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What political events divided and alienated the public during the Cold War?
Alger Hiss
Pentagon Papers
Watergate
In June 1972, several men burglarized the Watergate building in Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Democratic National
Committee. When it came to light that those involved had ties to top advisers in President Richard Nixon's administration, the
White House virulently denied any wrongdoing. Subsequent investigations and revelations of secret Oval Office audiotapes,
however, made it clear that the president had indeed been directly involved in the affair. Ultimately, Nixon resigned office on
August 9, 1974, as he was facing certain impeachment by Congress. The Watergate scandal rocked the American public to its
core. Studies of the Cold War are dominated by discussions of foreign policy; however, domestic events also played an
important role during this period. Watergate was only one of many tumultuous political events during this lengthy conflict.
Although the first few decades of the Cold War were generally marked by bipartisanship and relatively high levels of public
confidence in the federal government, by the mid-1960s political divisiveness and cynicism had become the norm, reaching
unprecedented heights during Watergate.
In order to fully understand the effects of the Cold War on society, it is important to examine how the public regarded the
political policies of its leaders. At the beginning of the Cold War in 1945, most individuals in the United States agreed that
bipartisanship and cooperation were needed to combat the perceived Soviet threat. As the long conflict wore on, however, the
public became increasingly split along party lines. Revelations of political misconduct also imbued many Americans with a
deep distrust of the nation's leaders.
The Background Essay explores the political atmosphere of the United States during the Cold War and how it evolved over
time. A number of reference entries, images, and documents highlight specific events—including the trial of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate scandal—that increased partisanship and cynicism among Americans. Also
included are biographies of important figures such as Alger Hiss and Richard Nixon.
Public support for and trust in government fluctuates over time. This was especially true during the Cold War. At the beginning
of the conflict, many Americans saw their government as a champion of freedom and democracy, in contrast to what they
perceived to be the tyranny of the Soviet Union. As the Cold War continued, however, and gave rise to a number of "hot" wars
such as the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict, Americans became more divided in their opinions. Some remained ardent
supporters of U.S. policy, while others vocally protested the secrecy and corruption they found in the government.
In the Defining Moments that follow, Dr. Larry Simpson explores the effect of two events on Americans' confidence in their
own government, and how public opinion in turn helped shape policy. In the first essay, he discusses the trial of Alger Hiss. A
top State Department employee, Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy by Whittaker Chambers, himself a self-proclaimed
agent for the Soviet Union. Although Hiss was eventually found guilty, Americans were deeply divided on the case. Even
today, the question of Hiss's guilt is a controversial topic. In the second Defining Moment, Dr. Simpson highlights the release
of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst for the RAND Corporation, surreptitiously released more
than 7,000 pages of classified government documents related to the United States' secret dealings in Indochina. The publication
of these documents in national newspapers created a considerable uproar and did much to increase antiwar sentiment and
tarnish the reputation of President Richard Nixon.
Topic 1: Trial of Alger Hiss
One of the most remarkable and contentious political issues in American politics during the Cold War revolved around the
extraordinary case of Alger Hiss. Hiss was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former highranking State Department official who had played an important role in the establishment of the United Nations (UN). In 1948,
Whittaker Chambers, a self-confessed former Soviet agent and an editor of Time magazine, accused Hiss of having participated
in a Soviet espionage ring back in the 1930s. Hiss appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC),
denied his guilt, and sued Chambers for falsely calling him a communist. Chambers produced stolen government documents,
however, and dramatically led investigators to his farm and explained how he had hidden the purloined papers in a hollowedout pumpkin. Afterward, a federal grand jury indicted Hiss on two charges of perjury. A first attempt to convict Hiss ended in a
hung jury, but a second trial resulted in a guilty verdict and a sentence of 5 years' imprisonment. Hiss served 44 months, spent
the rest of his long life proclaiming his innocence, and died in 1996.
The contentious issue of Hiss's guilt became a cause célèbre that divided the American Left and Right early in the Cold War.
Supporters of Hiss claimed that Chambers was psychologically disturbed. Hiss, they averred, was a New Dealer, not a
communist, and this was why his opponents pilloried him. In his defenders' eyes, Hiss became an innocent victim of the
McCarthyite hysteria of anticommunism that gripped the United States in the early years of the Cold War. On the other hand,
Chambers was a hero to the political Right. Conservatives argued that Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and the liberals
in their administrations had not exercised due diligence and had failed to recognize Soviet agents in their midst. Chambers'
autobiography, Witness, appeared in 1952 and had an enormous influence on many prominent conservatives including National
Review editor William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan. Chambers passed away in 1961, but Reagan posthumously awarded
him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984.
Meanwhile, the Hiss controversy reappeared in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's political disgrace. As a
young and ambitious California congressman, Nixon had vaulted to national attention pursuing Hiss's perjury. Hence, some
suspected a Nixonian conspiracy and declared that a gross miscarriage of justice had occurred in the Hiss case. The publication
of Allen Weinstein's Perjury in 1978, however, persuaded many that there was compelling evidence against Hiss and in
support of Chambers. As Weinstein recognized, the case had taken on an iconic status, with both Hiss and Chambers serving
more as symbols than men to their followers on both sides of the political spectrum.
Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the dispute continues. Hiss asked Russian officials to search the Soviet archives for
information about his case. In 1992, General Dimitri Volkogonov, a prominent Russian historian who had charge of the KGB
archives, issued a press release stating that a comprehensive search of files had failed to find any evidence against Hiss. Hiss
used this to again proclaim his innocence. Subsequent revelations, however, pointed toward Hiss's guilt. The most significant
of these came from Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet intelligence officer who had defected in the mid-1980s and who said
that Hiss was a spy codenamed ALES. The release of the National Security Agency's (NSA) Venona files of declassified
intercepts of Soviet cables provided additional evidence of Hiss's culpability. The Hiss-Chambers debate continued when a
group of academics protested George W. Bush's nomination of Weinstein to become national archivist. Weinstein served as
archivist of the United States from 2005 to 2008.
Topic 2: Publication of the Pentagon Papers
One of the most sensational political controversies of the Cold War began on June 13, 1971, when the New York Times
published highly sensitive information from government documents related to the United States' military involvement in
Indochina. Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation, was the man responsible for the largest
unauthorized disclosure in history—some 7,000 pages of classified information that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.
Some of the documents had a classification of top secret, and therefore their release had the potential of causing grave damage
to the national security of the United States. Nonetheless, Ellsberg claimed that as a matter of conscience he had to reveal the
truth about what he considered to be an immoral, imperialistic conflict that the United States could not win.
The editors of the New York Times and Washington Post, to which Ellsberg leaked the papers, saw it as their First Amendment
right to print the stolen documents. The publication of the Pentagon Papers came over the vigorous protests of the White
House. Richard Nixon publicly and vehemently objected to what he declared was the media's wanton disregard of national
security, using the Justice Department to obtain an unprecedented injunction from federal courts that prohibited the publication
of the classified documents. Petitions from both sides led the Supreme Court to take the case immediately, and in a landmark
ruling on June 30, 1971, the justices ruled in a 6–3 vote to allow the newspapers to print the Pentagon Papers.
Privately, Nixon and top aides H. R. Haldeman and John Erlichman decided to go after Ellsberg. They organized a special
clandestine unit, which was known as the Plumbers because its task was to plug leaks. In September 1971, the Plumbers
botched a burglary of the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, in which they had been hoping to find information to discredit the
whistleblower. Members of the same group would be arrested when they attempted the infamous Watergate break-in the
following June, and the investigation into these criminal activities would ultimately result in Nixon's resignation from office in
August 1974. In the meantime, federal authorities had brought Ellsberg and another RAND colleague, Anthony Russo, to trial
on charges of espionage, theft, and conspiracy. A federal judge, however, dismissed the case in May 1973 because of
governmental misconduct.
The results of the affair were mixed. If Ellsberg had hoped that his leak would bring an end to the Vietnam War, he was
mistaken—Nixon continued to prosecute the war as before. There is no evidence that the unauthorized disclosure undermined
American security in any significant way as government officials claimed it would. The documents were politically
embarrassing because they showed that politicians often said one thing about the war in public but quite another privately.
Moreover, they underscored the repeated miscalculations that the bureaucracy had made as America became mired in
Southeast Asia. Hence, the episode contributed to a growing sense of cynicism and distrust for much of the American public.
Conclusion:
Although public confidence in the government rose and fell throughout the Cold War, particular patterns are evident. For two
decades beginning in the latter half of the 1940s, most Americans were generally optimistic about the actions and policies of
their national leaders. Although differences between Republicans and Democrats certainly existed, bipartisan cooperation was
the norm. With the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, however, the United States became much more
divided, with unprecedented levels of cynicism about the veracity of government officials. This distrust of government
decreased slightly during the 1980s and 1990s, only to resurface in the early 21st century. In the preceding Defining
Moments, Dr. Larry Simpson highlighted two events—the trial of Alger Hiss and the publication of the Pentagon Papers—that
did much to divide Americans and increase their cynicism about the federal government. The former, taking place during the
era of McCarthyism, represents something of an exception to the pattern of the early Cold War years. Although still early in the
Cold War, Americans became deeply divided on the subject of Hiss's guilt; a division that continues to this day. In the case of
the Pentagon Papers, revelations of the true nature of the United States' actions in Indochina shook the American public,
inciting a harsh backlash against President Richard Nixon. In fact, the release of the Pentagon Papers would be only one of
several events to tarnish Nixon's presidency and drive deeper the wedge that separated the political Left and Right.
Topic Two: Tet Offensive
Was media coverage of the Tet Offensive the primary reason Tet was viewed as a major defeat for the United States?
This photograph shows an American soldier being treated by a U.S. Army medic during the Battle of Hue in February 1968.
Hue City was the site of the longest and bloodiest battle of the Tet Offensive. The attack on Hue began on January 31, 1968,
the first day of the lunar new year, when a large force of People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, North Vietnamese Army) troops
attacked two different areas of the city. Over the next several weeks, six battalions of U.S. troops and elements of the Army of
the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN, South Vietnamese Army) waged a heated battle on the streets of Hue against the PAVN and
Viet Cong (VC). Finally, on February 25, the last of the communist troops escaped into the countryside, ending the battle.
Communist casualties were very high at Hue, with more than 5,000 killed. The United States lost more than 200 soldiers
during the battle, while the ARVN suffered more than 350 dead.
The U.S. Army considered the Battle of Hue, and the larger Tet Offensive, a victory for the United States. South Vietnamese
and U.S. forces retook every major North Vietnamese objective and killed thousands of enemy troops during Tet. However, the
U.S. media and the American people had a very different view of Tet. Prior to the Tet Offensive, President Lyndon Johnson
and General William Westmoreland had claimed that U.S. forces had made major progress in Vietnam and that victory was
near. Despite the U.S. Army's military successes during Tet, this widespread offensive by the PAVN and VC demonstrated the
enemy's strength and resiliency. The media beamed television footage of the bloody fighting in Hue and the attack on the U.S.
Embassy in Saigon into living rooms all over the United States, convincing many Americans that the war was not going well.
Whether the media should be blamed for turning a clear military victory into a devastating defeat for the United States is still
the subject of much debate today.
The 1968 Tet Offensive was a major turning point during the Vietnam War. Prior to the offensive, the U.S. civilian and
military leadership had convinced the majority of the American public that the war was going well and that victory was around
the corner. Although U.S. forces achieved clear military success during the Tet Offensive, media coverage of the bloody
fighting, particularly in Saigon and Hue, persuaded many people in the United States that the war was far from over. As a
result, President Lyndon B. Johnson's popularity continued to plummet, and General William Westmoreland's request for
additional troops was rejected. Many military leaders blamed the media for changing public opinion of the conflict, believing
that the Tet coverage focused on gory scenes from Saigon and Hue instead of victorious U.S. actions there and elsewhere in
Vietnam. Others, however, believe that U.S. public opinion of the Vietnam War had already begun to turn, and that Tet only
hastened the inevitable.
Read the Background Essay to get a better understanding of the situation in Vietnam in the months leading up to Tet, as well as
details of the Tet Offensive itself and the aftermath of Tet. The biographies on Walter Cronkite, Johnson, and Westmoreland
offer background information on some of the key players involved in the Vietnam War. The Communist Party member's
evaluation of Tet provides insight into the North Vietnamese view of the Tet Offensive. The document concerning Cronkite's
criticism of U.S. policy, David Halberstam's keynote address on Vietnam and the presidency, and the Vietnam Panel
Discussion titled "Media and the Role of Public Opinion" reveal how many prominent members of the media who covered
Vietnam felt about the conflict.
Background Essay
Media coverage of the Vietnam War remains a source of controversy in the United States. Nowhere is that controversy more
evident than in discussions of the media's coverage of the Tet Offensive in 1968. Up until that point, the media had mostly
provided the American people with fleeting glimpses of the North Vietnamese forces in action, since the People's Army of
Vietnam (PAVN, North Vietnamese Army) and the Viet Cong (VC) stayed mostly in the dense jungle or paddy areas of South
Vietnam. During the Tet Offensive, however, much of the fighting took place in urban areas, providing ample opportunity for
the media to get graphic footage of the fighting. In particular, the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon received an inordinate
amount of attention from the media because the Western press was stationed nearby. Back in the United States, millions of
Americans watched scenes and viewed photographs of the embassy attack and the bloody Battle of Hue, witnessing the
tenaciousness of the enemy for the first time. Doubts about U.S. progress toward ending the war were heightened during this
time and prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision not to seek reelection.
Jerry Morelock, the author of the first essay, asserts that the media missed the big picture of the Tet Offensive while focusing
on individual combat actions. He points out that the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon was a minor, failed action that
received a disproportionate amount of attention from journalists stationed nearby. In addition, he states that the nearly monthlong Battle of Hue provided the media with numerous opportunities to take gruesome photographs of dead soldiers and
civilians, obscuring the fact that U.S. forces achieved a major military victory at Hue. Clarence R. Wyatt, the author of the
second essay, argues that the Tet Offensive was not the turning point in public opinion about the war that many make it out to
be. He points out that support for the war had been steadily declining since 1965, and that by October 1967, three months
before Tet, the majority of Americans believed U.S. involvement in Vietnam was a mistake.
Perspective One: Media Coverage Turns Tet into a Defeat
How would you characterize a battlefield fiasco in which the attacking forces were totally defeated, every objective they
captured was retaken, and the attackers lost 40,000 of their best troops killed with tens of thousands more wounded? In 1968,
the media represented North Vietnam's disastrous Tet Offensive to the American public as a "victory" for the North
Vietnamese Army (NVA).
Hanoi planned the 1968 Tet Offensive to precipitate a general uprising among South Vietnam's presumably disaffected
population that would force Saigon to accept a coalition government. Yet, the savagery wreaked by NVA general Vo Nguyen
Giap's country-wide attack dismally failed to evoke the expected popular uprising. However, battlefield success is no guarantor
of final triumph in war, as the aftermath of the Tet Offensive so starkly demonstrated. Although U.S. and South Vietnamese
forces weathered and then overcame Giap's assault, the shock that reverberated through the American public precipitated a
downward spiral in popular domestic support for the war that turned the communists' battlefield defeat into a public relations
victory that arguably won the war for Hanoi.
No one can—or should—question the veracity of media reporting of the Tet Offensive or the truthfulness of its coverage of the
Vietnam War in general, for that matter. With rare exceptions, the reporting was factual and accurate. Contrary to what some
may claim, the media did not intentionally lie about what they saw, heard, and reported from Vietnam. Yet, getting the facts
right did not ensure that reporters got the story right. Media coverage of the Tet Offensive is likely the most egregious example
of reporting the facts of individual combat actions while missing the more important story of the big picture that those combat
actions represented. Out of the hundreds of combat actions that occurred during Tet, two in particular garnered excessive media
coverage that, in turn, produced an unexpected domestic political impact far beyond the modest scope and size of the forces
involved and the relatively small body count in each case: the Viet Cong (VC) sapper attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon and
the Battle of Hue.
The Tet attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon was a minor, unsuccessful assault by a small group of VC sappers that became a
sensationalized media icon, hyped as symbolizing the United States' failed strategy in Vietnam. The embassy was added to the
VC target list almost as an afterthought, and only 19 enemy soldiers took part. In fact, all VC attackers were eliminated and
none actually made it inside the embassy building. Yet, what one U.S. participant characterized as "a piddling platoon action"
took place only a short distance from the main quarters for the Western press corps—a proximity that virtually guaranteed
extensive media coverage by reporters who were either too shocked or too timid to venture very far afield. When Americans
picked up their morning papers a few hours after the last VC sapper was killed, the first inklings they had of the Tet Offensive
were inaccurate headlines stating that the U.S. embassy had been "captured." The panicked, often confused news reports—
coming on the heels of President Lyndon Johnson's and U.S. Vietnam commander William Westmoreland's claims that
America was winning the war—delivered a shock from which the public never recovered.
The battle for Vietnam's ancient imperial capital of Hue, in contrast to the failed, six-hour "piddling" action at the embassy in
Saigon, lasted 26 days—the longest sustained infantry combat of the war to that point. A major NVA Tet objective, Hue was
quickly captured by NVA regulars supported by VC main force units, thereby precipitating brutal, house-to-house fighting by
U.S. forces to retake a city that was essentially a fort. The nearly month-long battle for Hue provided ample opportunity for
reporters to illustrate their coverage with gruesome photographs of dead marines, soldiers, and civilians, many showing bodies
grotesquely stacked in trucks and hauled away under heavy fire. Although American forces recaptured the city, killing 5,000
North Vietnamese while losing 216 U.S. dead, the lopsided body count tally could never overcome the 26 days of pessimistic
reporting and the barrage of bloody, negative images. By February 26, 1968, the American public was, almost literally, "shell
shocked" by the intense media coverage.
These two combat actions and how reporters chose to present them, more than any other events reported by the media from
Vietnam, exerted a negative and lasting influence on American public opinion and attitude toward the war. Reporters may have
gotten their facts right, but they clearly missed Tet's "big picture" story—with ultimately tragic results for the people of South
Vietnam. Beyond its influence on public perceptions about the Vietnam War, media reporting also had an unintended and longlasting secondary impact that is still felt today. Soldiers' experience with how they perceived that the media reported Vietnam
left many veterans of the conflict wary and distrustful of reporters. Many, particularly army officers who later reached high
rank, became embittered and resolved to keep reporters at arm's length, providing only information that they were required to
hand over, and even than often reluctantly and grudgingly. Although the recent program of embedding reporters within military
units in combat is a belated attempt to reestablish an atmosphere of trust and openness, it may be too little, too late for military
personnel who trace their roots back to the Vietnam generation. They had assumed that their war in Vietnam would be reported
by Ernie Pyle; instead, they got Dan Rather.
Perspective Two: Blaming Media Coverage of Tet is an Oversimplification
On the morning of February 1, 1968, a Viet Cong agent, a small man in a plaid shirt, was seized by South Vietnamese Marines
in central Saigon. Soon, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the National Police, approached the man, drew his pistol and,
without a word, fired a single round into the man's head. The man in the plaid shirt collapsed, his life and soul pouring onto the
dirty Saigon street. This death was not memorable because of the prominence of either the killer or the killed. It didn't change
the tide of battle. Rather, it is memorable because Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and NBC cameraman Vo Suu
captured the event. Within hours, the photo and the film had been seen by millions of people around the globe; millions of
people had witnessed the last moment of life for the man in the plaid shirt.
The photo and the film have also become part of the mythology that has grown up around the 1968 Tet Offensive and its
coverage, a mythology that encapsulates the controversy over the press's role in the Vietnam War. This myth says that Tet was
a watershed in public support of the war. It portrays public opinion before the event as supportive of or at least apathetic
toward the war and claims that afterward public opinion swung against the war. Those who view Tet this way point to press
coverage as one of, if not the, prime catalysts of this shift. They blame the press for distorting the character of the offensive,
exaggerating both Viet Cong and North Vietnamese success and American and South Vietnamese desperation. In his memoirs,
General William Westmoreland attacked the press for misrepresenting the actual course of events. Robert Elegant, a former
correspondent for Newsweek, in 1981 cited Tet as a particularly grievous example of how the press sapped the public's will to
pursue the war. Most of these critics ascribe the press's actions to gross incompetence, liberal bias, or outright disloyalty.
But this view fails to understand what shaped the actions and coverage of the war by mainstream American news
organizations, most especially coverage of the Tet Offensive. Journalists in Vietnam—especially from the major news
organizations—were some of the best the profession had to offer. Just as was the case for young military officers, a tour in
Vietnam was considered an essential boost for up-and-coming reporters, many of whom went on to become some of the
biggest names in American journalism for the next generation.
This perception of the press also does not recognize the challenges of covering American involvement in Vietnam. Most of the
military action in Vietnam involved relatively small units, lasted for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, and took
place all across a difficult landscape. Also, military action represented just one aspect of a conflict that involved important
political, social, and economic issues crucial to success or failure. At the height of the press presence in Vietnam, some 600
individuals held press credentials, a small number to cover such a widespread and complicated story. The nature of the
challenge becomes even starker when one realizes that of those 600 or so people, only about 125 to 150 were actual newsgathering journalists; the remainder were drivers, couriers, and office personnel.
These logistical challenges led to the development by 1965 of a largely cooperative relationship between news organizations
and the U.S. government and military on the ground in Vietnam. The press needed steady access to information in order to
cover the war; the government and military realized that if they provided the press that information, it could have significant
influence on coverage. Thus, news organizations came to depend on official sources to cover a complex and far-flung conflict,
and the government and military were able to use the news media to feed that information to the American public.
Finally, those who contend that incompetent or biased coverage shattered the American people's confidence in the war effort
fail to see that support had been declining steadily since the commitment of American ground troops in large numbers in the
spring and summer of 1965. The changes of opinion associated with Tet in 1968 had long been in the works. Editorial opinion,
even of news organizations that had long supported Vietnam policy, was growing openly skeptical by the fall of 1967. Concern
in Congress also grew steadily. Senior administration officials also became increasingly doubtful. Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara had grown so concerned that earlier that year he authorized the secret study that came to be known as the Pentagon
Papers. Even President Lyndon B. Johnson, who announced his withdrawal from the presidential race on March 31, had been
contemplating retirement for some time.
However, the strongest repudiation of the view that the Tet Offensive turned the public against the war comes from the
American public itself. From July 1965 to late 1972, the up-or-down measure of public support for the war effort was the
question "Do you believe United States involvement in the Vietnam War to have been a mistake?" Well before Tet, in October
1967, for the first time, more Americans answered "yes" than "no" to that question in the wake of a significant increase in
American casualties and the imposition of a 10% income tax surcharge to pay for the war.
The scale and audacity of the Tet Offensive startled the American public, just as it did American leaders in Saigon and
Washington. Tet also pushed the press's fragile logistical base to the limit, resulting in some confused coverage in the attack's
earlier hours, as Peter Braestrup ably described in Big Story. But the public had come to question the government's effort in
Vietnam months before. The American people did not need the press or the government to tell them that the cost of the war, in
blood and in money, had reached a price that they were increasingly unwilling to pay—that their sons, husbands, and brothers
continued to die in a confusing, inconclusive war. In March 1968, the weekly paper in the small town of Brewton, Alabama,
turned from its previous support of the war after two young soldiers from the town died during the fighting. "Like hundreds of
other communities across the country," the paper's editor said, "the war came too close when it got to Brewton."
Conclusion
The 1968 Tet Offensive occurred at a critical time in the Vietnam War. Over the previous year, it had become clear that public
opinion of the conflict was changing, with a majority of U.S. citizens opposing the war for the first time. As a result, President
Lyndon Johnson's administration embarked on a campaign to persuade the American people that the war was going well. Tet
made that campaign futile. The massive offensive by North Vietnamese forces in late January 1968 alarmed Americans,
millions of whom sat transfixed in their living rooms watching graphic footage of the fighting on the evening news. Despite the
fact that the offensive ended in failure for North Vietnam and was a clear military victory for U.S. forces, Tet proved to be a
major turning point that ultimately led to U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
In the first Perspective, Dr. Jerry Morelock contends that media coverage of the Tet Offensive created a public relations victory
for North Vietnam that was a major factor in the outcome of the conflict. Dr. Morelock states that he does not believe the
media was deliberately biased in its portrayal of Tet, but he does feel that the media's focus on individual battles rather than the
big picture slanted coverage of the offensive and misled the American people into believing that the war was lost. In the second
Perspective, Dr. Clarence R. Wyatt asserts that the belief that Tet marked a major turning point in U.S. public support for the
war is a myth. Dr. Wyatt states that public support of the Vietnam War had already declined significantly by the end of 1967.
He points out that editorial opinion even in news organizations that had long supported the war had become skeptical, and that
there was growing concern in Congress and within Johnson's own administration prior to Tet about the direction of the war. In
addition, Dr. Wyatt relates that in October 1967, the majority of Americans who participated in a poll said they thought U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam War was a mistake.