American Experience

NARRATOR: He promised an America without poverty, where the young would be educated, the old would be cared for, where Black Americans would be equal citizens.

On the night of his inaugural gala, all his dreams seemed within his grasp.

Dark tales were still rumored about his rise to power, but within 100 days, Lyndon Johnson would be compared to Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Other presidents had called the White House a prison.

Johnson said, "I never felt freer."

(cheering) Lyndon Johnson filled the air.

This was his town.

CLARK CLIFFORD: Sometimes I would be with him, and I'd have the feeling that I'd been with a great hurtling locomotive running down the track.

RONNIE DUGGER: He was kind, he was cruel, he was a son of a bitch, and yet he could be awfully decent and generous.

You know, everything; a very strange person, because he had it all.

I think he would have been considered a great president if he hadn't got involved in Vietnam.

LARRY BERMAN: The tragedy of the war was it destroyed everything that Johnson had dreamed of.

My fellow Americans, I accept your nomination.

(crowd cheers and applauds) (crowd cheering) NARRATOR: The 1964 campaign had been an absolute triumph.

Johnson had been exhilarated by the enthusiastic crowds.

JOHNSON: I want for every family what my mother wanted for me: the chance for an honest living, an honorable job, a decent future.

NARRATOR: He had galvanized the nation with his appeal for racial justice and his vision of a Great Society.

At the same time, he had promised not to send American troops to fight in Vietnam.

JOHNSON: I have had advice to load our planes with bombs and to drop them on certain areas that I think would enlarge the war and escalate the war, and result in our committing a good many American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land.

NARRATOR: But in Vietnam, the fighting went on.

Even with American advisers, the South Vietnamese army couldn't win the war themselves.

Johnson knew they would need more help.

"It's going to hell in a hand basket out there," Johnson had told an aide.

"The army won't fight; the people don't know whose side to be on."

For months, his advisers were warning him that if he didn't act, South Vietnam would fall.

Johnson's vision for America was about to converge with a land war in Asia.

On Election Day, I represented the Defense Department in an interagency meeting at the State Department under William Bundy considering, essentially, alternative bombing programs against North Vietnam.

We didn't wait till the day after election, because Vietnam couldn't wait.

We just barely made it to the election without bombing.

NARRATOR: "We don't want to get tied down in a land war," Johnson told an aide.

The president's advisers gave him three choices.

WILLIAM P. BUNDY: One was to go on as we were doing, accepting that it might readily be that that simply wouldn't do the trick.

Then we had two options that were, in effect differed in their pace, in their severity: option B, which would have bombed very heavily, or fairly heavily, and option C, which was a more graduated bombing program.

We didn't really consider not bombing North Vietnam.

That possibility was mentioned, but only as a, a straw man.

"There lies defeat"-- no one is for that.

Johnson's advisers wanted to get us moving on the bombing, but the president was digging in his feet on that.

He had to be convinced that that was worthwhile.

It gave me a very good impression of Johnson.

I had, in fact, the thought that he was the only sane man at that level of the government, that he was asking the right questions.

(switch clicks) NARRATOR: On February 6, 1965, Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam in retaliation for a Viet Cong attack on an American military outpost.

The option he chose seemed, to the president, I'm sure, to be the option of restraint.

Rather than be cowardly, rather than be a terrible risk-taker, he would apply graduated pressures.

JACK VALENTI: Well, it's like the first olive out of a bottle.

Once that happens, the other olives are easier to get out.

And so once you started bombing, then it became a, a normality.

Always "a little bit more, a little bit more, and we can get this war behind us."

NARRATOR: In March, Johnson ordered continuous and massive air assaults against North Vietnam-- Operation Rolling Thunder.

"I knew," he later wrote, "that we were at a turning point."

Each step was making it more and more difficult for Johnson to turn back.

THOMSON: I think President Johnson had a unique opportunity to get us out of Vietnam after the election of 1964.

Johnson had won overwhelmingly.

He had promised not to send American boys to die there.

He had the mandate, and he had four years to do it.

But he didn't have the courage and he didn't have the confidence and he didn't have the advice.

NARRATOR: For every decision, Johnson had had the counsel of the best and the brightest in America-- men like Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk, holdovers from the Kennedy era; "Harvards," Johnson called them.

He was the graduate of Southwest Texas State Teacher's College.

ELIOT JANEWAY: He labored his life long under the illusion that he was branded for life because he had no formal education.

They had gone to Harvard and on to graduate schools, and here was he, and I don't think he ever finished reading a popular pamphlet past page one.

GEORGE BALL: I'm sure the fact that he was getting this information from people with such elegant educations was a great comfort to him.

It justified his own decisions.

NARRATOR: The president hoped the bombing would force North Vietnam to the bargaining table.

Johnson had no love for what he called "that bitch of a war."

"The woman I really loved," he said, "was the Great Society."

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Mr. Johnson proposes an education program that will ensure every American full development of his mind and skills.

He says the beauty of America must be preserved as a green legacy, with water and air pollution ended.

Beauty of mind, too, must be promoted.

Cities should be imaginatively improved, and a broad health program must ensure medical care for the aged and needy.

NARRATOR: It was a legislative avalanche.

No president had ever put so many bills before Congress.

History will prove that he was probably the most effective president we've ever had in the White House.

Whether you liked him or whether you approved of his tactics or what was actually passed, as far as getting things done, Johnson could do it better than anybody.

GEORGE REEDY: When he became president, he decided that he had to get everything done at once, because he had checked back.

He discovered that all the things presidents did, they did during their first couple of years.

And so he began to pump things out frantically.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: There was a sense in which laws were being written before people even understood the problems, and you had new agencies springing up overnight.

But I think Johnson was afraid that somehow, this consensus was going to go away, so he better get as much done as he could, and we can straighten things out later.

NARRATOR: Johnson prepared bill after bill: funds for education-- elementary, secondary, and college, and for pre-school children, Head Start; funds for conservation, clean air, and clean rivers, highway beautification, national parks; funds for consumer protection, truth in labeling and packaging; automobile safety.

There was urban renewal and housing, public television, the creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts.

The list goes on and on.

And you haven't seen anything yet.

JOHN CONNALLY: I thought he passed too much legislation.

And he was passing them one right after the other, without adequate hearings, without a, a basic understanding of what the ultimate costs were gonna be, and how they were gonna be administered.

JOHNSON: I have had but one objective: to be the president of all the people-- not just the rich, not just the well-fed, not just the fortunate, but president of all of America.

(audience cheers and applauds) CONNALLY: He was, he was inordinately proud of all this legislation he passed.

Well, he-- I mean, he kept a scorecard in his pocket.

Had a sheet of paper, and he listed all the legislation he'd passed.

He was extremely proud of it.

(applauding) S. DOUGLASS CATER: He wanted to do good things.

He wanted to do great things.

And he had grown up in a system of government which was the American system, in which you did things by wheeling and dealing and trading.

This was the way you did it.

Well, I'm not sure that the government works this way anymore, but... (clears throat): When I was in the White House, the president assigned me certain senators and congressmen "to handle."

And every now and then, Everett Dirksen would call.

He was the Republican leader.

And he'd say... (imitating): "Jack..." You know, he had a voice that was like, uh, uh, honey dripping over metal tiles, and he'd say, "Jack, I want to see the boss later on today, and maybe we could have a drink and talk about a few things."

And I'd say, "Yes, sir, Senator.

The president will see you at 6: 00, how's that?"

"Yes, that would be fine."

And then he'd rise in the Senate about 3:00 in the afternoon and accuse Johnson of every crime that the most depraved mind could be capable of committing.

And then at 6: 00, he'd show up, and I'd go up with him to the second floor of the mansion.

And we'd sit and talk, and the president would say... (imitating): "Everett, I wouldn't talk about a cur dog the way you did me in the Senate."

"Well," he said, "Mr. President," you know, "I vow to tell the truth, so I, I have no choice."

And then they would laugh, and then they would recount some old long-fought battles.

And then finally, the president would say, "Now, Everett..." (clears throat) "I got to have three Republican votes, "and you know who they are.

"I gotta have those votes, Everett, "and I don't want any, any beating around the bush about it."

And Everett Dirksen would say, "Well, Mr. President," he said, "I happen to have here some names "of some likely nominees to the Federal Power Commission "and the Federal Communications Commission and a few other commissions."

And the president said, "Well, give their names to Valenti here, "we'll check them out with the FBI and see if they're fit to serve their country."

And they'd have another drink, and there was no summary of the meeting given.

Each of them knew that Johnson was gonna get three Republican votes, and Dirksen knew that he was gonna get three nominees to commissions.

I don't know they teach that in Government 101 in, in any of the schools, but, um, it worked.

The president got done what he needed to have done.

But the telephone was his Excalibur.

It was his sword, and no congressman was too much of a rookie to be called, nor too powerful of one to be importuned.

CATER: One morning at 5:00 a.m., he woke up a senator and said, "Hi, what are you doing?"

And he said, "Oh, nothing, Mr. President, just lying here hoping you'd call."

If a congressman wasn't home, he'd talk to the wife.

And if the wife wasn't home, he'd talk to the children and told them to tell their daddy to support the president.

CONNALLY: Part of his demeanor, part of his whole life was that he felt he could convert anybody, that he could convert an enemy into a, into a friend.

That he, he was, he would work at it assiduously to court and to convert someone who disliked him into being a friend and a disciple.

And, and many times, it worked.

NARRATOR: But Johnson couldn't use those same tactics with Ho Chi Minh.

Johnson thought the war would be like a filibuster, as he said-- enormous resistance at first, then a steady whittling away, then Ho hurrying to get it over with.

BERMAN: Ho Chi Minh was a revolutionary.

Johnson didn't understand that.

He didn't understand revolutionaries.

A revolutionary in the United States Senate is very different than someone like Ho Chi Minh.

He didn't understand the history of the Vietnamese people, the Vietnamese culture.

(explosions roaring) NARRATOR: Johnson thought he could force Ho Chi Minh to bargain.

"I saw our bombs as political resources for negotiating peace," he said.

But Ho couldn't be pushed.

Their positions were irreconcilable.

(man yelling) NARRATOR: Ho called the Americans invaders.

Johnson called North Vietnam the aggressor, waging war on a peaceful neighbor.

(men yelling) NARRATOR: Johnson wanted two countries: a North and a South Vietnam.

Ho wanted one.

(man yelling) Ho Chi Minh and the Communists had no intention whatsoever of ever allowing a peace treaty to separate their country.

Time was on their side.

They could certainly wait out Lyndon Johnson.

(men shouting, rifles firing) BERMAN: He understood Ho Chi Minh to be like any other political adversary who he could broker with, he could deal with.

That Ho Chi Minh had a price, and he would find that price.

JOHNSON: Well, what do the people of North Vietnam want?

Food for their hunger, health for their bodies.

I will ask the Congress to join in a billion-dollar American investment to replace despair with hope and terror with progress.

(explosion roars) NARRATOR: Johnson would bully and bargain.

On April 7, he offered Ho what sounded like a Great Society program.

The vast Mekong River can provide food and water and power on a scale to dwarf even our own TVA.

The wonders of modern medicine can be spread through villages where thousands die every year.

Schools can be established to train people... VALENTI: And I remember one time, I trailed him into his office, and he leaned back in his chair and put his hands on his head like this, and he said, "Oh, God, how can we get out of this war?"

He said, "If I could just sit in a room with Ho Chi Minh, "talk to him, I think we could cut a deal."

PROTESTERS: We shall overcome We shall overcome NARRATOR: At the same time Johnson was challenging Ho, the civil rights movement was continuing to challenge the South.

Despite Johnson's historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 that had put an end to segregation, a web of local laws continued to deny Black Americans the right to vote.

About 192 Negroes were registered, on the average, a month in the state of Mississippi; all over the state, 192 a month.

Now, on the basis of this rate of registration, it would take exactly 135 years for half of the Negroes eligible to vote in Mississippi to become registered.

NARRATOR: Early in 1965, Martin Luther King met with Lyndon Johnson in the White House.

ANDREW YOUNG: Martin made the case we were going to continue to have serious problems and racial violence until we got the vote, and that the right to vote was something that we could not afford to wait on.

President Johnson said that there could not be a Civil Rights Act in '65 because there had just been a Civil Rights Act in '64.

It was just not in the cards; that you couldn't have back-to-back civil rights bills.

But we felt like there was no choice, and so we told him then that we would be going to Selma to begin nonviolent demonstrations to try to dramatize the need for the right to vote, and that we would stay in touch with him.

NARRATOR: Determined to force Johnson's hand, King, working with other civil rights groups, organized a series of demonstrations in Alabama, climaxing in a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery.

(talking in background) (clamoring) (car horns honking) NARRATOR: Alabama state troopers brutally attacked the unarmed marchers while television cameras recorded the event for a stunned national audience.

(sirens wailing) It was called "Bloody Sunday."

Johnson was outraged.

With the rest of the country, he saw it all on television.

But he refused to send federal troops to protect the marchers.

There was enormous pressure on Johnson to send down federal troops.

He said the last thing he wanted to do was to send the federal Army into the South.

He said it would be like Reconstruction all over again.

He said, "I would lose every Southerner."

NARRATOR: Johnson said he was afraid to play into the hands of the popular segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who had turned the state troopers loose on the marchers.

But the civil rights movement was forcing Johnson to action.

Demonstrators all over the country demanded that Johnson provide federal protection so that the march could go forward.

KING: Now, they've been slow to do anything about it.

They always find ways to get over to you that it can't be done.

Still strange to us, though, how millions of dollars can be spent every day to hold troops in South Vietnam... (people exclaiming) ...when our country cannot protect the rights of Negroes in Selma, Marion, Alabama.

(audience applauds) NARRATOR: Johnson was stunned by the pressure, but refused to be pushed.

"I was hurt, deeply hurt, but I was determined not to be shoved into hasty action."

We shall overcome WILKINS: People were demonstrating all over the country.

It was just a general uprising.

The president was very unhappy.

During that week, I was in the White House, and again, we meet him.

(chuckles): And he just looked at me, and he stared at me, as if, "I never saw this person-- where did he come from?

I'm furious that he is in my sight."

It was really frightening, I mean, he looked like...

I hadn't done anything to him, you know?

And he looked like he was... And I said, "Hello, Mr. President," and he looked at me and he said, "These demonstrations, what are they all about?"

And I said, "People really want to vote, Mr.

President."

That, "We really need a Voting Rights Act."

I was kind of trembling.

(growling) He just-- I mean, it was... (growls): And he just left.

I mean, he did not...

There was no word.

No words came out, just... (growls) At that very precise moment, fortunately, Wallace sent a telegram to the White House saying he'd like to meet with the president to discuss the situation.

Johnson said, "Well, you, you just come right ahead."

That was the most amazing conversation I've ever been present at, because here was Lyndon Johnson, the consummate politician, and George Wallace just didn't know what was going on at that meeting.

Wallace is about five-four and Johnson is about six-four.

So he leads Wallace in and he sits him down on the couch.

Wallace sinks down, so he's now about three feet tall.

And Johnson sits on the edge of the rocking chair, leaning over him.

"George," he said, "do you see all those demonstrators out in front of the White House?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. President, I saw them."

He said, "Wouldn't it be just wonderful if we could put an end to all those demonstrations?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. President, that would be wonderful."

He said, "Why don't you and I go out there, George, "with all those television cameras-- do you see those television cameras?"

"Oh, yes, I saw them."

He says, "Let's you and I go out there, "and let's announce that you've decided to integrate every school in Alabama."

And his Southern voice always deepened when he spoke to other Southerners.

He says, "Now, you, you agree that the Negroes got the right to vote, don't you?"

He says, "Oh, yes, Mr. President, there's no quarreling with that," he says.

He says, "Well, then why don't you let them vote?"

And he said, "Well, you know," he said, "I don't have that power.

"That belongs to the county registrars in the state of Alabama."

And Johnson leaned back and he says, "George," he said, "Don't you shit me... (chuckles) ...as to who runs Alabama."

(laughing) And Wallace insisted, no, he didn't have the legal authority.

Said, he said, "Well, why don't you persuade them, George?"

He said, "I don't think I can do that."

He said, "Now, don't shit me about your persuasive power, George."

He says, "You know, I sit down in bed "in the morning when I get up, "and I got three TV sets "lined up, one right up after the other, "and I got a little button I can press, and I click it.

"Whenever I see something I, I'm interested in, "I press the button and the sound goes on.

"And I was, had it on this morning, "and I saw you, and I pressed the button.

And you were talking," he said, "and you was attacking me, George."

He says, " Well, I wasn't attacking you, Mr. President.

"I was attacking the whole principle of states' rights and..." He says, "You was attacking me, George."

He says, "And you were so damn persuasive," he says, "I almost changed my mind."

Well, this goes on for half an hour or more, and then finally, he turns to Wallace and he said, he said, "George," he says, "you and I shouldn't be thinking about 1964.

"We should be thinking about 1984.

"We'll both be dead and gone then.

He said, "Now, you got a lot of poor people "down there in Alabama, "a lot of ignorant people, a lot of people who need jobs, a lot of people who need a future."

He said, "You could do a lot for them."

He says, "Now, in 1984, George," he said, "what do you want left behind?"

He said, "Do you want a great big marble monument "that says 'George Wallace: He built,' "or do you want a little piece of scrawny pine laying there "along that harsh Caliche soil that says 'George Wallace: He hated'?"

NARRATOR: In the end, Wallace agreed to ask the president to mobilize the National Guard to protect the marchers.

The governor was reported to have said afterwards: "If I hadn't left when I did, he'd have had me coming out for civil rights."

Two days later, on national television, Johnson presented a tough voting rights bill to a joint session of Congress.

But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over.

What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America.

It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

Their cause must be our cause, too.

Because it's not just Negroes, but really, it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

(applauding) DEMONSTRATORS: We shall overcome NARRATOR: With the protection of the federal government, the marchers assembled in the heart of the old South to claim their rights as American citizens.

DEMONSTRATORS: Someday WILKINS: You felt that the pent-up needs and desires of your people over the generations were going to be achieved in your lifetime.

Enormous, when you thought of, of your ancestors who were slaves.

We shall overcome Someday Well, at that point, I was, like, bonded to him.

(chuckles) I mean, the, my transformation as a human being had been complete.

I believed by then that he was truly the civil rights president that we wanted and needed.

DEMONSTRATORS: Someday PILOT: Bomb doors open at 30 TG, coming up on 30 TG.

BOMBARDIER: 30 TG.

PILOT: Roger.

BOMBARDIER: (inaudible) coming up.

PILOT: Stand by to release.

Ready, ready, now.

BOMBARDIER: Bombs away.

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

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.

MAN: ...turn now.

NARRATOR: 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 Da Nang, we were told that the objective was to defend the, the air base.

How do you resolve that, sir, with your statements in Saigon that their objective is to kill the Viet Cong?

SPOKESMAN: 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 Viet Cong and kill them.

(men speaking on radios) PILOT: Now some people running along the dikes.

Actually, the canal is perpendicular to the one you're attacking now.

They have on black uniforms, and I estimate approximately three-zero.

Do you have them in sight?

Over.

PILOT 2: This is two-three, and roger, we have them in sight.

We're engaging the present time.

PILOT 1: Roger.

PILOT 3: Good job.

I saw you splatter one right in the back with a rocket.

PILOT 1: 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 500,000 men."

Now Johnson knew the stakes: to keep South Vietnam from falling, he might have to commit hundreds of thousands 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."

BERMAN: How would Johnson explain to the American people that the 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.

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, um, uh, 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-- Under Secretary of State George Ball.

BALL: I thought that the balloon was going up much too fast, so I spent a few nights preparing a memorandum which was 75 pages or so, which is now in the public domain, in which I challenged every assumption of our war in Vietnam, and, uh, uh, came to the conclusion that it wasn't a war we could win.

The next morning, I got a call, said, "Damn you, George, you kept me awake all night.

"I read that thing three times.

"Why didn't you ever give it to me before?

"Get over here, and, in the morning, and we'll discuss it if it takes all day."

BERMAN: George Ball is telling Johnson, "Look, you're going to lose in Vietnam.

"You're gonna end up with a protracted war "that will divide America.

"At the end of three or four or five years, "you're gonna be in Vietnam with 500,000 American troops and you're not gonna 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, 500,000 troops, 600,000 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 gonna 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 40 years "and get it done-- fight 'em, kill 'em.

"Get off that gold watch, Phi Beta Kappa key.

Let's get going."

(machine guns firing) (fires) At the end of March, Ho Chi Minh vowed that he was ready to fight another 20 years if that's what it took to win.

Johnson grew more and more grim.

(explosion pounds in distance) "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."

(jet screeching overhead) 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.

MAN: Incoming!

NARRATOR: 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."

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."

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.

THOMSON: Withdrawal is not what a big, commanding Texan ever does.

On the other hand, he was one of the world's great deal makers.

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.

I, 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 to it, it's ten, 15, 20 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 28, 1965, he addressed reporters at an afternoon press conference.

I have today ordered to Vietnam the airmobile division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately.

Additional forces will be needed later, and they will be sent as requested.

BERMAN: This was it-- the war was Americanized.

We were committed.

We were committed to not losing Vietnam.

ELLSBERG: Most people have always imagined, and because in part they'd 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?

It does not imply any change in policy whatever.

It does not imply any change of objective, uh... 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 these actions, that's the end of the Great Society.

That's the end of the one thing he cares about more than anything.

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.

(audience applauding) NARRATOR: Just two days after his decision to commit America to a land war in Asia, he traveled to Independence, Missouri, and signed into law Medicare.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Mr. Johnson chose to sign the bill here as a tribute to former President Truman.

The former president campaigned for Medicare 20 years ago, but it took two decades for his proposal to become law.

The new bill expands the 30-year-old Social Security program to provide hospital care, nursing home care, home nursing service, and outpatient treatment for those over 65.

NARRATOR: Johnson continued to pass legislation.

Only the president knew that his Great Society was in jeopardy.

He hid the costs of the war from Congress and signed more bills.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: When he got into that Great Society mode, he looked at every problem in the society and felt, "I'm going to make it better."

He had this desire to perfect everything and to have his stamp on everything.

So he saw handicapped people, he was going to make things better for them; retarded people, he was going to make things better for them.

Whatever it was, he wanted to make things better.

He liked to make everybody feel good.

SARGENT SHRIVER: You could see the great progress which was being made for poor people.

You could see the transformation of young men and women who were in the Upward Bound program.

You could see them going to universities when they never had anybody in their family ever went to a college in their whole life.

You could see that.

You could see what was happening to the mothers-- not just to the children, but to the mothers of the children in the Head Start program.

You could see mothers who were illiterate and never been to school suddenly starting to learn themselves, because they were learning simultaneously with their child who was in Head Start.

You could see people 16 to 21 who were in the Job Corps actually graduating and going out and getting jobs and beginning to lead useful lives.

People were coming out of poverty and we could see it.

It's like largesse, it's like a miracle, something comes from the sky.

There's a bunch of bills that say, "We understand your problem "and we're going to send you a ton of money 'cause it's the right and American way."

I want economic opportunity to be spread across this land north, south, east, and west to all people, whatever their race, whatever their work, wherever they live.

MALAFRONTE: Television wasn't fair to Johnson.

He, he looked funny, with those big ears and all that sort of stuff, but in person, he was really a handsome guy-- big, tall, handsome man.

And he came, puts his arm around...

I was kind of, just a city aide, you know, happy to be looking on.

And then he puts his arm around you and says, "You're doing a great job, son."

Well, that's, uh, that's pretty heady stuff.

You just loved the guy.

JOHNSON: This is not a time for timid souls and trembling spirits.

MALAFRONTE: He talked about "people" programs.

He'd say, "People-- I'm talking about people.

I mean, P-E-E-P-U-L-- I'm talking folks!"

REBECCA DOGGETT: Yeah, it was an exciting time.

We were being challenged by the president of the United States to, to go into our local communities and make a change.

And not only was it the rhetoric, there were dollars coming in to local communities to make it happen.

Lyndon Johnson was saying that this is something that has to be done, and we believed it could be done.

Washington should not be telling your hometown what to do to solve its problems of poverty.

You ought to be telling us what we can do to help you carry out your plans.

It was an attempt to energize and empower poor people.

That's rarely if ever done by an elected government.

It had a galvanizing effect on a lot of community persons who might not have been involved in, in government, in, in politics, in American life in a way that the poverty program permitted them to do, and that was great.

DOGGETT: Certainly, this was a great opportunity for minorities, for women, who up till then had really not had a chance to play a significant role in running a large organization.

So I, I very early had an opportunity to become an administrator of a very large corporation, a multimillion-dollar corporation, which, of course, was really unique in those days.

We were young, we were gifted, we were Black, and we saw resources there, we saw national will there, and then there was certainly this local energy of people who wanted to make a change in their lives, and it came together all at the same time.

(newsreel theme playing) ANNOUNCER: In the same room where President Lincoln signed the first emancipation order in 1861, President Johnson signed the 1965 voter registration act and pledged to millions of Americans a new chance to find a political voice.

NARRATOR: The crowning achievement of the Johnson presidency was the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

100 years after the end of the Civil War, with a stroke of his pen, Lyndon Johnson guaranteed Black Americans the right to vote.

(sirens wailing) But the sense of triumph and accomplishment was short-lived.

Just five days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, riots erupted in Watts, a Black neighborhood in Los Angeles.

(sirens wailing) Five days of rioting left 34 people dead.

(siren wailing, people shouting) Johnson was shattered.

As one aide described him, "He just wouldn't accept it.

"He refused to look at the cables from Los Angeles "describing the situation.

"He refused to take the calls from the generals.

We needed decisions from him, but he simply wouldn't respond."

He reacted very badly-- how would you react?

You're sitting there in the White House, you're in charge of the country, um, and people think you have all this power, and the country starts burning up.

(sirens wailing) Johnson had a good heart, but he wasn't a civil rights expert.

He knew Texas, but he didn't know big-city ghettos.

He wanted Black people to be grateful.

"I did this," and he'd pull out a bill and he would tell what he did on it.

"And I did this," and he'd pull out another bill, and tell, "And I did this, I'm doing this.

How can they do this to me?"

And people would try to tell him, and it was hard to tell him.

HARRY MCPHERSON: American racism was still there.

The laws had not suddenly eliminated how people really felt.

(man shouting, police radio running) MALAFRONTE: I think the gap between the expectations of the early Johnson years and the ability of government to perform created a potential explosion in every city in America.

People were disappointed and angry, and responded by attacking whatever was handy.

NARRATOR: "How is it possible," Johnson asked, "after all we've accomplished?

How could it be?"

(shouting): Is it too much to ask you to grant us human dignity?

Should we be put down and shot to death for this request?

If so, you can aim your guns.

What the hell do you think we care about dying if you're going to deny us the right to live?

JAMES FARMER: Lyndon Johnson could not understand that the civil rights movement had changed its class content.

Johnson felt particularly uncomfortable with this new group of poorer Blacks from the inner cities of the North.

They were not like the poorer Blacks and Mexican Americans that he had had contact with down in Texas.

These were different-- these were raucous people, they were angry people, they were belligerent folk.

They did not see Lyndon Johnson as a friend.

They saw Lyndon Johnson as a white man.

(crowd shouting in background) We want Black power!

We want Black power!

We want Black power!

We want Black power!

We want Black power!

NARRATOR: Integration was no longer the battle cry.

We want Black power!

We want Black power!

NARRATOR: "Too little, too late" is what new Black voices were saying about Johnson's achievements.

We want Black power!

We want Black power!

NARRATOR: The civil rights movement as Johnson knew it was over.

He never understood it, Black consciousness.

He did not understand that, that the, the generations of, of heaping inferiority into our souls needed to be purged, and if you're going to put that awful stuff into people, when people begin to expel it, it's not coming out pretty.

You're not going to stand up and preach pretty sermons.

You're going to say some ugly things, which people did.

You're going to sit in front of your television set and listen to LBJ tell you that, "Violence never accomplishes anything, my fellow Americans."

(cheering and applauding) But you see, the real problem with violence is that we have never been violent.

We have been too nonviolent, too nonviolent.

(audience cheering) NARRATOR: The optimism of the civil rights movement had gone up in flames.

Justice, fairness, the War on Poverty had been too long delayed in America's ghettos.

(shouting) (shouting, grunting) (sirens wailing) NARRATOR: Not even a politician of Johnson's genius would be able to hold the country together.

In times of stress and tension in his life, Johnson was often struck down by illness.

In 1965, he entered Bethesda Navy Hospital for surgery.

With ten doctors and three Secret Service men in attendance, Johnson had his gallbladder and a kidney stone removed.

After a two-hour operation, Johnson went right back to work.

He was never shy about conducting the nation's business from the most unlikely places.

He could be earthy and crude, even vulgar.

After his operation, he couldn't resist showing reporters his foot-long scar.

One cartoonist transformed the scar into a map of Vietnam.

(bombs whistling) (man whistles) Johnson had gambled his political future and the lives of tens of thousands of men that he could win a quick victory; that when he sent American troops in force, Ho would turn tail and run.

But the North Vietnamese refused to quit.

Ho resisted Johnson's escalation with an escalation of his own, matching him soldier for soldier.

(helicopter engine running in background) Four months after Johnson's agonizing decision to send the troops, he received an ominous private report from the man who had argued most fervently for the land war in Asia.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had begun to have second thoughts.

BERMAN: In late 1965, we have minutes of meetings in which the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, tells Lyndon Johnson that, "We've been too optimistic.

"The war can't be won in the period of time that we've thought."

NARRATOR: Even with 600,000 men, McNamara told him, the odds were 50-50 that after a year or more, there would be a military standoff.

And I think the evidence is overwhelming that Johnson did not want to hear what the secretary of defense had to say.

And from that moment on, the relationship between the two men deteriorated and was never the same.

BALL: He wanted desperately to be told that things were going well, and he wasn't necessarily getting that advice.

Well, I, I think it shook him a great deal.

And I think that he felt that he had gotten...

He was riding a tiger and then couldn't get off.

NARRATOR: The White House could keep these internal debates hidden, but there was no hiding what was happening in Vietnam.

This is what the war in Vietnam is all about.

(speaking Vietnamese) The old and the very young.

The Marines have burned this old couple's cottage because fire was coming from here.

We're on the outskirts of the village of Cam Ne with elements of the First Battalion, Ninth Marines.

NARRATOR: Johnson bridled at what he saw.

He knew the power of television and worried about how Americans would react to watching the war in their living rooms night after night.

MORLEY SAFER: Today's operation is the frustration of Vietnam in miniature.

There is little doubt that American firepower can win a military victory here.

But to a Vietnamese peasant whose home is a, means a lifetime of backbreaking labor, it will take more than presidential promises to convince him that we are on his side.

(talking in background) NARRATOR: Americans began to question the conduct of the war.

At first, their numbers were small, and Johnson dismissed them.

But he could not ignore what was happening in the Senate.

FRANK CHURCH: I still think these principles upon which we rest our policy are subject to very serious question.

I wish-- all I'm asking for is clarification of what our objective is in this struggle.

NARRATOR: February 1966.

Senator William Fulbright began to hold televised hearings.

Fulbright had guided the Tonkin Gulf Resolution through an obedient Congress on behalf of the president.

Now he was leading Senate liberals in an anti-war revolt against the White House.

CHURCH: You can look at the war in Vietnam as a covert invasion of the South by the North, or you can look at it as basically an indigenous war.

But either way you look at it, it's a war between Vietnamese to determine what the ultimate kind of government is going to be for Vietnam.

Now, when I went to school, that was a civil war.

ANNOUNCER: We'll be back with more of the stormy Senate hearings when "ABC Scope" continues.

NARRATOR: Johnson was furious.

He began referring to Fulbright as "Halfbright" and cut him off entirely.

Their 20-year friendship was over.

He placed Fulbright and several other Senate liberals under FBI surveillance.

Johnson ridiculed his critics.

He called them "cut-and-run people with no guts."

"They'd rather fight me than the enemy."

He was beginning to hunker down, isolating himself from dissent.

("Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation" playing) TOM PAXTON: I got a letter from LBJ It said, "This is your lucky day "Time to put your khaki trousers on "We've got a job for you to do "Dean Rusk has caught the Asian flu And we are sending you to Vietnam" Lyndon Johnson told the nation "Have no fear of escalation "I am trying everyone to please "Though it isn't really war, we're sending 50,000 more To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese" NARRATOR: Johnson had taken the country into war and kept the American people in the dark.

Now, as the fighting escalated, many began to challenge the morality of the war.

I didn't fully understand why I was opposed to the war in Vietnam.

I just knew that it was wrong for a great, proud, abundant nation, technologically superior to anything in the world, going in and crushing a peasant society.

In my opinion, it was like a decision to release the Furies.

I think the thing that the anti-war movement probably didn't understand is that once he had made it, he wasn't going to draw back.

Johnson actively argued with me that he was trapped, that he had tried to do everything to bring peace.

"I don't want people to think I'm a coward," he would often say.

"I don't want to be the first president who's lost a war."

Well, what does it matter if he's the first president who's lost a war that shouldn't be fought anyway?

(chanting): End the war in Vietnam, bring the troops home.

End the war in Vietnam, bring the troops home.

End the war in Vietnam, bring the troops home.

(helicopter blades whirring) NARRATOR: By the summer of 1966, hundreds of thousands of Americans were in Vietnam.

Still, his generals kept asking for more.

(jets tearing overhead) (fires) (explosion pounds) Thousands were dead.

Johnson's dream of a Great Society was in danger.

And the end was nowhere in sight.

It was called the Golden Chalice-- the marriage of the president's younger daughter, Luci Baines Johnson.

One reporter said, "Nobody was invited except the immediate country."

It was August 6, 1966.

There was war in Vietnam and riots in the streets.

But there was still more Johnson hoped to do.

What he wanted was time-- time to build his Great Society.

"We can't quit now," he told an aide.

"This may be the last chance we have."

But time was running out.

(siren wailing in distance) (people talking on radios) NARRATOR: Over four long, hot summers, riots had become a brutal fact of American life.

(sirens wailing) Johnson looked helplessly on as more than 150 cities went up in flames.

(glass breaking, sirens wailing) Detroit was the worst: 43 dead, 7,000 arrested, 1,300 buildings destroyed.

Johnson dispatched Army paratroopers and prepared to send his own task force to investigate.

As part of the task force, Roger Wilkins was there as the president issued his final instructions.

Well, he started in a low key.

(softly): "I don't want any bullets in those guns.

(loudly): "You hear me?

"I don't want any bullets in those guns!

"You hear me, gentle...?

"I don't want any bullets in those guns!

(pounding) "I don't want it known that any one of my men shot a pregnant ni..." And he looked at me and his face got red.

I was the only Black in the room.

(stammers): "Well, I don't... No bullets in the guns!"

But he was clearly embarrassed, and everybody in the room was embarrassed.

So then he told us to go home and pack and get an Air Force plane to go to Detroit.

And as we were leaving, he called me and he said, "Come in here, Roger," and I went into his office with him.

And he didn't say anything.

I mean, I knew he wanted to say, "I didn't mean to say 'nigger,'" but he meant to say "nigger," and he, I knew he wanted to say, "I apologize."

He didn't know how to say it.

And so he walked me over to the French doors that went out to the Rose Garden, and it's the area where Eisenhower had had his putting green.

And he looked out and he looked at me and he looked down, looked out, looked down.

There are pock marks on the floor where Eisenhower's golf shoes had hit the floor, and he finally looked at me and he looked at the floor, and he said, "Look what that son of a bitch did to my floor!"

And then he patted me on the back and said, "Have a nice trip," and that was his way of apologizing.

It was very human, I thought.

(siren wailing) (people talking on radios) JOHNSON: We will not tolerate lawlessness.

We will not endure violence.

It matters not by whom it is done, or under what slogan or banner.

It will not be tolerated.

Pillage, looting, murder, and arson have nothing to do with civil rights.

They are criminal conduct.

(emergency radio running) MALAFRONTE: The anti-poverty program evaporated in the rioting of '66-'67.

And with the pressure on Johnson to establish order in the streets, this was not the man in front of Congress saying, "We've got to do more," it was a man concerned and upset and maybe worried about his political future and on the phone to the governor, saying, "Damn it, crack down on those people."

What happened is, we were all overwhelmed by the times.

So was he.

NARRATOR: The mood of the country had changed.

Many Americans began talking about law and order.

Johnson was accused of forcing racial equality and neglecting the needs of middle-class white Americans.

He was caught between the civil rights movement and a growing backlash of fear and resentment.

The country began to get out of control, and President Johnson was no longer in control of the Congress; the economy was creating problems for him; the war in Vietnam was being lost; and unfortunately, I'm afraid that instead of blaming all those forces, he tended to blame us.

And, uh...

The irony of it was that, uh, we were probably the best friends that he had.

(explosions pounding) NARRATOR: On January 5, 1967, Lady Bird Johnson wrote in her diary, "A miasma of trouble hangs over everything."

(sirens wailing) American planes had already struck most of the important targets in North Vietnam by the end of 1967.

Several times, Johnson ordered a halt in the bombing and waited for a response from Ho.

None came.

Johnson's generals thought he was too cautious, staying their hand, preventing them from using America's enormous firepower to force a victory.

But Johnson was tormented by a persistent nightmare: the fear of triggering World War III.

"In the dark at night," he said, "I would lay awake "picturing my boys flying around North Vietnam, "asking myself, 'What if one of those targets you pick today triggers off Russia or China?'"

Johnson spent many hours personally selecting where the bombs should fall.

BUNDY: He got more upset about things and more worried about constantly following it, getting the latest statistics, unreliable as we knew they were.

REEDY: I remember once in a meeting where the Defense Department was briefing him, and the figures didn't seem to jive with me at all.

It sounded to me as though they'd killed ten times as many people as had lived in Vietnam over a period of two centuries.

And I slipped him a note, you know, to ask a couple of questions, a practice that we'd been engaging in ever since I worked for him.

Boy, I got the dirtiest look: "No more of this."

That was the last time I tried it, because I realized it was hopeless.

And since our commitment of major forces in July '65, the proportion of the population living under Communist control has been reduced to well under 20%.

KATZENBACH: I am not sure that he didn't think he was telling the truth.

He had a, a capacity for self-deception about facts that was ten times the capacity of anybody else I've ever met.

And in the contested areas, the tide continues to run with us.

Everything would come around into his way he felt comfortable looking at it, whether that had any relationship to what went on or not.

The campaigns of the last year drove the enemy from many of their major interior bases.

NARRATOR: When Johnson continued to insist that America was making progress, fewer and fewer people believed him.

No one directly accused the president of lying.

They called it "the credibility gap."

He was so used to using words as a means of persuasion, to get somebody to do something, so used to talking to seven different people telling them seven different things so that they would all come together to do what he wanted, that lying and persuasion were all part of the same thing for him.

And I don't think he even knew the truth.

I'm not sure there was truth for him.

Truth was the action, the product.

The means didn't matter how you got there.

But when you're president and you make statements, and those statements are then picked up and they're put on television, you're not just talking to seven different Southerners and Northerners who will never speak to one another, suddenly, you get this credibility gap, 'cause people hold you to your statements.

(chanting): Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?

NARRATOR: Vietnam had become Lyndon Johnson's war, and the demonstrations turned personal.

MAN: As Vern stumbled out of that bunker, dazed, with blood on him, he didn't mumble, "Those bastard Viet Cong."

He didn't mumble, "Those bastard Communists."

He didn't mumble, "Those slope-eyed bastards."

He mumbled only one thing over and over: "That bastard Johnson.

That bastard Johnson."

(chanting): Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?

(chant fades) He didn't understand it.

He was totally and completely baffled by it.

For one thing, the White House was loaded with very young people.

And he would always see them correctly dressed, perfectly groomed, proper, and to him, this must be American youth, and therefore, he didn't know who those people were outside the gates, you know?

Were they extraterrestrial?

Where did they come from?

(chanting): How many kids did you kill today?

Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?

I, I think he would have been astounded if he had known, when they had the March on Washington, that a bunch of kids were sleeping in my house on the floor, and, and a bunch of kids were sleeping in Bob McNamara's house on the floor.

(laughing): We never told the president that our children felt as they did about the war in Vietnam, and he probably wouldn't have understood it.

I think he probably suspected left-wing plots, that sort of thing.

(people yelling) BALL: He said, "George, uh, don't pay any attention "to all these kids on the campus.

"They'll stomp around and make a lot of noise.

"What really matters-- "what is the great black beast that we have to fear-- is the right wing."

He was frustrated because he couldn't end it and because he thought he couldn't win it.

And I kept trying to plead with him to end it, to win it-- to end it by winning it.

And I said, "You ought to-- if you have to blow Hanoi off the face of the Earth, blow it off the face of the Earth."

He said, "I can't do that, I, I can't do that.

"They tell me we're winning, we're gonna win this thing.

I can't use ultimate power."

I said, "Why can't you?"

And I said, "I don't care what advice you're getting from whom."

I said, uh, "It's too slow.

"The war's too slow.

"You're not winning the war.

"You're losing the battle at home.

And, uh, and, and it's gonna destroy you."

KATZENBACH: There were no good choices that anybody could devise as to how you were gonna get out of Vietnam and still have an honorable peace or something of that kind.

The choices that you had were all skewed towards, "Do I send in more troops?

"Do I keep the same troops in there?

"Do I do more bombing?

"Do I put on more pressure?

"In what kind of cheap way can I put it on?

"What are the risks of China coming in?

Should I bomb in Cambodia?"

They were all hawkish choices, because there really wasn't anything on the other side that, that you could devise.

We had half, more than half a million men there.

How are you gonna get them out?

KING: The bombs in Vietnam explode at home.

They destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America.

It is estimated that we spend $322,000 for each enemy we kill in Vietnam, while we spend in the so-called War on Poverty in America only about $53 for each person classified as poor.

(bomb falling) (explosion echoes) CONNALLY: I argued with him a great deal.

I said, "You know, you're wrong.

"You're telling the American people that they can have guns and butter."

And I said, "That's wrong.

"This war has cost you an awful lot of money, and you can't have, you shouldn't have guns and butter."

SHRIVER: The war against poverty was killed by the war in Vietnam.

First of all, because of the lack of money.

Secondly, it stopped because of preoccupation with the shooting war and the killing fields of that war.

Death and destruction and bombing and all that captures the public imagination much more than creating something that's good.

Birth is never dramatized like death.

NARRATOR: The raids over North Vietnam continued until more tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam than had been dropped during all of World War II.

Still, Ho resisted.

"Hanoi and other cities may be destroyed," Ho told his countrymen, "but the Vietnamese people will not be intimidated."

THOMSON: The Vietnamese, had we bombed them to the Stone Age, would have gone back into the jungle, waited us out.

They knew something that we also knew but didn't acknowledge, and that was that someday, we would go home, and they could come back and rebuild what we had destroyed.

I think I, I made, uh, two mistakes in judgment.

One was that I underestimated the tenacity of the North Vietnamese.

And I think I overestimated the patience of the American people.

CROWD (chanting): Hell, no, we won't go!

(chant fades) NARRATOR: By the end of 1967, a grim sense of siege was settling over the White House.

The president dug in.

He had spent a lifetime climbing to the pinnacle of power.

His whole political life now hung on only one issue: Vietnam.

He decided to call in the men whom he respected most.

They became known as "the wise men."

There were about ten of them.

If you put the total service, those men must have had 250 to 300 years of government service.

NARRATOR: These were the architects of American foreign policy: Dean Acheson, John McCloy, Averell Harriman.

"Contain communism-- don't let it spread" had been their advice to every president since Truman.

BUNDY: The picture that was given to them was that we were making slow, grinding progress.

And we thought we could see, at some point, a break, with the other side really starting to really weaken and go downhill.

NARRATOR: Dean Acheson said later, "I told him he was wholly right on Vietnam, that he had no choice except to press on."

They voted unanimously for him to go on with his course.

He was greatly comforted by that.

BUNDY: The advice they gave was, "Look, the country doesn't see it the way you're describing it.

"You've got to develop a way to make your assessments of the situation more credible."

Well, they gave him perfectly silly advice.

They were sensible people, and why they were so silly, I don't know.

The main advice was, "Well, you've, you ought to improve your public relations."

Well, after the meeting, I, I spoke to Dean Acheson and John Coles and Arthur Dean, and I said, "You old bastards, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

"You're like a lot of vultures sitting on the fence and sending the young men out to die," and I walked out of the room.

NARRATOR: Johnson had expanded the war in secret.

Now he set out to sell it to the American people.

JOHNSON: We are making progress.

We are pleased with the results that we're getting.

I think we're moving more like this, and I think they're moving more like this, instead of straight up and straight down.

NARRATOR: He called home the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, for a round of well-publicized meetings and press conferences.

WESTMORELAND: The enemy is being progressively weakened.

The Vietnamese armed forces and the government as a whole is being strengthened.

LEE WILLIAMS: The glowing reports always came back from the Pentagon: "Hey, just a little more.

"We're winning this war; it's almost over.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel."

NARRATOR: In the middle of December, with reporters and television cameras in tow, the president took off across the Pacific.

(no dialogue) Johnson was inspired by the photo opportunity, but he was also moved by America's fighting men.

(no dialogue) "We're not going to yield," he told them, "and we're not going to shimmy."

(no dialogue) JOHNSON: The enemy is not beaten, but he knows that he has met his master in the field.

He is trying to buy time hoping that our nation, that our nation's will, does not match his will.

NARRATOR: After just a few hours in Vietnam, the president was on his way to Pakistan and then Rome.

It was like a campaign tour of old.

Johnson paid a surprise visit to the Vatican, where he assured Pope Paul VI of his desire for peace.

His Holiness presented the president with a 14th-century painting.

The president reciprocated with a foot-high plastic bust of himself.

The 27,000-mile four-day journey had buoyed Johnson's hopes.

He wanted desperately to believe that America had turned the corner in Vietnam; that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

And then Tet came.

Tet, to me, was the roof falling in.

NARRATOR: America watched as South Vietnam exploded.

On the first day of the Vietnamese holiday known as Tet, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong caught American forces by surprise.

Five of the six largest cities and nearly a quarter of the district capitals came suddenly under attack.

The illusion of progress was shattered.

REPORTER: What's the hardest part of it?

Not knowing where they are-- that's the worst.

Ride around, they run into the sewers and the gutters, anywhere-- could be anywhere.

Just hope you can stay alive from day to day.

Everybody just wants to go back home and go to school.

That's about it.

Have you lost any friends?

Quite a few; we lost one the other day.

This whole thing stinks, really.

(guns firing, people shouting) (gun fires) (child crying) NARRATOR: The Tet Offensive went on for more than three weeks.

When it was over, the Viet Cong had lost thousands of experienced soldiers and failed to provoke a popular uprising.

But by now, Johnson had misled the American people so often that when he told the truth, few believed him.

JOHNSON: The biggest fact is that the stated purposes of the general uprising-- a military victory or a psychological victory-- have failed.

KATZENBACH: There is an instance where the credibility gap really hurt, because I think everybody was convinced that Tet had been a, a very serious defeat for North Vietnam and for the Viet Cong.

And there was just no way you could persuade the American public that that was the fact.

Well, it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation.

NARRATOR: Walter Cronkite, the veteran newscaster who'd been called "the most trusted man in America," once supported the war; Tet changed his mind.

And for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of 100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000 more American troops to the battle.

And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

NARRATOR: Johnson felt more and more alone.

Many of those closest to him had resigned: his press secretary, his special assistant, his personal aides and advisers.

(audience applauding) And now the aide he had called "the most competent man I ever knew, the most objective man I ever met"-- one of the original architects of the war, Robert McNamara-- was leaving.

On February 28, exhausted and disillusioned, Johnson's secretary of defense said goodbye.

Mr. President... (clears throat) I cannot... (clears throat): ...find words to, uh, express what lies in my heart today.

(voice breaks) (clears throat) (voice trembling): And I think I'd better respond on another occasion.

(audience applauds) NARRATOR: "The pressure got so great, Bob couldn't sleep at night," Johnson said later.

"I loved him, and I didn't want to let him go, "but he was just short of cracking.

"Two months before he left, he felt he was a murderer "and didn't know how to extricate himself.

I never felt like a murderer; that's the difference."

(audience applauding) NARRATOR: March 1, 1968.

Clark Clifford replaced Robert McNamara as secretary of defense.

I, Clark M. Clifford... NARRATOR: Half a million Americans were already in Vietnam, and Westmoreland wanted 200,000 more.

Clifford confronted the Pentagon.

CLIFFORD: I'd say, "Are we nearing the end of the war in Vietnam?"

"We do not know."

"Do we have enough men in Vietnam now?"

"We do not know."

"Is the bombing being effective?"

"Well, in a limited way."

I got down finally when I said, "Now, what is the plan for victory in Vietnam?"

You know what?

We didn't have any.

It's probably the first time in the career of any of them that we'd ever fought a war in the jungles of that kind.

Firepower didn't mean anything.

I remember hearing a general; he said, "Damn 'em, they wouldn't come out and fight."

JOHNSON: Make no mistake about it.

I don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise.

We are going to win.

CLIFFORD: He was going through an agonizing period.

We met daily.

I felt it was my task to do everything in my power to persuade the president to change our policy in Vietnam.

I needed time to make every effort to reverse the process that had been going on since 1965, you see.

It's like a, this great train.

You just can't suddenly put it in reverse.

You have to kind of bring it to a stop, starting in at these meetings, and bit by bit by bit pointing out the disappointments, one after another, that had occurred, the reports that we were prevailing when it turned out that we weren't, each time hacking away.

By that time, maybe we'd lost 20,000 men out there, had spent tens of billions of dollars of our country's treasure.

Uh, it's almost beyond human capacity at that time to say, "We've been wrong."

REEDY: Suppose that you are the president of the United States and you give some orders, and some men get killed.

You aren't going to say to yourself-- and I mean to yourself, late at night-- "Those men are dead because I was a damned slob and gave some silly answers."

What you're going to say is, "My God, those men died in a noble cause, and we've got to see they didn't die in vain."

So you send more men, to vindicate their death.

NARRATOR: "Every night when I fell asleep," Johnson said, "I would see myself tied to the ground "in the middle of a long, open space.

"In the distance, I could hear the voices "of thousands of people.

"They were all shouting at me and running toward me: "'Coward!

Traitor!

Weakling!'

"They kept coming closer.

"They began throwing stones.

At exactly that moment, I would wake up."

(helicopter blades whirring) REEDY: Around midnight, 1:00, 2:00, the casualty reports would start coming in.

He would wake up automatically and call the Situation Room, or sometimes wander down there, where he could get the direct figures.

And the man became haunted by it.

(helicopter blades whirring) CATER: We were working-- it was around 9:30 at night-- and suddenly, the president came into the room.

And we all stood up.

And he said, uh...

It was a very strange thing.

He said, "Where are you sitting?"

Well, he had never asked that question before.

He would sit down in any chair that he wanted to, and we would... (laughs) We would reseat ourselves to accommodate where he was sitting.

But we found a seat for him, and he sat down, and he just looked, like, sunk.

And he said, "I don't know what to do.

"If I put in more boys, there'll be more killing.

"If I take out boys, there'll be more killing.

Anything I do, there's gonna be more killing."

And he just sat there, and then he got up and left.

CROWD (chanting): Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?

Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?

The presidency became a burden, and each day became more difficult to bear.

The furrows in the face were deeper.

The eyes were sadder.

And it was almost visibly apparent that this war was breaking this extraordinary, formidable man who had never been broken before.

DUGGER: With the turning of the country against him, his entrapment in the war, his inability to win it without simply wiping Vietnam off the map, I thought Johnson had become somewhat unstable.

(chanting): Hell, no, we won't go!

Hell, no, we won't go!

Hell, no, we won't go!

Hell, no, we won't go!

Hell, no, we won't go!

Hell, no, we won't go!

Hell, no, we won't go!

Hell, no, we won't go!

(shouting) RUSK: In 1968, it became apparent to us that an awful lot of people at the grassroots had finally decided that if we could not tell them when the war was gonna be over, we might as well chuck it.

(protesters chanting and shouting) NARRATOR: In the midst of his despair over Vietnam, Johnson was forced to cope with the 1968 presidential election.

I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States.

I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policy.

WILKINS: The thing that the president really hated was the idea that he would be the mistake between the Kennedys, that he would be viewed as the mistake between the Kennedys.

He truly hated Bob Kennedy.

I mean, he really hated him.

(talking in background) NARRATOR: "The thing I feared from the first day of my presidency "was actually coming true.

"Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother."

JANEWAY: Always paranoid.

Always insecure.

His insecurity had grown into a disease, and the, the insecurity was asserting itself in proclamations and assertions.

We seek not victory of conquest, but we do seek the triumph of justice.

The right... NARRATOR: In spite of growing opposition to his war policies, warnings from his political advisers, with over 20,000 Americans dead, Johnson remained adamant.

We seek that right, and we will, make no mistake about it, win.

(audience applauds) NARRATOR: By the middle of March, Clark Clifford despaired of ever changing the president's mind.

Only one group of Americans might be able to influence him: those foreign policy experts called the wise men.

Five months before, the wise men had cheered Johnson with their support.

Now Clifford encouraged the president to meet with them one more time.

Now, although it might sound somewhat conspiratorial, I thought it wise, mmm, to contact a good many of them first.

So I did.

I knew them all.

(clears throat): Known them all for years.

I, I got a feeling from them.

I made four, five, or six contacts and found that in each instance, Tet had changed their mind.

They all came back, we went through the same process, reading cables, getting briefed.

And we met with the president.

They'd all turned around.

The impact was, uh, profound-- so profound that he thought something had gone wrong.

And he used the expression, "I think somebody has poisoned the well."

RICHARD GOODWIN: He had picked these old Cold Warriors who were still fighting the battle of containment, and he listened to their advice.

And as long as they stayed with him, he felt that he must be doing the right thing.

And then finally, at the end, they left him.

They all said, "It's not working," and they walked out of the room, and there was Lyndon Johnson, all alone with his war, the last believer.

NARRATOR: March 31, 1968.

Five days after meeting with the wise men, Johnson appeared unusually calm as he rehearsed his speech on Vietnam.

...to discuss the means of bringing this war to an end.

Uh, let's have Walt outline the three or four steps we want to ask these folks to do, the United Kingdom.

CLIFFORD: A week before he was to deliver that speech, he called and said he wanted me to sit in from then on with those who were preparing the speech.

...unprecedented... CLIFFORD: But when I got there, the first line of the speech was, "My friends, I wish to speak to you tonight about the war in Vietnam."

Gosh, this is hard to read, Jim, you have no idea.

It's just marked up every word, nearly, you see?

CLIFFORD: On the evening of Sunday, March 31, the first line was, "My friends, I wish to speak to you tonight about peace in Vietnam."

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Tonight, I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

NARRATOR: At first, the speech seemed like many others-- one more pause in the bombing, one more gesture toward negotiation.

Tonight, I have ordered our aircraft and our naval vessels to make no attacks on North Vietnam except in the area north of the Demilitarized Zone... MCPHERSON: The day before he made the speech, we had an all-day meeting, and he said, "Have you seen the last part of the speech?"

And I said, "No, but I think I know what's in it."

And he said, "What do you think about that?"

I said, "I'm very sorry."

And he said, he said, "Well, okay, so long, partner."

He had said on many occasions that he might not run again, and I had always interpreted this as meaning that he would.

With our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan cause.

And I remember being torn, literally, 50-50, half of me hoping he would do it-- that is, with, announce his withdrawal-- and half of me hoping he wouldn't do it.

And when he got to what I knew was the end, I got up and said, "Well, let's turn it off and talk about it."

And I moved toward the set, and then came the sayonara.

I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

CONNALLY: I was surprised-- I was surprised, because I didn't think he'd ever really do it then.

Here was a man whose whole life had been politics-- everything, to the exclusion of everything else, really.

I, I couldn't believe it.

It's, it was like a, it was like a... (clicks tongue): A percussion grenade going off in that room.

I was stunned.

I... ...was overwhelmed with exhilaration.

It was as if someone had told me I'd won the Nobel Prize.

There was hope, suddenly.

It just broke me in two, because I knew what it meant to him to say it, and I, I couldn't stand it.

And, uh, three men and I were in a car, and we all began to just openly cry because it was tearing our heart apart, and of course we knew what it meant to him.

NARRATOR: Surrounded by his family, Lyndon Johnson withdrew as a candidate for president of the United States.

Three days later, Ho Chi Minh responded: North Vietnam was ready to talk.

But the war would go on for another seven years.

Johnson would remain in office ten more months, a lame duck president helplessly watching as the country drifted closer to anarchy than at any time since the Civil War.

On April 4, he learned that Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed.

Two months later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

In August, police battled anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

And then in November, Richard Nixon, the Republican who said he represented "the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters," was elected president.

"I sometimes felt," Johnson said, "that I was living in a continuous nightmare."

CROWD (chanting): Hell, no, we won't go!

PICKLE: You knew it was the end of the road for that presidency, and all the good things that you had enjoyed, the challenges that you had had and the opportunity to do something-- and maybe had done something for your country.

For those of us who were a part of the Johnson team, that broke our hearts.

WILKINS: My feelings were so mixed about the man.

There was part of me that never stopped loving him, um, and there was part of me that hated him.

So I didn't know how to respond.

And it was mainly sadness, I guess.

JANEWAY: Only he, with all of his remarkable gifts and knowledge, could have had a realistic appreciation of the extent of his opportunity and of the extent of both his achievement and his failure.

ROBERT DALLEK: The liberal impulse that went back to the New Deal is challenged, and what you get beginning in '68, I believe, with Richard Nixon's election, is an era of conservatism.

And the irony is, Johnson presides over the extraordinary achievement of liberalism reaching its zenith, reaching its heights, and then within three years' time, plunges to its depths from which it still hasn't recovered in the year 1990.

MALAFRONTE: What he wanted was people to love him.

And what he wanted to do was to solve everybody's problems himself.

For Johnson, he had no other vocabulary, no other way of thinking about how to help people, other than to have involvement of government in a big way.

Give them a lot of money, put your arms around them, and love them.

He was the last soldier in the New Deal war.

NARRATOR: Congressman, senator, vice president, president.

Washington had been his life for over 30 years.

Now he was going home to the Texas hill country, where, as his father told him, "The people know when you're sick and care when you die."

(birds chirping) (gate creaks) CONNALLY: The basic sedentary life that he was relegated to was not the type of life that he enjoyed or had ever known.

His life had been enormously active, had been centered around politics.

All of a sudden, uh, he had nothing to be active about and the politics was gone.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Now he was left to this ranch, but he had to have staff meetings in the morning or else he would have gone crazy.

But they might have only been three or four Mexican field hands, and he was telling them which tractors to fix and which eggs were going to be laid by which hens, almost.

And at night, he literally couldn't go to sleep unless he had reports, just as he had always had in the White House, but now it would be how many eggs had been laid by these hens, and it was almost as if the monarchy had been reduced to this small ranch, but the habits had to stay the same.

And as all of that sadness set in, then there was a certain frenzy of wondering, would history remember him well?

And then I think his whole mood began to change.

ELIZABETH WICKENDEN: He was extremely depressed.

And he wouldn't talk about anything in the last 25 years.

He would talk about the early days.

He wouldn't talk about anything in the subsequent years.

He was, uh, he had this long white hair, and it was all curled... (chuckles) You know, kind of curled at the back of his hair, and he looked like a hippie.

I think he chose to look like a hippie because he contained everything.

He looked like he was identifying with the kids who had been demonstrating against the war.

Maybe he was trying to say to them, "Hey, I understand.

If I'd been young, I might have done the same thing."

I think he drank himself to death, knowing that he shouldn't have drunk, shouldn't have smoked, shouldn't have got overweight.

He had the heart problem.

He always said that men in the Johnson family didn't live long.

And I think he just asked for it and just waited for it to happen.

(audience applauding) NARRATOR: On a cold day in the winter of 1972, Johnson left the seclusion of his ranch and traveled to Austin to speak about civil rights for the last time.

LADY BIRD JOHNSON: He got up out of his bed from a bad angina attack.

Just put a, a pocketful of those little nitroglycerin pills in.

Now, let me make it plain that when I say "Black"-- as I do a good many times in this little statement-- I also mean brown and yellow and red and all other people who suffer discrimination.

MCPHERSON: His heart was really hurting.

And he, I remember seeing him pop a nitroglycerin pill.

We know how much still remains to be done.

And if our efforts continue and if our will is strong, and if our hearts are right, and if courage remains our constant companion, then, my fellow Americans, I am confident we shall overcome.

(audience applauding) NARRATOR: This would be the last speech he would ever give.

Within six weeks, on January 22, 1973, Lyndon Johnson's heart stopped beating.

He was 64 years old.

Five days later, the Vietnam War ended for America in a peace treaty signed in Paris.

He was just interesting as hell.

I mean, you know, compared to most people that kind of go through life banally, making their dreadful moral points or, or, uh, condemning this or hoping for that or, or, uh, scratching the back of their head, Lyndon really moved.

He was, uh, he was moving all the time.

The few times I was with him, it was, um, he was just fun to be around.

(sniffs) And you liked him, you liked him.

I liked him when I was with him more than I did when, when I was thinking about him.

(laughing) ANNOUNCER: "American Experience: LBJ" is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.