Episode 38: The Johnson Treatment (Part 6) Rolling Thunder
George H.W. Bush 1990 - 1991 The Sweep of History
English - August 08, 2021 14:00 - 1 hour - 44.7 MB - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsPolitics News History politics history government republican democrat independent speeches world war 2 vietnam war lyndon johnson Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
In this episode we see events start moving fast. You see a divide start to show between members of the Johnson Administration as to what to do about the problems of Vietnam. The enemy starts bombing American targets including the Brinks Hotel during the Christmas season, maximizing the number of deaths in the hotel.
Still Lyndon Johnson refuses to retaliate. He still has to be convinced that a war in Vietnam would be worth it. He listens as his advisor George Ball urges him to walk away and let the Government fall. South Vietnam had become a basket case in the year and a few months since the assassination of its long time President Ngo Dinh Diem. Johnson assistant, Jack Valenti, called it a "turnstile of leadership" as the country's Presidency was passed around, one time in just 19 days.
Listen to various interviews from several Johnson Advisors, George Ball, Jack Valenti, Dean Rusk, Clark Clifford, William Bundy, Bill Moyers, Daniel Ellsberg, and Robert Thompson all discuss how the momentum built toward the decision to commit land troops in Vietnam.
These interview snippets are from PBS's "LBJ Goes to War", and "LBJ: The American Experience", plus LBJ's actual phone calls as he wrestles with moving forward and committing troops. An act that will Americanize the war and eventually lead to 500,000 American soldiers on the ground in Vietnam, a country half way around the World.
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