Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (75 page)

1966

January 31
The bombing of the North is resumed after failure of the “peace offensive” that was designed to promote negotiations.

March 10
In Hue and Danang, Buddhist monks demonstrate against the Saigon regime. Both cities are taken over by government troops.

June 29
American planes bomb oil depots near Haiphong and Hanoi, in response to North Vietnamese infiltration into the South to aid the Vietcong.

September 23
The U.S. military command in Vietnam announces that it is using chemical defoliants, Agent Orange among them, to destroy Communist cover.

October 25
A conference between Johnson and heads of six allied nations involved in Vietnam (Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, South Korea, and South Vietnam) issues a peace plan calling for the end of North Vietnamese aggression. By year’s end, American troop strength in Vietnam is nearly 400,000.

1967

January 5
American casualties in Vietnam for 1966 are announced: 5,008 killed and 30,093 wounded. (Totals since 1961 are 6,664 killed, 37,738 wounded.)

January 8
Thirty thousand combined American and South Vietnamese troops begin Operation Cedar Falls, an offensive against enemy positions in the Iron Triangle, an area twenty-five miles northwest of Saigon. (Among the U.S. battalion commanders in this operation is General Alexander Haig.)

January 28
The North Vietnamese announce that U.S. bombing must stop before there can be peace talks.

July 7
The Joint Economic Committee of Congress reports that the war effort created “havoc” in the U.S. economy during 1966.

August
Testifying before Congress, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara says bombing of North Vietnam is ineffective.

September
Major Communist offensives begin. General West-
moreland fortifies Khe Sanh.

October 21
Two days of antiwar protests take place in Washington, and are the subject of Norman Mailer’s book
Armies of the Night.

December 8
The wave of antiwar protests becomes more organized and active. In New York, 585 protesters are arrested, including Dr. Benjamin Spock and poet Allen Ginsberg. Spock and four other protesters issue a pamphlet,
A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority
, later published as a book and used as the basis for Spock’s prosecution by the government. In the following days of antidraft protests, arrests are made in New Haven, Connecticut; Cincinnati; Madison, Wisconsin; and Manchester, New Hampshire. At year’s end, U.S. troop strength stands at nearly half a million.

1968

January 21
The Battle of Khe Sanh. A strategic hamlet that General Westmoreland had heavily fortified and stockpiled with ammunition as a future staging point for attacks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Communist supply route from the North, Khe Sanh becomes the scene of one of the war’s most controversial sieges. When Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars begin the siege of American forces at Khe Sanh, it is seen by many Americans, including Westmoreland, President Johnson, and the media as a repeat of the 1954 attack on the French stronghold at Dienbienphu. Westmoreland and Johnson are committed to preventing such a disaster, and Johnson tells one of his senior aides, “I don’t want any damn Dinbinphoo.”

A military catastrophe such as the French suffered is averted as Khe Sanh is heavily reinforced and supported by massive B-52 bombings. But at home, Americans watch the siege unfold like a nightly TV serial. Fought in the midst of the Tet Offensive (see below), the battle for Khe Sanh seems to be one more example of the resolve of the Vietnamese, who ultimately lost some 10,000 to 15,000 men at Khe Sanh against 205 Americans killed. The siege lasts until April. Ironically, the base at Khe Sanh will be abandoned one year later, when a planned strike at the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos is canceled.

January 23
The intelligence vessel USS
Pueblo
is captured by North Korea.

January 31
The Tet Offensive. Although a brief truce is set to celebrate the Vietnamese lunar New Year holiday, the Vietcong launch a major offensive throughout South Vietnam, and the American embassy in Saigon is attacked. Hanoi had hoped for a general uprising in the South, which does not happen.

Although most of the attacks are eventually repulsed, Tet is seen in the United States as a defeat and a symbol of the Vietcong’s ability to strike at will anywhere in the country. It also damages the optimistic views of the war’s progress that General Westmoreland and other American military leaders have been bringing back to Congress and the American people.

February 25
After twenty-six days of fighting since the Tet Offensive began, the city of Hue is recaptured by American and South Vietnamese forces. Mass graves reveal that an enormous atrocity was committed by the retreating Vietcong and North Vietnamese, who killed thousands of civilians suspected of supporting the Saigon government.

February 29
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns after concluding that the United States cannot win the war. He is replaced by Clark Clifford.

March 12
Senator Eugene McCarthy, an outspoken opponent of the war, nearly defeats President Johnson in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a stunning setback for Johnson as the incumbent president.

March 16
Following McCarthy’s near upset of Johnson, Senator Robert F. Kennedy announces that he will campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

This is also the date of the massacre of villagers at My Lai (see p. 491).

March 31
In an extraordinary television address, President Johnson announces a partial bombing halt, offers peace talks, and then stuns the nation by saying he will not run again.

April 4
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

April 23
At New York’s Columbia University, members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) seize five buildings in protest of Columbia’s involvement in war-related research.

May 10
Peace talks begin in Paris between the United States and North Vietnam.

June 6
Following his victory in the California primary, Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan B. Sirhan.

June 14
Dr. Benjamin Spock is convicted of conspiracy to aid draft evasion. (The conviction is later overturned.)

August 26
The Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago. In the midst of antiwar protests and violent police response, the Democrats nominate Hubert Humphrey.

October 31
President Johnson orders an end to bombing of the North, in an attempt to break the stalemate at Paris. Progress at Paris will presumably help the chances of the Democratic ticket of Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie.

November 6
In one of the closest presidential elections, the Republican ticket of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew defeats Democrat Hubert Humphrey, with third-party candidate George Wallace drawing more than 9 million votes. At year’s end, American troop strength is at 540,000.

1969

January 25
Paris peace talks are expanded to include the South Vietnamese and Vietcong.

March 18
President Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger order the secret bombing of Communist bases in Cambodia.

May 14
President Nixon calls for the simultaneous withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese forces from the South.

June 8
Nixon announces the withdrawal of 25,000 American troops, the first step in a plan called Vietnamization, the aim of which is to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese.

September 2
Ho Chi Minh, leader of the North since the 1950s, dies in Hanoi at the age of seventy-nine.

September 25
Congressional opposition to the war grows as ten bills designed to remove all American troops from Vietnam are submitted.

October 15
The first of many large, nationwide protests against the war, the so-called Moratorium is designed to expand the peace movement off the campuses and into the cities, drawing broader popular support. Led by Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 250,000 protesters march on Washington.

November 3
Attempting to defuse protest, Nixon makes his “silent majority” speech, claiming that most of the nation supports his efforts to end the war.

November 15
A second Moratorium march on Washington takes place.

November 16
A 1968 massacre of civilians at the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai is revealed. U.S. Army Lieutenant William L. Calley is tried and convicted for his role in the massacre. The atrocity further discredits the war and adds momentum to the peace movement in America.

December 1
The first draft lottery of the Vietnam era is instituted in an effort to reduce criticism of the draft as unfair. It signals the end of student draft deferments. By the end of the year, American troop strength has been reduced to 475,200.

1970

February 18
Following a long, theatrical trial highlighted by the courtroom antics of defendants Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and others, the Chicago Seven are acquitted on charges of conspiring to incite a riot. They are convicted on lesser charges of conspiracy, which are later overturned.

February 20
National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger begins secret Paris negotiations with North Vietnamese envoy Le Duc Tho.

April 20
Nixon promises to withdraw another 150,000 men from Vietnam by year’s end. The withdrawals are decreasing American casualties.

April 30
Nixon announces that U.S. troops have attacked Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia, following the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk by U.S.-aided Lon Nol.

May 4
As part of the widening campus protests against the war and the decision to send troops to Cambodia, a demonstration is held at Kent State University in Ohio. When national guardsmen open fire on the demonstrators, four students are killed. Ten days later, two more students are killed, at predominantly black Jackson State College in Mississippi.

October 7
Nixon proposes a “standstill cease-fire,” and reissues a proposal for mutual withdrawal the next day.

November 23
A raid into North Vietnam, in an attempt to rescue American POWs, comes up empty-handed. Heavy bombing of the North continues.

At year’s end, U.S. troop strength has been reduced to 334,600.

1971

January–February
The South Vietnamese, with American support, begin attacks on Vietcong supply lines in Laos. The operation is easily defeated by Communist troops.

March 29
An army court-martial finds William Calley guilty of premeditated murder at the village of My Lai. After three days in the stockade, Calley is released to “house arrest” by President Nixon.

June 13
The
New York Times
begins publication of the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret history of American involvement in Vietnam, which has been turned over by Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg to
Times
reporter Neil Sheehan. Nixon tries to stop publication of the documents, which reveal much of the duplicity within the government surrounding Vietnam. But on June 30, the Supreme Court rules that the
Times
and the
Washington Post
may resume publication. On Nixon’s orders to investigate Ellsberg, a group is set up known as the “plumbers,” whose purpose is to try to stop “leaks.” The “plumbers” soon expand their activities to a campaign aimed at a Nixon “enemies list.” Also on their agenda is a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C.