I go to Vietnam. They say I’ll probably go right in the front line. ibid. Ron
Vietnam is a white man’s war, a rich man’s war. ibid. black male nurse
People here – they don’t give a shit about the war. Yeah to them it’s just a million miles away. It’s all bullshit anywhere. I mean the government sold us a bill of goods and we bought it. ibid. Stevie
That’s the problem, mum. I’m not dead. I’ve gotta live. ibid. Ron
Looming over the administration was the war on Vietnam. American troops had been fighting for four years on behalf of South Vietnam against the Soviet-backed communist forces of the north. The American Experience: The Presidents: Nixon II: The Triumph, PBS 1990
Nixon ordered the most drastic escalation of the war since 1968. Massive sustained bombing of Hanoi. ibid.
Nixon brooded over the issue that had haunted his first time and now threatened his second – the War in Vietnam. The American Experience: The Presidents: Nixon III: The Fall
Nixon ordered the most intensive bombing of the entire war ... The Christmas Bombing. The raids went on for twelve days. ibid.
It was the evening of October 1st 1969 when I first smuggled several hundred pages of top secret documents out of my safe at the Rand Corporation. This study contained 47 volumes, 7,000 pages. My plan was to Xerox the study and reveal the secret history of the Vietnam War to the American people. The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, 2009
Wouldn’t you go to prison to end this war? ibid.
I received orders from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to gather examples of atrocities perpetrated by the Viet-Cong. ibid.
That was in fact the most shameful episode I could think of: that I really did at a critical moment help McNamara persuade the president by information I gave him – that he should start a systematic campaign of bombing. ibid.
I was beginning to realise we couldn’t beat this enemy in their own backyard. ibid.
The Tet Offensive was a devastating blow to American morale. ibid.
I met with reporter Neil Sheehan of The New York Times and leaked information about a secret CIA report on enemy troop strength. The story made the front page. It was the first time I had gone outside official channels to affect the conduct of the war. ibid.
I said [to Kissinger] as far as I can see there is no way to win. ibid.
We opposed elections while pretending to support democracy. ibid.
I could now see that Johnson was continuing the pattern of presidential lying ... We were the wrong side. ibid.
The hundreds of thousands we were killing was unjustified homicide. ibid.
I’m not going to be part of this system of lying any more. ibid.
I began Xeroxing the McNamara study in the fall of 1969. ibid.
Conspiracy and eight other charges were added to Ellsberg’s charges and he now faced 115 years in prison. ibid.
The courage we need is not the courage, the fortitude, to be obedient in the service of an unjust war, to help conceal lies, to do our job by a boss who has usurped power and is acting as an outlaw government, it is the courage at last to face honestly the truth and reality of what we are doing in the world, and act responsibly to change it. Daniel Ellsberg
For twenty years this nation has been at war in Indochina. Tens of thousands of Americans have been killed, half a million have been wounded, a million Asians have died, and millions more have been maimed or have become refugees in their own land. Meanwhile, the greatest representative democracy the world has even seen, the nation of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, has had its nose rubbed in the swamp by petty war lords, jealous generals, black marketeers, and grand-scale dope pushers.
And the war still goes on. People are still dying, arms and legs are being severed, metal is crashing through human bodies, as a direct result of policy decisions conceived in secret and still kept from the American people. Mike Gravel, The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam
President Kennedy had always been a servant of the elite but he was so shocked by the Northwoods document that he signed Executive Order 11110 shortly before his death announcing that he would abolish the Federal Reserve system. He also began to pull us out of Vietnam, and signed an order to abolish the CIA. It was at that point that he was assassinated. You see, he had decided to be a leader of the people, to defend their interests, and the New World Order couldn’t allow that to happen. Alex Jones, 9/11 The Road to Tyranny
He [Kennedy] had signed the executive order; he was pulling the troops out of Vietnam; he said he was going to abolish the CIA; he’d learnt they were going to stage terror attacks like 9/11. Alex Jones, interview with Jim Marrs & Robert Groden
The President was ending the Vietnam war, which was big business and a lot of money to very very powerful people including Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was a major stockholder in, I believe, at least seven companies that had Vietnam war contracts. He made billions off the war himself. It’s not the only reason why the President was killed, but it was certainly one of the major reasons ... He and his brother Bobby, the Attorney General, were fighting the only effective war in this nation’s history against organised crime. Robert Groden, interview with Alex Jones & Jim Marrs
Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge brought from Washington because the agency disagreed with it ... The CIA’s growth was likened to ‘a malignancy’ which ‘the very high official’ was not sure even the White House could control. If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the government] it will come from the CIA’. Arthur Krock, article New York Times 3rd October 1963, ‘The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam’
The reason why Kennedy was assassinated was he wanted to end the Vietnam War, and he wanted to end the rule of the CIA. That begets two questions: Did Rome want the Vietnam War? And, Did Rome control the CIA? The answer is yes on both counts. We know, on its face, that the Vietnam War was called ‘Spelly’s War’ – Cardinal Spellman’s war. He went over to the warfront many times and he called the American soldiers the ‘soldiers of Christ’. The man who was the Commander of the American forces was a Roman Catholic, CFR member, possibly a Knight of Columbus, I don't know, but he was General William Westmoreland.
So, Westmoreland was Cardinal Spellman’s agent to make sure that war was prosecuted properly. And another overseer of Westmoreland was Cardinal Spellman’s boy, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a 33rd-degree Freemason. He was also part of the assassination, with J Edgar Hoover, another 33rd-degree Freemason ... Spellman wanted the Vietnam War, why? Spellman was controlled by the Jesuits of Fordham. Why did the Jesuit General want the Vietnam War? The people of Vietnam, the Buddhists, were unconvertible. They would not convert to Catholicism. They didn’t need Rome.
There had been a Jesuit presence in Vietnam for centuries, so it had been decided that about a million or so Buddhists would have to be ‘purged’. They would later continue this purge of Cambodia, with Pol Pot, and the purge is yet for Thailand. It was a purging of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam of all these Buddhists, just like they purged the Buddhists of China with Mao Zedong, because Mao Zedong was completely controlled by the Jesuits. So, they wanted the Vietnam War. Eric Jon Phelps
The press too has to reconsider its role as a social force, tempering its freedom with a sense of responsibility. Only by confronting this challenge can we fully pay our debt to those who died for us in Vietnam. Charlton Heston
‘It is a mixture of pretty scenery and ugly events.’ The Sixties: The War in Vietnam, news report, 2014
Early on Kennedy made a command decision: We will not allow South Vietnam to fall to the communists. ibid.
‘I uh feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it. I should not have given my consent to it without a round-table conference.’ ibid. Kennedy
‘The frank answer is we don’t know what’s going on out there.’ ibid. McNamara
‘The United States was killing twenty-five thousand civilians a year. The blowing up and burning down.’ ibid. reporter
‘It was the wrong damned war.’ ibid. commentator
June 1966: ‘Currently there are about 267,000 US fighting men in Vietnam.’ ibid. television news
‘Going after a bunch of half-starved beggars.’ ibid. McNamara
‘It was a tragic comedy of errors.’ ibid. Morley Safer
The New York Times reported 35% of the casualties are black people. It is crystal clear that the United States is moving to white power – for young black youth of this country by sending them to Vietnam. For our survival we must say as in Muhammad Ali that we cannot go. Stokely Carmichael, Black rights activist
There is a sad reality: Vietnam a nation representing the aspirations, the hopes of a whole world of forgotten peoples – is tragically alone. This nation must endure the furious attacks of US technology, with practically no possibility of reprisals in the South and only some of defense in the North – but always alone. Che Guevara