The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  Though most Americans applauded his bold initiatives, Nixon braced for a “revolt” by former allies on the right who thought he had betrayed them by visiting China, concluding arms control treaties that allowed the Soviet Union to gain nuclear parity, pulling most U.S. troops out of Vietnam, taking the United States off the gold standard, imposing wage and price controls, and embracing Keynesian economics. They were also upset that he had established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), endorsed a guaranteed annual income for all families, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and Endangered Species Act, and strengthened the Voting Rights Act.

  Opponents of détente and arms control struck back, spurred by former RAND nuclear expert Albert Wohlstetter. Applying game theory and systems analysis to defense policy, Wohlstetter based his projections not on what the Soviets were likely to do but on what they were capable of doing—no matter how irrational or self-destructive. He worried that SAC bombers and ICBMs might be vulnerable to a surprise Soviet nuclear attack and supported the deployment of an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system to defend them. McNamara had dropped plans to build a large-scale ABM system when he learned that defensive weapons cost five times as much as the missiles they protected against and could be easily overwhelmed by sending more ICBMs. Scientists throughout the country mobilized in opposition to ABM, which they believed expensive, unnecessary, unworkable, and likely to further propel the arms race. McNamara knew that the U.S. deterrent was more than adequate. When he declared in 1964 that a 400-megaton nuclear force would be enough to destroy the Soviet Union, the U.S. stockpile was already 42.5 times that size and growing rapidly.

  Wohlstetter and veteran hawk Paul Nitze formed the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy and set out to defeat the ABM treaty. They recruited Richard Perle, Edward Luttwak, Peter Wilson, and Paul Wolfowitz. One committee enthusiast, Dean Acheson, anointed them “our four musketeers.”96 Wilson and Wolfowitz had studied with Wohlstetter at the University of Chicago, where he taught political science. Perle had become a disciple while still in high school.

  Following the unsuccessful effort to stop the ABM treaty, Perle took a job with Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s powerful Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Operating from what was known as “the Bunker,” Jackson’s foreign policy team would eventually include a gaggle of leading neoconservatives. Jackson and his acolytes bristled at the fact that the SALT treaty allowed the Soviets a temporary advantage in the number of missiles and in missile throw weight. They ignored the fact that the United States had significant advantages in terms of both numbers of nuclear warheads and technology. The United States also had a three-to-one advantage in bombers. Jackson charged U.S. negotiators with having “caved in” to their Soviet counterparts. He attached an amendment to the SALT treaty stipulating that no future treaty could permit the United States anything less than numerical parity in any category of weapons. Jackson pressured the White House into firing a quarter of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) staff, including a dozen people involved in SALT negotiations. The new, more conservative head of the ACDA, Fred Ikle, recruited Wolfowitz to fill one of the vacancies. In 1974, Jackson’s allies passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which denied trade benefits to any Communist nation that restricted citizens’ rights to emigrate freely. Kissinger was furious, claiming that the amendment had “blighted U.S.-Soviet relations ever after,” which was just what Jackson, Perle, and company wanted.97

  In June 1971, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s secret history of the Vietnam War, showing that the government had systematically lied to the public about Vietnam for years. RAND analyst Daniel Ellsberg was one of the few people to have had access to the study in the summer of 1969. The more he read of the history of the French and then U.S. invasions, the more he understood the moral indefensibility of U.S. policy. By September 1969, he had drawn several key conclusions: The war had been “an American war almost from the beginning.” It was a “struggle of Vietnamese . . . against American policy and American financing, proxies, technicians, firepower, and finally, troops and pilots.” It was only U.S. money, weapons, and manpower that had kept the political violence at the scale of a “war” since 1954. And, most significantly, he understood that

  It was no more a “civil war” after 1955 or 1960 than it had been during the U.S.-supported French attempt at colonial reconquest. A war in which one side was entirely equipped and paid by a foreign power—which dictated the nature of the local regime in its own interest—was not a civil war. To say that we had “interfered” in what is “really a civil war,” as most American academic writers and even liberal critics of the war do to this day, simply screened a more painful reality and was as much a myth as the earlier official one of “aggression from the North.” In terms of the UN Charter and of our own avowed ideals, it was a war of foreign aggression, American aggression.

  Ellsberg recalled his former Pentagon boss John McNaughton telling RAND researchers that “if what you say is true, we’re fighting on the wrong side.” Ellsberg realized that stating it that way had “missed the reality since 1954. We were the wrong side.” Therefore, in his mind, the war was a “crime,” an “evil,” “mass murder.” And he knew that Nixon was lying about ending it. In fact, through his bombing policy, Nixon was showing the North that there were no limits to what he was willing to do to achieve “victory.”98

  Inspired by the example of young activists who chose to go to prison to protest the war and increasingly desperate to end the bloodshed, Ellsberg photocopied the forty-seven-volume McNamara study. He then tried to convince several senators to enter the study into the public record. When that failed, he went to Neil Sheehan of the New York Times. On Sunday, June 13, 1971, the Times published the first installment of the Pentagon Papers. On June 15, the Justice Department filed for an injunction in Federal District Court in New York. The judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Times. Such an action was unprecedented. An injunction had never before been used to stop the presses in the United States.

  To circumvent the injunction, Ellsberg then gave the documents to the Washington Post, which took up where the Times left off until it too was blocked. But, anticipating that, Ellsberg had gotten copies to seventeen other newspapers. After the Post was enjoined, excerpts appeared in the Boston Globe and then the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In all, nineteen newspapers printed sections of the papers. Meanwhile, the FBI conducted a thirteen-day manhunt to try to find Ellsberg, who had gone into hiding. The Detroit News interviewed Ellsberg’s father, a Republican who had twice voted for Nixon. The elder Ellsberg proudly defended his son’s actions: “Daniel gave up everything to devote himself to ending that foolish slaughter. . . . If he did give them that report, and if the government accuses him of some crime . . . well, he might be saving some boys they’d have sent there otherwise.”99

  On June 28, Ellsberg surrendered to the authorities. As he walked toward the federal building, a reporter asked, “How do you feel about going to prison?” Ellsberg replied, “Wouldn’t you go to jail to help end the war?”100 On June 29, Alaska Democratic Senator Mike Gravel tried unsuccessfully to read the papers on the floor of Congress, but he later managed to read them into the record in a hastily called evening subcommittee session. He also distributed a large number of unpublished top secret documents to reporters. The following day, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Times, releasing the Times and Post to resume publication. Ellsberg, however, was indicted on criminal felony charges and faced 115 years in prison.

  Nixon actually welcomed the leaks showing years of lies about Vietnam by Democratic administrations. He salivated at the thought of leaking more documents exposing Kennedy’s involvement in the Diem assassination. Kissinger called it a “gold mine,” but when he hesitated to undertake the leaking himself, Nixon instructed Charles Colson to do so.

  Nixon
and Kissinger decided to destroy Ellsberg. Kissinger told Nixon, “Daniel Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in America today. He must be stopped at all costs.” In late July, Kissinger railed against Ellsberg to Nixon: “that son of a bitch—First of all, I would expect—I know him well. . . . I am sure he has some more information. . . . I would bet that he has more information that he’s saving for the trial. Examples of U.S. war crimes that triggered him into it.”101

  Having come to understand the moral indefensibility of the Vietnam War and infuriated by the profusion of official lies, RAND analyst Daniel Ellsberg photocopied the forty-seven-volume Pentagon Papers and released them to the New York Times and eighteen other newspapers. Indicted on criminal felony charges, Ellsberg faced 115 years in prison.

  In July, Nixon approved establishing a White House Special Investigations Unit. Former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy and former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt were brought in to help run things. They hung a “Plumbers” sign on their door and set out to plug the leaks. In September, they broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in hopes of finding something to use to silence him before he could release documents Nixon thought he had revealing Nixon’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Coming up empty with that break-in, they made further plans to silence Ellsberg, unleashing a wave of dirty tricks and criminal activities that would eventually bring multiple indictments and Nixon’s ignominious resignation.

  Hanoi’s spring 1972 offensive pulverized the South Vietnamese army. Desperate to avoid defeat before the election, Nixon contemplated measures so extreme that even Kissinger objected. “. . . power plants . . . the docks . . . And, I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?” Nixon asked. “About two hundred thousand people,” Kissinger informed him. “No, no, no . . . I’d rather use the nuclear bomb,” Nixon asserted. Kissinger hesitated, “That, I think, would just be too much.” “The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?” Nixon asked, “I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.”102

  Nixon bombed North Vietnamese cities for the first time since 1968 as well as sites throughout the South and mined Haiphong. He wanted Hanoi to be “bombed to smithereens,” declaring that the “bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time.”103 Civilian casualties soared. Nixon felt no remorse, telling Kissinger, “The only place where you and I disagree . . . is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about the civilians and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.” Kissinger assured Nixon that his restraint was based on political calculations, not humanitarian ones: “I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.”104

  In October, the stalled Paris talks suddenly revived. Kissinger announced, “Peace is at hand.”105 But after winning reelection, Nixon unleashed a massive twelve-day “Christmas bombing” campaign against Hanoi and Haiphong—the heaviest bombing of the war. The international outcry was deafening. Peace talks resumed. On January 23, Nixon announced an agreement that would “end the war and bring peace with honor.”106 The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27. The United States ceased military activities, and the last U.S. troops departed on March 29, 1973. Approximately 150,000 North Vietnamese soldiers remained in the South, though they were to respect the cease-fire. Thieu would retain power pending the results of elections in which all would participate. But in fact he made no effort to hold such elections. Nixon assuaged Thieu by increasing the already massive military support and promising to restart the bombing if the Communists attempted a new offensive.

  In April, within weeks of the U.S. troops’ departure, Nixon and Kissinger ordered a resumption of bombing in both the North and the South—bombing more intense than at any previous point in the war. The order was rescinded, Time magazine reported, when Nixon learned of John Dean’s damning revelations to Watergate prosecutors. Nixon decided not to inflame public opinion by bombing at the same time he was preparing to battle Congress, a determination he would make for the rest of his time in office.

  The war dragged on for two more years. On April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese seized Saigon. The war was finally over. By its end, the United States had dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than had been dropped by all sides in all previous wars throughout history—three times as many explosives as were dropped by all sides in World War II. Unexploded ordnance blanketed the countryside. Nineteen million gallons of herbicide poisoned the environment. In the South, the United States had destroyed 9,000 of the 15,000 hamlets. In the North, it had rained destruction on all six industrial cities, leveling 28 of 30 provincial towns and 96 of 116 district towns. Le Duan, who took over the leadership of North Vietnam when Ho died in 1969, told a visiting journalist that the United States had threatened to use nuclear weapons on thirteen different occasions. The war’s human toll was staggering. More than 58,000 Americans had died in the fighting. But that paled in comparison to the number of Vietnamese killed and wounded. Robert McNamara would later tell students at American University that 3.8 million Vietnamese had died.107

  The horrors of Cambodia exceeded those of Vietnam. In December 1972, Nixon instructed Kissinger, “I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?”108

  Kissinger conveyed the orders to his assistant General Alexander Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?”109

  The bombing continued until August 15, 1973, when Congress cut funding for the war. More than 100,000 sites were hit with more than 3 million tons of ordnance. The attacks left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. The Cambodian economy lay in tatters. Inflation skyrocketed, especially food prices. Production dwindled. Rice production was barely one-sixth of prewar levels. Starvation was rampant. Not everyone suffered, though; the elite frolicked in opulence and splendor. Refugees flooded into Phnom Penh, creating a humanitarian crisis. Approximately 95 percent of all income came from the United States. By early 1974, U.S. humanitarian aid totaled $2.5 million compared with $516.5 million in military aid.

  The Khmer Rouge, which had been a weak force prior to the bombing, used those atrocities to recruit in the same way that others would later use U.S. atrocities to recruit in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Khmer Rouge officer Chhit Do:

  Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched. . . . The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on cooperating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them. . . . Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge.110

  The Khmer Rouge grew exponentially. Terrifying reports circulated of the fanaticism of its young cadre. In 1975, it seized power. It wasted little time in unleashing new horrors against its own people, leading to a genocide in which more than 1.5 million people perished on top of the half million or so who had been killed in the U.S. phase of the war. The United States, given its new alliance with China, Cambodia’s principal ally, maintained friendly relations with the brutal Pol Pot regime. In late 1975, Kissinger told the Thai foreign minister, “You should . . . tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way.”111

  Fortunately, Hanoi did not turn a blind eye. In 1978, it tried to spark the Cambodians to rise up against a government Vietnamese leaders described as “the most disgusting murderers in the latter
half of this century.” Vietnam invaded that year, eventually toppling Pol Pot’s heinous regime. The Vietnamese reported, “In Cambodia, a former island of peace . . . no one smiles today. Now the land is soaked with blood and tears. . . . Cambodia is hell on earth.”112 Perhaps a quarter of Cambodia’s population died during the Khmer Rouge’s brief rule.

  If the United States did not wreak similar devastation on Laos, it was not for lack of trying. The United States had been “secretly” bombing Laos since 1964. It was no secret to the Laotians. Starting in 1967, the pace of the bombing picked up. Civilian suffering increased. When Nixon took over, all restraints were removed. Belgian UN advisor Georges Chapelier detailed the situation on the basis of interviews with survivors:

  Prior to 1967, bombing was light and far from populated centers. By 1968 the intensity of the bombings was such that no organized life was possible in the villages. The villages moved to the outskirts and then deeper and deeper into the forest as the bombing climax reached its peak in 1969 when jet planes came daily and destroyed all stationary structures. Nothing was left standing. The villagers lived in trenches and holes or in caves. They only farmed at night. All of the interlocutors, without any exception, had his village completely destroyed. In the last phase, bombings were aimed at the systematic destruction of the material basis of the civilian society. Harvest burned down and rice became scarce.113

  Between 1965 and 1973, the United States dropped 2,756,941 tons of ordnance in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites.

  The Pathet Lao–controlled Plain of Jars region was one of the areas that took the brunt of the U.S. offensive. Most of the young left to join the Pathet Lao. U.S.-allied Meo soldiers evacuated the remaining villagers. By September 1969, the area was largely deserted. Fred Branfman, who interviewed more than a thousand refugees, wrote, “after a recorded history of seven hundred years, the Plain of Jars disappeared.” Much of Laos suffered a similar fate.114