The Vietnam War, an Audio History

Known as a proxy war of the Cold War Era, the Vietnam War lasted nearly 20 years from November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975.  This was a war between Communist backed North Vietnam and the Anti-Communist backed South Vietnam.  By 1973, direct United States involvement had ended.  But, there were speeds into other parts of Southeast Asia resulting in a Laotian Civil War and a Cambodian Civil War.  All three regions fell to the communists in 1976.

In 1954, President Eisenhower held a press conference and he was asked about the spread of communism throughout the world.  Ike explained it in terms of a domino  theory, which at the time was a theory when communism would take over Indochins which in turn would lead other Asian countries to follow suit.  Secretary of State John Foster Dulles also stated at the same time that 80 percent of the people of Vietnam had voted overwhelmingly for Ho Chi Minh; which raises the question nearly 70 years after that election and 60 years after the American people fought in a war for the 20 percent who did not vote for Ho Chi Minh.

So three days before he left office in 1961, President Eisenhower in his Farewell Speech warned the American people of something he called the Military Industrial Complex.  Some believe that while there were 400 American casualties in Vietnam by November 1963; President Kennedy wanted to get Americans out of Vietnam by the end of 1965.  But that would all change in November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

For eight months after the assassination, President Johnson was focusing mostly on Kennedy's civil rights policy, but by August 1964, there was an incident known as the Gulf of Tonkin.  To prove how times have changed in 60 years; LBJ had sought the advice of the Republican Party's presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater on a speech Johnson was to deliver on the Gulf of Tonkin that evening.

So Lyndon Johnson went on to defeat Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential Election on a campaign of "Let us continue."  But, this campaign elevated Former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to the United States Senate and not only was he not a personal fan of President Johnson, but he was the only member of the Kennedy administration who helped draft a Vietnam policy serving in the United States Senate.

So as the 1960s and the war progressed, many college students and young men of draft age, but not voting age began questioning the United States' presence in the war.  Mostly, it was kids who were not wealthy, or who were not going to school, or not married and had children who were drafted.  If you look at the presidents and presidential and vice presidential candidates: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, Jack Kemp, Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards.  There were those who did serve but did not become president: Al Gore, John Kerry, John McCain, and James Stockdale.  

So in 1967, with President Johnson vulnerable in the upcoming Presidential Election of 1968; Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota decided to challenge President Johnson for the Democratic Presidential Nomination as the anti-war candidate.  Many college students waited for Bobby Kennedy, but he feared going into 1968 as being opportunistic challenging the incumbent.  RFK had intention of waiting to run for President in 1972.  He had his chance, but the college kids went for McCarthy.

All of this changed on March 12, 1968 when in the New Hampshire Democratic Party Primary Senator McCarthy finished in a respectable second place showing against President Johnson.  Four days later, Senator (Robert) Kennedy announced his candidacy for president knowing that he entered too late to run in several primaries.  He made public his support and urged his supporters to vote for Senator McCarthy over President Johnson in those primary elections he was too late in entering.

Then, on March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation on negotiating bombing halts in Vietnam, followed by something no one had expected…"I do not believe that I should devote an hour or day of my time to the personal, partisan causes that are developing in this political year other than the awesome duties of this office, the presidency of your country…Accordingly; I shall not seek and I will not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my Party for another term as your  president."  It was a whole new political ball game with Lyndon Johnson out and Vice President Hubert Humphrey in.

Like Kennedy, Humphrey visited colleges and universities around the nation, but unlike Kennedy giving speeches at Ball State and Vanderbilt; Humphrey would go to Marshall University and Kent State University.  Ironically, Vice President Humphrey visited Kent State on May 3, 1968; two years and one day before the infamous May 4, 1970 shooting.

But after the assassination of Senator (Robert) Kennedy in June 1968, the Democratic Party fell into disarray.  You still had Senator Gene McCathy running as the anti-war candidate and you had Vice President Humphrey representing the establishment.  That left the question of who would be the late Senator Kennedy's understudy at the Convention in Chicago.  Some thought it only right that Senator Ted Kennedy fill his brother's shoes and some looked to Senator George McGovern.

In the end, after a tumultuous Democratic National Convention; both inside and outside of the convention hall; Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Ed Muskie of Maine would be the Democratic Party's nominees to go up against Former Vice President Richard Nixon and Governor Spiro Agnew, and Former Governor George Wallace and General Curtis LeMay for the presidency and the vice presidency in 1968.

After the nominees were decided, LBJ thought it would be a good idea to have a conference all with the three presidential candidates about the possible bombing halt agreements taking place between the United States and North and South Vietnam.  President Johnson told the candidates what can and cannot be said, and by the end of October 1968, the President got word that Former Vice President Nixon had gone secretly to the negotiators and ask that they hold off on peace talks until after the Election because he had a better plan to end the war in Vietnam.  It was very much in line with what 12 years later in 1980 when Former Governor Reagan went to Iran late in the Presidential Election of 1980 and asked that they hold off until after the Election to free the hostages in Iran.  But back to 1968, President Johnson bluntly told the Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, R-IL that what Nixon did was treason, to which Dirksen replied, "I know."

In the end, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew won 301 Electoral Votes; thus winning the presidency to Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie's 191 Electoral Votes and George Wallace and Curtis LeMay's 46 votes.  Percentagewise this Election was just as close as the Presidential Election in 1960 when then Vice President Nixon lost to Senator John F. Kennedy.

As the Nixon administration was nearing the end of its first year, the President went before the American people to explain his position in regards to the Vietnam War.  This was known as the Silent Majority.  Then, a month later, a draft lottery was imposed for young American men starting at age 19.

On April 20, 1970, President Nixon went before the American people to address that after five years of war, there was light at the end of the tunnel.  The president addressed his plan to withdraw 150,000 American troops from Vietnam by the spring of 1971.  This had to be a very satisfying thing for both the American people and for President Nixon.

Then, ten days later, on April 30, 1970 President Nixon went before the American people, but this time the news was grim.  President Nixon would be expanding the war in Vietnam into Cambodia.  As Pat Buchanan, a young Nixon staffer said in 2015, the President had called Buchanan into the Oval Office on April 26 to tell him that the United States was going into Cambodia.  The President believed that the Vietcong had privileged sanctuaries filled with food and ammunition hidden there and he was not going to be the first American president to lose a war.

In that April 30th address the President addressed rioting on college campuses and what their behavior should be.  Governor Ronald Reagan of California on May 1, 1970 went so far as to say that of the students get out of line maybe there should be bloodshed.  And of course, that very weekend, students from colleges and universities all over the United States spoke out in response to the Cambodian expansion.

The most infamous action on a college campus did not happen at Harvard on the east coast, not even Berkeley on the west coast, No it was in a middle American university in Kent, Ohio, a college town in Northeast Ohio called Kent State University.  Kent State was not Ivy League or even Big Ten, but Mid American Conference where the children of union rubber workers in Akron and the union steel workers in Canton and Youngstown went to get an education for $1500.00 a year at the time.

On Friday, May 1, 1970, the Kent State campus held a rally just before noon where students buried a copy of the United States Constitution citing the murder of democracy by Richard Nixon.  Later that night, the downtown area on Water Street erupted in violence as a rioter threw a Stroh's beer bottle at a Kent City Police car.  There were 47 plate glass windows; mostly storefronts of small businesses were smashed with estimated damage being $200.00 each.

Because of the riots that took place, newly elected mayor LeRoy Satrom imposed on May 2, 1970 eight o'clock pm curfew for the townspeople.  There was no curfew imposed for the students on the Kent State campus.  Earlier that Saturday, Mayor Satrom had called Columbus by five o'clock pm requesting that Governor James A. Rhodes send the Ohio National Guard to Kent.  There was a company of the Guard in nearby Akron who had been called in since April 29, 1970 to handle a Teamsters' strike.  As the National Guard rolled into Kent the students had burned down the ROTC Building on the campus and had cut the fire hoses of the Kent and Ravenna City Fire Departments.  The campus was now under military occupation.

On May 3, 1970, Governor Rhodes, who was trailing Congressman Robert Taft, Jr. in the Republican Primary for the US Senate in May 5, 1970 came to Kent to survey the damage and to give a press conference.  Rhodes expressed more concern for the safety of the public buildings paid for by the tax payers of the state of Ohio than for the personal safety of the students of Kent State and an exhausted National Guard.  The governor was really touring the law and order platform for Tuesday's Primary Election.  Everything was relatively quiet that Sunday afternoon, but in the evening the students had violated to mayor's eight o'clock pm curfew by sitting down on a sidewalk 30 feet into town.  The students, thinking that they had a curfew on the campus at one o'clock am were told that the curfew had been pushed up to eleven o'clock pm.  The students were given five minutes to get back onto campus, but after one minute the Guard rushed them and teargas began to fall from the sky.

May 4, 1970 started with plans for a noon rally which the students had no idea the governor declared all outdoor activities illegal.  There was no signed proclamation from Governor Rhodes.  The students assembled on the Commons as planned while a Jeep drove across declaring that the rally was an illegal assembly.  The students refused to disperse and so teargas was volleyed into the crowd.  The students threw the canisters right back at the National Guard, along with bricks and rocks as the National Guard pointing M1 rifles with bayonets affixed to them marched towards the students.  Then, at 12:24PM, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on the unarmed students, firing 67 rounds of ammunition in 13 seconds.  Four students were killed and nine more were wounded.

Kent State was an event that brought the war home.  As for Governor Rhodes, he lost his election on May 5, 1970, losing to Bob Taft, Jr. by 1.5 percent of the vote.  Before the Kent State Shootings, Governor Rhodes was losing to Congressman Taft by eight percent.  After the shooting, Rhodes' support increased by 6.5 percent.

By 1972, Richard Nixon was running for re-election against Senator George McGovern.  Ever since Kent State and later the Hard Hat Riots in New York City, traditional Democratic voters, that great silent majority that President Nixon spoke of; those who supported Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman because they were for the working man started to change their more traditional views when it came to the younger generation and in particularly the Vietnam War.  Because of this shift, President Nixon and Vice President Agnew won 520 Electoral Votes to Senator George McGovern and Sargent Shriver's 17 Electoral Votes.

Three days after the Inauguration in 1973, a peace agreement was reached in Paris and major combat campaigns involving the United States military were pretty much over.  The draft had also been ended in 1973, and by April 30, 1975, Saigon fell to the North Vietnam communists.

Vietnam was still a hot button issue for decades to come.  Jimmy Carter, on his first full day as president in 1977 pardoned all draft evaders.  By 1992, the United States would see the first of six candidates old enough to have served in Vietnam run for president.  Bill Clinton suffered a controversy early in the Democratic Primary about a letter he had written in regards to obtaining a draft deferment during the late 1960s as he was going to school.  The other issue was the accusation by George HW Bush about a young Bill Clinton while at Oxford visited Moscow, Russia in 1969/1970 and organized an anti-war rally on foreign soil against the United States.  In later years; two Vietnam Era veterans; John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008 would run for President with both losing their contests against George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  And most recently, President Joe Biden had made a deal with Vietnam at the 2023 G20 Summit to normalize relations to bring about a more accessible world through the Trans Pacific Partnership.

This collection is dedicated to the memory of the 58,220 Americans killed in Vietnam as well as the brave Americans who fought in that war. Thank you for your service.

See also:

• American Forces Vietnam Network Recordings
• Presidential Eavesdropping
• John F. Kennedy Recordings
• Lyndon B. Johnson Recordings
• Hubert Humphrey Recordings
• Robert F. Kennedy Recordings (Bobby Kennedy) 
• Richard Nixon Recordings
• George McGovern Recordings
• Gerald Ford Recordings
• Presidential Election 1968
• Kent State Shootings
• Presidential Election 1972
• John Kerry Recordings
• John McCain Recordings