An Interview with Dr. Spock

(Following his sentencing Wednesday morning Dr. Benjamin Spock held a news conference and then gave David L. Horn the following interview.)

DR. SPOCK: "I want people to realize that of the two leading contenders for the presidency, Richard Nixon believes the war should be bloodier and faster. The leading Democratic contender is Hubert Humphrey, who has said nothing about the War. In fact he [Nixon] has been more in favor of the War than has Lyndon Johnson. I say, what an impasse for the United States to be in at this time. I say to the American People--Wake up, get out there and do something before it is too late, before we have another president committed to killing American men at the rate of a thousand or two thousand a mouth. This could go on for years.

The peace conference being held in Paris is a fraud. The president is pretending to move toward peace. The president has done nothing but shifted his slippery ground. We have made no progress except the withdrawl of Lyndon Johnson. Instead we have Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. There is no solution in sight. The War could be stopped if one hundred million Americans stood and said: let's stop it. More than half the American people think it is a mistake, but they don't have the initiative or energy to stand up and do something. Let's do something before it is too late."

QUESTION: The government has charged you with conspiracy...

DR. SPOCK: "I deny that I was part of a conspiracy; I deny that I ever counseled anyone [to avoid the draft]; I feel that all the things that I have done are covered by the Free Speech guarantee of the First Amendment."

QUESTION: What do you think were the principal issues in your trial?

DR. SPOCK: "The reason that all of us (Spock and the four other co-defendants) were indirectly involved in this is because we believe this war is totally illegal. Before the trial starts, the judge says--this is not the issue. In my appeal the issue of the illegality of the war will be raised.

QUESTION: At the news conference, you stated to N.B.C. News that the Paris Peace Conference was a fraud.

DR. SPOCK: "I think he [Johnson] is a man who has to save face. I don't mean that he is deliberately keeping us in the war. My gratuitous analysis is that without him knowing it, he has to save face. He is reported to have said, just before the escalation in 1965, that when his military and State Department people told him that the Saigon government and army were about to collapse--his reply was, that I refuse to be the first President to lose a war. This seems the only plausble reason why a man who campaigned as a peace candidate would turn around and become a war escalator.

"Secondly, Johnson completely misjudged, miscalculated the Vietnamese. He thought that if the strongest country, militarily and industrially, decided that something was right for Vietnam, then the other side would capitulate. Johnson is a man of action and feels that if you know that you have the strength, show your strength resolutely, and the other side will cave in. The other side hasn't caved in. To Johnson I am sure that it is inconceivable that this tiny country is beating us.

"Johnson's formula for not running is extremely shrewd: to pretend to the American people and to himself that because of a dangerous division in the country he is withdrawing to prevent that division from going further. I think that this is what the man consciously believes. I think this is an ingenious cover for his inability to admit that he has made a disastrous mistake.

QUESTION: But why is the Paris Peace Conference being staged?

DR. SPOCK: "Johnson is still hoping to win, at the negotiating table, what he has been unable to win on the battle-field. From what I have seen, I don't think Johnson is prepared to offer anything to the Vietnamese. And while we wait, 1000 or 2000 Americans are dying every month in Vietnam. The conference is a very ingenious way to take the pressure off himself [Johnson] and Vice-President Humphrey, and it takes some of the wind out of McCarthy's sails.

"The only hope for America and the world is in the new idealism and the new realism of the young people of America and Europe; the only hope is that youth think that it is worth doing something for humanity: if it were not for that, I would withdraw from the human race or at least from civilization