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New promotional material from PBS. click here. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/movement-and-madman/
American Experience
The Movement
and the “Madman”
Premieres
Tuesday*, March 28, 2023, on PBS
and Streaming on PBS.org
Explore the
Little-Known Story of the Dramatic 1969 Showdown
Between President
Nixon and the Anti-War Movement
(BOSTON,
MA) –
The Movement and the “Madman”
shows how two antiwar protests in the
fall of 1969 —
the largest the country had
ever seen —
pressured 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. At the time, protestors had no idea how
influential they could be and how many lives they may have saved. Told through
remarkable archival footage and firsthand accounts from movement leaders, Nixon administration officials,
historians, and others, the film explores how the leaders
of the antiwar movement mobilized disparate groups from coast to coast to
create two massive protests that changed history.
Directed by
Stephen Talbot,
The Movement and the “Madman”
premieres as a Special Presentation of
American
Experience on Tuesday, March 28, 9:00-10:30 p.m. ET (
check local listings) on PBS,
PBS.org
and the
PBS
App.
By 1968, 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,
Nixon had defeated Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, and the antiwar movement
decided that something dramatic needed to be done.
Although Nixon publicly belittled the movement, he was acutely
aware that Lyndon Johnson’s presidency had essentially
been brought down by the constant chants of protestors surrounding the White
House. While on the campaign trail, Nixon vowed never to use nuclear
weapons in Vietnam but, now in office, he came up with a plan to end the war:
his “madman” strategy. “His
secret plan was to threaten the North Vietnamese with nuclear weapons,”
said 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 began military
preparations for bombing North Vietnam, mining Haiphong harbor, and using
tactical nuclear bombs near the Chinese and Laotian borders. They codenamed the
plan “Operation Duck Hook.”
Unaware of the plan and with casualties continuing to mount, the
leaders of the antiwar movement developed new and bigger ideas for protests in
the fall. The first was 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, was to organize what they
hoped would 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 succeeded beyond the organizers’
wildest dreams. Dispelling the myth that the antiwar movement consisted
solely of “hippies” and leftists, the Moratorium
crowds consisted of labor leaders, church groups, civil rights activists,
Democrat and Republican lawmakers, housewives, veterans, families and more. “The
word ‘protestor’ generally evokes an image of
long hair and love beads,” reported 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 decided to call off “Operation
Duck Hook.” Years later, he wrote: “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 had one more move left and, later that month, he
ordered a secret worldwide alert of U.S. nuclear forces to send what he called “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,” said 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 focused on discrediting the
antiwar movement and the media for their positive coverage of the protests. In
a nationally televised speech on November 3, Nixon blamed demonstrators for
undermining the war effort and appealed to what he called “the
great silent majority” for support.
Tensions built as the protests neared, with Nixon barricading the
White House with buses and military troops. When November 15 arrived, as many
as half a million protestors descended on Washington, while another 250,000
rallied in San Francisco. It was the largest single-day protest the country had
ever experienced. Within earshot of the White House, the enormous crowd on the
Washington Mall sang John Lennon’s “Give Peace
a Chance” as folk singer Pete Seeger
shouted, “Are you listening, Nixon?”
He was. Nixon’s
“madman” plan was shelved, and the nuclear alert ended. “It was only decades later, when the
archives were released, that we realized what, in fact, we had accomplished,”
said 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,” said organizer Rev. Dick Fernandez. “They had to take it off the
table. There were too many of us who were saying no.”
About the Interviewees
Christian Appy
is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
and author of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity.
Sam Brown was the lead
organizer of the October 15, 1969 Moratorium.
Stephen Bull is a Vietnam
veteran who served as Richard Nixon’s personal aide from
1969-1974.
Willian Burr is co-author
of Nixon’s Nuclear Specter: The Secret
Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War.
Brenda Cavanaugh
(deceased) was an antiwar activist whose husband was killed in Vietnam.
David Cortright is
Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace
Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He participated in the November 15,
1969, march in Washington as part of a contingent of GIs and veterans. He is
the author of Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War.
Carolyn Eisenberg is a
professor of U.S. History and American Foreign Relations at Hofstra University
and author of Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast
Asia.
Daniel Ellsberg was an
early supporter of the war in Vietnam but grew to oppose it. A military analyst
with the RAND Corporation and the Department of Defense, he advised Kissinger
in the winter of 1968-69 on President-elect Nixon’s Vietnam
war plans.
Reverend Dick Fernandez
was the director of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam and a significant
player in the October and November 1969 protests.
Morton Halperin was a
Defense Department official from 1966-1969. He became privy to Kissinger and
Nixon’s nuclear threats and resigned as Kissinger’s
aide in late 1969.
David Hartsough was a
Quaker antiwar lobbyist in Washington during the Vietnam War.
David Hawk was one of the
four main organizers of the October 15, 1969 Moratorium.
Joan Libby Hawk was on the
staff of the October 15 Moratorium in Washington, D.C.
Frank Joyce was an antiwar
and antiracism activist from Detroit.
Anthony Lake served in
Vietnam as a young diplomat and became an aide to Henry Kissinger in the Nixon Administration. Involved in the “madman”
strategy, Lake quit in protest during Nixon’s invasion
of Cambodia in April/May 1970.
Susan Miller-Coulter was
the co-coordinator of the March Against Death in Washington, D.C., November
13-14, 1969.
David Mixner was one of
the four main co-organizers of the October 15, 1969 Moratorium.
Roger Morris was special
assistant to Henry Kissinger, working on secret negotiations with North Vietnamese
diplomats in Paris in 1969.
Mary Posner organized the
October 15 Moratorium at Ball State University and attended the march in D.C.
Don Riegle was a
Republican congressman from Flint, Michigan, who became an early and outspoken
opponent of the Vietnam War.
Melvin Small is Professor
Emeritus of History at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.
Margery Tabankin was an
antiwar activist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who took part in the
October 15 Moratorium and then organized students to go to D.C. for the
November march.
Joseph Urgo was stationed
at a small Air Force base in Atlantic City, NJ, guarding a squadron of jet
fighters and their nuclear missiles during what he later learned was Nixon’s
worldwide nuclear exercise in October 1969.
Cora Weiss was a leader of
the national group Women Strike for Peace and co-chair of the New Mobilization
Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which organized the November 1969 mass
marches and rallies in Washington, DC, and San Francisco.
Tom Wells is the author of
The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam.
American Experience The Movement and the “Madman” will
stream simultaneously with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms,
including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS,
Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android
TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. It will
also be available for streaming with closed captioning in English and Spanish.
About the Filmmakers
American Experience The
Movement and the “Madman”
|
Producer and Director
Editor
Executive Producer
|
STEPHEN
TALBOT
STEPHANIE MECHURA
ROBERT LEVERING
|
American Experience is a production of GBH
Boston
Stephen Talbot
(Director) is an Emmy, duPont and Peabody award-winning filmmaker who
has produced, written or directed more than 40 documentaries for public
television, primarily for the PBS series FRONTLINE and KQED (San Francisco).
His FRONTLINE films include The Best Campaign Money Can Buy, The Long March
of Newt Gingrich, Justice for Sale and News War: What’s
Happening to the News. He directed the PBS history special 1968: The
Year That Shaped a Generation, and produced and wrote PBS biographies of
authors Dashiell Hammett, Ken Kesey, Carlos Fuentes, Maxine Hong Kingston and
John Dos Passos. He was the co-creator and executive producer of the PBS music
specials Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders. Talbot also served as the
series editor for FRONTLINE’s international series, Frontline
World: Stories from a Small Planet, and the senior producer of documentary
shorts for the PBS series INDEPENDENT LENS. As a student at Wesleyan
University, he made his first documentary film about the November 1969 anti-war
protests in Washington, DC.
About American Experience
For 35 years, American Experience has
been television’s most-watched history series,
bringing to life the incredible characters and epic
stories that have shaped America’s past and present. American Experience documentaries have been
honored with every major broadcast award, including 30 Emmy
Awards, five duPont-Columbia Awards and 19 George Foster Peabody Awards. PBS’s
signature history series also creates original
digital content that innovates new
forms of storytelling to connect our collective past with the present. Cameo
George is the series executive producer. American
Experience is produced for PBS by
GBH Boston. Visit pbs.org/americanexperience and
follow us on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram
and YouTube to learn
more.
Major funding for American Experience provided
by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Liberty Mutual Insurance, and the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Funding for The Movement and the
“Madman” provided by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. Additional
series funding for American
Experience provided by the
Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, the Documentary Investment Group, and
public television viewers.
The Movement and the “Madman” is distributed
internationally by PBS International.
*********************************************************************************
One page press release for general use is here https://tinyurl.com/AmEx-Press-Release
Full press release for the media is here PBS Pressroom - The Movement and the "Madman"
* Most stations will broadcast on Tuesday at 9 p.m local time but check with your PBS affiliate for the local schedule.
******************************************************************************
A list of PBS Stations that did special programs for the Burns/Novick Vietnam series is here. Staff contacts may have changed but that is a good place to begin if your station is included. https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2017/09/vpcc-list-of-local-pbs-stations-plans.html
****************************************************************************
Dr. Paul Lauter on the importance and use of the film
In late March a new film, The Movement and the
“Madman,” will be shown on PBS. The film dramatizes the impact of the 1969
Moratorium and the Mobilization to End the War on the war policies of the
Nixon-Kissinger administration, constraining them against widening the conflict
or using nukes, which they were considering. Directed by Steve Talbot and produced by
Robert Levering and Steve Ladd—all long-time peace activists—the film tells an
accurate and persuasive story of the power of the anti-war movement to shape
policy and programs at the highest levels of government. It has the potential to
reach a huge audience, especially younger people, whose understanding of the war
on Vietnam has largely been shaped by movies from that period and by blockbuster
documentaries like Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s “The Vietnam War,” which,
unfortunately utterly marginalizes the anti-war movement.
Some of us active
with the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee (VPCC) would like to pull
together a package of materials that might be useful both to viewers and to
teachers. We do not
have much time nor many resources. So I am turning to you to ask that you send
me links to on-line materials that might be included in such a useful
package. And also
other primary materials we could put up on line if necessary. Such materials might
include photos, autobiographical statements, local Moratorium flyers and news
clips—the whole shooting match that you think people might find of interest in
viewing or teaching the film. Please annotate or assign captions to
documents or pictures; we don’t have the capacity to track them down.
Please send any
such materials to me at paul.lauter@trincoll.edu.
The simultaneous
nationwide showing offers unique organizing and educational opportunities that
can result in more viewers and a greater impact. The following have occurred to
us, and we welcome your comments and additions:
1)
House parties at the time of the national premier (March 28, 9-10:30 p.m.) They
could be in person or virtual, e.g., an open zoom screen simultaneous with or
immediately following the TV broadcast. They could involve friends from the
Vietnam era, or your children or grandchildren who will find interesting how
your personal story relates to what they are seeing, maybe for the first
time.
2) Collaboration with
local historians (city, county, state, university, newspapers, TV archivists) to
assemble and present publicly the history of the antiwar movement in your own
community.
3) Introducing the
program director or public relations staff of your PBS station to the knowledge
and resources of local historians as well as to persons like yourself who were
active or present during the antiwar movement. That can lead to on screen
participation in conjunction with the March 28th premier or likely rebroadcasts
during fund-raising season. If you or others have written memoirs of protests,
imprisonment, exile and/or opposition during military service, this is an
opportunity to make them known.
We also think it is appropriate for this question to be
asked in conjunction with the broadcast: What lessons do the experience of the
US war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and of its opposition have for Russia's war
in Ukraine and aspirations for peace?
Paul
Lauter
Allan K. & Gwendolyn Miles Smith
Professor of Literature
(Emeritus)
Trinity College (Hartford)
******************************************
Ways to Engage with the film premier and afterwards
Building and localizing the PBS broadcast is our first opportunity to carry the message of VPCC to a broad national audience. It is the missing chapter of the Burns Novick mega series about the war. VPCC is calling on its network of more than 5,000 antiwar activists and supporters to maximize the impact of the documentary by doing or adapting whatever is personally appropriate from this list:
- Reaching out quickly to public relations and program staff of your PBS station to find ways to collaborate for the premier including involvement of former peace movement activists living in your area.
- Planning to watch it yourself and alerting friends, family, coworkers and long lost contacts from the antiwar movement.
- Organizing in-person or virtual viewing parties and conversations for the night of the premier or at a more convenient hour during the week or on the weekend by recording it or with streaming on PBS.org .
- Showing the film with a moderated discussion to classrooms, peace and religious groups, community organizations, social justice campaigns, etc.
- Assigning the broadcast for student viewing and leading a discussion the next day. (Suggested questions for students are here https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2023/03/movement-and-madman-resource-list.html )
- Meeting local historians, archivists and universities to ask if chronicles or collections about the peace movement in your area already exist that can be publicized in connection with the broadcast (or could be quickly assembled).
- Using the premier to open discussion of longer term projects, including creation of local histories, collections of memorabilia and documents as well as collaboration with station rebroadcasts of the film during a summer fundraiser.
- Writing an op ed or letter to the editor for pre-broadcast publication by local newspapers, online blogs and progressive newsletters that links your personal experience during the war with the showing of the film
- Making the film relevant to current policy debates by asking how Russian military intervention in Ukraine is similar to or different from US military Intervention in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (and Iraq). Asking if a Russian antiwar movement, mass draft resistance through self-exile and dissatisfaction among soldiers can help bring peace the way they did in the US.
