appreciation for how congress worked. he spent four years in the congress. but he was very clear that he wanted to move on to the presidency, and in fact became only the second of sitting u.s. senator to win the presidency. before, the only one who had done it was warren harding in 1920 and since kennedy the only one that has done and is barack obama in 2008. so the senate isn't a natural jumping off point for the presidency, yet can be found a way to use it to advance his political ambition. >> the name of the book jfk in the senate pathway to the presidency, the author john shaw. santiago lyon talk about the associated press photographic history of the vietnam war and the state of the war photography today. the book vietnam includes 300 photographs by 15 photographers.

>> line with the book passage, thanks for coming out tonight. i was a child during the vietnam war living in turkey while my dad was reporting for the armed forces radio. he remembers it much more vividly than i do but for my dad's generation and for mine, the war is preserved for our reflection and study it history and words and images captured by some of the most impressive journalists on the planet, the associated press. over the period of the vietnam war, the month of the surprises for their coverage for both stories and a breaking news photography. some of the greatest names in the war correspondents staffed the ap bureau, malcolm browne, peter arnett, mick mcgeorge esther, antiatoms just to name a few. the total coverage from the vietnam war constitutes more than 25,000 images.

now almost the 50th anniversary of the war, the eps to get the first collection to tell the story of the conflict in vietnam. the book of "vietnam: the real war," which of course i'm blocking, is a photographic history by the associated press is a collection of 300 of these images. we are thrilled to fight to have some of the vietnam correspondence and joining us as well as current photographers who've covered the modern-day war to talk about the images from vietnam. the air to the surprise when a correspondent peter arnett who covers the vietnam war. [applause] for ap for 13 years. julie jacobs -- of jacobson who has covered everything from the olympic to the wars and has been indicted multiple times in iraq and afghanistan santiago lyon.

[applause] director of photography for the associated press responsible for the global photograph reporting and the hundreds of photographers and photo editors world wide who produce it. if you take pictures, you want to suck up to that guy. and make ut in vietnam. [applause] joined the ap in saigon at the age of 14 after his brother who was also an accomplished photographer was killed covering the war. mick is best known for the photographs he took that the man running naked and badly burned from their trade to get he won eight pulitzer prize for that photograph. many of the photos were taken by nick. the experience is total decades and are collected in a small part in this wonderful. please help me get a warm welcome to the photographers at the associated press.

[applause] >> we are going to run through some pictures and then have a little conversation on the stage and open up to questions.

[inaudible conversations]

[silence] [silence]

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[silence] no [silence] [applause] so an extraordinary selection of images from the book from the

war and vietnam which is what we are gathered here to talk about this evening. i thought it might be useful to put this work into a little bit of context with the h-p history for those not familiar with the associated press is a not-for-profit cooperative news organization founded in 1846 during the mexican american war as a way for newspapers to share the costs and the logistics of coverage about conflict. the ap since 1846 has covered just about every conflict on command so we have a very intimate and longstanding relationship to warfare and army had conflict around the world. the cooperative is owned by about 1500 u.s. newspapers and they pool their resources together through the fees that they pass for the access to the content and sharing of their own

content to providing news agency that is unparalleled and global reach in bureaus and just about every country that you could name and never-ending stream of photographs and video and audio. it's an institution in the way of journalism. above coverage was extraordinary would because of the commitment with epo -- the ap made and it's quite different to three stories are covered today where journalists are typically assigned for the tour of anywhere between six weeks to two months. the journalists who covered the vietnam war for the ap state for many years and they gained a very intimate knowledge of what was going on in the country,

with the players were, how to access things and this was coupled with an extraordinary dynamics that existed then which facilitated access to journalists in a way that has probably never been seen in a more fair and probably quite possibly would be seen again but just as a journalist could show up at the military bases and essentially it's the pilot of the helicopter or the airplane that they wanted to travel on was willing and most of the time they were. they could jump on a helicopter and go where the action was and photograph it, jump on another helicopter and come back, dropped their film off, some pictures and go back the next day of the felt up to it depending on what was going on and that level of access is very different from the level of access you have today.

possibly because the flow of information around the world is so much faster and so much more voluminous now than i was then that the protagonists of many stories nowadays seem to control that information in a much more direct and demanding way was in the vietnam era. it was quite a different dynamic. so i thought i would start on a brief conversation with my fellow panelists before opening this up to questions. tiemann informed us the questions tend to be good and robust and frequent and animated and thoughtful and precise so that's what we are counting on you all to do when we stop talking here but i thought i would take off by asking the panelists if they have a particular photograph in the book perhaps one of the ones we've just seen projected that

they would like to talk to either because it meant something to them personally or it works for them on some level and i thought i would start off with the dean of the panel mr. arnett. >> thank you very much, santiago. it's my pleasure to be here in your community tonight. my daughter lives in berkeley so i am a visitor to this area and i'm going to be back in this book store again next week you will be sending another week -- but having said that, i was one of those that spend a lot of time in vietnam. i went there at age 26 in 1962. i stayed for nine years living there, got married there, had two children and kept going back until the fall of saigon and stayed with two other colleagues until the communists took over. you might say that sounds crazy. but in the era that i started

being a journalist it wasn't uncommon for american correspondence to be in the year rose away from home for say three years. i would be based in tokyo, couple afghanistan or delhi. so this is the era you have to think of as a sort of former period of time. the pictures that we had taken in vietnam where simple film process and sent by what we called radio photos and sometimes one little picture and you just don't have the kind of facilities that are visible to everyone like julie today. but there was another factor in

place in vietnam that is that in the u.s. tradition of the war coverage the military and u.s. government had a lot of influence in what appeared in magazines and on radio and on vietnam and on television. so as the vietnam experience began, the u.s. government from president kennedy in particular and president johnson made it their job to lobby intensely with american newspaper editors and and television were directors and to shape the image coming out of vietnam. because of the nature of the commitment there was never a declared war. still wasn't being declared. there was a limited engagement and beginning with advisers and is an american troops and

smaller groups will finally becoming a large army. this was never a conflict in which the u.s. government felt it could impose the kind of censorship that was brought to world war i and korea and not censorship, the journalists would be obligated to run their photographs and written material passed the military senses and also publishers at home would be expected to take a patriotic look at what was going on in a concept like vietnam war and overseas commitment. when i got to vietnam in 1962, was joined by a group of young american journalists sort of unique in journalism at that time. david oberst, come all graduates from ivy league universities.

probably the first to actually enter the news reporting and they took a much more pragmatic approach to what was going on in vietnam that covered the civil rights development of the civil rights movement in the american south. some others had been in africa and they all had a military training. we had been dropped and spent a couple years in the military. as the vietnam conflict began, you had journalists who knew a lot about the world and a lot about the military and had taken a healthy view of the role of journalists has been challenging to the government or challenging to the authority that was understood as the traditional role as a journalist to see what is really going on it was in

that environment that the pictures and the news started coming out. and we discovered that the vietnamese were very candid about what they were facing. the young american advisers many of them outraged and leader of the soldiers who were not much younger than we were very candid about what they felt and what they saw and therefore really felt we bring getting it very clear picture of what was the emerging as the conflict grew in its size. our vision from the scene deferred markedly from what the kennedy administration was hoping for vietnam and definitely from the johnson administration. president kennedy for example late in 72, the editor of "the new york times" and asked that he would bring halberstam back to the united states because his

reporting was dangerous to national security. president lyndon johnson on two locations approached the ap executives to have me removed from the area and there were lots of other influences on publishers particularly on television and owners of the networks. it was in this environment then that the news product, the written and photographic product emerge from vietnam. there was a matter of controversy from the beginning we saw a picture earlier of malcolm browne photographed of the buddhist monk, committing suicide by fire and in saigon earlier in 1963. that was a picture that helped shape president kennedy's view that the government didn't see him but we have supported and was sent to an inadequate job.

in fact the ambassador who leader told me that he had gone to the oval office to get his last instructions before being appointed ambassador to vietnam and the "washington post" was open and there was a picture of the burning month on the first confront page and kennedy said we've changed things. we can't let this happen again. interestingly enough, "the new york times" has the story did not published a photograph. "new york times" didn't published a photograph meaning that the editors in the united states were conscious of the nature of the images and about the controversy which brings me to the question santiago asked about my favorite pictures. i don't think favorite is the right term because i don't think any of the pictures from vietnam

are worth looking in a sort of way that i admire them, i admire the demotions far more deeper and sat. it was the seventh photographs were taken by the great ap photographer and of german nationality began taking 1963 to 1964 and he spent lots of time with the south vietnamese troops in the delta in the southern part of see it mom and in the deep jungles to the west and north of vietnam. he would go out in the units with american advisers and he was coming back with pictures of enormous brutality committed against ordinary vietnamese farmers and villages. these military operations were

dictated by the government and the military as being necessary to round out the vietcong, the communist vietnamese seemed to be plotting against the government. but in fact what was happening is whole villages were being held to waste and there was one picture in particular that is in the book that shows a farmer holding the body of a child and stripped skin from the body was hanging loosely from the body and he was holding the child up to a personnel carrier with ten or 15 south vietnamese soldiers served as interestingly looking at him and he was pleading with them. i don't know what he was saying that the soldiers moved on. he stayed around and got other photographs of the terrible agony inflicted on local people

and their remains with me as a punishment but local people would take in the war and second the indifference of the allies in the war at that point against a population and against was seen as a civil war with the communists were talking about as a people's war as we should have known from the french experience that was the role of the civilians and the supporting the communist hierarchy and government that won the war against them so the pictures that forced that he had taken that yelets surprise remain in my memory and one other point about the inspectors when he arrived back in the bureau after several days and he developed film and abroad of the print where's the president of the

associated press was visiting new going all the way from new york and he looked at them and said you these are shocking and i know that in his heart of hearts having been a reporter in world war ii being subject to censorship he had some and decision of the pictures of he has the authority to say little beast for a while to do we really have to put them on the wire but what he did say is we are going to use those pictures but i want you to write a story talking about pictures but pointing out the viet cong communists also come at atrocious atrocities at least try to balance at, so i did it but there was no way to balance the power of those pictures and as i said, they went on to win the pulitzer prize.

>> you've been around the proverbial block a few times photograph and the conflict in iraq and afghanistan. when you look at the pictures in this book are there any of them that particularly jump out at you or anything you'd care to share with us about the work in the book? >> there were a couple pictures that jumped out at me the color photo in the book is waiting for the helicopter to land to pick up some of the wounded. and when i was in iraq and in afghanistan i spent quite a bit of time on the evacuation helicopters. when i look at the photographs despite the different environments and the money of the jungle and a desert. there's nothing changed. i remember being in a helicopter looking down as we circle until we landed and there were guys on

the ground looking up at us to just like that. one gentleman their like we were dropping from the sky to pick up their bodies to the and i don't know what year that was shot and i think if you do the math it doesn't matter that 40 or 50 years later it's still the same scenario, still the same expressions on their faces, the same emotions running through. the other photographs that jumped out at me and i believe it was up here they were civilians and they were in a ditch with water and that struck me because while covering the war in iraq and afghanistan, i was embedded with u.s. troops but i was always very curious about how the war would affect people in that country. i'm always curious about the civilians who were not

necessarily not combatants and something about that photograph when i first saw it it made me realize there was something lacking in the picture that i need an iraq and afghanistan that i didn't have any access to a lot of the population because of cultural differences carried a lot of the women and children are behind a false. you never see them and when they come out they are wearing their irca -- wearing their burka and i remember being frustrated about that in afghanistan especially. iraq we had more access. so those images jump out for the reasons i just described of them. i always wished i had had a chance to get in behind those walls while the battles were being fought to bring home and bring together people's feelings

as these things are happening and we are all the same. you look at these people and these images and think that could be anybody. that could be an iraqi or afghan if the war is fought. >> thank you, julie. one of the pictures in this book that is arguably one of the most iconic to come out of the vietnam war is a photograph of the girl running down the highway screaming as a result of the pain that she was in. you are all familiar with the picture. make took that picture and i thought it might be interesting if he shared what happened that day and what was like to make that picture and defense that happened afterwards. >> june 8th 1972 when i hear a story about the viacom on highway one then on the early morning [inaudible]

took a lot of pictures of the refugees leaving the village that morning. i don't want to spend too long because [inaudible] then i worked with a soldier who liked to help before leaving the village and saw a south vietnamese soldier who told us look [inaudible] outside about 100 yards first

[inaudible] then i saw the bombing, and then looked like black smoke and i saw people running and i said my god people are killed in the village and a grandmother carried the body and called help [inaudible] i took a picture of the boy and said what happened when they came running i saw bodies burned so badly. i put water on her body and then i borrowed a raincoat to cover her and her uncle asked me to help the children to hospital.

[inaudible] they said i think i'm dying and i said he will be at the hospital soon. at the hospital nobody wanted to help her because it was very small and i shut my immediate past and i said if she dies tomorrow it will be a big story and then they all ran off. i'm not a doctor or a nurse but i want to help first before i go back to the office. i had a good picture. i didn't want to take too long. [inaudible]

he looked at my picture and he said i want more right away. stand let me pick up a minute on -- and the bureau when nick had come in with these pictures of and the attendant who drew attention to the nakedness of the young woman and said the ap will never use this. we don't use a naked child, no way. and there was a debate in the bureau with her it would be sent to new york because, you know, considering the moral aspect, but the man in charge of the total production and the bureau said new york will see this. it's up to them in the end we are going to write a story to go with it and we will send that picture and others from the series.

and in new york i believe there was a debate about the usage of the picture that was sent out and was widely published i do believe. it was photoshop to some degree but widely published. >> in that morning we went back to the village again. then i saw the mother running around looking for the daughter and she said where's my daughter and i said she's in the hospital. she and her husband were actually there. >> of the other wonderful part of the story is the nick were continued to be interested in that young child, helped her and the family in the course of the three years left of the water. and in 75 of course the whole operation closed, but he later picked up her story when she

moved to cuba for extra treatment and kept in touch and now they are very close friends today. they go to conferences together and it's a wonderful story about how we photographer can actually go from not just taking the picture but to do something positive about the victims of the photograph. it's not so when usually story as you might think. >> now she's married and has two children were. i thought it might be good if we opened up to questions now if anybody wanted to ask anything about what they've heard or any of your questions they might have about the coverage of the war in general or vietnam. >> thank you very much. i'm interested in photography and i used to be at icp and heard some of the greatest photographers talking about the war lord picture he took in

world war ii and others. is there a different approach has a war photographer if you will than a traditional photographer other than the obvious danger is there an approach that is used or does it depend on who the photographer is? >> you want to take that? >> good question. the estimate other than the physical dangers we, you are limited in the war and how you can cover things simply because you are not free to move around like he would be in any normal assignment back home. but your approach to the people is pretty much the same. you treat everybody with respect, compassion, you're always trying to put yourself on the other person's shoes.

you're always trying to find some balance in your reporting to make sure that you are fair, that your interpretation of things is fair and balanced. like i was talking about not having access to the afghan population, 50% of it to me that creates an imbalance but there's nothing i can do about it. whereas at home there's going to be a little bit more access than that. but no i think in general, like i said other than looking out for yourself and looking out for people around you while you are there and that's another thing you have to take into account. for the most part, you approach your assignments not as assignments, but as a way of seeing people. you have to remember the story is about the people that you are covering regardless whether it

is the war or something at home. what changes a little bit out there sometimes i tell friends and colleagues at least for me it's less about the competition any more when i'm covering conflict. it's more about getting the story out. and especially if you have another journalist with you who even father the news organizations, your priorities now are looking out for each other and making sure safety is always first so in that respect your coverage changes a little bit and you're also looking out for the people that you are with whether it is the soldiers were civilians you realize that you are all human beings. >> i might add to that that in covering conflict obviously the

stakes are quite high in the sense that your life is often a great danger. the scenes that you are for the briefing are very dramatic often people are dying or living the worst moments of their lives and it's your job to photograph them in a way that tells the story but also to some degree that preserves their dignity if possible. and the combination of all of those things photography obviously has a strong creative element and journalism has a creative element but also has a journalistic element and so a lot of what you do and covering the story is is to concentrate on telling the story as effectively as possible. there is so much invested in new being there and to waste that

opportunity by making esthetically pleasing pictures would possibly defeat the purpose and so there is a strong tendency and perhaps obvious to say that a strong tendency to focus in on the debts of the story in order to communicate that. and it's very mission in driven. i think the common factor that you hear when you talk to photographers that have gone to conflict order to cover the war they are extraordinarily focused and revenue because they believe that their work has value. it is debatable the power of photography and some people will argue it can influence things to some degree or people will argue it is completely fitial and a waste of time with. i think there is a value in the sense that without that we

wouldn't know what was going on and we would make the notion of impunity that much more powerful. and by bearing witness to what is going on in the dangerous situations nobody else wants to be, we are stripping the excuse of impunity away from the people who do these terrible things with a hour politicians are generals or militia or whatever this. do you have anything to add to that? >> i think the government role in coverage and conflict is an airport in factor. vietnam has mentioned was unique in that the u.s. government didn't get around to imposing the control for the media. why the secretary of state stated in 1967 when he was asked you are complaining about the media constantly with what is happening in the war why didn't

you imposed censorship and she answered censorship is too important a decision to meet that influence is so much else of what a country policy functions that we don't feel vietnam is a big enough more to do it but they were unwilling to censored the work or impose censorship because lyndon johnson and others kept believing it was a limited war and lyndon johnson had his other from domestic policy ideas. but having said that, the military much prefers a controlled environment and that basically goes back to the american civil war when the photographers were all over the battlefield and took the most heart-rending pictures he will probably never see and in the

world war i and a world war to the censorship prevailed and these are both sides of the propaganda chief of the nazis ordered thousands of media german media people not to take a photograph of any german soldier, not to take a photograph and the american government declared there would be no photographs of dead americans to be published until 1943 when president roosevelt lifted the order because he was concerned about cynicism growing among the american public about the propaganda images they kept seeing in the newspaper about how the war was going. and so the memory of this was clear during the vietnam war. today there is the system that is controlling. when it is exercised in its

entirety would they are not allowed to take pictures of the wounded or dead americans that generally you were not allowed anywhere near the bodies of american troops and in addition an important part of the coverage along with the picture is the written description putting it into a context that is meaningful. the ability to control commentary from ordinary soldiers or to control ideas within the military is almost complete. they would not -- i was embedded several times in iraq and they wouldn't let me talk to the intelligence chief of the unit. it was very difficult to get the kind of information that would make understanding a clearer. the media was highly criticized

in the first and second gulf war because they were perceived to have gone along with george w. bush's innovation plans and policies and in fact several media including "the new york times" have apologized not infrequently about the nature of the coverage, which was more positive than to the american public probably deserved. >> any other questions from the audience? >> i just want to add to that real quick what you said very briefly. my approach to the people in the war is the same, but my level of commitment is raised because much more is at stake to get and the process the way it is this for three or four weeks sometimes people say longer. you get to know them and you are emotional investment also gets raised because you get to know them. there is always a line to draw

at least i do where we are not going to be pals. i'm not going to invite you over for christmas dinner but, you know, you get to know them even more as human beings. and i will say that every time i left i felt guilty of leaving. i felt like -- the way that they expressed their i don't want to say enjoyment that their approval of having me there they would say we like having you here because people get to see how it is out here. we want them to see that. every time i left i felt like i was taking that away. and i figured out some point another journalist would come along. but how long it would be i didn't know. so why don't know if that helps answer your question. >> first, thank you. does it need to be on? thank you for what you're doing and my question sort of dovetails into what nick had

done for the little girl. thank you for that. peter said the stories are not that uncommon. these things do happen and we always hear about it. my question is being in the situation that is horrific and having the camera being so intimate with people, i would imagine that they often look at you as a friendly face, a hopeful face, someone they can connect to outside of the madness that's going on and i wonder what is that like for you all and have you had a very -- a lot of challenges with that and how you develop use it before with the soldiers about you draw the line and have that, but how is it when you have the children or the mothers or these sorts of things you mentioned that you didn't have that much access now, but i know that peter and nick, you seemed like you were really in it for these people and how was it in your heart and

mind how was it for them, share whatever you would like. >> the soldiers, when they see the media, oh, take my picture. of -- i traveled with them

everywhere and took a lot of picture. they never had trouble with the soldier. they are very happy to take photo. >> julie's comment today, that really resonated with me that you go with these units, and they get to like you, and you get to enjoy being around them. and that was exactly the experience in vietnam. now, it was, it was sad at the time or after the war that the press and the military were fighting each other, and the military said we'll never have the press back covering any war. at one level there was great distrust of the media. well, at several levels. the political level, the white house level as the top pentagon brass were not happy with seeing the pictures that nick ut was taking or seeing the stories,

analysis that i was writing and other reporters. why were they unhappy? not because they were inaccurate. in fact, wes gallagher, the ap chief, said you can do anything you like as long as it's the truth. you make one mistake, i can't protect you. and where's gallagher and management did protect us, but they said we want the truth. but the truth hurt the kennedy administration, the johnson administration and the new york stock exchange son administration. and as -- nixon administration. and as i said earlier, they were prevailing upon editors and publishers and news directors to disregard our material. at the level of the soldier, the thousands of stories i wrote from vietnam -- and i was out three weeks every month with the troops for days on end with the marines, the 1st cavalry division -- there was rarely an incident where, where you were even criticized by the local, by

the unit commanders of the soldiers. they felt your presence was sort of an integral part of what, how america fights wars, the ernie pyle idea, the beloved reporter of world war ii. that wrote about, about soldiers, american soldiers with great sensitivity and who, in fact, died in the field with american soldiers as he continued to do it. and invariably and to this day i go to reunions of military units. last night we were at the marine memorial hotel where they put us up, and great accommodations. there were a lot of marines there, and they're really supportive of the book and of our reporting. so it was, from what i -- from my experience, soldiers like to

have us civilian types around them. somehow it connects them maybe with the real world. >> thank you. you got anything more to add, nick? no, that's okay. >> you know, i think -- thank you, because all your coverage is great. i really admire your writing and everything. the thing is the problem like, say, you're operating on one side which may have, you know, some control of the news coverage. but then you had the communist side like in vietnam which was pretty repressive on any kind of information coming out of their area. and especially like in cambodia, there was one incident where nick long, nick long or something was a river port, it got bombed by mistake by

american airplanes. and that held all the coverage. but you had like the khmer rouge who are totally brute brutal, and somehow they snuck in in '75 to power. and they were there, when they took over phnom penh, they immediately emptied the city. and i think that was the first idea that most americans had that these people were really psycho peoplement i think an ally at some time had said all along they'd been psycho killers. so isn't there a problem like when you're covering one side and you have these photographs that are representative of the truth, but on the other hand, the other side that totally controlled their media. so their atrocities, their brutalities are kind of covered up. until finally, you know, the phnom penh is taken over by the

deher rouge. that's maybe a crazy idea -- >> it's not crazy, you're absolutely right that that's the difference between a democratic form of government and the dictatorships that the u.s. has been against. you have to remember that as far as the american public was concerned, the vietnamese communists were evil incarnate. we called them terrorists for the first three years of the war. there was not a viet cong soldier or a north vietnamese, they were terrorists. terrorists attacked the government outohs. we kill -- outpost toes. we killed 30 terrorists here. we know now that they were actually, you know, organized political, you know, basically legitimate political force fighting for nationalist causes. the whole sense in that cold war era was that communists are bad. we didn't have to have pictures of them committing atrocities. we were told they're happening

all the time. you know, that was the sense of our, of our government pronouncement. why was america in vietnam with half a million troops? to save the country from these terrible, violent, vicious communist people and advance the spread of communism through southeast asia and eventually to san diego, lbj or nixon or maybe kissinger said at one point. so it wasn't up for us, it wasn't our job to talk about the other side. our own government was doing that. and the, and also, you know, the kind of pictures and reporting we did reflected the view of many americans who were within vietnam at the time, within the embassy, within the advisory corps and within the military. so it's not as though we were coming -- and the reason i know that's true is that, you know,

santiago says we're working for the associated press with 1500 newspapers. in those days i think we had probably 2300. and we had radio stations and television subscribers. every picture we took of news value and every story that i and the dozens of other reporters in and out of there wrote appeared in american newspapers. and if we mentioned a local name or an address, certainly that newspaper would headline it. the parents, the mothers, the lovers of the purse, people we were writing about would clip the story and send it to your son, and it arrived two weeks later. mail was pretty good. they, the soldiers knew exactly what we were writing and what we were photographing and that we'd be going back to these units. they knew who -- what we were doing. they knew who we were talking to. they saw our news product. it was very rare that we were denied entry to a unit in the course of the war, maybe half a

dozen times, and they were for reasons, you know, misinterpretation maybe of something that was written. but from the soldiers' point of view, we were telling the real story of the war; their difficulties, the struggle, the kind of policies that were not making the kind of headway that the deaths of, ultimately, nearly 60,000 americans deserved. >> if i understood the question, you were asking a little bit about trying to get as many sides of the story, not necessarily this story, but generally as many sides of a story as possible. and i think that a lot of news organizations nowadays and historically strive to do that. um, for example, in afghanistan and iraq there were very robust networks of local journalists, photographers, text reporters,

videographers covering aspects of the story that were impossible for western journalists to cover because it was simply too dangerous. and so it's that kind of comprehensive coverage that strives to give a balanced account of what's going on. i think what happens often is that for whatever reasons, and there are many reasons, it becomes impossible to tell certain sides of the story because it's simply too dangerous. there are and i think, you know, the coverage that we saw out of the chemmer rouge takeover in cambodia was nonresistant because it was impossible for westerners to operate such that there was no independent journalism. but if you look what's happening in syria today, an extraordinarily difficult story to cover because of the logistics involved, because of the in-fighting amongst the various rebel groups fighting the assad regime. over the course of last year, it

was possible to send in teams of journalists to cover that story very carefully and very well planned operations with all sorts of backup and logistics surrounding them. but in the last year or so, it's become impossible to cover that story. because the various rebel groups have started to abduct foreign journalists. right now there are as many as 18 foreign journalists who have been kidnapped in syria, some of whose stories have been made public, some of whose stories have not been made public. but it's changed the whole equation of the coverage and, essentially, it has made it off limits for independent journalism and to tell what's going on there. and as a result, the only information that's coming out of, in cases, a country like syria is agenda-driven information that's being provided by activist groups on the ground. now, it's the job of the

journalists to interpret that information and to verify it and to validate it, and if they believe in it, to use it to tell the story. but it's a far cry from seeing it with your own eyes. and it really shifts the way that we see a story when the situation on the ground becomes too hazardous. because as brave as journalists are and as committed as news organizations are to covering stories, there comes a point where it's suicidal where if you go to these places, you will almost certainly either be killed or abducted, and quite reasonably, no story is felt to be worth the life. and so you have this dynamic. >> it's been some 50 years since vietnam, and nick and peter have, obviously, incredible

insights into what went on at the time, but also in 50 years of reflection you must have some opinions in retrospect regarding the vietnam war and america's involvement, and i'd be interested to hear a couple of your comments about that, nick and peter. >> that's a pretty big subject. [laughter] fifty years ago, i feel much too old to answer that question. actually, it was 40 years ago the war ended. you know, in two years it'll be the 40th anniversary of the fall. did i finish i'll let nick feel, how do you feel about the war, nick? was it worth -- did america, was it worth america going to your country to help your people create a free societiesome. >> i really happy the war end, because i vietnamese-born.

every day saw many people die. i'd travel the children, the bomb kill hundreds of thousands of people in village. i, that's when i took a picture of napalm i said will the war be over. in 1975 -- [inaudible] and he helped me become refugee now. this man helped me get my visa travel from japan to hong kong. thank you. happy with the visa. >> and you asked me that we don't have the time. we would not be the time. i started collecting books on -- in vietnam there weren't many books in english available in the '60s. today there's 30,000 titles available on amazon in english about vietnam. and almost every one of those titles comes up with a theory or

another about the war. now, i live in orange county these days near little saigon where there's many what we call viet-q, they came out at the fall of saigon and established new lives. and very successfully, they own the banks and the restaurants and lots of businesses there. their children are well educated. but to a person, they're unhappy that they had to leave vietnam. so to a person, they will tell you that the war should have been won and that america should have done more to win it. they realize and they'll admit that there were weaknesses within their own government, but be they feel that they were worth supporting longer than the support did come.

now, i don't agree with that viewpoint, because i feel that the u.s. had already done much more than, i think much more than, say, a president eisenhower, president kennedy ever foresaw. both eisenhower and kennedy had reason, vietnam was what they called a domino that had to be held up. if it had fallen, neighboring countries might fall with it, and that would mean that the communists push into southeast asia. eisenhower had that idea, kennedy had that idea. early in this his administration, kennedy agreed to a peace agreement in laos which gave the communists half the country and a neutralist government. so clearly -- and an important official at the time, an ambassador, he negotiated that deal so to my way of thinking

kennedy, who had, you know, ideas to develop the green beret, the great force of heroic force that essentially was fighting the early wars in vietnam, even he by towards the end of his third term in office, third year in office had ordered a withdrawal. so they were starting to pull american troops out. so it strikes me that kennedy was seeing that the american effort to try and create a government that would have the kind of values america could support, have a government in vietnam that could perform the kind of military and leadership capabilities to make a new south korea -- which was being talked about, south vietnam like south korea -- that they just didn't have it. kennedy approved the overthrow

of the president in november of 1963. the cia helped engineer that. and, of course, president kennedy himself, unfortunately, was to be assassinated three weeks later. so, therefore, you have, you know, i think historically an opportunity that early to maybe prevent the tremendous loss of not only american life, but of vietnamese life that followed the administration of president johnson and then of president nixon. bearing in mind that as many americans died under the administration of president nixon add diss under president johnson -- as did under president johnson. so, you know, early on david hall bear stamm, my colleague, wrote in "the best and the brightest" this was the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time. and i didn't necessarily agree with him then, b