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Unknown: What are the principal tools and methods used by both public and private policymakers to manipulate public opinion about the policy and do different sets of policymakers and this, I think, would be primarily in a generational

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sense, in a chronological sense, choose different methods or place different emphases on the various tools that are available to them based either on specific conditions that pertain at that point in time or or psychological preference?

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Frank Kofsky: No, I think that they do. And I I tend to under a or underplay psychological preference, for example, in the well, in the 20s, and let's say first third or first half of the century, something that now seems to be waning in

00:00:46.540 - 00:00:59.500

effectiveness, was then a principal medium for this kind of indoctrination. That's the public school system. One of the fascinating things is to go back and read educational literature from the 20s, because that point in time the curriculum was being

00:00:59.500 - 00:01:12.180

Americanized. That was the word that was used. It's difficult for us to remember all of this now, but at this period of time, first of all, there's an enormous population that was immigrant and even non English speaking, roughly a million a

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year for 20 years. So just after the turn of century, and there were others before, there was a socialist and communist movement, a viable socialist and communist movement, up until the first movement, up until the First World War, that it was

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explicitly anti capitalist, which, of course, now we're beginning to see the revival of but haven't until the last four or five years there was, there was widespread opposition to the first world war among German speaking peoples who were not,

00:01:38.600 - 00:01:52.540

not necessarily socialist, Radical or or anything, but just didn't want this country to go to war with Germany. So you have all of these things occurring at the same time. And you again, you have a conscious effort by business groups, the National

00:01:52.540 - 00:02:06.600

Security League and other groups, the Johannes studied some of them, kind of in passing, in strangers in the land. These business groups get together and form a consortium and say they're very worried about the threat, the red menace

00:02:06.600 - 00:02:22.040

and what have you. And one of the things they hit on is Americanization, which was to be the immigrants are to be Americanized through classes in the factory for which they will be paid time off to go to the children will be especially

00:02:22.040 - 00:02:37.820

Americanized by the kind everything with the entire curriculum will be Americanized. I've got some place in my notes here, one of the guys who wrote a book. He was the superintendent of schools in Boston, and he wrote the book

00:02:37.820 - 00:02:49.600

through a Carnegie Foundation grant. But see, here's how, here's what. Here are some of his concepts of American Americanism that are to be taught. Democracy means freedom of action of groups, so long as their convictions do not

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interfere with the well being of the state. National ideals is exemplified in the lives of great Americans. That usually means the presidents, because that's how you teach English conversation to immigrant children, the ideal of obedience

00:03:05.040 - 00:03:21.140

to lawful authority, which is an important component of American ideals, beliefs, attitudes and points of view. Inculcating Americanism through history, through civics, is important. Is an important method training for citizenship? He says, Here is

00:03:21.140 - 00:03:35.000

the ultimate end and sole justification of the expenditure for education, of public monies, training for citizens, not and not teaching people to think, but training for citizenship. And it just goes on and on in this vein. And if you add, if

00:03:35.000 - 00:03:47.560

you then inquire in specific detail about what he means by Americanism, what he means is teaching people to worship the President as an icon. Could we have a that's the national religion this country is President worship. So in this

00:03:47.560 - 00:04:00.420

period of time, in the pre television era, and in the with a population that still isn't entirely literate in English, public schools are of vast importance. Now, I tend to think in the post war period that probably that we now have

00:04:00.660 - 00:04:13.380

Richard Nixon superstar, a guy who knows he really can manipulate all of the media and places more reliance on the media than on the public schools. But the public schools and newspapers were the backbone of that up until, say, the

00:04:13.380 - 00:04:28.280

Second World War. After the Second World War, public television eclipses the schools. I think, is Speaker 1: this simply to make the same kinds of things possible, or are there really deep, deeper differences than

00:04:28.280 - 00:04:39.140

that? I mean, the manipulation, it seems to me, can now be carried on by the political actors themselves. Oh yeah, Frank Kofsky: sure, you don't need the intermediates anymore. Besides, the intermediates are inefficient. As you can see, the

00:04:39.320 - 00:04:51.340

public school system doesn't work people. What I find is people are just sick of hearing about how Washington cut down the cherry tree and Lincoln freed the slaves. But it does work in another way, though. What it does do is turn people

00:04:51.340 - 00:05:02.640

off of history. I mean, it induces the old kind of apathy that the public school system saw to inculcate was trust and your betters, because they know what they're doing and you don't have to think. Think the new kind of apathy is it's all such

00:05:02.640 - 00:05:16.080

a terrible bore and nothing ever happens. All this folklore and all this fabulous mythological stuff about Lincoln and Washington and Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt that I'm just forget it into the toilet. As Lenny Bruce would have said,

00:05:16.380 - 00:05:37.880

President Lyndon B. Johnson: we fight because we must fight if we're to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny, and only in such a world, will our own freedom be finally secure. This kind of a world will never be built by

00:05:37.880 - 00:06:05.220

bombs or bullets, yet the infirmities of man are such that force must often precede reason and the waste of war the works of peace. We wish that this were not so, but we must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish.

00:06:06.180 - 00:06:23.960

Unknown: The publication of the Pentagon Papers certainly provides excellent documentation for part of the thesis that you've been arguing. It provides material about 25 years, really, of decision making and decision implementation, that and

00:06:23.960 - 00:06:39.440

indications, both of what was known to the people in policy making positions, which can now be compared with what they were saying all those points and times and the contrast are very obvious in actually, the two programs that we've done with

00:06:39.440 - 00:06:56.140

Brahms, Sherman and Peter Scott and others who have kept track of the politics of escalation, they have have talked about both how this process of widening involvement was was managed, and to somewhat lesser extent, what was being told to the public at

00:06:56.140 - 00:07:12.300

this time. But they've also talked about how at various points in time, there were people within the decision making elite who counseled caution and who finally managed, by various means, to place limitations on exactly how

00:07:12.300 - 00:07:30.380

deeply, how broadly the United States would get involved in Southeast Asia, and their analysis of the publication of the Pentagon Papers themselves is that it represents, at least to some extent, a split within this policy making and policy

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implementing elite that with consequences that can only be imagined speculated on at this point in Time, the last chapter of your manuscript is subtitled permanent counter revolution, or a new society. What kind of perspective Do you have? Not so

00:07:49.600 - 00:08:03.260

much, on what the Pentagon Papers have revealed as on what their publication at this time indicates, and the fact that they were even drawn up starting in 67 and 68 indicates, Frank Kofsky: sure. No, I think that that's quite true. I think

00:08:03.260 - 00:08:22.280

that there's a split in opinion in the ruling class, and that goes back, actually, several years, at least, to 68 to the effect that if you keep on with the war over, if you keep on, if you keep on with the war, you're going to destroy what you're

00:08:22.280 - 00:08:35.050

what it is you're fighting for, namely, going to the society at home is going to be so eroded by a variety of pressures and tensions, and, heaven knows, we've seen those all that in the end, it's going to be self defeating. And there's that

00:08:35.050 - 00:08:52.190

split certainly exists now. That is, that is, I guess, would be step one, or point one in the syllogism. But again, the next point in the syllogism doesn't seem to command that much unanimity. Namely, well, all right, if that's true, what

00:08:52.190 - 00:09:07.770

should we do? We should withdraw now. And I hear I'm using a variety of things. For example, the ABA, which represents legal opinion, which in turn represents corporate opinion to some degree, just voted down Nixon's just voted down a

00:09:07.770 - 00:09:18.640

withdrawal plan. Last year, Nixon spoke to a group of 100 top business executives right after the Cambodian incursion, and was all it was. There were no press, but there were press outside in the corridors, and they asked what had happened and

00:09:18.640 - 00:09:31.070

what the tone of the meeting was. And they said, Well, some people are unhappy with Nixon's economic policies, but by and large, they gave him they supported what it was he was doing. It's like you've glimpsed half of a problem. And again,

00:09:31.070 - 00:09:46.100

it's sort of reminiscent of the 1850s in that respect, you've glimpsed half of a problem. You see that if you persist in the war in Vietnam, you ultimately are going to you run the risk of ripping apart the social fabric at home and destroying

00:09:46.100 - 00:09:57.490

capitalism that way. On the other hand, the will to withdraw isn't there throughout the entire ruling class, clearly, because if it were, we would be out by now. And the reason for that is because there, there are risks from staying, to be sure,

00:09:57.490 - 00:10:09.430

but there are risks from leaving. What are the risks? From leaving. That's where the domino theory comes in. They the people, the decision makers, believe in the domino theory, but the dominoes themselves seem to believe in the theory. That's

00:10:09.430 - 00:10:20.810

the interesting thing I've got Yon Sosa, who, if he's still alive, was the leader of a Guatemalan revolutionary movement, explicitly said several years back that, look, we're watching the Vietnam War. We're waiting to see how that

00:10:20.810 - 00:10:34.970

comes out, if the Vietnamese win and expel the Americans. That shows that any well organized group of revolutionaries anywhere can do it. It may take a long time to be sure, but so that, and that's, that's what's for grabs. Up for grabs now you

00:10:34.970 - 00:10:46.900

see ball well, George ball was right in that sense, that if you commit all, if you commit the United States to the suppression. If you make it not simply that we're assisting the South Vietnamese elite to suppress counter revolution, but

00:10:46.900 - 00:10:59.980

we are actively in there suppressing any damn well. Had better suppress it, because if you don't suppress it, you will, you can't bluff it through next time, next time you go in and you say, okay, look, Allen day, denationalize this or that, or

00:10:59.980 - 00:11:09.180

we'll send in the Marines. And they can say, well, you send in the Marines. We're ready. You know, we'll fight 15 or 20 years. President John F. Kennedy: Let every nation know whether it

00:11:09.180 - 00:11:33.560

wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. An Unknown: implication that's been found in the kind of analysis

00:11:33.560 - 00:11:46.900

that is carried out in the Pentagon Papers themselves is that if the American public, in fact, knew had access to the information that the decision making Elite has access to, that perhaps some very different kinds of things would be

00:11:46.900 - 00:12:04.620

happening. And kind of a corollary to that is that the publication of the papers, the fact that someone would take them and Xerox them and provide them to various newspapers, indicates that perhaps this is going to set a new pattern, that

00:12:04.620 - 00:12:20.240

there that the public in the United States is going to have more access to information, to some of the same information as the policymakers have access to. Do you think that this is a correct analysis, and if so, do you think that this may lead to

00:12:21.440 - 00:12:36.200

removing, or at least lessening, the kind of manipulation of consciousness that has been so characteristic of how the policymakers have kept their game going. Frank Kofsky: It's really, you know, that's a difficult

00:12:36.200 - 00:12:50.260

question to say, because it's all been so recent, but I can see a a tendency that runs in a straight line from McKinley through Nixon in terms of news managing like when McKinley was out there annihilating the Filipinos, he tried to bar

00:12:50.260 - 00:13:05.100

newspaper reporters from from the Philippines, and he tried to censor their dispatches. Same, same trip as Nixon is on, absolutely, and Wilson did the same thing when he with the intervention. And not only with the intervention in Russia, but

00:13:05.100 - 00:13:20.180

the intervention the First World War, he set up the Committee of Public misinformation, and which was a gigantic factory for turning out reams and reams of propagandistic material. It's hard to believe that, since that is an advantage that goes with

00:13:20.180 - 00:13:34.220

being the being in office, it's hard to see that won't be, that advantage won't be exploited. It may be now the people that there will be, the underlings who disagree with policy will be more willing to leak things out. But what I hope for is because,

00:13:34.220 - 00:13:46.960

I mean, we can't really that's sort of episodic, too, in a way. I mean, we can't wait for Daniel Ellsberg or somebody to come along and rip off one of these sets of 47 volumes and have it published. I'm glad that he did it. But mean, as he himself

00:13:46.960 - 00:14:00.360

said, you know, like, well, in the interim period, 9000 men have died. What I hope is that we'll get a new public, actually. I mean, we'll get a public that then learns how to read newspapers and learns what the what one well, one, well,

00:14:00.360 - 00:14:13.320

one a public that is willing to tolerate radical analyzes. Because the interesting thing to me is the things that radicals were saying at the time about the Gulf of Tonkin, for instance, about its fabricated nature, and about the war in

00:14:13.320 - 00:14:24.020

Laos, everything that the radicals have been saying about this war, turns out, in the from the Pentagon, as far as the Pentagon Papers comment about them at all, it turns out the radical analysis was correct. So I would hope that what we're

00:14:24.020 - 00:14:34.640

having now is an upsurge of skepticism, and from the polls, I've been seeing in the newspapers that that seems to be the case. People learn how to read the papers, learn how to think about what's happening and learn learn to protect

00:14:34.640 - 00:14:47.440

themselves by keeping them their own consciousness under lock and key. So in other words, they have to break the Presidential religion. You know, one of the saddest things I've ever, I think I've ever seen was I read the public opinion polls. I

00:14:47.440 - 00:15:00.420

think you know that they're fallible, but I think they were interesting. One was taken in some working class districts in Detroit, which had a referendum on ending the war some months back. And one and the referendum won, and it did. Best in the

00:15:00.420 - 00:15:11.160

working class districts. And so the pollsters went in and said, Well, you guys aren't for the war. So no, we're not for the war. We're just against those demonstrators. It was that they, like my father, for example, who left school at the eighth grade,

00:15:11.580 - 00:15:22.280

their religion, as I said, is President worship and American patriotism and all they really they know that the war is wrong. They know that it's destroying them, their society, their everything, their families, their wages and what have you,

00:15:22.460 - 00:15:34.760

but they also still believe that it is wrong to protest that they owe they owe this. They owe a kind of filial obligation regardless. Well, I hope that that thing gets eroded. Of course, with over time, it will get eroded, because this

00:15:34.760 - 00:15:46.360

generation doesn't feel that way. President John F. Kennedy: The question is, are we moving in the direction of peace and security. Is our relative strength growing? Is that Mr. Nixon says our prestige at an

00:15:46.360 - 00:15:59.740

all time high, as he said a week ago, and that of the communists at an all time low? I don't believe it is. I don't believe that our relative strength is increasing. And I say that not as the Democratic standard bearer, but as a citizen of the

00:15:59.740 - 00:16:14.940

United States. Who is concerned about the United States? I look at Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of the United States. In 1957 I was in Havana. I talked to the American ambassador there. He said that he was the second most powerful man in Cuba. And yet,

00:16:14.940 - 00:16:28.580

even though Ambassador Smith and Ambassador Gardner, both Republican ambassadors, both warned of Castro, the Marxist influences around Castro, the communist influences around Castro, both of them have testified in the last six weeks

00:16:28.580 - 00:16:40.040

that in spite of their warnings to the American government, nothing was done. Our security depends upon Latin America. Can any American looking at the situation in Latin America feel contented with what's happening

00:16:40.040 - 00:16:52.480

Frank Kofsky: today? Read some history and and look at, in particular, try and under try and read something about, what about the United States conquest of the Philippines? You know, we went to, how much, what do I have about a minute or

00:16:52.480 - 00:17:04.140

something, yeah, yeah, United States goes to war with Spain, ostensibly over Cuba, and we end up taking the Philippines. And isn't that bizarre? Funny, how that could have and, of course, it was just like the Gulch of Tonkin. Tom McCormick has

00:17:04.140 - 00:17:15.780

researched and found out McKinley had a plan set to take the Philippines well ahead of the war in this in the Cuban thing was ephemeral, but the methods used to subdue the Cuban, the Philippine population, as I said before,

00:17:15.780 - 00:17:29.420

were exactly the same methods, burning down huts, killing civilians to intimidate the gorillas, lock, stock and barrel. So in that sense, very little has changed. And I would like to, I hope that sense of skepticism is on the increase.

00:17:29.420 - 00:17:40.480

And I would urge people to look at, look into the details of the Philippine campaign by the United States. Maybe that will even give them a new dose of skepticism for reading the daily paper.

00:17:40.960 - 00:17:54.460

President Richard Nixon: There is one issue that stands out above all the rest, one in which every American is concerned, regardless of what group he may be a member and regardless of where he may live. And that issue very simply stated, is

00:17:54.460 - 00:18:11.160

this, how can we keep the peace? Keep it without surrender? How can we extend freedom? Extend it without war? First, we have to learn from the past, because we cannot afford to make the mistakes of the past.

00:18:24.500 - 00:18:52.390

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Music: He's five foot two and He's six feet four. He fights with missiles and with spears. He's all of 31 and he's only 17. He's been a soldier for 1000 years. He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a chain, a Buddhist and a Baptist

00:18:52.390 - 00:19:10.560

and a Jew, Unknown: and he knows he shouldn't kill and he knows he always will kill you for me, my friend, and me for you. And he's fighting for Canada, he's fighting for France, he's

00:19:10.560 - 00:19:29.660

fighting for the USA, and he's fighting for the Russians, and he's fighting for Japan, and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way. And he's fighting for democracy. He's fighting for the reds.

00:19:30.020 - 00:19:50.020

He says it's for the peace. Of all, he's the one who must decide who's to live and who's to die, and he never sees the writing on the wall. But without him, how would Hitler have condemned Him at daha? Without

00:19:50.020 - 00:20:08.340

him, Caesar would have stood alone. He's the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war, and without him, all. All this killing has gone. He's the Universal Soldier, and he really is to

00:20:08.640 - 00:20:29.780

blame. His orders come from far away. No more. They come from him, you and me and brothers. Can't you see, this is not the way we put an end to war. President Richard Nixon: Now I believe that one of the reasons

00:20:29.780 - 00:20:46.120

for the deep division about Vietnam is that many Americans have lost confidence in what their government has told them about our policy. The American people cannot and should not be asked to support a policy which involves the overriding issues

00:20:46.240 - 00:21:01.860

of war and peace unless they know the truth about that policy tonight. Therefore, I would like to answer some of the questions that I know are on the minds of many of you listening to me. Well, let us turn now to the fundamental issue, why and how

00:21:01.920 - 00:21:14.220

did the United States become involved in Vietnam in the first place? Unknown: The publication in many newspapers across the United States now, of what are known as the Pentagon Papers, except in

00:21:14.220 - 00:21:31.400

the Pentagon, where they're known as the McNamara papers, has brought to the minds of a lot of people, once again, the reality of a credibility gap, the reality of people in government and policy making positions in government having

00:21:31.520 - 00:21:51.340

one kind of awareness and perception of events which they are trying to control or direct, and presenting a very different picture of those events and of their own awarenesses to the public at large. It's the contention of a book that Frank

00:21:51.340 - 00:22:04.920

hofsky has been working on that far from being a unique or even a recent innovation in the conduct of American foreign policy, the existence of a credibility gap. That is a gap between descriptions of reality by the US government and the

00:22:04.920 - 00:22:18.960

reality itself has been a permanent component of the making of that policy since the 1890s at least. And his book, which is called, or is going to be called, I think credibility gap, the manipulation of public consciousness in the conduct of

00:22:18.960 - 00:22:35.420

foreign policy from McKinley to Nixon is something that takes on that subject and tries to provide some kind of historical perspective. Obviously, Frank, you were at work on this book long before the pentagon papers were published. What led you to

00:22:35.420 - 00:22:51.400

get involved in researching this particular question in the first place, and when did the research begin? Frank Kofsky: Well, really sprang out of my out of two things that go hand in hand, out of my teaching and out of what

00:22:51.700 - 00:23:03.900

came out of teaching and out of my own discoveries as I attempted to present what I understood to be the truth about this country to especially in lower division survey courses with freshmen and sophomores. Mostly, the further I got into

00:23:03.900 - 00:23:16.080

certain kinds of things, the more appalled I became, and as I became more outraged, so what really happened is my own teaching needs, just in terms of finding out what happened so that I could present an accurate picture to classes. And then my

00:23:16.080 - 00:23:28.340

growing outrage dovetailed. And the more I found out, the more I wanted to know, and till I could put together a try to put together a coherent picture of what the nature of government is in this country and to what forces its responsive

00:23:29.300 - 00:23:45.700

Unknown: when, when did the research actually begin? When Frank Kofsky: it's really it is so hard for me to say it seems like it's something that I've been working on, oh, for six or seven years without even knowing exactly what I was working on it

00:23:45.700 - 00:24:04.020

for. But I've been clipping things, for example, just out of the daily press on Vietnam for six or seven years, accumulating things, and I've written some articles and so on. Gradually, I guess it took place. The idea took concrete form, I guess,

00:24:04.020 - 00:24:21.500

about two to three years ago. Unknown: How did you select the beginning period of the 1890s as a matter of convenience, or as because you're feeling that it reflected, say, from the 1890s to the 1970s reflected a

00:24:21.500 - 00:24:35.000

particular period of development, a certain kind of tendencies within American society, and tendencies among the members of the policy making elite in this country. Or how was that initial decision made?

00:24:35.000 - 00:24:47.140

Frank Kofsky: Well, actually, it was decided for me. I mean, say the historical actors, the decision makers, did it all, and they left enough documentary records. It's funny, people really don't think that they're ever going to be found out. I

00:24:47.140 - 00:24:59.140

guess so. They commit all kinds of strange things to papers, basically, up until the Civil except Dean Russell, yeah, right. He bites his tongue. Well, I you know, if I were in his shoes, I would have bitten my tongue too. He may come out

00:24:59.200 - 00:25:14.460

looking better than. Any of the rest of the war criminals. So that's a matter of debate up until the Civil Civil War, and immediately thereafter, I guess, to the period through the period of reconstruction, the American capitalist class, who

00:25:14.460 - 00:25:29.180

essentially are the people who, in the last analysis, controlled political decision making, were mostly preoccupied with developing their home market, subduing rivalries with Southern planners, and then clearing the continent, which means

00:25:29.600 - 00:25:49.420

pacification of the Indians and pacification of the black population, a series of recurrent depressions in the 1870s 1880s and 1890s leads the same economic leaders to analyze the how capitalism, which really in industrial capitalism, is

00:25:49.420 - 00:26:04.320

relatively new phenomenon for them as well. Many first generation, maybe second generation for them, to analyze how it functions, and the analysis that they formulate by the crisis, by the depression of the 1890s which is a hair

00:26:04.320 - 00:26:18.120

curling depression, which results in lots of industrial violence, strikes and so forth. The analysis that they formulate is the analysis that guides making of the United States foreign policy from then till now, namely, that capitalism

00:26:18.180 - 00:26:33.380

confined capitalism in one country, doesn't work that. And everybody says that. Andrew Carnegie, who is Mr. Industrialist himself at this period of time, says, We have to have, we have to have overseas expansion. He is echoed by every

00:26:33.380 - 00:26:50.740

major trade and industrial journal in the 1890s and I've got just, I have oodles and oodles of quotations that can just be read off. It makes, it makes, as one historian has said, it makes these staid financial and industrial

00:26:50.740 - 00:27:04.200

newspapers look like Leninist journals, because they all say the same thing, capitalism. You can find capitalism here. It doesn't work, and we have to find foreign outlets for our for our produce, especially so that that happens really in the 1890s

00:27:04.560 - 00:27:16.020

it isn't fully implemented in the 1890s but that's just because we don't have they don't have the power. It's not because they don't have the desire. Unknown: I wondered about this, particularly in light of a

00:27:16.020 - 00:27:30.200

period to which I gave some study, which is the period of the 1840s with Polk as president running the Mexican War right in much the same kind of way. And in fact, this analogy has particularly been drawn. Would it be your interpretation that

00:27:30.200 - 00:27:41.860

this was in fundamentally a different kind of society than that which the United States has become by the 1890s or Well, something else? Frank Kofsky: No, I would say that there, there are great

00:27:41.860 - 00:27:53.740

similarities and great differences. The similarities are the foreign policy. That's very interesting, because that's where I started my doctoral dissertation to filibustering in Central America and a Cuba. So I'm somewhat checked out on

00:27:53.740 - 00:28:06.300

that. And the conclusion I come to the is that in this period, essentially, you have a Democratic Party running the government for the most part throughout the period, and that responding to slaveholder imperatives at a time when

00:28:06.300 - 00:28:17.700

slaveholders represent a minority in the south and certainly a minority in the United States. And so you have Polk resorting to a kind of McKinley esque and Johnsonian diplomacy, as in the Mexican War His own, His little Gulch of

00:28:17.700 - 00:28:33.200

Tonkin incident, within which he manufactures a confrontation and uses as a confrontation escalate into war for the purposes of slaveholders. And again, he has to practice a kind of a very dishonest sort of foreign policy, because the signal

00:28:33.200 - 00:28:44.320

contradiction in this period is a contradiction between an ostensibly democratic form of politics at home and an expansionist foreign policy that's going to satisfy the needs of a small minority, and you're going to ask people to

00:28:44.320 - 00:28:54.400

pay their taxes and go out and die for the small minority. Obviously, you can't say that's what you're doing. You say something else. Well, the Mexicans attacked us, and we're going to we're just going to defend our American bloodshed on

00:28:54.400 - 00:29:08.040

American soil. All right, Unknown: exactly. But then what you are saying is that there really is a different situation, that once industrial capitalism has arrived in the United States, the people who are at

00:29:08.040 - 00:29:23.820

the top, who have the influence on on those in Washington, who officially make American foreign policy, are representatives of the dominant interest Throughout, the society, Frank Kofsky: right? They take over. The similarity is in the

00:29:23.820 - 00:29:37.380

methods. The methods of deception are essentially the same presidential statements, attempts to discredit anti war movements and so forth as being communist or subversive. Those are those. You can find a direct continuity from Polk's time, and

00:29:37.380 - 00:29:51.470

Buchanan is good on that too. In the Kansas struggle. The difference comes in that in the be on whose behalf This is being done, that is saying the earlier periods being done for slaveholders, in the latter period is being done for

00:29:51.470 - 00:30:06.900

industrialists, but the methods are the same. Sure, no President Richard Nixon: one is more aware than I am of the political consequences of. The action I have taken, it is tempting to take the easy political path to blame this war

00:30:06.900 - 00:30:19.920

on previous administrations and to bring all of our men home immediately, regardless of the consequences, even though that would mean defeat for the United States to desert 18 million South Vietnamese people who have put their trust in us to expose

00:30:19.920 - 00:30:37.400

them to the same slaughter and savagery which the leaders of North Vietnam inflicted on hundreds of 1000s of North Vietnamese who chose freedom when the Communists took over North Vietnam in 1954 to get peace at any price. Now, even

00:30:37.400 - 00:30:58.240

though I know that a piece of humiliation for the United States would lead to a bigger war or surrender later, I have rejected all political considerations in making this decision, whether my party gains in November is nothing compared

00:30:58.300 - 00:31:16.260

To the lives of 400,000 brave Americans fighting for our country and for the cause of peace and freedom in Vietnam, whether I may be a one term president is insignificant compared to whether by our failure to act in this crisis,

00:31:16.260 - 00:31:39.740

the United States proves itself To be unworthy to lead the forces of freedom in this critical period in world history. I would rather be a one term president and do what I believe was right and to be a two term president at the cost

00:31:40.220 - 00:32:02.700

of seeing America become a second rate power, and to see this nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190 Unknown: year history. What kind of mechanisms exist? I mean, how do these kinds of interlock come to have their effect, obviously,

00:32:03.420 - 00:32:19.620

leaders of large corporate structures, people who have a certain kind of very almost tangible private power, simply by the actions that they undertake and that they have their agents undertake, make a kind of American foreign policy.

00:32:19.620 - 00:32:36.140

But it seems to me that the argument you're making goes beyond that, that in fact, the officials, appointed and elected, both who are in Washington are, in a sense, working in a kind of cooperation. How direct is the

00:32:36.260 - 00:32:47.020

cooperation? Frank Kofsky: Well, it's pretty direct because of two things, several things. I mean, first of all, you don't, we have enough studies now of party politics to know that you simply don't get

00:32:47.020 - 00:32:59.900

nominated for president by being a socialist. That is to say, people who are nominated for high office and who are appointed to high office have a, have a an explicit belief in the beneficence and goodness of the capitalist system, and believe

00:32:59.900 - 00:33:11.970

that the way to promote the welfare of the people in this country, insofar as they're concerned with promoting the welfare of the people in this country, the way to promote that welfare is by promoting the welfare of corporations. We see

00:33:11.970 - 00:33:24.010

that every day just by going out on the street and looking at all those automobiles, as opposed to some kind of mass transit. So and people like dumb Hoff, who in his book, who rules America, in his later essay, who makes American foreign policy, he's

00:33:24.010 - 00:33:39.850

very explicit in calling attention to the way in which the patterns of socialization are administered, that is to say, the private schools that the elite will go to. And he points out that the political elite and the industrial elite

00:33:39.850 - 00:33:53.820

are largely they're essentially either one in the same or where, when they're not, when you have somebody like Dean Rusk, who's not from particularly wealthy family, they're simply co opted, they first prove, as in any bureaucracy, the way to advance

00:33:53.820 - 00:34:09.190

is by demonstrating that your views are in accord with those who are your superiors. And what Russell, somebody like Russell, does is say, Sure, yes, I believe in the goodness of capitalism. I certainly believe we have to promote whatever is

00:34:09.190 - 00:34:21.580

good for capitalism. In the case of somebody like McKinley, though, really, in a way, is you don't have to go through any kind of elaborate theoretical analysis, because mckinley's bosom buddy and and and campaign manager finance, and the man who

00:34:21.580 - 00:34:34.110

finances or ranges for the financing of campaigns is Marcus Alano, Alonzo Hanna, who himself is an industrialist and so in the mining too, which is a crucial sector of the economy. So McKinley is not going to be ignorant of what's going on in

00:34:36.090 - 00:34:50.370

the industrial and financial community. But the fact is, my dissertation director, Tom McCormick. His his dissertation was the book, the China market now book, the China market quadrangle. And one of the things that strikes me in

00:34:50.370 - 00:35:01.510

reading his book is that the number of times that the administration actively seeks out wants to know, what does a business admin, what is business community thinking? What does a business community? Thinking, and now those things are all

00:35:01.510 - 00:35:16.750

institutionalized. Domhoff has studied some of the kinds of committees of corporate leaders that are now officially convoked to tell the President what, what? Here's what we need in Africa, and here's what we need in Asia, and so on and so on. So

00:35:16.750 - 00:35:32.410

there's a consensus point of view. I mean, it is. It isn't that you have to bribe people by time that you get to the top. You believe that the way to promote the welfare of the United States is promoting the welfare or, as Charles Wilson

00:35:32.410 - 00:35:37.880

said, what's good for General Motors is good for the US? Well, that's it. He again. You know, he blundered. He said it out loud. Unknown: There is a pluralist analysis of pretty much the same

00:35:37.880 - 00:35:52.420

period of history dating from the coming of industrial capitalism, which would argue that defining the business community as such is a fairly difficult proposition. There are groups within it which have very different kinds of interests

00:35:52.420 - 00:36:08.940

that in fact come in conflict. Obviously, there are also their similarities. I mean, they're definitely opposed to organized labor and to certain kinds of populist movements among among farmers and people in less metropolitan areas, but that

00:36:08.940 - 00:36:25.940

there are conflicts among various segments of an American business community, and that these conflicts have their effect in terms of Who has access to the people who make official decisions in Washington as to whose interests say are

00:36:25.940 - 00:36:44.440

going to be protected in China or in Latin America and whose interests aren't going to be protected. What's your feeling and analysis of this situation? Do you accept any of the premises or findings of this pluralist style of analysis. Or

00:36:44.440 - 00:36:53.560

do you feel that there's a point, an essential point, that they're missing? Yeah, Frank Kofsky: their findings are valid. It's just their interpretation is kind of screwed up. Professor Hayes will

00:36:53.560 - 00:37:08.040

forgive me my I was at Pitt under Sam Hayes, who's one of the pluralists, and as Lee Benson is turning into a discussion for historians and historiographers, but it's quite true, there are conflicts within the business community, but

00:37:08.040 - 00:37:23.300

basically, when you come down to something like survival, if you if you say, the system is unworkable as it now stands, and we have to have certain measures taken in order to maintain the stability, or generate some stability for the system there

00:37:23.300 - 00:37:38.600

you find that you're going to get broad range consensus. Now, after within that consensus, there will be all kinds of haggling. So it'll be the question of which bankers get the Lou get tapped to Weldon deal in China, or which

00:37:38.600 - 00:37:52.420

industrialists get the tapped to expand into Latin America, sure, and or there'll be arguments between shippers and railroad owners and dry goods merchants. All those things are true. Those arguments all exist. But you have levels of generality.

00:37:52.480 - 00:38:07.260

They're second order phenomenon, because what's most important in the 1890s is taking the measures that are viewed as saving the capitalist system and on that there is a consensus. Later on, people get to get to arguing, but nobody has really argued at

00:38:07.560 - 00:38:21.680

this. Nobody at that point is arguing that empire, trade and expansion are bad things in themselves. The overwhelming majority of business spokesmen are all saying the contrary. So the pluralism is true. It's just that at a more basic level, the

00:38:21.680 - 00:38:34.940

pluralism evaporates President Richard Nixon: to protect our men who are in Vietnam and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and Vietnamization programs, I have concluded that

00:38:34.940 - 00:38:54.280

the time has come for action. This is the decision I have made in cooperation with the Armed Forces of South Vietnam, attacks are being launched this week to clean out major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian Vietnam border. A major

00:38:54.280 - 00:39:09.840

responsibility for the ground operations is being assumed by South Vietnamese forces. For example, the attacks in several areas, including the parrot speak that I referred to a moment ago, are exclusively, exclusively South Vietnamese.

00:39:09.840 - 00:39:27.860

Ground operations under South Vietnamese command with the United States providing air and logistical support. There is one area, however, immediately above parrot speak, where I have concluded that a combined American and South Vietnamese

00:39:27.860 - 00:39:45.520

operation is necessary. Tonight, American and South Vietnamese units will attack the headquarters for the entire communist military operation in South Vietnam. This key control center has been occupied by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong

00:39:45.520 - 00:40:05.040

for five years, in blatant violation of Cambodia's neutrality. This is not an invasion of Cambodia. Unknown: Do you contend that there is a basic continuity of principles? Is that dominates shapes the orientations of

00:40:05.040 - 00:40:13.320

policymakers, public and Frank Kofsky: private? Sure, yeah, well, go ahead with your question. Unknown: I mean, you've already begun to answer it. Are there?

00:40:13.320 - 00:40:28.340

Are there shifts, though? I mean, do certain principles have greater significance to specific generations of policymakers, and do these kinds of things change over time, or is there just an elaboration of all of them that goes on so that the harmony is

00:40:28.340 - 00:40:42.100

pretty much the same, but maybe it just gets louder. That's a kind of difficult metaphor to take very far. Frank Kofsky: But the only, the only really well, all right, the I think what, the only real shift I see is in the sense

00:40:42.100 - 00:40:56.140

after the Second World War. Because after the Second World War, you get what William Williams has called American arrogance, the arrogance that convinces guys like Henry Luce, this is going to be the American century, and that they can do

00:40:56.140 - 00:41:10.980

anything they want. I mean, you can clearly see that running through the entire Southeast Asian tragedy. Unknown: But yet, I mean, with a man like Wilson, there is an incredible argument, rhetoric of mission, that really, even if

00:41:10.980 - 00:41:22.940

the United States may not yet have the power to impose its sense of what a world order should be like, it has to take a leading role in trying to bring that world order apart and all the benefits that will

00:41:22.940 - 00:41:36.560

Frank Kofsky: accrue therefrom. Well, sure, no, I'm not, I'm not arguing that there's any psychological change, major psychological change. I've gone over this with Joan Wilson, who, essentially, I think Joan shares my views on foreign policy. She

00:41:36.560 - 00:41:53.500

teaches the foreign policy courses at Sacramento State College, and she's Berkeley, Berkeley graduate, and she says, Well, you, you know, my emphasis on the 1890s she disagrees with. She says that in the 1890s the decision makers didn't have the

00:41:53.500 - 00:42:03.300

power to implement everything they were thinking about. But, and then that's and I agree. I said, That's right, they didn't have the power, but they had already devised, they'd already set the precedent. So when the power was there, other people

00:42:03.300 - 00:42:15.840

would go ahead and try and implement that, and that's what I'd say about Wilson. Sure, Wilson would like to stamp our evolution every place and takes place around the globe. But also, Wilson knows he's still somewhat guarded about what he

00:42:15.840 - 00:42:31.640

does, because he knows that he has to, he's ultimately going to be answerable to it, and he has a certain amount of he's circumspect to a point, and that he knows that he cannot fool all the people all of the time, to quote that little homily. So in

00:42:31.640 - 00:42:41.320

the right in the intervention against the Soviet revolution, he does have to pull out after a relatively short time. And later, when he goes to Versailles and meets Winston Churchill the Paris Peace Conference, he apologizes, I'm

00:42:41.320 - 00:42:51.160

really sorry I couldn't send more troops and leave them in longer. But, you know, that's American politics. Unknown: Was reality that much more difficult to control at that point in time, or

00:42:52.060 - 00:43:06.300

Frank Kofsky: I think it was sure. Well, as I say, the American power at the close of the Second World War breeds arrogance. It makes people like Lou think that this is the American Century, which means first of all, the whole attempt

00:43:06.300 - 00:43:19.680

to manipulate a Cold War psychology in the United States was unprecedented in the sense that the Soviet Union had just gone from being an ally, and now everybody was supposed to drop all of that nonsense, and the Soviet Union was supposed to

00:43:19.680 - 00:43:30.740

become an enemy. And conversely, Germany and Japan were supposed to become our allies, you don't undertake and Arthur Vandenberg, who was a senator at the time, said, well, in order to do this, we're going to have to scare a hell of a lot of people. But

00:43:30.800 - 00:43:47.200

that didn't bother the decision makers. They felt they could scare the Americans and bulldoze the French. Dulles wanted. Dulles offered the French atomic bombs to use against the Chinese or the Vietnamese, or anybody he wanted to bulldoze the French,

00:43:47.200 - 00:44:00.960

bulldozed the British. Bulldoze Europe into submission. Bulldoze the Soviets into submission. And Dulles was really quite petulant when he couldn't send troops into when he had to agree to the Geneva conference. He was very disappointed about that, because

00:44:00.960 - 00:44:12.600

men sitting down the table with Communists, and he could hardly wait till the conference was over before he could start undermining it. So I think that, I guess what is a division of omnipotence is what Williams calls it. And I think that

00:44:12.900 - 00:44:28.280

that's kind of the thing that's undone these policymakers. But I think it was in that sense, you know, it was inevitable that, given the fact the United States emerges so completely triumphant from the Second World War and what looks be a monopoly of all

00:44:28.280 - 00:44:41.800

the existing kinds of power, industrial, atomic, what have you, military, it was inevitable they were going to fall into that trap, and we're just now reaping the fruits of it. But the psychology that says that defines American well being as

00:44:41.800 - 00:44:53.320

American corporate well being, and defines American corporate well being on the ability to penetrate the underdevelopment well penetrate the remainder of the world. That is, that is a seamless hole, as far as I can say. I mean, that's right from

00:44:53.320 - 00:45:06.000

Cleveland, really. I mean, Cleveland's time, one of them, one of Unknown: the traditions that does pass through. Each of these periods, and each instance within them is this counter

00:45:06.000 - 00:45:24.620

revolutionary intervention. It begins in the Philippines. I mean, it's there in the Soviet Union. Are there both factors internal to American society and things that are happening in the world beyond that make kind of kind of revolutionary

00:45:24.620 - 00:45:41.500

intervention really a different kind of animal after the Second World War. I mean, when, when China, obviously, is the big thing. The fact that the revolution in the Soviet Union is to some extent a success, although the Soviet Union is

00:45:41.500 - 00:45:55.720

extremely weakened by the effort that it puts forth in the Second World War. Obviously, it is to some extent a question of circumstances, but what are the most significant of those Frank Kofsky: circumstances? Well, as you say, I think what's

00:45:55.720 - 00:46:06.780

happening here is our two opposing trends, two contradictory trends coming to fruition at the same time, on the one hand, the Second World War is ending with American power heightened as never before. But at the same time,

00:46:06.780 - 00:46:18.960

the Second World War is ending with people who have been subject to formal imperialism demanding control of their own destiny in a way that they never really have before either. And these it's clear that these two things are going to hit head on,

00:46:19.140 - 00:46:38.060

as they did hit head on. Are hitting head on right now. And you said China and Korea, South all of Southeast Asia, the Congo, Cuba, so the Caribbean and the Latin America, with British Guiana. I suspect we probably be in Chile now, if

00:46:38.360 - 00:46:53.560

were we not in Southeast Asia, that that kind of thing you have, I think that that has those those two, the collision of those 210, trends or tendencies, has heightened what I guess must be the principal contradiction of the

00:46:54.580 - 00:47:17.520

President Lyndon B. Johnson: epic the world as it is in Asia is not a serene or peaceful place. The first reality, reality is that North Vietnam has attacked the independent nation of South Vietnam. Its object is total conquest. Of course, some of the

00:47:17.520 - 00:47:43.060

people of South Vietnam are participating in attack on their own government, but trained men and supplies, orders and arms flow in a constant stream from north to south. This support is the heartbeat of the war, and it is a war of unparalleled

00:47:43.060 - 00:48:00.520

brutality. Simple farmers are the targets of assassination and kidnapping. Women and children are strangled in the night because their men are loyal to their government. You