Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David Halberstam, 1979 [part 3 of 5]

You're a long time but always wrong and you got it wrong and. I guess we can spare cars or localized. You know I wrote this autobiography which is so revealing you know the most revealing thing about it was the title. It's called Not without you Americans. You know what you know your years in Asia anyone knew and he was terrific you could go out with him all day long and you get everything right and then at 5 o'clock he struck shooting the American flag. If they're going to fight on the truth always went with a fight. I went with the guys to China one time in 73. I didn't go with the might they put him on a group in a group I was traveling with. And we get to some really remote place in China and the Chinese are always in that. Oh yeah. And did you have any specific

problems with editors. You have to understand that I was very much the point man for all this conflict between a very powerful executive branch and right wing and the press because I was a small handful of reporters and I was New York Time's Person which meant that I was the person served most often to the president of the United States for breakfast so that my reporting became what was known as controversial. And that was very difficult and I was also of the Times editors were made very nervous by you have to understand I think I was 28 years old at the time. And I was audacious. And there's a lot of ego in me and drive and I'm combative and I'm combative not just with embassadors and generals but I'm combative with my editors. Turner cabbage my former managing editor once said of me rather kindly you know. David is almost as good a reporter as he thinks he is.

And I I cite that because yes he was a kind of constant ongoing pressure they would print what I was writing and they were very good about that in a way it was you know they I mean intuitively something was happening and they somehow sensible they were being dragged into something they didn't want they were printing it but they didn't quite believe it and I remember in the 463 Margaret Higgins came out for the Herald Tribune and Drew you should know that Margaret Higgins was a very much a Pentagon spokesman I think was married to an Air Force general to time. She was also I think a very dedicated conservative and I think quite a serious Catholic so she hated the idea of what we were poring over her identifiable credentials almost everyone knew that she was not just a straight reporter but she is she was a real voice of a certain segment. And she went down to the Mekong Delta you know in a day or two. And she and I had a long long identifiable thing almost I'm proudest of a series of articles for more than a year chronicling the collapse of the Arvin forces in the Mekong Delta mean systematic and I'm very very

proud it's a very accurate portrayal of a collapse of an army that went on month after month and I truly think sources there I mean just there just weren't better stories. So she goes down there and she's there week and suddenly there's just nothing but stories that appear in her meeting you know the three on its way going out you know finding out whatever Colonel wants to get. General quoting him as saying you know where victory on here near at hand the VC are in retreat in crazy kind of stuff. And so the times very nervously began to send me cables you know begins today victory near DC being routed you know what say you. So I got about one or two of these and I finally. I finally I said a cable thing. You mention that woman's name to me one more time in a cable I will resign. Repeat. Resign I can still see myself typing it I was fearful myself and and I mean it. Repeat mean it you know how Eberstadt it off I want to say please however cool down they sent over a Jerry King from from Hong Kong to cool me down we really still love you but

I mean can't you. Can't you get one of your colonel's time to use his real name is it is it can we have somebody is that one of your anonymous cronies which is sort of like Ben Bradlee saying to Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward going to your nice Mr Throop please let us use his name. I mean it was a great storm and it was you know people in the Pentagon were leaking generals would leak stories hinge marguerita going so that that young boy was shown a photograph of Viet Cong bodies and he burst into tears. Well I mean there was no such thing and I wish in a way somebody had shown me a photograph of Vietcong bodies and I wish I had burst into tears I mean I wish I had the sensibility then about the war and the killing that I have now but I didn't it was I mean was the kind of thing attacking even your manhood. And then of course there is the moment. That the president of the United States asked the publisher of The New York Times Two of the coming out now you have to understand about John F. Kennedy he was wonderfully

manipulative of the press I mean I mean the press performed in Washington as badly in the Kennedy administration and he really got this enormous benefit of doubt because he was charming articulate. He'd gone to the same schools had the same professors read the same books. Everybody loved him and he would handle that. He played the press corps like a yoyo and the one they couldn't control was the muscle group out and so I would give a damn about Kennedy I didn't give a damn about being invited to Hickory Hill or think that I'm not in care with Jackie was wonderful or what they were inviting you know De Gaulle or somebody like I mean I under a mile or over dinner I mean but there was this wonderful quote that didn't matter in Saigon people were dying friends of ours would not going in the rice paddies. It was clearly what the Kennedy people were saying was bullshit. Now Kerry was very shrewd he would tell people like Arthur Schlesinger that the only way he could find out what was going on in Saigon was reading Sheen and my cables. You know how come I can only find out the truth the New York Times but not in my life or my ambassador. At the same time it was very

clear that he was on his way to a first class foreign policy failure I mean it was out of hand it was collapsing and the same kind of thing that would happen later in Watergate where once a thing collapses everybody starts running to the to the lifeboats trying to save his or her own. Soul and on the way stopping only to leak stuff to reporters it was those reporters you know readers and we had every source connected and there every day on the front page would be a story of the collapse. He was going crazy so about the fall of 1963 October rising the new young publisher of The Times Arthur Ochs Sulzberger known as Punch was I think who had by chance been made a publisher of The Times because he was rather annoyed they thought should have a publisher and he died so suddenly punches put enough into the into this into this new job he's taken over for his first meeting with President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and he's very nervous and he punches a guy with a very you know they never taken seriously the time they time

they put in charge of that the air conditioning unit you know he's he's a guy that no one takes seriously and he's nervous as to Scotty Reston Scotty. Well I say to him Mr. President I just think the guy says Hardinge don't worry you know he's going to ask you about your kids and you ask him about his kids. I've got to punch walks in and I'm going to teach him what he did what young man in Saigon or. We like him fine. You don't think he's too close to the story. Oh no no no of course we didn't really agree on. We don't need to go you word to you we're just going to be you're thinking of sending him to Rome or Paris by the general you know. And it's as good as a punch. So this is the good part of the times I mean sometimes they're nervous and they're uncertain but I think they're very good on direct pressure. And if you make a direct they're just going to be trying to I was scheduled for months vacation. You know you're going to be

by no means you know you did you. But they were very very. And it's no fun I mean listen when later it became very very legitimate for reporters to take on the embassy take on the war take on those military statistics and assumptions. In those days it was really I mean I mean to say the kind of things that we were saying which was it wasn't work didn't work with it was connected to the original work. I was really radical in those days in the early 60s and that was enough. I mean we were the most radical possible viewpoint that the center of a society and I mean the sort of society or organizations like New York Times CBS you could possibly absorb We were the outer extremity of it and that was a rather I mean it was an enormous amount of pressure and I mean you felt it every day. I wonder if you could go into the story of Charlie more. Well it was not yours John

Kennedy. And the Pentagon that loved Vietnam it was very loose in Time magazine loved it I mean. In fact I think Kennedy had a lot of doubts about Vietnam I think he you know I think he knew that you you do not want to get caught in the same footsteps as the French I don't think you want to see his administration sucked into the rice paddies of Indochina and so I mean I think he sent what he thought was politically the minimal commitment he could. I think Lulu's publications really were enthusiastic about the war and I think there was a kind of American jingoism that they really symbolized. I thought it was a true voice of Christian capitalism. I mean if you were a correspondent in Moscow in those days I mean as you might have listened to probably get the true voice of the Soviet the Polit Bureau in if you were a foreign correspondent in America you don't want the voice of American liberalism or the government but the true unconscious voice of the center of American Christian capitalism I think

Time magazine ONE TIME magazine you know thought that all the world a want in American values and B that American power could do anything and that we had inherent role and responsibility to teach people what was right for them in Vietnam and. You know the auto Furby here was a very conservative powerful figure who saw none of the nuances of of the complexity of a guerrilla war if you with a lot of probing it was the managing editor more loose than loose. I have a colleague named Stanley Karnow who once tried it was the Hong Kong bureau chief for Time magazine and Karr now came back to New York office wants to try and explain about the complexity of the war and the fact that probably the American commitment under Kennedy wasn't going to work and although it was waved him aside and said you know we don't have to worry about that we'll just you know we'll just we have the seventh fleet out there we'll just pummel them into the ground with the Stemmons 7st I mean the idea that American power.

Which was right and technological would just be absorbed to the degree it was by the rice paddies by a guerrilla war was inconceivable to these men. It's a generational thing again and for men who cannot see outside their own separate spirits and so. So having said that I mean as we wrote from Vietnam we offended not just Kennedy and within the Defense Department but we have been to the executive of Time magazine which started the war in Word the war should be done and could be done and that we were the problem. Now what Time magazine traditionally did in a situation like this is it used its press department as a club. And so when Charles Moore who was a very distinguished Time magazine correspondent out there. Filed some very negative stories. Time magazine didn't just fail to print his reports and write rather than put it rather more optimistic appraisals thereupon decided that more was part of the problem and they wrote these. Savage press pieces entirely

dictated in New York I mean the files coming from the Saigon reporters about how well the reporters were doing there were thrown out and in a way virtually for being addicted to speech saying you know the war is being won the only problem is this negative innocent young left wing press group and out of this boat. I mean it's very very very rough hardball. I mean it's no fun to find out you know that you are almost unpatriotic that you are doing the devil's work. You know you don't Whitely if you're a young reporter take on the government of the United States anyway and here was a thing that really virtually questioned your patriotism plus your professional ability. And out of this both Charlie who is a very distinguished reporter resigned and Rick Perry the full time Stringer resigned was a great great cause celeb. Mind you TIME magazine really loved that or stayed with it. No amount of defeat could change if you will which was right. There were certain people who. The more the war was lost the more

optimistic they became and it never seemed to limit their credibility I mean there's a there's a calmness to me Joe Alsop who is the most Imperial and imperious of American columnists and I mean he's a great power at least he was a great power in Washington I think not least because he was something of a bully. And Joe would every year predict you know imminent victory I mean you know the light at the end of the tunnel you know victory in six months and every year the Viet Cong would get stronger and you know Joe would predict victories tonight one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 12 years every year an annual prediction of victory every year. Victory is further away. Doesn't stop him doesn't make him think twice doesn't make him you know changes position and doesn't in the curious world of Washington which social contacts believes nobly are so important never injured his credibility. Astonishing.