On March 7, 1971, more than a thousand US planes engaged in bombing missions, along with combat missions involving hundreds of helicopters, in a war that was supposed to be nearly over, in a battle intended to prove that the US was no longer needed. Operation Lam Son 719 is both little remembered and little understood, but might well have represented a final turning point in the American war in Vietnam.
The “Great Sedition Trial” uncovered shocking connections at the time with the German reich that we were fighting, and challenged the idea that the nation was of a single mind during the war. It also challenged exactly how far the national commitment to freedom of speech and opinion reached, especially in extraordinary times.