On March 10 and 11, 2006, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum played host to an unprecedented two-day conference examining the history of the Vietnam War and the American presidency. Vietnam and the Presidency brought together for the first time many of those who helped shape US policy or witnessed the war in Vietnam firsthand. Among those taking part in the conference were former President Jimmy Carter; General Alexander Haig; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; Special Counsel to President Kennedy, Theodore Sorensen; Special Assistant to President Johnson, Jack Valenti; Senator Chuck Hagel; New York Timescolumnist Bob Herbert; Ambassador Pete Peterson; former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark; professors George Herring, Robert D. Schulzinger, and Marilyn Young; journalists Steve Bell and Dan Rather; Pulitzer Prize-winning authors David Halberstam and Frances FitzGerald; and historians David Kaiser, Jeffrey Kimball and Timothy Naftali. Caroline Kennedy made a special appearance, introducing NBC Nightly Newsanchorman Brian Williams who moderated all of the Saturday sessions. The Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein and the Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries, Sharon Fawcett moderated panels on the first day.
The two-day event at the Kennedy Library sparked discussions worldwide as media reports from the conference spread across the United States and across the world, including Vietnam. The conference drew comparisons to the current state of affairs in Iraq. President Carter, in a videotaped interview for the event, said President Bush's reason for invading Iraq represents ''a new and radical departure for all Democratic and Republican presidents in recent history." Carter said that the Iraq invasion was strictly a preemptive measure to prevent Saddam Hussein from attacking the United States with weapons of mass destruction that were later found not to exist, this from a report in The Boston Globe. In an Associated Press report posted on the Al-Jazeerah website, Kissinger was asked whether he agreed that the U.S. bombing of Cambodia led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and, if so, was he responsible for the two million people the Khmer Rouge killed? "The premise that the bombing of a five-mile strip led to the rise of Khmer Rouge and the murder of two million people is an example of masochism that is really inexcusable," he said. Kissinger said that the Vietnam War "has fundamentally affected my life in the sense that the Nixon debate doesn't ever seem to end and for many I am the surviving symbol of the Nixon administration."
Vietnam and the Presidency was the first national conference sponsored by all the Presidential Libraries – from Hoover to Clinton – and the National Archives and Records Administration. Click here for transcripts of the conference.