CLEP US History II

Answer: B - The Fall of Saigon occurred in April 1975, nearly two years after the United States had divested from the Vietnam Conflict. The 1968 Tet Offensive was a disastrous military campaign that came to be viewed as the biggest military intelligence failure since the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Shortly after Tet, venerated CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite (who was considered “the Most Trusted Man in America”) traveled to Vietnam to witness the military’s experience firsthand. Upon returning home, he broadcast an editorial in which he proclaimed that there was no way that America’s involvement could be successful. He went on to say that he believed that the best course of action was for the nation to negotiate a swift but peaceful exodus. Cronkite was so esteemed by the American people that his negative commentary shifted public perception demonstrably and prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to declare, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Soon after, an event ultimately known as the My Lai Massacre came to the public’s attention. In 1968, in the town of My Lai, an American Army platoon raped and executed hundreds of civilians who did nothing to provoke an attack (most of them were women, children, or elders). Then, in 1971, a government worker named Daniel Ellsberg secretly copied thousands of pages of top-secret government documents, then released them to The New York Times. The documents detailed the nation’s history in Vietnam and conclusively demonstrated that the Johnson administration knowingly, systematically, and routinely lied to Congress and the American people, as they escalated the nation’s commitments in Vietnam at the expense of tens of thousands of American lives.