a key fellow at the beginning was an older correspondent named homer bigart. he had been a terrific correspondent in world war ii. and more than any of the other correspondence, he had been willing to criticize u.s. tactics and strategy in world war ii. and that took special bravery in that war. but he accomplished it. he won a lot of renown among his editors. he was not a famous name at home, but he was a reporter's reporter. he spent time in french indochina in the 1950's, got a sense of what the war was about, got a sense of the civil war in vietnam, and had written about that. and then he consented to come back in this time in the early 1960's when the u.s. was starting to get involved in a major way for a short spent, six months. bigart hated vietnam and he thought the american enterprise there was doomed. and he wrote about it honestly. he wrote about the misguided tactics, the misguided efforts to help stop me -- the south vietnamese people who did not want to be helped by the americans. and yet had a big influence on this younger group of reporters. ha