by Oliver Stone
U.S. troops were on a typical search-and-destroy mission that day in the Son My hamlet. They arrived to find, with few exceptions, a village of women, children, and old men. Much of the killing was carried out by members of the 1st Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant William Calley. The slaughter was finally halted when Hugh Thompson landed his helicopter between rampaging soldiers and fleeing Vietnamese who were about to be slaughtered. Thompson ordered his crewmates Larry Colburn and Glenn Andreotta to open fire on U.S. troops if they tried to harm the Vietnamese he was rescuing from the bunker. Colburn recalled, “These were elders, mothers, children, and babies. . . . They come into a town and rape the women, kill the babies, kill everyone. . . . And it wasn’t just murdering civilians. They were butchering people. The only thing they didn’t do is cook ’em and eat ’em. How do you get that far over the edge?”46
The appalling incident had been covered up for more than a year. The truth might never have surfaced if it hadn’t been for the persistence of Vietnam veteran Ron Ridenhour, who was so troubled by what he had heard about the massacre that when he returned to the United States, he wrote a two-thousand-word letter, which he sent to thirty members of Congress and executive branch and military officials.
Before Ridenhour sent his letter, the army had managed to suppress the story despite the fact that at least fifty officers, including generals, had knowledge of the massacre and the cover-up. The mainstream media ignored the story until it was finally broken by Hersh through the alternative Dispatch News Service, after the major publications rejected his stories.
Americans were shocked by the news and outraged by the grotesque and increasingly undeniable inhumanity of the war. The mother of one of the My Lai participants, an Indiana farmworker, told a reporter, “I gave them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer.”47
Nixon complained about the negative publicity resulting from the news of the massacre, repeatedly saying to his deputy assistant, Alexander Butterfield, “It’s those dirty rotten Jews from New York who are behind it.”48
The bodies of dead Vietnamese in the aftermath of the U.S. massacre at My Lai. In November 1969, Americans learned from the journalist Seymour Hersh that U.S. forces had, the previous November, slaughtered some five hundred civilians in a village of mostly women, children, and old men.
My Lai was extreme, but indiscriminate killing of civilians was an everyday occurrence. Specialist Fourth Class Tom Glen, who had served in a mortar platoon, described the routine brutality in a letter to General Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam:
The average GI’s attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish . . . [and] discount[s] their very humanity. . . .
[Americans,] for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves. . . . Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with a vocabulary consisting of “You VC,” soldiers commonly “interrogate” by means of . . . [s]evere beatings and torture at knife point.
Glen’s letter was forwarded to Major Colin Powell in Chu Lai, who discounted Glen’s complaints. “In direct refutation of this portrayal,” Powell concluded, “is the fact that relations between American [Division] soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”49
The antiwar movement continued to grow. As many as three quarters of a million protesters flocked to Washington, D.C., for the November 1969 march; 150,000 more demonstrated in San Francisco. Despite the size of the protests, the war’s dehumanizing effects spread beyond the battlefield, hardening the hearts of the populace as a whole. Sixty-five percent of Americans told pollsters that they weren’t bothered by the My Lai massacre. The steady inuring against human sympathy that Dwight Macdonald had so eloquently described as resulting from the terror bombing of Japanese cities had again infected much of the nation.
News of My Lai opened the door to a steady spate of horror stories. The public learned of “free-fire zones,” where anything that moved would be shot. It learned of the tens of thousands killed by the CIA as part of the “Phoenix Program” and the “tiger cages” in which political prisoners were incarcerated and brutalized. It learned of the displacement of more than 5 million Vietnamese peasants, who were relocated to wire-enclosed refugee camps. It learned of widespread and wanton torture and many other crimes that outraged the sensibilities of at least some Americans and brought forth calls for war-crimes trials.
Exploding antiwar sentiment may have forced Nixon to cancel Duck Hook, but on April 30, 1970, he announced a joint U.S.–South Vietnamese ground invasion of Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases along the border, insisting that the United States would not act “like a pitiful, helpless giant.”50
Nixon steeled himself for the decision by drinking heavily and watching the movie Patton over and over again. He seemed particularly agitated when he went to the Pentagon the next morning for a briefing. First he called protesting students “bums . . . blowing up the campuses . . . burning up the books.”51 Then he cut short the briefing by the Joint Chiefs and repeatedly declared he was going to “take out all those sanctuaries.” He proclaimed, “You have to electrify people with bold decisions. Bold decisions make history. Like Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill—a small event but traumatic, and people took notice.” He concluded his expletive-laden diatribe with “Let’s go blow the hell out of them,” as the Joint Chiefs, Laird, and Kissinger looked on in stunned disbelief.52
The campuses erupted. Students and professors went on strike. More than one-third of colleges and universities suspended classes. Violence flared. Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine. Mississippi state police shot into a crowd of protesters at Jackson State College, killing two and wounding twelve.
Protests and violent confrontations spread to more than seven hundred campuses. The Washington Post reported, “The overflow of emotion seemed barely containable. The nation was witnessing what amounted to a virtual general and uncoordinated strike by its college youth.”53 Scores of thousands of protesters descended on Washington. Kissinger described the capital as “a besieged city” with the “very fabric of government . . . falling apart.”54 Secretary of the Interior Warren Hickel urged Nixon to heed the protesters. When his letter leaked to the press, Nixon fired him.
More than two hundred Foreign Service officers signed a petition protesting the invasion of Cambodia. Nixon ordered an undersecretary to “Fire them all!” Four of Kissinger’s top aides resigned in protest, as did NSC consultant Morton Halperin. Morris regretted not having gone to the press with documents because he believed that Kissinger was a restraining influence. He told Daniel Ellsberg, “We should have thrown open the safes and screamed bloody murder, because that’s exactly what it was.”55 He later concluded that there were no limits to Kissinger’s ruthlessness.
Nixon during his April 30, 1970, press conference, announcing the invasion of Cambodia. The president’s decision prompted outrage on campuses across the country and ignited a dramatic wave of protests.
A delegation of Kissinger’s Harvard friends informed him that they would no longer serve as advisors. Thomas Schelling explained, “As we see it there are two possibilities. Either, one, the President didn’t understand when he went into Cambodia that he was invading another country; or, two, he did understand. We just don’t know which one is scarier.”56
Nixon’s behavior became increasingly erratic. He and his valet visited the Lincoln Memorial at 5 A.M. for an awkward exchange with student protesters. Kissinger feared that Nixon might have a nervous breakdown. Under mounting pressure, Nixon announced that all combat troops would be out of Cambodia by the end of June. As Joint Chiefs Chairman Moorer acknowledged, “The reaction of noisy radical groups was considered all the time. And it served to inhibit and restrain the decision makers.”57 But the bombi
ng campaign intensified, devastating much of Cambodia.
The White House made broad claims about its authority to break the law in order to curb dissent. Testifying before the Senate, Tom Huston, who was in charge of White House internal security, explained, “It was my opinion at the time that simply the Fourth Amendment did not apply to the president in the exercise of matters relating to the internal security or national security.”58 When David Frost later confronted Nixon with his lawbreaking, Nixon replied simply, “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”59 That argument was very similar to the one the George W. Bush White House would make years later to justify its own illegal measures.
Nixon also justified overthrowing a popular government in Chile. A rarity in Latin America, Chile had been a democracy since 1932. Nixon and Kissinger would soon change that. Chile’s importance was magnified by the fact that it was the world’s leading copper producer, with production dominated by two American-owned firms, Kennecott and Anaconda. In 1964, the CIA, which had been meddling in Chilean affairs since 1958, helped moderate Eduardo Frei defeat Socialist Salvador Allende for the presidency. Over the next few years, the United States spent millions more supporting anti-Communist groups and provided $163 million in military aid, placing Chile, among the Latin American states, second only to Brazil, whose reform government the United States had helped overthrow in 1964. Meanwhile, the United States trained some four thousand Chilean military officers in counterinsurgency methods at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone and on U.S. military bases.60
Whereas Kennedy and, to some extent, Johnson had tried to work with democratic elements in the region, Nixon and Kissinger opted for the naked use of force. Nixon informed the NSC, “I will never agree with the policy of downgrading the military in Latin America. They are power centers subject to our influence. The others, the intellectuals, are not subject to our influence.”61
Allende ran again in 1970, promising to redistribute wealth and nationalize U.S. companies that controlled Chile’s economy, such as ITT. Prodded by Chase Manhattan Bank’s David Rockefeller and former CIA director and ITT board member John McCone, Kissinger instructed U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry and CIA station chief Henry Hecksher to stop Allende. Hecksher enlisted the help of Chilean power broker Agustín Edwards, who owned copper mines, the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant, and El Mercurio, Chile’s biggest newspaper. The CIA conducted a massive propaganda campaign to convince the Chilean people that Allende would destroy democracy. Korry later deplored the CIA’s incompetence: “I had never seen such dreadful propaganda in a campaign anywhere in the world. I said that the idiots in the CIA who had helped create the ‘campaign of terror’ . . . should have been sacked immediately for not understanding Chile and Chileans.”62 Despite U.S. efforts, Allende narrowly outpolled his two rivals. When Kissinger told Nixon that Rogers wanted to “see what we can work out [with Allende],” Nixon shot back, “Don’t let them do it.”63
At a September 15 meeting with Attorney General John Mitchell and Kissinger, Nixon instructed Helms “to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.” He told him to use his “best men” and gave assurances that he was “not concerned [about the] risks involved.” “Make the economy scream,” he ordered. He told Helms to run the coup planning without notifying Rogers, Laird, or the “40 Committee,” the five-member Kissinger-chaired review panel that authorized and oversaw all CIA clandestine activity. McCone informed Kissinger that ITT’s chief executive officer, Harold Geneen, had offered $1 million to support the effort.64
Nixon instructed the CIA to pursue a two-track operation. Track one had two components: spreading propaganda to terrify the Chilean public about the consequences of an Allende presidency and bribing elected officials to block Allende’s confirmation by the Chilean Congress. Track two called for a military coup. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Charles Meyer, Hecksher, and Viron Vaky, Kissinger’s chief advisor on Latin America, all opposed the coup option. Trying to reason with Kissinger, Vaky wrote, “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets. . . . If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us., e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”65
Clearly, Allende posed no “mortal threat” to the American people. A National Security Study Memo commissioned by Kissinger concluded that “the U.S. has no vital national interests within Chile” and an Allende government would not significantly change the balance of power.66 Kissinger himself had earlier disparaged Chile as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.”67 But he now feared that a successful democratic socialist government in Chile could inspire similar uprisings elsewhere. “What happens in Chile,” he figured, would have an effect “on what happens in the rest of Latin America and the developing world . . . and on the larger world picture, including . . . relations with the USSR.”68
For Kissinger, Chile’s democratic traditions and the freely expressed will of the Chilean people were of little, if any, concern. While chairing a meeting of the “40 Committee,” Kissinger remarked, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”69
Helms chose Brazil station chief David Atlee Phillips to head the Chile task force. Phillips was well suited to the job, having helped overthrow a democratic government in Guatemala, and suppress a democratic uprising in the Dominican Republic. Despite having twenty-three foreign correspondents on his payroll, he doubted that track one would succeed. Chilean elected officials were simply too honest to bribe. He also doubted the efficacy of track two. Chile’s military, under General René Schneider, a strong supporter of the Constitution, was staying out of politics.
CIA propaganda was having more of an impact in the United States than it was in Chile. Time magazine’s October 19 issue had a bright red cover featuring Allende titled “Marxist Threat in the Americas—Chile’s Salvador Allende.” Time trumpeted the CIA line, warning that if Allende “is acknowledged the winner, as seemed virtually certain last week, Chile may not have another free election for a long, long time.” Even worse, it opined, a Communist takeover would inevitably follow.70
In a subsequent issue, however, one astute reader, Michael Dodge of St. Paul, Minnesota, challenged Time’s biased coverage:
Sir: Intrigued by your marvelous cold war headline, MARXIST THREAT IN THE AMERICAS, I read on to see who is being threatened. Apparently it’s some U.S. copper firms, the telephone company, and assorted juntas. Somehow, I’m not alarmed. I am, however, irritated by your persistent assumption that any form of Marxism enjoying any form of success in any part of the world is, ipso facto, a threat. This kind of thinking gave us Viet Nam. And it ignores the obvious: non-Marxist politicians have generally failed to meet the needs of the masses. I suggest we let our humanity transcend our cold war reflexes and hope that the people of Latin America are finding some kind of solution to their problems. We haven’t been much help.71
As the futility of track one became apparent, the focus shifted to track two. With the assistance of allies like Edwards, the United States proceeded to destabilize Chile politically and economically. “You have asked us to provoke chaos in Chile,” Hecksher acknowledged in a cable to Langley. Ambassador Korry warned Chilean Defense Minister Sergio Ossa, “We shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chilean people to utmost deprivation and poverty.” But even Korry later cabled Kissinger that he was “appalled” by the coup. Undeterred, Kissinger had Helms cable the CIA station in Santiago: “Contact the military and let them know USG [U.S. Government] wants a military solution, and that we will support them now and later. . . . Create at least some sort of coup climate. . . . Sponsor a military move.”72
On October 13, after a meeting with Kissinger, Thomas Hercules Karamessines, director of the CIA’s clandestine services, cabled Hecksher, “It is firm and contin
uing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.” Karamessines instructed the Santiago station chief to encourage General Roberto Viaux to join forces with General Camilo Valenzuela and other coup planners in the military. The CIA provided guns and money to two of Valenzuela’s henchmen as part of a plan to kidnap General Schneider—the first step in initiating the coup. But on October 22, Viaux’s men apparently got to Schneider first and assassinated him. Exactly one week earlier, Nixon had assured Korry that he was going to “smash” that “son of a bitch Allende.”73
Salvador Allende outside his home on October 24, 1970, after learning he’d been elected president of Chile. The new president took office on November 3. Two days later, Nixon called for his ouster.
Allende took office on November 3, 1970, having been certified by a vote of 153–24. Two days later, Nixon instructed the National Security Council to topple Allende: “If we let . . . potential leaders in South America think they can move like Chile . . . we will be in trouble. . . . No impression should be permitted in Latin America that they can get away with this, that it’s safe to go this way.”74
Infuriated by the CIA’s failure to block Allende’s election and its tepid response to his coup plans, Nixon decided to clean house. Egged on by Kissinger’s deputy Alexander Haig, who urged him to eliminate “the key left-wing slots under Helms” and revamp the entire covert operations, Nixon threatened to slash the agency budget and fire Helms if he didn’t conduct a thorough purge. Haig knew that it would be “the most controversial gutfight” in memory. Helms axed four of his six deputies. Nixon ordered him to turn control of the agency over to his deputy, General Robert Cushman, and stay on as figurehead. Helms refused to go along. He also refused to have the CIA take the fall for the Watergate break-in. Nixon ended up firing him.75
