Johnson’s Secret Vietnam Tapes

Perhaps Lyndon B. Johnson’s greatest fear--that his name would forever be linked in failure with the war in Vietnam--is realized in the title of a new documentary on the former president. Yet “LBJ and Vietnam: In the Eye of the Storm” (tonight at 9 on the History Channel) proves far more redemptive than damning.

In secret tapes only recently made public, Johnson seems less the hawkish brute whose policies of escalation cost nearly 60,000 American troops their lives--as he was often portrayed by the era’s antiwar movement--but instead the most reluctant of warriors.

In recording after recording of agonized, late-night phone calls with military and political advisors, Johnson can be heard trying with growing desperation to find a way out of the murky conflict.

When he does agree to dramatically ramp up American troop commitment, he appears to do so only after exhausting all other possibilities, and only with the belief it will bring a quick end to the war.

Did Johnson purposely shape his role in these tapes to give his legacy a historical escape hatch? The program says virtually nothing about how access to the recordings came about and where the tapes had been for so long.

The program employs vintage news footage and dramatic re-creations to bring the tapes to life, the former more effective than the latter.

Problems with continuity also crop up, as when descriptions of LBJ’s deep resentment of Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy are paired with phone tapes between the two revealing nothing but mutual respect and even warmth.

In tapes from the beginning of the conflict, when terrorist attacks on civilian and military targets in South Vietnam (some real and some not) triggered increasingly strong retaliation by the U.S., there are reactions that may strike some familiar chords for viewers.