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♪ buckeye broadband along with thesetelevision companies suppot cspan2 as a public service. joining us and now on c-span is peter pritchard is a former editor-in-chief former president of the museum is the author of this book killing grace a vietnam war mystery what made you write a novel about the vietnam war. >> i always dreamed of writing a novel that my life intervened i became a newspaper editor and executive. i finally thought i had said i had the time to try to write a novel. i had to write something that is not a combat novel that was more

in the quiet american or the ugly american. both had a great influence by. >> without giving away any spoilers what's the books synopsis? >> two mps in saigon in 1967 at the height of the war. are called to investigate the murder talk in the saigon river. it appears to be a drowning she is an antiwar activists who said she came to vietnam as a piece tourist. her new goal is to help smuggle arms back to her associates in the united states. the mps gradually realize her death is part of a bigger conspiracy. they tried to avert the

disaster. >> was ben kincaid? his partner is elijah jackson. normally they are charged with enforcing curfew. and keeping the gis on the straight and narrow and out of the bars after curfew. they get pulled him because the police do not want to invest at this particular incident because it involves an american. oddly enough at the height of their their 20000 american tourists who visited vietnam a year end arere shocked to read that. >> peter you are writing about 50 plus years ago. do you have experience in vietnam? >> yes. i also wanted to write about the antiwar cultural experience. i went to college at dartmouth in the 1960s. and when i was a senior i watch

for professors it on the steps and say they're going to send their metals back to lyndon johnson laid out the vietnam war was an unjust and illegalan war. and it dawned on me i been reading about the draft that i could get caught up in this even before i started my adult life. so i tried to get out of the war. i was a draft dodger the best i could use teach english to kids in massachusetts. they were more auteur than i was. i had a hard time i had very little discipline over the classroom. and at the end of the year i got fired for not correcting papers and two weeks later i was doing push-ups at fort dix. by the end of that years of vietnam. glacier draft dodger as you say and a veteran of the war. [laughter]

yes, sir. i served almost 14 months and vietnam. we were advised are supposedly y intelligence advisors to theso thousands south vietnamese night vision at the height of the war progressed 67, 68 summer around there you are vietnam? >> i arrived in country six to generate 1968. i came home in march of 69. >> besides telling a compelling mystery story, really trying to accomplish anything else and killing grace? >> yes. for a lot of people, particularly young people they don't know a lot about vietnam. and i thought the mystery of fot and the conspiracy format would give me a chance to write about the conflicting currents in the country at that time.

we always talk and now about how divided the country is. but in many ways america was more divided back then when young men were scared to death of going to war being killed in a war that was started and uncertain circumstances and we never even declared war. and was very unpopular at home once the build up started. >> let's go back to july 28, 1965. here it was then president johnson. >> i have asked the commanding general commander at westmoreland what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression? he has told me and we will meet his needs. i had today ordered to vietnam airmobile division and certain ghother forces which will raise

her fighting strength from 75000 to 125,000 men almost immediately. additional forces will be needed later. and they will be sent as requested. this will make it necessary to increase our active vice the fighting forcesg by raising the monthly draft call from 17000 over a period of time to 35000 per month. and for us to step up our campaign for voluntary enlistments. >> peter, what do you thinkar wn you hear that nearly 60 years later? >> well, it reminds me of the spring of 1967 when it walked it to my mass mailbox and there were two letters inside. i opened the first one it was from the peace corps and they said they had accepted me as an

english teacher and micronesia. and i breathed a great sigh of relief and imagine a lot of grass skirts. i open the second letter it was from general lewis hershey he said i was to report to the new haven induction center in threer weeks. so i did not know what to do so i called the peace corps and i got a nice woman on the phone she said we are sorry mr. pritchard but in these circumstances the defense department takes precedence. that is the first thing it reminds me of it. the second thing it reminds me of it was an undeclared war which congress never really voted on or formally approved. we were consumed by the >> of anti- communism and the domino

theory. all of that was a false assumption that 58000 americans died and millions and millions of civilians of vietnamese died. >> 3 million troops served over an eight year period from 1965 to 1973. 58000 american servicemen and women gave their lives. when you are there and 67 and 68 did you see combat? >> as i said i never had to fire my weapon. we got mortar from time to time and would have to run to the bunkers. i had some convoy duty which was the closest i ever had to getting into combat. we are being shot at from across a rice paddy we had behind the

jeep tried to see if we couldn'd see anything to shoot at. we looked out on the rest of the convoy moved on where the only vehicle left. we got back in and drove as fast as we could. but the reality of you could get killed in like 1000 different ways. you could get in an accident, rent over by a truck get killed by friendlyas fire it was not se anywhere. >> what is the timeframe killing grace takes place exactly? >> starts in early 1967 i'm seeing at the gridiron dinner where one of the organizers of the radical group is attending the gridiron dinner with his father. he imagines how easy it would be

to have some terrorist incident at the gridiron and that is the spark that ignites his ideas what to do about the war. then it continues allou through 1967 and into 1968. >> is at the beginning of 1968 the ted offensive began. what exactly washat? >> t offensive was a series of coordinated attacks across the country. i think they were more than 500 attacks including attacks near where i was. i had not been in country very long. w we were observing the holiday with the vietnamese. we are standing in the square watching a vietnamese man call a big grease to pull to get something on top of it as part

of the ceremony. colonel there is a formation moving down the river was a complete surprise is a stunning defeat it was a complete ppolitical defeat and change te pen is beforeis the war. >> or cbs mike wallace reported on the tet offensive january 31 , 68. >> good evening i'm mike wallace. the enemy and vietnam demolish the myth alive military strength controls the country. the communist at the very heart of saigon, the capitol of south vietnam and at least 10 cities

would correspond to sick capitals throughout the united states. and then, as if to demonstrate no place in the war-torn nation is secure they struck nine military strongholds and unnumbered field positions. tonight the magnitude of those rates became apparent in the u.s. command report on casualties. the communist paid a heavy toll for theirai strikes almost 5000 dead including inside out alone. and almost 2000 captured. casualties also are high. 232 americans killed. de929 wounded. >> peter pritchard it was more of a so-called moral victory for the vietcong and it was a military victory, wasn't it? >> correct. four months the military had been telling the american people and all of these soldiers there is light at the end of the tunnel. we were defeating the enemy across the country and there was

hope the war would end soon. i when this offensive occurred that completely upended that assumption. i remember listening to the radio o, the second morning of e tet offensive. general westmoreland came on the radio and said the embassy is secure and we have defeated the enemy. it did not seem very secure, and as strapped to get him to be able to escape. apparently is not going to end anytime soon. >> doesn't play a role in playing grace? >> this particular book the story ends just before the tet offensive.

i am dueling around on a sequel which will correct that. >> already a sequel. >> people have told me we might read it. you're never quite sure until you do. give some perspective from 1961 until the fall from the saigon government the u.s. spent more than 141 billion about $7000 for each of south vietnam people can billion dollars in today's dollars. how do you process that today? >> all of the corruption that occurred. and all the u.s. supply that

went missing and was sold on the black market ended up in the hands of the vietcong. it was an amazing stream of men and material there was no way anybody could keep track of where everything went. which also plays into the plot of this book. in any servicemen that was serving there could see that. the whole premise of the war was a faulty. instead of declaring war and making it a national cause that the people were behind we had a policy people only served three to 65 days inan the war zone. and as a result most were focused on cross the days off on a calendar whether than caring about winning the war. we tried to serve hot food to soldiers in the field. we had p exes, they had a golf

course in saigon which also plays a part in the book. it was an insane way to fight a war. >> how we change that over the aryears and subsequent wars in e iraq war et cetera? personal in the field? >> yes i think so. the defeat in vietnam and it really was a political defeat had a profound effect on the american military. and that led to the establishment of an all professional military and the end of the draft. and as a result the military probably became better. it might not be better for the country because you have a force that is separate from society and not everyone shares in the obligation to defend the united

states. obviously in israel everybody has a serve in the military. i have long been a proponent for some sort of national service who either serve in the military are you help people in hospitals or be in the peace corps. i think that would bring people together more than they are today. >> you mention corruption. why are black market so ubiquitous and is seemingly easy to form during conflicts like this? >> i think it's mainly because of the volume of the material and the opportunity. it's very hard to keep track of things in chaotic war-torn societies. it happens in earthquake aid. people give all of this aid and enterprising criminals take a good portion of it in charge people too much for it. it is just human nature in some

ways.hi i don't think anyone has devised a way to stop things from going missing during armed conflicts. >> peter, before we talk more about killing grace in the vietnam era, let's go to c-span video library in her way back machine peter is former editor-in-chief usa today. president of the museum has appeared on c-span 63 times over his washington career. and this was the first one. july 2 , 84. >> just as the rest of the newspapers different from most traditional newspapers because it has shorter stories and more stories the opinion page is different because it's a single topic page and any topic that we consider or do during that week will be very close to the news we will run for points of view

on that topic besides our own. and among these four points of view will be the opposing view which will be completely opposite of what we think in the editorial column.pa so that we are the only newspaper the united states that consistently, every day runs an opposing point of view to its editorial position. our feeling is that gives the reader a chance to read all of the views and make up his or her unown mind and that is what isan unique about our opinion page and we find it is popular. >> so, what were al and john segan and the other leaders of usa today and your self thinking? what was your vision for this paper? >> al was the founder. print out newhart the chief executive of the gazette company the largest newspaper company in the united states. his vision was of a national newspaper that was available in every state that would appeal to

travelers and two people didn't get a full national report in their localap newspapers. tiwhen he thought the company wasn't a great position to provide it's because we had newspapers all over the country really printing plants all over the coury. and john came up with the concept of an opinion page that represented many points of view and did not have a dominant position as an institution on every issue. as a result, also at usa today would not endorse a candidate in a presidential election in part because it would put a bumper sticker your nameplate it would turn off people who were with the candidate you endorsed. that was his vision.

he thought usa today could be a unifying force for the country. and i think for a while it was. it helps contribute to a common base of knowledge that people could form their opinions using. we are a long ways from that today with the multiplicity of sources that people listen too. >> for a long time the best-selling daily newspaper in the unitedat states a must read for many of us here in washington. what you think of the paper today? >> it has changed a lot. i think usa today is suffering the same forces all other new papers in america are facing. the tech c companies have basically taken all of the revenue they used to go to the newspapers i think newspaper revenue has fallen 80% from its peak and we have lost thousands

of newspapers across the country so people do not have a good newsource in their communities. and because of algorithms people have migrated to sources that match their political points of view and they do not see the other point of view. it has made the whole medias landscape worse in my opinion. too bad for democracy because we will have a common knowledge base that we can all draw upon to form our opinions. we are living in silos and echo chambers listening to what they like toer hear but they don't hr any other points of view in many cases for. >> from daily writing and editing of new student novel writing what are the differences?

>> you don't have to worry quite so much about accuracy. you can use your imagination. as my mother said newspaper writing is very cut and dried. think about novels you can exert your imagination at all sorts of different things that might happen. ways.a liberating in many i really enjoyed writing. it is fun. however in today's publishing climate it is difficult to sell books. it's difficult to be published. it is just a tough economic situation. >> what kind of research to do do into killing grace? >> since i was a vietnam veteran i read books about vietnam for years. most recently i read wonderful

history what he calls vietnam and epic tragedy which it 'certainly was it's a tragedy still casting ripples across the world today. i was a familiar with many of the themes of the war and many of the things we could have done better. and i a also loved the quiet american thought there might be a niche for a book by a veteran that was not a combat novel. there's lots of tremendous book by jim o'brien, jim webb, many other people that are basically about the combat experiences of the protagonist. i thought it be fun to write a mystery set in vietnam. we tried to capture some of the crosscurrents in the antiwar movement at the time.

>> re: the principal characters in "killing grace" based on people you knew from that. we had an interpreter in our you meant in south vietnam in the delta. it was a chinese vietnamese. he had grown up on the chinese suburb of saigon. one day i asked sgt duck house you were going? and he said my work is terrible. and not in combat every day you are in interpreter and relatively safe here. he said it's because i am chinese and all vietnamese hate all chinese. i said they do?

they were threatening us inie vietnam and all part of the domino theory. i had no idea there is historic enmity between the chinese and the vietnamese. and of course that was just one of things we didn'tt know. and another thing was with. we were largely in the history of their desire to evict intruders over the years we really went into it not understanding the difference between the north and the south. the difference between the two cultures on the difference in will and the political will to win the war and the absence of that. and that is one character i would to the in the book street

without joy. and got even more depressed about what we're doingha there. >> peter what kind of information were you given about vietnam prior to going over there and serving in the war? >> it's kind of funny. went to fort dix and had basic infantry training. form thatten down the i would like to work and in intelligence for the army. thinkingng it might be less dangerous. the big joke was whatever you wrote down you would never get that assignment. however i did get it and we were sent in pulte part of baltimore

to go to intelligent school from three or four months we studied the makeup of the bureau, soviet order of battle protocols and tactics, you identify a t72 tank. virtually nothing about vietnamese history, about how to fight guerrilla war, how to get information and a guerrilla environment. no outside speakers about what the experiencee would in vietnam was like and really in terms of training it was a disaster. completely useless. >> it sounds like we were looking at it as a fight against communism. and in your book you have a scene at the gridiron dinner or president johnson is speaking. again i don't know how much of

this is real and how much is novel. you write that president johnson delivered an anti- communism a message at the gridiron dinner that year. >> he delivered many anti-communism messages. he didrt not do it at that particular gridiron dinner that year. as i said i played with dates and times and so forth. lead johnson was veryst strongly anti-communist. however he had grave doubts at getting the american soldiers involved in asia. but i think he felt hemmed in by the anti-communist fervor in the legislature.hi and he felt in many ways like he had no choice and it turned out to be such a colossal mistake.

i still remember many vietnam veteranay groups today and they are still suffering, and dying, dealing with mental illness and agent orange and everything else because of the vietnam war. and that's true of the vietnamese people people in laos and cambodia. it was an epic tragedy is the only way to describe it. it is just a shame our government was not able to recognize that and cut it short for. >> and "killing grace" a vietnam war mystery, there are some characters who express cynicism about their purpose in being in vietnam. >> yes. there are lots of them starting with cia man.

there were a bunch of people who stayed in vietnam for a long time. they saw what it was like. most of the civilians worked for the cia and other agencies. and in many ways they got seduced by the country thought they could somehow make it better. but were unable to do it. and edward lansdale is a good example ofof that and there's a lot of books written about his role in advising thew governmet about the insurgency. and use more intelligent tactics than we did. but, i think when you see that kind of a war the south was corrupted inany ways it did not represent the people. many of the people were stealing

goods you could go to the black market and buy everything that american soldiers were meant to have. from c rations to jeeps almost. and it wasl easy to become cynical quickly. and the whole body county. idea that we were going to figure out how we won the war by counting the number of people we killed. that was completely misguided. we should have been trying to change people's minds instead of just counting bodies. >> when you are there in 67 and 68, was the question what dhec are we doing here? was that a common refrain? >> it was. didn't really get vocal until later. until 1970, 71. these soldiers who served by thate time had basically figurd

out in the country had figured out tt it was a mistake. we were probably sending people there to die for nothing unfortunately. or not much. and as a result of drug use drue among the military. friendly fire shootings rose. people used to kill their lieutenants thinking they would keep themselves out of the field. things were really breaking down at that stage. and nixon was elected and 72 and then he took three more years to really end the war which led to more suffering. so we should have realized it was a mistake earlier. we should have cut our losses and gotten out. probably not long after walter cronkite made his famous appearance on cbs news and said

the best we can hopeis for is honorable peace. >> we have looked at the american side and some of the statistics regarding that too. but the vietnamese side isou significant as well. a country about 120 million at the time. the estimates are about 2 million civilian deaths and over 1 million fighters on both sides were killed. but was it do figure out who was for who? there was the vc. there was the nva. there was the south vietnamese, the french impact of the french being there for years. there's the chinese. there's the americans. it did get a little confusing it. well, it was completely confusing. and, you know, the typical village that americans went out to see these or takerow the vc out of whatever, we went

out to a village to take it over. the v.c. would fire a little bit and then leave. and then as soon as the americans left, c would come back. and so these village, the villagers were living a society where during the day they were nominally under south vietnamese control. but at day they were under this control but at night they controlled the place where they lived and agrees where people trying to surviveos a war in which they we caught in the crossfire of both sides. one of the other problems was there were so many vietcong spies inng government positions working for american newspapers

in tel aviv in some cases. we used to joke that they knew where our forces were going before we did. it was an almost impossible situation. at the end of the war they were at the peace talks with the colorguard and he said to them you know whenever we met you on the battlefield we were never defeated and the north vietnamese negotiator looked at him for a moment and said that may be true but it's also irrelevant. one of the better quotes. >> one ofys your characters says that it was like being a caged

tiger. she also told them you cannot breathe through another man's nose w and they were unable to o it. they were trapped and just trying to survive and had a series of leaders and no particular willl to win. they were much more determined than the south vietnamese to preserve democracies and in fact

whether the elections were rigged were never held. they were sent to the education camps so it was just an unimaginable tragedy. one of the principal architects of the war the defense secretary makes an appearance in your book. he said he knew the war was a mistake all along. he knew he just never said it thr did anything to end he makes an appea and goes out to visit hamlet that was one of the ideas you could keep them

from coming in at night. at the end of it to there's a scene where he attempts to say on live self vietnam in vietnamese but instead because he didn't use the tones correctly and the language depends on how. what he told his audience was the southern duck wants to lie down. so i put it in there i thought it was emblematic. >> 60 years on, president johnson's and as more and more troops, general westmoreland requests more troops, general mcnamara doesn't admit it was a

mistake all along. what do you think the motivation was back here in washington to push this forward? >> i don't know if it was just inertia we were so locked into the mentality act that time that we felt we couldn't because it would be a defeat for american prestige and influence around the world and our allies would not respect what we did. there could have been that kind of damage to the reputation and role but i still think that would have been less deleterious than causing this for several more years because we couldn't end this war. and of course there wll these missed opportunities along the way.

at the end of world war ii when he declared he used some words from our declaration of independence. he had a lot of admiration but he wanted to reject time and again for thousands of years and they didn't want anyone else to rule the country that escaped domination we should have been able to understand that but somehow we couldn't understand what was going on and we couldn't find the courage to admit that it was wrong and to end it.

do hubris and mismanagement,? >> i certainly think so in terms of the whole plot. i don't want to get too far into it because it spoils some of it but certainly what the fbi and cia are attempting to do that's an amazing example this idea that you can manipulate the movement for your own and by doing illegal things. fortunately we've done that in other times. adam c powell wrote a blurb for the book and observed that this wasn't a very far-fetched idea what the agencies did in the book and it was something that could have happened and he was a person that had a lot of experience

because of his famous father that her presented and was one of j edgar hoover's targets. >> some of the characters are more protesters you mentioned ethat a bit earlier but along with the civil rights movement, did these groups have a common goal? >> yes. the black panthers the activists. they were much more interested in equality but as part of it they didn't want to see young black men get sent to vietnam for a cause that was so uncertain. mohammed ali famously said the media invented and then he said

no vietcong ever called me the n word and i don't think i need to go over there and so there was an uneasy alliance and a segment in the movement that felt the protesting and marching and using first amendment rights wasn't sufficient but you had to do something more dramatic to try to end the war and they were inspired in part from the famous malcolm brown picture of the monk burning to death in the street and i think this inspired the protesters to get more serious. in fact they were hoping to bomb fort dix when it went off in the

apartment and killed one protester and wounded some others. >> 1965 was only 20 years after the end of world war ii when the journalists, and there are some in your book that are journalists. when they were in vietnam where werethey supportive of the goald of preventing the fury or were they skeptical about the role in vietnam? >> i think most when they went there early in the conflict were supportive. i read a lot of the old magazines when i was writing this book life and time magazines and there was a lot of coverage they often observed how it was a difficult situation but in general fighting communism

was endorsed just like it was my most in the early and mid 60s. however, some journalists like david halberstam and others started covering the war more closely and conscientiously and they were able to do that. you could get a ride on a helicopter almost anywhere. so they would go places and see things like when they burned down that bridge. so they began to get more

doubtful about whether this was the right wayan to go and at the time there were some critics who were critical of the strategy and they were talking to those people so they gradually got more and more cynical and began to believe that it couldn't be beone. halberstam wrote then best down to the brightest and the making of a quagmire i think was one of the first books and they were very prissy and. so their attitudes changed into the war went on and on. >> we are all pretty familiar with all the soldiers were treatedrn after they returned to the states. what was your experience? >> i extended a couple of months

because i found out that if you return with five months left, 150 days you could get out and i thought that was a good idea but i didn't really realize that i was probably suffering from a little ptsd and i stood have stayed but instead i went home and lived in my parents basement and went down every night to the american legion club in northern minnesota and we drink beer. i found two guys and we sat there and drank every night and oddly enough the world war ii veterans at the legion never even came over to say hello to us. no onene thanked us for our service or acknowledged that we

had been there. then when i moved back east if you said you'd been to vietnam people looked at you like how stupid are you. no one ever said welcome home and then of course there were many people being spat upon or left out or whatever. i think it contributed to some of the mental problems many veterans had after they returned. i think it only began to heal when the friends managed to build a wall that was incredible. >> have you been back to vietnam since? >> i wish iody had about everyy

that's gone back into said it was a healing experience and the people i talked to say people are incredibly welcoming and something ofan a great economic comeback but they have a good tourism business and they are quite welcoming and forgiving and i think many want to be forgiven and want to visit the places they served in and it is a healing experience for many. many times there was a movement to pick up the unexploded mines which is a wonderful thing to do

to atone for some of the things. >> on an individual level did your experience in vietnam change your worldview? >> definitely. i thought being in the army was a good experience and a wonderful way. to meet people from all walks of life. it was a good way to instill discipline ands certainly madee more serious about the world and whatever role i could play in it and it was a good experience even though i was sorry for the stuff we did i was lucky enough i didn't have to shoot anybody or go in combat or anything like that. however one of my jobs was

strikes and we would type up these strikes and say we want to bomb this area where we thought there were a bunch of vietcong guerrillas. we were paying for thiss intelligence i don't know how reliable it was but it was often next to where we were living. sure it killed anything in its path and i'm sorry for whatever involvement i had in that. >> you haveas a note i still ask god's forgiveness for my contribution to the death and destruction this undeclared war caused. >> i believe in redemption and i think everybody can feel sorry for things they did.

>> how did the war change the u.s.? >> it really damaged faith in institutions and made people more cynical and distrustful of government. it polarized huge sections of the country. people came back and had terrible experiences and were unable to talk to their family about it. i think that is still true in some cases it increased our homelessness problem there are still homeless vietnam vetshe en though there's 610,000 left alive. it was a disaster and i'm so sorry it happened. i wish we could have avoided it

and i think it contributed to the division we have in politics today. >> so when the pullout from afghanistan was happening rather chaotically, anyck flashbacks, y thoughts? >> i thought it was unconscionable. how do you pull out where it just becomes a mob scene. there had to be a better way to do that. i certainly am not supportive of the endless war in afghanistan but if you withdraw you want to be able to have the sense and intelligence to devise a plan that minimizes casualties. that was one of my fears how stupid would i be if i get killed during the 45 days i stated that i didn't have to.

>> the author of this book a vietnam war mystery and he has been our guest. we appreciate your time. >> it is a privilege to be on c-span, and i love the discussion your channel generates every day and distributes around the country. thank you the world is changed. today a fast reliable connection is something no one can live without so we are there for our customers with speed, reliability, value and choice.

now more than ever it starts with great internet. came to the united states in the late 1970s as a refugee from russia and did his undergraduate work at the state university but islamis