This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Betts with my good colleague Gregory Copply, Defense and Foreign Affairs, the author of the new book Noble State.

And he's agreed to get in a time machine with me.

We're going back to the year 1966, 1967.

The President of the United States was Lyndon Johnson, having taken up the job after the assassination of President Kennedy.

The Secretary of Defense at the time was a man named Robert McNamara from the Ford Foundation,

a man who lived his life with statistics and acting mechanically when asked questions.

At the same time, the Vietnam War was exhausting both of them.

Again and again, we can't win it, we can't get out.

It was the quandary that they were presented to themselves and their counselors.

At one point, the commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam wanted more men for filling

the roles that he needed for an offensive again against the Viet Cong and the North

Vietnamese infiltrators.

This is a man named Westmoreland.

The decision was made at the White House not to

call up the national card at the time. Later on it was, but not at the time. Therefore, they needed

a hole filled. They needed 30,000 soldiers, was the number. This is early 67. The decision was made

to ask our allies. This is Lyndon Johnson making the decision.

And he named in particular South Korea, the Philippines or Australia, and Gregory reminds me New Zealand.

Those four will concentrate on.

What I need to know now, given the level of deception that was going on from the Pentagon, from the White House,

from all aspects of the Johnson administration. The American people were not told the truth

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