Long Binh Jail — nicknamed LBJ — was the U.S. Army's largest prison in Vietnam, and many soldiers feared it more than the battlefield. Overcrowded, brutal, and seething with racial tension, it held men imprisoned for resisting an increasingly unpopular war — going AWOL, defying orders, refusing to fight. In the summer of 1968, that tension exploded. Black inmates rose up, overwhelmed the guards, and took control of the stockade. 

In this episode of A Matter of Conscience, we go inside LBJ — through the voices of two veterans imprisoned in the stockade. You'll hear what it meant to arrive at the stockade, survive the conex boxes baking in 105-degree heat, navigate the racial fault lines that divided the prison, and still find moments of defiance, humor, and humanity. One of those veterans is our own Bill Short, who was imprisoned there in 1969.

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In this powerful episode of A Matter of Conscience, veterans of the Vietnam War bear witness to the unthinkable — and reveal the moral courage it took to refuse complicity. From infantry soldiers surviving ambushes, to a military intelligence officer who risked his life to stop the torture of prisoners, to a whistleblower threatened into silence after reporting war crimes, these are stories of young men — barely out of their teens — confronting the darkest extremes of warfare.

We’ll also hear from two Vietnamese women, survivors of the My Lai massacre, whose devastating testimonies put a human face on a U.S. military atrocity that shook the world. 

This is not a comfortable listen, but it is a necessary one to understand why many U.S. soldiers came to oppose the war they were fighting.

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In this episode, we take you to the battlefields of Vietnam, where many young soldiers faced a moral conflict while just trying to stay alive. This is the first part of our look at resistance on the battlefield. GIs, like George Silver and Roy Barrington, practiced “search and evade” tactics where they would avoid engaging with the enemy. And, the military had to confront the prevalence of drug use fundamentally driven by a collapse of morale amongst troops. Warning: this episode has disturbing descriptions of combat.

For show notes, photos, and more, visit our website.

In 1969 Peter Hagerty, Navy ROTC instructor, inspected a destroyer the way he was supposed to.

He followed the rules. The ship was in bad shape. He told his superior that the hairline crack on the barrels of the guns could cause an explosion. He said he would not approve the ship for battle. The captain told Peter, "you're a goddamn agitator” and said he would court-martial him.

He found an attorney to defend him as he refused to go to Vietnam. Hagerty, motivated by guilt that his class background spared him from fighting the Navy in court, became involved in GI rights for men who went AWOL.

For show notes, glossary, photos, and more, visit amatterofconscience.com

Resistance among military officers takes courage. Most officers have earned their promotion from following orders. To say “No” an officer might be risking their career. In this episode, we showcase the stories of two officers, also pilots, who disobeyed orders during the Vietnam War: Charlie Clements, U.S. Air Force and John Kent, U.S. Navy. We explore how they made the decision to rebel and the consequences of that non-conformity.  

For show notes, photos, and more, visit our website.

This is a bonus episode of A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War, featuring more of our interview with Canadian historian and author John Boyko, who wrote The Devil's Trick: How Canada Fought the Vietnam War. You heard him in Episode 10: Leaving America Behind – Deserters and the War. This interview explores Canada's complex and often contradictory role in the Vietnam War, detailing the country's significant economic involvement in manufacturing and selling weapons to the U.S. military, while simultaneously becoming a refuge for over 40,000 American draft evaders and military deserters. 

For show notes, photos, and more, visit our website.

Move over James Bond!  In this companion to Episode 10 about deserters during the Vietnam War, we hear about the wild journey of four sailors who deserted from the USS Intrepid during the Vietnam War. Their act of conscience began in Japan, then took them to the Soviet Union, and ended with asylum in Sweden. Researcher Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez introduces us to the role of Beheiren, a Japanese organization dedicated to ending the Vietnam War, and we learn why their case has become an infamous part of Vietnam War history.

For show notes, photos, and more, visit our website.

More than half a million soldiers abandoned their posts during the Vietnam War, seeking refuge primarily in Canada and Sweden. In this gripping episode of A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War, we plunge into the emotional and personal sacrifice of desertion. Hear the extraordinary journeys of four men: Mike Wong, who crossed the border into Canada; Gerry Condon, whose path wound from Canada to Sweden and back again; Michael Sutherland (formerly Lindner) and Steve Kinnaman, two men granted asylum in Sweden and who never returned to their homeland. We'll also explore the secret routes to freedom—the 'underground railroad' to Canada, guided by historian John Boyko, and the resilient deserter community in Sweden, as shared by its unofficial historian, Jim Walch, a conscientious objector who made Sweden his permanent home.

For show notes, photos, and more, visit our website.

For Black soldiers, the Vietnam War was not only a struggle to stay alive but a battle against the persistent racism in the U.S. military. In this episode, we examine the resistance efforts by Black soldiers who were literally fighting two wars – one against Vietnam and the other against their own country. Four Black GIs tell their stories of fighting back and how PTSD affected the rest of their lives. Historian Sam Black gives context on how an integrated military and colonialism intersected with the GI experience. We uncover the origin of the DAP, discuss the rise of fraggings, where soldiers deliberately killed their officers, and consider the influence on Black GIs of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali. 

For show notes, photos, and more, visit our website.

As part of A Matter of Conscience, we bring you bonus episodes featuring the first-person stories of the veterans we interviewed some 35 years ago. We begin with Air Force veteran Alan Klein, who was sent to the brig for going AWOL (Absent Without Leave) in protest of the war.  Alan's story of foot-dragging within the military speaks to some of the more pervasive resistance that took place during the Vietnam War.

Note: this episode contains profanity.