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for an extended list and links to other various publications 2013 notable book selections visit booktv's web site booktv.org. you are watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. weeknights watched the public policy events and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv, past programs and get our scheduled at our web site and join in the conversation on social media sites. >> santiago lyon the photographic history of the vietnam war and the state of war photography today. the book vietnam, the real war includes 300 photographs by 58 photographers. >> thanks for coming out

tonight. i was a child during the vietnam war, no, really, living in turkey when my dad was reporting on armed forces radio. he remembers much clearly than i do but my dad's generation and mine, the war is preserve for our reflection, history in words and images captured by i the most impressive journalists on the associated press. over the period of the vietnam war, a pulitzer prize for its coverage for stories and breaking news photography, some of the greatest names in war correspondents, staff, malcolm browne, peter arnett george edgar, a adams to name a few. the photo coverage from the vietnam war constitutes 25,000 images. now almost 50th anniversary of the war, we could get a first

associated images of the conflict in vietnam. the book vietnam the real war, photographic history by the associated press is a collection of 300 images, we are thrilled to have some of the ip correspondents joining us as well as current ap photographers who covered modern day was to talk about these images from vietnam. gillick surprise winning correspondent peter arnett who covered the vietnam war. ap for 13 years, julie jacobson who has worked as a photographer for the associated press since 2001 and has covered pretty much everything from the olympics to wars and been embedded multiple times in iraq and afghanistan, santiago lyon. [applause]

>> director of photography for the associated press responsible for the global total reporting and hundreds of photographers and photo editors worldwide who produced it. if you take pictures, suck up to that guy. and hyunh cong ut who was born in vietnam joy and a pea in saigon at the age of 14 after his brother who was an accomplished ap photographer was killed covering the war. he is best known for the iconic photo he took of 9-year-old cam quote running naked and badly burned from a misdirected south vietnamese air raid. he won a pulitzer prize for that photo. many photos were taken by nick. and exciting panel of journalists, and they cover decade and are collected in some small part in this wonderful book. tell me give a warm welcome to the photographers of the associated press. [applause]

>> we will run through some packages and have a little conversation and ask some questions. [inaudible conversations]

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[silence] [silence] >> why don't we move to the middle? [applause] >> clearly an extraordinary selection of images from the book from the war in vietnam which is what we are and gathered here to talk about this evening. i thought it might be useful to

put this work into will little bit of context with the ap's 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 cost and logistics of coverage of that conflict and the ap since 1846 has covered just about every conflict known to man and so we have a very intimate and longstanding relationship to warfare and armies and conflict around the world. the cooperative is don't buy 1500 u.s. newspapers and they pool their resources together through the fees that they pay out for access to the content and sharing of content to provide a news agency that is

unparalleled in global reach in just about every country you could name, never-ending stream of text and video and audio and interactive institution in journalism. the coverage of vietnam is the commitment that the aid he made to covering that story. the dedication of the ap journalists assigned to vietnam many state for years and years, quite different from the way stories are covered today, typically assigned to tours of anywhere between 6 weeks and two months. the journalists who cover the vietnam war for ap would stay for many years and as a result gained a very intimate knowledge of what was going on in the country, who 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 warfare and quite possibly won't be seen again which is to say journalists could show up at military bases and the essentially it is the pilot of the helicopter or airplane that they wanted to travel on was willing and most of the time they were they could jump on a helicopter and go to where the action was, photograph it, jump on another helicopter, come back, drop their film off, send some pictures and go back next day if they felt up to depending 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 world is so much faster

and so much more voluminous than it was then that the protagonists of many stories seek to control that information in a much more direct and demanding way whereas in the vietnam era it was quite a different dynamic so i thought i would start a brief conversation here with my fellow panelists before opening up to questions. tina informed as the questions here team to be good and robust and frequent and animated and thoughtful and precise and so that is what we are counting on you to do when we stop talking here but i thought i would kick it off by asking panelists if they have a particular photograph in the book, perhaps one of the ones we have 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, peter arnett. >> thank you very much, santiago lyon. it is my pleasure to be in your community tonight. my daughter lives in berkeley so i am a visitor to this area and i will be back in this book store again. next week i will be spending another week but having said that, i was one of those who spend a lot of time, i went there at age 26, 1962, i stayed for nine years, and living there, got married there, had two children there and kept going back until the fall of saigon and stayed with two other a p colleagues until the communists took over. you might say that sounds crazy. in the era i started being a journalist in the 1950s it was

not uncommon for american correspondents to be away from home for three years, based in tokyo, based in afghanistan, travel around by ships, this is the vietnam era, you got to think of as a former period of time, the picture is that were taken in vietnam, simple film process, sent by what we call radiophone 0 and sometimes one will 6 by 4 richter, and you just don't have the kind of facilities, problems like julie day. there is another factor in place in vietnam. in the u.s. tradition, war

coverage, the military and u.s. government had a lot of influence in what appeared in magazines and on radio and in 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 television directors to shape the image coming out of vietnam. because of the nature of america's commitment there was never a declared war. still has not been declared. there was a limited engagement and beginning with advisers and american troops in smaller groups, finally becoming quite a large army, over half a million.

this was never a conflict in which the u.s. government felt it could impose the kind of censorship that was common in world war ii, world war i and gloria and that censorship would be obligated to run their photographs and written material past military censors, publishers at home would be expected to take a patriotic look at what was going on in a conflict like vietnam or overseas commitment, when i go there in 1962 i was joined by at group of young american journalists, mel brown, all graduates from ivy league university, probably the first

to actually enter the garage of the news reporting and they took a more pragmatic approach to what was going on in vietnam that all covered the development of the civil rights movement in the american south. some others had been in africa. had all had military training. we spent a couple years in the military. as the vietnam conflict began, you had journalists who knew a lot about the world's, a lot about the military, and had taken a healthy view of the role of journalists as being challenging to government or challenging to of 40. it was understand as the traditional role as a journalist, challenge authority and see what is going on and it was a net environment that the pictures and the news started

coming out of vietnam and we discovered the vietnamese we met were candid about what they were facing, young american advisers, many outraged and soldiers who were much younger than we were very candid about what they felt and saw and therefore we felt we were getting a clear picture of what was be emerging as the conflict grew in size. our vision from the scene differed markedly from what the kennedy administration was hoping from vietnam and definitely the johnson administration. president kennedy late in 72 phoned the editor of the new york times and asked that he bring it back to the united states because his reporting was dangerous to national security. president lyndon johnson on two

locations approached ap executives have me removed from the war arianna and there were lots of other influences on publishers, particularly on television, important donors of the networks. in this environment, the written and photographic product emerged from vietnam. there was a matter of controversy from the beginning. malcolm brown's photograph of the buddhist monk, the first month committing suicide by fire in saigon in 1963. that was a picture that helped shape president kennedy's view is that the government, that supported, wasn't doing an adequate job. in fact ambassador henry cabot lodge later told me that he had

gone to the 0 office to get his last instructions before being appointed ambassador to vietnam, washington post was open, the kennedys's best, there is a picture of the burning mount on the front page and kennedy says you better go over and change things. we can't let this happen again. interestingly enough the new york times, the story did not published a photograph. new york times did not published a photograph of the burning monk meaning editors in the united states were conscious of the nature of the images and the controversy which brings me to the question santiago lyon asked about my favorite pictures. my favorite, the most -- i don't think any of the pictures from vietnam are in a way it that i

admire is them, might emotioy e more deeper and sad other questions taken from 1963 through 1964 and he spent lots of time with south vietnamese troops in the southern part of vietnam and the deep jungles to west and north of vietnam, going out with units of american advisers and he was coming back with pictures of enormous brutality committed against ordinary vietnamese farmers and villages. these military operations predicted by the government and military commanders as being

necessary to route out the vietcong, communist vietnamese seem to be plotting against the government that in fact what was happening that whole villages were being laid waste, there was one picture in particular that is in the book that shows a farmer holding the body of a child, nay palm fired stripped skin from the body, handing loose from the body and holding the child up to an armored personnel carrier with 10 or 15 south vietnamese soldiers disinterested looking at him and he was competing with them. i don't know what he was saying. the soldiers moved on. he stayed around and got other photographs of the terrible agony inflicted on local people land that remains with meet as important because it illustrated

first of all the punishment local people were taking in the war. and the indifference of our allies in the war at that point against a population, against what was seen as a civil war, the communists were talking about as the people's work. as we should have known from the french experience that it was a role of the civilians and supporting communist government that won the war so the those pictures they had taken which got a pulitzer prize remained in my memory. one other point about those pictures, in the bureau after several days, developed the film and brought out the prince, where is gallagher? the president of the associated press was visiting which was a very rare visit going all the way from new york, and he looked

at them and these are shocking and i know in his heart of hearts, having been a reporter in world war ii and being subject to censorship he had some in decision about the pictures. he had the authority to say let's hold these for a while. if we have to put them on the wire. he said to me look, we are going to use those pictures but i want you to write a story talking about the pictures but pointing out that the vietcong also commit atrocities. at least try to balance its so he did it. there was no way to balance the power of those pictures. they went on to win a pulitzer prize. >> julie jacobson has been around a proverbial block a few times, the conflict in iraq and

afghanistan. when you look at the pictures in this book are there any that particularly jump out to you or any thing you care to share with us about the work in the book? >> there were a couple pictures that jumped out at me and one of them is the cover photo of the book. it is of a squad waiting for an evacuation helicopter to pick up some other wounded. when i was in iraq and afghanistan i spend quite a bit of time on the casualty evacuation helicopters. that jumped out at me because when i look at the photographs despite the different environments, afghanistan, iraq, the desert, nothing has changed. i remember being in a helicopter and looking down and circling before we landed and there were guys in the ground looking at us, one gentleman is there. we were dropping from the sky to

pick up their bodies, i don't know what year that was shot, 1968, do the math. it doesn't matter, 40 or 50 years later it is the same scenario, the same expressions on their faces, the same emotions running through. the other photo that jumped out at me was up here, it was of civilians and they were in a ditch and here was water. that struck me because covering wars in iraq and afghanistan i was embedded with u.s. troops but always very curious about how a war would affect people in that country where it is being fought. curious about the civilians who are noncombatants.

somebody like that photograph when i first saw it made me realize it was something lacking in the pictures i had made in iraq and afghanistan. i didn't have any access to the population because of cultural differences. a lot of women and children are behind walls, you never see them. when they come out you never see their eyes or their emotions or expressions and i remember being frustrated about that in afghanistan. especially iraq. we have a little more access. those two images jump out for reasons i just described. i always wished i had a chance to get in behind those walls when the battles were being fought to bring home, bring together people's thoughts and feelings as these things are happening. we are all the same. look at these people, these

images and think that could be anybody, that could be an iraq, afghan, american. >> one of the pictures in this book that is arguably one of the most iconic pictures to come out of the vietnam war is a photograph of the young girl running down the highway covered in a calm, screaming as a result of the pain she was in. you are all familiar with the picture. nick took that picture and i thought it would be interesting if he shared with us what happened that day and what it was like to make that picture and events the happened afterwards. >> june 8th, 1972, when i hear a story about the vietcong, highway 1, that morning, leaving the village, 25 miles west of

saigon, took a lot of pictures of refugees leaving their village, part of the morning and dead bodies of vietcong and soldiers. not too long because over 40 years ago, and then these soldiers, coming back highway 1 again before leaving the village and these soldiers, and put a sort of -- bomb, standing outside half a yard and two minutes in, a sky rider dropped and nate palm -- napalm and i

saw people running, peoppeople the village. and when i took a picture, i looked and what happened? took a picture. and her body was burned so badly and i took a picture and when she died i put a can of water on her body, half -- then a raincoat, and her uncle asked me about children in the hospital and my van to the hospital. event in my car all the time i

think i am dying and i tell her we will be there soon. nobody wanted to have her because -- there is more. than i showed my media pass. a big story in the paper everywhere and they all run up. i am not a doctor or anything but what is happening to girls first before i go back to the ap office. i had a picture that day. so many people, children. 9 come to the offithen i come to

all of that, look at my picture. >> and the bureau when nick had come in with these pictures, the dark room attendant 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. there was a debate within the bureau, would it be sent to new york? considering the moral aspects of it. in charge of the photo production in the bureau, new york will see this. it is up to them in the end if we are going to write a story to go with it and we sent that pictures and others from the ceres and new york, there was a debate, it was sent out and it

was widely published, photoshoped to some degree but widely published. >> next we go back, and looked round for the daughter and your daughter almost left. where is my daughter now? in the hospital. she and her husband were there. >> the wonderful part of the story is nick continued to be interested in that young child, helped her and the family in the course of three years left in a war and 75, the whole operation closed, he later picked up her story when she moved to cuba for extra treatment and kept in

touch and they are very close friends today, they go to conferences together and it is a wonderful story about how photographer can go from not just taking the picture of to doing something positive about the victims. it is not so unusual story as you might think. >> two children in canada. >> it might be good to open up to questions if anyone wanted to ask about what they heard or any questions they might have about the coverage of the war or vietnam in general? >> thank you very much. i am interested in photography. back in new york i used to be at i cp and i heard great photographers of the world talking about the war lord pictures in world war ii and

others. my question is is there a different approach as a war photographer than a traditional photographer other than the obvious dangers? is there a different approach use or does it depend on who the photographer is? >> do you want to take that? >> good question. other than physical dangers, you are limited in war in how you can cover things simply because you are not free to move around like you 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 call late trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes, always trying to find balance to make

sure you are fair, that your interpretation of things is fair and balanced. like i was talking about, not having access to the afghan population, 6% of it which is women and adolescent children, to meet that creates an imbalance but there is nothing i can do about it whereas at home there is probably going to be a little bit more access. i thinking general other than looking out for yourself, looking out for people around you when you are there, that is something else to take into account. for the most part you approached your assignments not as assignments, as a way of seeing people. it is about the people you are covering regardless whether it is war or something at home.

sometimes i tell friends and colleagues, at least from me is less about the competition anymore when i am covering conflict but getting the story out. especially if you are embedded and other journalists with you who saw the news organizations, your priorities now are more looking out for each other and making sure everybody is safe. safe tee is always first. you are covering changes a little bit and looking out for people that you are with whether it is older or civilians at that point you realize -- >> i might add to that. in covering conflict the stakes are quite high in the sense that your life is often in great

danger. the scenes that you are photographing are very dramatic, people are dying for lifting the worst moments of their lives and it is your job to photograph them in a way that tells the story but also to some degree preserve their dignity if possible. the combination of all those things, photography has a strong creative talent to it. photojournalism has a great development to it but clearly has a journalistic element to it and so what julie was saying, a lot of what you do in covering these stories is to concentrate on telling the story as effectively as possible. there is so much invested in you being there and to waste that opportunity by merely making pathetic least pleasing pictures

would possibly defeat the purpose so there is a strong tendency, perhaps an obvious thing to say but a strong tendency to focus on the guts of the story in order to communicate that. and it is very mission driven. a common factor is that you hear when you talk to photographers who have gone to conflicts or go to cover wars, they are extraordinarily focused and driven because they believe that their work has value. it is debatable, the power of photography, some people argue it could influence things to some degree. others argue it is futile and a waste of time. i think there is a value in it in the sense that without it we wouldn't know what is going on and we would make the notion of

impunity that much more powerful. by bearing witness to what is going on in dangerous situations where no one else wants to be we are stripping the excuse of impunity away from the people who do these terrible things whether they are politicians or generals or whatever it is. do you have anything to add? >> the government role in coverage and conflict is an important factor. vietnam as santiago lyon mentioned is unique and the government didn't get around to imposing controls over the media. dean rusk stated in 1967 when asked when you are complaining about the media constantly their version of what is happening why don't you impose censorship and he said censorship is too

important a decision to make that influences so much else when a policy functions, we don't feel vietnam is a big enough war to do it but they were unwilling really to sensor the war or impose censorship because lyndon johnson and others kept believing it was a limited war and lyndon johnson had other domestic policy ideas but having said that the military much prefers a controlled environment and that goes back to the american civil war when photographers were all over the battlefields and took the most heard ranting pictures you will ever see and in world war i and ii strict censorship prevailed. both sides, the propaganda chief

of the nazis ordered thousands of german media people not to take a photograph of any dead german soldier. do not take the photograph and the american government decreed that there be no photographs of dead americans be published until 1943 when president roosevelt lifted that quarter because he was concerned about cynicism growing in the american public about the propaganda images they kept seeing in the newspaper about how the war was going. so the memory was strong and the imbedding system is controlling when it is exercised in its entirety, photographers would not be allowed to take pictures

of wounded or dead americans. generally you weren't allowed anywhere near the bodies of american troops and in addition the important part of war coverage along with the picture is the written description, putting the picture into up context that is really meaningful and as the journalists and the and betting system, the ability to control commentary from ordinary soldiers or to control ideas within the military is almost complete. i was embedded several times and they would not let me talk to the intelligence chief of the unit. it was difficult to get the information that would make understanding clearer. of 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 invasion plans and invasion policies, in affect several media including the new york times that apologize not infrequently about the nature of the coverage which was more positive, the american public probably deserve. ..

the way they expressed their, i don't want to say enjoyment of approval of having me there, we like having you here because, you know, 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 voice away. i figured at some point another journalist would come along but how long it would be i don't know. i don't know if that helps answer your question. >> first, thank you all for what, is this on? need to be on? yeah, thanks for what you are all doing and my question sort of dovetails into what nick had done for the little girl and, and thank you for that. and peter said these stories are not that uncommon. these things do happen and we

don't always hear about them. my question is, being in the situation that is you're in which are obviously horrific and having a camera, being so intimate with people i imagine they often look at you as a friendly face, a hopeful face, someone that they could connect to outside of the madness that's going on. i'm wondering what is that like for you all and have you had very, a lot of challenges with that and how you developed, you said before with the soldiers you would draw a line and sort of have that with the soldiers but how is it when you have the children or the mothers or these sort of things, julie you mentioned you didn't have that much access now and peter and nick, seemed like you were really in it with these people. how was it for you in your heart and mind and how was it for them? share whatever you'd like. >> i let nick answer that but pointing about the ap in

vietnam, we hired, we had on our staff vietnamese photographers. there was nick and don accident. , they were vet ma niece. they had experience with the military. they were accepted within the vietnamese communities. because of their friendliness and their determination and eagerness they were accepted with american troops also. but i think that, how do you feel about being with the military? how did you get along, nick, for example? >> vietnam, open media we had no trouble anything to cover. big welcome from media. i think soldiers they are very lonely. media, oh, take my picture. i traveled with all american soldiers and vietnamese mekong delta to central vietnam, everywhere and took a lot of

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

not that they were inaccurate. wes gallagher the ap chief said, you can do anything you like, as long as it is the truth. you make one mistake, i can't protect. 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 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, first cavalry division, there was rarely an stint where you were even criticized by the unit commanders or the soldiers. they felt your presence was sort

of an integral part of how america fights wars, the earn any pyle idea, the beloved reporter of world war ii, that, wrote about american soldiers with great sensitivity and who in fact died in the field with american soldiers as he continued to do it. invariably and to do this day i go to reunions of military units. last night we were at at marine memorial hotel where they put us up and great accomodations. a lot of marines were there and they are really supportive of the book and 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 in vietnam which was repressive on any kind of information coming out of their area and especially like in cambodia, there was one incident where nick long or something was a river port. it got bombed by mistake by american airplanes and that had a lot of coverage but you had like the, the khmir rouge who

were totally brutal. they snuck in '75 into power. they were there. the media hadn't given the american people. when they took over pnom phen. they emptied the city, that was first idea american people had they were psycho killers. and 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 on the other side that totally controlled their media. so their atrocities, their brutalities are kind of covered up until finally, you know, phnom penh is taken over by khmir rouge. >> you're absolutely right.

that is the difference between a democratic form of government and the dictatorships the u.s. has been engaged against. you have to remember 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 a, not a vietcong soldier or a north vietnamese. they were terrorists. terrorists attacked the government outpost. 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 communists are bad. we didn't have to have pictures of them committing atrocities. we were told they're happening all the time. that was the sense about, if our government pronounced it.

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 also the, 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. it is not as though we were coming out and the reason i know that is true, you know, santiago says, we were worked for the associated press with 1500 newspapers. in those days we were probably

2300. 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 mention ad local name or an address certainly that newspaper would headline it. the parents, the mothers, the lovers of the people we're writing about would clip the story and send it to their son. it would arrive two weeks later. i thought that was pretty good. the soldiers knew exactly what we were writing and what we were photographing. we would be going back to these units, they knew what we were doing. they knew who we were talking to. they saw our news product. it was very rare we were denied entry to a unit in the course of the war. maybe half a dozen times, they were for reasons, misinterpretation maybe of something we had written, that

from the soldiers point of view, we were telling the real story of the war, the 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 side 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 strife to do that. in afghanistan and iraq there were very robust networks of journalists photographers, covering aspectses of the story that were impossible for western journalists to cover because it

was simply too dangerous. it is that kind of comprehensive coverage that that strives to give a balanced account of what is going on. i think what happens, often there are many reasons it becomes impossible to tell certain sides of the story because it is simply too dangerous. the coverage we saw out of the khmer rouge takeover in cambodia, it was impossible for westerners to operate there and control on the local populace was such there was no independent journalism. if you look what is happening in syria today, extraordinarily difficult story to cover because of the logistics involved, because of infighting among various rebel groups fighting the assad regime. over the course of last year it was possible to send in teams of journalists to cover the story, very carefully and very

well-planned operations with all sort of backup and logistics surrounding them. but in the last year or so it has 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 whose stories have been made public, some whose stories have not been made public. but it changed the whole equation of the coverage and essentially made it off limits for independent journalism to tell what's going on there. and as as a result the only information that's coming out in many cases a country like syria is agenda-driven information being provided by activist guys on the ground. it is the job of the journalists to interpret that information and verify it and validate it and if they believe in it to use it to tell a story but it is a

far cry from seeing it with your own eyes. it really shifts the way we see a story when the situation on the ground becomes too hazardous. as brave as journalists and news organizations are to covering store is it become as point where it is suicidal. if you go to these places will almost certainly be killed or abducted and quite reasonably no story is felt to be worth a life. and so you have this dynamic. >> it has been some 50 years since vietnam and nick and peter have obviously incredible insights to 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 would be interested to hear a couple of your comments about that, nick and peter. >> that's a pretty big subject. 50 years ago i would feel much too old to answer that. actually it was 40 years ago the war ended, two years will be the 40th anniversary of the fall. but, i'll let nick, 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 the free society? >> i really happy the war end because as vietnamese i traveled, the children, the

bombs kill hundreds and thousand of people in villages. that's why when i took picture of napalm, i said, when will the war be over. 1975 in la and he help me become refugee. help me get my visa to travel to japan and flew to hong kong. i thank you to him and happy with the visa. >> you asked me that you we don't have the time. we would not be the time. i started collecting books on, vietnam the there weren't many books available in english in the '60s. today's there 30,000 titles available on amazon in english about vietnam. and almost everyone of those titles comes up with a theory or another about the war. now i live in orange county

these days and near little saigon where there is many, what we call vietq. vietnamese came out at fall of saigon and established new lives and very successfully. they own the banks and the restaurants and lots of businesses there and they're, 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, they realize and they will admit there were weaknesses within their own government but they feel that they were worth supporting longer than the support that did come. i don't agree with that view point 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 call a domino that had to be held up. if it had fallen, neighboring countries might fall with it and that would mean that the communist push into southeast asia. eisenhower had that idea. kennedy had that idea, early in the administration kennedy agreed to a peace agreement in loose which gave the -- laos which gave the communist half the country and neutral government. ambassador harriman, important official at the time, he negotiated that deal. to my way of thinking kennedy who had ideas that to develop the greenberg ray, the great --

green beret. , force that was essentially fighting early wars in vietnam. he by the end of third term in office, had ordered withdrawal. they were starting to pull american troops out. it strikes me that kennedy was seeing that the american effort to try and create a government that would have the kind of values that america could support, have a bought in vietnam that could perform the kind of military and leadership capabilities to make a new south korea, which was talked about, south vietnam being like south korea, they just didn't have it. kennedy approved the overthrow of president ziem in 1963. the cia