Robert McNamara, JFK/LBJ and The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — Transcript

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1. 0:08[Music]
2. 0:10October
3. 0:112nd I had returned from
4. 0:15Vietnam at that time we had 16,000
5. 0:18military
6. 0:20[Music]
7. 0:21advisers I recommended to President
8. 0:24Kennedy and to the security Council that
9. 0:27we
10. 0:28establish a plan and an objective of
11. 0:31removing all of them within two
12. 0:34[Music]
13. 0:41years to the people we do have a plan
14. 0:47for reducing the exposure of us combat
15. 0:54Personnel continue to go well it look
16. 0:57like we were overly optimistic
17. 1:01we need a way to get out ofet way
18. 1:09doing Kennedy announced we were going to
19. 1:12pull out all of our military advisors by
20. 1:14the end of 65 we're going to take a
21. 1:15th000 out in the end of 63 and we did
22. 1:19but there was the coup in South
23. 1:25Vietnam ZM was
24. 1:28overthrown and he and his brother were
25. 1:32killed I was present with the president
26. 1:36when together we received information of
27. 1:39that coup I have never seen
28. 1:42him more upset he totally
29. 1:46blanched President Kennedy and I had
30. 1:48tremendous problems with ZM but my God
31. 1:51he was the authority he was the head of
32. 1:53state and he was overthrown by a
33. 1:55military coup and Kennedy knew and I
34. 1:59knew that to some degree the US
35. 2:01government was responsible for
36. 2:07[Music]
37. 2:16that I was in my office in the Pentagon
38. 2:20when the telephone
39. 2:22rang and it was
40. 2:25Bobby the president had been shot in
41. 2:28Dallas
42. 2:33perhaps 45 minutes later Bobby called
43. 2:35again and said the president was
44. 2:39dead Jackie would like me to come out to
45. 2:41the
46. 2:43hospital we took the Buddy of the White
47. 2:45House about whatever it was 4:00 a.m.
48. 2:48and called the superintendent of
49. 2:49Arlington
50. 2:51Cemetery and he and
51. 2:53I
52. 2:56uh walked over those grounds
53. 3:03they are hauntingly beautiful
54. 3:05grounds white crosses row and
55. 3:08row and uh and finally I thought I found
56. 3:12the exact spot the most beautiful spot
57. 3:14in the
58. 3:15cemetery I called Jackie at the White
59. 3:18House and asked her to come out there
60. 3:19and she immediately accepted it and
61. 3:22that's where the president is buried
62. 3:24today a park service ranger came up to
63. 3:28me and said that
64. 3:32he he
65. 3:35had escorted President Kennedy on a tour
66. 3:39of those grounds a few weeks
67. 3:42before and Kennedy said that was the
68. 3:46most beautiful spot in Washington that's
69. 3:48where he's
70. 3:58buried
71. 4:01I will do my
72. 4:03best that is all I can
73. 4:07do I ask for your
74. 4:11help and
75. 4:26God's yes Mr I hate to modify your
76. 4:29speech in it because it's been a good
77. 4:31one but I just wonder if we shouldn't
78. 4:33find two minutes in there for
79. 4:37Vietnam yeah probably what to say about
80. 4:40it all right I'll tell you what I would
81. 4:41say about it I would say that we have a
82. 4:44commitment to Vietnamese
83. 4:47Freedom we could pull out of there The
84. 4:50Dominoes would fall and that part of the
85. 4:53world would go to the
86. 4:54Communist we could send our Marines in
87. 4:57there and we could get tied down in the
88. 5:00third world war or another Korean action
89. 5:03nobody really understands what it is out
90. 5:06there they asking questions they're
91. 5:08saying why why don't we do more well I
92. 5:12think this you can have more war or you
93. 5:14can have more
94. 5:16PE but we don't want more of
95. 5:19either our purpose is to train these
96. 5:21people and our training is going
97. 5:24good all right I'll I always thought it
98. 5:27was foolish for you to make any
99. 5:28statements about what
100. 5:32I thought it was bad psychologically but
101. 5:35you and the president thought otherwise
102. 5:36and I just sat
103. 5:40silent the problem is all the questions
104. 5:44how the hell is M thing when he's losing
105. 5:47W he pull out of
106. 5:57it if you went to in the CIA and said
107. 6:01how's the situation today in South
108. 6:03Vietnam I think they'd say it's
109. 6:08worse you see it in the desertion rate
110. 6:11you see it in the
111. 6:12morality see it in the difficulty
112. 6:14recruit people you see it in the gradual
113. 6:16loss of population
114. 6:22control many of us in private would say
115. 6:25that things are not good they've gotten
116. 6:28worse
117. 6:31now while we say this in private and not
118. 6:33public there are facts available that
119. 6:35find their way in the
120. 6:37Press if we're going to stay in there
121. 6:40we're going to go up the escalated chain
122. 6:42we're going to have to educate the
123. 6:44people we haven't done so yet I'm not
124. 6:47sure now is exactly the right time no
125. 6:50and I think if you start doing it
126. 6:51they're going to be holling your
127. 6:53warart I completely agree with
128. 6:58you
129. 7:01make no bones of this don't try to sweep
130. 7:05fish under the rug we are at war in
131. 7:14Vietnam and yet the president and his
132. 7:18secretary of defense continues to
133. 7:20mislead and misinform the American
134. 7:22people and enough of it's gone
135. 7:28by
136. 7:40[Music]
137. 7:51on August 2nd the Destroyer Maddox
138. 7:55reported it was attacked by a North
139. 7:56Vietnamese Patrol
140. 7:58boat it was an act of aggression against
141. 8:01us we were in international waters I
142. 8:03sent officials from the defense
143. 8:05department out and we recovered pieces
144. 8:07of North Vietnamese shells that were
145. 8:09clearly identified as North Vietnamese
146. 8:10shells from the deck of the Maddox so
147. 8:12there was no question in my mind that it
148. 8:14had occurred but in any event we didn't
149. 8:18respond and it was very difficult it was
150. 8:21difficult for the president there were
151. 8:24very very senior people in uniform and
152. 8:26out who said my God this president is
153. 8:29they didn't use the word coward but in
154. 8:32effect he's not protecting the national
155. 8:36[Music]
156. 8:46interest two days later the MX of the
157. 8:49Turner Joy 2 destroyers reported they
158. 8:52were
159. 8:54attacked now where are these Torpedoes
160. 8:56coming from but we don't know presumably
161. 8:58from these unidentified
162. 9:01craft there were sonar soundings
163. 9:04Torpedoes had been detected other
164. 9:06indications of attack from Patrol boats
165. 9:10we spent about 10 hours that day trying
166. 9:11to find out what in the hell had
167. 9:13[Music]
168. 9:15happened at one point the commander of
169. 9:17the ship said we're not certain of the
170. 9:19attack another point they said yes we're
171. 9:20absolutely positive and then finally
172. 9:22late in the day admir sharp said yes
173. 9:25we're certain it
174. 9:27happened so I reported this the Johnson
175. 9:30and as a
176. 9:31result there were bombing attacks on
177. 9:35Targets in North
178. 9:50Vietnam Johnson said we may have to
179. 9:53escalate I'm not going to do it without
180. 9:55Congressional Authority and he put
181. 9:57forward a resolution the language of
182. 9:59which gave complete authority to the
183. 10:02president to take the nation to war the
184. 10:05tonen Gulf
185. 10:10resolution now let me go back to the
186. 10:12August 4th
187. 10:18attack well there apparently been at
188. 10:21least nine Torpedoes in the
189. 10:24water all
190. 10:26missed yeah no I don't way not uh I'm
191. 10:30not so sure about this number of of of
192. 10:33engaged right we we'd have to check it
193. 10:35out
194. 10:41here he said many of the reported
195. 10:43contacts and Torpedoes fired appear
196. 10:45doubtful uh freak weather effects on
197. 10:48radar and overeager S and may have
198. 10:50accounted for many reports okay well
199. 10:52I'll tell some night this that's the
200. 10:54best I can give you Dave
201. 10:58sorry
202. 11:00it does appear now that a lot of these
203. 11:03torpedo attacks were from the sarm man
204. 11:05you see and uh they get keyed up to
205. 11:08thing like this everything they hear on
206. 11:10the sonar is torpedo you're pretty sure
207. 11:13there was a torpedo attack oh no doubt
208. 11:15about that I think no doubt about
209. 11:20that it was just confusion and events
210. 11:25afterwards showed that our judgment that
211. 11:29we' been attacked that day was
212. 11:31wrong it didn't
213. 11:37happen and the
214. 11:39Judgment that we had been attacked on
215. 11:43August 2nd which we had made was right
216. 11:45we had been although that was disputed
217. 11:48at the time so we were right once and
218. 11:52and wrong once all of un laay President
219. 11:55Johnson authorized bombing in response
220. 11:57to what he thought had been the second
221. 11:59attack and hadn't occurred but that's
222. 12:01irrelevant to the point I'm making here
223. 12:04he authorized the attack on the
224. 12:06assumption that had
225. 12:08occurred and his belief that it was a
226. 12:11conscious
227. 12:13decision on the part of the North
228. 12:15Vietnamese political and military
229. 12:16leaders to escalate the
230. 12:20conflict and an indication they would
231. 12:22not stop short of
232. 12:24[Music]
233. 12:27winning
234. 12:30we were wrong but we had in our minds a
235. 12:33mindset that led to that
236. 12:36action and it carries such heavy
237. 12:49costs we see incorrectly or we see only
238. 12:52half of the story at
239. 12:55times we see what we want to believe we
240. 12:57see what you're absolutely
241. 13:01right belief and
242. 13:04seeing they're both often
243. 13:10wrong