Transcript: Chapter 19

Bomber Pilot: Bomb doors open at thirty TG, coming up on thirty TG.

Bombardier: Thirty TG.

Bomber Pilot: Roger. That target's now coming up. Stand by to release. Ready, ready, now.

Bombardier: Bombs away.

Narrator: All through early 1965, bombs continued to fall on North Vietnam.

Bomber Pilot: Ready, ready, now.

Narrator: Johnson had hoped that the massive air strikes by the B-52s would halt the flow of supplies from North to South, but the bombs seemed only to stiffen the resolve of Ho and the North Vietnamese. The war was acquiring a momentum of its own and a desperate sense of inevitability. On March 8, Johnson ordered the first American fighting troops into Vietnam. Their mission was officially defensive: to protect the planes that were bombing North Vietnam.

Reporter: When the Marines were first landed at Danang, we were told that the objective was to defend the air base. How do you resolve that, sir, with your statements in Saigon that their objective is to kill the Vietcong?

Military Officer: You can't defend a place like that by sitting on your ditty box. You've got to get out and aggressively patrol, and that's what our people are doing. And the one thing I emphasized to them while I was out there was to find these Vietcong and kill them.

1st Helicopter Pilot: We have some people running along the dikes. Actually, the canal is perpendicular to the one you're attacking now. They have on black uniforms. I estimate approximately three-zero. Do you have them in sight? Over.

2nd Helicopter Pilot: This is two-three, roger, we have them in sight. We're engaged at the present time.

3rd Helicopter Pilot: Good job. I saw you splatter one right in the back with a rocket.

4th Helicopter Pilot: Roger. Got lucky, I guess.

Narrator: The logic of war was relentless. Advisers had led to bombing. Bombing now led to troops. By early 1965, thousands of American soldiers were in Vietnam, and still the South Vietnamese Army was losing. On March 15, Johnson met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Harold K. Johnson made a prediction that sent a shock wave through the room. "To win the war," he said, "it could take five years and five hundred thousand men."

Now Johnson knew the stakes. To keep South Vietnam from falling, he might have to commit hundreds of thousand of American boys to a full-scale land war in Asia. He was face-to-face with the decision he had been dreading. "If I don't go in now and they show later I should have gone, then they'll be all over me in Congress. They won't be talking about my Civil Rights bill or education or beautification. No, sir. They'll be pushing Vietnam up my ass every time -- Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam."

Larry Berman: How would Johnson explain to the American people that a country that John Kennedy had promised to defend, that Dwight Eisenhower had promised to defend, wasn't worth defending any longer? Had the people changed? Had our commitment to freedom changed? Or was it the fact that we couldn't defeat the North Vietnamese?

Narrator: Every Tuesday, Johnson had lunch with his principal advisers. "If you can show me any reasonable out, I'll grab it," he told them, "but to give in would be a sign of weakness." The lessons of World War II were always in the back of their minds -- stop aggression when it begins, never reward a bully. And the real bullies behind Ho and the North Vietnamese, they believed, were the Russians and the Chinese.

James Thomson: The men at the top did not want to be bothered with rethinking of assumptions; and most of what a dissenter might offer -- namely, that Chinese Communism was no mortal threat to us and was very different from the Soviet form of Communism, and that Hanoi posed no major threat to us and was different itself from Moscow and Peking -- this kind of thing, this kind of challenge to the assumptions underlying a policy, was regarded as troublemaking.

Narrator: Of all his advisers, only one was ready to be a troublemaker, to challenge the conventional wisdom that Johnson had no choice but to send in troops: Undersecretary of State George Ball.

George Ball: But I thought that the balloon was going up much too fast, so I spent a few nights preparing a memorandum which was seventy-five pages or so, which is now in the public domain, in which I challenged every assumption of our war in Vietnam and came to the conclusion that it wasn't a war we could win. And the next morning, I got a call. He said, "Damn you, George, you've kept me awake all night. I read that thing three times. Why didn't you ever get to me before? Get over here in the morning and we'll discuss it if it takes all day."

Larry Berman: George Ball is telling Johnson, "Look, you're going to lose in Vietnam. You're going to end up with a protracted war that will divide America. At the end of three or four or five years, you're going to be in Vietnam with five hundred thousand American troops and you're not going to accomplish your political objective." He's advising Johnson to let the government fall, let the government of South Vietnam fall and walk away. And it must be shocking to him; I mean, what if George Ball's right? Now, from his military advisers he hears the same thing: it's going to be a long, protracted war in the jungles of Vietnam -- four, five years, five hundred thousand troops, six hundred thousand troops. This must have been extraordinary pressure on this man at this one period. "What do I do? Is George Ball right? Are the military commanders right? Is this going to be a quagmire?"

Narrator: Johnson still clung to the idea that the South Vietnamese Army could win the war themselves. He told his advisers, "Get every South Vietnamese man under forty years and get it done. Fight 'em, kill 'em. Get off that gold-watch Phi Beta Kappa key. Let's get going."

At the end of March, Ho Chi Minh vowed that he was ready to fight another twenty years if that's what it took to win. Johnson grew more and more grim. "Everything I knew about history," he said, "told me that if I got out of Vietnam and let Ho Chi Minh run through the streets of Saigon, then I'd be doing exactly what they did in World War II. I'd be giving a big fat reward to aggression."

The war was careening out of control. South Vietnam was about to fall. Johnson could hesitate no longer. He would have to decide: escalate or withdraw. At the end of July, he invited his advisers to a remarkable series of meetings that lasted all week. The issues would be aired one last time. "I don't want to make any snap judgments," Johnson told them. "I want to consider all our options." Once again, Ball argued his case -- "We cannot win, this war will be long and protracted"; and once again, Ball was shot down -- "If the Communist world finds out we will not pursue our commitment to the end, I don't know where they will stay their hand."

Dean Rusk, Secretary of State: How we reacted in Vietnam would be looked upon by other governments as a sign as to how we would react under other treaties, such as NATO and the Rio Pact. In other words, this was a -- the reputation of the United States for fidelity to its security treaties is not just a simple question of face and prestige. It's a real pillar of peace in the world.

Narrator: Secretary of Defense McNamara agreed with Rusk. He assured the president that we could win within two and a half years; there was no risk of a catastrophe. But Ball continued to argue: "Take what precautions we can, Mr. President. Take our losses, negotiate, discuss," knowing full well there will be a probable takeover by the Communists.

William P. Bundy: It would have been terribly difficult to do what George Ball urged, which was straight withdrawal. It would have been, I think, very damaging to the country. It would have been very divisive.

James Thomson: Withdrawal is not what a big, commanding Texan ever does. On the other hand, he was one of the world's great dealmakers. He just didn't know how to do it overseas, especially when Communism was involved and when the White House appeared to be at stake.

Clark Clifford: I have a great sympathy with the man for what he went through with reference to the war. I don't know whether any other president would have done it any differently. If you analyze it with great care, as he did, and you line up all those in favor of going on with it and those who were opposed, it's ten, fifteen, twenty to one.

Narrator: After months of doubt, the president made his decision. He had inherited a limited war; now he chose to expand it. On July twenty-eight, 1965, he addressed reporters at an afternoon press conference.

President Johnson: I have today ordered to Vietnam the air mobile division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from seventy-five thousand to a hundred and twenty-five thousand men almost immediately. Additional forces will be needed later, and they will be sent as requested.

Larry Berman: This was it. The war was Americanized. We were committed. We were committed to not losing Vietnam.

Daniel Ellsberg: Most people have always imagined -- and because, in part, they've been told -- that a president like Johnson could only have gotten us into this if he had been unaware, if he had been deceived, lied to. Now, that was untrue. He had been told he was heading into a catastrophe, but I think he found it in himself that he might get away with it, and that possibility, I think, drew him on into this sea of devastation.

Narrator: The president never asked for a declaration of war, but on July 28, 1965, Lyndon Johnson went to war in Vietnam. He kept the risks and costs of war hidden from the American people. He never told them he'd been warned that hundreds of thousands of soldiers might be needed, never prepared them for the struggle he knew might lie ahead.

Reporter: Does the fact that you're sending additional forces imply any change in the existing policy of relying mainly on the South Vietnamese to carry out offensive operations?

President Johnson: It does not imply any change of policy whatever. It does not imply any change of objective.

Larry Berman: He doesn't tell the American people what's really going on because he fears that if he moves ahead and escalates the war in Vietnam and mobilizes and does all of his actions, that's the end of the Great Society. That's the end of the one thing he cares about more than anything.

President Johnson: This nation is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home.