I’ve listened to all of the released phone conversation tapes that are extent from the library, the LBJ library, thus far. President, I will take you to your helicopter.” He said, “Son, they are all my helicopters.” Īnd, Jack, you and I have spent some time at the other library as they call it out in Austin. It brings to mind the great story as President Johnson was being escorted out to his chopper and a military aide said, “Mr. WILLIAMS: Jack Valenti, here we are at that Kennedy Library and yet the photo on the front of the brochure, advertising this event, “Vietnam and the Presidency,” is of your boss watching an armada of helicopters approach. But it never raised to the level of the other major crises confronting the Kennedy administration and there were plenty of them. I don’t want to minimize its seriousness. The Viet Cong were a disorganized guerilla group. There was no pitch to war with North Vietnam yet. The fact is Vietnam was a low level insurrection at that time. But you’ve said nothing so far about Southeast Asia.” Because I said, “The other major issues facing this presidency, such as the ones I just mentioned, have all been the subject of a presidential address. I even have a memorandum I wrote to President Kennedy at the end of, nearing the end of his first year in office in 1961, in which I am asking him whether the time is coming when he wants to go on national television and talk about Southeast Asia. The Soviet Union- One might even say the United Nations, nuclear testing, a number of other issues. The truth of the matter the war in Vietnam was not central to the foreign policy of the President Kennedy.īerlin was central. But in one sense the premise of this conference when it says in the brochure that the war in Vietnam was central to the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and so on down the line. So I’m sure with hindsight it is easier to point out errors of commission and omission with respect to Vietnam by a string of presidents. ![]() I think what should be emblazoned upon the wall behind this panel and kept in mind by everyone up here, but everyone on any panel today, including even the historians, something that President Truman was reported to have said, which is (And I keep this in mind often), “The average high school sophomore in Independence, Missouri equipped with hindsight is smarter than the president of the United States.” In any event, much as I’m fond of the slogan, so to speak, of the National Archives, which you mentioned earlier, “what’s past is prologue”- Roughly translated that means, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The fact that you begin quoting President Kennedy’s words and that we are in this wonderful repository of his words, it puts me in an awkward position because the audience will expect me to be as eloquent as he was, forgetting that he had a much better speechwriter than I do. But let me say a few words opening words, Brian, if I may, without taking too much time from our distinguished panelists. Did the United States become captive of either our own rhetoric or our own swagger at the time in Vietnam? Bear any burden to assure the survival and success of liberty. So, Ted, I will put the first question this way. And I guess it should be worded, “What went wrong?” And I suppose if there is a home field advantage in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be had in this repository of artifacts from the Kennedy administration, it should go to Ted Sorensen. And I think it is probably best to begin with an overarching question that I’ll pose in different ways to our participants. No shortage of issues today although we do have a finite period of time for the panels gathered. I think this is going to be difficult to balance. ![]() I must say a candidly more revealing interview than I expected going in, his thoughts on the Vietnam War and the effects on him and his presidency. I’ve been asked to state the obvious and that is, their bios are in your packet should you need more on them as they get settled. Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumīRIAN WILLIAMS: The men taking the stage, the dais, are familiar to all of you.
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