Conversation with James Reston

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educational television network behind the trees of this guard and in one of the residential sections of washington dc are the white house the capitol the state department and the various other federal establishment humana been more familiar with these agencies or have known better the men who have led this country for the past twenty years and this man james reston associate editor syndicated columnist and reporter of the new york times the politician and presidents reader and reporter is regarded as one of the most influential gathers and interpreters of the news of the world's most influential capital reston thinks of himself as a journalist rather than executive as a reporter rather than a pundit he's elevated city room journalism into political and social criticism of ohio they are the national educational television network presents

this special program a conversation with james reston interviewing mr reston his poll of them stretching you made to resist to south vietnam and they asked for months did you change your mind in any fundamental way is to whether we believe we should be doing what we're doing there well nadal thinks so paulo i guess i sort of exchanged worries i am i went there in september worried about whether we could really exercise our par all across the pacific ocean and make it effective but after being there for a little while and saying those ships come in too long right near the short rollout girl floating dock run the bulldozers clear awful wine before this is an enormously impressive thing big easy walking american kids moving

into a wholly foreign situation it seemed to me they did a much better than i'd dreamed they couldn't so i came away in september rather reassuring that i said change worries because going back in december by the time we moved in country and there you saw the same kids walking through the elephant grass and change strategy between august and december we had gone to a strategy of searching out the enemy and destroy on his character in his country and that's not all my newly i think we can do the first better than i thought and i'm worried about the second the dedication of the soldiers' of there's an enormously progress or i found that the robert a recovery session with a g i began with him saying i just wanna get it here and get home and after three sentences later the zelaya

back to a finish this up this dedication and not be enough do you think that we can achieve our objectives do you think we can clear the country of vehicle i suppose we can do anything that we're willing to pay for and we certainly have the firepower but jerry i they get i think we'd all have to admit this that it's terribly difficult to be dogmatic about this today you remember the old days when we fought the germans we knew we have maps of every street in every major challenger to the cast of characters because based on pretty good actually now i don't believe there's ever been a war in which so many fundamental decisions have been taken

on so little knowledge we don't know we're guessing about the intentions of the chinese we don't even know who is in control in hanoi we don't know whether it's whole genome know whether gen giap is still in control over where shall lap and going from moscow really influences them or whether they are really being pushed around by the chinese we don't know that they're doing only sending twenty thousand more men with north vietnam as the innocent fifty thousand more well that of course is the real question and thus i suppose is sharon is the war ii everybody has a few top for example to general westmoreland there's a wonderful soul here and he at the story you're back here where we argue about theories he deals with facts he knows how many to the north the news and that the problem

can supply there's estimates are maybe five at the most six divisions and he believes he can deal with sex abuse and he believes he can search them find them with all kinds of new devices in eritrea or read the fiction wherever a fire for example or even on a hot automobile engine he's operating the infrared it in the aircraft helicopters will pick it up so they can find but the question is after you've destroyed the five or six divisions what about the next five years is what about five or six after that and we got to remember that and westmoreland quite frank about this and saying that we have to assume that they will commit everything they've got well they've got an army of about four hundred thousand men that is the same army which we are french

cost the french a hundred and seventy two thousand casualties and destroyed every officer class of sense here for generations so if that is the exercise that i think we've got to come back to the question not can we do with the book they are willing to pay the price and to what are the consequences in china of our kind to destroy the part of it that is that devilish and i say i don't think any honest man can be very dogmatic about it or be anything except sympathetic about the young people wept beside you like i sit here and talk about it in a comfortable living by dobson has to sit there and decide when that cop i gather you think that the american people would not put up with a sustained

hemorrhage members and friends with them well i don't know who would presume to speak for the american people i don't know what they would put up with i've had the feeling that in the current generation of people of the congo very modest in their opinions we have a lot of shouting on the side of the two extremes but in general i think most people feel that these problems are so serious so complicated so far away but when in doubt they kind of war with the president i think this has been through things to joe iser us please the white house it was when kennedy kennedy and the berlin crisis could have it in my view he could run a convoy through hong pj got or he could've said whoa primitive hundred and ten miles and size you

know for years but i think you obviously if we don't want the purpose to move was cut to begin taking that heavy compensations territorial otherwise this would invariably subject of the president especially democratic present press charges of appeasement another your body away the communist is over you don't know that it would be insufferable free press well it helps you go back to the old kind of thing and when the democrats were there is a different situation and that on the whole the republicans are not saying the democrats have more partly what they're really saying is you're not fighting the war hard enough they've taken different strategy political strategy and said rather sadly that they thought this democratic it had

gone too far and perhaps so you know we ought to pull back and not try to play god with the world quite so much maybe only really would've had a better strategy but they haven't chosen to do so i would have thought johnson can do about what he wants and less the bloodletting get too rough when the raid started early nineteen sixty five that the administration must have hopeful words also we've had five years i think they've been down that olive something that interest me you know the glory of our country it has been that optimism it was this wonderful american fueling that the immigrant pioneer prop the frontier that our life there it is there is enormous continent and we can cut down the trees we can conquer we can blend the

races of the world and create a great society here on this couple and down we did it and now we're only process i think i'm trying to adapt that same psychology of optimism through the world and i hate to say this because this feeling i think with the glory of concrete it up when i tried to see it applying the only worry because i think that we thought that when we did cross the seventeenth or allowing going to north of vietnam as indeed we went beyond the thirty gallon in korea and went right up to the yalu i think we saw that when the enemy saw the american gi he would run away well

other people are tough to label run away when people are coming close to their front yard anymore than we would if communists were coming close think of the rio grande his singing was certainly not conciliatory when you talk to a few weeks ago we keep reading the russians or embarrass the chinese claim that the russians are asking them to help get the us off the hook and there was no sign of embarrassment or conciliation with this even said to you did you feel it was a performance of toughness and you well i think that he thought at that time that this is a guessing game going back to great decisions based on leaving opinions based on real information can only guess but i have the impression and so on was that he felt we were about to do two things at that time one take a decision on hanoi and haiphong in north vietnam and two

it was just before china's where heart of germany's visit to washington and prime minister wilson i think he thought we were on the point at that time of bringing the germans end of the nuclear club and he just decided to raise the level of norway's i don't think it was much more than i just happen to be there and he used me for that purpose if he had wanted to do it as an act of state the supreme soviet was meeting there is at that time and he could have done that in much more official informal way that this question of are and our aspirations were live performance and to make a case for the proposition that we should be very proud of the way we've used our more supremacy over the past twenty years that we've been off work for the rest of the world that we have had some results despite get them despite of all around the law more who agree strongly whole and i think

israel a combat in a way because we concentrate so much on what is wrong in a way we couldn't give an impression everything that's wrong with the world cup on what is your look for example at how quiet berlin is now less was a great achievement but because it's quiet with little attention so saigon becomes bigger than all the camp below europe and the gulf of tonkin become bigger than the atlantic well this is the way we are real time fix things improve the process so i think it is i think you make a good point this generation k dollars conditions are conscripted a minute don't wait for low taxation to high taxation structure conscripted its money broke up the family and it has maintained power in the world and they can commit looks like which the british

never did in their entire imperial thing and we have avoided the great big war and this is something to be very proud that we recently won a beloved as well as respected and every time somebody says to heck with usaid or something like that it burns a library so obviously for names in the state we lived well i think so crushed coming back to vietnam pull this is really what worries me because we started out to try to organize some kind of collective security system whereby all countries would put in their opponent tried to create some kind of war we created the un for that purpose at all these alliances with the basic problem in the

world today is that these institutions have not worked and what we are trying to do is to replace them we are crying it in vietnam to replace the southeast asian system we tried in the dominican republic to replace interim have consistently tried in berlin to replace the late eighties and others are taking on an awful lot when i worried you know very simple way that we wrote tried to do too much accept the strategy of searching finding and trying to destroy the enemy on his team and in the process that we will take such a bloodletting that the people of the country will sign our guest here and then johnson is a good political president will and respond to that

and instead of holding what we can and we will either tried to do too much or tried to make peace on terms which will lose the country and you lose the purpose of the law and then we'll be in trouble again he is suggesting that we got to scale their objectives prisoners at the site to decide to communicate to the people the decision that we can in the absence of bees which we cannot fulfill our present military objectives i'm going to settle for something less well i again i don't wannabe because of frankly i don't know all i can do is just look at them try to give an honest but i do have a feeling that there is a great dish we're just at the beginning of an enormous battle for a share of that battle will going for the rest of the

century and down that vietnam is not the end of it but it's the beginning of what some people say you know if we don't if we lose vietnam the domino theory will prevail and we'd begin to lose always compete i think this is true but i don't think the opposite is true if we win in here now the battle will still go walk and what i'm afraid of is that we would try to score every smashing victory thinking that that will end at all which it won't take great casualties and in the grocer's have our people will rise up against them and then instead of doing this whole thing that we have to do i believe over a generation or so we'd pull out and they were confident i think with very very serious prospect during one of your recent trips before as you suggest in that would be a good idea from that to just to go out there

and sit down with asian heads of government what would be the purpose of such a meeting well i think the purpose of such a meeting would be really to say to them look we are we are you know we are trying to create a security system we have long we upheld the gate here for twenty years now are people are willing to do that is provided they see some evidence that view in japan and you and india to break potentially powerful bankers from the himalayas to the sea of japan that these are the two people are beginning to get in on the fact after all this is your prime but if you show no evidence ah but you are interested in deepening you then don't ask the americans to do it forever because that way lies a defeat for everybody you and me so remember that with twenty years

ago other business obtains also in europe and latin america but what happens if they you say okay we won't how do we then turn our backs and women wept of the communist takeover the entire i developed world and told western europe well i think we are different things you have to do what you have to do what it is important to do to defend the interests of the united states no matter what other people do if that is what we're going to be confronted with i think we have to look at the strategic position again probably invented what we would have to do is there's going to a new line of defense may be the line we should have taken the first place that is to say a line where we could do there aren't simple and yet every time there's a president gets an argument

advisors to of course the thing he says what would you do for low use them to assign a satisfactory answer well i'm trying to suggest that there is and i think there's only a pose of a new business line who presumed to criticize to try to come up with some kind of oh can we don't have only information they have that we ought to try and what i'm saying is that there is an option there was an attack upon south vietnam just as there was a communist attack upon south korea the purpose of our going there wanted to keep that attack from prevailing now i believe in the perimeter of saigon a wide perimeter where you have about eight two nine million people and in the coastal areas and then most of the main provincial capital you have

about seventy percent of the people i believe we can defend those areas securing very well secured and fairly well you'd have to go wild with their power to keep the enemy off now but it's a lot different if they are attacking you when you're walking as the boys up there saying that american way taking a walk in the sun through the elephant grass this is a lot different for the enemy of them cringed when you are not in fact the difference in casualties in these two strategies i think in very great indeed therefore i would limit the object i would neither say oh some of my colleagues are that's gold for the big blast and try to blast the modern risk a war with china necessary for the other that it's true difficult therefore those who because if we do that there's no doubt that one is going to happen congress will determine this great

revolutionary movement in the pacific and we will have to deal with the consequence is we are kids will only other so i think there is in that way whether it will be done and i don't think that the big issue is coming up now looking back over with hindsight on this history this commitment was there any point at which a president should see me and running a lot and get out or children of lee of reframed tape taking one of the many steps of the escalating the split well i had an interesting i had an interesting experience as by accident when president kennedy in that time he agreed to see me in just a few minutes after the last meeting with their core staff of vienna in the spring of nineteen sixty one and at that time we had a really rough time with christo khrushchev tried to bully always true before

meetings and kennedy said to me occurred he thought he understood why christopher taken this position he said that looking back on the bay of pigs fiasco that khrushchev had decided that anybody who was stupid enough to get involved in that situation was immature and anybody who didn't see it all the way through and therefore can be lonely and kennedy said to me and then we'd never do anything these people unless we make our power relative to it must be made credible allies would get nowhere on anything and it was at that time in order to make his are credible when he came home he increase the military budget by six billion dollars he sent the rain more division to germany and most important

he escalated in vietnam not because the situation on the ground commanded but he went to twelve thousand women in the us because he wanted trish prove a diplomatic point not a military court and that i think is where we begin to get off the track in my view is it advises can turn his judgment that that was necessarily know there was a big battle that at that at that time one of his advisers said don't go down that track because once you get twelve thousand men committed you'll get into a situation in which you'll keep on developing than one of his other advisors said if you call that way you made it may take three hundred thousand position whatever is necessary i think we ought to put in the air van that was a real problem

because the state department or at least part of the state department sent you must never asked the president of the united states to go all the way through and circumstances he can't foresee because you don't know what's going to happen and therefore don't commit yourself much and this was in my view at the critical historic debates between now and from that i think we made one step back on till now we have almost two hundred thousand is that a moment ago the military choices we haven't yet getting out continuing to escalate or stealing our objectives are some more variety of alternatives it diplomatically well i just when around the world turn to find out to that question where can we look for help and frankly it's not very encouraging because if you go to london like talking about what we're going to

do four in southern rhodesia to go to moscow from their lake features off above the earth now go on to that pakistan and india and they're complaining about the role we played on kashmir go to japan and they say well i'm not very interested in getting involved so it's not it's not encouraging but i still think that we've got to have these terrible violence we went to war against the japanese to keep japan from controlling the show we got a similar problem with the present time we can either get out which is one option i believe an acceptable unthinkable in this one second weekend not we can all become hawks and i'm glad indicate that i believe if we use

all our part to try to finish this settle things in the nice tidy american way we like to go that we'll get into deep trouble and it will be self defeating the third is that the political candidate and that is to try to build some kind of collective security system step by step over a long period of time in the pacific the hopes for this lie in japan the north of the perimeter of the sea of japan and the indian ocean and that the bottom in india these are the two great hopes but they're not german media call and the question is i think how can we hold the fort with acceptable losses until the day comes when we can put together some kind of collective security we cannot i do not believe that life is when our with

five percent of the asian people make that a viable thing by using all our part to support the south korean chiang kai shek and promotions all going that way and getting into it really big i don't think of it the middle way i think why we ponder these alternatives in foreign policy and mr jensen has achieved a remarkable consensus on domestic affairs at the moment i'd like to turn to the presidency and the great society in this extraordinary chief executive one you are listening to a conversation with the eminent reporter and political analyst james reston of the new york times he is being interviewed by paul medlin we spent a lot of the last year writing about the extraordinary productivity of the congress and this president to what extent was the demand for what we now call the great society they are building up over the years and to what

extent did ms johnson to himself oh i think it was a mixture of color there had risen mixture of history and i suppose sentiment death of kennedy i think had produced the kind of self surgery like that maybe something had gone will speak of violence in the country that indigenous vastly on turkey and are public record a while there was a kind of desire and computer guided put things right that has been to psychological and what i think there was something to them and then there have been a lot of ground who are prepared to buy can of argument the press about that and down there and playing upon these two things there's extraordinary political and when lyndon

johnson is going right now is that congress only assume that there's a i think the difference was that this man who has learned the deck you know the congress the way of poker player he knew the value of contacts he lived with these people for thirty two years and on all of the weddings in the been there when their kids were born and he had drunk whiskey with you know all the problems of the constituencies who are going to run against in a lot of other things that we didn't knowledge of the knowledge of human power and i think i think this probably was the year probably was the essence of the newer techniques

difference of the techniques of the course you know many of these techniques are so your mom when he was majority leader it used to sit in a room full of reporters and are you boys accused middleton says it's a boy's accuse me of influencing a mission is focused on how to vote i never do that or he didn't believe it and i don't think he expected you to believe it there and that's his way of doing things or if you say something about lyndon johnson you could say that is terribly good it turned domestic policy but he's not very good form foreign policy right away the one thing he wants to do is to prove that what you said against him was not true if you said he couldn't fly from here to the washington monument you know i get up on the roof and start flapping his arms and he does do it he wants everything he wants to be a i think he'd the only was the love that he wants

to name he'd he wants to achieve what every sets out to you you know it becomes be considered the most affective protestant history was to be the most beloved natural world you know more than you think you know he may be the most effective affection he i don't think he will get it maybe the very qualities which make an affective president and when you're deprived of a french what i think that's true everyone snow i don't know i have a feeling that the federal system so rough and so so many different savage forces operating from regions and states interests of place the only iran kind of man who could really make it work is a man who really does know the deck and was really tough this is not this is not an operation for nice guys and this is of course it's

one of his aides out that some ridiculous few months backed by saying in a speech or an interview that was just in a special antenna a religion should permit him to know the move and the thoughts of the american people and when i went out to talk to them and melissa something forward to that in theory at the stranger up on it as so i think he goes you know and talking about this whole thing with a friends in europe both very interested in the state no it's a repair where we liked kennedy but we don't like just know that it's interesting that analyze what that is and what i think it is is this that the europeans like kennedy because he wasn't a typical american kennedy's america was founded by boston to washington to new york to palm beach i suppose he crossed the

atlantic more than he crossed the allegheny range from the time i first signed with his father propping them and the nineteen thirty seven and to lose funding killed but johnson has a trans appalachian and i think if you could pick one of the five best reporters in this town and get them put them in one room and get him to put on a piece of paper what lyndon johnson's qualities are and then pick the five best sociologist in the back or let them go on another room and defined the qualities the primary qualities of the american people and put these two pieces of paper together they wouldn't be far apart maybe both the american people and lyndon johnson would resent that analogy that i believe iran has served as a huge intelligence farm of a lot of the numbers in this is what i think of the great one of the great care of misconceptions about

johnson of that because he is not intellectual he's not intelligent is enormously intelligent life is ours have great respect for the intellectual it really isn't the point where i kind of love hate for i think he resents it i remember one c on dr oz was hard for me to tell the story and now it's an interesting bit of history so your number the time during the campaign the sixty four rooms talk about bobby kennedy running for rock vice president and he was there at the same time he was just before atlantic city in that time there had been a big story in one of the papers about him driving his car at ninety miles an hour johnson town in texas while he was drinking couple beer and well i was

talking during this day he and he read an account of this in time magazine and he came back and he said you know you said we're talking about the wrong thing the question is not whether bobby kennedy ran vice presidency the question is whether i will run again and i said are you kidding me was that depressed he was so depressed and they settled most moving things that you know i wanted to only one thing i wanna try to unite the american people but he said i don't know whether we're far enough away from appomattox and a southern president that can really unite the people of this country particularly against this big east german intellectual press the planet kept the peace

the race that started i think it reveals something of this feeling about the intellectual as it is for the devil who retain the author zigzag my accident is that the temperature of everyone is that at the right now the catholic tableau are i would think so not wholly gone it depends on the man i think it's easier now that unbroken would you do if you were charged with the responsibility of winning the next election of the next after that for the republican party it just utterly failed i've got enough problems without thinking much about that well i don't i don't know i i think it's so i think it is an enormous problem because for the past five or six years the republican party has been concentrating on the themes of rural america and since a million people are going off the land every hour every single year

this is a wasting asset for they have got to get down and grapple with the problems of the city and that i would have thought that the only thing they can do is he's learned something about what the what the british conservatives did the british conservatives have dominated british politics really until wilson kenyan for regeneration certainly does after nineteen forty five they just took over the problem of the little boy they took over what was in effect a welfare state program but they realized that people were worried about government subsidies and the whole planned economy and welfare state concept and they said in effect put as in we will administer it with more prudence with more care whereas the socialists are they love what they like to play we'll do it but we'll be careful and on that thing they dominated british politics for in the

republican party is offering the politicians who know the better with what the people want and the businessmen would carry off and drive the party to the right as well and fifty eight in ohio and in california they like the republican party by ear and pushing for right to work what is it that between mike and businessman who was so extraordinary really progressive and courageous in their businesses and whose whose courage is all runners which is our daily life are so often unrealistically out of touch i don't think you have to have to draw distinction between a small businessman and a big international businessman people around the committee for economic development for example people like phil read before you went to you and paul hoffman in the days when he was a studebaker these men presided over a worldwide company and this is certainly true the day as more and more

businesses are really making the difference between profit and loss in the export markets and therefore you've got two different what you say i think is true the provincial business in many small businesses but i dont think it's too big to be nevertheless what you say is true they will plan every mile of an automobile or every product from toothpaste two talcum powder very carefully and yet to them to the government for planning and borrow against future build their own adventure you say that to the way for the party to come back is to find all the american people are thinking and identify with them so there is a consensus on this island ms johnson the great society what areas of disagreement remaining republican party carve out in the next election campaign last election campaign where is the welfare

state well the big issue i think is going to be vietnam of course it's a difficult one for them because they've chosen to be more hawkish than the democrats i suppose i suppose they got a tremendous problem there because it's very difficult to argue with success in this country and after all we've had five four years of the greatest peacetime boom in the history of this country so it says you can argue the theory of the welfare state you can argue against the theory of keynesian economics but if it is done through the gross national product and prosperity in profits and employment concludes don't make the company votes johnson dominated even a while the political scene but it seems as if those are the kind of gradual of diminution of dissent as such in the country and only just opposition of

the government of the day on an issue is that is a possibility growth central government's influence is promoting orthodoxy and suppressing dissent she furman doesn't like no other order of your premise is correct i've had the feeling that in the past two year was johnson's theory about consensus is going to get beat up around the edges certainly it never was very popular with the intellectual community of the country but they are the intellectual community here is certainly and much more savage opposition was a year ago the other way in which he dealt with fear aluminum price questions do you rise and steel prices sixty years caused him so some trouble with the euro with the business community as much now is that families do

you notice no i don't think so no idc kennedy was really a cricket captain says johnson might criticize it or change it to modify it india's political maneuverings but he would know more pack up with us lay out a heavy implied that day yale for example anything he'll speech that he'd actually a methodist church leaders wouldn't have consensus is wearing around the edges can you imagine <unk> johnson in good health of bahrain was total disaster in vietnam was among predicted catastrophe us were being defeated that is very very unlikely only on the condition that country's beloved president staying for two terms are even if things are not going to well i mean after all how you go back through the history of

this entire century you see that and unless he got into deep deep trouble and yet now with the kind of boom in the economy's vanished think he's done well when anywhere in the country to repeal it to durham amendment here do you think to any of his friends will try to do that about nineteen seventies artifacts even he may have threats another to turned next to the question of the role of the press in washington and in our society about what you've been reading and thinking eloquently for the last fifteen twenty years you are listening to a conversation with the eminent reporter and political analyst james reston of the new york times he is being interviewed by paul newman

you often have the experience of being asked by a government official sometimes even a president to suppress a news story which he's just getting over you picked up in is this a difficult ethical judgment of a german forger ruffalo who own first place it doesn't happen very often that happened for the last few years maybe and i think two or three times and almost always in the military situation where human crisis fears the bay of things in the show you want to dinner with a the window of the show or diplomats a lot of the conversation might make news digital write it it is what a lot of palm first place i don't really believe in the theory of gathering information in a town like this that dinner parties i know some people think this is a good way to do it

i really don't know if i did the following morning i would check with a solution make sure that it was in a professional context those gathering new novel social as to deciding if i don't decide these things have all my job is to gather all the information i plan for the times i transmit that information to the paper just that when the boss of it transmits information was taken by what it is not for me to say i'm really industry reporter of information for the paper is a danger that a top ranking washington correspondent will become too long gadget would get too much become almost party a great day isn't great and then you'd you know when you see people struggling with the kind of questions you know i've been talking about here today would you do about it now is agonizing and after all these are human beings

on the pants one leg at a time and then if you're close to them you can't help but get sympathetic with their crop and once you do that you know how can you do an object going to have a state does that mean that when a good friend who happens to be in dublin says what would you do in this situation you have various oh no no it's not that black and white but as a general proposition it's just not getting deeply involved in realizing you know one of the great reporters and then he later e mails and say sooner or later all of the jetsons come to grief because they violate leahy law leahy law is for sale where everybody gets to that point on what people get to the point where they think they are what they really represent only begin to take himself so seriously than their income from the

beginning so i don't know i think the main point is to have a philosophy about it realize that your only have a little while to try to pass on what you can gather and not take yourself too seriously to take the story sees itself of music i want you to report that a publisher of the new york times but another paper gets asked a reporter to write a speech for a government official events and simpler outcome of that speech that's going to be very jealous about the right of the press to inquire if you ventured many government many criticism from the other side of it is put yourself in the position of a public official spas if when you have been running the new york times' bureau hear you every year disagreement with a colleague your every discussion as to whether to hire or fire somebody had been on the front page of the times the next day when you find life very uncomfortable then mayer it but i'm not

in public life they'll have to get in the public about this is the public business and they engaged or not engaged and i would be arrogant i admit and i don't feel sympathy for them but as carrie said you know it's like the dusty of the kitchen they don't have to be in this ms johnson has complained about speculation on his appointments and his press secretary said in interview with us recently that it's very difficult when the owners these lists appear the front runner becomes a target for attack it may become difficult or impossible for them and those were mentioned as possibilities for a post and don't get it then go home and face a disappointed wives in any sympathy for this for i have saved lives no frankly i don't i don't really have i have sympathy for the basic and i think the problem in this town is not too much aggressive reporting to little league union example of what i mean

in the modern context where government is involved in issues of war and peace as in the case of the attack by the north vietnamese on our warships in the gulf of tonkin within twelve was johnson president johnson put a resolution before the congress asking for a virtual blank check to take any military action he deemed necessary for the defense of the entire southeast asian every as soon as he did there was nothing the press good to go there was nothing really that congress can accept either accept or repudiate him in the face of the enemy was a new dimension here it seems to me that the press if there is to be any real the bait in the country before a presidential pardon is almost anything like i think we've got a submarine in

trying to find out what was going well so while i admit irritating i would feel myself the way they feel mead which is not very pleasant nevertheless i think our job is to keep hoping to keep exposing the information because you know you want the more interpretive reporting not less well i want a more assertive reporting and so far is interpreted and reporting what i think we probably got to do that because as things get more and more complex a reporter also asked to do more and more interpretive we can we can compete with this where i'm looking at you as reporters if i go wild no i don't disagree say a presidential inauguration

how can i compete with this machine that sees the tears and jackie kennedy's cheap solar can compete in the same way we have to we have to do things we have to deal with ideas and thoughts and movements of policy and things which the camera can get on our job is changing has been forced to change by and modern develop your own papers of all a quite way i presume that you were composted beginning opinion columns than anybody in the times did twenty years ago but i think that you know i don't know even in the news corp has a great deal more interpretations of the press as a whole here it was a job his do enough in washington know what to say really mean that i think we've got to be more aggressive no i dont think we live up to our job but you know one thing or that i think i've always good and that is that

the history of our company came so much that all institutions press television picture here in the congress everything is head changing habits habits of mind so first all within a single generation and out of course we haven't kept up because the pace is so sweet that it would be surprising that somebody like myself who has started out as a sportswriter learning the old technique so county courthouse police work type of reporting to go from then juno and portly middle aged doing totally different totally differently of course you were in an all these institutions in the same

province you have taken great satisfaction in your profession you even said that the twentieth century as the century of the journalist adam kennedy took a different view a guy's hand headed after the war and he quickly decided that being an observer was not the same thing as having a piece of the action he wanted an activist role that you disagree well i i don't disagree for him because that was what he wished to do you wish didn't need them it's i'm perfectly happy and in reporting events in jeopardy i think it's a glorious fresh i've got one son who was in the nile delta to collect more than many industry people don't feel like it's in one fashion or thank yous it's been this conversation with james reston was videotaped in washington dc

this has been a special presentation of a national educational television network because he's been at the national educational television network fb