7
00:00:40,498 --> 00:00:43,209
I see people
with little babies in their arms.
8
00:00:45,045 --> 00:00:47,714
I didn't feel scared. I wasn't crying.
9
00:00:47,797 --> 00:00:49,924
I was just kinda observing.
10
00:00:51,885 --> 00:00:54,137
And then I was placed on the airplane.
11
00:00:57,223 --> 00:01:01,936
I was in the CIA's operation room
when the initial reports came in.
12
00:01:05,190 --> 00:01:08,109
{\an8}And… I was dumbstruck.
13
00:01:12,781 --> 00:01:15,366
I just remember at one point we were up,
14
00:01:16,326 --> 00:01:19,245
we were going down, and then I went dark.
15
00:02:02,664 --> 00:02:06,793
In 1971, it was a period of transition.
16
00:02:06,876 --> 00:02:08,795
The war was changing.
17
00:02:08,878 --> 00:02:10,547
American troops were leaving.
18
00:02:10,630 --> 00:02:14,300
And we were moving
South Vietnamese units to the front.
19
00:02:15,301 --> 00:02:17,262
But the reality was this,
20
00:02:17,762 --> 00:02:22,058
how do we crawl
out of a country standing up…
21
00:02:23,309 --> 00:02:25,353
…without betraying our allies,
22
00:02:26,437 --> 00:02:30,608
and without getting our own boys
shot in the back on the way out?
23
00:02:31,860 --> 00:02:35,113
{\an8}And of course then we had
a presidential campaign going on,
24
00:02:35,196 --> 00:02:39,159
{\an8}effectively, while the talks
were happening in Paris.
25
00:02:47,792 --> 00:02:51,462
{\an8}When Nixon thinks
about ending the war in '71,
26
00:02:52,338 --> 00:02:54,549
Kissinger advises him not to do it…
27
00:02:57,093 --> 00:03:01,973
{\an8}because ending the war in '71
could mean losing the war in 1972.
28
00:03:02,056 --> 00:03:05,518
{\an8}And that means
that Nixon won't get a second term.
29
00:03:08,021 --> 00:03:09,647
It's very much to their advantage
30
00:03:09,731 --> 00:03:11,816
to have a negotiation
to get us the hell out
31
00:03:11,900 --> 00:03:13,401
and-- and give us those prisoners.
32
00:03:13,484 --> 00:03:14,569
That's right.
33
00:03:14,652 --> 00:03:17,363
{\an8}If they'll make that kind
of a deal, we'll make that
34
00:03:17,447 --> 00:03:18,615
{\an8}any time they're ready.
35
00:03:18,698 --> 00:03:21,451
{\an8}Well, we've got to get
enough time to get out.
36
00:03:21,534 --> 00:03:25,622
{\an8}We can't have it knocked over brutal--
to put it brutally, before the election.
37
00:03:25,705 --> 00:03:26,915
That's right.
38
00:03:31,211 --> 00:03:34,547
So Nixon kept on delaying
the withdrawal date
39
00:03:34,631 --> 00:03:37,508
in negotiations with the North Vietnamese
40
00:03:38,259 --> 00:03:42,055
so that it would fall
within this very limited period of time
41
00:03:42,138 --> 00:03:44,265
when it could not hurt him politically.
42
00:03:45,767 --> 00:03:49,979
And he secretly negotiated
a decent interval with the Communists.
43
00:03:52,523 --> 00:03:56,527
The "decent interval" was a term
that Henry Kissinger used
44
00:03:56,611 --> 00:04:01,449
to describe a face-saving period
of approximately 18 months
45
00:04:02,158 --> 00:04:07,580
between Nixon's final withdrawal
of American troops from South Vietnam
46
00:04:08,289 --> 00:04:12,085
and North Vietnam's final takeover
of South Vietnam.
47
00:04:13,461 --> 00:04:15,380
On the tapes,
Nixon and Kissinger admit things
48
00:04:15,463 --> 00:04:17,465
that neither of them
ever admitted in public.
49
00:04:20,134 --> 00:04:21,719
{\an8}If a year or two years from now,
50
00:04:21,803 --> 00:04:23,763
{\an8}North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam,
51
00:04:23,846 --> 00:04:25,682
{\an8}we can have a viable foreign policy
52
00:04:25,765 --> 00:04:28,184
{\an8}if it looks as if it's the result
53
00:04:28,268 --> 00:04:29,936
{\an8}of South Vietnamese incompetence…
54
00:04:30,728 --> 00:04:32,981
So we've got to find some formula…
55
00:04:34,899 --> 00:04:37,777
that holds the thing together
a year or two,
56
00:04:37,860 --> 00:04:41,406
after which, after a year, Mr. President,
57
00:04:41,489 --> 00:04:43,449
Vietnam will be a backwater.
58
00:04:44,033 --> 00:04:49,205
If we settle it, say, this October,
by January '74, no one will give a damn.
59
00:04:56,129 --> 00:04:58,172
The phrase "decent interval" and others
60
00:04:58,256 --> 00:04:59,632
have been misinterpreted.
61
00:05:01,134 --> 00:05:03,344
Kissinger viewed it, and I viewed it,
62
00:05:03,428 --> 00:05:07,390
{\an8}as giving the South Vietnamese,
with our aid and with staying in power,
63
00:05:07,473 --> 00:05:10,893
{\an8}a decent chance
to be able to survive on its own.
64
00:05:14,564 --> 00:05:19,402
It is a great,
uh, or terrible, if you will, reminder
65
00:05:19,485 --> 00:05:22,071
of the degree to which domestic politics
66
00:05:22,739 --> 00:05:27,744
{\an8}imbues the entire American
long involvement in Vietnam.
67
00:05:28,786 --> 00:05:32,915
There was major cynicism
in the Nixon administration.
68
00:05:33,833 --> 00:05:37,587
{\an8}A lot of young men and women
were sent to die in Vietnam
69
00:05:37,670 --> 00:05:39,172
{\an8}by a leadership,
70
00:05:39,255 --> 00:05:41,341
{\an8}Richard Nixon at the peak of it,
71
00:05:42,133 --> 00:05:44,260
that was saying behind the scenes,
72
00:05:44,344 --> 00:05:48,014
"We don't care about Vietnam,
whatever happens in there."
73
00:05:49,307 --> 00:05:51,642
{\an8}We knew we were pawns, we knew that,
74
00:05:51,726 --> 00:05:54,562
{\an8}but to use us as the bargaining chip,
75
00:05:54,645 --> 00:05:55,772
{\an8}if you will,
76
00:05:56,814 --> 00:05:57,648
terrible.
77
00:05:59,442 --> 00:06:03,446
Thousands of men died
from that time through the end of the war.
78
00:06:05,782 --> 00:06:11,329
So to sacrifice so many men
for an election is disgusting.
79
00:06:13,706 --> 00:06:16,459
It doesn't get any worse
as far as I'm concerned.
80
00:06:33,226 --> 00:06:37,355
{\an8}Hanoi's master strategist,
Võ Nguyên Giáp, struck first
81
00:06:37,438 --> 00:06:41,609
where he was least expected,
straight across the demilitarized zone.
82
00:06:43,611 --> 00:06:47,240
American F-4 Phantoms
and South Vietnamese fighter bombers
83
00:06:47,323 --> 00:06:49,367
take advantage
of any break in the overcast
84
00:06:49,450 --> 00:06:52,703
to launch tactical airstrikes
against North Vietnamese troops and tanks
85
00:06:52,787 --> 00:06:54,372
south of the DMZ.
86
00:06:56,249 --> 00:07:00,211
{\an8}In 1972, the military battles began
to slowly turn
87
00:07:00,294 --> 00:07:01,546
{\an8}against the North Vietnamese.
88
00:07:01,629 --> 00:07:04,173
{\an8}The American bombing began
to take a heavy toll.
89
00:07:13,683 --> 00:07:17,979
{\an8}And now the South Vietnamese Army
is starting to perform pretty darn well.
90
00:07:23,860 --> 00:07:28,698
{\an8}We lost a lot of people,
but not as much as the other side.
91
00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:34,996
North Vietnam now has
a choice. They can continue to fight,
92
00:07:36,330 --> 00:07:39,959
but with dwindling supplies
and after taking heavy casualties,
93
00:07:40,668 --> 00:07:42,962
or they can compromise
94
00:07:43,463 --> 00:07:47,383
and sign a peace agreement
and get the Americans out.
95
00:07:59,854 --> 00:08:05,735
{\an8}The Paris Peace Talks took place
while fighting was still going on.
96
00:08:06,569 --> 00:08:10,907
{\an8}They were held between, uh, the US,
97
00:08:10,990 --> 00:08:13,367
{\an8}the Republic of South Vietnam,
98
00:08:13,451 --> 00:08:16,329
{\an8}the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,
99
00:08:16,412 --> 00:08:21,417
{\an8}and then the Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam.
100
00:08:23,002 --> 00:08:26,214
{\an8}And, of course,
there were the secret talks
101
00:08:26,297 --> 00:08:29,258
{\an8}between Kissinger and Mr. Lê Đức Thọ.
102
00:08:40,311 --> 00:08:43,773
The "big breakthrough," in October,
103
00:08:43,856 --> 00:08:48,694
was the first time
that the North Vietnamese put forward
104
00:08:48,778 --> 00:08:51,864
a proposal that did not involve
105
00:08:52,615 --> 00:08:57,578
{\an8}the resignation of Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
as the first step.
106
00:08:59,997 --> 00:09:02,708
{\an8}There were two main things
that the Communists wanted.
107
00:09:02,792 --> 00:09:07,046
{\an8}Americans out and North Vietnamese troops
remaining in South Vietnam.
108
00:09:08,297 --> 00:09:13,678
{\an8}Those were Lê Duẩn's two main demands
that he would absolutely not change on.
109
00:09:15,638 --> 00:09:17,974
And the Americans accepted.
110
00:09:20,726 --> 00:09:23,813
{\an8}Kissinger goes to Saigon
to present this to Thiệu.
111
00:09:25,856 --> 00:09:28,359
And of course Thiệu went ballistic.
112
00:09:29,986 --> 00:09:32,321
Because this agreement meant,
113
00:09:32,405 --> 00:09:34,073
yes, he was still in office,
114
00:09:34,699 --> 00:09:37,618
but the North Vietnamese troops
were still in his country.
115
00:09:41,831 --> 00:09:45,084
{\an8}Kissinger was so… confident
116
00:09:45,167 --> 00:09:50,006
{\an8}that he could shove down our throat
that draft agreement.
117
00:09:51,549 --> 00:09:53,968
But, the big contention issue was
118
00:09:54,051 --> 00:09:57,805
the North Vietnamese troops
still remain in Vietnam.
119
00:09:59,056 --> 00:10:01,434
I was able to tell my boss,
"Hey, man, that guy, he's--"
120
00:10:01,517 --> 00:10:03,644
"He's full of something, okay?"
121
00:10:05,980 --> 00:10:11,777
I reaffirm again that the whole people
of South Vietnam will resist again
122
00:10:12,278 --> 00:10:16,198
any peace which demands
rendition of South Vietnam
123
00:10:16,282 --> 00:10:20,036
and which will give South Vietnam
to the Communist aggressors.
124
00:10:20,119 --> 00:10:21,787
It was not fair.
125
00:10:21,871 --> 00:10:28,669
{\an8}This is why Kissinger and Nixon were known
by South Vietnamese people
126
00:10:28,753 --> 00:10:33,090
{\an8}as people who betrayed
and sold South Vietnam out.
127
00:10:37,678 --> 00:10:40,723
Nixon said, "I can't sign an agreement
128
00:10:40,806 --> 00:10:45,311
over the head of our ally
just before the election."
129
00:10:45,394 --> 00:10:48,439
"It'll look just totally cynical."
130
00:10:49,482 --> 00:10:50,483
"I won't do it."
131
00:10:51,484 --> 00:10:53,027
So Henry had to come home.
132
00:10:55,905 --> 00:10:59,325
{\an8}And on the 26th of October,
he had this famous press conference.
133
00:11:00,493 --> 00:11:04,705
We believe… that peace is at hand.
134
00:11:06,248 --> 00:11:08,417
We believe that…
135
00:11:09,669 --> 00:11:12,630
a-- an agreement is within sight.
136
00:11:13,964 --> 00:11:17,677
Many people, in retrospect,
have criticized him
137
00:11:17,760 --> 00:11:20,221
for trying to help Nixon get reelected
138
00:11:20,304 --> 00:11:22,098
by saying, "We almost have peace."
139
00:11:26,268 --> 00:11:29,522
Nixon was able to win
his second term by a landslide.
140
00:11:30,106 --> 00:11:32,316
{\an8}President Nixon has won re-election.
141
00:11:36,779 --> 00:11:40,700
The second-greatest electoral vote
landslide in our history.
142
00:11:40,783 --> 00:11:45,454
Four more years!
Four more years! Four more years!
143
00:11:45,538 --> 00:11:51,001
Thanks for making our last campaign
the very best one of all.
144
00:11:51,085 --> 00:11:53,963
Thank you.
145
00:11:54,046 --> 00:11:57,633
At this point, Nixon decides
that the only way we're going to get
146
00:11:57,717 --> 00:12:00,261
the North Vietnamese to agree
is to bomb them,
147
00:12:00,344 --> 00:12:01,637
to show them we're serious.
148
00:12:01,721 --> 00:12:03,597
And so he launches the Christmas bombing.
149
00:12:18,779 --> 00:12:19,989
This is Hanoi,
150
00:12:20,072 --> 00:12:23,033
a little more than a week
after the heavy aerial attacks
151
00:12:23,117 --> 00:12:25,619
carried out by B-52s and fighter bombers.
152
00:12:26,620 --> 00:12:29,290
{\an8}We bombed them
into accepting our concessions.
153
00:12:30,624 --> 00:12:33,377
{\an8}They returned to the table within days.
154
00:12:33,461 --> 00:12:37,465
And it produced what it was meant to do,
namely bring this war to an end.
155
00:12:39,341 --> 00:12:41,552
Nixon basically had told Thiệu
156
00:12:41,635 --> 00:12:43,846
that, "Listen, sign the Peace Accords."
157
00:12:44,430 --> 00:12:46,891
{\an8}"We don't expect Hanoi to abide by them."
158
00:12:47,933 --> 00:12:51,479
{\an8}"But if they do what they typically do,
which is break a treaty,
159
00:12:51,562 --> 00:12:53,397
we will bomb the hell out of 'em."
160
00:12:54,356 --> 00:12:57,526
There was at some point that, you know,
we could not negotiate anymore.
161
00:12:57,610 --> 00:12:59,779
Nixon at that time basically said,
162
00:12:59,862 --> 00:13:02,865
"If you guys don't sign,
we're going to go alone."
163
00:13:03,365 --> 00:13:08,204
That means the end of help
and assistance to South Vietnam.
164
00:13:09,497 --> 00:13:15,085
So we said to ourselves,
"Okay, the Americans promised to help us."
165
00:13:15,795 --> 00:13:19,381
"We believe that the US
will be on our side to execute it."
166
00:13:26,680 --> 00:13:29,809
{\an8}They started bombing us on December 18th,
167
00:13:29,892 --> 00:13:32,728
{\an8}and in January 1973,
the Paris Peace Accords were signed.
168
00:13:35,815 --> 00:13:38,734
{\an8}We today have concluded an agreement
169
00:13:39,276 --> 00:13:42,822
{\an8}to end the war
and bring peace with honor in Vietnam.
170
00:13:46,283 --> 00:13:48,494
{\an8}A ceasefire, internationally supervised,
171
00:13:48,577 --> 00:13:53,916
{\an8}will begin at 7:00 p.m. this Saturday,
January 27, Washington time.
172
00:14:02,800 --> 00:14:06,095
The main terms
of the Paris Peace Accords were
173
00:14:06,178 --> 00:14:08,264
that there would be a ceasefire in place…
174
00:14:10,391 --> 00:14:13,227
that the Americans withdraw
all of their troops…
175
00:14:15,521 --> 00:14:19,483
that North Vietnamese troops
would be allowed to remain in-country,
176
00:14:21,402 --> 00:14:24,196
and that each side
would release its prisoners.
177
00:14:25,656 --> 00:14:32,454
{\an8}I think the Peace Accords, uh,
mostly solved the issue of the Americans.
178
00:14:33,038 --> 00:14:36,917
And that was the--
the most important issue.
179
00:14:37,918 --> 00:14:40,170
President Thiệu has zero confidence
180
00:14:40,254 --> 00:14:42,798
that the Communists
will abide by the Accords.
181
00:14:42,882 --> 00:14:46,343
He is highly suspicious
that the Americans will keep their word.
182
00:14:46,427 --> 00:14:50,180
But everything depends on keeping
American military and economic aid
183
00:14:50,264 --> 00:14:51,765
flowing for his country.
184
00:14:52,725 --> 00:14:56,562
The Vietnam War
officially ended today on paper.
185
00:14:58,105 --> 00:15:00,274
And Nixon views this
186
00:15:00,357 --> 00:15:03,068
as the crowning diplomatic achievement
of his career.
187
00:15:15,039 --> 00:15:18,500
By this time, I've
been a prisoner eight and a half years.
188
00:15:19,293 --> 00:15:22,880
Sometimes days without sleep,
food, and water.
189
00:15:23,797 --> 00:15:27,635
One time, they put us in a shed
with our feet in leg irons
190
00:15:27,718 --> 00:15:30,429
{\an8}and handcuffed behind our back…
191
00:15:31,889 --> 00:15:33,265
{\an8}…for a week.
192
00:15:33,349 --> 00:15:34,767
That was our punishment.
193
00:15:37,186 --> 00:15:40,564
And now they issued us clothing.
194
00:15:41,649 --> 00:15:44,944
Those of us that were in the first group
were going to be released
195
00:15:45,486 --> 00:15:48,322
and told we were going
to be leaving the next day.
196
00:15:51,492 --> 00:15:55,496
The gates finally open up,
and we march out.
197
00:15:55,579 --> 00:15:57,539
We go get on a bus.
198
00:16:01,919 --> 00:16:03,921
And, uh, for the first time,
199
00:16:04,004 --> 00:16:07,341
we're not blindfolded,
and we're not handcuffed.
200
00:16:14,848 --> 00:16:19,979
And then this beautiful, big C-141
comes in… and lands.
201
00:16:23,732 --> 00:16:24,566
We march up.
202
00:16:27,778 --> 00:16:31,407
And there's an American
and a Vietnamese guy.
203
00:16:31,490 --> 00:16:34,243
And then they have a list of names on it.
204
00:16:39,915 --> 00:16:41,917
And then they call my name.
205
00:16:42,001 --> 00:16:44,169
Everett Alvarez, Jr.
206
00:16:45,212 --> 00:16:51,427
And a fellow grabbed me by the arm,
and then he walks me to the C-141.
207
00:16:56,765 --> 00:16:59,893
And as we came around here on the runway,
208
00:16:59,977 --> 00:17:03,480
and then as it rolls down
and it breaks ground,
209
00:17:03,564 --> 00:17:05,065
and we actually lift off…
210
00:17:06,650 --> 00:17:09,403
the whole plane erupts in cheers.
211
00:17:11,530 --> 00:17:14,658
Just, uh…
You know, it was just long overdue.
212
00:17:22,416 --> 00:17:23,625
And I recall thinking,
213
00:17:23,709 --> 00:17:26,670
"What kind of a world
am I going to find when I get back?"
214
00:17:31,091 --> 00:17:33,844
The next biggest surprise
was getting off the plane,
215
00:17:33,927 --> 00:17:37,014
{\an8}you know, seeing thousands of people
turn out and cheering.
216
00:17:43,187 --> 00:17:44,772
{\an8}We were getting out,
217
00:17:44,855 --> 00:17:50,027
and so all of the fervor
of anti-war treatment was basically over.
218
00:17:51,987 --> 00:17:56,575
It was something that the American public
wanted to put behind 'em and go on.
219
00:17:57,284 --> 00:18:03,207
God bless the President,
and God bless you, Mr. and Mrs. America.
220
00:18:04,958 --> 00:18:06,585
You did not forget us.
221
00:18:19,014 --> 00:18:23,477
{\an8}After POWs were released,
the last GIs got on a plane.
222
00:18:25,187 --> 00:18:26,522
{\an8}And we were gone.
223
00:18:30,984 --> 00:18:33,070
But wars last longer
224
00:18:33,153 --> 00:18:34,571
than we think they do.
225
00:18:34,655 --> 00:18:38,283
Wars last long after
the war itself is over.
226
00:18:39,493 --> 00:18:42,246
The American War in Vietnam did not end
227
00:18:42,329 --> 00:18:46,041
{\an8}in early 1973 with the signing
of the Paris Peace Accords.
228
00:18:46,542 --> 00:18:48,127
Peace did not follow war.
229
00:18:50,170 --> 00:18:52,923
There was no longer
any US military combat units
230
00:18:53,006 --> 00:18:54,716
left in South Vietnam.
231
00:18:55,467 --> 00:18:59,012
{\an8}The several hundred people left
were basically intelligence, logistics,
232
00:18:59,096 --> 00:19:00,639
{\an8}and things of that nature.
233
00:19:01,265 --> 00:19:03,851
{\an8}And the North Vietnamese
really think that at this point,
234
00:19:03,934 --> 00:19:07,437
with the Americans out,
"We can take over South Vietnam."
235
00:19:15,404 --> 00:19:18,323
The Paris Peace Accords
called for a ceasefire.
236
00:19:19,283 --> 00:19:20,617
There was no ceasefire.
237
00:19:25,205 --> 00:19:28,167
The Paris Peace Accords
called for releasing all prisoners.
238
00:19:29,084 --> 00:19:31,712
Thousands upon thousands
of South Vietnamese
239
00:19:31,795 --> 00:19:34,006
that they knew were being held
were not released.
240
00:19:39,094 --> 00:19:43,140
{\an8}I was shot down,
and I was captured by the Communists
241
00:19:43,223 --> 00:19:45,058
{\an8}and became the prisoner of war.
242
00:19:45,767 --> 00:19:47,895
{\an8}They put us in the remote area
243
00:19:48,604 --> 00:19:51,273
and forced us to do the hard labor work.
244
00:19:52,983 --> 00:19:54,526
They beat many people.
245
00:19:56,195 --> 00:19:59,990
We knew that prisoner of war exchange
would never come to us.
246
00:20:03,410 --> 00:20:08,707
So it was clear that Hanoi was not, um,
going to abide by the main provisions.
247
00:20:12,085 --> 00:20:14,546
And after the treaty was signed,
248
00:20:15,047 --> 00:20:20,093
{\an8}the whole, if you will, political climate
in the US has changed.
249
00:20:21,470 --> 00:20:24,181
Nixon, at that time,
was consumed by Watergate.
250
00:20:26,683 --> 00:20:29,394
At first,
it was called the "Watergate Caper."
251
00:20:29,478 --> 00:20:32,648
But the episode grew
steadily more sinister.
252
00:20:32,731 --> 00:20:35,734
No longer a caper,
but the "Watergate Affair."
253
00:20:36,693 --> 00:20:40,030
When Richard Nixon
was running for reelection in '72,
254
00:20:40,781 --> 00:20:44,076
{\an8}he has a group of operatives
and former CIA agents
255
00:20:44,159 --> 00:20:45,619
{\an8}called the "Plumbers,"
256
00:20:46,703 --> 00:20:49,122
{\an8}who will do dirty tricks
for Richard Nixon.
257
00:20:49,915 --> 00:20:53,043
Five of the Plumbers,
five of the burglars from the White House,
258
00:20:53,126 --> 00:20:56,713
are caught
breaking into the Watergate Hotel
259
00:20:56,797 --> 00:21:00,050
where the Democratic National Committee
has its headquarters.
260
00:21:01,468 --> 00:21:03,387
They are going to bug their telephones
261
00:21:03,971 --> 00:21:06,682
to allow Nixon
to get a leg up in the election.
262
00:21:08,976 --> 00:21:11,770
It was clear there were links
reaching into the White House
263
00:21:11,853 --> 00:21:14,106
and into the Nixon campaign organization.
264
00:21:14,189 --> 00:21:17,734
A large secret fund was assembled
in the Nixon campaign organization,
265
00:21:17,818 --> 00:21:20,028
probably more than a million dollars.
266
00:21:20,529 --> 00:21:24,449
And as a result
of the break-in and ensuing cover-up,
267
00:21:24,533 --> 00:21:28,453
we learned that Nixon's illegal actions
268
00:21:28,537 --> 00:21:32,040
between cover-ups and wiretaps,
269
00:21:32,124 --> 00:21:34,251
{\an8}and obstruction of justice,
270
00:21:34,334 --> 00:21:35,961
{\an8}and burglary,
271
00:21:36,044 --> 00:21:38,130
{\an8}and perjury,
272
00:21:38,213 --> 00:21:40,299
{\an8}and the list goes on and on,
273
00:21:40,382 --> 00:21:43,302
that there were more of these activities
than we knew about.
274
00:21:43,885 --> 00:21:45,846
{\an8}It has created a crisis in the presidency,
275
00:21:45,929 --> 00:21:48,515
{\an8}the likes of which
this nation never before has seen.
276
00:21:50,434 --> 00:21:53,603
We almost missed that
but for a bungled burglary?
277
00:21:55,105 --> 00:21:58,775
We might have missed
the level of corruption in government?
278
00:22:00,652 --> 00:22:04,740
{\an8}You know, our tolerance
for that level of corruption
279
00:22:04,823 --> 00:22:06,575
{\an8}in the United States government
280
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,119
{\an8}really has to stop.
281
00:22:10,037 --> 00:22:15,334
Nixon was the evil incarnate
when it comes to government corruption.
282
00:22:16,251 --> 00:22:18,420
I welcome this kind of examination
283
00:22:18,503 --> 00:22:22,382
because people have got to know
whether or not their president's a crook.
284
00:22:22,466 --> 00:22:26,053
Well, I'm not a crook.
I've earned everything I've got.
285
00:22:26,803 --> 00:22:28,930
As a-- a student of American government,
286
00:22:29,014 --> 00:22:32,267
I understood
the executive's totally powerless now.
287
00:22:33,101 --> 00:22:36,772
After being embroiled in the Watergate,
Nixon had no power.
288
00:22:38,940 --> 00:22:40,317
{\an8}And then what happened?
289
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:42,194
{\an8}Richard Nixon resigned.
290
00:22:44,029 --> 00:22:46,323
{\an8}I have never been a quitter.
291
00:22:47,824 --> 00:22:50,077
{\an8}To leave office
before my term is completed
292
00:22:50,160 --> 00:22:52,954
{\an8}is abhorrent to every instinct in my body.
293
00:22:55,248 --> 00:22:56,249
{\an8}But as president,
294
00:22:57,042 --> 00:23:00,253
{\an8}I must put the interests of America first.
295
00:23:00,796 --> 00:23:05,509
{\an8}Therefore, I shall resign the presidency
effective at noon tomorrow.
296
00:23:06,009 --> 00:23:10,931
{\an8}Vice President Ford will be sworn in
as president at that hour in this office.
297
00:23:12,933 --> 00:23:16,645
And that changed everything.
298
00:23:16,728 --> 00:23:19,773
{\an8}"I, Gerald R. Ford, do solemnly swear…"
299
00:23:19,856 --> 00:23:22,776
{\an8}I, Gerald R. Ford, do solemnly swear…
300
00:23:23,318 --> 00:23:25,320
{\an8}Once Gerald Ford becomes president,
301
00:23:25,404 --> 00:23:27,197
his hands have been tied.
302
00:23:27,280 --> 00:23:30,242
The US Congress
is cutting aid dramatically.
303
00:23:31,284 --> 00:23:35,789
The North Vietnamese, they're seeing
that everything is blink and go for them.
304
00:23:46,550 --> 00:23:47,717
{\an8}At this point,
305
00:23:47,801 --> 00:23:52,764
the United States had basically
declared itself out of the war forever.
306
00:23:52,848 --> 00:23:55,225
There was no way, in an emergency,
307
00:23:55,308 --> 00:23:57,769
that we could send forces
back into Vietnam.
308
00:24:03,900 --> 00:24:08,613
{\an8}Graham Martin arrived
in the first months of the ceasefire.
309
00:24:10,365 --> 00:24:14,244
{\an8}He would be the last ambassador
to South Vietnam.
310
00:24:16,455 --> 00:24:22,669
Martin's adopted son, Glenn Mann,
was killed in Vietnam.
311
00:24:23,795 --> 00:24:25,547
He was a helicopter pilot.
312
00:24:25,630 --> 00:24:31,511
And when Martin found out
about the death of his adopted son,
313
00:24:32,262 --> 00:24:33,847
something happened to him.
314
00:24:35,015 --> 00:24:39,352
It solidified his hatred
of the Communists.
315
00:24:41,396 --> 00:24:45,859
{\an8}I was the senior
CIA intelligence analyst in Vietnam.
316
00:24:47,068 --> 00:24:50,906
And I was
Martin's principal intelligence briefer.
317
00:24:51,823 --> 00:24:54,701
He had one assignment,
318
00:24:54,784 --> 00:24:58,705
to try to create an enduring entity
319
00:24:58,788 --> 00:25:01,041
out of the South Vietnamese government.
320
00:25:02,375 --> 00:25:04,252
But the problem was,
321
00:25:04,836 --> 00:25:07,255
he couldn't level with them
322
00:25:07,339 --> 00:25:10,592
that they wouldn't be supported
as they had expected.
323
00:25:11,635 --> 00:25:15,180
You have, um, 17 million people.
324
00:25:15,263 --> 00:25:20,644
You have an army which has been trained
and reasonably well-equipped,
325
00:25:20,727 --> 00:25:21,645
fighting by us.
326
00:25:21,728 --> 00:25:24,856
They have lost material,
as you do in any withdrawal.
327
00:25:25,524 --> 00:25:27,192
{\an8}If we replace that,
328
00:25:27,275 --> 00:25:29,986
then I am quite confident
that they can hold.
329
00:25:30,070 --> 00:25:34,991
Ambassador Martin thinks
that he can save South Vietnam,
330
00:25:35,075 --> 00:25:37,118
in spite of all the odds.
331
00:25:38,078 --> 00:25:39,996
I don't want to use the word "delusional,"
332
00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:42,874
because he should have seen
the writing on the wall.
333
00:25:45,001 --> 00:25:48,838
Then, the Communists decided
to mount an improvisatory offensive.
334
00:25:49,589 --> 00:25:52,050
To punch here, punch there, push, shove.
335
00:25:52,133 --> 00:25:55,512
See if the United States
would react to any provocation.
336
00:25:56,221 --> 00:25:59,474
{\an8}First, they attack in Phước Long province.
337
00:26:04,396 --> 00:26:06,898
{\an8}Communist troops
have launched a major campaign
338
00:26:06,982 --> 00:26:08,942
in the southern half of the country.
339
00:26:09,025 --> 00:26:11,611
Government officials admit
their casualties in the region
340
00:26:11,695 --> 00:26:15,740
are heavier than at any other time
since the 1972 Easter Offensive.
341
00:26:16,366 --> 00:26:18,118
Did the United States react?
342
00:26:18,201 --> 00:26:19,202
No.
343
00:26:26,459 --> 00:26:30,255
That set off a chain reaction.
The city of Huế fell.
344
00:26:38,722 --> 00:26:42,559
There's horrific scenes
of trying to evacuate people by ships.
345
00:26:43,727 --> 00:26:47,147
Even as the refugees
swarmed ashore in Đà Nẵng,
346
00:26:47,230 --> 00:26:51,401
the word was passed that Đà Nẵng itself
would be the next place to fall.
347
00:26:54,654 --> 00:26:56,656
Then the city of Đà Nẵng fell.
348
00:27:00,076 --> 00:27:03,663
{\an8}In Đà Nẵng, the airport
is just flooded with people.
349
00:27:06,791 --> 00:27:08,168
They're on the runways.
350
00:27:08,251 --> 00:27:09,878
They're all over.
351
00:27:10,879 --> 00:27:13,340
{\an8}They had to do a… a rolling load
352
00:27:14,007 --> 00:27:16,718
{\an8}by taking everybody aboard
through the back hatch.
353
00:27:18,511 --> 00:27:22,182
And people were just coming to the plane
as they were slowly moving,
354
00:27:22,265 --> 00:27:24,851
and they were just dragging
'em up the stairwell.
355
00:27:26,186 --> 00:27:29,856
And once they got
a good amount of people on board,
356
00:27:29,939 --> 00:27:32,859
it's when they continued
to roll and take off.
357
00:27:32,942 --> 00:27:34,944
It was just pandemonium.
358
00:27:36,071 --> 00:27:38,657
That's how bad
the people feared the North.
359
00:27:41,326 --> 00:27:45,789
CIA headquarters and the Pentagon
were sending word to Saigon,
360
00:27:45,872 --> 00:27:49,751
"Send the surplus people home."
361
00:27:51,086 --> 00:27:56,591
But Martin wouldn't order
anybody out of the country
362
00:27:57,842 --> 00:28:01,388
because that would send
the wrong signal to the enemy
363
00:28:01,471 --> 00:28:03,473
and to the South Vietnamese population,
364
00:28:03,556 --> 00:28:06,184
and might cause chaos.
365
00:28:07,102 --> 00:28:09,938
The situation now, uh, seems to be, uh,
366
00:28:10,605 --> 00:28:13,149
described in terms
such as "disaster" and so forth.
367
00:28:13,733 --> 00:28:17,487
Would you say that South Vietnam
now is at the end of the road?
368
00:28:17,570 --> 00:28:22,158
{\an8}If you mean, "Is South Vietnam,
is it on the imminent verge of collapse?"
369
00:28:22,659 --> 00:28:25,662
I think the answer
is that it's quite definitely "No."
370
00:28:26,371 --> 00:28:31,376
However, Martin approved of one operation,
371
00:28:32,210 --> 00:28:35,755
because it would win
South Vietnam's sympathy
372
00:28:35,839 --> 00:28:37,465
from the American people.
373
00:28:38,883 --> 00:28:41,803
There was an adoption agency
in the United States,
374
00:28:41,886 --> 00:28:44,431
the Holt Adoption Agency
and several others.
375
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:48,226
{\an8}They proposed to Gerald Ford
376
00:28:49,227 --> 00:28:51,354
{\an8}that a baby lift be mounted
377
00:28:51,438 --> 00:28:55,942
to evacuate
about 2,000 "children of the dust."
378
00:28:58,153 --> 00:29:00,363
That's Vietnamese-American kids
379
00:29:00,447 --> 00:29:05,076
who'd been sired in love affairs
between American GIs and Vietnamese.
380
00:29:11,332 --> 00:29:14,836
{\an8}I have no information on my parents.
I ha-- I don't have a name.
381
00:29:16,921 --> 00:29:19,382
From what I was told, during that time,
382
00:29:19,466 --> 00:29:23,094
a lot of the soldiers had relationships
with the women over there,
383
00:29:23,803 --> 00:29:25,221
and some left.
384
00:29:25,305 --> 00:29:28,725
So a lot of them may not have known
that they had kids there.
385
00:29:29,934 --> 00:29:32,687
A lot of biracial babies were created,
386
00:29:32,771 --> 00:29:35,732
and Northern was coming,
didn't want us here.
387
00:29:36,483 --> 00:29:38,568
Anything American, they would kill us.
388
00:29:39,694 --> 00:29:42,822
So a lot of women, mothers,
were dropping their biracial kids off
389
00:29:42,906 --> 00:29:45,867
in the orphanage homes
because they couldn't keep 'em.
390
00:29:47,952 --> 00:29:49,954
My mother, she gave me up.
391
00:29:50,038 --> 00:29:53,792
She wanted me to have a better life.
She wanted to save my life.
392
00:29:57,754 --> 00:30:00,799
The flights were
to be flown out on a C-5A,
393
00:30:00,882 --> 00:30:03,593
one of the biggest transporter
aircraft available.
394
00:30:05,303 --> 00:30:08,515
{\an8}And on the afternoon of April 4th,
395
00:30:10,350 --> 00:30:13,436
that C-5A was loaded up.
396
00:30:15,021 --> 00:30:18,107
{\an8}I was placed
in a seat closest to the aisle.
397
00:30:19,442 --> 00:30:22,862
{\an8}To my right was a little boy.
398
00:30:24,739 --> 00:30:28,409
We kind of just stared at each other
for a few minutes, didn't say anything,
399
00:30:29,077 --> 00:30:31,579
and he presented me with a red Life Saver.
400
00:30:31,663 --> 00:30:33,414
I happily accepted.
401
00:30:33,498 --> 00:30:36,000
At that point, a woman came by,
402
00:30:36,084 --> 00:30:37,961
strapped us into our seats,
403
00:30:39,379 --> 00:30:42,215
and then I remember ascending upwards.
404
00:30:45,301 --> 00:30:48,012
About 300 people got on that aircraft.
405
00:30:49,931 --> 00:30:52,809
It took off around four o'clock
in the afternoon,
406
00:30:53,518 --> 00:30:56,479
and about 12 minutes out
from Tân Sơn Nhứt,
407
00:30:57,313 --> 00:31:00,608
the canopy covering the loading dock
408
00:31:00,692 --> 00:31:02,694
underneath the plane blew off.
409
00:31:04,487 --> 00:31:09,325
Somebody had forgotten
to latch a goddamn lock.
410
00:31:10,910 --> 00:31:13,246
And the pilot of the plane
grabbed the controls
411
00:31:13,329 --> 00:31:16,165
and tried to bring
that goddamned plane around,
412
00:31:16,249 --> 00:31:19,127
come in for a landing
back at Tân Sơn Nhứt.
413
00:31:20,128 --> 00:31:21,838
It lost altitude.
414
00:31:23,631 --> 00:31:26,050
Kids were sucked out
of the plane right there.
415
00:31:26,134 --> 00:31:27,677
There was instant decompression.
416
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:30,263
People were exploding in the plane.
417
00:31:33,933 --> 00:31:38,521
It comes in for a crash landing
in a rice paddy
418
00:31:38,605 --> 00:31:42,358
just off one of the main runways
at Tân Sơn Nhứt.
419
00:31:43,651 --> 00:31:45,528
It hits ground…
420
00:31:47,113 --> 00:31:49,741
bounces up again,
421
00:31:50,408 --> 00:31:52,160
bounces back down,
422
00:31:52,243 --> 00:31:55,622
decapitates several fishermen
in the rice paddies.
423
00:32:08,843 --> 00:32:10,720
By the time I got out there,
424
00:32:10,803 --> 00:32:13,514
the bird had been down
half an hour to an hour.
425
00:32:17,018 --> 00:32:22,273
{\an8}I remember checking
the, uh, C-5 cargo deck,
426
00:32:22,357 --> 00:32:24,192
{\an8}which had all the babies,
427
00:32:24,275 --> 00:32:25,568
{\an8}was wiped out.
428
00:32:39,582 --> 00:32:42,126
It was one of the worst aviation disasters
429
00:32:42,210 --> 00:32:43,211
in history.
430
00:32:45,964 --> 00:32:47,674
I said, "Oh, my God."
431
00:32:49,092 --> 00:32:52,971
{\an8}So I had my driver
rush me over to the crash site.
432
00:32:53,054 --> 00:32:57,642
{\an8}They found a lot of babies
in their cradles floating there, alive.
433
00:32:58,142 --> 00:33:00,019
Babies floating in the rice paddy?
434
00:33:00,103 --> 00:33:01,396
Yes.
435
00:33:01,479 --> 00:33:03,481
In-- In cradles.
436
00:33:08,027 --> 00:33:11,197
I don't have
any recollection of the impact.
437
00:33:12,740 --> 00:33:13,783
It went dark.
438
00:33:15,827 --> 00:33:17,954
I didn't hear. I didn't feel.
439
00:33:18,871 --> 00:33:20,456
I didn't see anything.
440
00:33:22,250 --> 00:33:24,460
I just remember opening my eyes…
441
00:33:26,963 --> 00:33:29,966
and seeing that I was
no longer on the plane.
442
00:33:30,049 --> 00:33:33,469
I was floating in water
on some type of debris.
443
00:33:34,762 --> 00:33:37,890
I happened to look to my left a little bit
444
00:33:37,974 --> 00:33:40,768
and saw a woman behind me in water.
445
00:33:41,811 --> 00:33:43,813
The little boy wasn't next to me.
446
00:33:44,772 --> 00:33:47,483
In the distance, I saw smoke.
447
00:33:47,567 --> 00:33:48,860
I didn't see a plane.
448
00:33:50,445 --> 00:33:54,365
I didn't see anything
except for water and debris.
449
00:33:55,366 --> 00:33:59,287
The last memory of Vietnam
is floating on that debris, looking out.
450
00:33:59,912 --> 00:34:01,664
I kind of just blacked out.
451
00:34:01,748 --> 00:34:03,666
I have no memory of my rescue.
452
00:34:03,750 --> 00:34:06,210
My next memory would be in America.
453
00:34:07,503 --> 00:34:10,631
Two hours ago,
I watched this airplane take off
454
00:34:10,715 --> 00:34:12,383
from Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base.
455
00:34:12,467 --> 00:34:14,302
It was a perfect takeoff,
456
00:34:14,385 --> 00:34:16,763
carrying those orphans
to the United States.
457
00:34:17,388 --> 00:34:19,265
What can one say except,
458
00:34:19,348 --> 00:34:22,226
"When will the misery
in this country ever stop?"
459
00:34:32,904 --> 00:34:34,655
That was devastating to me.
460
00:34:39,118 --> 00:34:42,413
It underscored, as nothing had,
461
00:34:43,456 --> 00:34:46,667
the hazards of trying to evacuate
462
00:34:46,751 --> 00:34:48,419
under dangerous circumstances,
463
00:34:48,503 --> 00:34:53,091
and how a lack of planning
could lead to disaster.
464
00:34:58,137 --> 00:35:01,766
{\an8}At this point, President Ford
was attempting to maintain
465
00:35:01,849 --> 00:35:03,684
{\an8}Nixon administration policy,
466
00:35:03,768 --> 00:35:05,478
{\an8}which was to support South Vietnam.
467
00:35:06,312 --> 00:35:10,066
{\an8}The situation
in South Vietnam and Cambodia
468
00:35:10,691 --> 00:35:12,902
{\an8}has reached a critical phase.
469
00:35:13,486 --> 00:35:15,530
I am therefore asking the Congress
470
00:35:15,613 --> 00:35:19,117
to appropriate,
without delay, $722 million
471
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:21,994
for emergency military assistance
472
00:35:22,078 --> 00:35:27,917
and an initial sum of $250 million
473
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:32,004
for economic and humanitarian aid
for South Vietnam.
474
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:38,344
But there were
so many anti-war congressmen in now
475
00:35:38,427 --> 00:35:41,806
that President Ford, at this point,
had no chance to resurrect
476
00:35:41,889 --> 00:35:44,183
any sorts of US aid to them.
477
00:35:46,102 --> 00:35:51,774
{\an8}We did not anticipate that the Congress
would cut off American military assistance
478
00:35:51,858 --> 00:35:54,110
{\an8}right in the midst
of a Communist offensive,
479
00:35:54,694 --> 00:35:56,195
you know, kicking the struts out.
480
00:35:57,530 --> 00:36:01,284
{\an8}President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
and many others in his government
481
00:36:01,367 --> 00:36:04,745
trusted the US to help South Vietnam…
482
00:36:07,665 --> 00:36:11,043
{\an8}which, uh, turned out to be,
uh, a wrong assumption.
483
00:36:15,173 --> 00:36:18,759
{\an8}We don't have anything to fight with.
We did not have anything.
484
00:36:19,552 --> 00:36:22,680
{\an8}Airplanes sat idle on the tarmac,
485
00:36:22,763 --> 00:36:24,932
{\an8}and-- and helicopters could not take off.
486
00:36:26,267 --> 00:36:30,813
While the other side received
massive reinforcement, modern weapons,
487
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:32,732
we were just sitting ducks.
488
00:36:35,318 --> 00:36:36,444
So people knew.
489
00:36:38,613 --> 00:36:40,656
We knew it was a lost cause.
490
00:36:48,497 --> 00:36:51,918
The story from South Vietnam
grew increasingly grim today.
491
00:36:53,127 --> 00:36:55,588
The news from nearly every corner
492
00:36:55,671 --> 00:36:57,215
of the country is bad.
493
00:36:58,049 --> 00:37:00,176
{\an8}Communist forces in South Vietnam,
494
00:37:00,259 --> 00:37:02,845
{\an8}already solidly in control
of 11 provinces,
495
00:37:02,929 --> 00:37:05,181
began working on yet another one today.
496
00:37:12,980 --> 00:37:14,690
As of early April,
497
00:37:14,774 --> 00:37:19,570
{\an8}the North Vietnamese Army
was barreling towards Saigon.
498
00:37:21,030 --> 00:37:23,366
{\an8}There was quite a few of us
that kept a map.
499
00:37:23,908 --> 00:37:26,744
{\an8}We had a map of South Vietnam,
and it had all the provinces.
500
00:37:27,995 --> 00:37:31,207
And as each province fell,
we colored it in red.
501
00:37:32,416 --> 00:37:36,254
That's when you knew that things
were going very bad real quick.
502
00:37:38,506 --> 00:37:40,883
You could see on the map, here's Saigon,
503
00:37:40,967 --> 00:37:44,428
and everything just started
to just be consumed around.
504
00:37:45,471 --> 00:37:48,474
{\an8}Just now it seems
there are even more North Vietnamese
505
00:37:48,557 --> 00:37:52,061
{\an8}in the Saigon area
than there are South Vietnamese troops.
506
00:37:53,729 --> 00:37:59,235
{\an8}We searched and destroyed.
We were strongly determined to kill them.
507
00:37:59,318 --> 00:38:02,488
That's how our spirit of intense fighting
spread further south.
508
00:38:02,571 --> 00:38:04,949
We killed them along the withdrawal route.
509
00:38:05,533 --> 00:38:08,744
They withdrew in chaos.
510
00:38:09,870 --> 00:38:12,707
The South Vietnamese
Army began to disintegrate.
511
00:38:12,790 --> 00:38:15,668
Even the crack airborne units
took off their uniforms
512
00:38:15,751 --> 00:38:17,253
and threw away their weapons.
513
00:38:21,048 --> 00:38:24,218
We drove ahead of them,
and no one shot anyone.
514
00:38:24,302 --> 00:38:27,722
When they heard us honk, they scattered.
515
00:38:33,185 --> 00:38:35,354
{\an8}Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese
516
00:38:35,438 --> 00:38:38,691
frantically want out,
and there's apparently no way.
517
00:38:38,774 --> 00:38:42,111
Is it difficult to get a passport
for your wife's Vietnamese relatives?
518
00:38:42,194 --> 00:38:43,779
It's impossible today.
519
00:38:43,863 --> 00:38:45,865
{\an8}Uh, you can take a chance on buying them.
520
00:38:45,948 --> 00:38:48,326
{\an8}They sell anywhere from $10,000-$50,000.
521
00:38:48,409 --> 00:38:51,329
{\an8}Every day now I meet friends
who start talking about themselves
522
00:38:51,412 --> 00:38:53,706
{\an8}or members of their family
carrying poison.
523
00:38:53,789 --> 00:38:56,208
{\an8}And this is intended for,
if the other side takes over,
524
00:38:56,292 --> 00:38:58,044
{\an8}that they'll use it to commit suicide.
525
00:38:59,295 --> 00:39:02,173
When the Communists seized
the northern part of the country,
526
00:39:02,256 --> 00:39:05,134
they had picked up secret documents,
527
00:39:05,217 --> 00:39:06,218
American documents,
528
00:39:06,302 --> 00:39:09,430
identifying Vietnamese
who were working for us right now
529
00:39:09,513 --> 00:39:11,474
in the most sensitive capacities.
530
00:39:12,099 --> 00:39:14,185
They were in imminent danger.
531
00:39:17,063 --> 00:39:21,859
I estimated that if we paid
our moral obligation to the Vietnamese,
532
00:39:21,942 --> 00:39:23,819
we should evacuate
533
00:39:24,653 --> 00:39:26,822
all the Vietnamese who worked
for American agencies
534
00:39:26,906 --> 00:39:28,407
in the past ten years,
535
00:39:29,075 --> 00:39:31,952
plus four or five family members.
536
00:39:32,870 --> 00:39:34,955
Take all of those figures,
put 'em together,
537
00:39:36,457 --> 00:39:37,958
one million Vietnamese,
538
00:39:39,251 --> 00:39:42,463
if we were being moral, we would evacuate.
539
00:39:43,297 --> 00:39:46,008
To me, it was one
of the most terrible realizations
540
00:39:46,092 --> 00:39:48,010
I ever had in that war.
541
00:39:52,264 --> 00:39:56,185
{\an8}But Martin was still dragging his feet,
planning for an evacuation.
542
00:39:56,811 --> 00:39:59,188
The President asked Congress
for authorization
543
00:39:59,271 --> 00:40:01,565
to use American troops here
to evacuate Americans
544
00:40:01,649 --> 00:40:03,651
and Vietnamese who work for Americans.
545
00:40:03,734 --> 00:40:06,570
- If it were necessary.
- Do you have plans for that?
546
00:40:06,654 --> 00:40:09,573
Of course. Every embassy
in the world has plans for it.
547
00:40:09,657 --> 00:40:11,992
- Think it will be necessary?
- I have--
548
00:40:12,076 --> 00:40:14,286
That again, you see, is a-- is a judgment
549
00:40:14,370 --> 00:40:17,498
that-- that-- that I can't
possibly make at this time.
550
00:40:19,542 --> 00:40:23,838
It appears
that what really, uh, drove Martin
551
00:40:23,921 --> 00:40:25,256
to the lengths that it did
552
00:40:25,339 --> 00:40:27,466
was his mistaken…
553
00:40:28,717 --> 00:40:32,054
{\an8}hope that there could still be
554
00:40:32,138 --> 00:40:35,224
{\an8}some kind of agreement
reached with the other side
555
00:40:35,307 --> 00:40:39,311
{\an8}that would allow a more orderly departure.
556
00:40:42,773 --> 00:40:47,778
{\an8}It became clear that the Americans
had lost the war in Vietnam.
557
00:40:50,906 --> 00:40:54,743
{\an8}And just about every journalist knew this.
558
00:40:55,369 --> 00:40:58,164
Just about every military commander
knew this.
559
00:40:58,706 --> 00:41:01,959
Certainly every CIA agent knew this.
560
00:41:02,585 --> 00:41:05,129
But it was being denied by the embassy.
561
00:41:06,547 --> 00:41:07,923
{\an8}In the last days,
562
00:41:08,007 --> 00:41:12,261
{\an8}Thiệu was trying to save
what he could of South Vietnam.
563
00:41:13,220 --> 00:41:14,805
But the Communists were saying
564
00:41:14,889 --> 00:41:17,433
that before there's
any sort of halt in the war,
565
00:41:17,516 --> 00:41:18,934
Thiệu has to go.
566
00:41:19,018 --> 00:41:20,769
That was always the bottom line.
567
00:41:20,853 --> 00:41:22,563
"Thiệu has to resign,
568
00:41:22,646 --> 00:41:24,815
and then we'll figure out
the government from there."
569
00:41:24,899 --> 00:41:28,527
Ambassador Martin came to him
and said, "We're not getting more aid."
570
00:41:29,820 --> 00:41:33,782
He believes that there's
maybe a very small sliver of hope
571
00:41:33,866 --> 00:41:35,868
that if Thiệu resigns,
572
00:41:35,951 --> 00:41:39,455
then there might be a chance
for a negotiated settlement.
573
00:41:40,831 --> 00:41:45,294
And so Thiệu, basically believing
the Americans have betrayed him,
574
00:41:45,377 --> 00:41:49,465
resigns in a last-ditch effort
to save what's left of his country.
575
00:41:50,090 --> 00:41:52,009
{\an8}The Americans fought a war here
576
00:41:52,092 --> 00:41:54,261
{\an8}without success and went home.
577
00:41:55,846 --> 00:41:57,598
{\an8}They promised
if the Communists invaded again,
578
00:41:57,681 --> 00:41:59,850
{\an8}there'd be action taken.
But there's been no reaction.
579
00:42:00,601 --> 00:42:02,895
Therefore, the least they can do
is to send us more support,
580
00:42:02,978 --> 00:42:04,355
but they have not sent it.
581
00:42:06,565 --> 00:42:08,359
What does this amount to?
582
00:42:08,442 --> 00:42:12,154
Breaching promises, unfairness,
a lack of righteousness,
583
00:42:13,697 --> 00:42:17,493
inhumane treatment
towards an ally that is suffering,
584
00:42:18,869 --> 00:42:21,664
the shirking of responsibility
of a superpower.
585
00:42:22,706 --> 00:42:28,379
{\an8}He denounced that
the Americans were p-- betraying Vietnam,
586
00:42:28,462 --> 00:42:31,882
and I saw that it was the end.
587
00:42:35,886 --> 00:42:39,181
{\an8}Gen. Dương Văn Minh was made
the President of South Vietnam
588
00:42:39,265 --> 00:42:40,683
{\an8}after Thiệu left.
589
00:42:41,267 --> 00:42:42,101
{\an8}As embodied in…
590
00:42:42,184 --> 00:42:46,313
{\an8}About this time, Kissinger finally ordered
591
00:42:46,397 --> 00:42:48,607
{\an8}major evacuation planning to begin.
592
00:42:49,233 --> 00:42:52,444
{\an8}And that was when Martin was forced
593
00:42:52,528 --> 00:42:55,322
{\an8}into pushing
the evacuation planning forward.
594
00:42:56,865 --> 00:43:00,035
{\an8}…small arms fire around here,
.50 caliber machine gun bullets…
595
00:43:00,119 --> 00:43:03,372
{\an8}Newport Bridge was the last
the Communists had to cross
596
00:43:03,455 --> 00:43:04,623
{\an8}to enter the capital.
597
00:43:05,833 --> 00:43:08,127
With Communist forces only a few miles
598
00:43:08,210 --> 00:43:09,753
from the center of Saigon,
599
00:43:09,837 --> 00:43:13,090
the order to evacuate
American nationals is given.
600
00:43:14,550 --> 00:43:18,262
The options to evacuate were A, by ship.
601
00:43:18,345 --> 00:43:21,724
{\an8}That wasn't going to happen
with the way things were going.
602
00:43:24,810 --> 00:43:28,397
The second option was by air
from the air base, Tân Sơn Nhứt.
603
00:43:29,607 --> 00:43:32,443
They rocketed the airport on the 29th.
604
00:43:33,444 --> 00:43:36,030
We heard that two Marines were killed.
605
00:43:37,990 --> 00:43:38,907
That hit home.
606
00:43:47,916 --> 00:43:49,376
It still does.
607
00:43:52,963 --> 00:43:57,676
The evacuation of Saigon by helicopter
was the very last option.
608
00:43:58,510 --> 00:44:00,596
And that was all that they were left with.
609
00:44:00,679 --> 00:44:02,723
There was no other way to go.
610
00:44:07,227 --> 00:44:08,812
{\an8}I was in the hospital.
611
00:44:09,688 --> 00:44:12,399
{\an8}I stayed with my soldiers,
who were wounded soldiers there.
612
00:44:13,275 --> 00:44:15,277
And I meet my commander in chief!
613
00:44:15,361 --> 00:44:16,695
He, uh, give me an order,
614
00:44:16,779 --> 00:44:19,865
said, "Get out,
because the Việt Cộng about to come."
615
00:44:19,948 --> 00:44:20,908
"They'll kill you."
616
00:44:22,076 --> 00:44:26,914
Finally, we go to a place
where we find a platform for a helicopter.
617
00:44:28,916 --> 00:44:32,419
{\an8}I was a teenager, around 18.
618
00:44:32,503 --> 00:44:39,051
{\an8}My brother came and he said that,
"Hurry, I need to pick you up."
619
00:44:39,134 --> 00:44:42,304
"So you need to get
out of the house soon."
620
00:44:43,138 --> 00:44:46,183
The driver took us to the building.
621
00:44:46,266 --> 00:44:47,893
And I said to my brother,
622
00:44:48,644 --> 00:44:51,146
"We need to go home and pick up parents."
623
00:44:52,398 --> 00:44:55,526
And he said,
"We don't have time, we don't have time."
624
00:44:57,111 --> 00:45:00,030
And suddenly,
there is a helicopter coming.
625
00:45:00,614 --> 00:45:01,740
And he landed.
626
00:45:01,824 --> 00:45:04,493
He say, "Go, go, go, come in."
627
00:45:05,411 --> 00:45:06,662
And we start going.
628
00:45:07,705 --> 00:45:10,332
There's only enough
for ten or twelve people.
629
00:45:10,916 --> 00:45:14,670
{\an8}But we-- we were twenty-some already
on-- on that plane.
630
00:45:15,879 --> 00:45:21,135
{\an8}The people behind me
was a couple with a lot of kids.
631
00:45:21,218 --> 00:45:25,931
They hold the baby,
and then maybe kids, two-three years old.
632
00:45:26,014 --> 00:45:32,354
Then on the ladder,
there was a-- a kid, maybe 13 years old.
633
00:45:32,438 --> 00:45:33,897
But that was a cut-off.
634
00:45:33,981 --> 00:45:36,942
They cannot get the kids on anymore.
635
00:45:37,651 --> 00:45:40,237
But then the parents on top tried to pull.
636
00:45:41,155 --> 00:45:46,535
The American person slapped the guy
so then the helicopter can take off.
637
00:45:47,536 --> 00:45:52,082
So at that time,
the parents of the kids cried so much.
638
00:45:54,585 --> 00:45:56,795
And then he say, "Now, we go out."
639
00:45:58,964 --> 00:46:00,758
{\an8}"We go to the Seventh Fleet."
640
00:46:06,722 --> 00:46:07,681
From there,
641
00:46:08,766 --> 00:46:10,309
you know, everybody cry.
642
00:46:11,769 --> 00:46:13,562
Because we know we will--
643
00:46:13,645 --> 00:46:16,356
Probably, we'll never see
our country anymore.
644
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:19,777
The first thing
that I think was my parents.
645
00:46:26,116 --> 00:46:29,536
I asked myself
when I could see my parents again.
646
00:46:31,538 --> 00:46:36,043
I knew for sure
that I wasn't able to come home.
647
00:46:37,669 --> 00:46:38,796
I am penniless.
648
00:46:40,714 --> 00:46:42,424
No money in my pocket.
649
00:46:43,926 --> 00:46:47,429
I only have
one pair of clothes on my body.
650
00:46:48,013 --> 00:46:51,725
That's it.
No friends, no relatives, no money.
651
00:46:52,768 --> 00:46:55,187
No career. How can I survive?
652
00:46:58,565 --> 00:47:01,652
{\an8}I was, uh, the chief engineer on USS Kirk,
653
00:47:01,735 --> 00:47:04,363
{\an8}a Knox-class destroyer escort.
654
00:47:04,446 --> 00:47:07,741
{\an8}And our job, initially,
was simply to-- to protect.
655
00:47:08,742 --> 00:47:12,162
We were never supposed
to take any kind of evacuees at all.
656
00:47:14,414 --> 00:47:18,502
{\an8}We could see the US Air Force
and US Marine Corps helicopters
657
00:47:18,585 --> 00:47:21,296
{\an8}cycling back and forth
in very orderly fashion.
658
00:47:21,797 --> 00:47:23,298
What they didn't plan,
659
00:47:24,007 --> 00:47:29,763
they didn't plan on so many
small Vietnamese Air Force helicopters
660
00:47:29,847 --> 00:47:31,557
that came out on their own,
661
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:35,310
flown by Vietnamese pilots
with their families aboard,
662
00:47:35,394 --> 00:47:39,356
with their wives, their children,
their neighbors, their uncles and aunts.
663
00:47:39,439 --> 00:47:40,941
They just loaded them on.
664
00:47:41,733 --> 00:47:45,988
So you had swarms of helicopters
coming out just helter-skelter.
665
00:47:46,071 --> 00:47:49,199
Landing on anything
that they could get their skids onto.
666
00:47:50,242 --> 00:47:52,995
Hovering above the deck
to unload their passengers,
667
00:47:53,078 --> 00:47:56,790
the pilots were unfamiliar with landing
their crafts on a moving ship.
668
00:47:57,583 --> 00:48:00,669
One crashed into the side
of the USS Blue Ridge.
669
00:48:00,752 --> 00:48:04,047
Others managed to crash-land
on the deck of the ship.
670
00:48:09,636 --> 00:48:11,889
We weren't expecting to take a helicopter.
671
00:48:12,723 --> 00:48:15,934
And some of us on the bridge,
we went to the captain and we said,
672
00:48:16,018 --> 00:48:18,020
"Captain, let's try to take one."
673
00:48:19,062 --> 00:48:21,815
Because there were so many
of them coming out. So many of them.
674
00:48:24,318 --> 00:48:25,444
And we finally did.
675
00:48:26,904 --> 00:48:30,532
Of course, that starts a whole daisy chain
because as soon as one landed,
676
00:48:30,616 --> 00:48:34,786
the others all started coming in
and lining up to do the same thing.
677
00:48:34,870 --> 00:48:36,622
But we only had room for one.
678
00:48:38,749 --> 00:48:40,459
And, uh, you're looking up and you see
679
00:48:40,542 --> 00:48:42,544
there's three or four more
waiting to land,
680
00:48:42,628 --> 00:48:44,963
all full of women and children, babies.
681
00:48:45,631 --> 00:48:48,675
So this is the question for the captain.
682
00:48:49,801 --> 00:48:50,928
What's he gonna do?
683
00:48:52,846 --> 00:48:55,015
And the captain said,
"Throw it over the side."
684
00:49:05,192 --> 00:49:07,069
Do you let these people die?
685
00:49:07,152 --> 00:49:09,529
Or do you get rid
of the million-dollar helicopter?
686
00:49:10,072 --> 00:49:11,198
There's no question.
687
00:49:13,617 --> 00:49:15,869
So plop, plop, plop.
We just got rid of them all.
688
00:49:16,370 --> 00:49:19,164
Other South Vietnamese pilots just hovered
689
00:49:19,247 --> 00:49:21,333
long enough to unload their passengers,
690
00:49:21,416 --> 00:49:23,335
and then headed for the side of the ship
691
00:49:23,418 --> 00:49:27,297
and just jumped out with their life vests
to be picked up by US sailors,
692
00:49:27,381 --> 00:49:30,300
their helicopters crashing into the sea.
693
00:49:31,093 --> 00:49:33,762
Still other pilots headed out
to the side of the ship
694
00:49:33,845 --> 00:49:35,889
after unloading their passengers,
695
00:49:35,973 --> 00:49:39,434
and settled the crafts into the water,
and then jumped out,
696
00:49:39,518 --> 00:49:42,479
again waiting to be picked up
by US sailors.
697
00:49:50,487 --> 00:49:53,782
We had the expectation
of taking 7,000 people.
698
00:49:56,034 --> 00:49:59,079
It ended up,
so sea lift and a helicopter lift,
699
00:49:59,162 --> 00:50:01,123
147,000.
700
00:50:04,459 --> 00:50:08,338
{\an8}I was going to stay behind
after the evacuation.
701
00:50:08,922 --> 00:50:11,258
But it was such a nasty situation
702
00:50:11,341 --> 00:50:15,470
that we decided we'd go be evacuated.
703
00:50:15,554 --> 00:50:18,932
{\an8}And I was with a correspondent
named Ed Bradley.
704
00:50:21,643 --> 00:50:24,438
{\an8}The crowds of Americans
and other foreigners
705
00:50:24,521 --> 00:50:27,941
{\an8}lined up at installations
around Saigon waiting for buses.
706
00:50:29,317 --> 00:50:33,071
We rode through the streets of Saigon
for more than four hours.
707
00:50:36,616 --> 00:50:38,952
We were told that the embassy
708
00:50:39,036 --> 00:50:41,997
was surrounded by people
and we couldn't get in.
709
00:50:46,251 --> 00:50:48,962
We were facing an avalanche of refugees
710
00:50:49,046 --> 00:50:53,550
racing to stay ahead
of the first enemy units.
711
00:50:56,344 --> 00:50:59,681
{\an8}We all decided to try
and reach the United States Embassy.
712
00:50:59,765 --> 00:51:02,601
{\an8}And once there,
we found it surrounded by Vietnamese
713
00:51:02,684 --> 00:51:05,645
looking for a way in and a way out.
714
00:51:07,773 --> 00:51:11,443
There were thousands
upon thousands of Vietnamese
715
00:51:11,526 --> 00:51:15,781
outside the walls of the embassy,
screaming to get in.
716
00:51:24,414 --> 00:51:26,208
{\an8}I was one of them,
717
00:51:26,291 --> 00:51:29,377
{\an8}standing in front of the gates
of the US Embassy.
718
00:51:30,295 --> 00:51:34,007
{\an8}At that time, my wife had already left
two days before that.
719
00:51:34,091 --> 00:51:36,635
I was so scared to death
that they would kill me.
720
00:51:36,718 --> 00:51:37,844
They would kill me!
721
00:51:39,054 --> 00:51:42,140
I was standing there just in despair.
722
00:51:42,808 --> 00:51:43,934
Had I had a gun with me,
723
00:51:44,017 --> 00:51:46,561
I would have pulled it out
and just shot myself dead.
724
00:51:48,188 --> 00:51:50,607
At the time,
I believed that if I had stayed,
725
00:51:50,690 --> 00:51:52,025
I would be killed.
726
00:51:53,443 --> 00:51:56,279
{\an8}We had to push and shove
our way through a crowd
727
00:51:56,363 --> 00:51:59,574
{\an8}of several hundred Vietnamese
trying to scale the wall,
728
00:51:59,658 --> 00:52:02,536
only to be knocked back by US Marines.
729
00:52:03,370 --> 00:52:05,038
And initially, we were told,
730
00:52:05,122 --> 00:52:06,873
{\an8}people that show paperwork,
731
00:52:07,958 --> 00:52:10,210
{\an8}that they were embassy employees,
bring them in.
732
00:52:12,921 --> 00:52:14,965
But we had so many people,
733
00:52:15,048 --> 00:52:17,717
you couldn't differentiate
the-- the paperwork.
734
00:52:20,220 --> 00:52:22,806
We had an area where we staged them.
735
00:52:22,889 --> 00:52:25,475
Before we staged them,
we had to shake them down.
736
00:52:26,268 --> 00:52:29,646
We would find knives, guns,
you-- you name it.
737
00:52:29,729 --> 00:52:32,649
We would just take the weapons
and throw them in the pool.
738
00:52:34,568 --> 00:52:36,945
Between the gate and the embassy building,
739
00:52:37,028 --> 00:52:41,741
there was a 55-gallon drum
that had a fire in it.
740
00:52:41,825 --> 00:52:44,870
And I was seeing people
coming out of one building
741
00:52:44,953 --> 00:52:48,874
with packets of $100 and $20 bills.
742
00:52:51,668 --> 00:52:55,005
Our government sent over a few million
743
00:52:55,088 --> 00:52:59,801
to pay the Vietnamese that worked
for the consulates, the embassy,
744
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:02,345
and they still had money left.
745
00:53:03,471 --> 00:53:08,351
And they were just emptying the cases
into the burn barrels, burning the money.
746
00:53:08,435 --> 00:53:10,645
We were like,
"Are you kidding me right now?"
747
00:53:11,271 --> 00:53:12,856
And that's what they did.
748
00:53:12,939 --> 00:53:15,984
But we always questioned,
"Did they really burn it all?"
749
00:53:18,862 --> 00:53:20,947
I got into the embassy building,
750
00:53:21,031 --> 00:53:23,700
and there's an American woman
751
00:53:23,783 --> 00:53:27,871
taking files out
of a top-secret file cabinet
752
00:53:27,954 --> 00:53:29,456
and shredding them.
753
00:53:29,539 --> 00:53:32,918
And I said, "Well, it's a bit late
for this, isn't it?"
754
00:53:33,001 --> 00:53:34,002
And she said,
755
00:53:34,085 --> 00:53:38,840
"All this should have been done weeks ago,
but the ambassador wouldn't allow it."
756
00:53:38,924 --> 00:53:40,634
Shredding classified documents?
757
00:53:40,717 --> 00:53:41,551
Yeah.
758
00:53:42,177 --> 00:53:45,305
We took bags of half-shredded stuff,
759
00:53:45,388 --> 00:53:46,806
put 'em in the courtyard.
760
00:53:48,099 --> 00:53:50,936
When the choppers began
coming in mid-afternoon,
761
00:53:51,019 --> 00:53:53,396
the downdraft tore open all the bags,
762
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:57,108
and we had classified confetti
all over the damn parking lot.
763
00:54:00,403 --> 00:54:02,822
Afterwards, when the Communists took over,
764
00:54:02,906 --> 00:54:06,952
their guys came in with Scotch tape
and put the documents back together.
765
00:54:07,035 --> 00:54:09,079
It was a major security breach!
766
00:54:09,162 --> 00:54:14,459
I mean, there wasn't a secret
in that embassy that was safe.
767
00:54:18,421 --> 00:54:22,801
We were packing
50 Vietnamese on each helicopter.
768
00:54:22,884 --> 00:54:26,680
As it got later in the day,
we just said, "No baggage."
769
00:54:26,763 --> 00:54:28,807
"Just throw the people on,
get 'em out of here."
770
00:54:29,432 --> 00:54:32,978
And then they were, you know,
brought to whatever respective ships.
771
00:54:37,357 --> 00:54:43,822
As I departed Saigon
for the US ship out in the ocean,
772
00:54:43,905 --> 00:54:45,156
I felt that I lost.
773
00:54:45,991 --> 00:54:47,325
I lost.
774
00:54:47,409 --> 00:54:49,911
I lost every part of my soul.
775
00:54:51,246 --> 00:54:57,210
The embassy by nightfall
was a catacomb of panicked humanity.
776
00:54:58,545 --> 00:55:02,090
Every stairwell was filled
with Vietnamese.
777
00:55:02,632 --> 00:55:05,051
One Vietnamese had brought in a pig.
778
00:55:06,511 --> 00:55:08,763
We had the final 400 people staged,
779
00:55:09,597 --> 00:55:12,183
which was literally eight more lifts,
780
00:55:12,809 --> 00:55:14,352
50 people apiece.
781
00:55:15,687 --> 00:55:19,524
We were told,
"No more lifts. American personnel only,"
782
00:55:19,607 --> 00:55:20,817
meaning the troops.
783
00:55:22,569 --> 00:55:24,946
And the 400 people that we had staged,
784
00:55:25,030 --> 00:55:27,657
you just saw the fear in-- in their eyes.
785
00:55:30,035 --> 00:55:31,578
We were playing God.
786
00:55:31,661 --> 00:55:33,663
How are you trained to do that?
787
00:55:34,414 --> 00:55:36,124
How are you trained to do it?
788
00:55:37,125 --> 00:55:38,043
The horror.
789
00:55:38,793 --> 00:55:40,503
There was no words for it.
790
00:55:42,839 --> 00:55:44,674
And the shame,
791
00:55:44,758 --> 00:55:47,010
knowing you can't get these people
792
00:55:47,093 --> 00:55:49,346
to whom you've made so many promises.
793
00:55:50,263 --> 00:55:53,350
And what was so crazy for me
794
00:55:53,433 --> 00:55:56,227
is that I knew we had the intelligence
795
00:55:56,311 --> 00:55:58,772
that should've enabled us to act sooner.
796
00:55:58,855 --> 00:56:02,776
I'm sorry to get so…
The, uh-- I can't think about this.
797
00:56:07,072 --> 00:56:09,324
About four o'clock in the morning,
798
00:56:09,407 --> 00:56:11,910
a helicopter pilot landed and said,
799
00:56:12,619 --> 00:56:16,748
"The President sends word that it is time
for the ambassador to leave."
800
00:56:17,374 --> 00:56:20,835
And then finally they went downstairs
and they told him,
801
00:56:20,919 --> 00:56:23,046
and he just picked up his stuff,
802
00:56:23,129 --> 00:56:24,589
walked out the embassy door,
803
00:56:24,672 --> 00:56:26,966
got on the helicopter, and off he went.
804
00:56:28,635 --> 00:56:31,721
And finally,
we'd get on a helicopter and go out.
805
00:56:33,390 --> 00:56:35,225
When we got off,
806
00:56:35,308 --> 00:56:38,436
a friend of mine
from the Washington Post said,
807
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:41,314
"The ambassador got out
just before you landed."
808
00:56:41,398 --> 00:56:46,444
And there's the ambassador,
just not coherent at all,
809
00:56:46,528 --> 00:56:51,199
and just, you know,
to me a, you know, pitiful sight.
810
00:56:52,575 --> 00:56:55,245
{\an8}With the evacuation, I think,
811
00:56:55,328 --> 00:56:59,874
{\an8}as far as the, um, performance
of the, um, Navy
812
00:56:59,958 --> 00:57:02,293
{\an8}was absolutely, totally superb.
813
00:57:05,046 --> 00:57:08,716
The American airlift only took
a fraction of those who wanted to leave.
814
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:10,718
And for hours after the last departure,
815
00:57:10,802 --> 00:57:14,180
scores of people still crowded
onto the embassy roof
816
00:57:14,264 --> 00:57:16,057
in the vain hope of rescue.
817
00:57:17,642 --> 00:57:19,477
I work for the American staff.
818
00:57:19,561 --> 00:57:22,772
And you have
your, uh, American ID card there.
819
00:57:22,856 --> 00:57:26,359
It says, uh,
"United States, Mission Saigon."
820
00:57:26,443 --> 00:57:29,237
But do you know
that all the Americans are gone?
821
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:30,363
Yes, I know that.
822
00:57:30,447 --> 00:57:33,324
But I must come in case-- just in case.
823
00:57:34,284 --> 00:57:37,287
But there's no way
because all the helicopters are gone.
824
00:57:38,163 --> 00:57:39,539
Can you help, uh, us?
825
00:57:41,541 --> 00:57:44,586
There is no way I can help
because we are staying here.
826
00:57:44,669 --> 00:57:46,880
We are staying in-- in Saigon.
827
00:58:12,697 --> 00:58:16,576
I was standing in front
of the Presidential Palace in Saigon.
828
00:58:16,659 --> 00:58:22,415
We saw the tanks from North Vietnam
moving into the palace.
829
00:58:23,041 --> 00:58:25,919
It looked like a bad dream,
like a nightmare.
830
00:58:27,212 --> 00:58:30,882
{\an8}That palace is a symbol of freedom,
831
00:58:30,965 --> 00:58:33,384
{\an8}of the goodness
that we've been fighting for.
832
00:58:38,264 --> 00:58:40,975
{\an8}I photographed tanks
that entered the Independence Palace.
833
00:58:44,437 --> 00:58:46,356
{\an8}As it pertains to photography,
834
00:58:46,439 --> 00:58:49,984
{\an8}this image is now considered
a symbol of the 1975 victory.
835
00:58:54,364 --> 00:58:56,866
When the tanks bulldozed through the gates
836
00:58:56,950 --> 00:58:58,535
of the Independence Palace,
837
00:58:58,618 --> 00:59:04,249
{\an8}my heart was filled with extreme joy
but also full of immense pain.
838
00:59:04,958 --> 00:59:08,461
{\an8}Happiness that there was peace again,
839
00:59:08,545 --> 00:59:12,465
but remember my comrades and my brothers
840
00:59:12,549 --> 00:59:16,469
who sacrificed their lives
all over Saigon.
841
00:59:16,553 --> 00:59:19,806
I will never forget it for a second,
even a minute.
842
00:59:32,610 --> 00:59:35,363
{\an8}I replied, "The South is liberated,
the South is liberated!"
843
00:59:35,446 --> 00:59:37,907
{\an8}Everyone was baffled. No one believed it.
844
00:59:42,287 --> 00:59:45,582
{\an8}The feeling was indescribable.
845
00:59:48,126 --> 00:59:51,379
How do you feel if you win the match?
846
00:59:51,963 --> 00:59:54,549
{\an8}We rejoiced that day.
847
00:59:57,927 --> 01:00:02,181
When Saigon fell, I assessed
100% that the Americans lost.
848
01:00:02,265 --> 01:00:04,767
And this was the last battle.
849
01:00:06,686 --> 01:00:09,689
{\an8}We said that,
"Now the liberation soldiers
850
01:00:10,648 --> 01:00:14,902
{\an8}have returned to Saigon,
'Hồ Chí Minh City.'"
851
01:00:16,529 --> 01:00:22,285
{\an8}The American newspaper Time published
a large cover photo of Hồ Chí Minh
852
01:00:25,371 --> 01:00:29,542
{\an8}and a mark for Saigon
declaring "Hồ Chí Minh City."
853
01:00:41,888 --> 01:00:43,222
{\an8}It was all a waste.
854
01:00:46,559 --> 01:00:48,311
I felt betrayed.
855
01:00:49,771 --> 01:00:53,691
{\an8}I felt like, "Why didn't they do it
when they first started?"
856
01:00:53,775 --> 01:00:56,402
{\an8}"Why did they have to let
so many people die?"
857
01:01:01,866 --> 01:01:04,494
{\an8}I can't help but shed-- shed a tear.
858
01:01:09,624 --> 01:01:12,835
Everything we hoped for,
everything we're fighting for,
859
01:01:12,919 --> 01:01:14,879
disappeared in front of me.
860
01:01:18,341 --> 01:01:20,385
When I heard Saigon fell,
861
01:01:22,261 --> 01:01:23,888
{\an8}everything fell apart.
862
01:01:24,681 --> 01:01:26,265
No more hopes, nothing.
863
01:01:28,017 --> 01:01:31,688
In Vietnamese, we have a proverb.
864
01:01:33,147 --> 01:01:38,111
"When the nation is lost,
the family will be shattered."
865
01:01:44,534 --> 01:01:46,452
It was in the Philippines
866
01:01:47,495 --> 01:01:50,331
{\an8}that someone had a radio
867
01:01:50,415 --> 01:01:56,254
{\an8}and we heard that the North Vietnamese
would take over the government.
868
01:02:00,007 --> 01:02:01,926
And we cried, all of us.
869
01:02:04,804 --> 01:02:06,514
Because it's our country.
870
01:02:08,182 --> 01:02:12,478
And I thought that we would
go away for a while and come back.
871
01:02:12,562 --> 01:02:16,232
I never thought that we'd go away forever
and lose our country.
872
01:02:25,908 --> 01:02:29,078
Wars don't end
simply because we say they do.
873
01:02:35,168 --> 01:02:36,878
{\an8}Where my memories really began
874
01:02:36,961 --> 01:02:40,965
{\an8}is a few weeks later
in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania
875
01:02:41,048 --> 01:02:45,970
where we, along with about 20,000
other Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees,
876
01:02:46,053 --> 01:02:47,388
had been placed.
877
01:02:55,980 --> 01:02:58,983
The only way of leaving
that camp, uh, for any of us
878
01:02:59,609 --> 01:03:03,488
was to have an American sponsor
take responsibility for us.
879
01:03:03,571 --> 01:03:06,657
But there was no American willing
to take all four people in my family.
880
01:03:08,409 --> 01:03:10,244
So one sponsor took my parents,
881
01:03:10,328 --> 01:03:13,247
one sponsor took
my then ten-year-old brother,
882
01:03:13,331 --> 01:03:15,583
one sponsor took four-year-old me.
883
01:03:15,666 --> 01:03:20,129
And so my first narrative memories
are of being taken away from my parents.
884
01:03:22,465 --> 01:03:24,175
We were eventually reunited.
885
01:03:24,258 --> 01:03:29,347
But for me, the refugee experience
is inseparable from the experience of war.
886
01:03:31,390 --> 01:03:36,771
More than 130,000 people
were able to leave South Vietnam.
887
01:03:36,854 --> 01:03:40,691
When the Communists came in,
they went to live in the US.
888
01:03:41,400 --> 01:03:44,946
There were many more
who wanted to leave but could not leave.
889
01:03:46,280 --> 01:03:48,783
And now the victorious
Communist government
890
01:03:48,866 --> 01:03:53,496
wanted to continue
their revolution in South Vietnam.
891
01:03:55,915 --> 01:03:58,709
Some Vietnamese
who used to work for the US
892
01:03:58,793 --> 01:04:01,879
are still in camps like these
at forced labor.
893
01:04:01,963 --> 01:04:06,551
"Re-education camps" they're called,
holding tens of thousands of people,
894
01:04:07,218 --> 01:04:12,056
former South Vietnamese generals,
politicians, businessmen, intellectuals,
895
01:04:12,139 --> 01:04:14,183
so-called "enemies of the people."
896
01:04:15,309 --> 01:04:17,562
{\an8}My husband was a military officer.
897
01:04:17,645 --> 01:04:23,734
{\an8}The Việt Cộng asked anyone who had worked
for the South Vietnam government and army
898
01:04:23,818 --> 01:04:27,154
to report to, uh, be re-educated.
899
01:04:28,322 --> 01:04:33,369
"And please bring food
and your personal things for ten days."
900
01:04:34,203 --> 01:04:39,792
And people… assumed that, oh,
they will be just going for ten days.
901
01:04:41,711 --> 01:04:45,715
I didn't hear from my husband
for about a year.
902
01:04:46,966 --> 01:04:49,260
And I was with my two-month-old baby.
903
01:04:50,094 --> 01:04:51,596
I live in despair.
904
01:04:55,433 --> 01:04:58,227
They would come in,
and they would search my house.
905
01:04:59,145 --> 01:05:02,940
And here I am with my baby.
It was… It was…
906
01:05:03,774 --> 01:05:07,778
I really thought about committing suicide
during those days.
907
01:05:08,821 --> 01:05:12,033
My husband escaped
from the re-education camp.
908
01:05:13,117 --> 01:05:17,330
He was, um, hidden in a church
by the priest, by the pastor.
909
01:05:19,040 --> 01:05:22,251
There was such an underground movement
910
01:05:22,335 --> 01:05:24,545
of South Vietnamese people
911
01:05:24,629 --> 01:05:30,343
who were willing to hide
escaped prisoners from Communist prison.
912
01:05:30,426 --> 01:05:31,469
That's how we survive.
913
01:05:32,887 --> 01:05:35,514
We didn't escape until 1979.
914
01:05:36,140 --> 01:05:39,852
We try about 20 times, and we fail.
915
01:05:39,936 --> 01:05:43,773
But finally, in October 1979,
916
01:05:43,856 --> 01:05:45,650
we got on a boat.
917
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:49,528
A boatload of Vietnamese refugees
918
01:05:49,612 --> 01:05:52,531
at the end of a 300-mile journey,
919
01:05:52,615 --> 01:05:55,326
from Vietnam
to the eastern coast of Malaysia.
920
01:05:55,409 --> 01:05:58,871
They come ashore
at the rate of 10,000 a month,
921
01:05:58,955 --> 01:06:01,791
much faster than the United States
or any other nation
922
01:06:01,874 --> 01:06:03,459
is willing to accept them.
923
01:06:04,126 --> 01:06:06,128
During the next 20 years,
924
01:06:07,088 --> 01:06:12,426
there were almost a million more
came to the United States in small groups.
925
01:06:13,469 --> 01:06:16,222
A single boat with 12 people,
a single boat with 50 people.
926
01:06:23,145 --> 01:06:25,982
It scarred
the South Vietnamese people deeply,
927
01:06:26,065 --> 01:06:27,858
uh, when you talk about the boat people,
928
01:06:27,942 --> 01:06:31,362
the people held in re-education camps,
and the thousands who died afterwards.
929
01:06:33,864 --> 01:06:36,701
For many of the Vietnamese refugees
in the Vietnamese diaspora,
930
01:06:36,784 --> 01:06:39,662
the re-education camps are a symbol
of everything that went wrong
931
01:06:39,745 --> 01:06:40,788
in the post-war era.
932
01:06:42,748 --> 01:06:45,626
I was a prisoner of war
933
01:06:45,710 --> 01:06:50,131
{\an8}for 13 years, eight months, and one week.
934
01:06:51,674 --> 01:06:56,679
In 1976, they called me
"re-education detainee."
935
01:06:56,762 --> 01:06:58,514
No more "prisoner of war."
936
01:07:00,850 --> 01:07:02,351
When they said "re-education,"
937
01:07:02,435 --> 01:07:06,063
they tried to brainwash
and force us to do hard labor work.
938
01:07:06,147 --> 01:07:07,732
That is the purpose.
939
01:07:13,404 --> 01:07:18,409
The re-education camps,
I think, with harsh conditions,
940
01:07:18,492 --> 01:07:25,207
{\an8}I do not hesitate to say that this was
one serious mistake that we made.
941
01:07:26,959 --> 01:07:30,755
Because they were
more or less forgotten there.
942
01:07:33,007 --> 01:07:34,800
Nobody says it officially,
943
01:07:34,884 --> 01:07:38,387
uh, but here and there, when I am asked,
944
01:07:38,471 --> 01:07:40,848
I-- I have spoken.
945
01:07:42,224 --> 01:07:46,729
There will come a time
that we will have to acknowledge it.
946
01:07:52,985 --> 01:07:55,780
We are not superheroes.
We are just humans.
947
01:07:56,572 --> 01:07:58,199
We could have done it better,
948
01:07:58,282 --> 01:07:59,825
but it was not a bloodbath.
949
01:08:01,118 --> 01:08:01,952
Some things,
950
01:08:02,036 --> 01:08:05,164
the Communist Party of Vietnam
did wonderfully.
951
01:08:06,415 --> 01:08:09,293
{\an8}After the "War of Peace,"
the reconstruction,
952
01:08:09,376 --> 01:08:12,922
{\an8}the Communist Party paid attention
and took care of my family and me.
953
01:08:13,005 --> 01:08:17,676
We were given a house
and were able to build a metal roof.
954
01:08:17,760 --> 01:08:21,847
Before, we could never
afford a metal roof.
955
01:08:23,265 --> 01:08:25,309
Human consequences were tremendous,
956
01:08:25,392 --> 01:08:28,813
because somewhere around
three million Vietnamese people died
957
01:08:28,896 --> 01:08:30,481
during the years of the war.
958
01:08:30,564 --> 01:08:33,818
That doesn't even account
for the death toll in Cambodia and Laos,
959
01:08:33,901 --> 01:08:37,905
which during the years of the war
ran to the hundreds of thousands.
960
01:08:37,988 --> 01:08:42,201
And if you count the Cambodian genocide
as a direct consequence of the war,
961
01:08:42,284 --> 01:08:45,037
that adds
about another 1.7 million people.
962
01:08:48,916 --> 01:08:50,960
Under Nixon and Kissinger,
963
01:08:51,043 --> 01:08:54,380
the bombing campaign
and the joint US-ARVN incursion
964
01:08:54,463 --> 01:08:55,673
into Cambodia
965
01:08:55,756 --> 01:08:58,342
{\an8}begins what is the rise
of the Khmer Rouge.
966
01:09:00,177 --> 01:09:01,720
Led by Pol Pot…
967
01:09:04,223 --> 01:09:07,309
{\an8}there's a vacuum of power
that allows the Khmer Rouge
968
01:09:07,393 --> 01:09:12,523
{\an8}to kill off rival Communist factions
within the Communist Party in Cambodia.
969
01:09:14,358 --> 01:09:16,235
{\an8}And it ignited a civil war.
970
01:09:17,653 --> 01:09:18,946
{\an8}No question.
971
01:09:19,947 --> 01:09:25,161
You had about a quarter
of the population killed off after 1975.
972
01:09:26,829 --> 01:09:31,208
So there was not any peace after the war,
as many people hoped.
973
01:09:35,796 --> 01:09:38,215
If we look at Vietnam today,
974
01:09:38,299 --> 01:09:43,596
I think I could say
that it is a unified country.
975
01:09:43,679 --> 01:09:45,514
It is independent.
976
01:09:45,598 --> 01:09:48,434
The country struggled greatly
in the years after the war
977
01:09:48,517 --> 01:09:51,854
to achieve economic prosperity
for its people.
978
01:09:52,605 --> 01:09:55,774
To a certain extent,
it's been able to achieve that.
979
01:09:55,858 --> 01:10:00,446
And yet it is still a country in which
there is considerable economic inequality.
980
01:10:00,529 --> 01:10:02,406
There are tensions within the country
981
01:10:02,489 --> 01:10:06,118
over ethnic minorities
and their role in the country.
982
01:10:06,202 --> 01:10:07,620
Uh, and there is a great degree
983
01:10:07,703 --> 01:10:11,123
of political repression
that still takes place.
984
01:10:14,001 --> 01:10:17,213
{\an8}The United States and Vietnam,
we normalized relations in 1995.
985
01:10:17,296 --> 01:10:23,552
{\an8}So, roughly 20 years after, uh, the end
of the conflict in-- in 1975.
986
01:10:25,179 --> 01:10:28,015
And part of that effort
was to work with Vietnam
987
01:10:28,098 --> 01:10:31,393
on the search
for missing American service members.
988
01:10:33,979 --> 01:10:37,983
Over 1,000 Americans do remain
still missing from the war.
989
01:10:39,443 --> 01:10:43,030
Vietnam has upwards
200,000 to 300,000 missing.
990
01:10:46,200 --> 01:10:50,579
In the case of the Vietnamese themselves,
reconciliation has been much harder.
991
01:10:52,539 --> 01:10:53,791
It was a revolutionary war,
992
01:10:53,874 --> 01:10:55,501
but in my opinion,
it was also a civil war.
993
01:10:56,335 --> 01:10:59,838
And civil wars,
as Americans hopefully understand,
994
01:10:59,922 --> 01:11:03,550
breed deep anger and resentment
for generations.
995
01:11:04,551 --> 01:11:07,471
Between the people in the north
and people in the south,
996
01:11:07,554 --> 01:11:11,183
there is still very deep division.
997
01:11:12,434 --> 01:11:15,354
Most of the diaspora don't want
to come back home.
998
01:11:17,606 --> 01:11:21,944
The older generation,
they hope that when they die,
999
01:11:22,027 --> 01:11:26,991
their body will be buried
in their fatherland.
1000
01:11:27,908 --> 01:11:32,162
But if you ask them, "Do you want
to go back to Vietnam to live right now?"
1001
01:11:32,246 --> 01:11:33,372
They would say, "No."
1002
01:11:47,303 --> 01:11:50,556
We could not contain
the pain of millions of Vietnamese mothers
1003
01:11:50,639 --> 01:11:52,016
whose children died in Vietnam,
1004
01:11:52,099 --> 01:11:56,854
{\an8}nor could America contain
the pain of 50,000 families.
1005
01:11:57,938 --> 01:12:04,028
So, we must understand the past
to build the future.
1006
01:12:13,203 --> 01:12:16,874
The story of the US
in Vietnam was a story of ignorance,
1007
01:12:17,875 --> 01:12:20,252
hubris, and arrogance.
1008
01:12:21,670 --> 01:12:25,799
So much of what we see now
about the war in Vietnam is a function
1009
01:12:25,883 --> 01:12:28,886
of the individual personality
and characters of people
1010
01:12:28,969 --> 01:12:34,224
{\an8}and their inability
to just get tough with themselves.
1011
01:12:36,101 --> 01:12:37,394
McNamara and Johnson,
1012
01:12:37,478 --> 01:12:41,398
the two men who ended up
being held most responsible for the war,
1013
01:12:42,066 --> 01:12:46,695
both knew, for all kinds of reasons,
that it was not going to end well.
1014
01:12:47,363 --> 01:12:48,364
They were inept.
1015
01:12:49,490 --> 01:12:53,869
Nixon and Kissinger were
both determined to keep the war going.
1016
01:12:55,204 --> 01:12:57,539
{\an8}Keep people fighting and dying
1017
01:12:57,623 --> 01:13:00,709
{\an8}until it was politically safe
for them to end the war,
1018
01:13:00,793 --> 01:13:04,004
after Nixon had secured his second term.
1019
01:13:04,505 --> 01:13:08,133
And, uh, in the end,
the human toll is enormous.
1020
01:13:12,888 --> 01:13:17,393
{\an8}When the CIA station chief wrote
his final message from the Saigon station,
1021
01:13:18,560 --> 01:13:22,272
he said, "Let us learn
from the lessons of the past."
1022
01:13:23,732 --> 01:13:26,360
"Let us not have
another Vietnam experience."
1023
01:13:29,655 --> 01:13:33,742
Less than 40 years later,
the United States got into another war,
1024
01:13:33,826 --> 01:13:34,910
in Iraq,
1025
01:13:36,203 --> 01:13:38,205
based on political lies,
1026
01:13:38,872 --> 01:13:40,874
{\an8}premised on false intelligence,
1027
01:13:41,500 --> 01:13:43,585
{\an8}in this case, provided by the CIA.
1028
01:13:44,795 --> 01:13:50,300
I take the fact that he develops
weapons of mass destruction
1029
01:13:51,427 --> 01:13:52,469
very seriously.
1030
01:13:53,220 --> 01:13:55,806
We are the United States of amnesia.
1031
01:13:56,723 --> 01:13:59,184
We do not learn from history.
1032
01:14:04,815 --> 01:14:10,320
I mean, it's hard to look
at, uh, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
1033
01:14:10,404 --> 01:14:12,364
and not think about Vietnam
1034
01:14:12,448 --> 01:14:16,660
when you hear words
like "counterinsurgency," or "attrition,"
1035
01:14:17,244 --> 01:14:18,787
or "credibility gap,"
1036
01:14:18,871 --> 01:14:20,330
or "hearts and minds,"
1037
01:14:20,414 --> 01:14:21,707
or "pacification."
1038
01:14:32,468 --> 01:14:35,554
When Afghanistan was taken by the Taliban,
1039
01:14:35,637 --> 01:14:37,723
I said, "Oh, my God,
they didn't learn it!"
1040
01:14:37,806 --> 01:14:40,642
"They didn't learn
from the Vietnam War at all."
1041
01:14:42,436 --> 01:14:45,939
The same thing happened
to the people they left behind.
1042
01:14:51,320 --> 01:14:53,864
One of the major roles of the press
1043
01:14:53,947 --> 01:14:55,782
{\an8}is "hold power accountable."
1044
01:14:56,867 --> 01:14:59,161
{\an8}And the press did its best
1045
01:15:00,370 --> 01:15:05,292
to hold both the Johnson administration
and the Nixon administrations accountable.
1046
01:15:06,084 --> 01:15:10,297
And our country's whole experience
with Vietnam and the war
1047
01:15:11,215 --> 01:15:14,760
drives home the point again and again
1048
01:15:14,843 --> 01:15:20,307
that a free and independent,
truly independent, press
1049
01:15:20,933 --> 01:15:25,187
is the red, beating heart
of freedom and democracy.
1050
01:15:26,813 --> 01:15:29,983
Going into the war,
there was generally a sense
1051
01:15:30,067 --> 01:15:33,737
that Americans trusted their government
to do the right thing.
1052
01:15:33,820 --> 01:15:36,740
Right? People believed
in their elected officials.
1053
01:15:36,823 --> 01:15:38,825
{\an8}They knew best,
they had the right information,
1054
01:15:38,909 --> 01:15:41,537
{\an8}and they were going to act
in our best interests.
1055
01:15:41,620 --> 01:15:44,164
{\an8}That changes as a result of Vietnam.
1056
01:15:45,666 --> 01:15:51,880
{\an8}It undercut confidence
in Washington and political leadership
1057
01:15:51,964 --> 01:15:53,465
{\an8}that we've never recovered from…
1058
01:15:58,845 --> 01:16:02,015
and will be many years, if we ever can.
1059
01:16:03,183 --> 01:16:06,853
It drove us into partisanship
where we're locked today,
1060
01:16:07,771 --> 01:16:09,731
{\an8}stupid division, not debate.
1061
01:16:16,488 --> 01:16:18,865
{\an8}I came back from Vietnam
and I finally went back
1062
01:16:18,949 --> 01:16:20,784
{\an8}to Macon, Georgia, my home,
1063
01:16:20,867 --> 01:16:23,161
{\an8}and decided this time I would stay
1064
01:16:23,745 --> 01:16:25,747
{\an8}and be the change that I wanted to see
1065
01:16:25,831 --> 01:16:27,666
{\an8}because there were still
some things going on,
1066
01:16:27,749 --> 01:16:29,876
{\an8}some remnants of racism.
1067
01:16:32,254 --> 01:16:34,006
And I got involved in politics,
1068
01:16:34,089 --> 01:16:34,965
ran for office,
1069
01:16:35,048 --> 01:16:39,595
and became the first and only Black mayor
of my town in 1999.
1070
01:16:41,763 --> 01:16:45,058
{\an8}I went back to Vietnam
during my term as mayor,
1071
01:16:45,934 --> 01:16:48,645
and I met the mayor of Huế.
1072
01:16:50,355 --> 01:16:54,151
During Tết of 68,
I fought in the city of Huế.
1073
01:16:54,943 --> 01:16:58,822
He was in the North Vietnamese Army
serving in Huế.
1074
01:17:00,365 --> 01:17:02,451
So we were trying to kill each other.
1075
01:17:03,410 --> 01:17:04,578
And here we are now,
1076
01:17:04,661 --> 01:17:07,247
he was the mayor of Huế,
I was the mayor of Macon,
1077
01:17:07,331 --> 01:17:08,832
and we're sitting in his office,
1078
01:17:08,915 --> 01:17:11,376
and he's telling his driver
to take care of me
1079
01:17:11,460 --> 01:17:14,546
and give me everything
that I needed while I was there, so…
1080
01:17:22,262 --> 01:17:27,726
We can't forget about the effect
that it had on the Vietnamese people,
1081
01:17:27,809 --> 01:17:29,269
the young children.
1082
01:17:31,021 --> 01:17:33,857
We don't know
how many Vietnamese were killed.
1083
01:17:34,608 --> 01:17:37,694
That we dropped bombs on and napalm,
1084
01:17:37,778 --> 01:17:42,324
and fired artillery shells,
and burnt down their villages,
1085
01:17:42,407 --> 01:17:45,911
destroyed their whole way of life
for-- for so many years.
1086
01:17:47,788 --> 01:17:49,373
It's the human toll
1087
01:17:50,916 --> 01:17:53,710
that I think of when I think of that war,
1088
01:17:53,794 --> 01:17:57,422
both American soldiers
as well as the Vietnamese.
1089
01:18:06,556 --> 01:18:11,186
I'm very appreciative
that someone saw fit to memorialize
1090
01:18:11,269 --> 01:18:15,857
all the men who, uh, gave their lives.
1091
01:18:15,941 --> 01:18:18,235
It's like a living memorial.
1092
01:18:21,655 --> 01:18:24,616
Of course, I know so many names there.
1093
01:18:25,826 --> 01:18:28,120
My very best friend in-- in the war,
1094
01:18:28,704 --> 01:18:32,332
a Sergeant First Class
by the name of William C. Jennings.
1095
01:18:35,210 --> 01:18:39,798
A young Marine Sergeant
from my hometown, Rodney Davis,
1096
01:18:39,881 --> 01:18:41,508
who won the Medal of Honor.
1097
01:18:42,634 --> 01:18:45,721
A Sergeant, uh, First Class, Eddie Sands,
1098
01:18:45,804 --> 01:18:48,390
who died near me in Vietnam.
1099
01:18:51,810 --> 01:18:55,021
The last time you would see them,
they were in a body bag,
1100
01:18:55,105 --> 01:18:57,149
or they were being put on a helicopter.
1101
01:19:01,153 --> 01:19:03,572
Even though we hear that a lot,
"Thank you for your service,"
1102
01:19:03,655 --> 01:19:05,615
you can't say that to them.
1103
01:19:05,699 --> 01:19:07,242
I'd really like to say,
1104
01:19:08,493 --> 01:19:09,494
"I'm sorry."
1105
01:19:10,871 --> 01:19:13,498
We were so young, 20, 21 years of age.
1106
01:19:17,461 --> 01:19:22,632
And Vietnam veterans,
we're now in our mid, late 70s, early 80s.
1107
01:19:43,695 --> 01:19:49,951
But some of us still carry the burden
of that war with us to this day.
1108
01:20:26,738 --> 01:20:29,991
Gonna lay down my sword and shield
1109
01:20:30,075 --> 01:20:32,619
Down by the riverside
1110
01:20:32,702 --> 01:20:35,205
Down by the riverside
1111
01:20:35,288 --> 01:20:37,123
Down by the riverside
1112
01:20:37,207 --> 01:20:40,377
Gonna lay down my sword and shield
1113
01:20:40,460 --> 01:20:42,420
Down by the riverside
1114
01:20:42,504 --> 01:20:46,216
And study war no more
1115
01:20:47,050 --> 01:20:49,594
Ain't gonna study war no more
1116
01:20:49,678 --> 01:20:52,264
Ain't gonna study war no more
1117
01:20:52,347 --> 01:20:56,935
Ain't gonna study war no more
1118
01:20:57,894 --> 01:20:59,771
Study war no more
1119
01:20:59,855 --> 01:21:02,732
Ain't gonna study war no more
1120
01:21:02,816 --> 01:21:06,486
Study war no more
1121
01:21:07,904 --> 01:21:10,824
Gonna put on my starry crown
1122
01:21:10,907 --> 01:21:13,451
Down by the riverside
1123
01:21:13,535 --> 01:21:15,996
Down by the riverside
1124
01:21:16,079 --> 01:21:17,789
Down by the riverside
1125
01:21:17,873 --> 01:21:20,834
Gonna put on my starry crown
1126
01:21:20,917 --> 01:21:23,336
Down by the riverside
1127
01:21:23,420 --> 01:21:27,632
Study war no more
1128
01:21:27,716 --> 01:21:30,093
I ain't gonna study war no more
1129
01:21:30,176 --> 01:21:32,804
Ain't gonna study war no more
1130
01:21:32,888 --> 01:21:36,892
Ain't gonna study war no more
1131
01:21:38,351 --> 01:21:40,020
Study war no more
1132
01:21:40,103 --> 01:21:42,689
I ain't gonna study war no more
1133
01:21:42,772 --> 01:21:46,776
Ain't gonna study war no more
1134
01:21:48,153 --> 01:21:51,239
Gonna talk with the Prince of Peace
1135
01:21:51,323 --> 01:21:53,742
Down by the riverside
1136
01:21:53,825 --> 01:21:56,244
Down by the riverside
1137
01:21:56,328 --> 01:21:58,079
Down by the riverside
1138
01:21:58,163 --> 01:22:01,207
Gonna talk with the Prince of Peace
1139
01:22:01,291 --> 01:22:03,043
Down by the riverside
1140
01:22:03,126 --> 01:22:06,796
And study war no more
1141
01:22:07,589 --> 01:22:09,966
Ain't gonna study war no more
1142
01:22:10,050 --> 01:22:12,594
I ain't gonna study war no more
1143
01:22:12,677 --> 01:22:16,681
Ain't gonna study war no more
1144
01:22:17,599 --> 01:22:19,726
Ain't gonna study war no more
1145
01:22:19,809 --> 01:22:22,395
Ain't gonna study war no more
1146
01:22:22,479 --> 01:22:26,524
Ain't gonna study war no more