Title Card: Mr. Nixon's War

GEORGE C. SCOTT, Actor: [in "Patton"] Ten-hut!

NARRATOR: Richard Nixon loved the movie Patton and watched it again and again in the White House. General George Patton was a man of action, contemptuous of his critics, uncompromising, determined to win at all costs.

Mr. SCOTT: [in "Patton"] Be seated. Now, I want you to remember Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time and I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

NARRATOR: Richard Nixon was determined not to be the first American president to lose a war. He might simply have brought the troops home and blamed Vietnam on the Democrats, but Nixon, like many of his contemporaries in both parties, believed that abandoning South Vietnam to the Communists would be a defeat that invited further aggression, a sign that America could no longer be counted on by her allies. Despite mounting pressure for immediate withdrawal, he stuck to his gradual course, while trying to negotiate what he called "an honorable end" to the war. But the months dragged on. Casualties mounted and Nixon's policy seemed only to prolong America's agony.

DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs: And I said, with respect to Vietnam, I said, "The war in Vietnam is lost and the sooner you get out, the better we will be." It was lost, but they ... he, for some reason, kept at it. It wasn't his war and it seemed to me that just him handling a presidency, you stick around with a war for two years and it's your war. And it became his war. And in the end, half the country seemed to think he started it.

NARRATOR: In October 1969, the largest anti-war demonstrations in the nation's history, collectively known as "the moratorium," were held in cities all over the country. Critics of the war had waited nine months for Nixon to make good his pledge to end the conflict, but now, the honeymoon was over.

Pres. NIXON: I understand that there has been and continues to be opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses and also in the nation. As far as this kind of activity is concerned, we expect it. However, under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it.

Mr. EHRLICHMAN: The moratorium itself was seen by Richard Nixon as 200,000 people out there on the Mall, protesting his foreign policy while at the same time, the polls were showing that 58-59 percent of the American people supported him in his foreign policy. And he would look out the window and he would say, "I simply cannot permit foreign policy to be made in the streets of Washington."

DICK GREGORY, Comedian, Vietnam War Protester: The president of the United States said nothing you young kids would do would have any effect on him. Well, I suggest to the president of the United States, if he want [sic] to know how much effect you youngsters can have on the president, he should make one long-distance phone call to the LBJ ranch and ask that boy how much effect you can have.

NARRATOR: The fate of Lyndon Johnson did haunt Richard Nixon. He felt he had to demonstrate that most Americans still supported him and that it would not benefit Hanoi to stall peace negotiations. "Don't get rattled. Don't waver. Don't react," he told himself as he went to work on a speech to respond to the protests. Insisting on writing it himself, he distinguished his supporters, "the forgotten Americans," from the vocal minority in the streets, with a new catch phrase.

Pres. NIXON: [November 3, 1969] To you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support, for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

NARRATOR: It was the most effective speech of Nixon's presidency. Eighty thousand telegrams and letters arrived at the White House. Nearly all supported him. His approval rating soared. But the war continued and with it, the protests.

Mr. MORRIS: I think Richard Nixon came to office expecting, if not a quick fix in Vietnam, expecting a kind of responsiveness in the war. He had made certain speeches, he had offered certain gestures, he had proffered, both secretly and publicly, what he thought were promising initiatives in negotiations. None of that had yielded anything. There was a palpable sense of frustration in the administration about how long this war was going to drag on. Out of the Oval Office began to flood memoranda that were stream-of-consciousness renditions of the president's fears and ambitions in Southeast Asia. His image of this whole contest as a kind of challenge being issued not only by the parties on the ground -- by the Cambodian rebels and the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong -- but ultimately by more formidable and distant forces -- the Soviet Union, by China, by his enemies -- testing him, measuring his mettle as a man and as a leader.

Mr. EHRLICHMAN: He took me aside and he said, "I'm going to be out of the play for ten days here. I won't be able to handle any domestic decisions for ten days. So come back this afternoon and tell me all the things that need to be decided for the next ten days and then I won't be able to see you because I'm going to be focusing on this business of Vietnam. We're going to try and bring it to a head."

NARRATOR: At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Laird waited for the president. After days of tense deliberation, Nixon was about to announce an attack on enemy sanctuaries across the Vietnam border in Cambodia and he would do so over the objections of many White House advisers.

Mr. MORRIS: We thought the invasion was a bad idea and that it was one more round of escalation on the pattern, on an old pattern in Vietnam which would cost lives and national treasure and really only prolong the suffering and do nothing to affect the larger outcome of the war.

NARRATOR: But the military and Kissinger recommended the action and Nixon wanted to go ahead. He was convinced that destroying the North Vietnamese hiding places in Cambodia would relieve Communist pressure on the South. And he wanted to take some dramatic action to demonstrate that neither Hanoi nor the anti-war movement could intimidate the United States or its president.

Pres. NIXON: [April 30, 1970] If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world. It is not our power, but our will and character that is being tested tonight.

NARRATOR: As Nixon spoke, American troops moved into Cambodia. His critics were outraged. The president who had promised to end the war seemed to be widening it, moving into a country perceived as neutral. Three members of Kissinger's staff, including Roger Morris, resigned in protest. Nixon was unmoved.

Pres. NIXON: I would rather be a one-term president and do what I believed was right than to be a two-term president at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.

NARRATOR: Early the next morning, Nixon went to the Pentagon for a firsthand briefing. The military was reporting success. Nixon was encouraged and praised American soldiers fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The wife of one of those soldiers reached out to shake his hand. Nixon drew a sharp contrast between the troops in Vietnam and the student protesters at home.