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CNN Special Reports
1968: A Nation on the Edge. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired June 27, 2020 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DON LEMON, CNN HOST, ORIGINAL SERIES: Welcome to a very special evening on CNN. We are living in a historic moment, racial inequality, political division, protests taking over American cities. All while we head towards a divisive Presidential Election. Your calendar might say 2020, but to many historians, America today feels quite similar to 1968.
With this in mind, tonight CNN is bringing you a special encore presentation of 1968, a year that changed America forever. Through tonight's episodes, you will relive the events of that iconic year and decide for yourself if history is repeating itself today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The enemy is not spoken, but he has met his mast mere the field. I'd like to say hi to mom back at home. I know she is worried about me. So hello mom.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Diana Ross.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody knows Diana rose. You are how many years old?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 23 years old forever and ever.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are planning simultaneous action in many cities. Today I state that I am a candidate for President of the United States. Well, I would like to confirm that I will be in the New Hampshire primary. And I think we have to support the President and the administration.
PRESIDENT, LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, members of the Congress and my fellow Americans, I was thinking as I was walking down the aisle there tonight of what Sam Rayburn told me many years ago, that Congress always extends a very warm welcome to the President as he comes in.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAN RATHER, FORMER ANCHOR, CBS EVENING NEWS: As 1967 faded into 1968, Lyndon Johnson knew he had compiled one of the most important presidencies for domestic policy in history.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: Our food programs have already helped millions avoid the horrors of famine. And last year Medicare and Medicaid brought better health to more than 25 million Americans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RATHER: Also, a great period in which he passed all his landmark civil rights legislation, dismantling much of institutionalized racism would give him a place in history.
REV. JESSE JACKSON, CIVIL ACTIVIST: In terms of civil rights, no tree in the forest is tall as - as Johnson.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: If ever there was a nation that was capable of solving its problems, it is this nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT DALLEK, HISTORIAN: Johnson had to be the best. He just was driven by this idea to be top dog. That's also how he felt about Vietnam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: Since I reported to you last January, the enemy has been defeated in battle after battle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He knew all of that would make him a candidate for some future of Mount Rushmore, but he also knew that he was unlikely to be any future Mount Rushmore because of the Vietnam War. This was the frustration that made Lyndon Johnson's fingernails sweat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: B-52 bombers today made six raids on North Vietnamese divisions around the United States, Marine Base of Khe Sanh.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
THOMAS RICKS, FORMER CORRESPONDENT, THE WASHINGTON POST: Khe Sanh is a marine base up in the North Western corner of South Vietnam and Northern East forces start surrounding it and attacking it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 6,000 American marines and 500 South Vietnamese rangers are surrounded by 40,000 communist troops.
(END VIDEO CLIP) RICKS: And General West William says this is great. This is the big comminuting battle that we've wanted.
CHARLES KAISER, AUTHOR, 1968 IN AMERICA: Johnson is very worried that the outcome of this battle could change the outcome of the war.
[22:05:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: The eyes of the nation and of all history itself are on that little brave band of defenders at Khe Sanh and the area that is around it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILIP CAPUTO, AUTHOR, A RUMOR OF WAR: It's hard for me to imagine that the '60s would have turned out the way they did had there been no war in Vietnam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIIFED MALE: They raise their voices, their placards and they march against the government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEATHER ANN THOMPSON, HISTORIAN: 1968 is the culminating moment for a generation of young people who really couldn't understand with so much unrest at home why there were so many resources going into the Vietnam War.
GLORIA STEINEM, ACTIVIST: I had a big sign on my bulletin board at home that said, alienation is when your country is at war and you want the other side to win.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're stabbing people. They just ran someone down back there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TIM NAFTALI, HISTORIAN: To understand the passion behind the anti-war movement, you have to keep in mind that the United States had a draft at the time, that every year young men were waiting to find out would their number be the number that's chosen for service.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRANK MCGEE, NBC NEWS: President Johnson orders another 10,500 men sent to the war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAFTALI: And there is also a sense that even if you weren't chosen, your friends were chosen. So you're in it together as a generation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. EUGENE MCCARTHY, MINNESOTA: In the beginning, it was said; we were simply sustaining and strengthening South Vietnam. Well, the early escalation did not satisfy that. And so, the objective was extended to include nation building in South Vietnam. Then we were told that we were saving all of southeastern Asia.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RICK PERLSTEIN, AUTHOR, NIXONLAND: Eugene McCarthy was a senator from Minnesota who entered the New Hampshire primary as an anti-Vietnam war candidate. And the young people flocked to his banner. They cut their hair off. They put on clean clothes. The saying was they were going clean for gene.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCARTHY: It's just crucial. You pay very close attention to the appearance you are presenting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good afternoon. We're representing Senator McCarthy who is taking the Democratic Nomination for President.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAM BROWN, JR. YOUTH SOORDINATOR, SEN, MCCARTHY CAMPAIGN; When McCarthy chose to be a candidate I dropped out at the end of the first semester and went to work for the campaign. The issue was Vietnam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to say that this war has gone too far.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: What makes 1968 such a pivotal year in American history is that an incumbent President couldn't seem to hold his party together.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ROBERT F. KENNEDY, NEW YORK: Will there be some kind of split in the Democratic Party? They're all getting quite vocal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
KENNEDY: They're saying that if the Republicans nominate a moderate or a liberal Republican, Democrats will come over and support him and the conservatives in the Republican Party will go over and support Lyndon Johnson. Is that possible?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:10:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now here is NBC News Correspondent Frank McGee.
MCGEE: The new communist campaign in Vietnam continues. Just after midnight their time, a band of Vietcong raiders blew up a power installation and attacked two police stations in Saigon, at Hue, the old imperial capital, 400 miles to the north. The Vietcong is holding on to part of the town.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TOM HANKS, ACTOR: I remember there was a graphic put up on the screen on the news, it was these cartoon explosions that were just all over this little strip of the country on the other side of the world.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCGEE: It all amounts to the most ambitious series of communist attacks yet mounted spreading violence into at least ten provincial capitals, stretching the entire length of the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANKS: For a year that was supposed to start off as being a grand sophisticated, exciting year, it was redefined literally within 48 hours by TET.
COL. MYRON C. HARRINGTON, JR. USMC. (RET): The attacks on the night of the 31st, were really my first exposure to major combat. Initial reports were very clouded and we couldn't really get a good grasp of what was happening, except something was happening all over Vietnam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON WEBSTER, CBS NEWS: This is the main - the other main language radio station in Saigon.
GEORGE SYVERTSEN, CBS NEWS: This neighborhood is called--
MIKE WALLACE, CBS NEWS: Saigon airport.
WEBSTER: Heavy casualties in Hue, South Vietnam.
JEFF GRAINICK, CBS NEWS: Hear the rounds flying little overhead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARK BOWDEN, AUTHOR, HUE 1968: The TET offensive, simultaneous attacks on every city in town in South Vietnam, shocked the American people.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEN. WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND, U.S. COMMANDER IN VIETNAM: The enemy very deceitfully has taken advantage of the TET troops in order to create maximum consternation within South Vietnam, particularly in the populated areas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LIEN-HANG NGUYEN, AUTHOR, HANORS WAR: Every year there was a ceasefire, on the lunar New Year holidays known as TET. And they believe that year would be the same thing, but that wasn't what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are American combat military police and troops from the 101st airborne division half a block to the U.S. Embassy. Vietcong snipers and suicide commandos were holed up inside the embassy compound and firing from surrounding buildings.
HOWARD TUCKNER, NBC NEWS: Now CIA men and MPs have gone into the embassy and are trying to get the snipers out by themselves.
ROBERT SHACKNE, CBS NEWS: Military police got back into the compound of the $2.5 million embassy complex at dawn. The fighting went on for a total of six hours before the last known Vietcong raider was killed. In a small residence of the embassy's mission coordinator, George Jacobson, who had been hiding out all alone all morning.
COL. GEORGE JACOBSON, EMBASSY MISSION COORDINATOR: You had quite an escape at the very end.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did that happen?
JACOBSON: Well, they put riot gas into the bottom floors of my house which of course would drive whoever was down below up top where I was. They had thrown me a pistol about ten minutes before this occurred and with all the luck that I've had all of my life, I got him before he got me. I'm sorry.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With a pistol, he had what?
JACOBSON: An m-16.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you got him?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:15:00]
MARK KURLANSKY, AUTHOR, 1968: That just really scared people because that showed Americans being attacked, the marines unable to defend the embassy. In reality they did defend the embassy. They killed them and drove them back, but that's not the way it looked on TV.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then at the same time, the destruction of this beautiful, ancient city of Hue, my God, what are we doing here?
GRALNICK: It's been like this all weekend in Hue one nasty little firefight right after another rounds going overhead little firefight across the Perfume River. What do you think at a time like this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, keeping down. Bullets are flying over here too fast.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we weren't prepared for the combat in an urban area. So we had to go in and to use the Marine Corps phrase, we had to adapt, improvise and overcome the many obstacles and challenges that we had. How do you cross a street? How do you go in and take a fortified position which is a home?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colonel Cheatham, what are your men about to do?
COL. ERNIE CHEATHAM, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS: Well, I've got two companies here that are just about to clear the next two blocks up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What kind of fighting is it going to be?
CHEATHAM: It's house to house and from room to room.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do had you ever expected to experience this kind of street fighting in Vietnam?
CHEATHAM: No, I didn't. I think this is the first time the marine corps has been street fighting since Seoul in 1950.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW BACEVICH, PROFESSOR, BOSTON UNIVERSITY: Most of the fighting happens in the countryside. But the North Vietnamese political and military leadership believed that large scale military action in the cities will stimulate a popular uprising and basically make the American position in South Vietnam untenable.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WESTMORELAND: Apparently hoped that when his troops mingled with the people, intimidated them, terrorized them, that they would join his ranks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BACEVICH: But the South Vietnamese people don't rise up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: The biggest fact is that the stated purposes of the general uprising, a military victory or psychological victory, have failed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JEFF GREENFIELD, JOURNALIST: The TET offensive may have been a huge military defeat for the NLF and the North Vietnamese, but psychologically it was an enormous victory because it suggested that this war had no end.
(BEGIN VIEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We lost a lot of people. We probably have to drop back today to regroup.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you feel yourself?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scared I guess. But I'm hoping we'll drop back and regroup, because I lost my engineer and I need another man to help me with my job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LANCE MORROW, ESSAYIST, TIME: There was something deeply corrupt and even evil in our involvement, and I'll tell you the moment that defined TET all over the world. It was the moment when General Nguyen Loan, who was the Chief of Police of the Saigon Police Department pulled out a snub nose 38 revolver and held it up to the temple of the VIETCOM and shot him, bang.
Eddie Adams of the A.P. took the picture. It was the next day all over the world. And it was injected right into the center of the American brain. And it made Americans feel morally unclean. Can it be that we are the most idealistic people in the world can it be that we are actually evil? That was what TET did.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Awful sick of it. I'll be so glad to go home. I don't know. This is the worst area we've been in, since I've been in Vietnam.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think it's worth it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I don't know. They say we're fighting for something, I don't know.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAY SHERMAN, UPI: 1,000 striking sanitation workers marched on Memphis City Hall this afternoon and demanded Mayor Henry Lobe hears their grievances.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAYLOR BRANCH, AUTHOR, THE KING YEARS: On February 1st in Memphis, two sanitation workers were crushed in the back of a garbage truck. Memphis policy did not allow them to seek shelter in a rain storm, because the white citizens of Memphis did not want to see sanitation workers in their yards and that sort of thing.
The rain was so terrible that they got into the back of this barrel trash truck, and a broom fell on the lever and compacted them with the garbage and killed them. CLAYBORNE CARSON, PROF. OF. HISTORY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: The situation in Memphis was local. That sense that they were desperate led them to accept these conditionings until they just got to be intolerable, and then they went on strike.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The garbage collectors, predominantly Negro, want higher pay and union recognition.
MAYOR HENRY LOEB (D) MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE: Public employees cannot strike against their employer. I suggest that you go back to work.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police used a riot control gas and night sticks this afternoon to break up a disturbance among a group of striking garbage men.
REV. JAMES LAWSON, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Over a thousand of us were amazed and marched and stretched from the beginning of that corner up to here, was broken up. That became the cry essentially for the entire Negro Community to say, the fight was on.
I saw that strike as another part of the emerging movement of non- violence in the United States. And that's the way King saw it as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: The vast majority of Negros in our country is still perishing on a lonely Island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. And it is criminal to have people working at a full-time job, getting part-time income.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAWSON: I think King was inspired by that movement, and he saw that as a poor people's movement.
[22:25:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We are poverty stricken and we have been at the bottom too long.
(END VIDDEO CLIP)
DAN CARTER, HISTORIAN: It was always hard to be Martin Luther king, but it was really hard in 1967, 68. He had alienated many of his moderately conservative white allies by his attack on the war in Vietnam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Let us save our national honor. Stop the bombing and stop the war. (END VIDEO CLIP)
CARTER: On the other hand, his continued insistence on non-violence had alienated him from many activists who felt that non-violence had run its course.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this what you want to do, destroy the country?
H. RAP BROWN, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: I'll destroy a whole bunch of y'all.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want to destroy who?
BROWN: You and a whole bunch of others like you anybody who gets in our way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURLANSKY: People started to say, we aren't going to get our rights from the Martin Luther King way. So what are we going to do? We're going to build black power. We're going to build black companies. We're going to build back organizations. We're going have our own power center.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ADAM CLAYTON POWELL. JR.: Black power. Black power, my friends, means that we are developing now a new breed of cats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRY EDWARDS, SOCIALOGIST: This is what spurred Stokely Carmichael.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STOKELY CARMICHAEL, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: The major enemy is the honky and its institutions of racism. That's the major enemy!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
EDWARDS: This is part of what spurred the Black Panther party to organize.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, BLACK PANTHER PARTY: It's the pay and their mentors, the people who control the pay, the power structure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
EDWARDS: So there was a sea change in the civil rights movement and its goals, and that impacts the black perspective being played out every day in American society. RENEE GRAHAM, COLUMNIST, THE BOSTON GLOBE: Say it loud, I'm black and
I'm proud, there's no ambiguity there. This is a civil rights anthem. This is a black power anthem.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want you to know that I'm a man, a black man, a soul brother.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NELSON GEORGE, AUTHOR: James Brown had been the dominant black musical figure. He was the best showman by far in any genre of music. He also was a smart businessman. He took over booking his own shows, radio stations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is - from WRDW, - Augusta, a James Brown Station.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE: So he was the hardest working man in show business. Then he becomes soul brother number one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's black and he's proud.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Brown is the number one soul brother in the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM: There's no question that James Brown was a huge influence for Sly Stone - the music. But Sly Stone was different, there were women and the band was integrated. That was a big deal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE: Sly Stone is a product of the black church and also a child of the bay area, which is incredible progressive politics, and he also was a radio deejay. There was no show better there was no band more interesting to look at. And he was writing hit song after hit song after hit song. When Sly came out with Haight-Ashbury/pimp outfits, it was over. Every R&B group had to flip it.
GRAHAM: So in 1968, the Supremes put out "love child," and it's this whole idea what it's like to grow up in a tenement. "I started my life in an old cold run-down tenement slum". Diana Ross is singing this?
For the Supremes, this is a darker, more mature album, they're actually singing about some social issues. And then you also remember Motown promoted itself as the sound of young America. They never borrow themselves as the sound of black America. For Motown, that was a big step
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:30:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you thought about graduate school?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you mind me telling me then what those four years of college were for, what was the point of all that hard work?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It got me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS CONNELLY, JOURNALIST: "The Graduate" is probably the most important movie of the '60s. Maybe it's the best movie of the '60s. The pervasive sense of alienation, of being not at one with the world around you that's the idea of the '60s and that is the crucial idea of 1968.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now you know we are just about the friendliest folks you'd ever want to meet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANN HORNADAY, FILM CRITIC, THE WASHINGTON POST: In "Bonnie & Clyde", Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway played this impossibly attractive couple, robbing banks as some sort of a sexual sublimation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's it like?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HORNADAY: When it was released in '67 people didn't know how to take it. So it was re released in early 1968.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Armed robbery.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NELSON GEORGE, AUTHOR: It had a tone that challenged people that they hadn't seen in the film before and this was a movie that changed the way people regarded how those movies were done. So we go to see "Planet of the Apes" at an all-black theater in Brooklyn. And we're having a base time because we identified with the apes. Hell, yes. - Charlton Heston. I mean, you know, why are we rooting for him? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do we want something? Come on, speak!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM: Charlton Heston lands on this planet and he realizes that this planet is literally a planet of the apes that the apes were now in charge.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty ape!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE: Charlton Heston would have to confront the tragedy of a broken civilization.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You maniacs! You blew it up! Oh, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RICK PEALSTEIN, AUTHOR, NIXONLAND: This was a hit. It really captured something very deep in the psyche of America in a year where the cities were falling apart.
[22:35:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please go in your homes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CLAYBORNE CARSON, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: In 1965, after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts passed, you had the watts riots. Then in '66 and '67 in Newark in Detroit dozens of people are killed, and Johnson is chagrinned and he says, look what I've done for the blacks, why are they doing this to me? There had to be a response to that by the establishment. And that's what led to the Kernel Commissioner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: We need to know the answer, I think, to three basic questions about these rights, what happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARSON: Now, asking the question and accepting the answer are two different things. And they didn't like the answer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRY REASONER, CBS NEWS: For the last few days, this country has lived under indictment, a charge of white racism, national in scale, terrible in its effects. The evidence to support that charge has now been presented in the text of a report released just last night. Our nation says the report is moving toward two separate societies, black and white - separate but unequal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get your hands up and go!
GODFREY CAMBRIDGE, ACTOR AND ACTIVIST: You told people about the Civil Rights Act, that we would have more freedom and told them we'd pass this law and have this, and when you give people hope and you don't fulfill that hope then you are more likely to have problems.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every time I come to town, you overcharge me for everything I get. And how in the world do you expect for me to get it? You're not going to give them nothing, just enough to keep you eating. Yes, I eat breakfast this morning. I don't know where dinner coming from? How do you think I feel?
REASONER: In 12 out of 24 riots studied by the commission, the spark that touched off disorder was the violent response of our own institutions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First one drops their hands is a dead man.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARSON: The answer was that American institutions created this, and that it was going to take a lot of resources to deal with it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE WALLACE, INDEPENDENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If the police in this country could just run it for about two years, then we could walk in the parks and on the streets in safety. And you all are doing a magnificent job. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George Wallace was a Southern Segregationist Politician, and a former Democrat, and he runs for President as an independent and taps into the deepest wellsprings of American rage and reaction.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIE MURPHREE, FACTORY WORKER: Well, I think that the Negro, no doubt about it, has got out of hand. And I think Wallace will enforce law and order.
WALTER WARREN, PLUMBER: You can see character in its eyes. He got a little spunk to him, little backbone that's what the American people will need.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARSON: Wallace realized that if you could remove overt racism from conservativism that lots of Americans would go for it because they were tired of the rights revolution. It was too much change for them too fast.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID FROST, THE NEXT PRESIDENT: Well, let's come to the basic question. Would you let your daughter marry a Negro?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't even want to - in fact, I don't want to get into a discussion of race, really because the most important thing in our country is maintaining law and order. Race relations are going to work themselves out. I don't believe in the marriage of Negro and whites. I'm candid and honest about it. I don't think it's good for either race. I think the races ought to remain intact.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the most astute men in the field of politics in the world of affairs on the scene today, ladies and gentlemen, the Former Vice President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAFTALI: When 1968 begins, it's an open question whether Richard Nixon can win anything?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have that stigma has a loser because of losing two big contests. How do you plan to combat that?
RICHARD NIXON, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The way you combat it is to win something.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAT BUCHANAN, SPEECHWRITER FOR RICHARD NIXON: Nixon lost two big elections, to Jack Kennedy, and he lost to Pat Brown in California and people would say the guy's a political loser talented, yes, but a loser.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIXON: America will be watching on March 12th. Let the people go out from New Hampshire, the people of New Hampshire want a change and America will have a change in November. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Television is a vital, political meeting place. To be successful, a candidate must use the medium and use it well. Richard Nixon prefers informal, no-holds-barred discussions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New Hampshire was the first time we saw a new innovation in televised campaigning. Richard Nixon's aides would gather a group of ordinary citizens and have them, instead of the media, asking questions.
(BEGIN VIDOE CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Any further questions that you have?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:40:00]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they made it look like Richard Nixon was this brave truth-teller, who was willing to face down any critic, when in fact, it was completely staged.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the Nixon answer, in which Richard Nixon discusses the issues with citizens of New Hampshire.
NIXON: Lawlessness, crime, is a major problem in this country today. We talk about civil rights, you know what the most important civil right in this country is? It's the right to be safe in the streets, to be safe in your home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BUCHANAN: Nixon's campaign in New Hampshire was a classic. There is a new Nixon, the reporters were saying. He's much better disciplined. He also is more relaxed. He takes criticism well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIXON: I plan to shake a lot of hands, and I have a good strong hand, and I also like to talk to people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The intelligence of the old Nixon, combined with the better behavior and outlook of the new Nixon. That's the candidate in '68.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIXON: I am myself and I am going to continue to play that role. If people looking at me say that's a new Nixon, well, all I can say is, well, maybe you didn't know the old Nixon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:45:00] BOWDEN: After the initial attacks of the TET offensive were beaten back, Hue was still occupied by the enemy. It had been completely overrun.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAURENCE: The North Vietnamese are deeply entrenched in buildings and bunkers, carefully camouflaged, waiting for the marines to move forward, to gun them down in the open. They have been holding out for three weeks in what has become the longest, bloodiest battle of the war.
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COL. MYRON C. HARRRINGTON, JR., USMC, (RETD.): Initially when we went into the citadel, the citadel being a fortress that was roughly four square miles, it was occupied by some 7,000 MVA.
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SHACKNE: The remains of an old tower fortress built more than a century ago again is put to combat use. That's the North Vietnamese strong point, that's where the rocket firing had been coming from. Now the marines are trying to silence the firing with grenade launchers.
HARRINGTON, JR.: I had a strong group of marines they were magnificent in every way, unwavering in going forward under intense fire.
BOWDEN: After 24 days of heavy fighting the Americans and the South Vietnamese troops finally pushed the enemy out of the citadel. The estimate was that 80 percent of the city was damaged or destroyed, and 80 percent of its population was homeless. In order to preserve the city of hue, we had to destroy the City of Hue.
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WALTER CRONKITE, CBS NEWS: Whatever price the communists pay for this offensive, the price to the allied cause was high where if our intention is to restore normalcy, peace to this country. The destruction of those qualities in this most historic and probably serene of all South Vietnam cities is obviously a setback.
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RATHER: Walter Cronkite and the CBS evening News had a very large audience. When he delivered what he did from Vietnam, it had an impact.
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CRONKITE: But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out would be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.
(END VIDEO CLIP) NAFTALI: He felt he had a public obligation to actually share with the Americans the fact that our government is not telling us the truth.
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MCCARTHY: No matter what we say, it is our napalm burning thatched huts, our bombs being used against simple people, our gas reported three non-lethal, the other day was reported to kill only 10 percent of the adults who inhale it, and 90 percent of the children. So it's only semi- lethal.
CRONKITE: The big surprise of the first primary of campaign '68, has been the strength of Senator Eugene McCarthy.
(APPLAUSE)
CRONKITE: They hope that perhaps 35 percent. The total they ran up was a dream come true.
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BROWN JR.: The results on election night gave us a sense that there was a real opportunity here. We even got the feeling like maybe we can run a national campaign after all. Let's take a run at this thing.
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NIXON: The McCarthy vote was just not a peace vote, it was an anti- Johnson vote on many other issues.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Nixon, do you think you can be stopped now?
NIXON: Let me put it - well, sir, that's a fair enough question. I can say this. I'm not going to stop myself, that's for sure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BUCHANAN: New Hampshire was critical. But you know what, we looked at the numbers and Nixon's total in New Hampshire was more than all the other candidates in both parties combined.
DWIGHT CHAPIN, AIDE RICHARD NIXON: New Hampshire was a significant turning point. It locked in a certain popularity that he had. And at the same time, you had the Democrats fighting among themselves.
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RATHER: The President and his advisers are most concerned about what tonight's returns mean in terms of Bobby Kennedy. McCarthy worked hard, had good financing and good organization in New Hampshire, one of the President's advisers says, but McCarthy and New Hampshire don't mean a thing, unless they mean Bobby is coming in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would this encourage you all to change your--
MCCARTHY: I have no plans. I have no plans at the moment. Maybe I'll have something further to say after I see the rest of the figures. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you accept a draft, Senator?
MCCARTHY: I don't think anybody's suggested that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm suggesting it now. Would you accept it?
MCCARTHY: I don't think that's a practical matter.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you refuse it?
MCCARTHY: But I just don't think - would you accept one? And I don't think anybody suggested that's going to happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:50:00]
GREENFIELD: All of Bobby's more seasoned political advisers were saying, you don't depose an incumbent President. All you're going to do is rip the party apart and make sure that Nixon or whoever is going to win. He was also worried that if ran against Johnson people would chalk it up to Bobby's ruthless desire to be President or his loathing of Lyndon Johnson.
RATHER: Bluntly put, Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy hated one another.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KENNEDY: This man is mean, bitter, vicious, an animal, in many ways.
JOHNSON: I believe bobby is having his coverage's, he is having his Negros and he is having his Mayors and he has had his Catholics and he's having them one after another each day. All of it makes Bobby look like a great hero and makes me look like a son of a bitch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAFTALI: Bobby Kennedy doesn't go after LBJ until he's politically wounded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KENNEDY: I am announcing today my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. I run because it is now unmistakably clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who are now making them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAFTALI: Can you imagine the anger that Johnson had? Here - here was his nightmare.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOB HOPE, THE BOB HOPE SHOW: I hear LBJ is trying to get rid of 150 pounds - Bobby Kennedy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Make a sweep all the way down from London back this way. You understand me? All right, lock arms on both sides of the street. Let's sweep it all the way down.
SHERMAN: Today in Memphis, a 3,000-man protest march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in support of a seven-week-old city sanitation workers strike. The strike has turned into a major racial issue in Memphis.
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LAWSON: We were an orderly march going up the main street. I was in the middle of it. And there was some unruly people no doubt, loud people. And I saw the police in a phalanx and said to myself, they're going to break up this march. Then, suddenly a handful of men are busting a window over here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chaos has just broken out downtown. Negro youths are smashing windows.
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LAWSON: And I went back to King in the first rank and said, Martin, the police up there are planning to break us up, and you're going to be a major target. So we're going to turn around and go back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That sound you just heard was the sound of tear gas fired by a police officer in an attempt to thwart this unruly demonstration.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you do not leave this area, you will be arrested. We urge you to return to your homes immediately for your own safety.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of here!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move!
KING JR.: We must not allow the events of the day to cause us to let up. That would be a tragic error.
LAWSON: There will be continued marches. We will not stop.
(ENDD VIDEO CLIP) CARSON: I don't think King had a choice. He had to go back to Memphis and prove that there could be a non-violent march.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: Good evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight, I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. No other question so preoccupies our people.
MCGEE: It is a new war in Vietnam. The enemy now has the initiative. Now there are finite limits to the destruction Vietnam can absorb. There are only so many buildings and so many people. The time is at hand when we must decide whether it's futile to destroy Vietnam in the effort to save it.
JOHNSON: We are prepared to move immediately toward peace through negotiations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LYNDA JOHNSON ROBB, DAUGHTER OF PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Daddy tried to the end to get peace with Vietnam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: I'm no goddamn fascist. I'm trying to settle this thing. Both daughters' husbands are going out. One is going to Hue and the other to Da Nang, right there in the middle of it. God knows I'm more concerned than anybody.
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ROBB: I followed Chuck out to get on the plane to Vietnam. And so there's a picture of Chuck and me carrying this tin of cookies. And before he left on the airplane, I am now pregnant, but it's secret. And he says to me, I have signed my will, and if I'm killed, the Marine Corps will take care of everything.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: Now, as in the past, the United States is ready to send its representatives to any forum, at any time, to discuss the means of bringing this ugly war to an end.
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THOMAS: By the end of March, President Johnson is in despair. Bobby Kennedy, his great nightmare, is in the race.
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KENNEDY: I'm interested in the future of this country and what this country must stand for and I don't think it's been satisfactory up to the present time.
(END VIDEO CLIP) NAFTALI: So this on top of all the other bad news he had in March pushes LBJ over the edge.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: Finally, let me say this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAFTALI: He told very few people about the last part of his March 31st speech.
ROBB: Of course mother knew that he was going to do it that night. I talked to him. I said please, don't do it. But daddy had made his decision.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: With American sons in the field far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBB: He just was worn out.
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JOHNSON: Accordingly--
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBB: By all of these heavy, heavy burdens.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
