When did we try in ’64...

Go ahead.

Want me to go ahead with, uh, how it began?

Yes.

I see, I thought you were going to ask a question. Well, as the involvement in Vietnam was a very gradual thing, I think so was my opposition and that of others a gradual thing, it was hard to say just what the critical point was, because we had progressively more and more deeply involved, which was reflected in things that both Johnson and Nixon said, uh, President Johnson would say he was only continuing, uh, what uh, three presidents before him had committed us to in some measure.

And that meant Truman, who we had, we had given aid to the French, military aid, which they in turn were using to fight the war in Vietnam, at least they were fighting the war in Vietnam and we were giving aid to France, not to the war. And in Algeria. And then Eisenhower he could say had sent in the 900 or 700, whatever the number was, of special advisors. And Kennedy had sent in the Special Forces, 17,000, whatever the number was.

And each as sort of, uh, it was sort of like a continuum, he suggested it was no point at which you could interfere. And Nixon said he was only continuing what four presidents and so it was as if this was a presidential commitment. And it was a gradual thing. I mean, the advisors, we’d sort of been in the advisory business anyway, in other parts of the country, and the significant change, really, was the Kennedy action in sending in the 17,000 to 19,000 in two ways. One, these were actually combat people. Even though it was said they weren’t going to go in to combat, it was, it was pretty likely they would under certain circumstances.

And also, the number, the quantitative factor made it different. You could evacuate 900 advisors in two or three airplanes. But you really can’t evacuate 19,000. At that point you really have to withdraw and it becomes a matter of, of national pride and of some surrender. So even though the Kennedy people said it was qualitatively no different from the earlier commitment, uh, it was in a way, but the quantity made a significant difference.

And we’d gone all along through that in between period this question of, y’know, a stable government and promises and statements, uh, from the administration that they had made progress, that each new president was better than the last, uh, and uh, there was no real way of knowing, uh, you couldn’t go over and look at it, they would suggest, they’d say, “Why don’t you go over and look at it?” And we’d say, “Well, why should we go over and look at it, uh, since the people who have been looking at it don’t seem to know what’s going on.” And I think in the overall period McNamara must have gone over twelve or thirteen times. And I think his reports were inaccurate every time, but one when he said we were losing the war.

But up until that time the reports were generally optimistic. And there was just a little more, just a little more. And um, I was persuaded quite early that they didn’t know what was going on politically. Because you’d get statements from Rusk about the stability of the government...Big Khanh, or whoever it was, and within a week, why Big Khanh would be out and you’d have to say to yourself, “How could Rusk be telling us, say on Wednesday, that this government was...

Khanh is one person and Big Minh is another, I think.

There was Big Khanh too, I think.

Yes, Big Khanh...(two voices talking at the same time, hard to hear one voice here)

I think there was General Khanh I think he was called Big Khanh. I’ll say, General Khanh I think there was only...

Let’s try it again...in the middle 60’s again.

In the middle 60’s there was a whole succession...

Start again after I give a pause.

In the period of the 60’s especially in the Kennedy Administration after Diem was, whatever, was assassinated or whatever happened to him, there was a whole series of presidents, one after another, and usually as each one was presented, it was said that he had put it together. And I recall especially when General Khanh was in, at a, at a White House meeting when Rusk assured us that this was really a good one. As I recall it was like Wednesday. And by Friday Khanh was out.

And you had to assume that Rusk was not trying to deceive us, because it would have been ludicrous to do it, if he thought Khanh was going to go. But he actually believed you, you have to accept that Khanh was stable. And if Rusk didn’t know on Wednesday or Tuesday (whatever it was) that the Khanh government was likely to go, that within a week, uh, you’d have to raise questions about the next time Rusk told you anything.

Uh, so if he didn’t know any more about this than he knew about that uh, why should we accept what he says. And, uh, the same thing then, it wasn’t so bad as long as it was just political. But when we got into deeper and deeper military involvement, particularly in ’66, the same similar questions began to arise as to whether or not we actually had any assessment of what would be required by way of military effort to gain whatever victory was, and especially, uh, when we found that McNamara didn’t know. Because he had the image, you know, of never making a, as we said when he came in, he never made a small mistake. Ha, ha. It looked as though the mistakes that, that would arise out Vietnam were uh, would be small mistakes, and therefore you could count on McNamara.

And, and as I said, we’d go time after time he’d go read report progress and so on, and time after time it’d be proved wrong, or he would go over he’d make projections as to what would happen...and it, and it wouldn’t happen. I think the one that, I thought was particularly impertinent was early in ’66 when we were bombing, when we were going to bomb. He said that with the bombing the number that the North Vietnamese could infiltrate and supply would be something like 4500 a month. And, uh, four or five moths later the report was they were infiltrating and supplying 7,000.

So he was off by roughly a hundred percent. Which is bad enough, but when he was asked to explain it...he said the number they could infiltrate has always been less than “x”, and “x” is a determinable number. So you sit there and you look at him and you say, “Now, one of us is strange.” I mean, uh, uh, if I accept that then I don’t know how I make any kind of objective judgment. And rather than do that you have to wonder whether he made any objective judgments. And I never really believed anything he said after that, ‘cause a normal person would have said Look, we missed it, you know; they’re tougher than we thought they were.

So, when you got on to his next quantification, their systems analysis, the margin of error, uh, which you had to allow to him, was—cause “x” could be infinity minus one—was somewhere between one and infinity minus one, which could have been “x”, and if you were allowing that margin of error you never would have a point of department for making any judgment on him. And I concluded that they, they didn’t know what they were doing.

And then along with that was the disposition on the part of the administration to begin to, to charge that, that anyone who challenged them or criticized was somehow un-American and didn’t have a right to do it. For patriotic reasons, and then the famous Katzenbach presentation in which he, uh, said that uh even under the Constitution the Senate really didn’t have a right to interfere uh with the conduct of foreign or military policy.

Uh, that uh, in that case it was both the, the if theory was wrong, you had to challenge it, even if the war had been going better; but when you put the two together, the, the theory they were presenting is their justification, a constitutional interpretation, and the military reality, it seemed to me you had two bases upon which to challenge. And, uh, it was about that time that I began to think that, uh, we had to do something.

Let me stop just a minute...

...concrete reaction to what Mr. Katzenbach had to say...

Yeah, well, there were two, the line was running, the actual, what was happening which you could pass a judgment on. Then, uh, um, Katzenbach came up speaking for the President and suggested that we, or asserted really, that his interpretation of the Constitution was that the Senate really didn’t have a role in the determination of foreign and military policy, that it was...we had a right to give advice, or to...but the question of consent was something different. And, uh, setting that alongside what was going on, you had to believe that, that this was a, in a formal way, was bound to lead us to trouble, or at least it had to be challenged, uh the idea that the president had arbitrary control over foreign and military policy. And, uh, I think that I said that, I said it was the wildest testimony I had, I had heard...relative to the constitutionality of the war.

And that, coupled with the other thing, sort of...moved me along. I concluded that the Senate wasn’t going to do anything about it, we might pass a resolution we didn’t even do that. And, uh, I think the best we ever did was to get something like thirteen or fourteen members to sign a request or protest, whatever it was, against the bombing. But when we tried even to bring up the Tonkin Gulf resolution in ’67, just for review because even though when it was passed in ’64 it was presented as though it had no particular relevance, it was just supposed to, as they now say, send a message to the Vietnamese and Viet Cong that we were serious about it, and the President had support, you know, from...or at least that we were unhappy about the Tonkin Gulf incident which probably never occurred.

And I had said at the time I was suspicious of it, I said, uh, in ’64 that, uh, a lot of it was what the sailors saw at midnight, that sailors on watch at midnight so far as we know see very strange things, and that their uh, witness would be suspect. Uh, but, uh, this was the projection, of when we passed it, but by ’67, especially Rusk, the President was a little better he didn’t resort to cause he had earlier said it didn’t give him any power that he didn’t have, but Rusk was beginning to present it as though it was a document of some legal and constitutional standing. And Senator Morse moved to bring it up just for debate, we weren’t even going to say we were going to repeal it.

Uh and, uh, uh, whereas there had been two votes against it in ’64, Morse and Gruening, all we got in ’67 when the war was, when we were already committed, was five votes just to bring it up. And again, it was Morse and Gruening and Senator Fulbright and Senator Steve Young of Ohio and I were the only five. And none of the other so called anti-war people even, even joined us. Not, uh, Robert Kennedy or some of them might have been missing, but the fact is that not McGovern, none of them, went on record to bring, not Mansfield, in fact Mansfield offered the motion to table the motion. So it was obvious that the Senate was not going to take this on, uh, within the range of the Senate’s, what I thought, constitutional responsibilities. And it appeared to me then that the only thing, as I said to Fulbright after the Katzenbach testimony, that I felt we had to take it, take it the people, take it to the public.

That is terrific. Let’s take it to the public and take it right to New Hampshire.

Well, I really didn’t intend to go to New Hampshire quite then...

I know, but let’s get into...in the story we will.

Yeah.

There was some question about whether you should run? Can we talk about why you decided to go, why you decided to run, and why you decided to go into New Hampshire?

Well, I decided to run for the reason we just pretty well given. You know, there had to be a challenge and the only place you could do it, it seemed to me, was in, was in the presidential race. If the Senate, it seems to me, had...you didn’t have to have a majority if the twenty probably senators, roughly twenty who were against the war, had really stood together in the Senate and argued and protested and did other things, by, according to the powers of the Senate, I think the escalation could have been blunted. Because we had some pretty good testimony early from General Gavin and others about, uh, limited commitments and so on.

And, uh, but they didn’t so the question then became one of what did you do next. We sort of followed the...Biblical recommendation that if you talked to the person in private and tell him not to sin and then you talk to him in the presence of two or three people and finally you have to take it to the whole church. Which is, in effect, taking it to the public in the presidential campaign.

And, uh, well as you know, we, I and others talked to Robert Kennedy to see what he was going to do anything, there was some...murmuring that he might, and he said publicly and privately that he wasn’t going to do it. So, and there were committees against the war in Vietnam that I was not involved in that were active and...one was that I thought was rather vulgarly called Dump Johnson, uh, and uh...so, they, or we, began to talk to people and organizations that were against the war to see what kind of support there was. And the critical point was that meeting in Chicago...where there was a general rally of all the people and organizations that were against the war. And, uh, I went out and said I would be their candidate.

You then had to decide which primaries to enter...

Yeah.

New Hampshire was not what would generally be perceived as a promising setting. Could you describe why you decided to...

Yeah, well at Chicago, after, when we, we, we decided that we would, and announced we would test the, the issue in what we considered four or five critical areas. We said, ‘cause we knew we didn’t have money and...and all the rest. One was, we said New England and we said Massachusetts, because we thought it was big state and representative. Then we said we’d test it in Wisconsin—which was Midwest. We would test in Oregon, which was... And I think the only other two we said California because of its size and also New York. And that was, those, that was pretty much the extent of our plan.

And, uh, ...well, then two things happened. One, the New Hampshire people were pretty eager even though, you know, the general indicator was it wasn’t a good state to take on the war issue. And, uh...I had a speech in New Hampshire and it wasn’t, it was one I was scheduled to give before the, the anti-Vietnam thing developed, and uh when I went up they asked me to meet with them, and I did, I think there were twenty-five, but they were very intense.

Um, but the other thing was that the troops were getting restless (chuckling) in other states, y’know, they say it has always been a problem with, uhm, sort of primitive warfare that the question, how long you could hold back the foot soldiers from the charge, sort of the success of Scipio Africanus, was not to let them charge too soon and supposedly that’s how he defeated Hannibal, but uh...

We sort of couldn’t hold him back anymore, they wanted to and uh, I’m not sure it was a good idea. It, uh, we probably would’ve beaten Johnson in Wisconsin, and, y’know what would’ve happened...the only thing is that Robert Kennedy might not have come in because he wouldn’t have known how well we were going to do if we hadn’t done so well in New Hampshire. And we might not have done as well in Wisconsin if we hadn’t done as well as we did in New Hampshire, so it might have projected the campaign on a somewhat different schedule. But in any case, uh...we did and uh, we were pretty sure that we would do better then the twelve percent that was projected if we had twelve percent. In fact, you can get twelve percent almost, y’know, just by being on the ballot against an incumbent president.

And we thought we could probably do twice as...which would say, y’know, we did twice as well as you said we would, and therefore it’s a great victory. But, as it turned out we, we, in the total count, all, I think we were three or four hundred votes short of Johnson, if you counted the write ins. So it was a significant achievement in New Hampshire.

When did the campaign begin to take off in New Hampshire from those early lonely days? Did it start with that when you were really sort of by yourself, there was no press. What got it going in your view?

I don’t what affected the New Hampshire people. Ah, I think there was a certain excitement that took over because of the number, especially of young people, who came in, and uh...well, there were some reports of what people said they hadn’t seen a young person for ten years, and hadn’t seen anybody all winter, things like that. There was an enthusiasm that took over. New Hampshire began to, y’know, just sort of they thought they were doing uh something. Uh, then there were a few political things, um, uh, it was kind of technical, but the New Hampshire Democrats put out something which was sort of, it was like making every Democrat admit uh that he had voted, and how he had voted. It was almost an opening of the ballot. It wasn’t quite that, but uh...they had to get out and prove that they’d been out and then the ballots and votes in that precinct were going to be counted to see whether the Democrats had in fact voted the way they were supposed to vote.

And we made something of an issue of that. Uh, and I think it helped us some. You know, we’re talking about a limited number of votes. And um, I think the Tet Offensive, which you know, people were beginning to read it uh, as uh, not a defeat, as an indication that whatever victory we might get would be too costly. And it has always been a curious point ah with me that, to know how...

Just a minute. "It’s always been a curious point with me...

Okay.

Well, that was rather difficult because it was sort of like St. Patrick’s Day speeches. If you come to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration and talk about something else people will be mad at you. They say why don’t you talk about the Irish and if you talk about they say why didn’t you talk about something else. And, actually in in ’68 if you didn’t talk about Vietnam, people would say, some would say why didn’t you talk about Vietnam. If you did they’d say why didn’t you raise some other issues. I did raise some other issues, although in a sort of in a defensive way so they couldn’t call it a one issue campaign. Cause I’d said when it started that I had some differences with Johnson on his conception of the presidency and how you dealt with the Senate.

Ah and, ah, also some of his domestic programs which I thought were were a little bit off but the basic difference between us was the presidency and the war, and the war as a manifestation of his concept of presidential power and that that’s really what I wanted to deal with. Ah. I did make ah well I I it was a speech I gave at Harvard in which I covered the whole range of domestic problems, especially the problem of race and discrimination and injustice in the country. It was quite a good speech. It was after the Kerner report came out on discrimination, and it was only after Bobby Kennedy came in when there was an injection of a whole set of issues, some of them fraudulent, and some of them issues on which he and I were not in in disagreement but which he presented as though we were or as though I had been indifferent to them. And, his campaign was much more of a complete attack on [incomprehensible] was on me but but on on on Johnson and sort of on what was wrong with America then it might have been and I I didn’t fair to do that to Johnson. That was not the issue between us, and I I thought it was a distraction from what I thought was a central issue.

That’s very good. I want to go back to Kennedy in a minute but I have one question more about New Hampshire. It’s sort of general, as well. Was your style frustrating for your campaign workers?

Well, I don’t know whether it was or not.

Just say I don’t know whether my style...

I don’t know whether my style was frustrating to them or not. There were some of them who who wanted excitement and wanted shouting and pounding and and in most cases I thought the response was was highly enthusiastic especially since we had an issue which was in itself very emotional and and I don’t know as I I was interested in getting people to stand up and denounce Lyndon Johnson. In fact, ah, when I first accepted the charge to run I said we weren’t going to call the the campaign organization the Dump Johnson movement. It had to have another name cause that was not what we were concerned about. And, I thought that there was enough excitement in the response, and I couldn’t, you know, couldn’t really be very apologetic since the method was working and as long as you’re winning (chuckle)...and it's essentially the same method I’d always used in campaigns.

How did you feel when Robert Kennedy entered the race?

Well, I don’t know how I felt. I mean I know what I thought. I really had, you know, believed when he said he wasn’t coming in that he wouldn’t come in, especially since he said it publicly and privately, and, ah, we planned our campaign on on the assumption that that I guess you could say he would keep his word. When he came in there were two things, I think, that ah concerned me. One was ah that it would not be a campaign concentrated on a particular issue. We were sure from what we'd heard before that that ah there would be other issues injected. First, we thought against Johnson. Ah.

And, later we found also involving some gross misrepresentations also against me. Ah. That was sort of the tactical part of it. The the principal part was that we were quite sure that the campaign to some extent would become one which was personalized. So, instead of the concentration on the issue which is really what we were concerned about that it would tend to become a contest for power or an anticipation of the presidency which ah I thought would detract from what our real purpose was and thirdly, of course, once he came in, ah, although we had not had very high hopes for getting the nomination, that the possibility of either coming close to be in a position to influence the nomination, that that, the possibility of that was greatly reduced, and all of these things really did, in fact, happen.

Was there any pressure on you from the Kennedy family to withdraw?

Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, I I I think they ah they might have thought so. Ah. But, I wouldn’t say any pressure from ah from the family...Ah. I think they thought they could just beat me, and that would be that that would take care of it. (chuckle) But, we had bad experiences with them earlier. We thought we could work out...We tried to work out an accommodation. We said why don’t you run in the primaries I’m not in.

And, then, we can come to the convention with your delegates and mine. Cause there were four, five primaries we had not decided, we had decided not to run. Indiana was an example. Nebraska, South Dakota, ah, well, Pennsylvania, I think was still open then, although that was a different kind of of a ah and they wouldn’t do it. And, ah, we did get one agreement not to compete in the District of Columbia, but I think it was the day after we agreed not to compete one of their campaign people said we had we had surrendered to them on the district, and we said, well, if that’s the game, why I guess we just have to go head to head from here on, and that was sort of the the end of any kind of cooperation.

How did your views of the presidency differ from his do you think and if you could fold my question into your answer so that...?

I think that Bobby Kennedy’s conception of the presidency was consistent with ah that which had been running before ’68 before ’68 which was an imperial presidency. And, that insofar as we know his advice to his brother and his own conduct of the Justice Department ah presumed that the president had arbitrary power in many areas, highly personalized.

Ah. That the other institutions of government were essentially subservient to him, and that ah ah his his concept of the presidency would not have been very different from that of well Arthur Schlesinger when he defected, as we said to Robert Kennedy, said that he objected to my concept of the presidency, which I thought was a constitutional one, and favored Robert Kennedy because he would give us what he called strong presidency, and, ah, obviously that meant the kind of imperial presidency.

So, I assumed that that Schlesinger knew him better than I did, but from what Schlesinger said and from what we’d observed of Bobby as Attorney General I think his use of presidential power would would have been in in in the in imperial field.

Moving on to Chicago. What were your ideas of what should be in the Vietnam plank in the Democratic Party?

Well, let me say...after Bobby was assassinated, ah, we were sure that...before that I couldn’t be nominated because he had the strength to stop that. We thought we had the strength to stop him too but but we then felt that we couldn’t even carry the plank, because many of his delegates once he was killed were released and ah Indiana, for example, some of the others, ah, one of his delegates from California in in in a joint appearance for governor with Senator Humphrey and I in the questions period asked me what my position on the war in Vietnam was.

Ah. So, you had to believe that that some of his delegates had sort of come for the ride and some of them were ready to go back to the old power of senator and the party, and putting that together we were pretty sure we couldn’t even carry on on our plank. And, and, my plank was pretty specific about we would we would really end the war. Take initiative and stop the search and destroy, stop the bombing whereas the plank we actually offered, it was called the Kennedy plank. It was sort of taken from a speech which Teddy had given somewhere along the way but it was a reflection of the of the what we called the Kennedy people.

And Kissinger in one one of his explanations of defenses of how he and Nixon had conducted the war down to the...and said he had followed the prescription of the anti-war people in Chicago, and in a way he had. The, the, the formulation of it, the Kennedy formulation was that we would we would stop doing certain things and then wait for them to respond, but if they didn’t, then something would happen, and that was essentially what Nixon did. You know, we will bomb you and then we will stop bombing and if you surrender why we won’t bomb you again, but if you don’t surrender...it’s a little bit like what’s going on in Lebanon today, and ah it was...

It didn’t make that much difference at the convention because ah we could have taken the Johnson plank and called it ours and given them ours and they would have voted for whatever was called theirs. So, there was a a considerable body of truth in what Senator Muskie said when he presented the Johnson/Humphrey plank ah that there was largely a question of semantics. Ah. That was true if you took the Kennedy plank which was presented and the Johnson one. If we’d ah had our original one it would have been more than semantics but having said that and observed it the Muskie people or the Humphrey people...

Okay. We’ll have to reload a—...

...ready...

It became a question of loyalty to the party and loyalty to Johnson and the particular language of the resolution itself or the plank didn’t mean very much. It was sort of showdown time and ah when Senator Muskie said that you know it was ah semantics he he was right but he was wrong. It was it was it wasn’t semantics because it was it was beyond that. It was it was sort of showdown time whether you were going to support the Johnson war even though Humphrey was now the say he was the advocate he was the bearer of the war. Responsible for it or whether you were going to challenge what had happened and what was happening.

What was your perception of Humphrey’s options at that point. You know, it was LBJ still his man, his president?

I don’t think he had any options at the convention...

Mention his name...

I don’t think Senator Humphrey had any options at the convention. No, the pressures were too great. I think ah he had some options after he was nominated. His commitment to Johnson was pretty deep and had been in existence for a long time. It actually, I think, went back to ’64 when ah Johnson picked him for the vice presidency, and ah, accepting that had involved almost a surrender to Johnson.

And ah...Senator Humphrey wanted to be president and ah with good enough reasons, and, I’m persuaded after he was defeated in ’60 by John Kennedy in Wisconsin and also West Virginia, both of those states he thought should be strong states for him. One, because he was close to Wisconsin and was known there and the other a mistake in judgment, but after Wisconsin, they thought that they ah that he had lost on a religious issue. Catholics in,... In West Virginia there weren’t any Catholics. Two or three percent.

But, he lost in West Virginia and I think he felt that there was no way he could get through the primary system at any time for the presidency. So when cause people say well, you’re a loser, you couldn’t and and so when Johnson made him vice president this was like giving him new life ah or an anticipation of the presidency, and I think he was willing with that in mind to surrender much more of his independence in ’64 when I think he could have been much stronger and said, "Lyndon look you you gotta take me for vice president. You can’t play around. You, you, you, if you do, you may get Bobby Kennedy," ah and ah but he didn’t do it that way. This is’64.

So, by’68 when Lyndon was through, I think again, he sort of said, I’m withdrawing and I’m giving you the presidential nomination, Hubert, but I have given it to you and you’re obligated to me. And, Humphrey’s memoirs suggest that Johnson never really let him free even after the nomination, although Humphrey did say I will now be the quarterback and not the pulling guard or something.

And, I said later he did later be the quarterback but all the plays were called from the bench. And, ah, even more than that, if he seemed to be getting away for a touchdown why the coach would come off the bench and tackle him. But, Johnson never let the convention get out of his control, and if what what we read what’s been said, even by Humphrey, he never let the campaign get very far away from his control, and I think that ah the Humphrey had had two options.

One, he could have rejected the war, or he could have said to labor and his people vote for the McCarthy/Kennedy plank and had it happen. Ah. That would have been very difficult for him to do, but he had to at some time in the campaign, even though he didn’t change on the war indicate that he would actually be free of Johnson’s influence in the conduct of the war, and he almost did it about, in a speech in Salt Lake City around September 15, but he but he retracted what he said.

In effect, by two days later, he sort of said, well I said it, but but I shouldn’t have. You know, this sort of thing, when you, I mean everyone knew it was, at least we did, it was Lyndon. The Johnson withdrawal was considered interesting psychological thing when he did it. He said he was going to do it so he wouldn’t be charged with politics for what he might do. It seems the only way that made sense was to assume he was going to withdraw, and say, look I’m not doing this to get re-elected, I’m doing it because I want the war to end.

Instead of that, by withdrawing he put himself in a position to control the issue and in effect to control the war. Ah. He was he was in a better position to force the Democrats to adopt or support his position in the convention, and failing in that, he was in a position to support a Republican. As it turned out, he he got both, and he couldn’t have done that if he’d stayed in. He either would have lost or I think he would have been forced to accept a modified position on the war which would have been more than he could have stood, I think.

Were you under pressure to support Humphrey and, you know, should you have? Would your coming out have made a difference? Would we not have had a Republican president in that case?

Well, there’s no question I was, you know, they asked me to get up on the platform which was a ridiculous request cause if you’d done that in Chicago there would have been riots, but after the convention, there was some pressure on me. I I don’t whether it was pressure being the...people who suggested I do it. There were some who did more than suggest, I guess. But ah I wouldn’t call it pressure. We we gave thought to it and as I said we’re quite prepared to do it. Ah.

We didn’t lay down formal conditions to Humphrey but we ah we really sort of said we want some assurance that you’re free of Lyndon because we fought the war which was Johnson’s war and we we can’t say well it’s the same war but you have a different person conducting it. Ah. That that somehow changes the substance of it. This this this just isn’t enough and we never really got either publicly, we hoped to get it publicly like the Salt Lake City speech. I was we we we were preparing to endorse Humphrey right after that speech. If he hadn’t retracted as soon as he did, ah, we probably would have. Then after that it just fell back into the old, old ruts, you know.

And, ah, we knew that Johnson had pressure on him not to make any concessions and felt that the only way we could be really honest and consistent with and in a way true to what had all the people who had worked for six months, a year, was to keep pressure on from the other side as long as we could, and ah the point in which we endorsed really uh hinged on a rally that was planned for Madison Square Garden.

It was for Paul O’Dwyer who was running for the Senate, and at that time Paul and his people were against any concession and any support, and ah, I’d said well we’ll wait until this rally is over, and fortunately by that time, Paul had decided that he was going to endorse Humphrey or at least that night so we then, I think we endorsed Humphrey the next day, but what we really had held on so that we’ve got an obligation to Paul O'Dwyer who has worked in the campaign, who had some chance to beat Javits, and for us to come out and say we’re for Humphrey when Paul wasn’t would have set up a very strange condition for the Madison Square Garden rally. So, these were the forces that were running and we were of the opinion that you know the endorsement wasn’t going to mean very much to Humphrey. Ah.

I don’t suppose we’ve ever had two candidates who were as well known to the public as Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon in 1968. They were both, they both had been vice presidents. They both had been in in public office for twenty years in the public eye, and then to say, well, the public out there is waiting for someone to tell them that Humphrey is better than Nixon ah was ridiculous. In any case, I did endorse him a week or so. It was a good endorsement, and I think that anyone who was waiting for my endorsement to decide whether to vote for Humphrey or not knew I had done it and ah weighed my endorsement, if he was waiting for it. I I don’t know of anyone who said, no one has said to me that if you’d endorsed him a week earlier we would have voted for him.

I’ve had a few people tell me that they did vote for him because I said I was going to. One or two said they regretted it, but in any case, that’s sort of...This whole thing, it’s sort of something the columnists make up. That you know, if he had voted, if he had endorsed Humphrey more enthusiastically, or done it a week earlier why all would have been different. I don’t there’s a bit of evidence...there’s no study, there’s nothing that demonstrates this. It’s just a sort of rash statement that columnists make.

Good. Let's cut for a minute. That’s great.

Wait till [inaudible]...

I think the students and young people would probably have rallied to almost anyone who who took up the cause ah because they were pretty desperate with reference to the war, but I think they rallied to me probably a little bit more enthusiastically than they might have to someone else. Ah. Especially those who came out of the colleges and universities.

I don’t know why. But, I I had...actually when I first ran for congress in ’48 my principal support was from students in the four or five schools in St. Paul and ah I don’t know I think the style and the substance of the campaign ah made it easier for them to come and it was somewhat reassuring to their parents too, and it it wasn’t a big break from the academic world to come over and campaign for me whereas if it had been someone else, it might have been more difficult.

Hubert Humphrey said that you and the year 1968 were made for each other. Do you think you were the right man at the right time? If you could start that by saying...was I the right man at the right time or something like that.

I may have been. At least I was the only one for a while, and ah it seemed to fall together. The polls actually showed me, before the Chicago convention, beating Nixon by as much as eight percent, and ah I think we would have beaten him by that much.

So, that it it was ki—I haven’t done that well since so there must have been something about that time and my position that that meant something. Ah. What happened four years later or eight years later ah ah is a little bit difficult to explain. I hoped to have, I didn’t really seek the nomination in ’72, but I did ask for some support at the convention so that I thought I could be an influence on what the party did and ah by ah 19 ah 72 whatever was there, either I didn’t make my case, which I thought was a pretty good case that we...which was that we shouldn’t try to dominate one person, just sweep the convention. Whether McGovern or whoever it was.

That rather we should not fight each other and I said I’d hoped that Shirley Chisolm would have delegates and I would have some delegates and McGovern would have some delegates and whoever else was running, we could come in and put together and sort of reconstruct the party, and ah that position didn’t prevail. There was a showdown between McGovern and Humphrey and and ah the great defeat.

Was there a group, a group that Nixon a silent majority in your view from 1968 on? Were there people who were disturbed by the protest and who were genuinely rallying to the President? What is your, in short, what is your view of that concept of the silent majority?

Well, I don’t know. I remember when he and Agnew talked about it I said, you know, first of all I don’t know whether they’re there because they’re silent, but ah if they are well you know we ought to keep them silent. Ah. Because if they are what Nixon says they are why they’d be dangerous if they emerged. It’s better not to know about them.

I ah I think Nixon had ah well maybe two things going with him. One, ah it it was not his war, and he, in fact, sort of said that, that I’d inherited this and we’re going to do the best we can with it, and the pro-war Democratics were sort of trapped ah, they couldn’t do much about it. And, also he was putting out, that you know, he was really trying to end the war, which was something Johnson couldn’t say cause Johnson had to win it.

And, ah, Nixon could say he was trying to end it, and I think this tended to dissipate probably the criticism or to ah spread it a little bit. He he had sort of a free run, and then he had Henry, of course, who was handling all of this and you know doing a pretty good performance. I don’t’ think anyone...ah I’m not sure anyone could have handled the end of the Vietnam war any better than Henry did.

But, I’m sure that nobody could have done any worse. Yet, he presented it as though he was you know busy and working hard and trying all these angles and that they were actually pursuing a policy designed for a kind of victory but they were pursuing it in the in the name of ending the war and they finally you know they really didn’t end it. It stopped on it was they could have got to a point where it was almost mutiny. The troops wouldn’t go out and fight. Some of them would shoot officers. Some would. The pilots wouldn’t fly over the areas where they might be shot down, and ah, the public was almost to a point of and the Congress of mutiny against them so ah they had to end it or at least let it end, and I think that was what really protected Nixon.

That's very good. What was do you think was the effect of your campaign on the war?

The campaign I, I could not say that the that the war wouldn’t have ended just about as it did if we hadn’t had the campaign. The physical aspects of it would probably have run just about the same. Ah. It might have been a little bit more violent. What happened as a result of the campaign was that the Nixon or Johnson, if he had succeeded, were left without what they had claimed as a kind of moral justification in that they were carrying out the will of the people, that this was an American people, that the public was for it.

That they could not claim that after ’68. They sort of had to say, Johnson would have had to say well, it’s now my war, you know. It isn’t a popular war. It isn’t the people’s war. And, Nixon ah never went on to say that he was taking over and was going to make it his war. Ah. He couldn’t have done it anyway, but if we hadn’t done ’68, he might very well have said, it’s my war now and I’m going to win it, cause I know how to do it and Johnson and the Democrats didn’t. So, it did that immediately, I think, or in that period. And, I think also it set up ah this may be the long range effect of it, I don’t know how long it will last but ah it would be some time before a president will assume if he gets us into a military action, that he will have popular support without question or Congressional support either without question or that he be given a lead time to ah to conduct the war before he’s subject to criticism.

The practical manifestation was the pass of the War Powers Act, which I think we’d be better off with it, but ah but in any case that that ah better off without it for for...the first reason is that Congress now sort of pretends that they have set up a stop on presidential war making and ah ah or set up a procedure whereby he can make war which is legitimate, thereby giving the kind of limited license.

If it hadn’t been passed, I think presidents would have had to be apprehensive. It’s something like what we did against the war in Vietnam. Ah. It could have started immediately and ah he would have been without the kind of legal protection or license that the War Powers Act gave. I think we would, I think it was a mistake. I wasn’t there when they passed it but ah I think it was a mistake.

Okay. Let’s stop for a minute. It’s okay.

Well, after the campaign was over I I quoted a line from a Frost poem that he’d wrote for John Kennedy’s inauguration in which he said America is hard to see and I added if you looked hard and closely you could find much that was good. I was a little opti—overly optimistic, I think, as to some of the things that I hoped might come from the campaign of ah ’68 and ah it wo—in part it was in anticipation of the good things that I took the stand I did in ’72 hoping to sort of open up party politics as...what I thought was a new force could be injected into the old political stream because it couldn’t do it alone.

I also said in the in the campaign of ’68 if we won in ’68 that 1984 might never come. We didn’t win and 1984 is a is approaching, and I do think that if some of the the attitudes and some of the ideas for the acceptance of public duty and so on, had it been allowed to run a little more strongly after ’68, we’d be in much better shape as we say than we are now.

That’s very nice. Thank you, let's...

Senator why don’t you explain, if you could introduce the poem by identifying it and saying how you like it and...

I had ah ah great sympathy, probably more than that for the men who were fighting in Vietnam, especially when we reached the point where we knew ah it was not going to be a success. There would be no heroes. They they were not likely to come back to any kind of welcome. I had, reflecting on that quite early ah in ’68 I wrote a poem called Kilroy in which I had noted that Kilroy who was the unknown soldier of WWI and Korea wasn’t’ in Vietnam. And asked the question where is Kilroy?

And I went on to explain that he’d taken his good name from all the walls and toilet stalls, gone absent without leave, which sort of led me to reflect on on on on the Yeats poem about the Irish airman, which poem I thought must have must have presented pretty much how many of the men fighting in Vietnam felt, and I—I quoted it along the way somewhere several times I guess but ah he has the airman saying ah...

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere in the clouds above; but [sic] Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan’s cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, No law nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, The [sic] lonely impulse of delight Drove me to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The days to come a [sic] waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind when balanced [sic] with this life, this death.

W.B. Yeats's "An Irish Airman foresees his Death" And that had to be something of the spirit and the attitude of many of the young men who were called upon to fight in the desperate conditions of Vietnam.

Do you know the Vietnam platform [incomprehensible] by heart?

I think I do. Ya.

Could you talk about that?

You know I, you know in in in every campaign no matter what the issues are there’s always someone who will come up and say what would you do, you know, if you were president today about some impossible problem, and, of course, we ran into it in in in ah in the course of the opposition to the war in Vietnam when especially the proponents of it would try to be very technical like say well, what would you do, where would you move the I Corps if you were president. Would you move it back or would you move it forward or ah all sorts of technical questions, and so it sor—sort sort of got to that, as to what would you do if you were president about ending the war, and...

I said well I’d, I’d this is what I’d do. I said we not I but I said ah we’d send a message to the Vietnamese and said which said we will ah take our tanks out of the land of the water buffalo, we'll take our corrugated steel out of the land of thatched huts, ah we will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches, we’ll take our helicopters out of the land of colored birds and butterflies. Ah. We will give you back your villages and fields. Ah. Your small and willing women. We’ll leave you to your small joys and smaller troubles and trust you to your gods some blind and some many handed. That seemed to be the best policy I could think of at the time.

Oh, you’re ready. You want me to do the ah...

Do your ’66...

In 1966, in 1966 and September 30, 1968, on September 30, 1968,...

Let’s have a couple just simply ’66.

Just ’66. Ya. ’66. Ah. ’66. And just, we're not you know we’re not on camera. Obviously. I didn’t put my glasses on. “I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above..."

Start again.

"I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above. Those that I fight do not hate, those that I guard I do not love. My country is Kiltartan’s cross. My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor. No likely end could bring them loss or leave them happier than before. No law nor duty bade me fight, nor public men, nor cheering crowds. A lonely impulse of delight drove me to this tumult in the clouds. I balanced all, brought all to mind. The years to come seemed waste of breath. A waste of breath the years behind. In balance with this life this death.” Okay?