LBJ and Sen. Richard Russell on Vietnam
LBJ and Sen. Richard Russell on Vietnam
Though Johnson had awoke on May 27 to news that Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had died of a heart attack, the bulk of his day would be dominated by the problems of Southeast Asia.
Just prior to 11 a.m., the President placed a call to his friend, mentor, and sometime antagonist, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. In this conversation, Johnson reveals his deeply conflicted thinking on Vietnam, a profound sense of anxiety absent from his public remarks on the subject. The exchange offers and intimate and revealing portrait of Johnson weighing perhaps the most difficult decision he ever had to make.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth President of the United States, 1963-1969.
Biographical sketch from American President.
Richard B. Russell was Democratic senator of Georgia from 1933-1971.
Biographical sketch from the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress.
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Robert S. McNamara was secretary of defense from 1961-1968.
Biographical sketch from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
LBJ Daily Diary, May 27, 1964.
Tape citation number WH6405.10, Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum. Raw audio file available at the Miller Center's Scripps Library portal.
CIA Special Intelligence Estimate on possible North Vietnamese responses to U.S. actions, May 1964, The National Security Archives.
South Vietnam, Enemy Situation, Early 1964. Source: ehistory @ OSU United States Military Academy.Bibliographies
Bibliography - Vietnam Conflict, Miller Center of Public Affairs.
Bibliography of the Vietnam War, Prof. Edward E. Moise, Clemson University.
Vietnam War Bibliography, Richard Jensen, University of Illinois-Chicago.
Scholarship
Caroline Ziemke, "Senator Richard Russell and the 'Lost Cause' in Vietnam, 1954-1968," Georgia Historical Quarterly (Spring 1988), 30-71.
David Barrett, Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and his Vietnam Advisers (Lawrence, Kansas, 1994).
John Goldsmith, Richard B. Russell and His Apprentice, Lyndon B. Johnson, (Mercer University Press: 1998).
Brian VanDeMark, Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (New York, 1991).
Archives
U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian, Vietnam, 1964.
Virtual Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University.
Documents Relating to the Vietnam War, Mt. Holyoke College.
Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library & Museum, Austin, TX.
March 21, 1964, WH6403.13, LBJL.
In the wake of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's recent trip to South Vietnam, Johnson had pressed him to prepare a speech on the subject, as several members of Congress were beginning to suggest that the administration consider a sharp revision of its policy there.
May 27, 1964, WH6405.10, #3520, LBJL.
In another segment of their May 27 conversation, President Johnson and Senator Russell discuss the challenges presented by war in Vietnam.
LBJ and the Sen. Richard Russell on Vietnam
See Stephanie van Hover, Marc J. Selverstone, and Patrice Preston-Grimes, "Window Into the White House," Social Education, vol. 72, no. 3 (April 2008), 130-135.
Teaching with the Tapes
Chester Pach, "The United States in the 1960s," Ohio Univesity.
Jeff Woods, "White House Tapes," Arkansas Tech University.