The Television War:

The Vietnam War Through the Eyes of a Correspondent

Interviewer: Colin Krinsky

Interviewee: Bob Schieffer

Instructor: Alex Haight

February 11, 2019

Table of Contents

Interviewer Release Form…………………………………………………………………………2

Interviewee Release Form…………………………………………………………………………3

Statement of Purpose……………………………………………………………………………...4

Biography………………………………………………………………………………………….5

Contextualization: A History of Journalism in the Vietnam War…………………………………7

Interview Transcription…………………………………………………………………………18

Interview Analysis……………………………………………………………………………… 49

Works Consulted…………………………………………………………………………………53

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………55

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Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this project is to obtain a historical comprehension of the life of a journalist as well as the effect of journalism during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1972.

Interviewing Mr. Schieffer provides both a first-hand perspective of the day to day life of a

Vietnam correspondent and a qualified assessment of the impact the media had on the war. This interview will allow historians to compare a credible recount of journalism in Vietnam to other historical sources. Mr. Schieffer’s experience in Vietnam and expert analysis adds to the debate of the media’s significance in the Vietnam War.

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Biography

Bob Schieffer was born in 1931in Austin, Texas. Mr. Schieffer grew up in Fort Worth in a middle-class family with two younger siblings. Mr. Schieffer attended Texas Christian

University was in the Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. After college, Mr. Schieffer served three years in the Air Force before returning to work at a small radio station. Mr.

Schieffer latter joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram where he covered major events such as the

Kennedy assignation and the Vietnam War. In December of 1965, Mr. Schieffer left for a four- month-long trip to cover the Vietnam War. Mr. Schieffer received letters from families in Texas asking him to interview their relatives in Vietnam. Mr. Schieffer interviewed 220 Texans and published his interviews in the Star-Telegram. After returning to Fort Worth, Mr. Schieffer got a job with a local television station and was later hired by CBS. At CBS, He spent 20 years anchoring the evening news before serving as the Chief Washington Correspondent and finally becoming moderating CBS’s public affairs show Face the Nation.

Mr. Schieffer has won almost every broadcasting award including eight Emmys, the

Overseas Press Club Award, the Paul White Award, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence.

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The Library of Congress deemed him a living legend in 2008 and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences inducted him into their Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2005, Texas Christian University renamed their journalism school the Bob Schieffer College of Communication. Mr. Schieffer has written four books including This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV and Face the Nation:

My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award-Winning News Broadcast. Although he retired in 2015, Mr. Schieffer is still a contributor on CBS, covering politics in Washington.

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A History of Journalism in the Vietnam War

Historian Howard Zinn summarizes the Vietnam War, stating “... the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country- and failed.”1 The war spanned from 1964 to 1972. The media played a major role in the war.

Often referred to as the “Television War,” the Vietnam War significantly changed how the media covers war. Some believe the media had a massive effect on public opinion and ultimately the

United States’ loss, while others believe the media merely reflected the current mood of the country. In order to fully understand the controversy and impact of journalism in the Vietnam

War, one must understand the circumstances in which the United States entered the war, the major events in the war itself, and the anti-war movement that followed.

The Vietnam War was part of a larger ideological conflict between United States and the

Soviet Union battling for influence, power, and economic control. Known as the Cold War, it ranged from 1947-1991. The United States fought for capitalism while the Soviet Union advanced communism. Although the Cold War never became violent between the Soviets and the United States, the war produced extreme militarism in both counties. The war fueled an intense rivalry that led to the space race as well as major developments in the two countries’ nuclear arsenals. One of the United States’ main goals was to prevent the spread of communism.

As communism expanded to Southeast Asia, the United States took a more active role in its containment. In his book Vietnam: A History, Stanley Karnow explains, “Official American spokesmen had already conceived the ‘domino theory,’ warning that if Indochina fell to

1 Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (New York, NY: New York Press, 2003), 247.

Krinsky 8 communism, so would the other countries.”2 In 1954 communist leader Ho Chi Minh declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s independence from France and founded the Viet Minh, a national independence coalition. In the Geneva agreement of 1954, the French consented to withdraw troops from the northern part of Vietnam. Zinn wrote, “The United States moved quickly to prevent unification and to establish South Vietnam as an American sphere.”3 The

United States installed their government in Saigon, led by Ngo Dinh Diem.

The U.S. struggled to control Vietnamese politics eventually resulting in violence.

Opposition to Diem grew; Diem was extremely different from most of the population religiously, socioeconomically, and ideologically. To keep power he refused to hold free elections. Historian

Paul Johnson recounted, “As a result, the Communists created a new guerrilla movement for the

South, the Vietcong, which emerged in 1957 and started hostilities.”4 Also known as The

National Liberation Front, the Viet Cong played a large part in organizing the previously small distant factions opposing Diem. As Diem continued to lose control, President Kennedy sent troops to Vietnam. Zinn claimed, “Diem was becoming an embarrassment, an obstacle to effective control over Vietnam.”5 Consequently, Diem was assassinated in November of 1963 by a CIA backed coup. Within the next month, Kennedy was assassinated.

After Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency and took a more aggressive approach to control the region. In early August 1964, Johnson made an announcement that the North Vietnamese had attacked a U.S. Navy ship in international waters.

The next day he reported a second attack. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution almost

2 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam a History (The Viking Press, 1983; New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1984), 184. 3 Zinn, A People's, 350. 4 Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998; New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), 879. 5 Zinn, A People's, 351.

Krinsky 9 immediately. It stated, “... the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.”6 The President was then able to send troops to Vietnam without officially declaring war.

President Johnson relied heavily on bombing throughout the war. One of his first military actions was Operation Rolling Thunder in March of 1965, a bombing campaign with the goal of damaging the North Vietnamese army and infrastructure. The operation was originally supposed to last two months, but no substantial damage to North Vietnamese army was reported.

According to Karnow, Johnson found his solution to the lack of results, “The answer was typically American: more and bigger. Soon the operation became ‘sustained pressure,’ and B-

52’s armed with napalm and cluster bombs joined the action.”7 Johnson continued to use more of the U.S.’s resources including ordering 50,000 more ground troops, increasing the draft, and ordering search and destroy missions. He was strongly encouraged to order these missions by

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Karnow recounts what the missions entailed:

[McNamara] stressed that Johnson ought to call up the reserves- the force of former servicemen a politically explosive step tantamount to an announcement of full-scale war. He also proposed a massive offensive against North Vietnam- mining its harbors, destroying its airfields, obliterating its rail and road bridges and wiping out every installation of military value, from ammunition dumps and oil storage facilities to power plants and barracks.8

Following McNamara’s plan, U.S.’s soldiers advanced their position, destroyed enemy resources then quickly retreated. The destruction of the North Vietnamese infrastructure not only affected

6 Gulf of Tonkin, A. Res. 88-408, 1964 Leg. (D.C., as passed, Aug. 10, 1964). Accessed November 26, 2018. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-78/pdf/STATUTE-78-Pg384.pdf. 7 Karnow, Vietnam a History, 430. 8 Ibid

Krinsky 10 the military but also the citizens. Many citizens’ food supplies and homes were destroyed and burned. On March 16, 1968, during what is now known as the My Lai massacre, a platoon led by

Second Lieutenant William Calley killed over 500 Vietnamese civilians during a search and destroy mission. Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment. Zinn wrote, “Thousands of

Americans came to his defense. Part of it was in patriotic justification of his action as necessary against the ‘Communists.’ Part of it seems to have been a feeling that he was unjustly singled out in a war with many similar atrocities.”9 Americans began to feel conflicted between their loyalty to United States mission and sympathy for the people of Vietnam.

As U.S. casualties grew so did the anti-war movement. On the Vietnamese holiday, Tet, the Viet Cong rebel force and North Vietnam began with waves of surprise attacks on the U.S. and South Vietnam, killing and injuring thousands of Americans. The Tet Offensive caused public opinion in the U.S. to drop dramatically. The number of anti-war protests began to increase around the country. Zinn observed public opinion noting, “By early 1968, the cruelty of the war began touching the conscience of many Americans. For many others, the problem was that the United States was unable to win the war, while 40,000 American soldiers were dead by this time, 250,000 wounded, with no end in sight.”10 In 1968, Nixon won the presidency on the promise of ending the draft and bringing home more troops. According to Zinn, “Nixon was not ending the war; he was ending the most unpopular aspect of it, the involvement of American soldiers on the soil of a faraway country.”11 This was known as Vietnamization; the United

States gradually withdrew troops, transferring more responsibility to the South Vietnamese.

9 Zinn, A People's, 354-355. 10 Ibid 11 Ibid

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Despite Nixon’s attempts, popular opinion for the war continued to plummet. In May of

1970, students at Kent State University organized a massive anti-war demonstration in response to the Cambodia invasion, a military assault on NLF bases in Cambodia. The students turned violent and burnt down the campus R.O.T.C. building. The National Guard was called; they shot and killed four students and wounded nine. The Kent State shooting sparked even more protests around the country, rallying opposition to the war.

In a final attempt to win the war, Nixon launched operation linebacker, a massive bombing of North Vietnam. Unsuccessful, Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 stating,

“The United States and all other countries respect the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Viet-Nam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Viet-Nam.”12

The Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. involvement in the war.

The controversy and intense public debate about the war lead to a lot of media coverage.

Everyone from major television networks to small regional papers sent correspondents to

Vietnam. By 1968, over 600 journalists reported from Vietnam. Most of the United States’ correspondents wrote from South Vietnam’s capital in Saigon at the Saigon Associated Press

Office. Saigon offered many resources for correspondents. Many journalists stayed at the

Continental Hotel located in downtown Saigon. There was also an extensive black market industry. Bob Schieffer, a Star-Telegram correspondent, wrote, “Black market racketeering was so rampant throughout the war that soldiers and Marines in outlying areas would sometimes get passes and come to Saigon to buy the equipment that had been meant for them, but had been stolen off the docks before it could be shipped to the field.”13 Reporters often wore western

12 United States of America et al., Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet-Nam (Paris, France, n.d.), accessed December 8, 2018, https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20935/volume-935-I- 13295-English.pdf. 13 Bob Schieffer, This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003), 61.

Krinsky 12 business attire and bought more appropriate clothing once they landed. They were able to buy almost anything they needed off the street.

One of the most notable aspects of the Vietnam War was the lack of government censorship of the media. The U.S. has censored nearly every other war besides the Vietnam war.

This is significant because it allowed the media to report on more controversial aspects of the war supposedly effecting how American citizens view on the government's policy. Schieffer explained:

For all the talk about how the administration and the military tried to control the news, Vietnam was one of the few wars where there was no censorship as such. Reporters were warned they would be expelled if they disclosed U.S. and South Vietnamese troop movements, but otherwise we were free to report what we pleased and we were not required to show our copy to military censors before we filed it in.14

The lack of restrictions allowed reporters to write what they wanted and travel where they wanted. Travel was relatively easy, and most of the military was very accommodating. Schieffer remembered, “... if helicopter pilots had room, they were usually happy to give you a lift.”15 The military’s support allowed reporters to get a fuller and more complete view of the war.

Although largely debated how the media’s coverage of the war affected public opinion, it is clear the media did become much more critical of the war as time went on. Gary Hess asserted in the “Unending Debate,” “Coverage of the war in the New York Times and on network news supported the U.S. effort through 1967; afterward, stories became more skeptical, but by that time the war was a topic of legitimate controversy.”16 While some reporters left Vietnam with the same perspective they arrived with, most changed their views. In a recent New York Times article, Andrew Pearson, an American journalist in Vietnam, argued, “the war's defenders might

14 Ibid 15 Ibid 16 Gary R. Hess, "The Unending Debate: Historians and the Vietnam War," Diplomatic History 18, no. 2 (1994): 256, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24912383.

Krinsky 13 have said I was becoming more critical, even biased. But in fact I was becoming more objective-

I set aside the pro-American, anti-Communist filter I brought with me to Vietnam and reported what I saw.”17 Journalists began to deliver more controversial reporting back to the U.S.

The Vietnam War is often referred to as the “Television War” because it is the first war with significant television coverage. The television was becoming increasingly popular and more

Americans began to rely on TV for their news. In Michel Robinson’s journal article on how TV affected popular opinion and the media’s role, he contended, “... television journalism disseminates news and information far more widely than does any other news source, bringing political information to people in the society who might never have bothered to obtain this information before television arrived, and who might still not bother, were it not for TV news.”18

The TV made the war more accessible than any newspaper could have. There was also an immense amount of trust in the news anchors and personalities. For example, while studying one of Louis Harris’s polls Robinson reported, “[Research] finds that Walter Cronkite is America's most credible human. Harris found that in 1974 the American public felt greater confidence in television news than in any other American social institution of any type.”19 The people’s trust in the TV personalities gave the news anchors remarkable power. Lyndon Johnson allegedly said,

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”20 The TV provided a trusted news outlet for the vast majority of America.

17 Andrew Pearson, "How Vietnam Changed Journalism," The New York Times (New York, NY), March 29, 2018, 1, accessed December 9, 2018, https://nyti.ms/2uzX1GW. 18 Michael J. Robinson, "Public Affairs Television and the Growth of Political Malaise: The Case of 'The Selling of the Pentagon,'" The American Political Science Review 70, no. 2 (June 1976): 430, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1959647.

19 Ibid 20 Bob Levin, "The Trouble with America," Globe & Mail (Toronto), July 8, 2006, F2, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A147956232/GIC?u=standy&sid=GIC&xid=b1fb8af3.

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Numerous criticisms about bias and revenue driven reporting were made about the television industry and media at the time. Many people believe that the TV brought the war into

American homes. It showed the people the violence of war that they did not usually see.

Robinson claimed, “These biases, frequently dramatized by film portrayals of violence and aggression, evoke images of American politics and social life which are inordinately sinister and despairing. The inadvertent viewer, through television, witnesses these images of the society, regarding them as essentially evil and indicative of sociopolitical decay.”21 There have been many accusations that the media had a bias or agenda against the war. The accusers believed that the media sympathized too much the North Vietnamese and led the American people to believe the same. Other people believed that the TV news anchors were not objective enough. In a 1965

New York Post article, Markel Lester wrote, “Too much of their space is devoted to entertainment and too little to information... As for television, potentially the most powerful of the mass media, it is almost entirely big and brassy business.”22 Lester was concerned that television's agenda was not ideological but economically driven. He believed that broadcasters reported the news in a more appealing way in order to make money, instead of providing the people with adequate information.

Some correspondents wrote about their disapproval of the war and the U.S’s actions while others maintained a clashing pro-war message. On September 3, 1967 Richard Harwood published an article relaying how he and his journalistic peers felt about the war: “The private comments of most (although not all) of the correspondents in Vietnam are even more pessimistic

21 Robinson, "Public Affairs," 430. 22 Lester Markel, "Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam: Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam," The New York Times (New York, NY), August 8, 1965, 68, https://search.proquest.com/docview/116969740?accountid=5492.

Krinsky 15 and more disillusioned then their stories reflect.”23 Interestingly many soldiers did not share the same view as the reporters. Jonathan Randal reported on the success of a group of Marines capturing Hill 881. He quoted First Lieutenant Jack Adinolfi’s feelings about the North

Vietnamese, “if any of those S.O.B’s are crazy enough to come up here tonight, they’re going to get killed.”24 Randal went on to describe the strategies and heroics of the marines as well as the brutality of the North Vietnamese. The juxtaposition of these two articles show the diversity in beliefs of Americans in Vietnam.

Reflecting on the war, historians have taken many different views. Paul Johnson conveyed, “It is important to emphasize that America never had any territorial ambitions in

Indochina, either as a base or in any other capacity.”25 Johnson supports the rhetoric of each administration that the only reason for the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam was to fight communism. However, Zinn questions the administrations’ motives. Zinn cites reports by

Congress and the State Department:

In 1953, a congressional study mission reported: “The area of Indochina is immensely wealthy rice, rubber, coal and iron ore. Its position makes it a strategic key to the rest of Southeast Asia.” That year a State Department memorandum said the: ‘If the French actually decided to withdraw, the U.S. would have to consider most seriously whether to take over in this area.’26

Many historians use these arguments to either criticize or justify the war.

Historians have also developed very different assessments of the media’s effect. When referring to the images of violence reported on by many television networks, Robinson claimed,

23 Richard Harwood, "Conflicting Views: September 1967," in Reporting Vietnam, comp. Milton Bates, et al. (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, 1998), 484, previously published as "The War Just Doesn't Add Up," The Washington Post (Washington, DC), September 3, 1967. 24 Jonathan Randal, "Khe Sanh Hill Fights: May 1967," in Reporting Vietnam, comp. Milton Bates, et al. (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, 1998), 345, previously published as "U.S. Marines Seize 3d Hill in Vietnam After 12- Day Push," The New York Times (New York, NY), May 6, 1967. 25 Johnson, A History, 878. 26 Zinn, A People's, 349.

Krinsky 16

“Unable or unwilling to reject the network reports, the inadvertent viewer may turn against the group most directly responsible for the conflict, against the social and political institutions involved, or against himself, feeling unable to deal with a political system ‘like this.’”27

Robinson’s claim represents the argument that the media’s coverage caused and controlled public opinion and galvanized the anti-war movement. Robinson’s argument is supported by many proponents of the war. However, many oppose Robinson’s analysis. Karnow defends the media claiming that the media doesn’t dictate public opinion but reflects it:

[Cronkite’s] views on the war had mostly been balanced, nearly bland. Now, on the evening of February 27, he delivered a fresh verdict. Just back from Saigon, he rejected the official forecasts of victory, predicting instead that it seemed “more a stalemate.” The broadcast shocked and depressed Johnson, who assumed that Cronkite’s despondent comment would steer public opinion even further away from support for the war. But Cronkite, like all other journalists, was lagging behind the American public- reflecting rather than shaping its attitudes.28

When trying to understand the influence of the media it is important to understand both arguments made by Robison and Karnow.

In a past Oral History Project, Karnow continued to defend his position: “... Cronkite expressed his doubts about the war, and everybody credits him for changing public opinion, but that's nonsense. Walter Cronkite reflected public opinion; he wasn't making it.”29 In the same interview Karnow proceeds to talk about another heavily debated issue concerning the media, censorship. He points out that many people wanted the government to censor the media because they believed that the U.S. could have won the war if it was not for the press. Karnow explains why the government allowed for a free press: “Well one of the reasons was they [the

27 Robinson, "Public Affairs," 430. 28 Karnow, Vietnam a History, 561. 29 Stanley Karnow, "The Vietnam War: The American Public and Press's Role in the Tragic Decades of the '50s, '60s, and '70s;," interview by Catie Dubensky, Digital Maryland, last modified 2008, accessed December 9, 2018, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/saac/id/23345/rec/1.

Krinsky 17 government] didn't want to admit it was a real war. If you had censorship and economic controls, you act like your involved in a real war. They never had censorship.”30 Karnow conveys that the government allowed a free press and possibly sacrificed public opinion in order to preserve the image that they were only in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism.

The Vietnam War changed the way most of the United States media viewed their responsibility to the people. The war forced them to change their role defending the U.S. and forced them to become more objective. Although today’s media has become very market-driven, often tailoring their content to support their viewers’ beliefs, the industry has developed the role and responsibility of holding the government accountable and acting as a check when needed.

30 Ibid

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Interview Transcription

Colin Krinsky: Again, thank you very much for doing this.

Bob Schieffer: Yeah, sure.

CK: [0:13] I really appreciate it. Just to start can you describe a little bit about your upbringing?

BS: I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. I went to North Side High school out by the stockyards in

Fort Worth and then went to TCU. I was in Air Force ROTC. I had a brother and a sister, both younger than I. We were just a middle-class family. My dad had started working in a lumber yard in Austin. When World War II came along, he first got drafted and then they turned him down. Then he went to work in a defense plant in Houston. We couldn’t find a place to live, so we wound up in Fort Worth where he was working for a construction company that was building houses. General Dynamics, it was called. It was a consolidated __??+, that’s where they made B-

17s and B-29s later. So there was just this flood of people. I went to four different schools in the first grade. Anyway, we settled out on the northside of Fort Worth where he worked for this company that built all these houses. And I was in ROTC and then spent three years in the Air

Force. Without ever hearing a shot fired in anger, came back to Fort Worth, and went back to work at this little radio station where I had worked in college. I worked full time when I was going to college. The first assignment, James Meredith was enrolling in Ole Miss. So that was kind of my first big story. I went down there to cover that and it [was] truly the most terrifying night of my life. Much more so than in Vietnam late when I went there, because the snipers got up on the dorm roofs and started shooting to us.

Krinsky 19

CK: Oh, wow.

BS: To the reporters and all that and two people got killed that night.

CK: That’s terrible.

BS: That’s basically what I did. I went back to work that this radio station just because I was waiting for an opening at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram which was my hometown newspaper. So then I worked there for four years, and amongst other things covered the assassination of

President Kennedy.

CK: Interesting. Before you went to Vietnam, where did you and the people around you get most of your information about the war?

BS: Well, we got it mostly from the Star-Telegram and from television. Television was very new. When my kids used to ask me, “Dad did you want to be a TV reporter when you were a little boy?” and I always said they didn’t have TV when I was a little boy. It didn’t come to Fort

Worth until I was in the eighth grade. So, it was just becoming a big force. We got our news from the Star-Telegram and the evening news. Walter Cronkite had just taken over the anchor for the evening news, and we always watched CBS and he was always kind of my hero.

Krinsky 20

CK: I learned that Kennedy slowly increased the number of military advisors in Vietnam in the early 1960s. What was your memory of Vietnam in the early 1960s?

BS: I was in the Air Force right after college. I graduated in 1959, and I had two roommates both of whom were transport pilots and were flying to Vietnam. We didn’t know much about it. They were just hauling stuff over there. So, I heard some of it from him, but I really didn’t become cognizant of it and what it meant as a big story. I guess it was in 1964 that they began the buildup, that they switched from advisors to combat roles. They were doing combat roles before that.

CK: Right.

BS: [4:54] That’s when there was this big build up. When they sent the Marines over there. By this time, I was the night police reporter at the Star-Telegram and had just been promoted to the political beat. I was going to cover politics. But the war just kept become a bigger and bigger story. I was just determined. I thought this was a big story I wanted to cover it.

CK: Right.

BS: I went in a met with the editor. They were not interested. They had not sent a reporter over to Vietnam since World War II. And I was really determined about it. I said, if you won’t send me over there, if I go over there. Will you hire me when I get there? In other words, I’ll pay my own way there. They said no we are not going to do that. And I said would you pay me as a

Krinsky 21 freelance if I just showed up. And they said no. What was really funny was that they were worried about the insurance. They were going to have to take out on me. Of all things.

CK: That’s interesting.

BS: So anyway, in a funny kind of way I sort of shamed them into doing it. I kept saying this is going to be a huge story. I mean we need to know about it. So, I came up with this plan. I said,

I’ll go over there and I won’t write about anything but boys from Texas. I’ll track them down.

The editor whose name Jack Butler finally agreed to do it. This is in December in 1965. I left and the Star-Telegram took out this full page ad. And said, Bob Schieffer is going to Vietnam and he’ll find your son, daughter, uncle, and so forth and tell them you said hi. Well I got 800 letters and I went there and I found 220 of these guys and a few nurses and woman, not many in those days. The circulation of the paper went up seven-thousand. It had a circulation of about a

150,000. And so, it was very, very popular. With the readers and so forth. But what was interesting about it was I went over there really as a hawk. I was from Texas, by this time

Lyndon Johnson was our president. I believed all the stuff about the domino theory and if we don’t stop them there, they will be in San Diego. I was there about six weeks and I realized no matter why we were there it just was not going to work. You can’t do something for people. You can help, but you can’t do it. It was very anecdotal but what really convinced me that it was not going to work is I went out on this operation with a Marine company. So, they were going to take the South Vietnamese troops with us. And we were going to cross this clearing, which was probably about as far from here to those trees over there by the Vice President's house (points out the window). We were going through this and there was supposed to be the Viet Cong or

Krinsky 22 whatever they called them over there. And the Vietnamese soldiers just sat down and said we are not going. They said if you’ll take us to the truck we’ll go, but we’re not walking. The captain in charge of the Marines really got mad at them and told them to go back to the basecamp. And they refused to do it they just sat there and he went and got a tank.

CK: Oh, wow.

BS: And drove them back. And then we went across. By the time all that had happened they knew we were there and there was nobody there by the time we got to the trees. What I didn’t really understand at the time was that they had been fighting this war for fifty years. And their own generals were very, very corrupt. This is the South Vietnamese army. There were just in it for the money and the Americans for all our good intentions were just the latest group of forgivers who showed up with guns. It wasn’t any more complicated than that. We were never able to build a relationship. I mean we could still be. We could be there today, but at what coast and to what purpose. So, it was just a disaster.

CK: Yeah.

BS: [10:00] And what I never understood because LBJ was my hero, and still is. I mean I still think he is the best politician I ever knew. But what I couldn’t figure out if I went over there at twenty-six years old and I could figure it out in six weeks. Why couldn’t the government figure it out? Well the fact is they could. But He didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war.

Krinsky 23

CK: [10:30] Right. So, Historians disagree about the U.S.’s motives to entering the war. Howard

Zinn argues that the U.S. did not only go into the war to stop communism but also to control and gain the resources of the region. While Paul Johnson argues that the U.S. had no other ambitions besides the suppression of the communist movement. What do you think the United States’ motives were?

BS: I take them on their word on that. I do not think we went there to take territory. I do not under any circumstances think that. We went there because we thought we were stopping communism. And we went there in ignorance, we simply didn’t know what we were doing.

There was only one scholar on Vietnam in the United States at that point. Nobody knew where it was. I remember when I left to go there, I had to go look on the map to make sure I knew exactly where it was. It was just like an unknown place.

CK: Right.

BS: To most Americans and to most people in the military. I wrote a little book called Face the

Nation. It was just kind of the history of that program. And I went back and read all the transcripts of the broadcasts during the Vietnam era as we called. In the beginning it was clear that the people who came on Face the Nation didn’t know what they were talking about. And then as the war dragged on and grew worse, they just began to lie about it. It finally all came to a head in 1968 when the Democratic convention fell apart.

Krinsky 24

CK: Right.

BS: Which was probably the closed the United States ever came to really coming apart. I talked to Walter Mondale, who was a young aid with Hubert Humphrey at that time, and he said we just didn’t know if the center was going to hold. We just thought it was all going to come apart. It’s the closed I think we have ever come.

CK: [12:43] What was your typical day like in Saigon?

BS: Well, I didn’t stay in Saigon very much. There was no censorship. It was the only war we ever been in where there was no censorship. We went there under this façade that we were advisors that we weren’t fighting a war. So, it was up to the Vietnamese to stop us from going someplace and so forth. What the military would do, they had a headquarters and you could go there and tell them you wanted to go to Da Nang to do some stories and find some Marines for

Fort Worth. They had these C1-35s, whatever. They were just our basic transport plane I think we are still flying some of them. And you’d just bum a ride. Then after you were there a while, you didn’t even fool with that. You’d just go out to the air Tan Son Nhut and go down to operations and say any of you guys going up to Da Nang and we’d get a ride from them. Once you got there then you’d go to the local commanders like the 82nd Airborne or something like that. You’d go up with them and just bum rides on the helicopters. They had what they called mailed delivery, water runs where they take water or mail or ammunition to the troops out in the field and you’d just ride along with them.

Krinsky 25

CK: So, I know when you got to Saigon you stayed in the Continental Hotel.

BS: Yeah.

CK: Where did sleep and eat when you were not in Saigon?

BS: With the troops. Yeah. With the troops. The Marines had a press center in Da Nang and sometimes you could stay there, but mostly you’d just go out in the field and you would stay with them. It was pretty funny how I wound up at the Continental. I knew so little about Vietnam that I didn’t realize that our seasons were reversed.

CK: Oh.

BS: I left in December wearing a wool suit, and I got there and of course it was in the dead of summer and you know. It was so hot, and I had this 80-pound suitcase. Which was in the days before they had rollers on them. I got to Tan Son Nhut airport. I told the cab drive after he managed to get the 80-pound up on top of his little cab, I said I want to go to Saigon. He said, you in Saigon. I didn’t know where the hell to go. I didn’t work for ABC, CBS, or the New York

Times which had bureau there. I had no idea where to stay. So, finally I told him I was trying to get the AP office, the Associated Press office, because we were an AP newspaper. It was right next door to the Continental Palace. I arrived there with this 80-pound suitcase and I wrote about this. I’ll give you this book. I wrote about my adventures there. I was sweating so profusely that I had sweated through the top of my shoes. I was wearing leather shoes (Laughs). They were on

Krinsky 26 about the third floor as I remember the AP office. A guy named Ed White, who was the bureau chief there, I just walked in and through myself on his mercy. He said we do this all the time. We have some rooms over at the Continental Palace. You can stay over there till you find a place.

Which eventually I did, but I probably stayed there a month or so before I found an apartment.

But I’ll never forget there was an AP photographer, he was also staying in the room. I went in to unpack my things, and looked over on his bed, and there was a hand grenade over there.

CK: Oh, wow.

BS: You know. A lot of the correspondence carried weapons. I never did. I always thought it was more dangerous to carry one. But that’s how I wound up at the continental palace. The only book that I read about Vietnam before going over there was The Quiet American by Graham Greene and a lot of it takes place in the Continental Palace, so that was pretty cool.

CK: [17:33] Interesting. Besides the interviews, how did you choose your assignments.

BS: Oh, I just went looking for these guys. After the Star-Telegram ran this ad, I got all these letters. I would just line them up. You know, and I would just go out and find these guys and I wasn’t writing anything under deadline. These were all stories that would keep. So, I’d go out and I stay in the field for about two weeks. Then I’d come back and sit down and write all these stories. It’s the most work I’d ever done in my life. I’d write five columns a week, and then five stories that were not columns, and a Sunday takeout with photos. I didn’t know how to take pictures. The photographer at the Star-Telegram had given me a Nikon, a 35 millimeter, which

Krinsky 27 was what everybody carried. They just kind of showed me how to set it. Eddy Adams, I don’t know if you know who that is, he is a very famous photographer, he’s the guy who took the picture of the guy executing.

CK: Yeah, I’ve heard the name.

BS: You know that one. After I kina got to know the guys around the AP bureau, I would go out and catch cut lines for him and he taught me how to shoot film. I’m a pretty good photographer now. In fact, when I came back from Vietnam, I went through two levels of interviews with Life magazine. They were creating these new positions called photojournalist. In those days reporters wrote and photographer took pictures. What they did was that they were just hiring a bunch of young kids. Young reporters and giving them a camera and showing them how to use it.

CK: Right.

BS: The local TV station in Fort Worth, by the time I got back the war was a huge story. And because I had become kind of a local celebrity, with this column, they asked me if I was interested in becoming the anchorman. So, I did. I did it because of the money. It was twenty dollars a week more than I made at the paper. So, I always tell people I got into TV for the money. I was making $130 a week at the paper, so they gave me $150 a week. Which seemed like a lot of money. That’s $10,000 a year.

CK: Yeah.

Krinsky 28

BS: Because of that, that’s how I wound up coming to CBS.

CK: [20:24] Can you talk about what it was like going on bombing missions with Gail

Anderson?

BS: Yeah, I don’t want to say it was thrilling it wasn’t. They were flying these A1-Es I think it is. They were the last propeller planes that the Navy flew off of aircraft carriers. The Air Force bought them from the Navy and created this thing called the First Air Commandos which was this squadron. I mean it was an amazing thing. They had these spotter planes. Which were these guys in little piper cubs and they fly around and looked for targets and radio us. They fly in threes. Then next thing you know it just psf (makes bombing noise and imitates a plane dropping a bomb with his hands). They had 50-caliber machine guns on there but they also, they were bombers. They carried a certain number of bombs. What was kind of interesting to me was that, I about eight hours, and that was the thing about why these planes were so handy. You could go up there and fly all day because they didn’t use much fuel. So, they’d go up and circle around. We got back, and a 50-caliber machine gun had blown a hole about this big (makes circle about the size of a soft ball with his hands) and another right behind where I was sitting.

CK: Oh, wow.

BS: It was a great adventure, and the other guy his name escapes me now, who was with us. He was the wing man. He later won the Congressional Medal of Honor about two weeks after I had

Krinsky 29 flown with him. I didn’t know it until after the war. What he had done, was that there had been a special forces camp that had come under attack. One of the guys flying with him that day his plane got shot down. He parachuted out and was between the special forces camp and a North

Vietnamese unit. These were real soldiers not Viet Cong. I mean they had uniforms and all that.

This guy, who was a Mormon, and I think he had about eight kids. He flew his airplane down there, saw the guy hiding behind this sand dune, landed on the air strip, and the guy ran out. He reached down and grabbed him and pulled him into the plane and he was sitting just like in the seat where I was sitting. Where I had been sitting the week before.

CK: Wow, that’s incredible.

BS: And then flew out and saved the guy. I mean it was truly a remarkable thing. I finally saw him, there was some kind of Air Force thing over at Pentagon City, and he came. By then, he had won the medal, but he had suffered from Parkinson’s and he was getting old by that time. But I did get a chance to tell him I knew about that and everything. But those guys, they were going out there, and they’d go up and were flying two or three missions a day. You know always taking fire.

CK: Right.

BS: And it was really something. I also later down in the delta was flying with one of the spotter planes one time, and your flying at like 1500 feet for maybe 500 feet. We almost got hit. We almost got run over by jet fire.

Krinsky 30

CK: Oh, wow.

BS: From a jet plane. He had gone into his dive and then pulled up and there we were. You know, it’s a wonder I didn’t get killed. But I didn’t know any better. You know, you think your bulletproof.

CK: Right.

BS: And you don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of somebody, so you got to do things, on reflection you shouldn’t have done. But what was great about it was if you’d go out there and share the war with those guys, they’d take care of you.

CK: Right.

BS: You know. We had a great, great relationship. Later, it was a different war, especially for a lot of those guys in Vietnam. You know one the war got into the 70s or 68. When I was there, the guys pretty much believed in the war. More so than I did by that time, and I was getting where I was having doubts about it. Well, they were doing very heroic things, but it just wasn’t doing any good. They were all gung ho about it.

CK: Right.

Krinsky 31

BS: [25:41] But then later, you know, the narcotics got to be such a problem there. They were fragging their officers. You know, taking a hand grenade and rolling it under the flap of the officer’s tent, so it was very different. The press was turning against it, but…

CK: The troops were still…

BS: Yeah. The troops were still pretty gung ho about it.

CK: [26:10] You wrote that you “...didn't have much use for peaceniks and the antiwar movement” in your book, why?

BS: When people were turning against the war, and these poor guys would come back and they would get spit on. Nobody ever thanked them for their service. That’s where this comes from now. Thank you for your service and all that. Even though people made a (?pose?) of the wars we become involved in, and certainly there was a lot of that after 911. (Mrs. Schieffer walks in)

Here’s my wife Pat. Hi Pat.

CK: Hi, I’m Colin. Nice to meet you.

Mrs. Schieffer: Don’t get up. I’m just bringing the laundry in. Nice to see you.

BS: Ok.

Krinsky 32

CK: Alright, nice to meet you.

BS: I just thought it was awful, cause I’d been there. I knew what these guys were doing.

Literally going out there, like those pilots risking their lives every single day, and the helicopter pilots too. Sometimes even more so. I went with the 1st Air Carvery I think it was, and I flew 35 sorties in one day.

CK: Oh, wow.

BS: We actually in a funny little, well not funny but a crash. We were delivering water to our troops and they were all dug in, in fox holes and stuff out there where the North Vietnamese was around. We were going along, and the pilot saw a bunch of people run out on this clearing and start waving their hands. The people were just trying to get away from the fighting. So, we landed, and they all just ran out and jumped on the helicopter. The helicopter just overloaded. He was trying to take off. You know a helicopter takes off like this and then it goes up (mimics a helicopter taking off with his hands). The hardest thing is to start off and go straight up. Well, he didn’t have much room, but he started making his run. The Vietnamese when they cut trees and stuff for firewood and stuff like that, they have a tendency of starting here (extends his arm about three feet off the ground) and leaving a stump three or four feet tall. So, he starts his run and hits one of the stumps and skid.

CK: Oh, wow.

Krinsky 33

BS: And it just turned us around like that (shows a helicopter spinning with his hands) (claps) and flops down. It was really hard they had some of those people get off. Again, it was very lucky. I mean those guys were doing stuff like that every day. I still am not sort of forgiven Jane

Fonda. But the war was just a disaster. They knew it wasn’t working and it became how can we get out of this. Without looking like, we turned and ran. Which of course we did. But I think,

1968 and the Tet Offensive really alerted people. What’s interesting is that most of the pictures that came back to this country of the Tet Offensive were about the fighting in Saigon. Well the reason for that was because they did fire on the American embassy which was dangerous. But, most of the reason those were the pictures were because that’s where the networks were based and there were a lot of cameras there. But the worst fighting was up in Hue. We really never saw that. It just shocked people. Everybody thought we were winning the war. We weren’t winning the war. Walter Cronkite went over, and we came back and did a commentary. Walter never did commentaries. Eric Sevareid did the commentaries. Before him Edward R. Murrow did the commentaries. Walter was always just a straight news (?wired service?). He just did a scathing commentary. He said no matter what our intentions. It simply isn’t going to work. Lyndon

Johnson, according to his press secretary George Christian, he said, “If I’ve lost Walter, I’ve lost the American people.” That was right when General Westmoreland was asking for 400,000 more troops.

CK: [31:25] In a former, Oral History Project interview Stanley Karnow, a Vietnam correspondent, claimed, “...Cronkite expressed his doubts about the war, and everybody credits him for changing public opinion, but that's nonsense. Walter Cronkite reflected public opinion; he wasn't making it.” How do you think television and the press affected public opinion?

Krinsky 34

BS: I think a big part of it was television. Morley Safer, who did the story about the marines who set the village hooches on fire. Some wanted that point. They said we had destroyed the village to save it. I think still photographers. I think their pictures were as influential on public opinion.

I mean Eddie Adams, who was an AP photographer, he took the picture of the little naked girl running.

CK: Yeah, I know that picture.

BS: Karnow, he was a real scholar. I don’t have any way to deprecate anything. I think he wrote the best overall history of the war. I got his book over there.

CK: I’ve read it. For my paper. In my research, I came across a newspaper article my Markel

Lester from 1965.

BS: Who?

CK: Markel Lester.

BS: I don’t know who that is.

CK: [33:09] Well, Lester wrote, “Too much of their space [referring to the media] is devoted to entertainment and too little to information... As for television, potentially the most powerful of

Krinsky 35 the mass media, it is almost entirely big and brassy business.” How do you feel some news organizations were reporting certain aspects of the war for economic reasons?

BS: I think they were reporting it because it was a big story because it was crucial. I don’t agree with that. Look at the civil rights movement that came before and after all that. Lyndon Johnson would call Martin Luther King in and told him “go find the worst place” in other words we don’t need speeches. And so, Birmingham, walking across the Selma bridge those were the things that had to do with ending. Well, they didn’t end it, but they were the big breakthroughs that helped it. The analysis, some of it was good, some of it was really good, some of it was not so good, but

I think looking back on it reflecting on it. I think it was the pictures.

CK: The Pictures.

BS: Yeah. The Pictures. Once they started drafting white boys. That’s when people started protesting. Up until the end.

CK: [34:52] I understand you were threatened with a gun when trying to cover the riots in

Saigon. Can you talk about what happened there?

BS: (laughs) Yeah. I got a picture of it. It was not a serious as it was kind of portrayed. Eddie

Adams and Peter Arnett, who worked for the AP in those days, and a guy named Robert

(?Keatley?), who worked for the Wall Street Journal. The Buddhists were having some sort of riot in Saigon. I just happened to be there. We were going out to cover the riot. The Buddhists

Krinsky 36 were having the protest and so forth. This American (?EMP?) walked up and said you can’t go there. We said you can’t stop us; the Vietnamese are in charge of this. Whereupon he unholstered his weapon and pointed it at us. Eddie ever being Eddie Adams said, “Okay asshole, you pulled your pistol now use it.” And I said, “Eddie he’s pointing it at me.” Well, I don’t think he meant it. I really razzed him over the years about that. It was just one of those things. That was an example of how this war was so different. A story like that wouldn’t gotten out in World War II or even Korea or certainly not now.

CK: [36:39] In your book, you wrote that besides giving away U.S. troop movements there was no censorship and you have already mentioned it, why do you believe there was no censorship after what happened when you tried to cover the riot Saigon.

BS: Well there wasn’t because they were carrying out this façade that we were just there to help, it was their war. We were just there to help them. As a result of that, there just wasn’t any censorship. The army felt that they were so poorly portrayed, that when the next war came you never say anything like that in Iraq. In the first war, which was very successful. Or in the second war which is still going on. When that war first started over there, before it became a huge story, people like Neal (?Shan?), who worked first for (?UPI?) and then David Halverson and they’d hire a taxi. They’d go out to wear the battles were. It was the same when I was there. I didn’t deal with all the compliance officers. I went from one end to the other. Cause I was just trying to track down these guys. Sometimes there’d be a publish repairs person who might be there, but most of the times not cause they’d be out in the field.

Krinsky 37

CK: [38:31] In the same interview I mentioned before, Karnow claimed, “Well one of the reasons was they [the government] didn't want to admit it was a real war. If you had censorship and economic controls, you act like you're involved in a real war. They never had censorship.”

Why do you think the government did not make more of an effort to censor the media?

BS: (laughs) They were getting criticized every day. People were writing these stories. I think they thought by that time they couldn’t get away with it. Frankly that’s why they didn’t do it.

CK: [39:13] Can you talk about your most memorable interviews or your most memorable one.

BS: The one I always remember was once I knew I was coming home I didn’t go out. That is what you did. When you were in your last two or three weeks you didn’t go out on these operations because you didn’t want to run the risk of getting killed. One time I went up to Bien

Hoa and there was supposed to be a guy up there from Texas. He was there and it was a good interview, but I don’t remember much about it. I was walking to the ward this kid said, “you wouldn’t want to interview a Georgia peach, would you?” I said, “well sure.” He started talking about it, he said, “the guy over there lost his arm he can go back and his buddies will think he is a big hero. My problem is that I can’t tell nobody what happened to me.” He had a towel over him and his genitals had been blown off.

CK: Oh, wow.

BS: That happens a lot. You don’t ever hear about it. You hear about the guys who lost a leg. He just raised the blanket up and I didn’t see what wasn’t there, but I never forgot that. I’ll tell you

Krinsky 38 one time when there was just starting to be some reports of discrimination. I was interviewing this black marine. I said, “do you feel like your discriminated against?” He said, “Oh, no. The marines that treat everybody like… (nods his head and makes a jester with his hand inferring the

N-word)

CK: Oh, yeah.

BS: You see. (laughs) I put that in the book, but you probably wouldn’t put that in the book now.

That was a pretty good quote. I didn’t talk to many generals or people like that I just talked to enlisted men. I was 26 and they were kids there that I was nine years older and they were 17 or

18 years old and their lieutenants. I was older than their lieutenants. I’d been in the Air Force three years and I was a lieutenant when I got out and was promoted to a captain when I was in the reserves. So by that time, I would have been one of the captains, which were the company managers, and the lieutenants, who were the platoon managers. I was almost to those kids like an older guy. They were asking me for advice on stuff. Just to have somebody to talk to. There was a kid sometimes in some God forsaken place. They hadn’t seen anybody but their platoon. He was wearing his helmet and they didn’t all wear body armor in those days. He had his ammo around him and everything. I said, “are you private so and so?” He said, “yeah.” I said, “I’m from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and your mother asked me to come by and see how you were doing.” He broke down and just started sobbing. He just completely came apart holding his weapon. They are just kids. Most of them. Just kids. When I talked about I didn’t have much use for those protesters. Thinking about them and their age. Most of them came from West Virginia and Kentucky those rural areas.

Krinsky 39

CK: [43:59] Can you talk a little about your relationship with other correspondents and journalists?

BS: I had some good friends. I became very good friends with Jack Lawrence, who was a young reporter who just by that age worked at CBS radio. Then later, he became quite a famous correspondent there and got involved in a lot of middle east wars and a lot of wars after that. He was a good friend of mine. That was the first time I ever met Dan Rather, he was there working there. But, most Jack and Eddie were pretty good friends. I got to know people from other places. You ran into people in Saigon, everybody pretty much hung out in the same place in Da

Nang. You got to know people. You get to know people pretty fast in a situation like that.

CK: [45:10] Right. In your downtime either in Saigon or outside with the troops would you talk to other reporters causally? How would you hang out with them?

BS: People would go over to the Continental Palace hotel and sit out there on the baranda. There was another hotel I can’t remember the name of it. The networks would have their headquarters in places like that. I would hang around. I hung around the AP office mostly because I would get my mail around there. That was kind of my main hang out.

CK: [46:02] Would you say you hang out mostly with reporters more than the troops more casually?

Krinsky 40

BS: Probably when I wasn’t working. Most of the stories I did, there wasn’t any other reporters there. (coughs) I’d go track them down.

CK: [46: 26] You wrote that most of the news briefings in Saigon were more for entertainment and were often irrelevant, how would you have wanted to change those briefings.

BS: Yeah. Well, I would have wanted them to tell the truth and they did not always do that.

When I went on that bombing run, it looked to me that we were bombing a shack or a tool shed or a sandbank from time to time. When I got back to Saigon for the official briefing because they always gave off the official statistics. It turned out what looked like a tool shed to me was an ammunition dump. The information was just totally irrelevant. There was no censorship there was censorship by the Americans. It was the information.

CK: [47:39] The U.S. took a search and destroy approach later in the war. Can you talk about how you felt about that strategy?

BS: I didn’t think anything worked. Nothing worked. These people weren’t communist. Some of them were. They were just people who worked in rice patties and stuff they paid attention to whoever had the guns. They didn’t have any ideology or philosophy. They were just trying to stay alive. The wars, most of them had no idea what they were about. There was just no way it was ever going to work. The longer you were there the more you came to understand that. A lot of people gave it their best, but it just wasn’t going to work.

Krinsky 41

CK: [48:43] Can you elaborate on what made you change your mind or understand it wasn’t going to work.

BS: It began six weeks after I got there. When these soldiers wouldn’t cross the land and risk their lives. They said they’d go if we could get a truck for them to ride. You can’t help somebody who won’t help themselves. I don’t really blame them in the sense that they’d been fighting the wars 20 years before we got there. Their officers were corrupt. They wanted no part of it. That’s when it occurred to me that it was never going to work.

CK: [49:30] Did you find that the soldiers were actively opposed to our help or they just had given up?

BS: I think that they had just kind of given up. I think they didn’t see where it was going. They didn’t see what was in it for them. They weren’t going to risk their lives for officers who were stealing the money. It was just dreadful.

CK: [50:00] What was your feeling on leaving Vietnam?

BS: I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go to Louse. There was a lot of interesting stuff going on up there. I really fought it and finally, they said you have got to come home. It was just a great story. I was there a little over four months I guess it was. I just wanted to stay to see what was going to happen. Just like any story.

Krinsky 42

CK: [50:39] You’ve talked a little bit about how you were kind of a celebrity when you got back. Do you feel that your work in Vietnam changed anyone’s view on the war?

BS: You know I don’t know. I don’t know that. I hope it did. But, those columns were very, very popular. I was in many ways kind of a war profiteer. It came out bad for a lot of people, but it came out good for me in a personal sense. Had I not gone there I would not have gotten a job at the television station, and if I had not gotten a job at the television station I would not have gotten a job at CBS. So I was always grateful for that. It was just a terrible episode in American history.

CK: [51:41] You said you hoped it changed the reader’s view, how would you hoped it changed their view to more agree with your take that it was a hopeless fight?

BS: I think it made people more aware. I’m not sure I convinced anybody of one thing or another, but at least I think I was part of that press at that time and television that caused people to become more aware of it. Maybe if you tell the story of one guy, maybe his family came to have a better understanding of it. I said I found 220 of them. I’m proud of it. I think it was the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done. Maybe not because of the journalism, but because it brought a little bit of happiness into those guys lives. When they’re out there it pretty easy to feel lonesome. To have somebody come from your hometown.

CK: To come say hi to you.

Krinsky 43

BS: Yeah. That’s the part I’m proud of.

CK: [53:03] You’ve talked a little bit about how the photographs and images changed public opinion. Do you think events like the Tet Offensive and My Lai massacre, what kind of impact did those have?

BS: They had a huge impact. A huge impact. The Tet Offensive especially so. The American people at that point thought we were winning. There was beginning to be opposition, but they thought we were winning. All of a sudden here were pictures on television of the U.S. television being attacked. Climbing over the walls of that. I think the My Lai massacre, it just brought home how awful war is. I think people had another view of that.

CK: [54:12] I read the officer who ordered the troops at the My Lai massacre, that thousands of people came to his defense at his

BS: Calley? Yeah, they did.

CK: Yeah, Calley. Why do you think they came to his defense?

BS: Well, I think there is always a certain segment of the public that never wants to think anything bad about their country. They don’t want to believe it. Like with Trump now. I don’t care what you say or what you reported. They say that’s just not true. Nobody would ever do something like that. In ‘96 I went back and interviewed, and I think I put some of this in my

Krinsky 44 book, Democrats that had been at the ’68 convention and I interviewed Mondale, who was I guess a senator by that time and Tom Hayden who’d been the leader of the opposition. Hayden was very introspective surprisingly. He said, “my father believed everything the government told him. He never doubted anything the government told him. We understood that the government was lying.” He said, “I’m not sure he ever believed it. That’s what happened. People came to that convention. The country was deeply divided over Vietnam, but at that convention, it became every disagreement or that problem in the country came to the floor. It became not just a disagreement over Vietnam, but a disagreement between young and old. Between women and men. Between blacks and whites.”

CK: Right.

BS: It just exacerbated all of that. I mean we went through a thing there that, the country had never been through before. That’s what I worry about now. Are we getting ready to go through something else just like that? A lot of those disagreements about what is right and what is wrong.

Could that cause something like 1968 happened again?

CK: [56:54] How would you say that the controversy in America and the anti-war movement affected the mindset of the troops in Vietnam?

BS: Well a lot of them didn’t know about it until they got back. That caused the divide to deepen. They’d been over there getting their ass shot off, and they came back home, and people spit on them and stuff like that. I think some of that may have fueled some of the distrust. What

Krinsky 45 happened in 1968 it really started with the assassination of Kennedy. Where the country kind of lost its innocence, and it’s never quite been the same since then. 1968 added on to that. That’s when we began to hear things like the credibility gap, you can’t trust the government, and things like that. From the Kennedy assassination, up through 1968, that’s had an impact on the country that I think we are still feeling. It’s not the same country.

CK: [58:14] Zinn wrote, “From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country-and failed.” Would you agree with Howard Zinn’s summation of the war?

BS: That we failed?

CK: Mhm (nodding).

BS: Yeah. Sometimes it’s not just the ammunition we had its not the bombs you had. It’s the idea that your defending or the idea that you're opposing. When the Berlin wall came down, it wasn’t because the people in Eastern German wanted more weapons. They wanted television sets they wanted washing machines. They wanted things that would look on their own televisions and see what was happening on the other side of the wall. They just had a much better life on the other side of the wall. It was that driving force that caused the collapse of communism actually. I think that’s what happened in Vietnam. We could still be there. There’s nothing to say that we couldn’t still be there. We couldn’t have marched right over to Korea and taken over that too

Krinsky 46 while we were at it. But, to what end. It was a no-win situation for something that wasn’t worth winning. I think I wrote about it in that book. We spent all our time asking if we were winning.

Well, if you have to ask if you are winning you are losing. Winning is obvious. That’s what the government kept rolling out all these statistics to show that we were winning. The statistics were right, but they had nothing to do with the Vietnam deciding to give up or trying to change their ways or anything. They were just meaningless statistics. That’s what happened there.

CK: [60:45] The Vietnam war is often referred to as the “Television War” or that reporters and journalist had much more opposition to the government after the war. Do you think the war changed how you do your job?

BS: Yeah, there’s no question. It was our first television war. Up until that point the way people found out about wars and things, they’d get it out of the newspaper. Then all of a sudden, they’d begin to see this on television what’s kind of interesting was none of it was live. People would send back film reports. It took about three days to get it from Tokyo. There were satellites, but they’d fly the film to Los Angeles and then put it on the satellite to New York. What the network reporters used to was tip off people in New York. So, the New York Times would have a story coming out saying X and Y. That caused the editors in New York to pay more attention to their pitch. They would sometimes conclude. Cause if they knew the Times was coming out with a story. I mean it changed everything. Once we got satellites and cable that changed everything.

When we got to Iraq, CNN, which no one paid any attention to CNN we called them Chicken

Noodle Network. When the first (?call for?) happened, we saw live on television Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett broadcasting on the ground. When we were dropping bombs and all that. That

Krinsky 47 changed it. It put a new emphasis on accuracy. As the news was becoming more available.

People were trying to use that to their own point. Now I think a majority of people don’t believe anything and most of the time they are probably right about that. You can’t do a poll anymore because people won’t talk to you on the television. People are so worried about someone lying to them. The country is undergoing, with the coming of the internet. (Phone rings) It is having a profound effect on our culture like the printing press had in its day. Martin Luther thought that it was God’s perfect gift. He thought once everybody could read the bible in their own language it would just be kumbaya all the religious stuff would come together. Well, guess what. It was followed by 30 years of religious war. It deepened people’s suspicions. We always tend to use technology before we completely understand it. Think about how many of thousands of men died, before the generals realized you don’t attack a machine gun mass head on. You go around on the said. You are seeing the very same thing. Now we are seeing all this sophisticated stuff with the Russians trying to destroy credibility. Now institutions and trying to get us not to believe in our institutions anymore. It’s very sophisticated.

CK: [65:23] Interesting. Nixon later came out after the war and said he would never admit it at the time, but public option and opposition from the media affected his decision to pull troops out of Vietnam. Do you think the war started the presses ability to check the government with their criticism?

BS: Yeah. I’m sure that it did. I’m sure that it did.

Krinsky 48

CK: [65:59] That’s pretty much all of my questions. Is there anything else you want to add before we end?

BS: No, but I always ask that. You’d be surprised how many good stories I got out of that. That’s good well. You have obviously done your homework.

Krinsky 49

Interview Analysis

In a recent article in the New York Times, Andrew Pearson, a Vietnam Correspondent during the war, wrote, “The war's defenders might have said I was becoming more critical, even biased. But in fact, I was becoming more objective- I set aside the pro-American, anti-

Communist filter I brought with me to Vietnam and reported what I saw.”31 The controversial

Vietnam War lead to many debates about the war itself and the media’s coverage of it. It is important to listen to first-hand perspectives in order to have a better understanding of the issues at hand. Oral history can bring a very valuable perspective; however, it does have flaws. One of the most significant and notable flaws in oral history is the inherent biases. Everyone in an oral history interview has their own biases made up by their personal experiences, political beliefs, and many other factors. Although oral history is full of prejudices and preconceptions, it is a very valuable resource. Howard Zinn claims, “... it’s not possible to be objective, and it’s not desirable if it were possible. We should have history that does reflect points of view and values, in other words, history that is not objective.”32 The unfiltered perspectives provided in oral history help illustrate different aspects of how the historical event affected people’s lives. Mr.

Schieffer contradicts what Howard Zinn says about the United States’ motivations in the

Vietnam War, and reinforces historian and Vietnam War consultant Stanley Karnow’s view on censorship in the war.

The interview with Mr. Schieffer began discussing his childhood and early career. He explained he grew up in a middle-class family in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended Texas Christian

University. After college, Mr. Schieffer joined the Air Force for three years, before starting his

31 Andrew Pearson, "How Vietnam Changed Journalism," The New York Times (New York, NY), March 29, 2018, 1, accessed December 9, 2018, https://nyti.ms/2uzX1GW. 32 Howard Zinn and David Barsamian, The Future of History: Interviews with David Barsamian (n.p.: Common Courage Press, 2002), 13.

Krinsky 50 career as a journalist. He reflected on his first story, covering James Meredith, the first African-

American student admitted to the University of Mississippi. Mr. Schieffer said it was “...truly the most terrifying night of my life...”33 because of the violence around the event. He continued to remember the early parts of the Vietnam War and his determination to cover it overseas. After being rejected multiple times to go to Vietnam, Mr. Schieffer claimed, “…I sort of shamed them into doing it.”34 Mr. Schieffer went on to discuss the United States motives in the war. He believed that the U.S. to stop communism and had no other agenda. He then described his typical day in Saigon including, where he lived, the transportation, and what it was like being a reporter.

Mr. Schieffer proceeded to recount going on bombing missions. He explained that they were not as “thrilling”35 as they sounded. He then defended the media, saying they reported on Vietnam because it was a “big story”36 and not for any economic reasons. Mr. Schieffer noted that the

South Vietnamese soldiers and “given up”37 and stopped trying to fight with the U.S. troops. He described how the war was a lost cause. He continued to talk about how the war “caused the divide to deepen”38 among Americans, and how it escalated in 1968 at the Democratic convention. Mr. Schieffer ended the interview saying that the war was a failure, and there was nothing we could have done to save it.

One issue historians have debated is the United States’ motivations in the Vietnam war.

The United States claims the only reason for entering Vietnam was to stop the spread of communism; however, many historians believe that the US also wanted to control the valuable

33 Bob Schieffer, interview by Colin Krinsky, last modified December 19, 2018, accessed February 11, 2019. 18. 34 Ibid. 21. 35 Ibid. 28. 36 Ibid. 20. 37 Ibid. 41. 38 Ibid. 44.

Krinsky 51 recourses in the region. Zinn questions the US’s motivations, citing Congressional and State

Department reports:

In 1953, a congressional study mission reported: “The area of Indochina is immensely wealthy rice, rubber, coal and iron ore. Its position makes it a strategic key to the rest of Southeast Asia.” That year a State Department memorandum said the: ‘If the French actually decided to withdraw, the U.S. would have to consider most seriously whether to take over in this area.’39

The US’s motives were questioned by many anti-war activists at the time as well as historians today. Interestingly Mr. Schieffer contradicts Zinn’s view. He claims, “I do not think we went there to take territory. I do not under any circumstances think that. We went there because we thought we were stopping communism.”40 Mr. Schieffer’s perspective is important because he met the soldiers in Vietnam and could testify to their character. Instead of analyzing the war academically as Zinn did, Mr. Schieffer is able to view the issues with a personal lens. His relationships with the soldiers may bias his view on their actions, but it also gives him a unique perspective that Zinn does not have.

Although the media’s effect on public opinion is debated, it is generally agreed upon that the US did not censor the press. In many wars, the government will censor the press in order to protect military secrets, control public support for the war, and many other reasons. The Vietnam

War was an exception where there was nearly no censorship. In a prior St. Andrew’s Oral

History project, Stanly Karnow claimed, “Well one of the reasons was they [the government] didn't want to admit it was a real war. If you had censorship and economic controls, you act like your involved in a real war. They never had censorship.”41 Karnow believes the government did

39 Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (New York, NY: New York Press, 2003), 349. 40 Schieffer, interview. 23. 41 Stanley Karnow, "The Vietnam War: The American Public and Press's Role in the Tragic Decades of the '50s, '60s, and '70s;," interview by Catie Dubensky, Digital Maryland, last modified 2008, accessed December 9, 2018, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/saac/id/23345/rec/1.

Krinsky 52 not censor the war and subjected its self to intense criticism to demonstrate that they were not fighting a real war. When asked about Kanrow’s claim about censorship, Mr. Schieffer replied,

“Well there wasn’t because they [the US government] were carrying out this facade that we were just there to help, it was their war. We were just there to help them. As a result of that, there just wasn’t any censorship.”42 Their views are very similar because they share similar experiences.

As correspondence in Vietnam, both Mr. Schieffer and Karnow appreciated the freedom journalists had. Because they had such similar experiences, they came to the same conclusion of why they were able to write without with such freedom.

The oral history project has taught me the importance of time management and being prepared for an interview. I struggled with time management thought the project. It was difficult for me to balance the OHP with my other classes and extracurricular activities. I learned that it is important to set up my own schedule for finishing each step. I also learned the of being prepared for the interview. I ran out of questions only 40 minutes into the interview. I should have written more questions prior to meeting with Mr. Schieffer. However, I did a lot of research and was able to make up questions on the spot. Interviewing Mr. Schieffer was an incredible opportunity.

I got to hear his stories and see his personal library. Seeing his pride in the collection of books he had read, inspired me to read more outside of school. I hope when I am older I will also be able to cultivate a library of my own.

42 Schieffer, interview. 36.

Krinsky 53

Works Consulted

Allan, Stuart, and Barbie Zelizer, eds. Reporting War Journalism in Wartime. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Group, 2004.

Bob in Vietnam. Photograph. Bob Schieffer College of Communication. Accessed February 11, 2019. https://goo.gl/images/HmWEAZ.

Gulf of Tonkin, A. Res. 88-408, 1964 Leg. (D.C., as passed, Aug. 10, 1964). Accessed November 26, 2018. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-78/pdf/STATUTE-78-Pg384.pdf.

Harwood, Richard. "Conflicting Views: September 1967." In Reporting Vietnam, compiled by Milton Bates, Lawrence Lichty, Paul Miles, Ronald Spector, and Marilyn Young. New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, 1998. Previously published as "The War Just Doesn't Add Up." The Washington Post (Washington, DC), September 3, 1967.

Hess, Gary R. "The Unending Debate: Historians and the Vietnam War." Diplomatic History 18, no. 2 (1994). https://www.jstor.org/stable/24912383.

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. First published 1998 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam a History. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1984. First published 1983 by The Viking Press.

———. "The Vietnam War: The American Public and Press's Role in the Tragic Decades of the '50s, '60s, and '70s;." Interview by Catie Dubensky. Digital Maryland. Last modified 2008. Accessed December 9, 2018. http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/saac/id/23345/rec/1.

Levin, Bob. "The Trouble with America." Globe & Mail (Toronto), July 8, 2006. http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A147956232/GIC?u=standy&sid=GIC&xid=b1fb8af3.

Markel, Lester. "Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam: Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam." The New York Times (New York, NY), August 8, 1965. https://search.proquest.com/docview/116969740?accountid=5492.

Pearson, Andrew. "How Vietnam Changed Journalism." The New York Times (New York, NY), March 29, 2018. Accessed December 9, 2018. https://nyti.ms/2uzX1GW.

Randal, Jonathan. "Khe Sanh Hill Fights: May 1967." In Reporting Vietnam, compiled by Milton Bates, Lawrence Lichty, Paul Miles, Ronald Young, and Marilyn Young. New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, 1998. Previously published as "U.S. Marines Seize 3d Hill in Vietnam After 12-Day Push." The New York Times (New York, NY), May 6, 1967.

Krinsky 54

Robinson, Michael J. "Public Affairs Television and the Growth of Political Malaise: The Case of 'The Selling of the Pentagon.'" The American Political Science Review 70, no. 2 (June 1976). https://www.jstor.org/stable/1959647.

Schieffer, Bob. Interview by Colin Krinsky. Last modified December 19, 2018. Accessed February 11, 2019.

———. "Kissinger's Shadow." The Washington Post (Washington, DC), July 13, 1974. https://search.proquest.com/docview/146144067/C5A9B3C5C36F4BDEPQ/1?accountid=5492.

———. This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003.

Shivkumar, M. S. "Reconstructing Vietnam War History." Economic and Political Weekly 31 (1996): 21-22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4403643.

Star-Telegram reporter Bob Schieffer has photograph taken by U.S. military pilot as he boards plane that will attack Viet Cong target, 01/1966. Digital Gallery of the University of Texas at Arlington. September 1, 1966. Accessed February 10, 2019. https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/items/show/28727.

United States of America, Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet-Nam, and Republic of Viet-Nam. Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet-Nam. Paris, France, n.d. Accessed December 8, 2018. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20935/volume-935-I-13295-English.pdf.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York, NY: New York Press, 2003.

Zinn, Howard, and David Barsamian. The Future of History: Interviews with David Barsamian. N.p.: Common Courage Press, 2002.

Krinsky 55

Appendix 1

“Bob in Vietnam”43

43 Bob in Vietnam, photograph, Bob Schieffer College of Communication, accessed February 11, 2019, https://goo.gl/images/HmWEAZ.

Krinsky 56

Appendix 2

“Star-Telegram reporter Bob Schieffer has photograph taken by U.S. military pilot as he boards

plane that will attack Viet Cong target, 01/1966.”44

44 Star-Telegram reporter Bob Schieffer has photograph taken by U.S. military pilot as he boards plane that will attack Viet Cong target, 01/1966, Digital Gallery of the University of Texas at Arlington, September 1, 1966, accessed February 10, 2019, https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/items/show/28727.