If you haven't seen this post before (it was posted on this day last year and this day the year before that), it's a reminder that protesting a wrong your government is doing is legal - it is part of our democracy. And when 100,000 people do it, as they did on this day in 1970, it sends a message.

As an outgrowth to the violence that met the anti-War protests at Kent and Jackson State Universities only a few days earlier, a mass demonstration and protest to the Vietnam War and our incursion into Cambodia on April 30th was organized and a march on Washington was held on May 9th.

It was the biggest demonstration of its kind, and the most peaceful. This was the demonstration made somewhat famous by the presence of President Nixon, walking through the crowd unannounced and without Secret Service in the middle of the night, talking with protesters.

News reports remarked Nixon thought the exchange with the demonstrators was "interesting". At a time when the word "interesting" could either mean enthusiasm, revulsion or the Chinese Curse - it was hard to pin down exactly what Nixon meant. But suffice to say, this demonstration brought mass opposition to the Vietnam War very much to the forefront.

Here is a special broadcast as presented by NBC News on May 9,1970.

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A curious mix of optimism and pessimism for this week, ending on April 26th in 1964.

On the optimistic side - President Johnson announced to the world that the U.S. would make substantial reductions in Nuclear Weapons and Uranium enrichment production. Simultaneously, it was announced by Nikita Khruschev via Radio Moscow, that the Soviet Union would do the same thing. The news was greeted with a sense of relief and UN General Secretary U Thant offered an evaluation on what was deemed a hopeful sign towards an easing of Cold War tensions.

On the Pessimistic side - tensions were brewing between the U.S. and Cuba as Cuban Premier Fidel Castro vowed to down any U.S. Reconnaissance planes flying over Cuban territory as it had been doing since 1962.

On the optimistic side - Sec. of State Dean Rusk returned from a fact-finding mission to Saigon and offered an upbeat assessment of the situation in Vietnam, saying the South Vietnamese Army could handle themselves nicely.

On the Pessimistic side - Defense Secretary Robert McNamara conceded it will "take time" for any progress to be made in Vietnam and that the South Vietnamese Army is running a defensive strategy rather than an offensive one. Oh well.

Meanwhile - the four year long negotiations between the Railroads and the Unions was finally at the settlement stage. And just in the nick of time, as the settlement averted a threatened strike.

President Johnson went on a brief tour of the Appalachia region, hitting the towns and cities worst hit by poverty and unemployment, touting his War on Poverty legislation. He was greeted with waves of enthusiasm.

Not so enthusiastic were reports from Capitol Hill saying the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was at a standstill, making the future unclear for passage of the Legislation.

And the much publicized "Stall-ins", threatened for Opening day of the New York Worlds Fair on April 22nd, didn't materialize. But that didn't stop some 300 Civil Rights demonstrators from being arrested from the Fair opening anyway.

All this in one week, ending on April 26th 1964, as reported on the ABC Radio Voices In The Headlines program.

As much as we're heard about the Protest Movement to the Vietnam War in the 1960's there was that just-as-vocal contingent who not only believed the war was justified, but that we were also in the process of winning it. And many of those people were on Capitol Hill.

For example, Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-Conn) who served on the Senate Armed Services Committee was a staunch believer in the Vietnam War and was convinced we were winning it. One of the true Hawks in the Senate. But in all honesty, early in 1965 there was a much larger segment of the population who believed the war could be won and believed we were absolutely justified in being in Southeast Asia than who weren't. The Anti-War Movement was just getting started at this point and the sales pitch for the War was much more organized.

Dodd was convinced we were winning, that we had "turned the corner" so to speak. And in this installment of NBC's Meet The Press, he is asked why he is so adamant in that assessment.

Sen. Thomas Dodd: “We’re winning more battles every day. The latest figure I heard was, on an engagement just recently, it was in the ratio of about four to one. They suffered something in excess of 400 losses. Our side had something in excess of 100.The morale of the South Vietnamese is very high. There are more defectors coming over to our side every day. About a year ago, my information is, we were getting about ten a month. We’re now getting over a hundred a month. We’ve got a thousand pilots, about a thousand pilots now in the South Vietnamese Air Force. They’re good pilots, I’m told by our Air Force people, they’re good fighters. As a matter of fact, I was told they do a better job at maintenance than our people do. So there are all these reasons I say we’ve begun to win.”

Hearing the casualty reports, I am reminded of what was later revealed to be grossly inflated enemy body counts, and how early on the war was being manipulated to be portrayed as another cakewalk. What was being conveyed and what was actually happening were two wildly different stories. And unfortunately we had to find out the hard way.

So here is Meet The Press featuring Sen. Thomas J. Dodd as originally broadcast on May 2, 1965.

For those of you who remember, Sen. George McGovern was one of the most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War and what had become our failed Foreign Policy in Southeast Asia.

With the Nixon Administration in place, and dissent and opposition to the war increasing on a daily basis, along with the disclosure of the My Lai Massacre which had taken place almost two years earlier, pressure on the White House to put an end to the long national nightmare was at its highest ever.

Here is a panel interview from CBS News' Face The Nation on November 30, 1969 where, among other questions, McGovern is asked about the "silent majority" as characterized by Richard Nixon.

Sen. George McGovern: “Frankly, in our kind of a free society, I worry about this new emphasis on the part of the Administration on the virtues of silence. There has never been a time that I know of in the history of this country when the highest officials in our government have made such a virtue of those people who remain silent. Now perhaps we ought to be doing more talking, more soul searching, more questioning about American policy. I think if the recent atrocities indicate anything it’s that we’ve had too much silence. Here is a terrible crime, if it’s true, that was committed almost two years ago that we’re only now learning about. Where were those who knew about this incident a year and a half ago? Where was the so-called Silent Majority in the face of the awful reports we’ve had of the loss of civilian life in Vietnam that have been coming in to us for many-many years? So it does seem to me that great emphasis on silence, the effort on the part of high administration officials to intimidate outspoken members of the Press, candid television commentators, the effort to isolate those who are involved in the protest against Vietnam, all of those things have had perhaps something to do with the slowing down of real debate over this policy.”

The MyLai incident would soon take center stage. And by the Spring of 1970 a whole new and deadly wave of protest would erupt over the country. And McGovern would make his bid for the Presidency in 1972.

Fascinating batch of years, to be sure.

In July 1967, with all the recent developments in the Middle East, the riots throughout America and escalating dissent towards the Vietnam War, Secretary of State Dean Rusk still maintained the eroding position that the majority of Americans supported the War and it was only a small "marginal" segment of the population trying to end it and get us out of there.

This interview from Face The Nation on July 30, 1967, features a trio of reporters - Marvin Kalb, Murray Marder and Martin Agronsky. They tried for some clarification from Rusk that our Foreign Policy was indeed going in the right direction and that the seemingly rampant violence hitting our cities was only a minor blemish on the bigger picture.

Dean Rusk: “I think they know enough about us to know that these riots have nothing to do with the situation that they face in Vietnam and their ambitions to take over South Vietnam by force. We’ve had some indication that they are becoming a little more sophisticated about the American political system and that they know that these marginal dissents and these minority views do not represent the United States or its policy or its determination. I think it would be a great mistake for them to think they get any comfort out of what has happened here recently in some of our cities. Obviously in their propaganda they are trying to use it to our disadvantage and this is happening also in Peking and Havana and Moscow.”

The only problem was, it was far from true and the level of dissent towards the war was escalating at a rapid rate. It was easy in 1964 to label dissent towards the war in Vietnam as marginal - only a comparatively few people actually knew there was war going on before the Gulf of Tonkin incident. But as the war dragged on and as casualty reports kept coming in (even though they were shaded in number so as to appear not so bad), it was hard to justify being there by 1967. The notion that billions of dollars were being spent on a War in Southeast Asia while our own cities languished in depressed times seemed wildly inexcusable. Despite the fact that a bastion of hawks and supporters of the war insisted it wasn't, the war was quickly becoming lost to the vast majority of American people. Particularly those who had sons fighting, or who were becoming of draft age and were facing the daunting prospects of being another number on the casualty lists.

But they tried to paint a rosy picture and they tried to say it was not what the majority really wanted. And Dean Rusk was somehow stuck propping up a rapidly weakening position.

It's a debate exactly when the turning point of the Vietnam War occurred. Some say it was around 1966 (the year of this broadcast) and others say it was in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive. My own feeling is that the writing was most certainly on the wall as early as 1965 as reports of escalation, draft calls and body counts became a daily segment on most every news program.

It was around 1966 that the mainstream news establishment began looking at the war and questioning its validity, as is evidenced by a special program from CBS Radio News which featured veteran correspondent Eric Sevareid reporting his impressions of that war in this June 21st broadcast.

Eric Sevareid: “We try to apply Western logic and experience to this Oriental land. So we encourage the elections, envisage a Parliament and eventual civilian rule representing groups and regions. My own guess is that this process of democratizing would produces years of political turmoil before stability is reached. It will probably, though not certainly open a whole new Pandora’s box, all the quarrels in the country bursting out into the open. Vietnam, I think myself, is not to be compared with Korea or Greece where we were successful in these respects. A strong national sense and strong leaders existed in those countries. If this proves to be the trend as we try to democratize government in Vietnam then the immediate consequence would be a nightmare for us, for we should then have to involve ourselves deeper and deeper into their politics, their economy and more and more of the fighting and dying will be done by Americans and less and less by the Vietnamese.”

It's interesting that Sevareid brings up the subject of Western logic with reference to establishing our brand of Democracy in other countries (in that case Southeast Asia). A subject being brought to the forefront again in the Middle East with the recent protest movements and overthrows underway and certainly our foray into Iraq. But in 1966 the concern was whether or not Vietnam was winable and what was in store for the future.

I guess the two parts to this post would be listening to a journalist like Sevareid and realizing how far we've gotten away from Journalistic integrity. And the other is how the lessons learned from Vietnam have somehow been forgotten.

We had no idea what the future would be like in 1966 and we certainly have no idea now.

Maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be.

(By 1970 just about everybody was sick of the war)

By 1970 protest to the War in Vietnam had taken over just about every school campus and large city in the country. Until our latest excursion, the Vietnam War was the longest period of time the U.S. had been engaged in active combat. No end was in sight. People were questioning what we were doing there at all in the first place. Americans were being drafted at increasing numbers in direct correlation to the numbers of flag draped coffins arriving home.

Then as now, our Foreign Policy was under scrutiny. The final straw came with the invasion of Cambodia early in 1970, triggering a mass of protests throughout the country that further escalated with the dramatic and bloody confrontations at Kent and Jackson State.

But despite all that, there was a segment of the population who still believed in the war, felt we needed a victory and almost all of them were still somewhere in the period of the "Last Great War", believing Vietnam was akin to World War 2 and we had no right to protest. The protesters were "duped by Communists" or were "idiot kids". If anything, it signified just how wide the gap in generations really was.

This documentary,produced by NBC News in May of 1970, attempts to survey what the protests were leading to and how would the Vietnam nightmare end. The numbers of guests are quite large - almost everyone it seems was interviewed and it's instructive to get, at least a sampling, of what was going on in the country forty years ago.

And . . .even Donald Rumsfeld shows up. As Director of The Office Of Economic Opportunity, he is asked if the protests to the Vietnam war have anything in common with the state of Poverty.

Donald Rumsfeld (Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity): “The problems of the poor depend in, of course a great deal on the economy and they also depend on the sources available. But indeed they also depend on the attitudes of the non-poor to the extent that the American people will interest themselves in these problems and involve themselves. Why there’s a tremendous amount that can be done in terms of inclusiveness and hiring and firing and the opportunities that individuals have. I think the exciting thing I see and what we saw this weekend in Washington is that we’ve seen a great many young people come to Washington. People who value life, people who recognize the importance of group activities, who are concerned about individual identity and individual opportunities, and the resource that’s there for this country. The brains, the energy, the emotion, the enthusiasm to the extent that this society can have the wisdom to include them, to listen to them and to provide constructive ways that they can help make this the kind of country they’re anxious to have. I think the problems of our society including the problems of the poor can be . . really handled in a very wonderful way.”

I realize at the time you would be hard pressed to imagine Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary some thirty years later. Although just by listening to his words, his characteristic mangling of language and his breezy disconnect with folks of lesser economic bearing, it really makes you wonder how he managed to, not only survive, but flourish in Washington. The only thing that comes to mind is I,Claudius.

And maybe we are more like ancient Rome than we thought.

In May 1970, with our invasion of Cambodia, the protests and deaths at Kent and Jackson State, opposition to our involvement in Southeast Asia hit an all-time high, and calls for ending our seemingly endless and pointless military engagement in Vietnam grew very loud.

On May 12, NBC aired a broadcast of a discussion with five Senators who were in support of Amendment Number 609, of The Amendment To End The War.

The Senators taking part in the discussion were: Sen. George McGovern (D- S. Dakota), Sen. Harold Hughes (D-Iowa), Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon), Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Sen. Charles Goodell (R-N.Y.).

Interesting that it took this long to get to the point where an Amendment was introduced. Even more interesting that it was so popular on both sides of the isle.

Yes, those things did happen in the old days . . . .

Here is the complete broadcast as it happened on May 12, 1970.

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On January 4th 1968 Secretary of State Dean Rusk held a Press Conference where he reviewed Foreign Policy accomplishments of the previous year, and laid out goals for 1968. As always during the Vietnam Era, the goings on in Hanoi were first and foremost and, among other subjects, the offer of a ceasefire for January was talked about. It is ironic that less than three weeks later North Vietnam would launch the bloody and opinion-changing Tet Offensive. The event which was said to have turned many Americans against our involvement in Vietnam and, for all intents and purposes, was influential in Lyndon Johnson's decision not to seek re-election for the 1968 Presidential election.

But on January 4th neither Rusk, nor anyone in the State Department or on the ground in Vietnam, have a clue as to what was coming within a matter of days. The Offensive was said to have surprised everyone. There were skirmishes in the weeks leading up to Tet. But nothing to give any indication as to the scale of what was to come.

So with that in mind, here is the Dean Rusk Press Conference of January 4th, 1968 as heard over NBC Radio.

Pretend you have no idea how it all turned out.

News for this day in 1964 (via radio station WXYZ in Detroit) started off with word on the upcoming Oregon Presidential Primary that had Ambassador to Saigon and GOP Presidential hopeful Henry Cabot Lodge leading the pack, with Nelson Rockefeller running a close second. Both the Oregon and upcoming California Primaries were considered something of a free-for-all with grumblings of a Stop Barry Goldwater Movement among the GOP's Moderates.

In other news - From Capitol Hill, the Senate GOP pledged to keep the Scandal Probe into former Democratic Aide Bobby Baker going. President Johnson and Defense Sec. Robert McNamara were holding talks over the situation in Vietnam.

Speaking of Vietnam, it was reported that 51 South Vietnamese troops were killed in an ambush by Vietcong guerrillas just north of Saigon the previous day.

Civil Rights Leader Bayard Rustin pledged some 50,000 demonstrators to picket the upcoming Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. When asked if the same would be true for the GOP Convention, Bayard said there would be pickets, but the GOP wasn't so important.

In Michigan news - the friction between Governor George Romney and Attorney General Frank Kelly heated up again. This time over the issue of Legislative Reapportionment.

And GM said it would try and hold the line on new car prices in 1965, saying that 1964 car sales would likely hit 8 million, marking the first time in history the car maker did so well.

And that was how it rolled, this May 15th 1964 as broadcast over Detroit Radio station WXYZ via their Morning Report.