The Day the '60s Died

PRESIDENT NIXON: Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Tonight I want to talk to you on a subject of deep concern to all Americans and to many people in all parts of the world -- the war in Vietnam.

I believe that one of the reasons for the deep division about Vietnam is that many Americans have lost confidence in what their government has told them about our policy.

But the question facing us today is -- Now that we are in the war, what is the best way to end it?

BUCHANAN: I think by 1970, what Richard Nixon was seeking to do was extricate us from the war in such a fashion that you would not pour down a sewer everything for which 40,000 Americans had died in Vietnam, but I'm not sure the public really understood that.

I mean it was a turbulent, angry, violent time in America.

Bombings were very regular in those days.

And there were people in the streets calling him a murderer and a warmonger.

And I think these things got to Nixon.

CROWD: [ Chanting ] End the war!

End the war!

CASALE: We really thought we would end the war.

We really thought we could do it.

KNOX: We were pushing each other to be more and more revolutionary.

RUDD: The noise of the time.

The revolution is come!

DeBONIS: Don't ever say we are going into a revolution.

We're in a revolution.

Now the question is -- who is going to win it?

RHODES: These people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize a community.

We are going to eradicate the problem.

REPORTER: Kent State University, May 4th.

Several days of student riots brought the National Guard to the campus.

[ Bell dings ] MAN: You are subject to arrest.

CASALE: It felt ugly and out of control, and that certainly culminated on that day, May 4th.

SNYDER: This is going to be an event that's going to require force.

DAVIS: You could see the line of Guardsmen moving out.

TOLLIVER: You just get a sense that something's not right here.

CASALE: We thought they were going to march at us with bayonets.

And instead... [ Gunfire ] [ Siren wails ] KNOX: Four dead at Kent State.

That that could actually happen.

MAN: This was the price we paid for opposing Nixon and his genocidal policies.

SENATOR KENNEDY: Four American students lie dead, slain in the heart of middle America by the violent temper of our society.

WOMAN: They were warned.

And I am sorry they didn't kill more.

PERLSTEIN: After Kent State, Americans seemed to be developing into warring tribes.

[ Indistinct shouting ] CASALE: The whole demeanor of everything changed.

It was like it was over.

The game was over.

"The Day the '60s Died" is made possible in part Happy New Year!

[ "Auld Lang Syne" plays ] REPORTER: So it is farewell to the '60s.

Perhaps not the best decade in history but certainly not the worst, either.

There may be good reason to look back in anger.

But there may also be reason to look forward in hope.

KNOX: The '60s was a time of intense longing for truth.

It was a time of dreaming of a better world.

How can society be better than it is now?

As children, we believed what we were taught -- that the United States was a place where there was peace, equality...

GIRL: ...of the United States of America.

KNOX: ...and true democracy.

But we started to get this message slowly but surely over the years that there's more going on in this country.

Announcer: The U-H-1-D with its... RUDD: We became aware of mass slaughter in Vietnam at the beginning of the war.

It didn't take to 1975, to know that we were murdering people industrially.

CASALE: We could see how wrong it was.

And you have to remember there was a draft.

And everybody that wasn't a rich kid was going and dying.

REPORTER: The American military command today confirmed reports that United States' dead in the Vietnam War now total more than 30,000.

DAVIS: I remember very clearly, we all sat around the table at 6:00 every night and had dinner together, and the news would be on.

And the body count, reporting the body count from the Vietnam War, was part of our evening experience every night.

RUDD: And so all of the illusions that kids are raised with just fell away.

COLLINS: And so, throughout the '60s, you had the sense of mission that you were going to stand up for what was right and be part of the movement.

But it turned out, you know, that it's not that easy, actually, to put together a movement.

When you're talking about all of these people from different groups and it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, I think it is easy to just sort of go crazy.

RUBIN: Let me tell you what is going on in Asia -- It's a genocidal war against us!

Because our parents send us over there to die because they want to kill us!

REPORTER: President Nixon said today his administration was fully aware of the antiwar sentiment in this country, and therefore there is nothing new to be learned from demonstrations.

PRESIDENT NIXON: I understand that there has been and continues to be opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses and, also, in the nation.

However, under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it.

PERLSTEIN: Kids have been protesting what they see as an evil war for years and seeing their hard work rewarded with utter futility.

NAFTALI: So by 1970, the antiwar movement has begun to splinter.

And with all the frustration and the anger, the uncertainty, no one knew what was going to happen, least of all the president.

ANNOUNCER: This is a special report.

The President of the United States is about to address the nation on Vietnam.

PRESIDENT NIXON: My fellow Americans, five years ago, American combat troops were first sent to Vietnam.

The war since that time has been the longest and one of the most costly and difficult conflicts in our history.

I am therefore tonight announcing plans for the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops to be completed during the spring of next year.

PERLSTEIN: You know, when he campaigned in 1968, Richard Nixon said that if you elect him, he would end the war and win the peace.

PRESIDENT NIXON: These are encouraging trends.

PERLSTEIN: In this speech, it's almost like he's saying the Vietnam War is on the cusp of being over, that we've finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel.

PRESIDENT NIXON: We finally have in sight the just peace we are seeking.

It must have been a very satisfying speech for Americans to watch on their TV, to realize that this ordeal might finally be over.

But here's the thing.

Richard Nixon was lying.

He was planning on extending the war into an entirely new country.

The military brass has been telling Nixon that the Communists have this secret mobile headquarters in which they're running the whole effort, and it's in the jungles of Cambodia, and that if they can hit that, then the whole Communist war effort just dissolves.

BUCHANAN: Nixon called me down to his office around the 27th or 28th and he says, "We're going into Cambodia."

I said, "Are we bombing them?

Then they're going to know we're coming."

And Nixon said, "No, we've been bombing them for a long time."

The country had come to believe, partly on the basis of that April 20th speech, that we were gradually moving out at a pretty high clip and a pretty high rate, and all of a sudden there's a new war in Cambodia.

But Nixon said, "Look, these guys are attacking American soldiers in Vietnam.

They got these privileged sanctuaries.

I'm going to go in and clean them out.

PRESIDENT NIXON: The time has come for action.

Attacks are being launched this week to clean out major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian-Vietnam border.

BUCHANAN: Nixon said, "I'm not going to be the first president to lose a war."

Well, one way not to be the first president to lose a war is to win it.

PRESIDENT NIXON: If the United States of America acts like a pitiful, helpless giant...

It is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight... We will not be humiliated.

We will not be defeated...

I promise to win a just peace.

I shall keep that promise.

REPORTER: The first American troops crossed the Cambodian border within minutes after President Nixon announced the operation to the nation.

Most of men had no idea they were going across the border until this morning.

BRAUN: Okay, you asked for a taped letter.

So I'm here, about five or six miles from the Cambodian border.

It's pretty thick down there, and it's supposed to be an estimated battalion size force of gooks just moved in there, about 4,000.

We were young kids.

I was a college student fighting a war.

I remember we had gotten a phone call saying that we are shipping the unit to Cambodia.

And we all started laughing.

You know, "We're not going to Cambodia."

OREM: We heard rumors, of course, that there were some serious NVA there and a lot of equipment, but we had no idea that the president had a strategy or an announcement or anything.

No sense of the scope or range of the incursion.

BRAUN: They issued us bayonets for the first and only time in Vietnam, which kind of gave some of us the clue that things might not be so good in Cambodia.

REPORTER: Reaction on the campuses was swift and predictable.

The students and many of their teachers... REPORTER #2: Since the President spoke, disapproval has been strenuously manifested by antiwar groups.

REPORTER #3: University and college campuses have erupted in protest from one end of the country to the other.

CROWD: [ Chanting ] Peace now!

Peace now!

Peace now!

COLLINS: When Nixon announced the Cambodia invasion, that was, like, the last straw.

REPORTER: At the University of Maryland, there was violence.

REPORTER #2: Students went to the university armory and ransacked it.

They broke furniture and burned uniforms.

CRONKITE: Campus protests also took violent form at some other institutions with firebombings at Oregon State and Hobart College, window smashing and other destruction at Stanford University.

REPORTER: Maryland's governor has laid down a firm warning -- "Stop the violence and stop it now.

We are not going to tolerate any violence or destruction."

BUCHANAN: You suddenly had tremendous numbers of kids who would otherwise not be involved in violence and things like that were now involved.

And then we had a hostile bureaucracy.

We had a hostile Congress.

SENATOR SCHWEIKER: This tragic war is tearing our country apart bit by bit, piece by piece, and person by person.

I don't think Cambodia's worth it.

BUCHANAN: So we felt besieged undeniably.

PERLSTEIN: Nixon was enraged that the liberal elites, that members of Congress were siding with these kids who he saw as quite nearly criminal anarchists.

REPORTER: In chatting with Pentagon employees who applauded him on the way in, the President had some strong words in a comparison he drew between what he called "the kids on campus" and those in the war zone.

[ Applause ] PERLSTEIN: He's saying these people, the real Americans who appreciate the sting of battle, they're the good guys.

And these other Americans, we can call them bums, which was just pouring gasoline on the flames.

MAN: Fat chance!

MAN #2: They are here, aren't they?!

MAN #1: Yeah, there's more here!

REPORTER: Kent State University was regarded as conservative in orientation at least in comparison to other colleges.

CROWD: [ Chanting ] We love America!

REPORTER: But Kent State was not without its radicals or political differences.

RUDD: I had traveled to dozens of campuses and talked about the coming revolution.

And I went to Kent State in the fall of 1968, and I was shocked by how organized they were and how militant they were.

MAN: That's the point.

Let's go out on campus.

Let's start rapping.

Let's start getting in the dorms.

And when we go to confront the administration, we got 15,000 strong!

[ Applause ] KNOX: Kent was a very alive place in those days, filled with people who wanted to know the truth.

CASALE: The downtown area of Kent where all the students would meet at places like Walter's Bar and JB's and the Cove also attracted a lot of townies, and they hated the university.

It represented to them debauchery and the degradation of America.

REPORTER: Friday night.

May the 1st.

A minor skirmish developed outside a tavern.

And before night became morning, riot became reality.

CASALE: The students kind of gave the locals ammunition by going out in the streets and chanting.

And then fights broke out.

REPORTER: 47 plate-glass windows were smashed, four police officers were injured, and 14 persons were arrested.

Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom imposes a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the city.

SNYDER: That weekend, I was given a warning order to be prepared to move to Kent, Ohio, because of college rioting.

The intelligence wasn't real good.

We had been informed that some militants had arrived in town, and that there was possibility of some machine guns that existed.

We were customarily handling racial riots and strikes and things of that nature.

We knew sooner or later we were going to have to handle the more radicalized demonstrations.

DAVIS: Saturday night, I was in my dorm room, and there was a line of people marching past my window.

I could tell it was a demonstration, and I wanted to know what people were talking about.

So I went out and joined it.

We ended up down on the Commons.

And there were a few people who started trying to damage the ROTC building.

And they tried to set the building on fire.

And I -- You know, I was a good girl.

I mean, I was a rule follower.

I was pretty horrified.

SNYDER: When we arrived at town, the entire sky was lit up like you would see in Baghdad with the reflection of the fires and so on in the sky.

And it turned out that that was the ROTC building that was on fire.

TOLLIVER: The building is engulfed in flames, students are running, dancing around it, making noise.

And I'm thinking, "Who's in charge here?"

[ Siren wails ] PERLSTEIN: The fire trucks come.

The students attack the fire hoses.

They start hacking at them with knives.

I mean, this is not innocent stuff.

This was not just a bunch of peaceful protestors who were set upon by murder-mad National Guardsmen.

You had a real insurrectionist situation going on here.

REPORTER: This morning, things were calm as National Guardsmen began a cleanup and only a few charred rifles remained.

Governor Rhodes, who visited the campus this morning, called it the worst violence in the state of Ohio and promised to crack down on those involved.

RHODES: I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained militant revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.

REPORTER: Rhodes blamed the trouble at Kent on what he called well-trained revolutionary outsiders.

CASALE: I think that Governor Rhodes, who was a staunch, conservative Republican, and he would have done anything to rid Kent State University of any student activists or political protests or dissent.

RHODES: These people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community.

They're worse than the brownshirt and the Communist element and, also, the night riders and the vigilantes.

They're the worst.

PERLSTEIN: He dehumanizes the protestors in the most aggressive possible way.

RHODES: We are going to eradicate the problem.

We're not going to treat the symptoms.

PERLSTEIN: It's a complete act of demagoguery and, of course, just manages to fan the flames some more.

REPORTER: Sunday night, students clash with National Guardsmen and law officials.

The result of dissent versus suppression.

DAVIS: Sunday night, things got worse.

A group of students marched to the corner of campus at Lincoln and Main where we were stopped.

There was a curfew in effect, but we just sat down on the pavement in the intersection.

A helicopter with a search light came overhead and came down really low, so it was really loud.

And the Guardsmen were brandishing their bayonets.

So it was scary.

REPORTER: 69 persons were arrested on charges ranging from curfew violation to carrying weapons.

SNYDER: Firing never came into the picture.

Although we were armed.

We had weapons, we had bullets, we had all those things that go with it.

DAVIS: I remember having this sense of now the Guardsmen were this intrusive presence.

REPORTER: Monday morning, May 4th.

Students plan a noon rally, and law officials say they are prepared for any further violence.

REPORTER #2: Approximately 600 National Guardsmen from Akron and the Cleveland areas are deployed either on campus or in the community nearby.

The Guard was called in response to student disturbances that resulted in the burning of an ROTC building.

REPORTER #3: As the result of action on the KSU campus, orders have been issued to Guardsmen banning all outdoor rallies and demonstrations, peaceful and otherwise.

[ Bell clanging ] TOLLIVER: Whenever there was a demonstration of any kind of magnitude, someone would ring the bell, which you could hear almost all across campus, because that's how huge of a bell it is.

And people would gather.

DAVIS: I got up and went over to my friend Julie's room.

She was getting ready.

And I'm thinking, "Oh, my God.

We're going to be late for the revolution."

I mean, you know, "Be late for the rally.

Come on, Julie!"

TOLLIVER: It was almost like a festive occasion.

Students on the side, laughing and talking, hanging out of their dorm windows, playing music.

CASALE: People are walking around in pretty good moods.

And it was such a beautiful day.

You know, I feel good.

CROWD: [ Chanting ] One, two, three, four!

We don't want your...war!

One, two, three, four!

We don't want your...war!

SNYDER: My personal recollection was that they were just sitting around yelling and doing the thing that student demonstrators do.

But we had orders to deal with student unrest.

So we formed a line where the burned-out ROTC building was.

MAN: Leave this area immediately.

Leave this area immediately.

[ Indistinct shouting ] CASALE: And of course, the students are going, "Hell no!"

you know.

CROWD: [ Chanting ] Pigs off campus!

Pigs off campus!

DAVIS: I was going there to exercise my Constitutional rights.

You know, not only was Nixon expanding this illegal war, but now our ability to disagree with that was being squelched by the presence of the Guard on campus.

SNYDER: I'm thinking this is going to be an event that's gonna require force.

By that, I mean, tear gas.

CASALE: Sure enough, the tear gas starts.

[ Indistinct shouting ] Some of the more militant activists, they're ready with their rags and their water bottles, trying to throw the canisters back at the Guardsmen.

And at that point, we think "Okay, this is a ritual."

TOLLIVER: The Guard would advance.

Do their thing with the tear gas.

Some students would throw it back at them.

DAVIS: This sort of wavelike action.

TOLLIVER: Back and forth, back and forth.

SNYDER: The demonstrators were showing really huge acts of aggression.

People would run forward and throw things at you, you know, rocks and things like that.

DAVIS: Most people wanted to move further -- you know, basically maintain their distance from the Guardsmen.

CASALE: You're trying to stay away from the tear gas.

And we all went over the hill, and they came right over the hill after us.

[ Indistinct shouting ] CASALE: I got scared.

That's the only honest thing I can say.

DAVIS: I thought they were going to turn around and go back where they had come from.

TOLLIVER: You just get a sense that something's not right here, something's going to go on here.

CASALE: We thought they were going to march at us with bayonets.

And instead... [ Gunfire ] [ Indistinct shouting ] It's hideous.

It's unbelievable.

The guns were loaded.

You're seeing the results of real gunshots.

I sat down cause I thought I was going to pass out.

And I'm looking up at the sky and all these beautiful old-growth trees with just buds on them and trying to, like, concentrate on that, 'cause I can't deal with what I've just seen.

You know, I'm 19.

DAVIS: There was a boy.

And he was lying facedown in the street.

He was just very still, and I wasn't thinking consciously that he was dead.

I was just thinking that he was very still.

But there was an enormous amount of blood.

[ Indistinct shouting ] [ Siren wails ] SNYDER: The very first thing I did was check everybody's rifle to make sure that nobody in my company had fired.

MAN: Let them slaughter us!

[ Indistinct shouting ] Are they going to slaughter us all?

SNYDER: Fortunately, for everybody, some very rational and heroic professors showed up there and talked some sense into both sides.

FRANK: Just sit down.

Sit down, please!

Just sit down!

We know they called in more troops.

We can see them.

Sit down.

DAVIS: We sat down in rows on this slope.

And it was, you know, like -- I felt like I was in class.

FRANK: I don't care whether you've never listened to anyone before in your lives.

[ Voice breaking ] I am begging you right now.

If you don't disperse right now, they're going to move in, and it can only be a slaughter.

Would you please listen to me?!

Jesus Christ!

I don't want to be a part of this!

DAVIS: Glenn Frank was begging us to leave.

And he was crying.

And I had never seen a man cry before.

So we did.

And we picked these directions that if the Guards started shooting again, somebody would be alive to tell the story.

ANNOUNCER: AFVN News, compiled from commercial and military news agencies.

REPORTER: Joint US-ARVN operations in the Fish Hook region of Cambodia... BRAUN: The day we flew into Cambodia, we arrived just before sunset.

It was in a very lush, green jungle area, nice clearing.

Had a dirt berm.

I remember we were setting up our fire base, and we were listening to my radio.

And that's when I heard about Kent State University.

REPORTER: Four students were killed today at Kent State University in Ohio in a confrontation with National Guardsmen and police during a rally to protest the U.S. involvement in Cambodia.

BRAUN: We were all in shock.

The National Guardsmen would've been about our age.

The students at Kent State would've been about our age, too.

REPORTER: ...gas canisters...

I remember feeling real anger that a bunch of National Guard guys would shoot down college students.

You know, if some kid's throwing a brick at me and I've got a loaded rifle, I don't feel intimidated.

BRAUN: We couldn't believe that Governor Rhodes would even allow the National Guard to carry live ammunition on a campus, let alone that someone would open fire.

So that was very unsettling.

OREM: Of course, that was personally painful.

But having said that, that was back in the world.

And it was a very sharp line.

What was happening in "the world" is a whole nother universe.

REPORTER: The school president told the students that protesting is not the way to get out of Cambodia.

MAN: One, two, three ANNOUNCER: "The Dick Cavett Show."

With the Reverend Dr. Billy Graham.

[ Applause ] CAVETT: What do you feel about the criticism that the administration is contributing to the division in the country by such things as the President calling the dissenters "bums"?

DR. GRAHAM: I'm sure that he didn't mean for the whole public to hear that particular terminology.

-[ Laughter ] -CAVETT: Ah.

DR. GRAHAM: I don't know.

I haven't talked to him.

So I'm just guessing.

I've never heard him call them bums.

CAVETT: [ Sighs ] It seems like, this tragedy yesterday in Ohio where the four students were shot, in a sense, that kind of thing can somehow be linked to this sort of unfortunate language.

You know, I'm not saying that the President wanted anyone killed -because that's absurd.

-[ Applause ] DR. GRAHAM: Well, I think that the situation in Kent is tragic and terrible.

I was just sick when I heard it.

I knelt in prayer.

And I said, "Oh, God, what's happening to us, that this could happen in America?"

But I also see that some of these things at the universities are not becoming dissent anymore.

They're becoming mob action.

And this is very dangerous.

[ Applause ] PERLSTEIN: Gallup does a poll.

"Who's responsible for the students' deaths?"

58% percent of Americans say the students are responsible for their own deaths.

Only 11% blame the National Guard.

REPORTER: What do you think about the shooting at Kent?

MAN: That people weren't behaving properly, and apparently they have asked for that sort of thing.

REPORTER: So you think the Guard was justified?

WOMAN: Yes, I do.

I am sorry they didn't kill more.

REPORTER: Really?

WOMAN: Yes, because they were warned.

And they knew what was happening, and they should have moved out.

WOMAN #2: If that's what it took to break them up, well, then, that's what it takes.

PERLSTEIN: I mean, it's almost like the consensus of opinion in the United States of America -- that antiwar protesters deserved to die.

[ Indistinct talking ] DAVIS: Right after the shooting, we were ordered off campus.

We had to leave.

So I got home.

My mother wasn't there.

My father walked in the back door.

And he looks at me and he says, "They should have shot all of them."

And I said to him -- and I never talk back to my father -- I said, "Don't you know, then, that one of those people would have been me?"

And he just walked into the other room.

BRINKLEY: The two young women and two young men killed yesterday are described by those who knew them as quiet and not at all radical or revolutionary.

Sandy Scheuer was 20, from Youngstown, Ohio.

Not much interested in politics and mainly liked to cook.

Jeffrey Miller was 20, from Plainview, New York.

William Schroeder of Lorraine, Ohio.

Allison Krause, 19, from Pittsburgh.

Today her father read a statement.

KRAUSE: [ Voice breaking ] She resented being called a bum because she disagreed with someone else's opinion.

She felt that war in Cambodia was wrong.

Is this dissent a crime?

Is this a reason for killing her?

Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl... has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government?

RATHER: The White House tonight issued the following statement, and I quote directly, "The President shares the sadness of the parents involved and that of all Americans over these unnecessary deaths.

This should remind us all that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy."

GREENE KILBERG: The image I have indelibly in my mind is of that photo.

I think to the young people in the White House, our reaction to Kent State was this overwhelming sense of, "Oh, my goodness, this is just terrible."

And I was saying that as someone who supported the actions of the President.

BUCHANAN: We knew that if all hell was breaking loose before, it was really going to break loose now.

NAFTALI: Four dead students at Kent State was a symbol of how far off the rails the country had gone.

PERLSTEIN: In its wake is a profound reaction.

The students start going crazy.

Hundreds of campuses went out on strike.

CRONKITE: Kent State, Ohio State, the entire California University system -- All were shut down by the events of the week.

Authorities used tear gas to control rock-throwing crowds at such scattered locations as the University of Wisconsin, the University of Buffalo, and the University of Texas.

RUDD: Strikes at hundreds of campuses, involving millions of people, that I remember thinking, "This is bigger than anything that students have ever done before."

WOMAN: If there is still a campus in this country which has not yet struck against these crimes of the Nixon administration, we call upon them to join us immediately.

REPORTER: The death of the four Kent State students caused a wave of shock and anguish that 41,000 American deaths in Vietnam have never managed to raise.

WOMAN: Violence is the only thing the country seems to be understanding right now.

We all give the peace sign and we all march and we say, "Peace now."

But what happens, man?

The man stands and looks at us.

CRONKITE: The events of this past week have polarized not only the opposition to the war but also the opposition to the antiwar movement.

New York City yesterday offered a chilling illustration of that division.

Crowd: [ Chanting ] Peace now!

Peace now!

Peace now!

REPORTER: Hundreds of youthful antiwar demonstrators have crowded onto the steps of the old U.S. Treasury Building, their slogans laced with obscenities.

Soon dozens, then hundreds of hard-hatted workers from nearby construction jobs stormed into the square, charged through police lines, chasing the protesters from the steps, beating those who did not move fast enough and the few who tried to slug it out.

[ Indistinct shouting ] REPORTER #2: ...antiwar demonstrators are on the run.

PERLSTEIN: You had white construction workers beating antiwar protesters.

And the Wall Street traders are cheering them on.

Americans seem to be developing into warring tribes.

REPORTER: [ Speaking indistinctly ] A wild, crazy melee.

Police trying to break it up.

MAN: All right, give me some cover!

[ Gunfire ] OREM: I knew about the protest, but it had no bearing.

It was what was in front of you that was pertinent.

I remember very clearly, the first few fights, being very overwhelmed and very stunned.

Before Cambodia, I carried 12 magazines for my rifle.

By the second week in Cambodia, I was carrying 30 magazines for my rifle.

The NVA had way more experience than we did.

They were dedicated, hardcore soldiers.

They were the pros.

BRAUN: We found weapons.

We found ammunition, and we found a lot of activity in the area.

[ Gunfire ] As we got deeper into Cambodia, we made contact every single day.

I knew that there was a peace movement going on, and I was kind of glad there was.

I believe that if people weren't demonstrating, we might still be there.

[ Man shouts indistinctly ] MAN: Get him back here if you can!

Can you move him?!

BRAUN: Let me tell you, all we wanted to do was get back to the world.

That's all we talked about.

MAN: All right, who's wounded?

Okay, bring him back.

Bring him back here.

Everybody is still down there... [ Radio chatter ] BRINKLEY: The pressure on President Nixon over Cambodia has grown daily since the killing of four students at Kent State University.

As many as 100,000 protesters, most of them students, will demonstrate in Washington tomorrow.

REPORTER: 1,500 District of Columbia National Guardsmen have been called up.

5,000 federal troops are on alert.

Police Chief Jerry Wilson said his entire force of 4,000 men will be on duty to prevent trouble.

BUCHANAN: I remember I came in to work and I went downstairs to get a pack of cigarettes and I ran head-on into the 82nd Airborne.

GREENE KILBERG: There were what seemed like thousands, I'm sure it was only hundreds, of troops stationed in the basement with nothing to do, just waiting there to protect the White House.

BUCHANAN: And there were buses circling the entire White House down around the Ellipse because there was real fear that the demonstrators would come at the White House.

And if they did, you're going to have to stop them.

MUDD: Good evening.

This is the President's second live televised press conference this year -- his first since his announcement of the Cambodian invasion.

But it is also the most important, the most crucial of his presidency... PERLSTEIN: So right before this giant demonstration, Richard Nixon gives a press conference.

He didn't give all that many of them.

– REPORTER: Mr. President!

– PRESIDENT NIXON: Captain.

REPORTER: What do you think the students are trying to say with this demonstration?

PRESIDENT NIXON: They are trying to say that they want peace.

They are trying to say that they want to stop the killing.

They are trying to say that they want to end the draft.

They are trying to say that we ought to get out of Vietnam.

I think I understand what they want.

I would hope they would understand somewhat what I want.

PERLSTEIN: One of them asks this astonishing one -- "Is America having a revolution?"

PRESIDENT NIXON: Briefly, this country is not headed for revolution.

REPORTER: In your inaugural address, you said that one of your goals was to bring us together in America, you said that you wanted to bring peace to Vietnam.

It seems that we're farther than ever from those goals.

How do you account for this apparent failure?

PERLSTEIN: I mean they wouldn't let him get away with anything.

REPORTER: Mr. President, have you been surprised by the intensity of these protests?

REPORTER #2: They indicated that you had agreed to tone down the criticism of those who disagree with you.

REPORTER #3: Sir, things look generally discouraging.

REPORTER #4: What is your policy toward Cambodia's future?

REPORTER #5: Have you in recent days felt isolated?

REPORTER #6: Would you explain this apparent contradiction?

[ Reporters calling "Mr. President..." ] PERLSTEIN: That night, Richard Nixon spends like four or five hours just randomly calling people -- reporters, politicians.

And he does this until like, you know, 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. -- almost till dawn.

Then he relaxes by going into his study, blasting his favorite piece, this bombastic Rachmaninoff piece.

[ Classical music plays ] And then this astonishing thing happens, probably one of the most astonishing things we have on the record of the presidency.

[ Telephone rings ] GREENE KILBERG: The phone rings and I was half asleep and I answer the phone and it was John Ehrlichman.

And he said, "He's gone to the Lincoln Memorial."

And I said, "Who's gone to Lincoln Memorial?"

He said, "The President."

And I went, "Oh."

NAFTALI: In his memoirs, Richard Nixon would explain that he couldn't sleep, slept fitfully.

And so he got up and he talked to his valet, "Manolo" Sanchez.

He said, "You know, Manolo, the Lincoln Memorial is so beautiful at night."

PERLSTEIN: The capital is full of antiwar protesters.

And he kind of just wanders out among them.

GREENE KILBERG: When I got there everybody was saying, "The president, the president.

That's the president."

And their eyes were, you know, as big as saucers.

PERLSTEIN: He has what they used to call in those days a rap session, and it's just absolutely nuts.

NAFTALI: To say it's surreal, I think, misses about 50% of the experience.

GREENE KILBERG: The discussion ranged from why he was going into Cambodia, his desire to save American lives, how hard it is to govern, what you should be doing when you're governing.

GREENE KILBERG: And then he was gone.

BUCHANAN: Richard Nixon was a sensitive man.

He was sensitive in a way that I am not.

I was very concerned that the demonstrations and the hostility and the hatred all spilling out against him, and the attacks, that it was getting to him.

JENNINGS: The day of dissent dawned brightly in Washington as the young and the not-so-young began to gather, and moved toward the sweep of green south of the White House that is known as the Ellipse.

No one was sure early in the day how things would go.

ISAACS: There was concern about violence because nobody on either side wanted to see a bunch of students getting shot dead on the Ellipse.

FONDA: The people of the world are watching us because the American protestors are holding out the last hope.

MAN: Say you're against the war if you've got some guts!

[ Applause ] DR. SPOCK: We are here to demand an end to the war in Vietnam, not in '72, not in '71, but in 1970.

ISAACS: But, you know, it was also a big festival.

OCHS: Oh, here's to the schools of Richard Nixon Where they're teaching all the children that they don't have to care... ISAACS: Getting out there with people who were wearing the same kind of clothes as you were and smoking grass and having a good time.

SEVAREID: The big demonstration had a strange air of anti-climax about it.

The protest movement has changed only in its greater size.

And it has nothing new to say.

The same rhetorical phrases, the same meaningless substitutes for thought like "Power to the People," "End the Establishment," the same intellectual and moral sin of generalizing the specific so that one speaker shouts, "It was Mr. Nixon who pulled the trigger, killing the students at Kent State."

[ Indistinct shouting ] BUCHANAN: I got the sense that this was the revolt of the over-privileged.

And I remember writing a memo to the president where I said, "Stop the patronizing these students.

They disagree with us, they've got their point of view, they don't like us, that's fine.

We have our point of view, we've thought it through, we believe we're right, they disagree.

Let's just move forward."

CRONKITE: Up to this hour tonight, the student demonstrators and their supporters at least have done their part to "Cool it."

There has been little violence.

This demonstration has been within the confines of decent dissent.

Our report this evening leads one to hope that this week in American history has brought us to that point.

This is Walter Cronkite.

Good night.

[ Gunfire ] [ Indistinct shouting ] DISPATCHER: We got two dead and about five wounded.

BRINKLEY: Two young Negroes, a high-school student named James Green and a college student named Philip Gibbs, were shot to death early today by police who fired into a crowd in front of a women's dormitory at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi.

15 others were wounded.

ANTOINE: Part of the protest that night was about Cambodia.

But it wasn't really just one thing.

I mean, we were struggling with political issues in the Deep South.

But we had no idea that it was going to get escalated to the point they would have to call in the state troopers and the city police.

REPORTER: A crowd of students had gathered in front of the girl's dormitory, which is now riddled with bullet holes.

BUXTON: I saw one man in the crowd of troopers raise a bull horn.

Now, he raised the bull horn, but he said absolutely nothing.

A split-second later, he started firing.

MAN: Bullets were flying all over my head.

People behind me were bleeding and falling.

The city police.

The highway patrol.

The state troopers.

None of these people offered to give any aid to this dying man.

ANTOINE: To think that 30 or 40 law-enforcement officers, armed with rifles and shotguns would walk up the street on a college campus, a couple hundred yards, and open fire on a bunch of kids.

RUDD: Young people started to turn away from the fight.

The effect of it was total demoralization.

TOLLIVER: Word got around.

After Kent State and Jackson State, I think there was a national concern about how far can we take legitimate dissent without worrying about losing one's life?

[ Sousa's "Stars And Stripes Forever" plays ] REPORTER: Here in New York today, there was a massive display of American flags, as more than 100,000 marchers rallied to show support for the administration.

REPORTER #2: Probably not since the Second World War or maybe even the First World War, has New York City seen an outburst of patriotic fervor that can match this one.

BUCHANAN: I think after Kent State, that terrible event, you wondered if it was all coming up unstuck, But then the real Americans, most of them probably Democrats in New York, were marching in support of the war and were standing up for the values and convictions of Richard Nixon.

It was a formative moment of America's new majority.

NAFTALI: The generational anger that Vietnam created was a spontaneous ground-up anger.

But the Nixon Administration exploited it.

BRENNAN: We're here as Americans.

We're here even though we disagree with many things that may be said by others.

We're here to try to work with them for the future of our country.

PERLSTEIN: What I can tell you for sure was that Nixon appreciated the political fallout from Kent State, because that really became the lever he used to bring white blue-collar, patriotic Americans into the Republican party.

BRENNAN: We're the fellows who build this country.

We're the fellows who build the hospitals when they need them when they're sick.

We build the bridges and tunnels for them to get around in.

We build the schools that they want to burn down.

And we also build all of the other things in this country.

BUCHANAN: So what you had to do was watch the Democratic party, these fissures open up and drive a wedge through them and take the portions of the Democratic party which were compatible with Nixon.

PERLSTEIN: By speaking to their patriotism, by speaking to their rage at people who were cutting against the grain of traditional American values.

BUCHANAN: And attach them to the Republican Party on a permanent basis.

And that's how Nixon created that new majority.

[ Cheers and applause ] BRAUN: Okay.

I don't know -- It's been a long time since I sent you a tape.

When we get back to Vietnam, we're supposed to be going in for a battalion stand-down, which was going to be six days, but... Just getting out of Cambodia -- and getting out alive -- was amazing.

I have been losing a lot of friends over here.

One of the guys that my company from NCO School in OJT was killed over here in Cambodia.

And it's just -- I don't know.

It's...

It's hard to take.

We saw so many of our friends... ...either killed or severely wounded that we actually couldn't wait to get back to Vietnam.

I will be glad to get away from this place.

I'm just sick and tired of fighting.

I'm sick and tired of blood.

I don't want to put any of my friends that are just graduating from college through what I've been through.

They're the ones that are gonna have to be coming over here and fighting.

And they don't want to fight.

I don't see any reason why they should.

I might have thought different before I came into Cambodia, but that was before I'd seen so many guys lose their lives.

OREM: I had no illusion that Richard Nixon was going to end the war with peace and with honor.

And it certainly was not going to happen during my tour.

My mission was very clear, to ensure that my men had the best possible chance to survive that experience.

We closed down the fire base we had, and Chinook helicopters came to take a platoon at a time.

And so the bird sat down.

My platoon was the last one to leave.

And I remember walking to the front where the pilots sat, and I bent over and kissed the one pilot on his visor and smiled at him.

If I had a feeling of doing good, as I looked down the two lines of seating, counted heads, and I said, "I have 25 guys I am bringing back."

We are going back to the safe zone -- Vietnam.

Let's go back to the nice war.

[ Intro to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Ohio" plays ] CHANCELLOR: A grand jury in Ohio today indicted 25 students and agitators on criminal charges connected with the killings at Kent State and absolved the National Guard of any legal responsibility for the killings.

REPORTER: The special state grand jury said the Guard "acted in self-defense."

It indicted 25 students and agitators for "deliberate criminal conduct."

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming We're finally on our own This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in Ohio KNOX: I returned to Kent in the fall of 1970.

And the Kent campus was very subdued.

It was a depressed place.

It was a changed place.

REPORTER: Conditions on the Kent State campus have changed since last May.

Students will have to show color-coded identification cards to avoid the new trespass regulations on campus.

The school has set up new rumor-control machinery.

In addition, the Ohio Legislature has declared campus disturbances illegal.

PARISI: Everyone seems to be confused.

They are really confused.

They don't know where they are going right now.

They don't know what to do.

They are waiting for an answer.

CASALE: It was easy to see that the movement was fragmented, co-opted, turned inside out and that the things we were dissenting about we lost.

COLLINS: I realized totally how little the actual equation of the world the students in America were.

We did all the things we knew how to do... and then nothing happened.

CASALE: The government forces got what they wanted.

Because, basically, if you can shoot students and get away with it, you know, kids learn their lesson.

How many people want to give up their lives... no matter how committed they are?

RUDD: I still believed in the revolution.

It's hard to explain.

You have a belief in something so big and so beautiful that you won't give up.

To give up the belief is to surrender.

KNOX: So we dispersed.

We went to teach school.

We went to be lawyers.

We went to live in the woods.

We went to grow organic gardens and start health-food stores.

CASALE: Some people just toed the line and went back and said, "Okay, Dad, I will work in your hardware store now."

COLLINS: My husband and I got married and we left the campus and we went to Connecticut and we both got jobs.

And we started living that life.

I started to make art because it is easy to say, "This is terrible.

This is terrible."

Let me see something that isn't terrible.

COLLINS: The women's movement came along.

Oh, my God.

The women's movement, and there was all that to do.

CROWD: What do we want?

ERA!

When do we want it?

Now!

ISAACS: The women's movement, the gay-rights movement, those were sort of descendants of the antiwar movement.

– JACKSON: I am... -CROWD: I am... -JACKSON: ...somebody!

– CROWD: ...somebody!

COLLINS: It was exactly the same people with exactly the same desires for a fair and equal life where everybody had a chance and people could live together in peace.

It was exactly the same kind of people.

MAN: Bob Smeal died for these medals!

Lieutenant... died so I got a medal.

Sergeant Johns died so I got a medal!

I got a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, eight Air Medals, National Defense, and the rest of this garbage!

It doesn't mean a thing!

[ Cheers and applause ] DENVER: Last night I had the strangest dream I've ever dreamed before I dreamed the world had all agreed To put an end to war CRONKITE: And that certainly looks like a Nixon sweep.

President Nixon has been re-elected.

He has gone over the top with Michigan... BUCHANAN: 1972 was the nation's verdict on the antiwar movement.

And we won 49 states to one.

George McGovern got the People's Republic of Massachusetts and D.C. [ Chuckles ] My hometown.

[ Cheers and applause ] Politically, we won the battle of the '60s and the '70s and the '80s.

But inevitably the other side had captured the culture.

And if you capture the culture of a country, eventually you might prevail.

DENVER: ...in the streets... PRESIDENT NIXON: I would only hope that in these next four years, we can so conduct ourselves in this country that years from now people will look back to the generation of the 1970s, at how we've conducted ourselves, and they will say, "God Bless America."

Thank you very much.

"The Day the '60s Died" is available on DVD.

To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

[ Indistinct shouting ]