COMMENTARY - SESSION 3
Comments on Keynote Address
by Steve Sherman

It would be virtually impossible to critique the role of David Halberstam without ad hominem references, since this writer’s ego is so intrinsically entwined with his work. His claim to be “unlike what my critics said about me, an experienced reporter when I went” [to Vietnam] is more of a condemnation of the journalists covering that war than an endorsement of his qualities. His reference to getting on with Ambassador Edmund A. Gullion in the Congo is probably clear evidence of his naiveté. Gullion, who was an old, old diplomatic hand, was later an emissary in the secret negotiations with Hanoi (until November 1965) and went on to become Dean of the Fletcher School where he coined the term “public diplomacy” to refer to the “influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policy…encompassing dimensions of foreign relations beyond traditional diplomacy.” Including journalism”1 This term was a coinage to replace the word “propaganda’ which had so many negative connotations for a public servant. Halberstam wrote his book, The Best and The Brightest, while a writer-in-residence during Gullion’s tenure as Dean. I suspect that Gullion felt more comfortable with Halberstam “inside the tent, pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in” which was proven a wise policy when Halberstam’s Vietnam role is assessed.

William Prochnau points out that “Halberstam would become a legend as one of the most questioning and outspoken Vietnam correspondents, symbolizing the beginning of a new era of deep hostility between the press and the government that would last long after the war. Later, after he left and the war began to rip America apart at the seams, some would enshrine him as the first journalistic laureate of the anti-establishment rebels who would storm the streets, fill the air with taunting obscenities, and spell their country’s name with a Germanic "k." But not once, during his Vietnam years or well afterward, did he question America’s right, even her need, to be there. His criticisms were not of a moral or philosophical nature.”

David Halberstam, in a precursor (rather than the antithesis) of “pack journalism”, joined with Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett and Malcolm Browne to formed an anti-Diem lobby2 to depose the one Vietnamese leader who had the moral authority to tell the Americans to leave Vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem was then assassinated, implicating President Kennedy in a coup against a democratically elected leader and saddling the United States with the moral responsibility for the South Vietnamese people’s survival as a nation.

Surely, Halberstam never considered that he might have been falsely guided by the Best and Brightest that the Other Side had to offer. Was Pham Xuan An (a Communist agent/interpreter) already at work on these journalists of the early 1960’s, the way we’ve seen former Ba’athists influence recent reporting from Iraq? Or did those journalists rely on the braggadocio of young American officers, like John Paul Vann, for military and political insights that neither party had the experience or knowledge to examine critically?

As evidence of a wildly overblown ego, Halberstam starts off an address by reading the transcript of a tape of what JFK and his advisors said about him forty years ago, and treat it as something of a joke to boot. Halberstam interprets what’s on that tape as JFK being foolishly annoyed by having the shortcomings of his Vietnam policy, especially about Diem, pointed out in public, yet Halberstam assures the audience of his admiration for President Kennedy.

President Kennedy did not reciprocate Halberstam’s admiration: “The President [Kennedy] observed that Mr. Halberstam of the New York Times is actually running a political campaign; that he is wholly unobjective, reminiscent of Mr. Matthews in the Castro days. He stated that it was essential that we not permit Halberstam unduly to influence our actions.3 Mr. Hilsman assured the President that this was not the case. . . .

“The President observed that Diem and his brother, however repugnant in some respects, have done a great deal along the lines that we desire and, when we move to eliminate this government, it should not be a result of New York Times pressure.”4

Iit’s an interesting indication of Halberstam’s shallow understanding that he doesn’t even get that the tape is not about pointing out the shortcomings of JFK's policies! JFK was annoyed with him for gratuitously making life harder for an ally in time of war, and for being simplistic and idealistic in reporting a very complicated and dangerous situation; and he was VERY annoyed with being pushed to make policy in a certain direction by The New York Times, which he thought had no business making policy in the first place. The talk about Halberstam not being a seasoned reporter is in that context: who on earth is a 28 year old with a Harvard degree and some foreign correspondent experience to tell DOD, the CIA, and the Presidency that they’re obviously all wrong? JFK couldn’t have cared less if Halberstam had spent some time in the Congo; so what? That scarcely qualified him to make foreign policy decisions for the United States, and that’s what Halberstam, and The New York Times, were really trying to do. These points have apparently sailed straight over Halberstam’s head for 40 years.

Back in 1963, he also had his own Enemies List. Besides Diem and Ngo, the list included Maxwell Taylor and, by extension, Paul Harkins. Whatever the judgment of history will ultimately be on these men, the attitudes of a 29 year old journalist certainly colored the record. These attitudes persist today as evidenced by the treatment Harkins gets in Halberstam’s presentation.

A critique of Halberstam’s works is a topic for another discussion, but to call The Best and the Brightest, as did The Boston Globe, “the most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam. . . . The Iliad of the American empire and The Odyssey of this nation’s search for its idealistic soul” illustrates pop history gone awry.

By desecrating the graves of their journalistic predecessors, Halberstam , his peers and those that followed them in the field of ego driven journalism have created a Media Lying Machine that dwarfs their criticism of the 5 O’clock Follies. As Halberstam says, “And gradually the lines harden and the lies dominate the [reporting] policy and the lying machine has a dynamic of its own. It becomes as it did in Vietnam, an organic thing.”

“Who’d have thought it?” he says, “More than 40 years later, and we are still talking and arguing about Vietnam, the subject that never goes away, in part because those who should know the most have managed, in their memoirs more often than not, to tell the least.” While Halberstam calls for other to come clean with the past, we shouldn’t expect it of him. The guilty parties return to the scene of the crime: Peter Arnett will follow the scent of “poison” gas and David Halberstam will write about Vietnam whether the title involves Baseball or the Korean War.

1 Public diplomacy… deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications. http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/1htm

2 Ross A Fisher et al, To Oppose Any Foe, Carolina Academic Press, 2006, p. 19-20.

3 In Hilsman's record of the meeting he paraphrased the President as follows: "Halberstam was a 28-year old kid and he [the President] wanted assurances we were not giving him serious consideration in our decision." [Footnote in the text.]

4 Memorandum for the Record of a Meeting at the White House, Washington, August 26, 1969 in JFK FRUS Vol 3, Document 289, RADIX Press CD ROM Edition, 2006