I was lucky enough to meet Stanley Karnow when I was still in graduate school at Berkeley, studying Chinese history. Since I was a recently minted veteran, having done a stint as an Army intelligence case officer in Vietnam, we quickly began talking about the war.
A master storyteller, Karnow, who died Sunday at 87, quickly filled my ear with fabulous anecdotes. If I remember correctly, he knew more people in Da Nang than I did. No surprise there: Karnow knew everybody, from Prince Sihanouk to CIA station chiefs throughout the region.
And that meant he knew a lot more about the con game U.S. military commanders in Vietnam were playing on the American public than his editors at TIME Magazine in New York, who for a long time held to the idea that we were waging a great, winning crusade in Southeast Asia.
TIME's editors changed his stories so much, he cracked, that he finally tacked a sign on the door of his Saigon office, below the shiny brass TIME plaque: “Any anything written here and what appears in TIME Magazine is entirely coincidental.”
Karnow also had distinguished careers with The Washington Post, and as a freelance journalist and as an author. His “Vietnam: A History,” a companion book to a celebrated 13-part PBS series in 1983, was praised as a masterwork and sold millions of copies. He later won a Pulitzer Prize for his history of U.S. involvement in the Philippines, "In Our Image."
When he graciously offered a flattering blurb for my own, 1992 Vietnam book, I was speechless: Karnow was everything I wanted to be as a reporter.
“A reporter’s life never stops,” in said in an August 2010 video interview posted by his son, Michael.
When he was based in Hong Kong, he regularly played golf with the CIA and U.S. military intelligence chiefs there, he recounted, “And they would tell me things.” Important things. Things that gave his stories texture, context and nuance.
But Karnow wasn't a waterboy who ran to the keyboard with rumors and innuendo, like so much that passes for journalism these days. He learned early on in Vietnam “to double-check the CIA” with other sources, such as British and French intelligence operatives he knew, because some operatives filed reports that lined up more with American policy than objective facts that could upset U.S. officials.
But the CIA station was hardly a monolith, he learned. There were sharp difference among its own operatives and officials, too, about the progress of the war.
To use a cliché that would surely make his eyes roll, Karnow was a reporter’s reporter. And that annoyed the hell out of people who thought he and other Saigon reporters should “get on the team” and cheer the war effort, no matter the facts.
He's still annoying the knee-jerk flag wavers, even in death, judging by their typically tasteless comments on the lovely obituary by Stephanie Hanes in The Washington Post.
Many more readers who actually knew Karnow, however, are lining up to praise and honor him.
As it should be. Because, above all, Stanley Karnow was an honorable man.
A master storyteller, Karnow, who died Sunday at 87, quickly filled my ear with fabulous anecdotes. If I remember correctly, he knew more people in Da Nang than I did. No surprise there: Karnow knew everybody, from Prince Sihanouk to CIA station chiefs throughout the region.
And that meant he knew a lot more about the con game U.S. military commanders in Vietnam were playing on the American public than his editors at TIME Magazine in New York, who for a long time held to the idea that we were waging a great, winning crusade in Southeast Asia.
TIME's editors changed his stories so much, he cracked, that he finally tacked a sign on the door of his Saigon office, below the shiny brass TIME plaque: “Any anything written here and what appears in TIME Magazine is entirely coincidental.”
Karnow also had distinguished careers with The Washington Post, and as a freelance journalist and as an author. His “Vietnam: A History,” a companion book to a celebrated 13-part PBS series in 1983, was praised as a masterwork and sold millions of copies. He later won a Pulitzer Prize for his history of U.S. involvement in the Philippines, "In Our Image."
When he graciously offered a flattering blurb for my own, 1992 Vietnam book, I was speechless: Karnow was everything I wanted to be as a reporter.
“A reporter’s life never stops,” in said in an August 2010 video interview posted by his son, Michael.
When he was based in Hong Kong, he regularly played golf with the CIA and U.S. military intelligence chiefs there, he recounted, “And they would tell me things.” Important things. Things that gave his stories texture, context and nuance.
But Karnow wasn't a waterboy who ran to the keyboard with rumors and innuendo, like so much that passes for journalism these days. He learned early on in Vietnam “to double-check the CIA” with other sources, such as British and French intelligence operatives he knew, because some operatives filed reports that lined up more with American policy than objective facts that could upset U.S. officials.
But the CIA station was hardly a monolith, he learned. There were sharp difference among its own operatives and officials, too, about the progress of the war.
To use a cliché that would surely make his eyes roll, Karnow was a reporter’s reporter. And that annoyed the hell out of people who thought he and other Saigon reporters should “get on the team” and cheer the war effort, no matter the facts.
He's still annoying the knee-jerk flag wavers, even in death, judging by their typically tasteless comments on the lovely obituary by Stephanie Hanes in The Washington Post.
Many more readers who actually knew Karnow, however, are lining up to praise and honor him.
As it should be. Because, above all, Stanley Karnow was an honorable man.
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5 comments:
Jeff got it right on Stanley.
Karnow was one of the first American journalists on the Vietnam beat and had it pegged right from the first. He was a great inspiration to so many of us who followed him into the paddies and jungles of Vietnam..and tought us it was okay to talk back to your
editors who had a different and false agenda. A year or so ago Stanley Karnow, Barry Zorthian, Richard Holbrook and other old hacks from Asia gathered for dinner. Stanley told how General McCrystal called to ask him what were the main lessons learned from the Vietnam war. Stanley told the General, " What we really learned in Vietnam was that we shouldn't the hell have been there in the first place." R.I.P Stanley Karnow
From Don North
My the latter 13 months of my 19 months in Vietnam (April 1970-Nov 1971) were never written about in any honest way by Time Magazine. Following six months with the (high intensity combat) aviation section of the 199th Light Infantry (Fireball Aviation) I transferred to the 330th Transportation Company (aviation support) at Vung Tau, and into a cesspool of corruption. Our military brass were making money hand over fist in deals facilitated by the 'white mice' (south Vietnamese civilian police) and everything was for sale from high tech Japanese goods from the PX to our own rations we bought back from downtown to eat decently, considering our mess hall appeared to be serving road kill. Numerous soldier complaints bringing investigating congressmen at least got us a few decent meals (for the few days the congressmen hung around.) And the soldier strike over wide areas of the war zone precipitated by the Laos invasion of 1971, negating any chance at a ground intervention by American forces to save a southern army ambushed on a titanic scale by the north. Vietnam being Vietnam, no doubt the north had the order of battle plan before the south had deployed. My former pilot from the 199th, Dudly 'doc' Young, flew so many missions rescuing who they could, he was shot down twice and recovered on both occasion alive (talk about lucky.) And of course we never read about the 30% heroin addicted soldiers relieved by the arrival of Air America flights whenever the heroin supplies were exhausted. I'm guessing Karnow's personal diary would be an interesting read..
Don, thanks for your wonderful recollection and anecdotes. Stanley was a giant among giants.
To Ronald West, thanks for contributing your (albeit awful) memories. Yes, I saw some of that myself. The media's view that Vietnam was a great noble crusade faded--but ever so slowly--over time, until it was too late. Fwiw, I covered a lot of this ground in my 1992 book, "A Murder in Wartime: The Untold Spy Story that Changed the Course of the Vietnam War," used copies of which are available, cheap, through Amazon.
Thank you Jeff, I've just emailed my book seller in Berlin requesting a copy-
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