0:03 in a televised speech on march 31 lbj
0:05 announced that he would not run for reelection
0:06 reelection
0:07 and that he was ending american
0:10 escalations in the war and would start
0:13 peace negotiations in paris with north vietnam
0:14 vietnam
0:15 so he's not going to run for re-election
0:17 and instead he's going to try to use the
0:19 rest of his term to end the war
0:21 the republican candidate richard nixon
0:24 meanwhile ran as the candidate of law
0:26 and order now remember it's the late 60s
0:28 what laws have been broken a lot in the
0:31 60s segregation
0:33 so those opposed to civil rights will
0:35 largely support nixon and repeat this
0:38 phrase again and again law and order
0:39 though there will also be a third party
0:42 candidate who will run explicitly on
0:44 segregation not so much the dog whistles
0:46 type stuff that nixon does
0:48 and he'll take the deep south
0:50 now nixon promised that he had a secret
0:53 plan to end the war in vietnam but he
0:54 couldn't tell you what it was or else it
0:56 wouldn't work you just had to trust him
0:58 he also appealed to those who still
1:00 supported the war by calling for an
1:02 honorable end to u.s involvement which
1:05 he later called peace with honor and
1:06 this implied that the way lbj was trying
1:09 to end the war was not honorable
1:11 while nixon campaigned lbj was engaged
1:13 in furious 11th hour efforts to end the
1:15 war that had already killed 30 000
1:17 americans before he left office
1:20 but nixon and his aides saw johnson's
1:22 attempts at peace as nothing more than a
1:23 crude ploy to try to help the democratic
1:25 presidential candidate hubert humphrey
1:27 win the election
1:29 in october of 68 nixon launched what
1:32 came to be known as the chino affair
1:34 he ordered his campaign chief of staff
1:36 haldeman to find ways to sabotage
1:38 johnson's plan to stage productive peace talks
1:39 talks
1:41 he wants to sabotage the peace talks so
1:42 the war continues
1:44 and he hopes a frustrated american
1:45 electorate would then turn to
1:47 republicans and to nixon himself to end
1:48 the war
1:50 the chino affair was named for anna
1:52 chanel the republican fundraiser who you
1:54 see on the slide there who became
1:56 nixon's secret back channel to the south
1:58 vietnamese government
2:00 her official role in the nixon campaign
2:02 was to organize women but she was
2:04 secretly telling the south vietnamese
2:05 government to hold out at the peace
2:07 talks and wait for nixon's presidency
2:10 that it would get them a better deal
2:11 johnson and his aides suspected the
2:14 treachery the u.s was eavesdropping on
2:15 their south vietnamese allies and when
2:17 chino told the south vietnamese
2:20 ambassador to the u.s to hold on and we
2:24 are going to win lbj heard
2:26 lbj chose not to expose the affair
2:27 during the election because he had no
2:29 proof that nixon had personally directed
2:32 chanel's actions but he raged to senator
2:34 edward dirksen of illinois the
2:35 republican leader in the senate quote
2:37 this is treason
2:38 dirksen replied
2:40 i know
2:42 nixon denied any involvement with the
2:44 scandal right up until his death but the
2:45 white house taped conversations of nixon
2:48 telling lbj i would never do anything to
2:51 encourage saigon meaning south vietnam
2:53 not to come to the table however
2:54 however
2:56 in 2007 when the nixon presidential
2:58 library finally opened haldeman's notes
3:00 to the public historian john a farrell
3:02 found four pages of notes alderman had
3:04 scrawled in october of 68 while nixon
3:06 was on the phone
3:09 saying quote keep anna chanel working on
3:12 svn meaning south vietnam
3:14 haldeman noted they were out to quote
3:16 monkey wrench lbj's election eve
3:19 attempts to end the war so nixon helped
3:21 sabotage the peace efforts to try to
3:24 extend the war so that it would get him
3:25 into office
3:28 the peace talks stalled and nixon won
3:29 the presidency in a three-way race as
3:31 you can see on the map there winning the
3:34 popular vote by less than one percent
3:37 almost half of all u.s casualties in
3:40 vietnam occurred after nixon sabotaged
3:45 anti-war demonstrations reached their
3:47 height during nixon's first two years in
3:50 office 1969 and 1970
3:52 and he and vice president spiro agnew
3:54 loached these protesters and pursued
3:57 what agnew called positive polarization
3:59 they campaigned to further divide or
4:01 polarize the nation because they thought
4:02 that was a good thing
4:04 the goal was to split the respectable
4:06 silent majority as the president labeled
4:09 his supporters from liberal democrats in
4:11 congress and radical anti-war activists
4:13 so even if you didn't like the war
4:15 you disliked the anti-war protesters
4:19 more and therefore agreed with nixon
4:20 nixon began wielding the power of the
4:22 federal government to harass his
4:23 political opponents
4:25 as we've discussed other presidents had
4:27 used the fbi the cia and military
4:29 intelligence agencies to infiltrate and
4:32 thin the ranks of civil rights groups
4:34 both dr king and malcolm x were targets
4:36 of the fbi's cointelpro
4:38 lbj had expanded these efforts to
4:40 include anti-war demonstrators nixon
4:42 went beyond other presidents in
4:45 assembling an enemies list that included
4:47 mainstream figures especially liberals
4:50 the press and his democratic opponents
4:52 now the pentagon papers were a
4:55 classified defense department history of
4:57 american actions in vietnam and they of
4:58 course revealed that the government had
5:00 been deceiving the american people about
5:01 the course of the war
5:03 when disillusioned former pentagon
5:05 official daniel ellsberg secretly leaked
5:07 the study to the new york times for
5:10 publication in 1971 an enraged nixon
5:12 sued to stop them
5:15 and he initially got an injunction
5:17 so ellsberg released the papers to 17
5:19 other newspapers including the
5:20 washington post
5:22 so he is betting that even with the
5:25 injunction one of these 18 papers is
5:27 going to print the paper
5:29 and if you have seen the movie the post
5:30 with tom hanks and meryl streep that's
5:32 what this is all about the post decision
5:34 to print the pentagon papers
5:36 now the supreme court ultimately allowed
5:38 the publication of the pentagon papers
5:40 but a furious nixon ordered his plumbers
5:42 to find out how the leak happened and to
5:44 stop it
5:46 the plumbers broke into ellsberg's
5:48 psychiatrist's office on september 3rd
5:51 1971 to try to get information to
5:53 discredit him
5:55 nixon and his plumbers believed that
5:57 they could carry out illegal acts as
5:59 long as they believed it was necessary
6:01 for national security
6:03 nixon later famously told journalist
6:05 david frost when the president does it
6:07 that means it's not illegal
6:09 now of course that's not true we have
6:10 rule of law in the united states the
6:11 president doesn't just get to do
6:13 whatever he wants to do
6:15 ultimately it was this disregard for the
6:17 rule of law that ended nixon's presidency
6:22 nixon and his national security adviser
6:24 henry kissinger wanted to reduce the
6:26 number of u.s troops in vietnam
6:29 they pursued vietnamization or
6:31 withdrawing american troops and leaving
6:33 arvin right the army of the republic of
6:36 vietnam to actually do the fighting
6:38 but this had been exactly what lbj had
6:40 been trying to do for years it turned
6:44 out there was no secret plan at all
6:45 but the key to a successful withdrawal
6:47 from vietnam for nixon was to preserve
6:49 u.s credibility so there would be no
6:52 immediate pull-out it would be a gradual
6:55 process that lasted four years from 1969
6:57 to 1973 during which almost half of the
6:59 total american casualties in vietnam occurred
7:00 occurred
7:03 looking to incentivize peace talks nixon
7:06 pursued a madman strategy he ordered the
7:07 secret bombing and invasion of
7:10 neighboring countries cambodia and laos
7:13 he intensified bombing in north vietnam
7:16 and he had the haifang harbor near hanoi mined
7:17 mined
7:19 he was trying to convince north vietnam
7:21 that he would do anything to stop the
7:22 war but the attacks failed to spur the
7:24 peace process which stalled by the end
7:26 of 69.
7:28 enormous protest rocked the nation after
7:30 the announcement of the cambodian
7:33 invasion on april 30th 1970.
7:35 national guards troops killed four
7:37 students at an anti-war demonstration at
7:39 kent state university in ohio you can
7:40 see the picture on the top of the slide there
7:41 there
7:43 and two more students at jackson state
7:45 college in mississippi
7:47 so they're full of just shooting at
7:49 anti-war protesters now
7:51 still another three years passed and
7:54 another 20 000 american troops died
7:57 before a peace deal was reached
7:59 by 1972 a majority of americans opposed
8:01 the nation's war effort a level of
8:03 dissent unprecedented in american history
8:04 history
8:06 americans cringed at nick oot's
8:08 wrenching photograph of a naked
8:10 vietnamese child fleeing an american
8:12 napalm attack
8:14 most telling of all was the criticism of
8:17 some veterans returning from the vietnam war
8:18 war
8:20 the morale of american soldiers still in
8:22 vietnam plummeted the steady withdrawal
8:23 of their comrades made clear that they
8:26 were no longer expected to win this war
8:28 drug abuse and racial conflict increase
8:30 sharply among gis even fragging that is
8:33 killing one's own officers escalated
8:35 vietnam veterans against the war staged
8:38 very effective protests against the war
8:40 these aren't young kids who are safe
8:42 because they're college students and not
8:43 subject to the draft these are people
8:45 who have been to the war
8:47 who have lost friends and loved ones in
8:50 this war and are coming back to say it's
8:52 not worth it bringing them home
8:54 so we're going to watch two clips about
8:56 vietnam's veterans against the war
8:58 vietnam veterans against the war the
8:59 first is
9:02 rather tidy it shows some of the vietnam
9:05 veterans protesting and uh testifying
9:06 before congress the second one is some
9:08 pretty rough footage of the dewey canyon
9:11 protest in front of the halls of
9:13 congress in which they are throwing their
9:14 their
9:17 war medals over the fence basically into
9:19 the trash can so take a look at those
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