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"You've lost that lovin' feeling. Ooh that lovin' feeling..."
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"See that last hooch down there? See that last hooch?"
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"Yeah.""Alright, just this side of it, there are four guys with bushes on them.
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I want you to kill them.""OK. I'm going to put tracers right here."
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"Go!"
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I'd planned to spend Christmas in the States, but I can't stand violence.
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The Bob Hope Show, Christmas, 1968.
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"Dallas, Houston, Memphis, Boston, Atlanta, Denver, Frisco..."
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Paid with American aid, armed with American weapons,
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South Vietnamese soldiers on patrol in 1969.
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Foreigners didn't understand the psychology of the South Vietnamese soldiers
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who were carrying the guns and doing the fighting.
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We felt we had to fight.
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We were spilling our blood and suffering all kinds of hardships
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because we felt there was no other choice.
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We never accept any form of government, any form of policy
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that the Communists would like to impose on us before the decision
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on all South Vietnamese people can be made through free choice and
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democratic procedures, without external interference and without atrocities.
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Pop singers livened up conscription campaigns,
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welcoming draftees into South Vietnam's armed forces.
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The military numbered more than a million,
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but each week more than 2,000 of its troops deserted.
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Each week more than 400 were killed.
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"We will never forget you and your fight for freedom" was the refrain.
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The South Vietnamese government was recognized by most Western countries.
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It had survived for 15 years on more than $100 billion in U.S. aid.
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It was still totally dependent on America.
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We had a lot of conversations about the impact
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of the huge American presence in South Vietnam.
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We South Vietnamese, we are very concerned about the fact
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that the Communists are,were very shrewd in trying to
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take advantage of the American presence in South Vietnam.
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They said that we are puppets of American, we are working you know,
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for America, receive money from America, die for America.
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While they are the true liberators, you know.
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So, when you look just at the surface,
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a lot of people listened to their propaganda and believed it.
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The Vietnamese couldn't think in terms of
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the Americans intervening in some-thing and not succeeding.
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When they saw that the Americans build with billions and
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billions of dollars the air strips in Danang and Camranh
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-- everywhere around the country -- they couldn't think
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that the Americans once having committed their troops in Vietnam,
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having spended so much money in Vietnam,
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could one of these days leave everything behind and call it quit.
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In early 1969, one-third of the forces defending the Saigon government
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-- half a million men -- were American.
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Just pull him over; if anything flies out, watch out.
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After four years in Vietnam, American combat troops still pursued
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-- and often caught -- an elusive enemy.
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Tell... we'll pick him up there. Hello, got another one over here that's wounded.
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Send me an aircraft over to pick up the one that's wounded up.
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We thought he was dead. He's wounded.
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Soon as you pick the one up on the stretcher come get the other one.
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Take him in also. The other fellow died but we gotta get him out of here.
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Every American had his own version of the Vietnam War.
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The aviation units in general had a very high espirit de corps.
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The morale was good. We enjoyed what we did.
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And part of it I think is due to the fact of the logistics of being a pilot.
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You know, you go out and you fly your mission everyday,
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and you take, you know, very precarious chances, but at, you know,
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you come back home, you have a comfortable hootch.
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It might be air-conditioned.You got an officers' club across the street
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where you can get loaded every night and kind of forget about the world.
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And that kind of made...It was almost like a nine to five job.
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I mean, if I could put that kind of parallel.
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Go out and fight, come back and live, almost the way you lived in the states.
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All of a sudden from up above on my radio I hear our battalion commander
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telling me that there were three dinks, his exact words,
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"There's three dinks to your west. Go get 'em."
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You know, and I said this must be Bunker Hill, you know.
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So I said to my men,
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"Okay, the colonel saidthere's three dinks to our west, we're going east."
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Because I always felt never follow them cause that's when you're gonna go.
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We were on our way back to our base and
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we were walking through the vill when a soldier came up to the guy
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who was in charge of patrol,
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and he had apparently spotted three VC,or NLF,
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or whoever they were in one of the houses, so we surrounded the house.
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And that was, that was the story of go-get-'em, you know.
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And you don't just go get Charlie. 'Cause he's a little fast.
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None of the South Vietnamese who were in the patrol
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fired at these three guys, and I was scared stiff.
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I was suddenly, I was feeling alone because I was the only American
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who was there and so I, I put my rifle on automatic.
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I jumped up and I just fired the entire magazine at these three guys.
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I killed two of them and I didn't hit the other one and he got away in the darkness.
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There were areas where you weren't supposed to fly over.
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There were areas where if you took fire you had to call back,
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maybe all the way back to the commanding general of the division
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to get permission to fight, to fire back, and to me that was absurd.
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We're fighting a war. Somebody's shooting at you.
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You turn around, you shoot back and you kill him.
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The Americans gave a medal to the South Vietnamese soldier
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who was in charge of the patrol. This is part of,
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this was considered instilling morale in the South Vietnamese soldiers,
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so he was given a Bronze Star by the American army
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because this was like body count we had in our area
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in probably eight months, you know,
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and the South Vietnamese feeling the need to reciprocate
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that ended up giving me a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
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I was a very lucky person to have the people I had with me,
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because they got me through it.
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You know, I would say to them,
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"Look, you have one function. That's to protect me. '
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Cause I can get you everything else. I can get you the beer in the field.
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I can get you the air mattresses."
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Because the people I sent in the rear still had the respect for me.
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So anything I needed I called in for and got.
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I mean, we had some precarious situations and we lost some birds
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and we lost some people. But we always won.
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I mean, we, so to me, we were very successful, you know.
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But I, I'm, as I think of it now, I don't know what we won.
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We won a box on a map where the next day we left it
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and we never came back maybe.
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But every time we were engaged in that type of an operation, we won.
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The peace talks in Paris had not stopped the bombing in South Vietnam.
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American aircraft dropped six times more bombs on South Vietnam
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than on the Communist North.
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Many towns and villages in the South were destroyed in order to
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drive out the Vietcong, the North Vietnamese and their civilian supporters.
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The number of northerners captured increased
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as more of their main battalions moved south.
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But most of the enemy troops were native southerners fighting in Vietcong units.
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The destruction--much of it deliberate--reated more than three million refugees.
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Most American soldiers served with support units during their one-year tours.
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Their daily routine could be broken at any time
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by enemy rocket attacks or terrorism.
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U.S. bases employed thousands of Vietnamese civilians.
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The jobs were highly prized.
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The American-financed war overheated the economy,
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creating new opportunities, new wealth, and a new commercial class.
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Between 1967 and 1969, when the American forces were still in Vietnam,
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it was very easy for everyone to make money.
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Take a certain Mr. A. who worked for the Americans.
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He could earn much more working for the Americans than
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an official could earn from the South Vietnamese government.
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And since Mr. A. had a lot of money to spend,
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he would spend it in many ways.
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It was so easy for everyone to get a share of the pie.
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That money was so easily available that it very easily corrupted everyone.
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As for black marketeering, I did not see anything bad at all.
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When people bought goods from the American supermarkets
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for resale to make a little profit,
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then everybody said that this was black marketeering.
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But, to me, this was not black marketeering. This was only a transaction.
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The press at the time tried to blame it on Vietnamese officia or Vietnamese people.
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You know that most of the goods came, you know,
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that selling of the black market came from the various PX.
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So, it's wartime and a lot of people,
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both sides, American as well as the Vietnamese,
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are involving in the black market, you know.
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So it created a big, upside down society.
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Christmas, 1969.
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Nixon was steadily reducing the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam.
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In South Vietnam's towns and cities -- swollen with refugees --
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the enemy still planted bombs. Civilians still died.
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But business went on -- all kinds of business.
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I answered an ad in the newspaper for a job as a cashier.
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While I was working there,
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the woman who owned the establishment bought me a lot of new clothes.
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Every time I liked something, she bought it for me.
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I didn't think that she was going to deduct these things from my salary.
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But after a while, she began to demand repayment.
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I became very upset and flustered.
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I didn't know where I would get the money.
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Then she suggested that I ought to go with a certain man
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who would give me money so that I could repay my debt to her.
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The man asked me whether I would like to go some place to enjoy myself.
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I replied that I didn't know where to go,
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that since my childhood, I'd always been living with my family.
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Then he suggested that we go to the town of Cantho.
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I thought we were going to live together as husband and wife.
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But to my surprise, he stayed with me for only three days,
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then told me that he was returning me to the woman who was my boss.
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Prostitution. Tell me somewhere in this world that there's no prostitution.
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Tell me some city, some country, where there is no prostitution.
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So there is prostitution in Vietnam, in Saigon, of course.
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There is corruption, of course. There is black market, yes.
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But, because we're living in war for long time.Thirty years.
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And with the vast, the big presence of foreign troops in, you know,
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in Vietnam, it created a lot of social problems.
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The first problem we have here is VD.
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Many of the South Vietnamese women suffer from at least one type of VD.
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Of course, the best protection here is to abstain from
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all sexual relations with the South Vietnamese women.
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However, facts have proven that not all of you will choose to do this.
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I don't know if I should tell this story (chuckle),
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but my first day when I went into town and I got into this Vespa
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they had these little taxis that they called Vespas
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these three-wheeled jobs in which it starts like a lawnmower.
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I got in and the first thing the guy asked me did I want a girl.
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I said, "No, I'd like to see the town first."And he said, "Would you like..."
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and he held up this big pack of what I assumed was marijuana.
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Now, I know it was marijuana. At the time I just assumed it.
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"GI, you want Vietnamese cigarette? I trade you one pack of Salem."
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Or "GI, can you get me Pham?
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I give you this, and make enormous dope deals."
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For a box of Tide, you could get a carton of pre-packed,
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pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes soaked in opium.
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For ten dollars you could get a vial of pure heroin about the size of
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say, maybe about that high, the size of a cigarette butt.
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And, you could get liquid opium, speed, acid, anything you wanted.
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If I wanted it, it was available.
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I could either have drugs, I could have a girl,
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or I could go to any part of town I wanted to.
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Now, let's say you can turn down a girl or you can turn down going to a bar.
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I mean, it, whatever the taxi driver said, offered you
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you couldn't turn down every one.
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I mean it was something he said that you were going to want.
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The only drugs I actually saw men taking was maybe smoking grass.
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A little marijuana on a three-day standout.
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Now, what I would do is when we came, when we came back
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for a three-day stand-down so to speak,
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or a three-day rest before going on another operation,
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I would just say to the men,"Look, go get drunk,
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do any...find a little Vietnamese girl,whatever you're gonna do.
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If you're gonna smoke a little dope, don't get caught,"
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you know. "If you do anything worse, don't come back,"
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you know. But they'd, they'd always show up on the third day straight.
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And, and, they frowned on drugs.
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My particular company, because they knew out in the field anybody
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that wasn't alert they could cost the other guy's life.
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In 1971, a Congressional study said that drugs in South Vietnam
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were "more plentiful than cigarettes and chewing gum."
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Another report estimated 30,000 American heroin addicts in the country.
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Narcotics were eroding discipline.
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Drug abuse, concluded an official survey, had become a "military problem."
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But the pusher don't care if you live or if you die -- Goddam."
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In 1969, more than 9,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam.
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Nixon aimed to reduce American casualties by Vietnamizing the war,
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letting the South Vietnamese do the fighting.
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In 1970, as U.S. troop withdrawals increased,
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American deaths dropped by more than one-half.
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All of the U.S. troops cannot be withdrawn in 1970.
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It will take many years.
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Ambassador Bunker, General Abrams, everyone have assured me
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that the U.S. people and U.S. Government will continue to stay, to mend,
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to help the Vietnamese people and army to defend the freedom in Vietnam.
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"Good morning Vietnam. Welcome to the time buster...Today is the day..."
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The total number of Americans in Vietnam continued to drop.
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But among new arrivals anti-war sentiments were spreading,
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morale was in decline.
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Vietnam gave the language a new term: "fragging."
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In more than 200 incidents during 1970, American troops tried to kill
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or wound their superiors using fragmentation grenades.
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After five years in Vietnam, America's armed forces had changed.
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I had an experience and I'll never forget it.
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00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:10,260
I went in, on payday and the commissaries,
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well really the PX over there are just mobbed.
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Everybody has their money for the month, and the lines are really long,
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and really rank has no privilege. Everybody stands on line.
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00:24:19,150 --> 00:24:25,880
I came in one time and there was a long line and we were all standing there
255
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and a couple of black guys came in and they walked in front of the line.
256
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So I said to the one fellow, I said,
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"Hey boy, you'll have to get back on the line."
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And I didn't mean it in the derogatory sense.
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Well, the guy went crazy.
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I mean, he started to yell at me, "Who are you calling 'boy'? I'm,"
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you know, "I'm no boy," and I don't remember exactly
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00:24:47,370 --> 00:24:49,900
all the things he said to me, but I said to him, "Gee,"
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I said, "look, I apologize." And, I was a captain and he was a PFC.
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I decided it was time to leave. He was really causing a scene.
265
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So I walked out the back door and the guy followed me.
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And I turned around to say, "Hey look, I'm sorry," and the guy hit me.
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I mean, he punched me.
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And, he was, I don't know, he was about 5'8", 5'9", 120 pounds.
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He couldn't have hurt me, but in my mind I said, this guy is a PFC.
270
00:25:15,150 --> 00:25:17,200
He just hit a captain. I mean, it wasn't him hitting me.
271
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It was the whole relationship that I'd grown up with.
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You know, enlisted men don't hit officers. I mean you go to jail for that.
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00:25:24,570 --> 00:25:30,630
The racial polarization was deeper there than I've ever seen.
274
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They had black sides of town, white sides of town.
275
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And even the Vietnamese accepted it.
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And woe to the white who walked in a black area unaccompanied, and vice-versa.
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Woe to the black who would walk into a white area of town unaccompanied.
278
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I just found myself isolating myself from the white soldiers and things.
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00:25:57,390 --> 00:26:01,130
As blacks we began to associate among ourselves.
280
00:26:01,170 --> 00:26:03,910
More so, we began to have political education classes.
281
00:26:03,940 --> 00:26:07,490
We began to come together to sit down to talk about, you know,
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00:26:07,530 --> 00:26:12,830
some of the problems that we was confronted with. Our, our commitment.
283
00:26:12,860 --> 00:26:15,880
For blacks such as myself, it was reading,
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00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:20,110
after reading Malcolm X and black history.
285
00:26:20,140 --> 00:26:26,510
Martin Luther King and other, other more black militants, Eldridge Cleaver, etc.
286
00:26:26,550 --> 00:26:35,230
It naturally led into a political reading, and I read Dr. Spock on Vietnam.
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00:26:35,260 --> 00:26:40,010
There was anti-war literature in Vietnam. Readily available.
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00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:43,110
A lot of guys felt that we shouldn't, you know,
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00:26:43,140 --> 00:26:47,440
risk our life or put our life on the line when there was a war back in America,
290
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:49,560
when we wasn't free, you know,
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00:26:49,590 --> 00:26:52,590
like when dogs were being turned on to our peoples,
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00:26:52,630 --> 00:26:55,040
young children were being bombed in churches.
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00:26:55,070 --> 00:26:57,690
It was very confusing.
294
00:26:57,730 --> 00:27:01,110
Most blacks still was, you know, very supportive.
295
00:27:01,140 --> 00:27:05,620
Most blacks was very supportive of the system, what they had to do.
296
00:27:05,660 --> 00:27:09,120
The closer they got to combat
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00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,590
-- the more blacks and whites needed each other --
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00:27:11,620 --> 00:27:13,370
the better they got along.
299
00:27:13,410 --> 00:27:17,160
"How many people here got a lot of soul? You got a lot of soul?""Yeah."
300
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:19,810
"Right on, right on."
301
00:27:28,430 --> 00:27:33,020
Bob Hope's 1970 Christmas show played to shrinking audiences.
302
00:27:35,550 --> 00:27:41,830
In two years, the U.S. force in Vietnam had been reduced by more than 300,000.
303
00:27:41,870 --> 00:27:43,310
I'm surprised to see you.
304
00:27:43,340 --> 00:27:45,920
Where were you fellows hiding when the withdrawals took place?
305
00:27:53,540 --> 00:27:58,130
In Saigon, demonstrators protested against the Thieu government.
306
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:01,110
Many favored an immediate peace.
307
00:28:03,370 --> 00:28:09,020
Others denounced corruption or sought to discredit the 1971 presidential election.
308
00:28:13,130 --> 00:28:17,950
Anxious to give South Vietnam a democratic image, American officials
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00:28:17,980 --> 00:28:21,480
searched for an anti-Communist contender to run against Thieu.
310
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:24,670
But Thieu stifled domestic opposition.
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00:28:26,830 --> 00:28:30,540
To Thieu, like his predecessors, the election was a means
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00:28:30,570 --> 00:28:33,890
to control the population and placate the Americans.
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00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,580
President Thieu declared that the election and his victory were
314
00:28:45,610 --> 00:28:49,310
an expression of civil rights in a free and democratic society.
315
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:58,790
The only effective opposition to Thieu was the Vietcong,
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00:28:58,820 --> 00:29:02,600
which now labeled itself the "Provisional Revolutionary Government."
317
00:29:02,630 --> 00:29:05,240
It was active in much of the countryside.
318
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:08,660
It would get to be about three thirty, four o'clock and people would say,
319
00:29:08,690 --> 00:29:10,260
you know, "It's getting late in the afternoon,
320
00:29:10,290 --> 00:29:12,680
you'd better go home because the government's going to change."
321
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:16,600
And literally, the Saigon government sort of closed up and went home
322
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:21,580
and the PRG people would come in, help the people,
323
00:29:21,620 --> 00:29:23,850
maybe even work at night,
324
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:29,180
you know, helping to sift the rice or put it in bags,
325
00:29:29,210 --> 00:29:32,620
talk to the people, bring them movies or just visit.
326
00:29:32,660 --> 00:29:37,200
They could because, of course, the PRG in the area were not,
327
00:29:37,230 --> 00:29:39,850
as people thought,North Vietnamese that had come south,
328
00:29:39,890 --> 00:29:42,550
but were really the people themselves.
329
00:29:42,590 --> 00:29:48,590
One of the things that was a problem for a foreign government coming in
330
00:29:48,630 --> 00:29:50,240
and trying to control an area
331
00:29:50,270 --> 00:29:54,040
where it was not popular was figuring out who,who was against the government.
332
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:57,860
Their way of solving it seemed to be
333
00:29:57,890 --> 00:30:01,360
to round up groups of people and interrogate them.
334
00:30:08,890 --> 00:30:13,700
Identifying subversives was part of a broader effort called "pacification,"
335
00:30:13,740 --> 00:30:16,700
always a key American strategy in Vietnam.
336
00:30:16,730 --> 00:30:23,750
In 1968, America's Central Intelligence Agency started the Phoenix program.
337
00:30:23,790 --> 00:30:28,550
Its teams scoured the countryside, rounding up Vietcong suspects.
338
00:30:30,970 --> 00:30:36,220
They're obviously much more valuable to you alive than dead, and therefore,
339
00:30:36,250 --> 00:30:40,170
the incentive was to capture them so that they could be interrogated,
340
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:42,290
so that we could learn more about them.
341
00:30:42,330 --> 00:30:46,890
Now, we also had a program of trying to invite these people to rally.
342
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:51,950
We'd put up posters in various parts of Vietnam with a picture
343
00:30:51,980 --> 00:30:56,440
of the individual and description of who he was. Wanted posters.
344
00:30:56,480 --> 00:30:59,550
Like the old Jesse James ones, but a little different
345
00:30:59,580 --> 00:31:02,860
because at the bottom of the poster it said very clearly:
346
00:31:02,900 --> 00:31:09,550
And Mr. James, if you will turn yourself in, you will be freed of any punishment
347
00:31:09,580 --> 00:31:13,070
for anything you may have done while you were on the other side.
348
00:31:13,100 --> 00:31:17,480
And, 17,000 of these people turned themselves in.
349
00:31:20,670 --> 00:31:25,190
In Cantho province, we organized a unit of Thien Nga -- wild geese --
350
00:31:25,230 --> 00:31:27,540
composed of young, beautiful high school girls.
351
00:31:27,580 --> 00:31:32,070
We infiltrated these girls into the local Communist apparatus,
352
00:31:32,100 --> 00:31:34,950
and they provided us with information on the Communists.
353
00:31:34,990 --> 00:31:37,680
During the time I served in Cantho,
354
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:41,060
almost all the Communist organizations were neutralized.
355
00:31:43,170 --> 00:31:46,330
The Phoenix program was managed by
356
00:31:46,370 --> 00:31:49,530
South Vietnamese operating with CIA advisers.
357
00:31:49,570 --> 00:31:53,440
Thousands of civilians -- men, women, and even children --
358
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:56,000
were classified as Vietcong suspects.
359
00:31:56,040 --> 00:32:00,480
The system relied on a network of informants and secret agents.
360
00:32:00,510 --> 00:32:04,440
Communist officials later conceded its effectiveness.
361
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:12,540
Criticism at the time prompted program managers to turn to public relations.
362
00:32:15,450 --> 00:32:20,330
For the news cameras, a search for a husband and wife team of Vietcong terrorists.
363
00:32:32,180 --> 00:32:36,770
Despite the public relations, reports of abuses persisted:
364
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:40,970
there were rumors of extortion, blackmail,
365
00:32:41,010 --> 00:32:43,920
private revenge, and political assassination.
366
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:52,430
Twenty thousand of the names that we had collected we found were killed.
367
00:32:52,470 --> 00:32:57,350
Now, it's on that basis that people have made totally false accusations
368
00:32:57,380 --> 00:33:01,200
that this was a program of assassination. Not true.
369
00:33:01,230 --> 00:33:06,380
What this was was that we had the names from our intelligence collection
370
00:33:06,420 --> 00:33:09,180
and when there was a battle outside the village some night,
371
00:33:09,220 --> 00:33:11,940
and people were killed on both sides.
372
00:33:11,970 --> 00:33:15,230
We went out in the morning to find out who had been killed on which side,
373
00:33:15,260 --> 00:33:20,700
and sure enough Mr. Nguyen who was down as the local guerrilla chief,
374
00:33:20,740 --> 00:33:25,300
he had been killed in that fight, but he certainly hadn't been assassinated.
375
00:33:25,330 --> 00:33:27,780
He had been killed in a military fight,
376
00:33:27,810 --> 00:33:30,510
but he hadn't rallied and he hadn't been captured.
377
00:33:30,550 --> 00:33:34,260
He'd been killed and so that was the phase used. Killed.
378
00:33:34,300 --> 00:33:40,370
The colonel who ran the province who was actually an engineering colonel,
379
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:44,750
created a contest throughout the province,
380
00:33:44,780 --> 00:33:48,620
and the contest was among the irregulars in the districts and that was,
381
00:33:48,660 --> 00:33:54,880
the team that could bring in the most bodies on a monthly basis
382
00:33:54,910 --> 00:33:58,550
would be given cash prizes to the groups.
383
00:33:58,590 --> 00:34:04,750
This just seemed to me totally out of line
384
00:34:04,790 --> 00:34:08,450
and I think that it increased the possibilities that many civilians
385
00:34:08,490 --> 00:34:11,730
were killed who had nothing to do with the war whatsoever.
386
00:34:11,770 --> 00:34:15,210
Now, I'm not going to say that there was nobody wrongfully killed
387
00:34:15,240 --> 00:34:19,520
in all of Vietnam during all the years of the Phoenix program,
388
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:24,180
but I do say that the purpose and the effect of the Phoenix program
389
00:34:24,210 --> 00:34:29,520
was to reduce and eliminate as far as possible the abuses
390
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:32,970
on the government, although not on the enemy side.
391
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:37,020
While we were having dinner one evening at our table
392
00:34:37,060 --> 00:34:38,320
-- there were five of us sitting in there --
393
00:34:38,350 --> 00:34:40,410
and we had an old French villa we lived in.
394
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:46,590
Well, these irregulars came in with a district village chief just,
395
00:34:46,620 --> 00:34:48,090
you know, covered in blood.
396
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:50,170
They obviously had just come back from a battle.
397
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:52,600
They had five or six weapons and they threw the weapons down.
398
00:34:52,630 --> 00:34:55,290
They were just disgusted with the whole situation.
399
00:34:55,330 --> 00:34:57,260
They were going to prove something. Came up.
400
00:34:57,290 --> 00:35:03,080
Threw a bag on the table and the bag had 11 ears in it.
401
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:05,340
And he just looked at us and he said,
402
00:35:05,370 --> 00:35:08,720
"You don't need the twelfth ear,"and walked out.
403
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:15,250
Some Americans now in the United States may misconstrue
404
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:17,920
that this Phoenix program was an extremely vicious program
405
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:20,920
designed to neutralize various Communists factions
406
00:35:20,950 --> 00:35:24,290
by means such as assassination and illegal arrests.
407
00:35:26,390 --> 00:35:30,090
However, the Phoenix program was an extremely effective program
408
00:35:30,130 --> 00:35:33,290
and one which enabled us to distinguish clearly between
409
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:37,490
nationalists and Communists by intelligence methods which we had organized.
410
00:35:39,540 --> 00:35:42,600
If you torture, you'll get what you want to hear
411
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,960
or you'll get something that the fellow invents.
412
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:51,100
If you're clever about your interrogation and use sophisticated systems,
413
00:35:51,130 --> 00:35:56,000
you'll learn what the truth is and you'll learn it without any abuse.
414
00:35:56,030 --> 00:36:00,460
Prisoners were held without trial in hundreds of jails
415
00:36:00,500 --> 00:36:03,010
and internment camps throughout South Vietnam.
416
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:17,160
There was no doubt whatsoever that the Americans were responsible,
417
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:21,010
I feel, for the entire prison system in the province where I worked.
418
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:23,570
The Vietnamese knew that.
419
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:28,380
You know, you, they saw all the results of what happened.
420
00:36:28,420 --> 00:36:32,630
They were chained to their bed with Smith and Wesson handcuffs.
421
00:36:32,670 --> 00:36:38,570
When they were tortured it was either by Americans in the latter sixties,
422
00:36:38,610 --> 00:36:41,880
or in the early seventies there would be American advisers there.
423
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:46,830
My first inkling that anything was going on that I had a problem with
424
00:36:46,870 --> 00:36:51,540
as hearing screams from next door and finding out
425
00:36:51,580 --> 00:36:53,070
that was their interrogation center
426
00:36:53,110 --> 00:36:56,290
and that the way they got their information from these people
427
00:36:56,320 --> 00:37:00,120
was with a crank telephone and wiring these people in various manners.
428
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:03,910
They had electric, you know, certain devices
429
00:37:03,950 --> 00:37:07,630
that gave them electrical shocks at the interrogation center
430
00:37:07,670 --> 00:37:10,770
and these electrodes were attached to sensitive parts of their bodies,
431
00:37:10,810 --> 00:37:14,700
and the women that were tortured by electricity were the ones
432
00:37:14,730 --> 00:37:16,440
that we saw having the seizures.
433
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:21,680
And I remember seeing this 67-year-old woman
434
00:37:21,710 --> 00:37:24,390
that was lying on a bare bed frame springs,
435
00:37:24,420 --> 00:37:27,240
and they had just put cardboard on the top of it with a hole cut in it
436
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:30,050
through which she was supposed to defecate and she had no clothes
437
00:37:30,090 --> 00:37:33,050
and just a blanket that the other prisoners had given her.
438
00:37:33,090 --> 00:37:37,070
She had been partially paralyzed
439
00:37:37,100 --> 00:37:40,470
because she had such a severe injury to her head.
440
00:37:40,500 --> 00:37:43,200
So, I guess that was one of my first impressions was,
441
00:37:43,230 --> 00:37:47,670
you know, the real horror of the, of the situation.
442
00:37:47,710 --> 00:37:49,900
I mean this old woman being treated like this
443
00:37:49,940 --> 00:37:53,550
and how could she possibly be dangerous to the government enough
444
00:37:53,580 --> 00:37:56,410
that they had to torture her into being paralyzed.
445
00:37:59,530 --> 00:38:06,920
Operation Wandering Soul. From helicopters came Vietnamese voices
446
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:09,480
pretending to be from beyond the grave.
447
00:38:09,510 --> 00:38:14,330
They called on their "descendents" in the Vietcong to defect, to cease fighting.
448
00:38:18,480 --> 00:38:21,770
Vietnam was deluged with propaganda.
449
00:38:21,810 --> 00:38:26,970
In some provinces up to a million leaflets a day were distributed, exhorting,
450
00:38:27,010 --> 00:38:31,490
cajoling or warning the peasants to back the government of South Vietnam.
451
00:38:40,130 --> 00:38:44,470
American V.I.P.s -- like Secretary of State William Rogers --
452
00:38:44,500 --> 00:38:47,930
regularly toured South Vietnam to observe the progress
453
00:38:47,970 --> 00:38:51,980
and repeated the official claims that pacification was working.
454
00:38:52,020 --> 00:38:56,390
But loyalty to the Saigon government was difficult to measure.
455
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:02,040
The Vietnamese that we were training were very responsive.
456
00:39:02,070 --> 00:39:04,150
They asked questions. They were very interested in,
457
00:39:04,190 --> 00:39:05,890
you know, in what was going on, and this, you know,
458
00:39:05,930 --> 00:39:08,090
made me feel good because, you know,
459
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:10,430
the standard rap on the South Vietnamese was that they,
460
00:39:10,470 --> 00:39:11,520
they just weren't interested.
461
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:14,240
They were lethargic and this particular group
462
00:39:14,270 --> 00:39:16,510
seemed like very involved in what was going on.
463
00:39:16,550 --> 00:39:19,970
So it made me feel good. It made me feel as if I was accomplishing something.
464
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:22,950
We put them through a six-week training program.
465
00:39:22,990 --> 00:39:28,130
At the end of the training program the province chief came down
466
00:39:28,170 --> 00:39:30,750
and there was a big graduation ceremony and they all got
467
00:39:30,780 --> 00:39:32,260
these little colorful neckerchiefs
468
00:39:32,290 --> 00:39:35,800
as sort of souvenirs of the whole thing and, you know.
469
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:39,190
It was like this whole sort of media publicity thing about how,
470
00:39:39,230 --> 00:39:41,170
you know, these people have been trained and everything.
471
00:39:41,210 --> 00:39:46,960
Then it was about a month after the training program was completed
472
00:39:46,990 --> 00:39:48,410
and this graduation ceremony happened
473
00:39:48,450 --> 00:39:53,560
that three NLF cadre came into the vill one night,
474
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:56,890
and all 29 of those people's self-defense forces that I trained
475
00:39:56,930 --> 00:39:58,470
walked off and joined the NLF,
476
00:39:58,500 --> 00:40:01,060
taking all their weapons and all their training with them.
477
00:40:03,190 --> 00:40:07,190
By 1971, South Vietnamese officials were claiming
478
00:40:07,230 --> 00:40:11,000
that the government had won over 95 percent of the population.
479
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,830
Pacification involved a lot of other programs.
480
00:40:14,860 --> 00:40:17,830
The development of the land reform program.
481
00:40:17,860 --> 00:40:21,850
The building of schools, the development of the whole refugee program
482
00:40:21,890 --> 00:40:24,710
and the resettlement of the refugees in the areas
483
00:40:24,750 --> 00:40:28,130
from which they had come and were now able to go back,
484
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:30,930
thanks to their having some local security.
485
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:36,190
Years of fighting had failed to topple the American-supported Saigon government.
486
00:40:36,220 --> 00:40:41,370
In March 1972, a dramatic change of strategy:
487
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:46,320
regular North Vietnamese units crossed the demilitarized zone in force.
488
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:55,610
This time they massed tanks and heavy artillery in an all-out offensive.
489
00:40:58,490 --> 00:41:01,820
The swift enemy advance left little time for retreat.
490
00:41:01,850 --> 00:41:07,380
Along Route One, American advisers had to blow up their headquarters.
491
00:41:10,020 --> 00:41:13,530
Taking their colors, and whatever else they could carry with them,
492
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:15,050
they escaped by air.
493
00:41:30,130 --> 00:41:32,370
In fact, we didn't know what was going on.
494
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:37,580
There were American advisers with the 56th regiment.
495
00:41:37,610 --> 00:41:40,210
But helicopters suddenly arrived and took them away,
496
00:41:40,240 --> 00:41:43,900
leaving behind our commander, who didn't know anything at all.
497
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:57,640
People called this road the "highway of terror."
498
00:41:57,670 --> 00:42:02,070
There were refugees every-where. Then Vietcong tanks came.
499
00:42:02,110 --> 00:42:06,520
We realized that we couldn't resist, and we fled toward the sea.
500
00:42:11,790 --> 00:42:16,540
Amid the retreat, several South Vietnamese army units stood and fought.
501
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:43,190
With no American combat troops to support them,
502
00:42:43,220 --> 00:42:46,720
the South Vietnamese army seemed to be fighting a losing battle.
503
00:42:46,750 --> 00:42:50,910
On May 1, the South Vietnamese were forced to surrender
504
00:42:50,950 --> 00:42:52,930
the province capital of Quangtri.
505
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:57,990
President Nixon reacted by mining Haiphong harbor
506
00:42:58,020 --> 00:43:01,120
and stepping up the bombing of North and South Vietnam.
507
00:43:04,220 --> 00:43:09,370
The Sounth Vietnamese air strike accidently hit women and children with naplam.
508
00:43:45,530 --> 00:43:47,970
The North Vietnamese offensive was blunted.
509
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:51,030
American equipment,massive American bombing
510
00:43:51,060 --> 00:43:54,460
(?)had improved South Vietnamese fighting for its mere difference
511
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,550
South Vietnamese troops prepared to counter-attack.
512
00:44:05,150 --> 00:44:08,330
With their northernmost province in Communist hands,
513
00:44:08,370 --> 00:44:12,930
outh Vietnamese tactics included amphibious landings behind enemy lines.
514
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:24,330
The U.S. Air Force and Navy provided air and artillery support.
515
00:44:28,580 --> 00:44:32,400
But now the ground war was left to the South Vietnamese.
516
00:44:56,750 --> 00:45:00,960
Stopping the northern offensive did not stop civilian panic.
517
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:04,520
People near the battle zone struggled desperately to get away.
518
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:08,710
South Vietnamese troops and their families who travelled with them
519
00:45:08,740 --> 00:45:10,470
battled for aircraft space.
520
00:45:52,830 --> 00:45:56,750
During and after the spring offensive, battles raged,
521
00:45:56,780 --> 00:46:00,790
not only in Quangtri province, but also in the Central Highlands,
522
00:46:00,830 --> 00:46:03,570
and in the Mekong delta far to the south.
523
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:12,480
Each week more than 3,000 northern soldiers moved south to join the fight.
524
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:30,990
The fighting in 1972 was the heaviest of the war.
525
00:46:31,030 --> 00:46:34,570
Forty thousand South Vietnamese soldiers died.
526
00:47:29,060 --> 00:47:32,190
The last enemy holdouts in the city of Quangtri
527
00:47:32,220 --> 00:47:36,040
finally surrendered on September 15, 1972.
528
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,450
That week, for the first time in seven years,
529
00:47:47,490 --> 00:47:49,730
there were no American battle deaths.
530
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:54,030
That week more than 5,000 Vietnamese died.
531
00:47:54,070 --> 00:47:57,110
The war had been Vietnamized.
532
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:03,930
Over Quangtri city, once home for 80,000 people,
533
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:06,800
the flag of South Vietnam flew again.
534
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:14,440
After this battle, we became masters of the situation again.
535
00:48:17,090 --> 00:48:19,780
The morale of all the soldiers seemed to be high.
536
00:48:23,410 --> 00:48:26,060
We seemed to be confident in the fighting ability of
537
00:48:26,100 --> 00:48:29,550
the South Vietnamese armed forces -- and in our own unit.
538
00:48:29,590 --> 00:48:33,950
We thought that, with continued American help
539
00:48:33,980 --> 00:48:37,390
and the support of people everywhere in the world who cherished freedom,
540
00:48:37,430 --> 00:48:40,770
we could defend a free South Vietnam by ourselves.
541
00:48:50,010 --> 00:48:53,240
Crowded Saigon had been spared the enemy offensive.
542
00:48:53,270 --> 00:48:58,090
Its population had become accustomed to the war.
543
00:49:03,100 --> 00:49:07,950
Then, on October 22, Henry Kissinger informed Thieu that
544
00:49:07,990 --> 00:49:11,340
the United States had reached a ceasefire agreement with North Vietnam.
545
00:49:11,380 --> 00:49:15,160
The agreement was to be initialed by October 31,
546
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:17,640
a week before the American election.
547
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:21,690
Under the agreement, northern troops could remain in the South,
548
00:49:21,690 --> 00:49:24,670
a concession that Thieu had always opposed.
549
00:49:28,900 --> 00:49:31,820
President Thieu refused to sign.
550
00:49:31,850 --> 00:49:35,620
He went on television and told the South Vietnamese to keep fighting.
551
00:49:42,930 --> 00:49:44,710
The war continued.
552
00:49:44,740 --> 00:49:48,780
Without Thieu's acquiescence, the agreement was impossible.
553
00:49:48,820 --> 00:49:51,260
Peace seemed far away.
554
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:03,820
But the South Vietnamese could not easily continue the war alone.
555
00:50:03,860 --> 00:50:07,290
The American troop withdrawal weakened the economy.
556
00:50:07,330 --> 00:50:11,590
Jobs were scarce. Inflation soared.
557
00:50:11,620 --> 00:50:17,020
Dollars were disappearing from a society based on the dollar.
558
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:30,160
The bars, the clubs and the hotels built for the American trade,
559
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:32,450
had seen more lucrative days.
560
00:50:40,090 --> 00:50:43,870
But South Vietnam still spent more on imported cosmetics
561
00:50:43,900 --> 00:50:47,000
and beauty aids than it earned from all its exports.
562
00:50:54,950 --> 00:50:57,870
Saigon beauty parlors still offered the Western look
563
00:50:57,910 --> 00:51:01,070
-- surgery to make Vietnamese eyes round.
564
00:51:03,010 --> 00:51:05,890
The Vietcong still exploded their bombs.
565
00:51:13,070 --> 00:51:18,720
As U.S. bombs fell on Hanoi and Haiphong, the remaining American troops
566
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:21,680
watched Bob Hope's last Vietnam Christmas show.
567
00:51:32,150 --> 00:51:35,890
At the time, Ambassador Bunker was urging Thieu
568
00:51:35,930 --> 00:51:38,790
to sign the agreement, to trust Nixon.
569
00:51:38,830 --> 00:51:43,020
Right after the Christmas bombings we were deluged with letters.
570
00:51:43,050 --> 00:51:46,080
Almost once every three or four days from Mr. Nixon,
571
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:51,140
care of Mr. Bunker or Mr. Haig that we, the South Vietnamese,
572
00:51:51,170 --> 00:51:53,750
should close ranks with the U.S.
573
00:51:53,780 --> 00:51:57,240
And, I remember on the 16th of January
574
00:51:57,280 --> 00:52:00,710
when Mr. Thieu gave his daughter away in a wedding,
575
00:52:00,740 --> 00:52:05,390
Mr. Bunker wanted to see him to communicate the latest letter from Nixon
576
00:52:05,430 --> 00:52:08,960
and that really angered Mr. Thieu. He say, on this day,
577
00:52:08,990 --> 00:52:11,670
the happiest day of my life, the most important day of my life,
578
00:52:11,700 --> 00:52:13,670
I'm still bothered, you know, with that.
579
00:52:13,700 --> 00:52:16,640
One day later, that's when the pressure came and say,
580
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:18,350
if you don't sign, we go alone.
581
00:52:18,380 --> 00:52:23,600
And, that's what the, that's when our political pragmatism dictate to us.
582
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:25,530
He say okay. You know,
583
00:52:25,570 --> 00:52:28,630
we're not going to be dumb enough to stand in front of a steam roller.
584
00:52:28,660 --> 00:52:35,550
America had viewed Vietnam as a crusade, as a challenge,
585
00:52:35,590 --> 00:52:38,080
and finally as a burden.
586
00:52:38,110 --> 00:52:42,370
Now like the Chinese, Japanese, and French before them,
587
00:52:42,410 --> 00:52:44,610
the Americans were leaving.
588
00:52:54,550 --> 00:52:59,690
The Vietnamese couldn't think in terms of the Americans intervening
589
00:52:59,730 --> 00:53:04,300
in some-thing and not succeeding,and so it is a kind of blind trust
590
00:53:04,330 --> 00:53:10,380
that the South Vietnamese wrongly or rightly put into the Americans.
591
00:53:10,410 --> 00:53:12,840
They couldn't think that the Americans
592
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:15,800
once having committed their troops in Vietnam,
593
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:18,200
having spent so much money in Vietnam
594
00:53:18,240 --> 00:53:24,470
could one of these days leave everything behind and call it quits.
56113
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