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Saturday Morning News

Helen Thomas and Joe Galloway Discuss the 25th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War

Aired April 29, 2000 - 9:20 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: As Vietnam marks the 25th anniversary of the end of its war with the United States, many people in the U.S. are pausing to remember the conflict and how it has affected their lives -- among them, reporters who kept Americans informed about the war's progress.

Joining us now from Washington, Helen Thomas, UPI's White House correspondent. She covered the Vietnam War from the White House and has written a book about her experiences called "Front Row at the White House." Also joining us, veteran journalist and author Joe Galloway, who spent 16 months in Vietnam as a UPI war correspondent.

Good morning to both of you.

HELEN THOMAS, UPI WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

JOSEPH GALLOWAY, FORMER UPI VIETNAM WAR CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Helen, let's begin with you. There has been a lot of criticism that this war was being micromanaged from Washington, that politicians were misusing the nation's military. What do you remember about that, and how did you cover it?

THOMAS: Well, I think that certainly was an apt criticism. It was. At times there were reports that LBJ, that President Johnson, was really trying to dictate the moves from into the field at 3:00 in the morning from his bedroom at the White House.

Actually, what I remember was the total anguish of both President Johnson and President Nixon, wrestling with decisions that they knew, you know, would go nowhere, really. They could not cope with the fact that they were going -- that the U.S. was going to be defeated unless it went to such drastic means of bombing them back to the Stone Age, which is what General LeMay had recommended, and we were so horrified.

PHILLIPS: Joe, going to the front lines, I read that you weren't so interested in the political aspects of the war, but something a little more reality-based.

GALLOWAY: That's true. I thought that my job was to get out there with the troops and cover the war from the point of the spear, and that's what I tried to do. You know, I know what Helen's talking about. Once I found myself in a Special Forces camp that was under siege by the North Vietnamese. And in the middle of it, the XO, a fellow named Tommy Thompson, said, "Major," he said, "there's a fellow wants to talk to you on the radio." And the major said, "Well, who is it?" And he said, "It's -- well," he said, "it's the president."

And Charlie said, "The president of what?" And he said, "The man says he's the president of the United States of America." And it was Lyndon Johnson. Somehow...

PHILLIPS: And what happened?

GALLOWAY: ... plugged through to talk to this major, who was defending his life and mine, by the way...

THOMAS: Micromanagement, (inaudible).

GALLOWAY: ... yes, he wouldn't tell him what to do, but he gave him the old, "I'm proud of you, you're out there on the frontiers of freedom"...

THOMAS: Bring back the coonskin cap.

GALLOWAY: ... and the guy just sat there looking totally nonplused. I couldn't blame him.

PHILLIPS: Wow. In regard -- or with regard to questions to the president, Helen, you're famous for your very aggressive questioning. Do you remember a question you asked the president that may have stumped him at this time?

THOMAS: Well, I do -- not -- they're never stumped. They're pretty -- you know, you get to be president, you can dance on the head of a pin. But during the 1968 political campaign for the presidency, Richard Nixon said he had a plan to end the war. And that won him a lot of votes, I'm sure.

Reporters were not -- never able to lay a glove on him during the campaign. They were well fed, well housed, and so forth, and kept a distance from the candidate. When -- at his first news conference, I asked President Nixon, after he had been sworn in, what was his plan to end the Vietnam War?

Well, he was very, very vague, but it -- what it amounted to was Vietnamization, which was to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese forces. But four and a half years later, we were still hell out of Hanoi.

PHILLIPS: Joe, what did the soldiers tell you? Did they think that there was a vital natural -- national interest here?

GALLOWAY: I didn't hear that from the soldiers. I never heard that from the soldiers. Basically, the GIs, I think, fought in the end for themselves and their friends next to them, a matter of survival.

They may have, as my friend Phil Caputo wrote in his very good book, "A Rumor of War," arrived carrying their packs and their rifles and convictions that they were going to beat the Vietcong in about 10 days, and 10 days passed and they were left with their rifles and their packs and the war that never ended, but they had lost that conviction. That went very soon for everyone who went into combat in that place.

PHILLIPS: My final question to both of you, if you both could respond quickly, we're unfortunately short on time, access to information, when it comes to war, easier or harder?

THOMAS: Oh, I think it's much harder. The Pentagon apparently learned -- or tried to practice in the Gulf War what -- the mistake they thought in the Vietnam War, which was to let reporters go to the front and know what was going on. In the case of the Gulf War, there was a real blackout.

GALLOWAY: That's -- Helen puts her finger right on it. The -- Vietnam was the most open and freely covered war in the history of our country. You could go anywhere you had the guts to go and stay there as long as you had the guts to stay, and the military seems to have decided in the wake of that that that wouldn't be the case ever again.

PHILLIPS: UPI correspondents Joe Galloway, Helen Thomas, what an honor. Thanks for being with us this morning.

GALLOWAY: Nice to be here, Kyra.

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