![]() When the gold curtains on the left are swept back, the sliding glassined wall maps mirror a globe of violence-divisions and missiles, ours and the enemy’s, aircraft and submarines, movements and mysteries speckle and thread their surface. But whoever passes its double-guarded entrance enters a world where all reality is reduced to symbols. The National Military Command Center-or NMCC-gleams beneath its low ceiling with a continuous glare of harsh white light. The first news of Tet seemed purely military, arriving as it did in the E ring of the Pentagon late Monday afternoon, January 29th, 1968, in a spurt, then a cascade, of action reports to the National Military Command Center. Upon this contradiction between reality and appearance, all through 1968, American politics was to turn. For events lead a double life, and the appearance of events in politics is as important as their reality. ![]() IT WAS days before anyone could see the Tet offensive in perspective-perhaps weeks. ![]() ONE CHAPTER ONE TET!-THE SHADOW ON THE WALLS ![]()
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