Required
Give Me
Voices of
Freedom: 228-239
Martin
Luther King’s declaration of independence from the war in Vietnam
Civil Liberties in Times of War
Questions: How did the civil rights movement change in the mid
1960s? What criticism of American
society does the Port Huron Statement have? What is your opinion of this
criticism? What criticism of the war in
Vietnam does Paul Potter and Martin Luther King have?
What is your reflection on those criticisms?
What does Potter mean by the importance of naming the system? Why does
MLK suggest there is a connection between domestic policies and foreign policy
for the U.S? What happened to Civil
Liberties during the Vietnam War era? Choose the violation of liberties that
most interests you and be prepared to comment on it or ask questions.
·
Leslie Gelb Analyzes the Roots of
U.S. Involvement in Vietnam (document)-this is the state departments own
“explanation” for the roots of U.S. involvement; note the defensive reaction to
the accusations about the real motivations for involvement
·
McNamara
on the way that the Cold War purges affected Vietnam
·
Senator Fulbright on
the Arrogance of Power 1966
· President Johnson White House Tapes -“I don’t think it’s worth fighting for, and I don’t think we can get out” –May 1964
·
Vietnam War
–PBS’ American Experience Website
·
Vietnam: Yesterday and
Today (Includes good basic chronology)
·
Spartacus Educational
Website on Vietnam—links to short biographies, and 100 other websites
Vietnam War Internet Project
–documents, including those relating to Mai Lai
Remembrance stories, poems,
songs, maps, and narratives from or about the Vietnam War era
·
Winter
Soldier Investigation Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, 1971: This is
testimony of Vietnam Vets.
All of the Winter Soldier testimony is recommended, but these are especially relevant:
·
Testimony
of Randy Floyd (the Vietnam Vet featured in Hearts and Minds), before the Vietnam War Crimes Hearings
·
How
Randy Floyd changed his mind—testimony from his child
·
Story
on Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the little girl who ran away from the napalm in
Hearts and Minds
· CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam by former Southeast Asia CIA operative Ralph McGhee
· International War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam –1967
· see therein the description of Napalm effects
· Agent Orange website
· A Historian Reviews the recent Vietnam War Movie: “We Were Soldiers Once” But Which War?”
· Perspective on the Bob Kerry Revelations about murdering children in Vietnam
· The Pentagon Papers—commentary. The Pentagon Papers were the leaked documents that showed how the government was lying about the Vietnam War, and which made Nixon go “ballistic” about the problems they might cause about questioning the war
· Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg from Presidential Decisions and public dissent series
·
The New Hampshire Gazette’s list of
“Chickenhawks”—those
pro-war politicians who avoided military service
§
CIA
acknowledgement (limited) of what it did in Chile and ties to repressive
Pinochet regime
§
(1 page plus links to 3 documents)
§
Chilean coup - brief
summary
§
Guardian
story on intense corporate influence on Chilean policy –how
Pepsi corporate officials helped to ensure the CIA coup in Chile that brought a
dictator to power
§
For more on what we now know overthrow the democratically elected government of Allende in Chile http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/latin_america/chile.htm
§
Documents that
implicate the CIA in the killing of American citizen Charles Horman Horman’s story is featured in the 1980s film, “Missing”
(available for rental in many video stores); in addition, see these documents
released in June 2000—Documents from
2000
§
Kissinger
and East Timor (Indonesian Slaughter and U.S. responsibility) –article
summarizing
§
Kissinger &
Indonesia/East Timor-actual documents from George Washington University’s
National Security Archive, showing US complicity in the murderous Indonesian
invasion of East Timor (see summary of document 4 and p. 9-12 of document 4
especially) – Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger give the green light for the
slaughter, concerned only that U.S. not be implicated.
(recall U.S. had installed Suharto earlier,
overthrowing Sukarno government in 1950s)
§
The
case for Kissinger as a War Criminal
§
Kissinger, Pinochet and history –
Norman Solomon on the media
and lack of historical memory on Kissinger
Kissinger’s
attempts to cover up what he really did
COINTELPRO
· Excerpts from COINTELPRO and Perspectives on COINTELPRO and domestic spying/disruption of protest movements—this is a terrific site, searchable for specifics (see bottom of opening page), divided into topics, easy to navigate—for example, section on targeting of King, or targeting of the American Indian Movement, excerpts from the actual FBI files; also CIA domestic spying; Excerpts from books, with dozens of links. For any citizen interest in the fallout from imperial presidency, this is it!
Excerpts from the Church Committee on Cointelpro (1000 pages of the 4000 pages of the Committee evidence)
·
Cointelpro and the Black Panther Party –Church
Committee’s findings on methods by which the FBI disrupted the Black Panther
Party—stunning; just one example of many files that are linked from the site
above
· COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story
September 1, 2001. Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa
· How COINTELPRO was established and operated—origins from early 20th Century
· How COINTELPRO worked in the 1960s Excerpt from the Book War At Home by Brian Glick
·
COINTELPRO
in the 1970s Also from Glick’s War at Home; targeting Black
Panthers, American Indian Movement; targeted by Church Committee in 70s,
supposedly ended
· COINTELPRO in the 1980s – while not as powerful as in the 1960s, the COINTELPRO operation reemerged as Reagan administration targeted foreign policy dissenters, like the Committee In Support of the People of El Salvador
· Nothing Vague About FBI Abuse: Here Are the Dossiers -article summarizing how FBI surveillance led to violence