WEBVTT - Saigon, 1965 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:15.796 Pushkin. 0:00:18.636 --> 0:00:22.516 After we got married, we got an apartment on Hibachung, 0:00:22.636 --> 0:00:25.756 near the Tending Market. It's not the best part of town, 0:00:25.796 --> 0:00:30.876 but not the worst either. Very lively, bustling, noisy area. 0:00:31.436 --> 0:00:34.636 That's my Elliot. She lives outside of Los Angeles now, 0:00:34.996 --> 0:00:38.436 a graceful, elegant, middle aged woman. She's talking about her 0:00:38.476 --> 0:00:41.276 life in Saigon in the early nineteen sixties, the first 0:00:41.316 --> 0:00:42.356 days of the Vietnam War. 0:00:42.876 --> 0:00:46.036 I had an apartment of my own. You know, life 0:00:46.076 --> 0:00:47.636 couldn't have been better, I thought. 0:01:00.996 --> 0:01:05.036 My name is Malcolm Glaubla. Welcome to Revisionist History, where 0:01:05.076 --> 0:01:07.756 every week we go back and look at something misunderstood 0:01:07.996 --> 0:01:17.236 or overlooked. This week's episode is about a secret Pentagon 0:01:17.316 --> 0:01:20.716 study that a Vietnamese woman named May Elliott and two 0:01:20.756 --> 0:01:24.556 others became tangled up in and what happened when it ended, 0:01:25.396 --> 0:01:32.316 because there's a lot we can learn from them today. 0:01:38.556 --> 0:01:41.516 The project was run by the Rand Corporation, a think 0:01:41.556 --> 0:01:45.036 tank based in Santa Monica, California, home to an extraordinary 0:01:45.036 --> 0:01:49.196 collection of intellectuals and thinkers and policy wonks. RAND is 0:01:49.236 --> 0:01:52.556 the kind of place where everyone speaks in complete paragraphs, 0:01:52.956 --> 0:01:55.036 and if you close your eyes as you listen. You 0:01:55.036 --> 0:01:56.956 can almost see the footnotes at the end of each 0:01:56.956 --> 0:02:00.596 one of those perfect paragraphs. The Defense Department were alatting 0:02:00.676 --> 0:02:04.196 them heavily in those years. Still does tell me about 0:02:04.196 --> 0:02:05.996 how you come to work for RAND. 0:02:06.996 --> 0:02:13.876 Dave knew somebody McVie who was an officer, a graduate student. 0:02:14.556 --> 0:02:18.476 Dave is Ma's husband, an American academic. McVie stands for 0:02:18.516 --> 0:02:23.156 a military Assistants Command of Vietnam Headquarters for the Vietnam War. 0:02:23.396 --> 0:02:26.756 So anyway, Dave knew this guy who was also a 0:02:26.796 --> 0:02:32.076 graduate student doing his military stint, and his wife, an American, 0:02:32.276 --> 0:02:33.276 was working at RAND. 0:02:33.916 --> 0:02:36.796 My Elliott is Vietnamese and she ends up working at 0:02:36.836 --> 0:02:39.716 Randon Saigon for a man named Leon Garray, one of 0:02:39.796 --> 0:02:43.756 Rand's most brilliant academics. He ran the Secret Study and 0:02:43.796 --> 0:02:46.556 he's a big part of this story. Here's an interview 0:02:46.636 --> 0:02:48.956 Rand recorded with Garray just before he died in two 0:02:48.996 --> 0:02:49.836 thousand and seven. 0:02:50.716 --> 0:02:53.636 And how did you end up getting into Vietnam? 0:02:54.116 --> 0:02:58.156 I got drafted. Well, I was semi volunteered, but I 0:02:58.196 --> 0:03:01.516 got drafted. The Chief of Air Force Intelligence asked me 0:03:01.596 --> 0:03:01.916 to go. 0:03:05.476 --> 0:03:07.996 Garray set up shop in an old French style villain 0:03:08.036 --> 0:03:11.916 near the Presidential Palace in downtown Saigon, one seventy six 0:03:12.036 --> 0:03:15.876 Rue Pasteur. The house is still there, flame trees and 0:03:15.916 --> 0:03:20.356 tamarin line, the street quiet, discreet. This was in nineteen 0:03:20.396 --> 0:03:24.436 sixty four, just when Saigon was beginning to fall apart. Still, 0:03:24.716 --> 0:03:26.636 if you were a Westerner, you might go to the 0:03:26.676 --> 0:03:30.156 exclusive Cerx sportif on the humid afternoons, to sit by 0:03:30.196 --> 0:03:32.556 the pool or by tennis, or have a cocktail in 0:03:32.556 --> 0:03:35.436 the veranda of the Continental Hotel. Maybe you'd hear a 0:03:35.436 --> 0:03:38.436 bomb or two oft in the distance. Later, of course, 0:03:38.916 --> 0:03:40.156 things would get far worse. 0:03:40.876 --> 0:03:44.436 The house we lived in in Saigon was directly under 0:03:44.476 --> 0:03:47.596 the trajectory of the rockets that they yet congo firing 0:03:47.636 --> 0:03:50.876 at the palace, so we had a greative experience of 0:03:50.956 --> 0:03:53.276 ducking under the dining room table. 0:03:54.276 --> 0:03:56.436 Gray had been working in the Santa Monica office of 0:03:56.516 --> 0:03:59.396 RAND when he was summoned to Vietnam. It was a 0:03:59.476 --> 0:04:02.676 job no one really wanted. Who would leave southern California 0:04:02.716 --> 0:04:05.796 for Saigon. The Pentagon wanted him to run a project 0:04:05.836 --> 0:04:09.916 interviewing Vietcong prisoners and defectors. Jumped at the chance. 0:04:10.276 --> 0:04:13.996 I had to organize my own team of Vietnamese we 0:04:13.996 --> 0:04:20.076 were producing interview reports or interrogation reports for the US, 0:04:20.436 --> 0:04:23.356 for Rand and for the Chief of the Intelligence of 0:04:23.396 --> 0:04:26.636 the Vietnamese ARA Forces. They all got copies. 0:04:27.196 --> 0:04:31.316 Later, Leongerrey got into trouble, or at least into an argument, 0:04:31.956 --> 0:04:34.276 and Rand brought in a third person to fix things, 0:04:34.996 --> 0:04:35.756 Conrad Kellen. 0:04:36.516 --> 0:04:39.156 I was supposed to be in Doctor Nathan by Leon Golray. 0:04:39.396 --> 0:04:42.756 He was supposed to tell me about Vietnam. But I 0:04:42.836 --> 0:04:46.996 got very quickly the feeling that he was extremely partisan, 0:04:47.236 --> 0:04:49.516 you know, for the for the South, which of course 0:04:49.676 --> 0:04:50.556 was part of the show. 0:04:52.076 --> 0:04:55.556 That woman's voice, you hear, that's my Elliott again. She 0:04:55.716 --> 0:04:58.916 interviewed Kellen in Santa Monica after he retired from RAND 0:04:59.116 --> 0:05:01.996 for a history she wrote called Rand in Southeast Asia, 0:05:02.356 --> 0:05:04.876 a History of the Vietnam War, A brilliant book. 0:05:04.916 --> 0:05:07.956 By the way, he was sort of mister Vietnam at Rand, 0:05:08.156 --> 0:05:12.916 you know, and missed the saus Vietnam, and I sort 0:05:12.956 --> 0:05:24.556 of became his sort of successor in a way. 0:05:24.636 --> 0:05:27.756 The story that follows is about these three people, May 0:05:27.836 --> 0:05:32.916 Elliott leungar Ray Conrad Kellen, and how their lives intersected 0:05:33.196 --> 0:05:36.316 over a minor and forgotten episode in the Vietnam War 0:05:36.636 --> 0:05:40.996 called the Vietcong Motivation and Morale Project. I say minor 0:05:41.036 --> 0:05:43.556 because what happened in that French villa on one seven 0:05:43.716 --> 0:05:46.956 six Rue Pastor didn't swing the war one way or another. 0:05:47.756 --> 0:05:49.756 Nobody who was part of the study ever fired a 0:05:49.756 --> 0:05:53.116 gun or dropped a bomb. But the story of the 0:05:53.116 --> 0:05:55.836 Morale Project says a lot about something that has obsessed 0:05:55.916 --> 0:06:00.396 us ever since intelligence failure. Why is it so hard 0:06:00.436 --> 0:06:05.036 to tell what your enemy is thinking? That question came 0:06:05.076 --> 0:06:07.756 up after nine to eleven during the Two Gulf Wars, 0:06:07.796 --> 0:06:10.116 It came up again in Afghanistan in It comes up 0:06:10.156 --> 0:06:13.396 today with ISIS. And every time we get it wrong, 0:06:13.716 --> 0:06:17.156 every time our enemies take us by surprise, we always say, 0:06:17.356 --> 0:06:20.236 if only we knew more about them, If only we 0:06:20.316 --> 0:06:24.076 had more information about our adversaries, more spies in the ground, 0:06:24.236 --> 0:06:31.876 more satellite images, more intercepted communications, more of everything. Do 0:06:31.916 --> 0:06:34.876 you know how many federal government organizations there are just 0:06:35.076 --> 0:06:39.836 devoted to counterterrorism? Twelve hundred and seventy one and another 0:06:39.996 --> 0:06:43.396 nineteen hundred and thirty one private companies. Do you know 0:06:43.436 --> 0:06:47.676 how many Americans hold top secret security clearances? Eight hundred 0:06:47.756 --> 0:06:51.476 and fifty four thousand. Those numbers all come from an 0:06:51.516 --> 0:06:55.316 extraordinary washed and post investigation from six years ago. And 0:06:55.436 --> 0:06:59.236 here's the most incredible statistic of all. Just since nine 0:06:59.276 --> 0:07:03.036 to eleven, just to Howe's top secret intelligence work, and 0:07:03.356 --> 0:07:07.876 just in the Washington, DC area, seventeen million square feet 0:07:07.916 --> 0:07:11.756 of new office space has been built to house intelligence operations. 0:07:12.156 --> 0:07:17.716 Seventeen million. We want to know everything about our enemies. 0:07:18.196 --> 0:07:21.156 But what the viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project tells 0:07:21.236 --> 0:07:24.316 us is this, you can know everything there is to 0:07:24.316 --> 0:07:28.036 know about your enemy, everything, and that still won't solve 0:07:28.076 --> 0:07:37.236 your problem. Vietnam was a French colony from eighteen eighty 0:07:37.276 --> 0:07:41.236 seven until nineteen fifty four. Then the French lost control 0:07:41.276 --> 0:07:44.796 of the country. It was split in half. Communists took 0:07:44.796 --> 0:07:48.036 over the north, an American backed regime came into power 0:07:48.076 --> 0:07:51.876 in the south. Over the next decade, conditions inside South 0:07:51.956 --> 0:07:56.836 Vietnam slowly deteriorated. The government was unpopular, they were protests 0:07:56.836 --> 0:08:00.076 in the streets, a military coup, and the North Vietnamese 0:08:00.116 --> 0:08:02.996 started setting guerrillas known as the Viet Coong over the 0:08:03.036 --> 0:08:05.916 border to try and recruit South Vietnamese to their cause. 0:08:06.836 --> 0:08:08.996 That's why the Vietnam War at least the US and 0:08:09.516 --> 0:08:12.476 there starts in the nearly nineteen sixties because the United 0:08:12.476 --> 0:08:15.556 States feels compelled to help the South turn back the. 0:08:15.556 --> 0:08:16.196 Via con. 0:08:17.596 --> 0:08:21.516 Wars are usually about territory. A country X invades country 0:08:21.596 --> 0:08:24.756 Y country why fights back? But this is a weird 0:08:24.836 --> 0:08:27.916 kind of war. The US and the South Vietnamese have 0:08:27.996 --> 0:08:31.396 no intention of invading the North. They decide instead that 0:08:31.476 --> 0:08:34.516 they'll just bomb the North Vietnamese until they give up, 0:08:34.876 --> 0:08:38.196 until they realize that exporting gorillas over the border isn't 0:08:38.196 --> 0:08:41.676 worth it. The Vietnam War is a war of persuasion, 0:08:42.236 --> 0:08:45.476 a crude kind of persuasion. The goal is to break 0:08:45.556 --> 0:08:46.596 the other side's will. 0:08:46.876 --> 0:08:50.316 The new theory is that revolutionary development may look good 0:08:50.356 --> 0:08:51.596 on paper, but. 0:08:51.636 --> 0:08:55.196 Nothing pacifies quite like old fashioned military might. 0:08:55.756 --> 0:08:57.956 And alive horse of more than eight thousand men. 0:08:57.996 --> 0:09:01.476 Today Titans hold on a Batangan peninsula on South Vietnam 0:09:01.556 --> 0:09:02.236 central coast. 0:09:03.716 --> 0:09:06.396 But if your goal is to break someone's will, how 0:09:06.396 --> 0:09:08.876 do you know if his strategy is working? In the 0:09:08.916 --> 0:09:12.116 earth early nineteen sixties, when the US first starts sending 0:09:12.116 --> 0:09:15.356 troops to fight the Viatkong, there was a problem. No 0:09:15.356 --> 0:09:18.436 one knew anything about the Viat Coong. Almost known of 0:09:18.516 --> 0:09:22.556 the Pentagon or the State Department even spoke Vietnamese. The 0:09:22.596 --> 0:09:25.436 special advisor to the American General in South Vietnam at 0:09:25.476 --> 0:09:28.756 the time was an Australian called Colonel Sarong. And you 0:09:28.756 --> 0:09:32.196 know what he said. I'll quote him directly. These people 0:09:32.276 --> 0:09:35.796 are simply what we call in many countries juvenile delinquents. 0:09:37.356 --> 0:09:39.676 That's the best he could offer in terms of intelligence 0:09:39.716 --> 0:09:42.716 about the Viet Kong. So what do you do if 0:09:42.716 --> 0:09:45.956 you're bombing someone you know nothing about and you want 0:09:45.996 --> 0:09:49.876 to know how this unknown person feels. You call in 0:09:49.916 --> 0:09:54.476 the Rand Corporation. So Rand rents Sevilla on Ruepasteur and 0:09:54.516 --> 0:10:00.636 brings in Leon Garray to run the show. Gray was 0:10:00.716 --> 0:10:04.476 Russian by birth. His family history was remarkable. His parents 0:10:04.476 --> 0:10:08.156 were Mensheviks. The Mensheviks were the socialist moderates who split 0:10:08.196 --> 0:10:10.036 off from Lenin during the Bloshebic Revolution. 0:10:10.516 --> 0:10:12.276 They were in Russia during the revolution. 0:10:12.716 --> 0:10:16.356 This is Leon Garrey's son, Daniel. He's a national security 0:10:16.356 --> 0:10:19.996 and policy expert with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. 0:10:20.196 --> 0:10:22.436 They participated in the revolution. In fact, my grandparents met 0:10:22.476 --> 0:10:27.556 in prison. My grandmother used to smoke unfiltered cigarettes and 0:10:27.556 --> 0:10:29.636 a little holder and cut them in half. 0:10:29.796 --> 0:10:30.836 They were living in Moscow. 0:10:30.996 --> 0:10:33.556 Are at Moscow, Yeah, are at Moscow, and they were, 0:10:33.756 --> 0:10:37.076 you know, fighting the system. He my grandfather ran an 0:10:37.116 --> 0:10:40.236 I legal printing press and the whole thing. 0:10:40.596 --> 0:10:43.636 In nineteen twenty two, just after Leon is born, the 0:10:43.676 --> 0:10:45.236 Garrays are kicked out of the country. 0:10:45.436 --> 0:10:49.476 They ended up next in Berlin, and in nineteen thirty 0:10:49.516 --> 0:10:54.156 three they shut the doors, locked the building up and left, 0:10:54.676 --> 0:10:57.996 just walked away and went to Paris. And then they 0:10:58.036 --> 0:11:02.036 got out of Paris on the same train that Humphrey 0:11:02.036 --> 0:11:07.676 Bogart did in Castle Blanca, heading south and meandered south, 0:11:07.996 --> 0:11:10.636 went through Spain to Portugal and then got to the 0:11:10.756 --> 0:11:14.036 US after that. So they stayed on one step ahead 0:11:14.116 --> 0:11:19.516 of the tide of evil for about almost twenty years. Wow. 0:11:19.756 --> 0:11:22.956 Yeah, which of the bolsheviksty He must have known some 0:11:22.996 --> 0:11:23.436 of the in person. 0:11:23.516 --> 0:11:25.436 Oh, he knew Albin person if they knew Trotsky, they 0:11:25.476 --> 0:11:29.196 knew Lenin, they knew Stalin, they knew the whole, the 0:11:29.276 --> 0:11:33.116 whole crowd. Man, Your left is royalty, Yeah right. 0:11:33.676 --> 0:11:36.196 The Grays end up in New York City, ninety sixth 0:11:36.236 --> 0:11:39.396 and Broadway, deep in the world of Eastern European emigreys. 0:11:40.156 --> 0:11:42.756 Leon serves in the army, fights in the Battle of 0:11:42.796 --> 0:11:45.996 the Bulge, and ends up in counterintelligence. How do you 0:11:45.996 --> 0:11:48.156 think the refugee experience shaped your father? 0:11:49.076 --> 0:11:54.916 Number of ways. I think the overriding one was we've 0:11:55.116 --> 0:11:59.716 retreated this far and no farther. So it was it 0:11:59.836 --> 0:12:02.556 was a view of sort of America, not just as 0:12:02.596 --> 0:12:05.956 city on the hill, not just but you know, there's 0:12:05.956 --> 0:12:08.996 nowhere left to retreat to. The country needs to be 0:12:09.436 --> 0:12:13.076 truly defended. He got a home, he got a country, 0:12:13.516 --> 0:12:17.356 he got acceptance. All that was terribly, terribly important. 0:12:18.356 --> 0:12:20.236 So this is who Ran puts in charge of the 0:12:20.316 --> 0:12:24.916 Vietnam operation. Leon Garay a patriot in the way that 0:12:24.956 --> 0:12:26.756 only an immigrant can be a patriot. 0:12:27.116 --> 0:12:31.316 He was suave, he was very charming. He had a 0:12:32.076 --> 0:12:39.676 great sense of humor, very articulate, energetic, enthusiastic. So personally 0:12:40.076 --> 0:12:42.436 I liked him. The only thing I didn't like about 0:12:42.516 --> 0:12:44.596 him was the fact that he was a great ladies man, 0:12:44.836 --> 0:12:48.596 and there were a lot of rumors about that. But 0:12:49.356 --> 0:12:51.716 as a person I liked him. 0:12:52.116 --> 0:12:56.836 Gray spoke, German, Russian, French, all fluently, big thick head 0:12:56.876 --> 0:13:00.436 of black hair, that amazing accent. He was the embodiment 0:13:00.436 --> 0:13:01.596 of the European intellectual. 0:13:01.836 --> 0:13:04.276 He had an amazing kind of research all of his life, 0:13:04.316 --> 0:13:08.036 where there would be stacks of documents in Russian innings 0:13:08.516 --> 0:13:10.596 on his desk and he literally re talking to you 0:13:10.916 --> 0:13:12.556 and it would sort of be, well, you know, there 0:13:12.596 --> 0:13:15.076 was this recent thing, and it's an idetic memory. But 0:13:15.116 --> 0:13:17.556 he was certainly kind of librarian encyclopedic in that kind 0:13:17.556 --> 0:13:18.916 of set. 0:13:19.276 --> 0:13:23.636 Gray meets Robert McNamara, President Johnson's Secretary of Defense and 0:13:23.716 --> 0:13:25.796 tells him what he thinks needs to be done. That 0:13:25.916 --> 0:13:28.516 is to really answer the question of how the bombing 0:13:28.556 --> 0:13:29.636 is affecting the Viet Cong. 0:13:30.116 --> 0:13:32.316 That's the question I remembered very clearly. 0:13:32.556 --> 0:13:34.476 Again, this is from the interview Garray did with the 0:13:34.556 --> 0:13:37.556 Rand Archives a decade ago at the end of his life. 0:13:37.356 --> 0:13:39.356 And he said, what is your funding? I told him 0:13:39.396 --> 0:13:42.196 he had one hundred thousand dollars. He said, what would 0:13:42.236 --> 0:13:45.996 you do with a million? That was his question. I said, 0:13:46.036 --> 0:13:47.396 that's a new moral of this stuff, and I have 0:13:47.476 --> 0:13:49.836 more people doing the interviewing, says, you have it. 0:13:54.116 --> 0:13:57.156 A million dollars in Saigon in the mid sixties was 0:13:57.156 --> 0:14:00.556 a king's ransom. So Gray hires a team of locals 0:14:00.796 --> 0:14:04.116 to fan out across the South Vietnamese countryside to interview 0:14:04.116 --> 0:14:08.196 defectors from North Vietnam and captured via Cong guerrillas. That's 0:14:08.196 --> 0:14:11.476 where my elliot comes. She was one of Garay's interviewers, 0:14:11.956 --> 0:14:15.276 and her story is every bit as fascinating as Leon Garays. 0:14:15.876 --> 0:14:20.796 My father was appointed to Haifhog. He became mayor of Haiphong. 0:14:21.956 --> 0:14:24.996 She grew up in the north before the country was divided. 0:14:25.276 --> 0:14:28.436 Her father was part of the French colonial administration, and. 0:14:28.436 --> 0:14:30.876 As mayor he had a lot of authority. He was 0:14:30.916 --> 0:14:34.316 almost like the king of that little town. And we 0:14:34.396 --> 0:14:40.156 live in an enormous house with an enormous garden front 0:14:40.196 --> 0:14:44.316 and back, with a staff of servants and even a 0:14:44.356 --> 0:14:48.236 platoono guards, you know, who stood guard outside our gate. 0:14:48.796 --> 0:14:52.836 So that was really the best time of my life. 0:14:53.996 --> 0:14:56.796 Then the French get defeated in the north by the communists. 0:14:57.076 --> 0:14:58.956 Vietnam is divided in two. 0:14:59.076 --> 0:15:03.076 It happened, so suddenly we just packed up and left 0:15:03.116 --> 0:15:08.156 everything and we lost everything. So when it happened, we 0:15:08.156 --> 0:15:10.276 were in a panic, didn't know what to do. My 0:15:10.396 --> 0:15:14.116 father had, of course collaborated with the French. I didn't know, 0:15:14.196 --> 0:15:16.276 you know, I didn't understand a thing, but my father 0:15:16.436 --> 0:15:18.276 was a fait that the communists would come in and 0:15:18.836 --> 0:15:25.476 kill him. 0:15:26.396 --> 0:15:28.596 My Elliott didn't come to the RAND project as a 0:15:28.636 --> 0:15:32.276 blank slate. She came with a history. She had to 0:15:32.316 --> 0:15:34.716 flee for her life from the communists in the north. 0:15:34.996 --> 0:15:38.116 Now she's been hired by RAND to figure out the communists, 0:15:38.636 --> 0:15:42.676 the same people who chased her family away. The interviewers 0:15:42.676 --> 0:15:45.796 would go out in teams of three or four. Sometimes 0:15:45.796 --> 0:15:48.196 the groups would stay in Saigon and go to the 0:15:48.196 --> 0:15:51.796 prison where captured Via Kong were held. Other times they 0:15:51.836 --> 0:15:54.556 would head out into the countryside, hitching a ride on 0:15:54.596 --> 0:15:58.636 military planes to the Mekong Delta. The interviews were taped, 0:15:59.036 --> 0:16:02.876 did offer their subjects cigarettes. Sometimes they'd sit outside under 0:16:02.916 --> 0:16:07.476 the trees. It was friendly, not confrontational. The interviewers made 0:16:07.476 --> 0:16:10.076 it clear that they were only doing a research project. 0:16:10.676 --> 0:16:14.276 If the subject was uninteresting or reluctant, the sessions would 0:16:14.316 --> 0:16:18.436 be short. Other times they might last for days. Then 0:16:18.476 --> 0:16:21.036 it was back to the villa on Route Pasteur, where 0:16:21.036 --> 0:16:32.756 the interviews would be transcribed, translated, and edited. That's my 0:16:32.836 --> 0:16:35.956 Elliott in the Central Mekong Delta into being a former 0:16:36.036 --> 0:16:38.916 company commander for the two hundred and sixty first Battalion 0:16:39.236 --> 0:16:40.556 of the North Vietnamese Army. 0:16:40.676 --> 0:16:44.716 There was a lot of questions about bombing, What weapons 0:16:44.716 --> 0:16:47.716 do you feel the most, what had the most effect 0:16:47.756 --> 0:16:51.036 on your unit and your operations? And with the North 0:16:51.116 --> 0:16:55.116 Vietnamese who infiltrated into the South, tell us about conditions 0:16:55.476 --> 0:16:58.436 you march from the North to the South with the 0:16:58.556 --> 0:17:02.356 bombings you know along the way. Things like that. 0:17:07.316 --> 0:17:11.756 The Morale Project would eventually put sixty two thousand pages 0:17:11.756 --> 0:17:16.116 of transcripts interviews with captured via Kong and others sixty 0:17:16.356 --> 0:17:21.116 two thousand pages. This isn't some focus group conducted by 0:17:21.156 --> 0:17:24.196 a PR firm where a few dozen people are interviewed 0:17:24.196 --> 0:17:27.156 for an hour. This is one of the most extraordinary 0:17:27.476 --> 0:17:33.516 encyclopedic detailed portraits of an enemy ever created. Remember, no 0:17:33.596 --> 0:17:36.156 one in Washington really knew anything about Vietnam in the 0:17:36.156 --> 0:17:39.396 early nineteen sixties. Now there was a million dollar operation 0:17:39.476 --> 0:17:43.316 on the Rue pasteur painting a living, breathing portrait of. 0:17:43.356 --> 0:17:44.036 The other side. 0:17:44.796 --> 0:17:50.836 The stuff was gold. Gray takes the results and makes 0:17:50.836 --> 0:17:55.396 the rounds. His favorite statistic was this. When Rand started 0:17:55.396 --> 0:17:59.516 as study, sixty five percent of defectors and prisoners believed 0:17:59.516 --> 0:18:02.556 the Via Kong could win. After a year of heavy 0:18:02.636 --> 0:18:06.316 US bombing, that number was down to twenty percent. The 0:18:06.476 --> 0:18:10.596 enemy was on the ropes. He's the Air Force Army 0:18:11.196 --> 0:18:14.636 US Embassy, then off to Honolulu, to the headquarters of 0:18:14.636 --> 0:18:18.196 the Army of the Pacific RAND in Santa Monica, Washington, 0:18:18.276 --> 0:18:20.356 d C. To the Pentagon, and to the White House. 0:18:20.876 --> 0:18:23.836 Helicopters would pick him up in Saigon and whisk him 0:18:23.836 --> 0:18:27.316 to aircraft carriers at the Villa and Rupasteur. He holds 0:18:27.316 --> 0:18:30.636 cocktail parties for everyone who is anyone in South Vietnam, 0:18:31.316 --> 0:18:35.356 Henry Kissinger, Walter Mondale, the US Senator later to become 0:18:35.436 --> 0:18:40.556 Jimmy Carter's Vice president. Gray meets with visiting journalists, CIA officers. 0:18:40.916 --> 0:18:42.276 His stuff goes right to the top. 0:18:42.596 --> 0:18:46.076 Well, we've had an interesting report from a man named 0:18:46.156 --> 0:18:50.036 Goray who works for the Rand Corporation, and wemired. 0:18:50.676 --> 0:18:55.116 That's Robert McNamara, Johnson's Defense secretary. From tapes made of 0:18:55.116 --> 0:18:58.916 White House conversations in nineteen sixty five and sixty six, 0:18:59.556 --> 0:19:02.876 President Lyndon Johnson decides to pull the United States deeper 0:19:02.916 --> 0:19:06.596 and deeper into Vietnam, and the story was that LBJ 0:19:06.796 --> 0:19:09.076 used to walk around with a summary of Grey's fine 0:19:09.716 --> 0:19:15.636 in his back pocket. Wars require public justification. If you're 0:19:15.636 --> 0:19:18.196 going to put thousands of lives at risk, you need 0:19:18.236 --> 0:19:21.676 to explain to your citizens just what you're doing. And 0:19:21.716 --> 0:19:24.716 that's what Leon Garret offered in the crucial early years 0:19:24.796 --> 0:19:33.836 of the Vietnam War. He offered justification. Enter Conrad Kellen, 0:19:34.556 --> 0:19:36.076 the third person in our story. 0:19:38.076 --> 0:19:41.756 When did I come to rand Oh? Well, I lived 0:19:41.796 --> 0:19:45.716 in New York at sixty four. I think it was. 0:19:46.916 --> 0:19:50.036 Kellen was a battered veteran of World War Two and 0:19:50.116 --> 0:19:52.556 a little bit of a legend. I once spent two 0:19:52.596 --> 0:19:55.756 weeks in Los Angeles just going from one person's house 0:19:55.796 --> 0:19:59.636 to the next, asking for their memories of Kellen. Everybody 0:19:59.676 --> 0:20:02.876 remembers Conrad Keillen. If you took the absolute best of 0:20:02.956 --> 0:20:05.916 nineteenth century Central Europe and put it in a time 0:20:05.996 --> 0:20:09.076 machine that opened its doors in nineteen sixties southern California, 0:20:09.876 --> 0:20:10.596 that would be Kellen. 0:20:11.156 --> 0:20:14.556 I read the paper said some people in Washington, some 0:20:14.596 --> 0:20:20.596 smart boys, had showered the North with millions of leaflets 0:20:21.796 --> 0:20:24.596 in which they had told the Vietnamese they should lay 0:20:24.636 --> 0:20:29.916 down their arms because we were good people and their 0:20:30.196 --> 0:20:33.556 leaders were bad people. You know the ordinary nonsense, and 0:20:33.836 --> 0:20:35.876 they should stop fighting the war. 0:20:37.316 --> 0:20:40.196 Kellen served in US Army intelligence in the Second World War, 0:20:40.676 --> 0:20:44.556 specializing in psychological warfare. So later when he reads how 0:20:44.596 --> 0:20:47.676 the US was using leaflets in Vietnam, he gets angry, 0:20:48.036 --> 0:20:48.996 We're doing it all wrong. 0:20:49.276 --> 0:20:50.996 And so I wrote a letter to the New York 0:20:51.036 --> 0:20:57.076 Times and said it was obvious nonsense to shower large 0:20:57.156 --> 0:21:00.796 numbers of soldiers with a leaflet saying stop that war. 0:21:00.916 --> 0:21:03.756 Soldiers don't stop wars, so this would begin wars. And 0:21:03.796 --> 0:21:07.396 soldiers don't stop wars. So if you want to stop 0:21:07.396 --> 0:21:09.996 a war, you have to do it differently. So I 0:21:09.996 --> 0:21:12.396 got a call from them here, from the RAM people, 0:21:12.436 --> 0:21:16.036 and they wanted me to come and be part of 0:21:16.076 --> 0:21:19.156 the system, and that I said, okay, So came to 0:21:19.276 --> 0:21:20.036 Los Angeles. 0:21:22.316 --> 0:21:26.076 Kellen grew up in Berlin, wealthy cultured. His father owned 0:21:26.116 --> 0:21:29.476 a big brewery. His full name was Katzen ellen Bogan, 0:21:29.956 --> 0:21:31.636 and the Cats and ellen Boguns were one of the 0:21:31.676 --> 0:21:35.756 great Jewish families of Europe. But when Hitler came to power, 0:21:35.956 --> 0:21:39.116 Kellen packed his bags. He said later that he knew 0:21:39.196 --> 0:21:42.156 on some instinctive level that things would not end well 0:21:42.196 --> 0:21:42.636 for the Jews. 0:21:42.676 --> 0:21:43.196 In Germany. 0:21:43.836 --> 0:21:46.556 He goes to Paris becomes friends with the French writer 0:21:46.636 --> 0:21:49.396 Jean Cocteau. His life is full of moments like this. 0:21:50.556 --> 0:21:52.596 He gets on a boat to America and meets the 0:21:52.636 --> 0:21:55.956 mobster Dutch Schultz, who offers him a job. He arrives 0:21:55.956 --> 0:21:59.356 in New York and works for the legendary investor Benjamin Graham, 0:21:59.556 --> 0:22:01.996 who was the mentor of Warren Buffett. He goes to 0:22:02.036 --> 0:22:04.916 California and is the private secretary of the Nobel Prize 0:22:04.956 --> 0:22:12.156 winning novelist Thomas Mann. Kellen was impossibly handsome, dashing over 0:22:12.236 --> 0:22:15.956 six feet tall. He was an expert in golf, handwriting analysis, 0:22:15.996 --> 0:22:20.356 and ferraris. Both his sisters earned PhDs from Berkeley, one 0:22:20.396 --> 0:22:23.796 in chemistry, the other in biology. His brother escapes from 0:22:23.876 --> 0:22:26.596 Nazi Germany lands in New York, and if you go 0:22:26.636 --> 0:22:29.356 online and look up the assets of his personal foundation, 0:22:29.956 --> 0:22:34.076 it's six hundred and sixty five million dollars. His stepmother 0:22:34.196 --> 0:22:37.476 was painted by Renoirs, a family friend. He was cousins 0:22:37.476 --> 0:22:41.516 with Einstein. I mean, after a bit, it gets ridiculous. 0:22:45.796 --> 0:22:48.076 The craziest story about Kellen is when he was in 0:22:48.156 --> 0:22:51.156 Paris in nineteen forty five. The war has just ended, 0:22:51.276 --> 0:22:53.276 and he's sitting in the Cafe Select near the chan 0:22:53.396 --> 0:22:57.476 Zilise when a young woman approaches him. She says, are 0:22:57.476 --> 0:23:00.836 you an American gi He says yes. She says you 0:23:00.876 --> 0:23:03.756 going back to the States. He says yes. She says, 0:23:04.356 --> 0:23:06.996 you have to do me a favor. My father's an artist. 0:23:07.196 --> 0:23:10.036 I have to get his work safely to America, because, 0:23:10.076 --> 0:23:13.076 of course Europe was in chaos. And Kellen says, by 0:23:13.076 --> 0:23:16.316 all means. But then she goes away and comes back 0:23:16.356 --> 0:23:19.636 with this massive stack of canvasses and he says, there's 0:23:19.636 --> 0:23:21.556 no way I can take that, and she says, you 0:23:21.756 --> 0:23:25.836 have to. Whereupon Callen embarks on this epic month long 0:23:25.916 --> 0:23:29.436 struggle to get these paintings safely across the ocean, which 0:23:29.476 --> 0:23:31.916 includes being trapped in the back of an open truck 0:23:31.996 --> 0:23:34.476 during a rain storm and throwing his coat over the 0:23:34.476 --> 0:23:37.116 pile of paintings to keep them from being ruined, and 0:23:37.196 --> 0:23:40.796 staying up all night, night after night because he's terrified 0:23:40.876 --> 0:23:45.716 someone will steal them. Who's the painter, Mark Chagal, I 0:23:45.756 --> 0:23:49.956 should say Mark Chagal, of course, because only Conrad Kellen 0:23:50.156 --> 0:23:52.876 would end up transporting the collected works of one of 0:23:52.916 --> 0:23:56.436 the most famous artists of the twentieth century to America 0:23:56.876 --> 0:24:00.516 in a rainstorm on the back of a truck. The 0:24:00.556 --> 0:24:03.076 deal Chagall's daughter made with him was that he could 0:24:03.076 --> 0:24:06.156 take one picture and keep it for himself. So he 0:24:06.236 --> 0:24:09.636 takes one, a famous one. Then he tells it in 0:24:09.676 --> 0:24:12.116 the nineteen fifties for what seemed like a lot of 0:24:12.156 --> 0:24:15.796 money at the time, But of course it's a Chagall, 0:24:16.236 --> 0:24:19.276 a famous Chagall. And every now and again over the 0:24:19.356 --> 0:24:22.276 years he'd spot his old painting in an auction catalog 0:24:22.596 --> 0:24:26.476 worth more and more and more, and it'd bury his 0:24:26.596 --> 0:24:37.156