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The people are not rebuilding their destroyed houses because they fear another Vietcong attack. Now our leaders can say as much as they like to the enemy is being defeated is staggering and so on but the people of Vietnam know better. That voice belongs to ABC News Correspondent George Allen. His assignment for the past year has been the war in Vietnam. Mr. Allen is back in the States for a few weeks before returning for another year of duty in Vietnam. George Allen is our guest this week on an E.R. Washington forum I mean ANY our public affairs director of excitement Mr. Allen. Are the American people getting the truth about Vietnam. And if not who is doing the lying. The newsman or the government. When that kind of a loaded question it assumes that somebody is lying. There are two or three or six different versions of the war. But I'm not sure of it did you could say that any individual who adheres to one particular view of the war is lying. There are certainly two strongly opposing points of view of the administration the establishment
and the press. The administration has been saying for three and a half years were winning we're winning we're winning. For approximately the same period of time the press has been saying we're not winning we're not winning we're not winning. And it's gotten down to a pretty and Tegan mystic situation where the establishment is practically and has in fact accused various members of the press of being not patriotic being poor Americans looking for the bad side to report instead of reporting the good side and you're frequently asked in Vietnam why don't you get on the team. Well fortunately it's needed to not journalist jump to get on the team. The best thing a journalist can do is to look over the shoulder of the administration to see whether the administration is doing what it says it is. What's what's the relationship like between the press in Saigon and the administration. By and large it's very poor. Well let me back up and say that the higher up the administrative ladder you go either on the military side the civilian side the poor the
relationship gets. We have excellent relationships with a soldier in the field with middle grade officers and so on. They are always amazed that we as unarmed civilians who don't have to be there will go out into combat will make helicopter assaults with them risk our lives. Then in the middle raid great officer and the soldier in the field doesn't have anything to sell he's not responsible for the war he's just counting it 365 days till he can get out of there and stay alive. He may have views on the war but he is not responsible for selling it to the American people so therefore he really doesn't concern himself too much with what we say. The responsible official up to the level of ambassadors and generals do have to sell the policy and they're the ones who are most annoyed at us the press the journalists as a group for not helping them to sell their policy. And relations are at a point where
I myself and my wife who lives with me in Saigon have actually had to leave Embassy dinner parties because the abuse got so bad. People on the embassy staff would get red faced waving their fingers at us to the point where they're almost going to climb over the dinner table and put me in the eye because they they view us as unpatriotic Americans. Again the American people believe government reports such as enemy casualty figures it seems that. According to the newspapers anywhere that we kill an enormous amount of the enemy and yet his numbers don't really seem to diminish at all are these reports true. Well the administration itself was questioned the figures General Westmoreland and the other generals in Saigon were putting out. Figures of about 30000 between I think it eventually got up to around 40000 enemy killed during the Tet Offensive. The Pentagon itself finally came out and said well that's a battlefield estimate which is probably high. And the real figure is probably somewhere around
10000 or even less so that they did the body count when the horrible phrase or. Brutal phrase. Is widely ignored and laughed at by the press because it is made up. Of estimates by men in battle they are required to make an estimate whether they can count the enemy bodies or whether they can't they are required to come up with an estimate so they make an estimate. I think there were 100 of them I think we killed 50. Well as often as not they just have no idea how many they kill and also and I frequently ask a ranking officers. Particularly about the reports of helicopter pilots that helicopter pilots today reported they killed one hundred twenty six enemy. Well a helicopter pilot shoots at people on the ground. First of all he has great difficulty distinguishing whether they're civilians or Vietcong or North Vietnamese. Second if you shoot at them and the man falls down the man may be faking. You may not have been hit at all. If he does hit he maybe wouldn't be able to get up and walk away or he
may be dead now how could a helicopter pilot report that he killed so many. And you never get a report from a helicopter pilots that they wounded so many it's always that they kill them. The brutal fact of the matter is that many of those dead are innocent civilians. That's the most terrible thing about the war in Vietnam. You can never get any report from the American military high command as to how many civilians were killed accidentally. They always give you an estimate of how many Vietcong killed they always will report Vietcong atrocities and terror acts against civilians. But when we make a tactical air strike and the bombs go astray a bit maybe wipe out a village you never get an estimate of how many people are in that in that village. And it's an awful thing to say that many of our military in Vietnam define a Vietcong is a dead heat I mean if the Vietnamese is dead he must have been a Viet Cong agent even if it's an 11 year old girl. What about such things as the kill ratio. What's next. We need explanation of this is another brutal nauseating phrase to
kill ratio which means we are killing them faster than they are killing us the implication of that is that we are willing to sacrifice a certain number of Americans a given number of young Americans to kill a given number of the enemy. This is really an admission that war is a butchery that is machine into which you feed young men as cannon fodder. We are willing to take a certain percentage of casualties so long as we are killing more than they are. They killed 10 of our men and we killed 100 of their men so therefore we have won the day. I would like to talk to the parents of those 10 Americans who died to see whether they agree that we won the day. Who is winning the war in Vietnam. If you have an opinion about this General Westmoreland as you pointed out keep saying that the tide is running against North Vietnam but the war continues is anyone really winning there is this a stalemate. I doubt that you could say that anybody either side is
winning the war in my own view it is a true stalemate and that's the word that is General Westmoreland and most of the administration officials in Vietnam right up the wall they can't stand that word. It is stalemate because we are not winning we cannot drive the other side off the battlefield. They have shown that time and time again every time General Westmoreland has said that the other side is staggering on their last legs desperate low morale and so on they they come up and mount an offensive to show that they are not what General Westmoreland says they are. As a matter of fact as a joke that goes around. So I go on among the press corps. Which has an administration a military press officer writing a release that begins in desperation today the Vietcong overran Saigon. The General and Ambassador Bunker were back in the United States last November and they were on national television saying that the enemy was on its last legs he
was practically finished and the light at the end of the tunnel was growing brighter and then in perhaps in two years we could begin to phase out American involvement begin to bring the troops home. At the same time also on national television he accused the American journalists there of being aged cynics who never leave Saigon who get their facts in bars in Saigon or collect their rumors as the general put it. That's pretty harsh statement you know. And this was approximately 50 days before the Vietcong the North Vietnamese unleashed their attack against Saigon. They floored our zine and totally unexpected the strength and fury of their attack and their ability to hang on as they did in a way for 42 days. Just unbelievable against this enormous firepower that we can mount. The general was just absolutely one hundred and twenty eight percent wrong. Now the general comes back after the attack and says it was a great defeat for them. Well his track record isn't very good.
And if he says that it's a defeat that the Tet Offensive was a defeat because as the general claims we killed 30000 of them. When the Pentagon comes out and corrects the general and says we didn't kill 30000. But even conceding that we did kill many thousand for instance. This business of our leaders saying that is a defeat for the other side because we killed a lot of them is viewing it in Western terms which were formed during World War One and during World War Two when you measured defeat or victory in terms of the number of enemy units you were able to wipe out or in terms of the number of hundred yards of territory that you were able to get this is not that kind of war. So conceding say we did kill many thousands. But what did the enemy do. This is what they are generals never admit that what was the enemy's goals. General Westmoreland claims that the enemy's goal was to create a national uprising and because this did not happen therefore the enemy suffered a defeat. But in fact when you live in Vietnam and in Saigon and you talk to the people and you talk to the Vietnamese leaders and you go all over the country as the
press does. You find that the Vietcong in the North Vietnamese have stricken the Vietnamese populace would terror. I was in way about five five and a half weeks ago I spent a day there and I did a television story on the rebuilding of way what way isn't being rebuilt very fast hardly at all. The people are not rebuilding their destroyed houses because they fear another Vietcong attack. Now our leaders can say as much as they like that the enemy is being defeated is staggering and so on but the people of Vietnam know better. They know the Vietcong has achieved a psychological victory in that they have demonstrated to the American to the Vietnamese people that the half a million American troops in Vietnam cannot protect the Vietnamese people from the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. Now this is not a defeat for the Americans in the sense that as I said before they cannot be driven from the battlefield.
But it also indicates a limit to American Power. No matter how much metal How many airplanes how many weapons you put in there you still cannot keep the other side from getting at the Vietnamese people this is the nature of this war there for American power American ability is limited and we have to recognize that what future do you see for the Paris peace talks. I think the talks from all that I have read and I have no particular knowledge unlike any private information. But reading with intense interest as you can well understand since I live in Saigon reading every word that I can find with intense interest I can see a considerable thread of hope. The the very fact that the Vietnamese came to North Vietnamese came to the conference table before the bombing was stopped the thing that they said they would never do is a concession in a sense if you will. And they have been dropping various hints that their point is that they've formally said we're not negotiable are in fact negotiable such as they they have been saying for weeks that they would not talk about any other points
until the entire bombing of the entire country of North Vietnam was stopped just in the past two days of the last meeting they dropped a hint that they would be willing to talk about a time schedule for ending that bombing. This is a concession this is a forward movement. And what has been happening is that each side is making a record for history they're putting their propaganda positions their hardest position if there are no negotiating positions on the record so that historians in the future can read it. And each side is hoping that it will appear to be more right than the other side once they get over this is gone on for a month. Once they get over this they can then go into private sessions where some real negotiations will begin. I am. Fairly high on the negotiations and I have a private time schedule where I think that the fighting the shooting may actually be stopped by the end of this year is not going to happen in a day or a week or even a month. But within within six months I think it's a good possibility that the fighting may have been stopped.
Anti-war critics in this country there is a fringe of any war criticism which which is calling for complete pullout of American troops in Vietnam what would happen if the United States were simply to pull out to withdraw or go home. Well it's a very iffy question which politicians are rightfully and journalists also should never deal with and sidestep. Because in fact it is just about unthinkable for the United States to announce tomorrow I'm getting out we're getting out. Leave it just is not in the cards therefore there's no need for contingency planning for this the best that can be done is a phased withdrawal over a period of time. The big problem in any kind of withdrawal whether if you want to talk for ideal purposes to talk for about an immediate and total withdrawal there the big problem is face. And we hear an awful lot of fear a lot about this now you live in Saigon you live in the origin but I live
here in the United States and I'm amazed when I hear this concept of face because this is an Eastern concept and I hear Americans saying well we've got to save face what is finally meeting Wes having lived in Vietnam for a year and traveled around the rest of Southeast Asia quite a bit. Side of yet I'm impressed by the fact that he sensed the Oriental sense of face. Is outranked only by the Western sense of place really. We call it other things we call an honor we call it duty we call it 100 things we don't call it face. But this is what we're all talking about. And the Oriental sense of face the Vietnamese sense of faces is very very strong. If you want to say a cross word to somebody in your office that they committed an error the enemies you have to take me to a separate room and make no indication of what you're going to say so that none of his colleagues will be aware of it at all because if you allow him to lose face in front of his colleagues you have lost him entirely he may resign and you may walk out
there or come back. It is a very real thing. But the American sense of face is also very real and what is basic to any with Demick and withdrawal from Vietnam is that the United States must retire with honor. And I think that's a reasonable request. The United States is the most powerful industrial nation the world has ever seen the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen and its presence in the world does. Make a great deal of difference if the United States did not exist the Soviet Union would be able to have its way much more it would be dominating the world. So if the United States were to pull out without honor to lose face and pulling out it would change the relationships around the world a great deal. The Soviet Union would be strengthened. Communist China would be strengthened our various allies around the world would be weakened. The United States in other words would be showing that it could not always be relied on there is there is a good deal of truth in that. So on a withdrawal a
phased withdrawal over a period of time and I think that we would not lose too much face and I think we could also get considerable concessions from the other side if we announced a positive program for withdrawal. We would not just walk out. We wouldn't have to walk out without requesting the aid concessions from the other side. What kind of concessions could you get about a future government about the division of Vietnam. About Chinese Communist Chinese domination or hegemony in the area and so on you could do a great deal if you went on to a positive withdrawal you're negotiating and might in fact be strengthened. Let me change the subject here for a moment to get away from hard politics. Let's talk about something a little more personal. What is life like in Saigon for the Americans. Fascinating absolutely fascinating. I am often asked here in the in the States since I've been home whether I like it in Saigon or like it in Vietnam's I don't spend all my time and so I go on.
That's not the correct question I can't respond to it I neither like it nor dislike it it has many discomforts but it really is fascinating. Will your Whether you approve of it or oppose it is the greatest drama since it involves the life and death of thousands of human beings. And as in any wartime situation you form fast friendships. Solid friendships very quickly once you've been under fire with somebody else that changes you in a way that people have not been in the fight cannot understand and. You the Vietnamese are a fascinating blend of honesty deceit intrigue. They're in a terrible position. They have no place to go and they break down into several groups the urban elite. Who are the hockey is to hawks and want the United States to bomb the other side into submission to the simple peasant who are really delightful people. And when you go 20 miles outside of Saigon you find people hardly
know where Saigon is or what it is they have no idea they've never been there in all their lives and you know they may be 50 60 years old and they have no intention of ever going. Saigon is a was a beautiful city designed for a half million people it was it was copied after Paris it had wide boulevards with trees growing on it. It was a French a large provincial French provincial city now it has instead of a half a million people it has two and a half million people it's swollen by the refugees and people coming in from the countryside. And the traffic problem that this is created is just unbelievable. It really is. There are military trucks. There are passenger cars there the old Renault catch you have all four horsepower little tiny things that are used as taxis and held together by spit and string. I daresay that the world's most dangerous taxi gabs because they have been unable to get replacement parts for about five years and they just keep welding things together and soldering them together and every once in
awhile one of these things just like a one horse shape will just fall apart in the street there in the sea close the replace the ricksha and above all there are the motorcycles the Vespers the Hondas. This is the keys. Three quarters of a million keys and hundreds in a city designed for half a million people it's just frightening it really is. There literally is not enough room in the roadway. And many of the Suzuki's and hundreds go up on the sidewalk to run and you will be walking along the sidewalk as an innocent citizen and you'll have them beeping their horns at you to get out of the way to get by you. The United States is responsible for this. Directly because the impact of military spending on the economy of Vietnam has been tragic enormous and we are supporting the Vietnamese piaster and its American policy to allow the importation of hard goods for the Vietnamese to spend their piastres on so they don't bid up the price of things this is trying to keep the price level down so the United States policy to
import hundreds and Suzuki's or to allow Vietnamese to import them and sell them to soak up the extra piasters. But these are two cycle engines and they burn oil you mix the oil with the gasoline and they put out a blue smoke that you wouldn't believe. And from 8 o'clock in the morning until 8:00 o'clock at night Saigon it is covered with a pall of blue smoke. I myself sometimes think that those of us who lived in Saigon for any length of time will be known as the cancer generation that over the next 25 years will be dying of lung cancer because of the enormous amount of air pollution and signing on. What is your life like specifically the life of a foreign correspondent Is it glamorous is it a life filled with adventure and intrigue or is it adult. It's all of those elements of all of that in it. The ABC bureau in Saigon have a routine there for correspondents. Normally in for camera crews and we have a second headquarters beside Saigon then today and then up in I Corps the First Corps the marine area. And we keep that staff normally with one correspondent and one camera crew and from
there you work out of that and you go around I Corps to see what's going on. So you're up there for about 10 days or two weeks and then you were rotated back to Saigon in Saigon as your base. Which means that for about the next six weeks you get to dining about every two months for 10 days or two weeks then you're back to Saigon you work out of Saigon traveling to the delta or to the Highlands to play cooed told wherever the action is. Before the Tet offensive before the attack on Saigon life in Saigon itself surprisingly was quite normal are good restaurants. There was a cocktail circuit you meant to government officials at dinner you meant the military people you met your colleagues at a bar or whatever. Since the Tet Offensive there's been a curfew and life is completely abnormal now. There is no evening life at all and there are the constant attacks on the city it's dangerous to walk around you cannot go out to Chillon anymore where the good Chinese restaurants and excellent superb Chinese restaurants out there still have them but Americans don't dare go near them anymore you never
know when it's going to be rocketed or when it. The Vietcong started climbing over the back wall. So your life has become very subscribed since the Tet Offensive. The journalistic community in Vietnam is. Bout two hundred fifty regular correspondents there all the time and you get to know pretty near everybody and it's a tight community always exchanging information. Glamour. I don't know you do a lot of flying around you do a lot of travelling around to other Southeast Asian countries. We go out on our own hour every couple of months you need to retain your sanity you just can't take the strain all the time of the strain now is greatly increased. So I guess that's part that might be called glamorous travel but I personally don't like being shot and I don't like being rocketed and mortared and I don't know anybody who does and it's if you're pretty hairy experience.
Well if that's what you're going through then my next question is about the South Vietnamese people themselves do you think they hate Americans. Well as I pointed out a couple of minutes ago that you can't talk about the Vietnamese people as such they're not a unity they're not homogeneous. There are different groups. South Vietnamese people which have and these different groups have different interests. For instance the rice grower in the delta to the south of Saigon has very little in common with the dry rice farmer or the vegetable farmer in the Highlands around a lot to replace their conditions of life are totally different they have no communication with each other. Vietnam in a sense is hardly a nation because Ford to build a modern nation you need modern communications. And you just don't have it in Saigon as in Vietnam as I said. These people rarely leave their villages to country people and if they were to go three or four miles away from their village
that's a major journey for them. Therefore there is little cohesion there turned inward as in most oriental societies aren't to the family the family is the important thing. Their concept of the nation is very hazy. Therefore their opinion of Americans and the war is keyed very closely to what happens to them as individuals. Now do face facts very bluntly if you put yourself in the position of a Vietnamese rice farmer who has been plowing his fields and using his water buffalo to grow rice and never been to Saigon and has only a hazy understanding of what this funny word democracy is all about. Suddenly a bunch of men and helicopters descend upon him. Threaten him break open his right stocks looking for weapons and finally set fire to his village. And fourth him to go into a refugee camp. I don't think it takes a great deal of political sophistication to divine that he probably would not be very much in favor of the people who did that. That is what is happening in
Vietnam. More and more both the Americans and the South Vietnamese Army are doing this is clearing people out of areas that we see are controlled by the Vietcong we're trying to remove the population from Saudi's village burning villages bombing creation of refugees is going on more and more. And as that goes on. So the Vietnamese people are less and less favorably inclined toward our point of view toward the American point of view. In fact as you travel around here now when you talk to the people more and more you get the answer. What do you want. We want the war to stop. We want the shooting to stop. That's what they're interested in what kind of government do you want in Saigon. I don't care what kind of government is stop the war I've lost my brother and my sister's child was killed my farm was burned down I am a refugee I have absolutely nothing. I have nothing to gain or lose no matter what kind of government you have in Saigon the government in Saigon never paid any attention to me for the last 25 or 30 years. Why should I care what kind of government is in sight. This is basically the attitude of the
peasants of the cure. The Americans are offering them is worse than the disease. And in fact the conditions of life in Vietnam for the vast majority of the population for the presence there in a nation of rice farmers. The condition of his life are such that no government whether it be fascist communist democratic or any other variety can have can have very little impact on it. You can't change the conditions of his life very much no matter what you want to do because of lack of communications his lack of interest in anything outside he was in his own village. He has very few wants. It is not a society that is of rising expectations because communications are so few and far between They're quite content. Their ancestor worshippers they are attached to their land one of the worst things you can do to a Vietnamese person is remove him from the land of ancestors the graves of his ancestors. So. What of the Vietnamese people think of Americans they think a lot of different things depending on what the Americans have done to them or for them. But more and more there is a rising anti-American feeling
because of the amount of destruction that we're causing the amount of destruction throughout Vietnam is just unbelievable. We've been talking with George Allen news correspondent for the American Broadcasting Company. Mr. Allen has spent the past year in South Vietnam reporting the war for radio and television. He will soon return to that country for another year of duty. Our thanks to the ABC network for allowing Mr. Allen to appear on this program. Now this is national educational radio public affairs director Vic Sussman inviting you to be with us again next week for another edition of any are a Washington forum a weekly program concerned with significant issues in the news. This program was produced by W am US them American University Radio in Washington D.C. This is the national educational radio network.
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Series
NER Washington forum
Episode
Press coverage of the Vietnam War
Producing Organization
WAMU-FM (Radio station : Washington, D.C.)
National Association of Educational Broadcasters, WAMU-FM (Radio station : Washington, D.C.)
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-tt4fsf9h
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-tt4fsf9h).
Description
Episode Description
American Broadcasting Company News correspondent George Allen, on covering the war in Vietnam.
Series Description
Discussion series featuring a prominent figure affecting federal government policy.
Date
1968-06-10
Topics
Public Affairs
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:17
Credits
Host: Sussman, Vic S.
Producing Organization: WAMU-FM (Radio station : Washington, D.C.)
Producing Organization: National Association of Educational Broadcasters, WAMU-FM (Radio station : Washington, D.C.)
Speaker: Allen, George
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 67-24-64 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:06
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Citations
Chicago: “NER Washington forum; Press coverage of the Vietnam War,” 1968-06-10, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tt4fsf9h.
MLA: “NER Washington forum; Press coverage of the Vietnam War.” 1968-06-10. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tt4fsf9h>.
APA: NER Washington forum; Press coverage of the Vietnam War. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tt4fsf9h