- Two antiwar protests in the fall of 1969 cause President Richard Nixon to cancel his "madman" plans for a massive escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam.
- The Movement and the "Madman" shows how two brilliantly orchestrated antiwar protests in the fall of 1969 - the largest the country had ever seen - pressure President Nixon to cancel what he called his "madman" plans for a massive escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam, including a threat to use nuclear weapons.
The film opens in 1968 with Nixon campaigning for president and promising never to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. The U.S. had been at war in Vietnam for four years and there were over 500,000 troops on the ground. 31,000 Americans had been killed. When Nixon narrowly defeats Hubert Humphrey in the election, many in the antiwar movement decide that something new and dramatic needs to be done to end the war.
Although Nixon publicly belittles the peace movement, he is acutely aware that Lyndon Johnson's presidency had essentially been brought down by anti-war activism. Nixon hopes to end the war quickly by relying on what he privately calls his "madman" strategy. "His secret plan was to threaten the North Vietnamese with nuclear weapons," says Morton Halperin, a Defense Department veteran and an aide to Henry Kissinger. "He was convinced that the way to make the threat credible was for the North Vietnamese to fear that he was crazy and might actually do this."
In clandestine talks with the Soviet ambassador in Washington and the North Vietnamese in Paris, Nixon and Kissinger set a November 1, 1969, deadline for Hanoi to accept U.S. terms for ending the war or face disastrous consequences. The National Security Council and the Pentagon begin military preparations for bombing North Vietnam, including the country's dikes, mining Haiphong harbor, and using tactical nuclear bombs near the Chinese and Laotian borders. They code name the plan "Operation Duck Hook."
Unaware of the plan and with war casualties continuing to mount, the leaders of the antiwar movement develop new, ambitious ideas for protests in the fall. The first is to call for a Moratorium on October 15, 1969, a nationwide protest with an emphasis on local demonstrations throughout the country. The second plan, created by a sprawling coalition known as the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, is to organize what they hope will be the largest peace marches and rallies the country had ever seen, scheduled for November 15, in Washington D.C. and San Francisco.
With an estimated two to three million people taking part on hundreds of campuses and over 200 cities and towns across the country, the October 15 Moratorium succeeds beyond the organizers' wildest dreams. Dispelling the myth that the antiwar movement consisted solely of "hippies" and leftists, the Moratorium crowds include labor leaders, church groups, civil rights activists, Democrat and Republican lawmakers, housewives, veterans, families and business executives, as well as college and high school students. "The word protester generally evokes an image of long hair and love beads," reports ABC commentator Howard K. Smith. "But today, the crowds that marched and chanted and cheered the speeches looked more like a cross-section picked by the Census Bureau."
Stunned by the success of the Moratorium - and facing the prospect of another massive protest on November 15 - Nixon decides to call off "Operation Duck Hook." Years later, in his memoir, he writes: "Although publicly I continued to ignore the raging antiwar controversy, I had to face the fact that it had probably destroyed the credibility of my ultimatum to Hanoi."
But Nixon has one more move left and, later that month, he orders a secret worldwide alert of U.S. nuclear forces to send what he calls "a special reminder" to the Soviets and North Vietnamese of what he might unleash. "Nixon assumed that he could bend Cold War adversaries to his will by making them fear that he was crazy enough to launch a nuclear attack," says William Burr, co-author of Nixon's Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War.
Following the Moratorium's success and with the November 15 demonstrations soon approaching, Nixon switches his focus to discrediting the antiwar movement and attacking the media for their positive coverage of the Moratorium. Vice-President Agnew plays a prominent role in these attacks. In a nationally televised speech on November 3, Nixon blames demonstrators for undermining the war effort and appeals to what he calls "the great silent majority" for support.
Tensions build as the protests near, with Nixon barricading the White House with buses and bringing thousands of military troops into Washington. When November 15th arrives, as many as half a million protesters descend on Washington, while another 250,000 rally in San Francisco. They are the largest single-day protests the country has ever experienced and they are overwhelmingly peaceful. Within earshot of the White House, the enormous crowd on the Washington Mall sings John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" as folk singer Pete Seeger shouts, "Are you listening, Nixon?"
He is. The nuclear alert is called off. Nixon's "madman" plan is shelved.
"It was only decades later, when the archives were released, that we realized what, in fact, we had accomplished," says Moratorium and Mobilization co-organizer David Hawk.
"We now know we had a big impact on Nixon and Kissinger, what they thought they could get away with in November, namely blowing Vietnam to bits, and maybe even using nuclear weapons," adds protest organizer Rev. Dick Fernandez. "They had to take it off the table. There were too many of us who were saying no."
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