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FREDRIK: In late '67, as Johnson is insisting on
good news being presented to the American people,
General Westmoreland says,
"We have reached an important moment
when the end begins to come into view."
GEN. WESTMORELAND: The enemy cannot win now in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese are planning
what becomes known as the Tet Offensive,
a massive series of attacks throughout South Vietnam
designed to ultimately topple the South Vietnamese government,
to cause an uprising on the part of the populace
and to end the war on Communist terms.
LIEN-HANG: Le Duan believed that by simultaneously
attacking the cities and towns across South Vietnam
with main force units
that it would be powerful enough to inspire the masses
to rise up and topple the Saigon regime once and for all.
So this was how Vietnamese Communist troops
would win in short order.
Ho Chi Minh and General Giap did not believe
that the strategy should be implemented in the time,
the manner that Le Duan saw fit.
They always believed that Le Duan's strategy
was always just too risky.
And it risked losing all the gains made at that point
by the Communist army.
So that was the disagreement in 1967.
Le Duan, using the powers of his police state,
arrested all of his enemies.
All of this was to send a signal, send a sign
to Ho Chi Minh and General Giap, who could not be arrested,
to quit their oppositions to Le Duan's decisions
and his strategy.
Le Duan prevailed.
JAMES: The North Vietnamese were pretty smart.
They launch a preliminary attack at Khe Sanh on January 21st,
even while basically 80,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
are positioning themselves for what becomes the Tet Offensive.
JEFF: I went to Khe Sanh in December.
On the 20th of January is when all hell broke loose,
and they attacked both 861 and the base in full strength
with this enormous artillery barrage,
cut the road and basically cut the base off.
The actual "siege" was about two months.
I think there were roughly 6,000 Marines at the base,
and there were roughly 40,000 NVA surrounding us.
They had this enormous advantage
in terms of artillery and so forth,
and they were just slamming the base every day.
The advantage we had that for example the French didn't have
at Dien Bien Phu was air power.
As the siege went on and the weather got better,
that air power just decimated these guys.
MAI: When the Communists launched a country-wide attack
called the Tet Offensive in 1968,
the Americans launched a ferocious counterattack
and drove the commoners from all the cities and towns
they had occupied.
DEVIER: Tet had an enormous psychological effect,
more of a psychological effect than a military effect.
WALTER CRONKITE: To say that we are closer to victory today
is to believe in the face of the evidence
the optimists who have been wrong in the past.
To suggest we are on the edge of defeat
is to yield to unreasonable pessimism.
To say that we are mired in stalemate
seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory conclusion.
Johnson said something to effect of,
if we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost the country.
MAI: The message of the Tet Offensive
to the American administration and to the American people is,
yes, unless you continue, not only continue at this level
but unless you sink more into this war,
you're not going to win.
So there was two different perceptions, really, in Vietnam
and in the United States.
DEVIER: March was a very dramatic month.
Clark Clifford, when he became Secretary of Defense,
was one of the two men who were deeply involved
and really led that effort to push the President
to reconsider some of these positions.
The other was my great friend and colleague, Harry McPherson,
who was then chief speechwriter for the President.
Clifford was asked to report on his trip to Vietnam.
He said, "We have three alternatives. One is
to extend our troop commitment to roughly a million men."
No one wanted to do that.
Second was to concentrate our troops
in highly populated, other critical areas.
Nobody wanted to do that.
And the third is to begin a staged withdrawal.
Clifford was doing an adroit lawyer's trick, really:
to put on the table this issue,
and he did it in the context of two obviously
unattractive options, leaving only withdrawal.
Harry wrote, at the President's request,
a hawkish speech and a dovish speech.
For a while, the President was working with the hawkish speech,
and then he called and said,
"Now make these additions to Speech B,"
which was the dovish speech.
And Harry called Clark Clifford and said, "We have prevailed."
FREDRIK: Tet represented a defeat for Lyndon Johnson.
In the aftermath of Tet, he comes to a decision
that, just as he feared, Vietnam has been his undoing.
Just as he feared, he's politically defeated,
in many respects.
He makes the decision that he's not going to run
for reelection in 1968.
PRES. JOHNSON: I shall not seek, and I will not accept,
the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
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