“The 1967 march on the Pentagon would prove a defining moment of division in the country, one that hardened attitudes on both sides and left a legacy of bitterness.”

By Steve Vogel

THE 1967 MARCH on the Pentagon was much less violent and far less dangerous to the American republic than the horrific assault and attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. But there are parallels and unlearned lessons, including miscalculations about the security needed to defend large government buildings and the danger of underestimating the power of a mob.

Ironically, despite the large force inside the Pentagon at the time of the protest, the perimeter of the building was deliberately left lightly defended. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the military civilian leadership were determined to present an image of a tolerant and beneficent Pentagon — and it backfired. It’s a story that seems particularly prescient now in light of the recent events in Washington, D.C.

By mid-1967, protests against America’s war in Vietnam had become a regular feature of daily life. By that point, more than 13,000 Americans had been killed in fighting in Southeast Asia. And as the conflict continued to escalate, public opinion steadily turned against U.S. involvement. That year, a near-majority of Americans believed the war was a mistake. Against this backdrop organizers of the October march promised they would disrupt Pentagon operations in what they said would be the greatest anti-war protest in history.

For months, activists had publicly vowed they would shut down America’s military headquarters. Intelligence flowing into the U.S. Army operations centre at the massive building across the Potomac River from Washington in Arlington, Virginia, warned of impending violence. Accordingly, the army brought in thousands of soldiers, including 2,400 troops placed inside the building. But to the shock of the U.S. government and the American people, on Oct. 21, 1967 demonstrators breached the Pentagon’s defences and made it inside – albeit briefly.

Army commanders given the responsibility for defending the Pentagon viewed the pending march through the prism of deadly race riots that had flared in the summer of 1967, including one in Detroit that left 43 people dead. In the days before the Pentagon protest, soldiers flew in from around the country, including contingents of military police from the Presidio in San Francisco, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Dix in New Jersey. Troops were also sent from 10 Army installations in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia, among them elements of the 3^rd Infantry Regiment, the 6^th Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 91^st Engineer Battalion.

The Pentagon’s civilian leadership was adamant that preparations be hidden from public view. David McGiffert, the assistant secretary of the Army, argued that this stance would give the Pentagon the moral high ground, telling McNamara it would “show the world that in troubled times this nation is strong enough and confident enough to permit expressions of criticism which few other governments would dare tolerate.”

The night before the demonstration, under the cover of darkness, dozens of Army trucks packed with soldiers concealed inside rumbled into the Pentagon bus tunnel. By 6 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, nearly 2,400 troops were inside the Pentagon, stationed strategically in corridors and near building entrances.

Army commanders wanted to a brigade of paratroopers from the elite 82^nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, positioned in reserve at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington in case of riots. Attorney General Ramsey Clark opposed the move, but shortly before 11 p.m. Friday night, President Lyndon B. Johnson approved the deployment. C-130 transports flew into Andrews through the night and 2,900 paratroopers were in position at the base by shortly after noon on Saturday. Some 40 Army helicopters, 45 buses and 64 trucks were staged at Andrews, ready to move the brigade to the Pentagon where needed. In all, more than 12,000 soldiers, National Guard troops, federal marshals, and civilian police officers were available in the Washington area; another 25,000 troops around the country had their weekend passes denied and were on alert in case needed.

Major General Charles S. O’Malley, Jr., commander of the troops defending the Pentagon, wanted to ring the building with triple concertina wire or failing that, a six-foot fence, but was turned down. Furthermore, at the insistence of the White House, any decision to make arrests, use force or deploy reinforcements needed Clark’s approval via a hot line connecting the Army operations centre to the Department of Justice command post in Washington. O’Malley had less power than a traffic cop.

“This is looked upon as fundamentally a public relations problem,” General Harold K. Johnson, the Army Chief of Staff, complained to subordinates after meeting with McNamara on the eve of the march.

On the afternoon of Oct. 21, crowd representing a vast cross-section of the country came marching across Memorial Bridge toward the Pentagon, following a rally at the nearby Lincoln Memorial. Estimated by aerial surveillance at 35,000, the turnout far exceeded any Pentagon demonstration before or since. Most of the marchers were intent on peaceful demonstrations – they included beloved pediatrician Benjamin Spock and poet Robert Lowell, veterans of Vietnam and World War Two, college students in tweed jackets and hippies wearing love beads. A much smaller but not insignificant number of marchers were intent on destruction. Army intelligence estimated that there had been “probably fewer than 500 violent demonstrators; hard-core agitators backed by an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 ardent sympathizers.”

Walter Teague and several hundred militants from a group known as the Revolutionary Contingent were on a mission. After crossing the bridge, they tore off from the main body and raced toward the building. Teague, a 31-year-old New Yorker and veteran radical, wearing a white crash helmet on his head and a gas mask strapped to his side, ran at the forefront, flanked by two demonstrators carrying Viet Cong flags.

“Our specific goal was to create a confrontation – a non-violent one, because they were military and we were not – and make a physical effort to get into the Pentagon,” Teague recalled 30 years later.

A line of military police – 575 in all – were standing 10 feet apart, a pittance for protecting two long flanks of the building, each a fifth of a mile long. The soldiers had helmets but were dressed in their Class As – jacket and tie uniforms appropriate for office duty, not a riot – and armed with pistols and night sticks. Behind them, spread out in five-man teams, stood 236 U.S. Federal Marshals, with white helmets on their heads and batons in their hands. A strand of rope, held by rickety wooden stands, protected the government line.

Scouts from Teague’s group found – or created – a gap in the roadway fence that separated the North parking lot from the Pentagon, and they ran for it. At 3:59 p.m., a call came into the Army operations centre warning that at least 200 demonstrators, some armed with ax handles and gas masks, had broken through the fence and were charging the River entrance, which had been left even more lightly guarded than the Mall.

Chanting “Viva Che!” in reference the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara who had been captured and executed in Bolivia two weeks earlier, the group rushed toward a line of a dozen MPs, who waited with their riot sticks held high. Teague called for his colleagues to slow down and link arms. The first row of demonstrators slammed into the soldiers and the Battle of the Pentagon was on. A protester swung a picket sign at a soldier, a marshal grabbed a Viet Cong flag, and an MP clubbed a protester in the back. More demonstrators followed the lead of Teague’s shock troops and rushed up though gaps in the fence. As the crowd swelled, it flowed toward the Mall entrance and was soon pressing menacingly at the rope barrier.

It was quickly apparent that the whole low-profile strategy was a mistake. Rather than somehow mollifying the advancing protesters, the sight of the Pentagon guarded by a thin green line seemed only to encourage those intent on attacking the building.

“[It] may have developed an air of over confidence on the part of demonstrators and encouraged violence,” an Army report written soon after the march concluded.

O’Malley recognized instantly that his men were in trouble, and at 3:59 p.m. requested backup from the building to block the demonstrators. But the reinforcements could not be dispatched until approved by Attorney General Clark across in Washington. The call was made, and they waited. Meanwhile, the crowd at the Mall plaza was surging.

At 4:12 p.m., demonstrators on one side broke through the useless rope barrier and began shoving MPs. Still no approval had come from Clark, and no reinforcements were allowed out of the building, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation. Five minutes later, at 4:17 p.m., Clark’s approval was received. A minute later – nearly 20 minutes after O’Malley had initially requested help – soldiers charged out of the building, some with sheathed bayonets fixed to their M-14 rifles. They were able to contain the crowd, and demonstrators who did not fall back were arrested by the U.S. Marshals.

The violence was momentarily kept at bay, but the 20-minute free-for-all had emboldened the crowd and encouraged a sense of anarchy.

“From this point on, the situation became extremely fluid,” an Army report said.

At the rope barriers, a small but vocal group of demonstrators taunted and abused the troops.

“They spat on some of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander,” James Reston of The New York Times reported.

Others pelted troops with eggs, overripe tomatoes, fish and plastic bags filled with beef liver. The soldiers, under orders to hold the line and having no masks or protective shields, made an easy target.

Capt. Phil Entrekin, the commander of the 6^th Cavalry’s 1^st Squadron, C Troop and a Vietnam veteran, considered the lack of protection afforded his soldiers the “dumbest decision” he would see in more than 20 years with the Army.

“Our kids were standing there and having all kinds of things thrown at them, to include feces,” he recalled.

The first round of trouble at 4 p.m. was only a precursor for a second, more violent wave of attacks an hour later. Angry demonstrators surrounding the Mall plaza launched a three-pronged assault on the building. About a thousand protestors swarmed around the northeast corner of the plaza and moved on the River entrance, while another group broke off in the opposite direction toward the heliport and battled with troops manning roadblocks on Washington Boulevard. The main body of the crowd surged forward against the line of MPs at the Mall plaza, many of them cursing, throwing bottles and rocks and slashing at soldiers with picket signs.

A platoon of MPs ran out to reinforce the sagging line at the front edge of the Mall plaza, where steps led up from the lawn, but they were immediately overwhelmed by demonstrators who overran the rope barriers. In the ensuing struggle, several MPs were knocked to the ground, and their tear gas grenades seized. In the wild melee, both soldiers and demonstrators threw tear gas.

Watching the disintegrating scene, McGiffert approved more reinforcements. At 5:05 p.m., 6^th Cavalry troops burst out of the Mall entrance and ran down the steps with M-14 rifles and tried to restore order; it was not enough. At 5:30 p.m., 30 demonstrators who had climbed a hill to the left of the Mall steps spotted an opening in the Army’s flank. They rushed through it and ran for an open door to the left of the main Mall entrance. The Army’s perimeter crumbled.

Soon about 2,000 demonstrators had broken through the Mall security line and pressed toward the building. The first 30 demonstrators, meanwhile, made it up the steps and victoriously stormed through the outer door.

“The line was too thin and we just began pressing forward,” 24-year-old Leonard Brody of New York later said. “We were so surprised we made it through, we kept looking around to see if it was true.” It was. The Pentagon had been breached.

It was the high-water mark of the march, but did not last long. As soon as the protesters entered the door, a company of soldiers from the 91^st Engineer Battalion waiting just inside the corridor crashed violently into the demonstrators. McNamara happened to be in the corridor and was nearly caught between the protesters and soldiers. His bodyguard pushed the secretary into the nearest office and held the door shut as the soldiers rushed by. The intruders were hit with rifle butts and driven back, leaving the steps spattered with blood. Four demonstrators made it past the inner door and into the building before they were pounced on by soldiers and roughly ejected. The entrance was secured by a thick wall of soldiers.

The Mall plaza remained in chaos. Hundreds of protestors ran up to the Pentagon walls, chased through the bushes by soldiers and marshals. Some of the demonstrators hurled rocks at the building, breaking windows. Others scrawled obscenities onto the limestone façade. Many took advantage of the opportunity to urinate on the building.

Yet the demonstration had peaked. As darkness fell, the crowd thinned, many boarding buses that were due to leave for distant cities, others trudging off on foot. Several thousand protesters remained, including hundreds still occupying the Mall plaza.

In the operations centre, Gen. Johnson was fed up and urged that the Army use “some cold steel and start using some gas” to clear the intruders. But McNamara insisted through the evening that no more force be used unless the demonstrators again threatened safety.

However, after McNamara went home around 11 p.m., soldiers in battle-dress from the 3^rd Infantry Regiment at Fort Myer were sent forward in a wedge, using rifle butts and boots to clear a path through the protesters. Marshals clubbed dozens of demonstrators, even some lying passively, and dragged them off to be arrested. The restraint the government forces had shown most of the day disappeared. About 300 were arrested during the sweep, more than had been during the day.

The absurdity was inescapable. In the critical first hours at the Pentagon, when a show of force would have gone a long way toward curbing violence, the commanders’ hands were tied. Then, late at night when the situation was largely under control and the top command was gone, heads were busted. The coveted image of restraint sought by McNamara – bought at the cost of the soldiers left without barricades and reinforcement when they were needed – was washed away.

Official figures showed 45 persons injured, 17 people of them seriously enough to be hospitalized. Injuries suffered by protesters included ten head wounds, a broken arm and assorted hand, leg and rib injuries; soldiers and marshals received eye and chest injuries. In all, 683 protesters were arrested.

Yet for all the missteps and miscalculations, no one had been killed, and not a shot had been fired. Some 3,000 Pentagon employees had been at work during the demonstration – not much less than was normal for a Saturday – and all critical operations were manned. The Pentagon had not been shut down.

The anti-war movement won few hearts and minds that weekend, as the acts of a violent and abusive minority of protesters dominated press coverage and overshadowed the peaceful message that most demonstrators sought to convey. The 1967 march on the Pentagon would prove a defining moment of division in the country, one that hardened attitudes on both sides and left a legacy of bitterness.

Journalist and author Steve Vogel reported for the Washington Post for more than 20 years, writing frequently about defence issues, and is the author of THE PENTAGON: A History. published by Random House. His latest book, BETRAYAL IN BERLIN: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation, was released in paperback last fall by Custom House.