Smith v. Cronkite: A War of Words
By Harry A. Jessell
The CBS News half-hour primetime special of Feb. 28, 1968, is among the network’s most memorable and impacful.
After returning from a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, top anchor Walter Cronkite presented a clear-eyed report on the war. He concluded with his opinion that it had devolved into a bloody “stalemate” that could not be won without a massive U.S. escalation that would bring the world “closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.” The only way out for the country was to negotiate an “honorable” end.
The broadcast, at a time when trust in the network news, especially that of Cronkite, ran high, encouraged the doves and rattled the hawks throughout the country. It likely contributed to the beleaguered President Johnson’s decision a month later not to seek a second term. He was said to have remarked, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”
But Cronkite was not the only newsman to have a say in the matter. Two weeks after him, on March 13, his rival at ABC News, Howard K. Smith, boldly argued that the U.S. needed to “escalate on an overwhelming scale” and fight it out until the North Vietnamese were crushed.
He called for a declaration of a national emergency, hundreds of thousands of additional troops, pursuit of the enemy into bordering countries and a 20% tax hike to pay for it all.
“Begin treating the Communists the way they treat South Vietnam: Bomb their irrigation dikes and deprive them of food as they are doing to Saigon,” he said. “Give civilians 48 hours to get out and level Haiphong, till not a bullet more can be loaded there.”
“If we demonstrate at last that the American nation really means it, the war might end, faster than we think.”
Smith was not nearly as watched or as influential as Cronkite. And while it is unknown what impact his editorial had on Johnson, Richard Nixon who would succeed Johnson the following year adopted a Vietnam policy that more closely tracked Smith’s advice than Cronkite’s.
Smith, whose son Jack was severely wounded in the war, came to regret his pro-war stance. In a 2001 interview, he said that his support was based on his belief that Communism would sweep across Asia if not checked in Vietnam, while, in fact, capitalism was winning out in country after country.
“So, Communism no longer had a chance in Asia anymore. That happened and I did not see that. I didn’t see that we had lost all reason for being in Vietnam. I made a mistake. I supported the war…after it ceased to have any importance anymore.”
Like Johnson, whom Smith admired, Smith’s hawkishness on the war contrasted with his staunch support for the civil rights for blacks and the end of Jim Crow. As a top CBS News correspondent, he started covering the movement in the late 1950s and over the years his reporting and commentary became increasingly critical of the often violent Southern bashlash to integration.
Smith made no apology for the one-sidedness of his reporting. "[G]iving equal weight to [segregationist] Bull Connor and [Chief Justice] Earl Warren and leaving it at that was the equivalent to saying truth is be found somewhere between right and wrong,” he wrote in his memoir, Howard K. Smith: Events Leading to My Death.
Unfortunately, his stance clashed with CBS’s news standards of objectivity at the time and network boss Bill Paley, under extreme pressure from Southern affiliates, personally fired him, abruptly derailing his long and steady rise at the network. Ironically, Smith’s ouster cleared the way for Cronkite to assume the coveted CBS evening news anchor spot in 1962.
Smith quickly reemerged at ABC, starting with a innovative news talk show in 1962 and eventually becoming in 1969 its evening news co-anchor for several years. He died in 2002 at 87.
Smith’s March 13 Vietnam script, including his hand-written edits, is included in the extensive collection of Smith’s papers at the Library of American Broadcasting.
The collection also includes many cards and letters from viewers reacting to Smith’s broadcast. Most of the extant responses are supportive, but many are critical. Think of them as forerunners of today’s social media comments.
On one hand:
“There used to be a humanitarian broadcaster with your name. What has happened to him? Your bloodthirsty remarks on the Vietnam war were shocking beyond belief.”
“If we should escalate, why not go all the way, instead of pussyfooting around? A hundred well-placed H-bombs would really wipe out No. Vietnam, and quick….You are dangerous, sir. You should retire.”
On the other:
“I hope you will continue in this kind of outspoken comment. I think that it is greatly needed in the face of such anti-VietNam editorializing from the other networks…. Do not be intimidated.”
“I know as you do that tyranny cannot be appeased, whether it be of the left or the right. It would seem that all of our friends and colleagues would have learned the lessons of recent history. But, alas, they have not. [This letter was from Al Gordon, who worked in the Hollywood bureau of ABC News.]
The Full Text of Smith’s Commentary on March 13, 1968
Two days of hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee clarified two things: One, the Senators have turned sharply against present Vietnam policy. And two, none of them has any clear notion of what to do about it.
Senator Morse said, take it to the U.N. – though we have proposed that, with no results, about 12 times.
Senator Cooper said, stop bombing and see if the Communists will respond – though we have done that eight times and the only response has been more bullets.
The old enclave plan was not pushed, for that is exactly what we have let ourselves be forced into in Khe Sanh – and it is, predictably, not working.
There exists only one real alternative. But no one suggested it because it is considered one of the unthinkable thoughts. That is — escalate, but this time on an overwhelming scale.
At home, declare a state of national emergency and stop pretending this is not a major war.
Use the urgency thus created to raise our tax schedules not 10 percent as the President asked, but 20 percent, to pay for the war.
Mobilize not a few more thousand men, but 3 or 4 hundred thousand men – enough to turn future Khe Shahs into Stalingrads that destroy the besiegers.
Begin treating the Communists the way they treat South Vietnam: Bomb their irrigation dikes and deprive them of food as they are doing to Saigon. Give civilians 48 hours to get out and level Haiphong, till not a bullet more can be loaded there.
The Communists respect no borders. Let us stop doing so and engage in hot pursuit into Cambodia, Laos and the DMZ, wherever they retreat to refuges.
The peace people don’t like this. But they don’t like anything else, so it does not matter.
I predict this is the kind of policy Mr. Nixon would apply if be became President – and he will if things go on drifting.
The war in basically neither political nor military. It is a clash of wills. So far their will has been more purposeful than ours.
If we demonstrate at last that the American nation really means it, the war might end faster than we think.