HEARTS
AND MINDS
1974
Producer/Director: Peter Davis
Producer: Bert Schneider
Associate Producers: Tom Cohen and Richard Pearce
Editors: Lynzee Klingman and Susan Martin
Photographer: Richard Pearce
Researcher: Brennon Jones
Sound: Tom Cohen
Mule and cart
in
Traditional singing.
Harvesting rice.
US soldiers walk past the fields.
Clark Clifford (aide to Truman, 1946-50; aide to Kennedy; Sec. of Defense, 1968-69):
“We were the one great power in the world” after World War II.
We had a sense of responsibility.
We also had a feeling that we could control events.
World War II propaganda film: “This time we will all make certain that this is the last time.”
Harry Truman: “Our vision of progress is not limited to our own country. We extend it to all the peoples of the world.”
Newsreel of
French military action in
By 1954, the
John Foster
Dulles offered
Georges
Bidault (French foreign minister in 1954): We were at the Quai d’Orsay and
Dulles was on his way to
Eisenhower [Ike]: “If
J.F. Kennedy [JFK]: “We don’t see the end of the tunnel, but I don’t think it’s darker than it was a year ago, in some ways lighter.”
Lyndon B. Johnson [LBJ]: “[The outcome will] depend on the hearts and the minds of the people who actually live out there.”
Nixon: “Throughout the war in
Lt. George
Coker returns to
He says that it was faith in family, God and country that kept us [POWs] going.
He speaks in a string of clichés, including, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
W.W. Rostow thinks that discussion of this new phase of the Cold War is “sophomoric.”
[Rostow was a major architect of the Vietnam War. He was an adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His theme was “Give war a chance.”]
“I know of no … analysis that would assert that the majority of the people in that country would want to be communists…. They were subjected to military attack from outside.
Are you really asking me this goddamn silly question?”
LBJ:
It was a lie, of course. It was used as an excuse to persuade Congress to give LBJ the authority to conduct the war without further Congressional approval.
Sen. J.W. Fulbright
on LBJ’s
[Fulbright, the founder of the Fulbright Scholarship, was
an
LBJ: Why is this responsibility ours? Because no one else can do the job.
More of Coker’s return…. He’s ready to go back if ordered to do so.
If I am a good American, it’s because
Randy Floyd
(
John Birch Society literature used in his high school.
He was a patriot, but even more, he was anticommunist.
Reagan: Communism is on the march.
1950s anticommunist propaganda film
Charles Hoey
(USAF,
“They’re tearing us down from the inside out.”
He is with his USAF buddy Jerry Holter.
J. Edgar
Hoover claims that the communist threat is greater in the
Joe McCarthy espouses the domino theory.
1950s anticommunist propaganda film.
Corporal Stan Holder: I always thought of the American fighting man as a warrior of sorts.
Robert Muller (Great Neck, NY): “Right or wrong, my country…. That’s how I felt back in ’67.”
Muller founded the
People hawk
things in
A boy tries to sell Charlie a prostitute, probably his sister.
A severely crippled boy crawls along the street.
Daniel Ellsberg: “We thought of ourselves, I think, as trying to defeat communism….
It was the underpinning of an imperial policy. I shared this assumption.”
General William Westmoreland (Commanding General, Vietnam, 1964-68): He was told by Gen. MacArthur that his new job was an opportunity but fraught with hazards.
Cargo planes and bombers appear ominously.
Floyd and Coker describe the thrill of bombing raids.
Coker: “I guess, perhaps, the risk of dying, being killed, is part of it, that makes it thrilling…. To say it’s thrilling, yes, it’s deeply satisfying.”
The planes the
Floyd: It was very clean. You’re an expert. “I had a lot of pride in my ability to fly.”
Villager: “The planes again…. I used to raise pigs…. The kitchen was here. The bombs destroyed everything I had.”
The villager is asked
if the planes are American or Vietnamese.
He doesn’t know. But it is a
strange question. The North Vietnamese
and
Two sisters: There used to be a third. She was killed by the bombs.
Coker: “You don’t have time for personal thoughts when you’re up there. It was all business.”
Floyd: You never saw the people, never saw the blood. It was clean.
“You’re doing a job…. I was a technician.”
The
two sisters: Everything just collapsed under the bombs. The bird comes home and finds no nest. One sister makes an eloquent, poetic soliloquy I cannot
repeat.
A
peasant:
“First they bomb as much as they please.
Then they film.”
Fr. Chan Tin
(
We fought against the Chinese for 12 centuries.
Then we fought the French, then the Americans.
Diem Chau (editor, Trinh Bay Magazine): “This is our war for independence.”
A 4th of July re-enactment, Croton, NY:
“When they rose up against the most powerful country in the world, they put everything on the line that they had.”
A participant: “Are you kidding? Oriental politics? Don’t put me on!”
A Viet Cong soldier is held at gunpoint, naked.
Ellsberg: We are engaged in counter-revolution.
Fulbright on Ho Chi Minh: He wrote seven letters to
the
Ho Chi Minh sits down with children. One of
them pulls his beard.
Rostow: “Ho
Chi Minh in ’56, I don’t think could have been elected dog catcher in
Ellsberg:
“Ho Chi Minh, dead, could have beaten any candidate we ever put up in
David
Emerson (
Emerson is a descendent of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Coffin-making
in
What killed the children? Poison.
Planes spray Agent Orange.
“It seems to spoil their intestines…. Hundreds of tons are dropped each day. And we can’t talk about it because we are afraid of the government.”
Edward Sowders, deserter, tells his mother he is going back to the military to stand trial.
He is going to testify at Congressional hearings.
Mrs. Lora Sowders: “All these people
holding their head high because they’re lost a son in
Muller talks about the thrill of “dinging” the enemy.
“That felt good, and I wanted more.”
Old movies depict
Stan Holder: “I wanted to go out and kill some gooks, you know…. I can remember when people used to call me ‘blanket ass’ or ‘chief’…. My name was ‘Ira Hayes’ in boot camp – either ‘Ira Hayes’ or ‘squaw’….”
Barton Osborn, former CIA officer talks about placing eyes on the backs of the dead.
The
He describes throwing POWs out of helicopters.
An Army officer says he never saw anything like that, but he had seen prisoners (“dinks”) beaten up.
Thich Lieu
Minh (Vietnamese Buddhist priest, An Quang Pagoda,
Soldiers under fire: a soldier says that he just wants to stay alive and go to school. “The whole thing stinks.”
William Marshall describes friendly fire: napalm: “Post toasties to the bitter.”
Interviews with soldiers in the trenches:
“I’ll be so glad to go home…. They say we’re fightin’ for something. I don’t know.”
Col. George
S. Patton III: “We sang three hymns and had a nice prayer…. My feeling for
A preacher
in
“This is serious business that we’re involved in, and that’s religious and God cares…. We’re concerned about the big game, but we’re also concerned about the bigger game, the biggest game of all that surrounds us, the game of life. May you be winners.”
The game, cheerleaders, the band….
In the brothel with Charlie and Jerry:
Cigarette lighter with map of
Two GIs demean a couple of prostitutes.
Jerry: “If my chick at home could see us now, man, she’d flip!”
A soldier uses a cigarette lighter to set
fire to a thatched roof. The villagers watch stoically. A man is led away. His son or grandson tries to go along with
him but is held back.
People hide in the reeds.
Soldier: “Some people enjoy it, some don’t…. I enjoy it.”
Lt. Coker at a Catholic elementary school, introduced by a nun:
He is still talking in clichés.
We felt good about the end of the war. “We knew that we had won.”
Question: “What does
“If it
wasn’t for the people, [
Question: “What do you feel about the
people that burned their draft cards and went to
“We don’t agree with them…. Sometimes they
were cowards.” The people who went to
Edward Sowders testifies before Congress.
It is a supreme irony to be prosecuted by the same people who planned this genocidal war.
[Sowders did not go to prison.]
Thich Lieu Minh (Buddhist priest) says the Americans will defeat themselves.
Westmoreland:
Coffin-maker:
The
“No
matter how many decades
In the
“We’re taught to obey our government.”
A teenage girl says that once in awhile she thinks about it, “but I like to think about the things that are happening right now to me.”
A truck driver thinks the
Duong Van
Khai A Vietnamese refugee from
Scenes:
Refugees on the roads.
A man tells a bad joke.
According to Peter Davis, the director, there was one
group at the gathering that did not want to be associated with the others and
did not want to be filmed. They sat at a
separate table and
Nguyen Ngoc Linh (chairman, Mekong Conglomerate, former cabinet minister): “I’m a johnny-come-lately as far as war-profiteering is concerned…. I saw that peace was coming whether we liked it or not, so I came home to prepare for peace.”
Logos of US corporations and banks appear on
False limbs are made and distributed to US soldier amputees.
Mike Sulsona (
He modestly describes the battle in which he lost his legs: “Not much to tell.”
“Don’t let’em beat us!”
LBJ: “We are going to win.”
Tet Offensive (1968).
An ARVN officer shoots a POW in the head.
A corpse is dragged onto a cot.
Westmoreland: After the enemy exposed himself he would be weakened.
Clark Clifford (Sec. of Defense, 1968-69) talks about what the Chiefs of Staff did not know: How long would it last? How many men would we need? Has the enemy’s resolve been reduced? “Nobody knew.”
I.F. Stone
[author of The Hidden History of the
Korean War] at a huge
Westmoreland: The enemy was on the ropes after the Tet Offensive, but we threw in the towel.
LBJ announces that he will not run again.
Various people on the street express doubts
about the war.
William Marshall:
You want us not to talk about the war, but we are going to.
Eugene McCarthy: The war is unwise and immoral, and therefore it must be brought to an end.
Robert Kennedy: “For 20 years we have been wrong.”
Kennedy doesn’t recall the part he played in getting the
US involved in the war, although he does admit that he formerly supported
Ellsberg, talking about RFK and his assassination:
“It began to look as though there were no way to change this country.”
Scenes of war …with body bags.
Clark Clifford: “I know now that the domino theory
was a false theory…. I could not have been more wrong in my attitude toward
VVAW: A soldier throws medals at the Capitol.
Robert Muller describes getting hit.
He describes being proud to be an American and a Marine.
His fiancée Kay Dvorshock describes Muller’s vitality.
Muller describes his earlier patriotism. “That’s gone. That hurts. That’s what I’m bitter about.”
Vietnamese villages are destroyed.
A propaganda film
Prisoners are tortured and beaten.
Ellsberg: Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon all lied.
“It’s a tribute to the American public that their leaders perceived that they had to be lied to.
It’s no tribute to us that it was so easy to fool the public.”
Vietnamization:
Nixon announces a plan for the complete
withdrawal of
A Vietnamese officer encourages villagers to chase the communists back to the North.
A
But his condescension is obvious.
Ellsberg: The
It’s not a civil war when one side is completely supplied and equipped by foreigners.
To admit that would be to admit that all casualties on both sides were the result of our policy.
“We weren’t on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.”
Ngo Dinh Diem (president of South Vietnam, 1957-1963)
Ike praised him for his patriotism and courage.
He was assassinated on November 2, 1963.
Gen. Nguyen
Khanh (president, S. Vietnam, 1964-65, speaking from his restaurant in
Maxwell Taylor (US ambassador to S. Vietnam, 1964-65) is shown making a statement to reporters before he ordered Khanh to leave the country: “The most encouraging factor is the promise offered by President Khanh’s government.”
Nixon
introduces Thieu. He says there have
been constructive talks about a program of peace for
At this stage, the
There are scenes of prisoners released from
South Vietnamese tiger cages.
Diem Chau: What are we fighting for? Prisons and torture? What kind of freedom is that?
What kind of freedom can you give us when you put so many of us in prison?
Fr. Chan Tin (in hiding from the S. Vietnamese government): “People can be arrested at any moment … and then tortured in inhuman ways in all the prisons, and above all, in police stations, and then imprisoned for years and years without trial. Their only crime is loving their country…. They ask for peace…. All that is considered a crime by Thieu.”
This is accompanied and followed by scenes
of people undergoing torture.
A woman describes being imprisoned and tortured.
Lime powder was thrown into their wounds.
“If we were innocent, they would beat us until we were guilty.”
Ngo Ba Thanh (a woman political prisoner): “In a country where the government has shown itself to be the enemy of the people, the prisoners are the patriots. And no matter how badly treated we are, still, we are proud to because at least we are free instead of enslaved, as so many of the so-called government officials….”
Fr. Chan Tin: “And so you see, when a Vietnamese works for peace and for liberty, he is considered a communist. It is the government that gives validity to being a communist….”
The communists are seen to be working for justice and peace.
Lt. Coker talks to a women’s club:
Maybe the gooks weren’t so bad compared to “a hundred women climbing down our backs.”
“I was what you made me to be.”
Rostow: “I would have preferred to have seen a different, more decisive military strategy.”
Emerson (filmed in 1973): My son’s death was a necessary price to pay for freedom.
The strength of our system is that you do rely on people like Pres. Nixon for leadership.
He presents an ode to the
Mrs. Emerson says her son had a great sense of humor. Later, as Mr. Emerson talks on, she fondles a model AF plane. He praises Nixon as a great man and a great leader. (This segment was filmed in early 1973.)
White House party for returning POWs, May 1973.
Bob Hope: “This is what I like, a captive audience.”
Nixon
describes his decision to start bombing
This is followed by scenes of soldiers loading
bombs and the bombs being dropped on
Dead children.
Vu Duc Vinh (a farmer) tells reporters to take his dead daughter’s shirt and throw it in Nixon’s face.
Westmoreland: The oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the westerner.
Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the orient.
Randy Floyd:
The reality of their homeland being destroyed was not something I thought about.
The pictures of the girl and others who
had been burned by napalm….
“We as Americans have never experienced that….”
He describes CBUs, which he admits he dropped.
“But I look at my children now, and I don’t know what would happen if – what I would think about – if someone napalmed….” He breaks down in tears.
“I think we’re trying not to learn something from this.”
The
Rows and rows of open graves….
Credits
Cadets march to band music.
Crowds cheer for soldiers.
Boys do drills.
Police attack antiwar demonstrators.