Interview with Philip Caputo

Caputo, Philip ; McKiernan, Stephen

Philip Caputo is a Chicago born journalist and novelist. Caputo attended Loyola and Purdue Universities and served in the U.S Marine Corps for three years. He has written 16 books throughout his life and was nominated for the National Book Award for Horn of Africa.

2009-12-12

In Copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

140:17

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Phil Caputo
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 12 December 2012
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:02):
... Going here. When you think of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

PC (00:00:09):
The first thing that comes to mind. Well, okay. I was not ready for that one for some reason. Well, the war does to me. I cannot think of a specific time or scene in the war, but that is what I think of. I mean, I always revert with that era back to Vietnam, the war.

SM (00:00:50):
When-

PC (00:00:51):
And then probably the other thing, of course, it sticks in my mind now I think of it, let us say there is two first things. One is just the war in general, and then more specifically was the Democratic convention riots in (19)68 in Chicago, which I happened to cover part of that.

SM (00:01:12):
Oh, wow.

PC (00:01:13):
... As a Cub reporter, so that is probably why it sticks in my mind.

SM (00:01:18):
Well, since you mentioned that, what really happened at that convention in (19)68? Who was responsible or was it both of the police being overly brutal or a lot of irresponsible young people creating habits?

PC (00:01:35):
Oh, it was absolutely both. It was like a bull fight between the matador and the bull. You cannot have one without the other. And now you can argue as to who was the matador and who was the bull. But there was kind of dynamic operating there where, I cannot say all the protestors because there were thousands of them, but many of them. And particularly I think some of the more radical leaders, wanted to provoke a violent police response and a lot of the cops wanted to respond violently so they in effect provoked each other.

SM (00:02:33):
When you think about that experience, what did you think about America at that time? Because you insert in Vietnam, I think in (19)65 and (19)66, came back home. Then as we get into the (19)67, (19)68 period, things kind of rev up in the United States in terms of anti-war. But you probably had a lot of different feelings as a person who served, came back, and then was back as a reporter. Just your thoughts on just being in that experience and your thoughts on America at that time.

PC (00:03:10):
Well, I remember distinctly, and it started well before actually (19)67 or (19)68 when I got back from Vietnam in the summer of (19)66 and I got home right after some of the Watts riots in Los Angeles, the race riots. And then similar riots occurred in (19)66, I think also in Chicago, which was where I was from. And I remember when I flew home reading, seeing these headlines in the paper about these really extensive race riots, for lack of a better term, I guess, and feeling really uneasy. And that increased his time went on. So that by (19)68, I had the feeling that America was going to fragment into something like a new civil war. And I really felt that the society was beginning to pull itself into pieces. And a lot of it too was reflected in a lot of the pop music of the day, that Creedence Clearwater song, Bad Moon Rising, and oh, I think it was, I cannot remember. I do not think he wrote it then, but it certainly embodied some of the spirit, like Fortunate Son and some of those tunes, that had this almost doom haunted quality about them. I really felt like we were going to be lucky to hang together as a society and as a country.

SM (00:05:27):
When you look at that Boomer generation, which is that young generation that was born between (19)46 and (19)64, what are some of the qualities that you admired in the young generation at that time and the qualities you are least admired?

PC (00:05:45):
Well, I can sort of speak as an almost outsider. I think I told you in the email is I am not a Boomer.

SM (00:05:54):
I want to mention that over half the people we have interviewed are not Boomers but they lived during the time.

PC (00:05:59):
Yeah. I am four years shy of it.

SM (00:06:01):
Right.

PC (00:06:05):
Well, I think the quality that I admired most was, again, we have to qualify these things. We are talking about a segment of that particular generational cohort, but a significant segment both in terms of its numbers and of its educational level or its leadership level would be a better way to put it. And what I admired was its commitment to improving the world, of wanting to make a better world. It was real. And I think there was definitely a very passionate feeling throughout that generation toward that end. And this is what I least admired about it, is that it was a generation that had never really known hardship. It was probably one of the very first truly privileged generations in America. And so consequently, whenever what it wanted and what its goals were and so forth, were frustrated. I think it tended to act immaturely, almost, I do not know. There were sometimes some of those war anti-war protests that I covered as a reporter almost struck me as these vast mass temper tantrums. And unfortunately, a lot of its political commitment got co-opted, even commercialized and became very self-indulgent.

SM (00:08:20):
How do you respond to this feeling that many felt that they were the most unique generation in American history? Because I can remember being on college campus at that time and this feeling of community and togetherness, that we are a generation that is going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, end war. We are going to do things that no other generation has done, bring peace to the world. This feeling of uniqueness that they had, and I think some Boomers still have it as they approach 60 years of age. The oldest Boomers now are approaching early retirement [inaudible] social security, so, but some still believe that. So, what are your thoughts on their feeling unique?

PC (00:09:05):
Well, I do not know about unique. There was a generation in the thirties that was certainly is politically committed as the generation of the (19)60s, maybe committed to some different ends to improving a lot of the common man to things like the Labor Movement and so forth. And they were very committed and they wanted to change the world in the way things had been done for decades, if not centuries. But I would say that the (19)60s generation was if not unique, certainly highly unusual. And they did. As I said, one of the things I admired is they wanted to end all of these ills of, like you said, end the war, poverty, end homophobia, end the exploitation of the environment and so forth, end sexism. By all those movements, the environmental movement, feminist movement, and the civil rights movement, although they certainly did not begin during the (19)60s, that the whole revolutionary impulse advanced those causes. And interestingly, just as something aside is that the fury generated by the war, the anti-war movement, I think was the fire and the boiler. I have a feeling that had there been no Vietnam War and no anti-war movement, all of those movements I just talked about, the civil rights, the feminist’s movement, and the environmental movement, and probably, well, those three [inaudible], I think they would have proceeded at a slower pace and probably at a more peaceful pace.

SM (00:11:30):
It is interesting because that was my next question. Because oftentimes all these movements developed when they were young, and people have different feelings of these movements as they have gotten older and how effective they are compared to what they were then. One of the things that is interesting is many of these movements, if you see a protest, many of these same groups that were unique in their own way, were all together at the protests. You have to include the Native American movement, the Ang group, certainly the Chicano movement, and the gay and lesbian movement along with civil rights, anti-war, the women's movement and the environmental movement. And I even believe the disability movement was starting then so that these were all kind of connected.

PC (00:12:16):
Yeah, they were. They all drew energy, I think. They were cables leading to the same generator, and I think they were all, again, fueled by the same impulse which was to change the world for the better.

SM (00:12:38):
This is a question I have asked everyone. When you hear people like Newt Gingrich and George Will and other political pundits criticize the (19)60s generation or the era of the (19)60s and (19)70s as the time that America really started going backward, the breakdown of American society. There will always be commentaries where the divorce rate began then, lack of commitment and in terms of family, victim mentality was really started around then, the drug culture, the breakup of the American family, you name it. And the Democratic party paid a heavy price in (19)72, and George McGovern lost. And I can remember Barney Frank wrote a book speaking frankly saying the Democratic party better disassociate itself from that left group that was anti-war or that party will be destroyed. Just your thoughts on these criticisms that all the problems in American society are based on that period.

PC (00:13:50):
Put it this way, it is a half-truth. In other words, what they are saying is true insofar as it goes, but what they are not saying makes it somewhat of a falsification. I am convinced that a lot of the good things, at least to my mind good things, that have happened in America since then would not have happened had it not been for, again, the call it that revolutionary highly idealistic spirit. The problem is that I think in any social movement... Well, let me back up a second. It is not unlike what a lot of economic conservatives, when they talk about capitalism, they talk about capitalism's creative destruction, if you are familiar with that term. That is kind of what happened in the (19)60s. There is no doubt that, again, the self-indulgent face of that generation is largely responsible for the prevalence of drug use in America. The idea that society had to be remade from the bottom up has been responsible for the breakup of the American family or partly responsible, again, the self-indulgence for the higher divorce rate, but only in part. So, in other words, a lot of things that a George will or a Newt Gingrich say, again, are true insofar as they go, but they leave out the other side of the argument.

SM (00:16:10):
What were the watershed moment when the (19)60s began and when the (19)60s ended?

PC (00:16:20):
Well, I have actually talked about this in some speeches I have given. And to my own mind, I certainly would not speak as some kind of historian who is giving you something chiseled in stone. To my own mind. The (19)60s began with the assassination of John Kennedy in November 21st, 1963, and they ended with the fall of Saigon.

SM (00:16:57):
That was April 30th of 1975, I believe.

PC (00:17:01):
Yeah. So, what we called the (19)60s actually was only part of the (19)60s and was also part of the (19)70s.

SM (00:17:13):
I have asked this question, and again, I can get different responses. But if you were in a room with 500 Boomers and these Boomers were from all over the country, and they were of all ethnic groups, males, female, different qualities, and you asked them if is there one event in your life that had the greatest impact on you, what do you think that event would be? And we're talking about Boomer lives that had lots of events.

PC (00:17:47):
Yeah. Boy, that would be a one event. Well, probably again, this Boomer generation since some of them were, I think do not sociologists classify it as being up people born up to 1964?

SM (00:18:07):
Yes.

PC (00:18:09):
So I got to qualify that a little bit. I got to split my answer. I would say for older Boomers, the assassination of John Kennedy would be the signal event. For younger ones, I would call it the Kent State shootings.

SM (00:18:32):
Right. Now, I have a question on that later in the interview that we will go into. How important in your views were the college students in ending the Vietnam War? All the protests on college campuses?

PC (00:18:49):
I do not think very effective at all.

SM (00:18:52):
Explain in detail or just your thoughts.

PC (00:18:57):
Well, first of all, what really ended the war was the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam in 1975. But I think you are really talking about our part in the war. And what led to the withdrawal of American forces from there was the growing perception on the part of the American mainstream, the American middle class, what Nixon called the silent majority, that the war was futile, that we were wasting many lives and a lot of money over there toward no end or an uncertain end. And I think that is what led, we can argue about Nixon's how much withdrawing he really did have American forces, but he did begin to withdraw them even if it took it four years. And I think that is really what ended the war. Probably if there was one event that encapsulated that feeling, it was the moment when Walter Cronkite, the great face of the American mainstream, said at the end of his newscast that, I do not recall his exact words, but he pretty much told the American public that his experiences in Vietnam had led him to the conviction that it was not a winnable war and that we ought to get out.

SM (00:20:48):
And again, this is just from your personal observations from being a reporter, a writer, an observer of America over the past 40 plus years, do you think Boomers have been good parents and now grandparents? And I preface this by saying that the generation is often looked upon as an activist generation, but only really 15 percent in my readings of the period were involved in any kind of an activism and 85 percent just went on with their lives.

PC (00:21:23):
Yeah, I wanted to bring that up too.

SM (00:21:24):
But subconsciously though, probably all of them were somewhat affected by this. And I am just curious as your thoughts on if you feel the Boomer generation of 74 to 78 million depending on what you read, have been good parents, not only in terms of sharing what it was like when they were young and giving their sons and daughters a belief in idealism that they can be positive change agents for the betterment of society, just activism or just your thoughts on them as parents and now as believe it or not as grandparents?

PC (00:22:01):
Yeah, I do not think I could answer that for when you are talking, what did you say, 74 million people?

SM (00:22:12):
Yeah.

PC (00:22:15):
I just know about my wife, my second wife, is a Boomer who was born in (19)53, and my sister-in-law who was born in (19)55 as a Boomer, let me think. I got friends of mine who were born in the late forties. I am just speaking of them. The ones that I know, that is all I can tell you.

SM (00:22:37):
That is fine. That is fine.

PC (00:22:38):
The ones that I know have been certainly I would say probably better parents than I was. I was really an old school parent, old school father, kind of disassociated somewhat from the lives of my children. I was the stern, ex-marine disciplinarian kind of thing. And the ones I have seen were much more involved, I think, in the lives of their children and really hands on in getting to do well in school and to achieve something in life. That is about all I can say. And I am talking about maybe at most 10 people, 10 sets of parents I should say. And I could not speak for such a huge ass number.

SM (00:23:49):
This is something very important. I got two more big questions here, and I am going to get into really direct questions on your experiences in Vietnam and the impact, and your writing and everything. I have to read this one though. I took a group of students when I was working at Westchester University, it must have been about 10 years ago now. We took a group of 14 student leaders to Washington DC to meet Senator Edmund Muskie. And we were able to arrange this because Senator Nelson was a friend of his, and we had a series of meeting former senators. And one of the questions the students came up with was a question that we asked him, the one I am going to read to you, and we got an unusual response from him. And let me read it here. Do you feel Boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, the division between Black and White, divisions between those who supported authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. What role did the wall play in healing divisions? Or was it primarily a healing for veterans? And do you feel that the Boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the statement, "Time heals all wounds," a truth? And I just want to mention that we thought Senator Muskie was going to talk about the (19)68 convention, which he was the candidate. And he kind of gave a melodramatic pause and he said, "I just saw the Ken Burns series in the Civil War when I was in the hospital." He had just gotten out of the hospital. "And we have not healed since the Civil War." And then he went out to talk for about 10, 15 minutes on that and never even talked about (19)68. Your thoughts on the healing issue in America. Is this an issue?

PC (00:25:47):
Well, I would not call it an issue. I would simply say that first of all, I really understand where Muskie was coming from when he mentioned the Civil War. Because again, in certain talks that I would give on topics like this one, I have talked about the American Civil War and how the repercussions of it just echoed and echoed for at least a century after Appomattox and probably longer than a century. And again, we must be careful, but I guess we have to for sake of argument of setting up these dichotomies, those who supported the troops and those who did not and blah, blah, blah. But just for the sake of argument, we will say that they existed. Well, it is quite obvious that among that Boomer generation, that those divisions in attitude and outlook and politics have echoed very loudly down to our own bay. And all you had to do was take a look at the 2004 presidential election. That is the one that I have cited quite often, is that all of those serpents that have been crawling around in the mines of the Boomer generation came out when Kerry ran against Bush.

SM (00:27:29):
Yes.

PC (00:27:30):
It was almost like the two of them were incarnations of the two faces of that particular generation.

SM (00:27:42):
Could you talk a little bit-

PC (00:27:43):
I remember actually being called by, I do not know why he called me, but he did. I was called by a reporter from the Houston Chronicle during all that business of the Swift boat veterans and so forth. And he asked what I thought about it. And I said, "Well, here we are involved in two other wars now, the Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are re-fighting this one," I said, "That took place 35 years ago." I reminded him that more time had passed between 2004 and the end of the Vietnam War than it had passed between the Custer Massacre and the beginning of World War I. And he agreed. He said he was 33 or years old or something at the time, or 35, and he said he was just stunned by this. He said, "Why are these guys re-fighting these old battles?" Well, it is the same reason that I guess the South and the North and the Confederates and the Union people really re-fought the Civil-

PC (00:29:03):
People really re-fought the Civil War in one form or another for, as I say, a century after the last shot was fired.

SM (00:29:12):
That is really interesting. When I asked that question to Senator Nelson, he said, "Well, people do not go across Washington or are not walking on down the street of Washington DC with lack of healing on their wrists or on their shirts." But he did say Vietnam will forever have an impact on the body politic, and I thought that was very prophetic. And Mr. Caputo, one of the interesting things is that just about every foreign policy happening that takes place, people always talk about Vietnam. It's amazing.

PC (00:29:49):
[inaudible] Right now, with Afghanistan, is that second thing.

SM (00:29:52):
If you recall when President Reagan came into power, he said, "America is back." And he emphatically was saying, from the divisions that we had back in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, and he was going to change America back to the way it was, kind of like John Wayne. And then of course, President Bush senior talked about the Vietnam syndrome is over. And again, I am going to get into some direct questions here, but when you think of Ronald Reagan's presidency and what he meant to America, and when you think about George Bush Sr and his presidency and saying the Vietnam syndrome was over, as a Vietnam vet, what were your thoughts on those two presidents and what they said?

PC (00:30:36):
Well, if we take George Bush Sr first, when he said the Vietnam syndrome, he was defining it very narrowly, and not even toward foreign policy, it was toward military action. And he was just basically saying that we are no longer fearful of committing military forces toward the defense or furtherance of our interests, the way we had been, I guess, paralyzed or semi-paralyzed in the wake that Vietnam. That is what he was saying. Then, I think he was right about that. In other words, that he was correct in his analysis of it, I think somewhat to our misfortune. I think had we been a bit more reluctant, we may not have gotten involved in what I still regard as this really stupid and unnecessary war in Iraq. Now, as far as Reagan went, I think what happened there was that the voice of the other people you were talking about, that 85 percent who had gotten on with their lives, or perhaps that 85 percent whose voice is heard in the Newt Gingrich’s and the George Will’s, that particular aspect of the boomer generation found its hero. When I think of Reagan though, the thing that troubles me, and by the way, I voted for him, and I am a lifelong Democrat. And I voted for him the first time, with Carter and all that, and then did not the second time. But the one thing that troubled me about his administration was I think the elevating of that materialistic element in the American character into a kind of, I do not know, almost a dogma, a sacred text. I remember when he said that something about the great glory of America, or the great thing about America is that anybody can become a millionaire. And now, that is been with us probably maybe our entire history, but certainly since the advent of the industrial age in America. But I remember being struck by that, and I said, "That is it? That is what this country is all about? Becoming a millionaire?" And I think that that led a lot to that, to what I would call the transformation of the self-indulgent aspect of the boomer generation into that scramble in the (19)80s to just make lots and lots and lots of money.

SM (00:34:08):
Yeah, I think-

PC (00:34:08):
I certainly saw all kinds of boomers who told me that they had been in anti-war protests, stuff like that, who were working on Wall Street and raking it in. I can remember one guy, as a matter of fact, we were in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel, he and his wife, and me and my wife. And I do not know, he had been in a couple of marches and all that. Now, I think he was some sort of rising muckety muck with Salomon Brothers or Goldman Sack, I forget which. And we were drinking martinis. And then I said, "Oh, man, we got to get back to Connecticut, my wife and me, and we got to catch a cab and catch a train." He says, "Oh, fuck the cab, fuck the train." And he just gets on the phone and [inaudible] this stretch limo and takes us all home. So that, to me, was the Reagan era. That is one of the things that bothered me about that era was. And then I think too, is that just in a specific policy argument, that deficit spending that he led us into-

SM (00:35:36):
You still there?

PC (00:35:37):
... has been really detrimental. And his breaking up of labor unions, when I told you I am an old-time democrat, that [inaudible] electrical...

SM (00:35:47):
Oh, hold on one second. Can you hold on one second?

PC (00:35:51):
Yeah, sure.

SM (00:35:51):
Okay. Somebody is trying to get... You still there?

PC (00:35:53):
Yeah. Still here.

SM (00:35:55):
That was my brother.

PC (00:35:56):
Oh, okay.

SM (00:35:58):
Go ahead. That is okay. Go ahead.

PC (00:36:03):
Oh [inaudible]. See, where was I? Hold on.

SM (00:36:05):
You were a martini and you were going to fly back and...

PC (00:36:09):
Oh, yeah. Well, I think that was when I mentioned that Reagan also, I think, led to, accelerated the breakup of the American labor movement, which I think has been detrimental to our society. I think it is hardened class lines. I think it has been partly responsible for the lack of growth in wages for the American working man and woman. And I criticize them for that. I was sorry I voted for him for that reason alone.

SM (00:36:51):
No, a lot of people, in recent articles, said that part of the problems we are having in America in the economy today is that self-indulgent boomer generation. Spend, spend, spend, spend, materialism, and then of course, the credit card problems and everything. So, a lot of blames been put on them even for that.

PC (00:37:11):
Yeah. Well, I think that that is going a bit far. I see all these people who pouring into Walmart, or at least they were before the economy collapsed.

SM (00:37:30):
Exactly.

PC (00:37:30):
And I do not think they were responding to some sort leadership from the boomer generation in that. I just think that there is a lot of reasons why we're economically here. But I think that some of Reagan's policies are certainly responsible.

SM (00:37:47):
If you were to just respond directly to this question, why did the Vietnam War end? Why did it end? Some people say it ended when body bags came, when families in middle America had their boys are coming home in body bags in middle America. That that was really the beginning of the end. Why did we lose that war?

PC (00:38:15):
Well as, wait just a second. Could you hold on one second?

SM (00:38:21):
Yep.

PC (00:38:21):
I thought I heard somebody at the door.

SM (00:38:24):
Okay.

PC (00:38:24):
May not have been. Hold on.

SM (00:38:26):
Yep. Yep.

PC (00:38:27):
It was false alarm.

SM (00:38:32):
Okay.

PC (00:38:33):
Now, the question was is why did we lose the war?

SM (00:38:36):
Yes.

PC (00:38:38):
Well, I think it has been pointed out in a lot of, not just books and interpretations, but the direct testimony of the Lyndon Johnson tapes, that a lot of people, that Johnson, Senator Russell back then, and then a lot of the great minds of that time knew that the war was not winnable to begin with. So why was it not winnable? Is that it was basically a civil war between, just as ours was, between the north and the south. The north was as motivated by Vietnamese nationalism and a drive or desire to unite the country as it was by Marxist ideology. In many ways, Marxist ideology just simply provided the framework and the discipline for those nationalistic aims to be realized. There is a lot of strategic military reasons. We had extremely long lines of supply and communication. We were fighting in an alien culture, about which we knew next to nothing. It was partly a conventional war, but partly also an insurgency, and it's always very difficult for foreign powers to win insurgencies. And I think for all those reasons, and in the end, probably the main reason was is it was always the South Vietnamese's war to win or lose. Yeah, South Vietnamese society was too fragmented and too confused in its aims to win the war against the north. But I think what happened in (19)75, there is all sorts of people say, "Oh, if we had sent the B-52s in there, that the North would not have won. Well, yes, we probably would have stopped them in (19)75. And then I would say that in 1977, they would have tried the same thing again, and we would have just gone on and on and on.

SM (00:41:28):
One of the qualities that somewhat linked to the boomers is this issue of trust. Boomers went through their lives seeing leaders lie to them. Of course, Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Nixon and Watergate, even in recent years, as boomers got older, the questions of President Kennedy, how much did he know about the DM overthrow? And Sorensen's tried to clarify that in his latest book, but there were still questions. And even young boomers saw President Eisenhower lying on TV about the U2 incident. And I remember that, coming home from school and seeing him say those things. The next day, he admitted he had lied or had not told the truth. And of course, we would go on and on and on through a lot of different presidents, whether they lied or did not quite tell the truth. When I was in college, I remember a college professor telling me that the issue of trust is very important, if you are to be a success in life as a human being. And to not trust others means that you may not be a success yourself in life. And I asked myself, that is always stuck with me. And Boomers just never... Or the (19)60s was just a-a period where many of them did not trust anybody in positions of responsibility, whether they be a university president or a vice president of student affairs or a minister or a priest or a politician or a president or a corporate leader, anybody in a position of responsibility, there was a lacking trust. Your thoughts on whether this is indeed a quality that many in the boomer generation had? And if this is a really negative quality to have as boomers age, what has this done in terms of raising their children to think the same?

PC (00:43:29):
Well, first of all, yeah, question one is that, yes, I do think that the distrust of official authority, maybe not now, but certainly was a characteristic of many of that generation, not all. Do not forget, again, we're talking about this percentage of them that was the most visible and the most vocal. But it was justified. The fact of the matter is they and the entire American public were lied to in big ways, repeatedly. And Winston Churchill once famously said that during wartime, the truth must be guarded by a body guard of lies. And yes, every now and then, it is necessary for national security reasons to lie or at least to shape the truth or withhold the truth. But in this case here, our national security was not involved, whether we're talking about Vietnam, or there was other things going on Southeast Asia, Laos and Thailand, I remember was there was problems there and so forth. And the Diem execution is another example. Our national security was not involved there. These were the secrets of the CIA. So that boomers who distrusted official authority, in many of its forms, were right to feel so. Because the highest levels of their government were lying to them consistently and in ways that could and did affect their very lives. Because of those lies, there's 60,000 dead guys up there now, memorialized on that wall. And probably twice as many without arms or legs or eyes or even minds. Now, so far as it being a trait that is going to, I do not know what, make you a failure or something like that, I do not buy that. I think that questioning authority is basically a good thing. Because I am an old reporter, so skepticism is part of my DNA.

SM (00:46:30):
All right.

PC (00:46:32):
Yeah. So that skepticism's part of my DNA as an old reporter, but I think that one should be skeptical of what one hears.

SM (00:46:43):
Could you comment on, again, how important the music was of the boomer generation, in terms of not only rock folk and the Motown sound, but how important that was in inspiring the generation? It obviously had quite an impact. And secondly, what were the books that you were reading that you felt had the greatest impact, not only on you, but on these young boomers as they were in the (19)60s and (19)70s?

PC (00:47:18):
I think that as far as the famed music of that era, the protest music and all that, obviously it coalesced as all art, pop, whether it is high art or low art or pop art or some other art coalesced, the spirit of the times gave people anthems that they could identify with. Although, I think the music, like most of the culture of the time, I meant the artistic culture, was more a product of the times than it actually shaped times. Two books that I remember most, that affected me the most during that time were Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five.

SM (00:48:11):
Huh. What did those books say to you?

PC (00:48:16):
Well, Catch-22, first of all, is that on a literary sense, it kind of showed that the traditional novel need not be the only form of the novel, that there were radical new ways to go about writing a novel. I would say that for both of them, particularly for Slaughterhouse five. And both of them just discussed, explored at great length, not the tragedy of war, but the absurdity of it. And, of course, Catch-22 went beyond that, and just into an examination of the absurdity of modern bureaucratic society, with the military that Heller described being a microcosm of that society.

SM (00:49:22):
What do you think of the movies that have been made since the war and trying to explain the Vietnam experience, your thoughts on them? And secondly, well, just respond to that first.

PC (00:49:38):
Well, I think that it has been pretty uneven. Except for the most surrealistic of all the films. That was Apocalypse Now. I have not been overly impressed with what Hollywood has turned out [inaudible]. Although there was a rather obscure film called Go Tell It to the Spartans.

SM (00:50:18):
Oh, wow.

PC (00:50:18):
That came out, and I think it was Burt Lancaster was in it. And I thought that that was a very good film that it certainly, but it looked at an aspect of the Vietnam War rather than was a kind of big, sweeping epic of the whole war. So, no, I have not been overwhelmed by any of films.

SM (00:50:46):
What other books on Vietnam that do you really like? Whether they be novels or just non-fiction books that you really think are the best, for the respect to telling the story about Vietnam in the (19)60s?

PC (00:51:04):
Well, I could not say the (19)60s. I would have to think about that. But as far as the Vietnam War goes, for my own taste, the two best novels were Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried. But you can argue The Things They Carried is really a novel or a series of short stories, but we will not get into that hairsplitting at the moment. I think there were several other very fine novels about it, that were more traditional kinds of novels, but that were very, very good. Like Webb's Fields of Fire, and Joseph Del Vecchio's The 13th Valley. Those were more in the kind of Norman Mailer Naked and the Dead tradition. But I think they were very good. The best nonfiction that I have read about it was, without question, again, there's some really good ones, but was, without question, was A Bright Shining Lie, Sheehan's.

SM (00:52:36):
What do you think of how-

PC (00:52:37):
But followed by, I would say, followed very closely by Fire in the Lake, The Best and the Brightest, and Once Upon a Distant War, which was not so much about the war, it was about the media or press coverage about the war, but it was very, very, very good.

SM (00:52:58):
What did you think of David Halberstam's The Making of a Quagmire?

PC (00:53:07):
I guess that is sort of overshadowed in my... No, I was not bowled over by it the way I was by the other ones.

SM (00:53:15):
And one last book I want to mention, and did you have a chance to read Fortunate Son by Lewis Puller?

PC (00:53:21):
No, I did not.

SM (00:53:22):
Go ahead, it is a great book.

PC (00:53:24):
Yeah. I was told it was, and I think by the time it came out, I was kind of saturated with the subject.

SM (00:53:33):
Photography has been very important part of any era. It explains an era. The picture says a thousand words. When you think of the Vietnam, but when you think of the (19)60s, what are the photography pictures that first come to mind? I have three that I really pinpointed here, but I would like your responses before I mention my three.

PC (00:53:56):
Well, let us see. I got to think about as far as Vietnam goes, one, in fact, there is a signed copy of it hangs on my wall. It was Don McLellan's photograph from the Battle of Wei during the Tet Offensive, of what appears to be this shell shocked Marine. I forgot if he has got a title for it or not. And it's on the more recent paperback, the 1996 paperback edition of Rumor of War has a sepia tone version of that photograph as its cover. If you can take a look at it.

SM (00:54:42):
Okay.

PC (00:54:43):
Then the second one, again, from Vietnam, would be Larry Burrow's photograph of these wounded Marines on this miserable shell-pocked muddy hilltop, somewhere near the DMZ, and one guy has got bandage around his eyes.

SM (00:55:05):
Yep, I remember that one. Yeah.

PC (00:55:06):
And he is reaching his hand out to somebody else. That photograph. And then there is, and I cannot remember the photographer on this one, but there is a haunting picture of a medevac, and it is a captain deep in the jungle somewhere with a dead soldier covered by a body bag next to him. And he is calling a helicopter in through some clearing in the jungle. And there is this almost ethereal light shining down on this captain as he looks toward the sky. It could almost be corny, but it is not.

SM (00:55:54):
Wow.

PC (00:55:54):
Those three. Boy, now, far as the (19)60 era goes, but I cannot think of any specific.

SM (00:56:09):
The three that I was thinking of was the girl standing over the body at Kent State.

PC (00:56:16):
Right. I was about to say that one. And, of course, I know we're back to Vietnam though, but it was the famous one of the AP photograph of the Napalm Girl.

SM (00:56:30):
Yep. That is Kim-

PC (00:56:31):
The little girl with her clothes blown off.

SM (00:56:33):
Kim Phuc.

PC (00:56:33):
But yeah. Yeah. And there was another one from the (19)60s, and it is just vague in my mind, but I-

SM (00:56:46):
There is the other one that was the two athletes, the (19)68 Olympics, Tommy Smith and Carlos raising their fists.

PC (00:56:55):
Yeah. No, that was not one of mine. This was-

SM (00:57:00):
My Lai?

PC (00:57:01):
No, it was not that either. It was something from that Chicago convention riot. But I cannot remember who the photographer was and exactly was, but it was this picture of this protestor with this blood coming down over his face after he has been clubbed. And it looks like all the little trickles of blood look like cracks in a window pane.

SM (00:57:31):
Wow.

PC (00:57:31):
But that is all I can, that one’s sticks in my mind.

SM (00:57:38):
There is three quotes I want to mention from period that may define this period. One of the quotes is Malcolm X, "By any means necessary." The second one is the quote from Bobby Kennedy, which I believe was a Henry David Thoreau original quote. And that is, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were, and ask why not." And the third one is from a Peter-

SM (00:58:03):
... were and ask why not? And the third one is from a Peter Max poster that was very popular on college campuses in the early (19)70s. And on the wording on that one was, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." It was those three, from different angles, from a more radical, from Malcolm to the idealistic beliefs that many boomers had with Bobby Kennedy, and then the kind of a hippie love and peace from Peter Max. Do those three quotes kind of define the boomer generation when they were young and in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, or... Of course We Shall Overcome is another one, but just your thoughts.

PC (00:58:49):
Well, I think that they do encapsulate, or almost aphoristically express some of the main elements of the zeitgeist of the (19)60s. Yeah, sure.

SM (00:59:08):
I have got some questions here now directly related to your experiences. When you came home from Vietnam, how were you treated?

PC (00:59:20):
Well, when I first got back, of course I remember I landed at two o'clock in the morning with just a couple of other guys at Glenview Naval Air Station near Chicago. Was a rather dreary homecoming. My parents were there to pick me up. The anti-war protest movement was not really underway the summer of 1966, but there were some... No, that barking means something. Just a second.

SM (01:00:06):
Okay.

PC (01:00:08):
That means somebody is at the door.

SM (01:00:10):
Yep.

PC (01:00:10):
All right, come here, come-come. Sage. Come. Come here. Come here. Get away from the door. Come here. Just a sec.

SM (01:00:22):
Yep. That is okay. The next question I wanted to ask you is...

PC (01:00:33):
Oh wait, just one sec. I want to... And the shed's open. All right, go ahead.

SM (01:00:42):
Yep. Not when you returned, but when a lot of the vets returned back in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, what did most of the troops think about the anti-war people back home? And I am not only talking about the college students now, I am talking about the politicians, the leaders that were along with the students that were anti-war.

PC (01:01:06):
Oh, well, I think that... By the way, I just want to back up a second, when I was mentioning that there were not a lot of anti-war protests when I came back in (19)66, but I do remember one moment when I was back on leave, and I was in Chicago and my Marine Corps haircut gave me away. And I was standing on a corner with a friend of mine near downtown Chicago, and a carload of kids came by and they yelled something at me about being a pig or something like that, and threw all of these McDonald's scraps at me and a bag of hamburger and french fries scraps. So that did not make me feel too welcome. But, I think that probably most veterans felt... most soldiers, whether it was by the college kid protestors themselves or by the politicians, I think they felt kind of betrayed, if there was a general feeling.

SM (01:02:29):
Were Vietnam vets discriminated against upon their return?

PC (01:02:32):
Yeah.

SM (01:02:32):
And I am going to say this in the area of jobs, service groups and so forth. I know my very first job at Ohio University, there was a Vietnam vet who I got to know quite closely, and he had two kids, and it was 1973. And the university was way ahead of its game, and they had to put Vietnam vets in the area with minorities in terms of possibly being discriminated against. What are your thoughts on America, say, in the first five to 10 years, and how they looked at Vietnam vets upon their return?

PC (01:03:11):
Oh, I think it was, generally speaking, a very negative viewpoint. And I think that what you just said is correct, is that in effect, no matter what race you were or ethnic group, just being a Vietnam veteran almost automatically made you a member of a minority group that was looked upon with suspicion by the general society. And even contempt. And there was discrimination against... and I mean job discrimination, particularly in the academic world. So, no feeling on that.

SM (01:04:00):
Was the reason... We are not talking about the anti-war people now, we are talking about the government, people who hire people for jobs. Was it because of incidents like My Lai, the massacre, there was a perception that all Vietnam vets could commit those kinds of crimes? Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, they could crack at any time? What was the reason why they felt this way? Because I have stories of people, Vietnam vets who would go to the VFWs and they were not welcome. And they are welcomed with open arms now. But then they were not.

PC (01:04:38):
Well, I think that at the VFW where this is where some of the contempt came in, is that they were associated with a losing war. That they were losers in all senses of the term. They were losers as individuals, they were part of a losing army, and mind you, that most of the VFW guys were World War II guys and Korea guys and the World War II veterans, at least could say that they were members of the most triumphant army in American history. And I think that the society in general, there was this viewpoint of the Vietnam veteran as a so-called ticking time bomb, someone who was mentally disturbed as a result of his experiences. And then, I think at a deeper level, because a lot of horrible things did happen in Vietnam, people did not want to be reminded that these veterans were really themselves. They did not want to be reminded that the American young man was capable of doing some pretty terrible things in the conditions of battle stress.

SM (01:06:22):
But you bring out-

PC (01:06:23):
I mean, these things have always happened in battle. And I do not think they happened in Vietnam any more frequently than they happened in other conflicts. But they were more naked because you did not have the cloak or the covering of some noble cause ala World War II or freeing the slaves or whatever to obfuscate some of the terrible things that men do in war.

SM (01:06:58):
What did you take from your experience in Vietnam and bring back to America when you returned? Break it down into two parts, short term until the war ended, and then long term over the past 50 years. What did you bring back with you that has been with you since?

PC (01:07:19):
Yeah, I would say that the short term and the long term are really one and the same. And I am trying to think of how to phrase it. That given the right circumstances, anyone is capable of almost anything. And that we never know until we are faced with a critical moral choice, under great stress, which choice we will make.

SM (01:08:14):
How did you become who you are as a person, that person who became a marine, that young man who became a marine. How did you become who you are, number one? And of course, this same person goes on to write one of the greatest books ever, I think on war and on the Vietnam War in particular. Your book will be read three, four, 500 years from now. And no, it will be, because it is a classic.

PC (01:08:44):
I do not know that anybody is going to be reading 300 years from now.

SM (01:08:48):
Well, I tell you, it is a book for all time. And how did you become who you are? Because you have gone on and written some other great books and you are a great writer.

PC (01:09:02):
Well, when you are talking about is that how did I become who I was when I joined the Marines or...

SM (01:09:08):
Yes. Yeah.

PC (01:09:09):
Or since then?

SM (01:09:10):
Yeah, both. Long term, short term, who were you? How did you become who you are, that young man who went into the service and the man that you are today? So, you became an author after many years of serving.

PC (01:09:27):
Well, if we go way back to the early 1960s is... First of all, I grew up in a pretty much a blue collar family. And in a neighborhood and in a milieu that was basically kind of call it upper blue collar, if you want. My father was a machinist at the time. One of my best friend's father was a tool and die maker, that kind of thing. And almost all of our fathers and uncles and even older cousins had been veterans of World War II. And military service was just expected. It was a thing that you did. And it was also, of course, you had the force of the law at that time. Everybody was subject to the draft. So, that was part of the reason that I ended up joining the Marines was that first of all, they were supposed to be the best. And it was that if you volunteered, you somehow or another would be better than being drafted. That did not turn out to be the case. And then, well, we're going back now to the early (19)60s, the (19)63, (19)64 era. The idealism of that era, and that generation had not yet fragmented in the way that we have been speaking of for the last hour. I think I used to tell people as a joke. I said that a lot of my friends joined the Peace Corps, and I joined the War Corps, but we all felt that we were doing something positive to make the world better. And I thought that, "Well, okay, you serve your country and you take your stand against the Soviet communism and Soviet imperialism." My friends in the Peace Corps, and several of them that I graduated college with went to Africa and South America. One of them, in fact, I remember almost died of some deathly illness in Columbia, in the jungle. My roommate joined AID and ended up in Laos and living in a remote village. And so, I think that a lot of... I joined up because of a lot of patriotism and idealism. What is interesting to me is that when I look back on it, is that there was a unity in the idealism in the early (19)60s that then kind of exploded and fragmented as the decade wore on.

SM (01:13:01):
Was Kennedy's inaugural speech part of that too?

PC (01:13:05):
Yeah. Oh God, yeah.

SM (01:13:06):
Yep.

PC (01:13:08):
Oh yeah. I remember that. But still, when I see the old news clips from that, that still gives me chills.

SM (01:13:16):
How did you become that author?

PC (01:13:17):
Well, I think that all writers become writers because there are two things, is that they have been wounded in some way, and they were outsiders. And the Vietnam War did both to me. And I mean, it inflicted a kind of psychic wound. And that in turn, we were just discussing it about the society's attitudes, and I was as a Vietnam veteran, I was an outsider looking in.

SM (01:14:12):
When you wrote A Rumor of War, did you expect it to be such a big hit, number one? And what was the reaction of some of your peers, your Vietnam vets, when that book first came out? Because you revealed a lot of... some of the things, the bad side of the war, some of the things that soldiers do that are not so nice.

PC (01:14:36):
Yeah, right.

SM (01:14:38):
Yeah. So just I-

PC (01:14:40):
Go ahead.

SM (01:14:42):
Just what was the reaction of the vets that you served with and came home just like you did, proud Marines and those who followed?

PC (01:14:53):
Well, as far as... no, I did. As far as the expectations I had for the book, I can still distinctly remember when I finally finished it in... When did I finish it? 1976, I think it was. Yeah. And I remember telling my first wife, and by this time, I mean it had been accepted for publication by Henry Holt company. And I remember telling her, I says, "Well," I said, "Be nice as I think I got an advance of $6,000 to write the book." And I said, "I think it will earn the advance out and we should have enough money left over." I said, "Maybe to take a nice vacation somewhere." But those were my expectations because the subject was so anathema at that time that I just could not... I was stunned that anybody was going to publish it and then I could not imagine that anybody would read it in great numbers. As far as the reaction from federal veterans, it has been almost uniformly positive. And for just one simple [inaudible], I told the truth and the truth of the experience. And even if it revealed a lot of ugly behavior and presented myself among others and them in unheroic light, they did not mind that. They have not minded that at all. They appreciate it. Anybody is going to appreciate the truth when it is presented to them, and we know it is there.

SM (01:16:52):
What are your thoughts on Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and even Gerald Ford at the end when the pardon came of Nixon? Just your thoughts on those three as the war ended, because obviously LBJ ran the war. Nixon said he was going to end the war, and he technically did, even though half the people in the names on the wall died after he became president. And then President Ford came in on unusual circumstances. Just your thoughts on those three men.

PC (01:17:26):
Well, my thoughts now are on this, as I now see Lyndon Johnson as a truly tragic figure. I think he was a man who had really... He wanted to do great things for the American people. And he did. From the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, Great Society and anti-poverty programs and so forth. But he was caught by the circumstances of the Cold War that combined with his own insecurities about himself as this Texas farm boy surrounded by the brilliant minds of the Ivy League. And oh, I guess what he viewed as a hostile media and so forth, combined with his own insecurities to lead him to commit American troops to a war that he knew and that some of his top advisors like Russell Long told him was not going to be winnable. Nixon, I see more as a, I cannot help it, it is cliched now, but as a brilliant, but I think fundamentally evil man. And I think his [inaudible] was Henry Kissinger. I mean, when you talk about lies and secret wars and all of those machinations that Kissinger was pulling off, I mean, even in (19)68, when he was taking part in the peace talks in Paris. But now evidence, I think I saw it recently in the one book about Nixon, is strong evidence that he was deliberately undermining the peace talks he was taking part in so he could advance Nixon as a presidential candidate and then attain a position of power in the Nixon administration. And I think both of them were very callous about the lives that they were risking, both Vietnamese and American. And Ford... I grew up in the Middle West. Ford is a very typical old time Midwestern Republican, a fundamentally decent guy. He had these two guys, Lyndon Johnson and Nixon, both extremely, I think, very talented, but very complicated and very flawed men. And yet Ford was basically, had very few moving parts, but it does not mean he was simple minded or something, or kind of a dope. I think he was a very smart man, but his personality was not complicated. I think he had a clarity of vision that the others did not. But it was combined, as I say, with this fundamentally kind of small-town Midwestern Republicanism.

SM (01:21:45):
What were the veterans' that you knew, your peers' thoughts on Robert McNamara, William Westmoreland and Abrams?

PC (01:22:00):
I never heard any opinions about Abrams, mainly because I think that by the time he took over, I was well out of the service. Westmoreland, I think to most veterans... I mean, I kind of thought of him as a bit of a staff type general, the spit shine shoes, spiffy looking Eagle Scout general, up at the front lines, chesty puller kind of general. In fact, you just saw him as kind of a remote person. I do not know but I do not seem to recall anybody getting in any discussions with any other veterans about him. I do recall getting in discussions about McNamara, and it was just almost universal loathing among the people I have talked to.

SM (01:23:13):
What was your thought when he wrote the book In Retrospect in 1995, and then he wrote another one where he admits to the mistakes that he made? And I remember I asked, that was the very one of the questions I asked in my very first interview with Senator McCarthy, because around that time, about a year later when I interviewed him, the book had just come out. And Senator McCarthy said it was, "all trash, a little late," and he was furious. But some people say, "Well, geez, at least he finally admitted that he was wrong." And that that is something to think about too. So just what was your thoughts on the book In Retrospect and his follow up book?

PC (01:24:01):
I am ignoring McCarthy's temp on that one. I mean, I would not think of it as trash, but it was definitely way too little, too late. And my other feeling is, so what? So he admits his mistakes, but the fact of the matter is that he couched these admissions in such a way as to almost make it sound as though he were... that his great mistake was not seeing things as he should have before we committed to Vietnam. And in fact, he did. I mean, he knew, and again, there's ample evidence. I cannot cite a chapter and verse at the moment. In the Lyndon Johnson tapes and in some other... even in McNamara's own writings, that he knew ahead of time that this war was not winnable. And he never explained to me in either book, and I could barely read the second one. I was so infuriated. Never explained to me clearly, as to why he went ahead with it anyway. And became the chief architect of the war.

SM (01:25:41):
How do you feel, I got a couple names here, and how do you feel, and some of your vets feel about the following people at the time, and maybe your reflections today? Muhammad Ali.

PC (01:25:54):
Oh, well, I loved him. I first saw him fighting, that Liston fight in (19)65, and then... No, I just thought he was really cool.

SM (01:26:06):
Were vets upset with him when he went against the war, and he would not serve because he was a conscientious objector?

PC (01:26:14):
No, I believed in that then, and I still believe in it. I mean, I think he was an authentic, conscientious objector, and he paid the price. This was not a case of where he objected to the war and he got rewarded for it in some way. I mean, he paid the price for his defiance of the norms of the day. And I saw his point of view. If I had been a black guy back then, I would have certainly questioned about, "Why am I going over here to fight these guys?" As he said, "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."

SM (01:27:03):
Right.

PC (01:27:03):
And-

PC (01:27:03):
As he said, no Viet Cong ever called me nigger.

SM (01:27:03):
Right.

PC (01:27:03):
And there was a lot of truth in that.

SM (01:27:07):
How about Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden?

PC (01:27:11):
Well, now this is going to sound contradictory, but no. My feelings toward them are negative, especially Jane Fonda. I think that Muhammad Ali, first of all, because of his particular version of the Islamic faith, and I think he actually thought things through. He thought about, "Okay, can I in conscience take part in this war and go into the army, both as a black man and as a member of the..." What was that called? It was not exactly called Islam. It was some...

SM (01:28:01):
Black Muslims?

PC (01:28:03):
Black Muslim. Yeah. It was a Black Muslim [inaudible]. And I think he thought things through and realized the price he would pay, and he paid it. And I admire him for that. I think Jane Fonda was reacting without any kind of thought to the things she did. She was reacting like a typical, I think, celebrity movie star. Sometimes a lot of them just strike me as huge vacuums that have to suck in all of this energy of attention and publicity. That is how I saw her.

SM (01:28:51):
How about Tom? When you look at Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, though, they were called the intellectual leaders of the left, and they were big anti-war. Just your thoughts on them?

PC (01:29:04):
Well, they are kinder than they are toward Jane Fonda. But I fault them for, and I think an unjustifiably false reading of the American public. They basically thought that America was right for some kind of total revolution. All American society was going to be turned upside down violently or non-violently. And I think that that was an unjustifiable reading the mood of the American public and the kind of reading that you get from a person who is an ideologue with blinders on. Then I think it led them into a lot of actions and a lot of rhetoric that I just simply do not agree with.

SM (01:30:07):
How about the three politicians that many look upon as the big-name anti-war leaders: Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Bobby Kennedy?

PC (01:30:19):
Yeah, just a sec.

SM (01:30:19):
Okay.

PC (01:30:27):
I worked for, in a very small way, but it is kind of like a precinct canvasser for Bobby Kennedy, and after he was assassinated for Gene McCarthy. So obviously I admired both of them. Stuff has come out about both of them since then that makes you see that there were some aspects to their characters, especially Bobby Kennedy, were not so admirable, and that Gene McCarthy sometimes comes off as an almost an arrogant intellectual who was, I do not know, a little too Olympian in some of his attitudes. But generally speaking, I admired, and still do, both of them. Then you mentioned somebody else.

SM (01:31:28):
George McGovern.

PC (01:31:29):
Same thing. I have worked for McGovern's campaign. I have thought of him and still do, I have met him once or twice briefly, as a principled man who was willing to take a lot of flak for the...

SM (01:31:54):
Hold on one second.

PC (01:31:55):
As I said, he took political risks for his [inaudible] and I admire him for that.

SM (01:32:14):
How about Vietnam Veterans Against the War?

PC (01:32:17):
Well, I joined them, so I cannot say anything, but that I thought that they had the right idea. I remember I was opposed to the war. I was against the war. I talked to some anti-war movement people, and I did not really like them. And I felt like the only people who had any moral authority to really protest the war were veterans. And so, when Kerry formed the VVVA, I joined them.

SM (01:32:59):
What do you think about the Black Panthers and the Weatherman's groups?

PC (01:33:04):
Oh, well, the Weatherman is just, they are contemptible. Again, you want to talk about misreading the American public, they were really guilty of that. They were basically nihilists. They were acting out some kind of psychodrama with violence, and certainly were so insular and so hermetically sealed in their own little revolutionary bubble. And again, they thought that the American public was ready for this revolution, and they were going to lead it. It was just a delusion of grandiose proportions. Same thing with the Black Panthers. Maybe some of their anger can be explained, but I do not think a lot of the things they did, the shootouts, the murders and all of that, there's no way to justify that.

SM (01:34:18):
I know the Black Panthers had the food programs that were very popular and very good, but they are set-

PC (01:34:25):
South American dictators do the same thing. It is always this bullshit that comes out when people who have violent political agendas, or Hamas over there in the Gaza Strip. They say, "Oh, well, they hand out water and food, and they have social services." So what? They are basically criminals.

SM (01:34:53):
There is seven big names that come out of that. Of course, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, and Angela Davis. I know that Dave Hilliard too. So these are all names of the Black Panthers that represented different things. They were a lot different in their own way. Do you bottle them up all together?

PC (01:35:19):
Yeah, I bottle them all up together.

SM (01:35:21):
What did you think of Students for a Democratic Society? They died when the Weatherman became a reality.

PC (01:35:33):
Well, the Weatherman, basically, Weatherman action took them over. I do not know what I thought of them. I had a brother-in-law, a high school classmate that was a member of SDS. I do remember getting into some vigorous arguments with him, obviously. For example, maybe this will tell you what I thought of them, is that he was trying to recruit me. Because they figured that a veteran would add some credibility to their ideas. And I remember him showing me a cover from The Nation magazine, and it had an oil derrick on the cover. The article that he was citing, its thesis was that the United States was fighting in Vietnam to gain control of the oil fields offshore of Vietnam. I think they are called the Spratly Islands or something like that. I remember he says, "That is what that is you were fighting for." And I remember looking at him and I said, "You know, Jack?" I said, "I wish [inaudible] for that." He says, "What do you mean?" I said, "Because then I could say, "Okay, I fought for an oil field.'" I said, "Right now I do not feel like I fought for anything." And they had this traditional, in other words, Marxist or neo-Marxist outlook about the world that I think was essentially incorrect. That we were fighting in Vietnam to gain control of these natural resources.

SM (01:37:41):
What did you think of Dr. King's speech against the Vietnam War? Because that was, even in the civil rights community, he was heavily criticized for getting outside his territory. What was your thought on him giving that speech?

PC (01:37:58):
I do not remember that I had a thought.

SM (01:38:01):
Okay. I was wondering if any of the veterans you knew reacted to that.

PC (01:38:04):
No.

SM (01:38:06):
No?

PC (01:38:06):
I did not have a lot to do with veterans after I got out of the service. There were not that many around, tell the truth, or the ones that were did not reveal that they were. But no, I do not remember that I had a thought about that one way or the other at the time. Again, I did not really know a lot of veterans, especially immediately after I got back.

SM (01:38:33):
You covered Vietnam as a reporter. I think you witnessed there. What did you think when the helicopters took off from the embassy in Saigon when the war was over? What were you thinking having served and knowing that over 58,000 Americans died and thousands were injured, both physically and psychologically? And then of course we got to also say 3 million Vietnamese died in that war. When those helicopters were taking off, what kind of feelings were going through your mind?

PC (01:39:04):
Well, I felt two things, because I wrote about them in the paper. I felt a mixture of bitterness and relief. Deep bitterness that these... I had 16 of my buddies were killed in action over there.

SM (01:39:23):
Oh geez.

PC (01:39:26):
A deep bitterness that they truly had died for no reason and a relief that it was finally over.

SM (01:39:40):
Jan Scruggs, of course, you probably read this book, To Heal a Nation. Did the Vietnam Memorial heal the nation? The Wall? I know it's done a lot with the vets and their families, but you cannot heal even every vet, because they have their issues. But his book centers on the fact that that was very important in healing in the nation. Do you think it has?

PC (01:40:06):
Well, I got to tell you in all candor, I do not believe in this healing. All it is, it's what I call the cant of this therapeutic culture. There are wounds that just remain tender forever, and they probably should. And no, I do not think that the Wall helped. It might have helped, like you say, Vietnam veterans and their families. Yes. I do not know that it helped heal them. It was a place where you could go and experience a certain kind of emotional catharsis, I guess. But it certainly, I do not think it did anything for the divisions in the nation, as going back to what we talked about quite some time ago now, is the 2004 election. Look at this. You had Vietnam veterans as members of this swift boat campaign turning on another highly decorated Vietnam veteran in the most vicious way imaginable. So, I did not see that there was any healing as far as the nation went.

SM (01:41:39):
Who do you blame for losing the war?

PC (01:41:45):
Well, nobody, because it was not winnable.

SM (01:41:51):
Okay.

PC (01:41:51):
All right. Let us put it this way. I blame the persistence and the discipline of the North Vietnamese army.

SM (01:42:00):
In the book since the Rumor of War, what have been the messages you have tried to deliver in those books?

PC (01:42:14):
Well, did you want to include A Rumor of War?

SM (01:42:20):
Yep. Include that one, but certainly your number two book and then some of your novels.

PC (01:42:27):
Well, as far as A Rumor of War went, I think I mentioned this in the afterward to one of the editions, is one of the purposes I had in writing, it was to create, by making an appeal to the physical senses, the virtual tour of duty for anybody who read the book. In other words, to put a reader into the Vietnam that the ordinary fighting man experienced, as much as was possible on the printed page. And when the reader finished the book, I wanted that reader to think or say to himself, "Now what do I think? Now what are my opinions and attitudes about Vietnam?" If I had a conscious motive it was that. In other words, as far as my other motives, they were probably unconscious. It was almost like an irresistible compulsion to set this experience down on paper. Many of the other books have been, particularly the novels, have been about the idea I expressed a little earlier here. Was that they have been stories about people in extreme circumstances or alien circumstances, where none of the usual moral guideposts of life exist. Facing moral choices and the choices they make become revelatory of what their true natures are. I have tried to get that across in a lot of novels, particularly in Acts of Faith and Horn of Africa, two books that interestingly enough take place in almost the same part of the world.

SM (01:45:20):
I would like to ask a question about the boomer veterans. 3 million served in Vietnam, and I know in some of the materials that I have read that probably about maybe 450 to 500,000 actually fought on the front lines. But in talking to vets who did not fight in the front lines, their lies were in danger the whole time they were there. So even though the 2.5 million did not walk through the jungles, there was danger there. How do they differ? Again, when we define a generation, we're talking 3 million of a 73 million population. How do they differ from the other boomers? And Vietnam vets we know were not welcomed home upon their return, but now we see an era in which Vietnam veterans are, it is really in to be a Vietnam veteran. And that there is an issue of people lying that they were veterans and making money off it by speaking, by talking about it. And I remember the ultimate was Dr. Joe Ellis, the professor at Harvard who has won of Pulitzer Prize, yet he was teaching his students that he fought in Vietnam.

PC (01:46:45):
He was 173rd Airborne.

SM (01:46:47):
And that is amazing for a guy that already had won a Pulitzer Prize. So, what is he trying to do? Just your thoughts on how the Vietnam veterans may differ from the rest of the boomers and really how important they are in the boomer generation and for America. I think they are very important. I would worked with them for many years. Just your thoughts.

PC (01:47:14):
Well, when anybody is experienced, and this would really apply to, I think you said, half a million were actually in action. You are forever set apart from your peers and contemporaries. I do not know. You know things that those who have not been there do not know, and that very knowledge cuts you apart. And I have touched on some of that knowledge, about the knowing that what you say are, what you believe in, what you will do under a certain set of circumstances is all rubbish until you are actually confronted with that moment when you have to make the choice. And to say nothing of the fact that these guys were all between 19 and 22, 23 years old, and they confronted death on a daily basis. Suddenly a lot of things that seem important to people who have not confronted death, it just pale to nothing. So, you are set apart for those and other reasons. And I think I agree with you that I think they are quite important. In our political leadership, you can take a look at how many Vietnam veterans have risen political prominence. John Kerry, Jim Webb, who is also a very fine writer as well. He is a real renaissance man, Webb. And Chuck Hagel. And there is I think 13 or 14 other members of the state Senate, of the US Senate and the US House of Representatives who were Vietnam veterans, and many of them combat veterans of Vietnam. The chairman or the CEO and founder of FedEx, I want to talk about business, is a Vietnam veteran. There's people like me who have become well known writers and artists as well. And probably if you did some research you would find Vietnam veterans in prominent or leadership positions in every single field life.

SM (01:50:13):
I agree. Kent State and Jackson State, I would like your thoughts on that. You have to link both of them, because you wrote a really great book. I read it. 13 Seconds. They have always tried to make sure when they had the remembrance events at Kent State that Jackson State is always remembered as well. Would you go so far as to say that the deaths on that campus, those four students, and of course the students at Jackson State, are also combat veterans of the Vietnam War, but on the home front?

PC (01:50:48):
No, I would not go so far as to say that. No.

SM (01:50:53):
What is your thoughts on Kent State and Jackson State? What does that mean to you?

PC (01:50:58):
Well, it was along with the assassination of President Kennedy, probably. Well, I would say the assassination of President Kennedy, the Tet Offensive and the Kent State Massacre were probably the three most prominent events of that era. Now that was the moment, Kent State, I think, when a lot of people that were writing about the boomer generation realized that when you are in the revolutionary forefront, you are not just risking a whack in the head, you are risking your very life. That this is a deadly business. And I think the American public realized. No, I should not say that, because I know the reaction was a reaction of Kent State from the Great American mainstream that was actually quite vicious. A lot of people in America realized that the atmosphere in the country had become so toxic that those National Guardsmen pulled the triggers on these college kids who were really no threat to them whatsoever. You could say that the mood or the atmosphere in the country had its fingers on those triggers as well as the actual men who pulled them.

SM (01:52:40):
Okay. I have a couple names here. We are getting close to the end of the interview. A couple names that I would like you to respond to. You have already responded to some of the presidents. These do not have to be long responses, but just gut level reactions. Your thoughts on Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

PC (01:53:04):
Clowns.

SM (01:53:06):
Timothy Leary.

PC (01:53:08):
Another one, but a dangerous clown.

SM (01:53:11):
How about Spiro Agnew?

PC (01:53:19):
I would just call him bombastic. I am trying to think of a word to describe him. He was bombastic and a demagogue. Bombastic demagogue.

SM (01:53:38):
John Kennedy.

PC (01:53:47):
He still moves me. I know everything, all of his flaws, and he had many. Personal flaws as well as political misconceptions. But there was still something about him that incarnated, I thought, a lot of great things in the American character, the American spirit.

SM (01:54:17):
How about Daniel Ellsberg?

PC (01:54:17):
I still miss him.

SM (01:54:18):
Right. How about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers?

PC (01:54:25):
Well, I know Dan a little bit. I have met him. I am torn about that.

SM (01:54:45):
He is a fellow Marine, too.

PC (01:54:46):
Yeah, I know.

SM (01:54:46):
We can go on.

PC (01:54:51):
Torn about it, because you can take that idea of disclosing big secrets too far and endanger people. But I would say that given, looking at him in hindsight, I think he did the right thing.

SM (01:55:10):
How about Dr. Benjamin Spock and William Sloane Coffin?

PC (01:55:17):
No particular opinion of either one.

SM (01:55:20):
How about Daniel and Philip Berrigan? They threw blood on-

PC (01:55:34):
I cannot say that... No, I do not really have an opinion or a feeling about either one of them.

SM (01:55:42):
All right. Dwight Eisenhower?

PC (01:55:53):
A great general, a great man, but a kind of a boring president.

SM (01:56:00):
How about Barry Goldwater?

SM (01:56:01):
How about Barry Goldwater?

PC (01:56:15):
I see Goldwater as a, living right here in his state, and I still see... I am thinking out loud right now, just a lot of echoes of Goldwaterism... He was really basically, kind of almost a man of the American frontier, who had lived into an era when those frontier values were ceasing to make much sense.

SM (01:56:47):
Woodward and Bernstein.

PC (01:56:50):
Oh yeah. No, I think they both did a great thing.

SM (01:56:56):
What are your thoughts-

PC (01:56:57):
And I really admire them as journalists because both of them were not, they were not big stars in the paper, and I do not even think they quite knew what they had for quite a while. But they were persistent, and they kept after the story, and I think that they did a great service to the country and to journalism.

SM (01:57:26):
How about George Wallace?

PC (01:57:29):
A demagogue.

SM (01:57:31):
How about William Buckley?

PC (01:57:43):
I think he was a guy that was a brilliant, he definitely was a brilliant articulator of the classic conservative position, but at quite a few points in his life was a bit overly impressed with himself.

SM (01:58:06):
How about Watergate? Your thoughts on that?

PC (01:58:11):
Well, I go back to what I said. I said I think Nixon was an evil man, period. I think, when it came to politics, he was totally, totally amoral. And that Watergate scandal was a direct result of his amorality.

SM (01:58:33):
How about Woodstock and the Summer of Love?

PC (01:58:36):
Well, just a lot of frothy bullshit.

SM (01:58:41):
The year 1968.

PC (01:58:45):
One of the most dramatic years in our history, really a chronological dividing line. Think of everything that happened then, King assassinated, Kennedy assassinated, the riots after King's assassination, the Tet Offensive, the Chicago Convention riots. That was the year, going back almost to one of your first questions, that I felt that the country was going to blow itself apart.

SM (01:59:21):
And LBJ withdrew from...

PC (01:59:22):
Yeah, LBJ withdrew from running for another term.

SM (01:59:25):
The term counterculture.

PC (01:59:36):
What do I think of it?

SM (01:59:36):
Yeah, what do you think of the counterculture?

PC (01:59:37):
Oh, oh, what do I think of the term? Or what do I think of-

SM (01:59:39):
Just, yeah, the counterculture, not the term, just the...

PC (01:59:42):
Again, I think that that was, that is the least attractive facet or aspect of this boomer generation that you are writing of. It was basically a... It was self-gratification and self-indulgence masquerading as a social revolution.

SM (02:00:08):
How about the hippies and the yippies?

PC (02:00:10):
The same thing. They were the counterculture.

SM (02:00:14):
How about the Chicago 8?

PC (02:00:21):
Oh, I will go back to what I was saying about Tom Hayden and all that. They were basically ideologues, and like all ideologues, I do not think they lived in the real world.

SM (02:00:38):
And Tet.

PC (02:00:41):
Well, Tet was... That was an interesting event, probably a rather euphemistic way to put it.

SM (02:00:50):
That was (19)68 too.

PC (02:00:52):
Yeah, yeah. What happened with Tet is, it is often said nowadays, and going back 10, 15 years in some of the postmortems about Vietnam, that we had actually had the war won at that point, that we had dealt such severe blows to the Viet Cong that they had never even recovered from it. And that was true insofar as it went. But what a lot of people ignore was that this offensive took place at a time when the political and military leadership of America were telling Americans about all of the wonderful progress we were making in Vietnam. And that all of a sudden, this enemy that was supposed to have been on the ropes, comes back and stages these massive attacks throughout the country, even to the point of invading the American Embassy in Saigon. And I think that is when the American people said that somebody has not been telling us the truth. That is why that when they say that that was a psychological victory, they are correct. Where they're incorrect, is assuming that it was a psychological victory because the media made it so. What really made it so were the optimistic statements and predictions that preceded it.

SM (02:02:37):
Just a couple more. John Dean, thoughts on John Dean.

PC (02:02:48):
Well, what do I think of him? My opinion of his character, who-

SM (02:02:52):
Yeah, he is the guy that-

PC (02:02:52):
I think he was the guy that saw the ship was sinking and decided to bail.

SM (02:03:06):
Very good. Yeah. The final names here are the women leaders, the Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug. Shirley Chisholm's in there. A lot of the, Phyllis Schlafly, who was a conservative, the women leaders of that period.

PC (02:03:23):
Oh. So, what about them, I mean?

SM (02:03:24):
Yeah, just your thoughts, if you have any thoughts on them. Many of them got involved in the anti-war movement too.

PC (02:03:31):
Yeah, yeah. Well, it was because, once again, as I said, it was the war and then the anti-war movement it had spun. I still think it was the generator behind a lot of the social and cultural upheavals of that period, which would include the feminist movement.

SM (02:03:46):
The-

PC (02:04:07):
Well, I do not know. By the way, I have met Betty Friedan, and I would suspect... I mean, I never met Gloria Steinem. I never met Shirley Chisholm or Phyllis Schlafly, on the conservative side. But I have a feeling that if I did, that I would end up liking Betty Friedan the most. I liked her. I thought she was a very pragmatic kind of feminist, even though she is associated by analogy.

SM (02:04:44):
We often say that... In the boomer generation, we talk about the (19)60s and the (19)70s as boomers have aged, but we do not talk a lot about the (19)50s. And what is amazing is that the boomer generation is often defined as a rebellious one. But that is amazing and ironic when you look at the (19)50s that were kind of laid back, conservative. Nobody really spoke up that much. I reflect upon the (19)50s by watching the television shows, whether it be Mickey Mouse Club, or the Mouseketeers, Howdy Doody.

PC (02:05:19):
Yeah, seriously.

SM (02:05:20):
Howdy Doody, when they were very young, Hopalong Cassidy, all the westerns on television through the (19)50s, and certainly the movies. And I know that many of the boomers, when they were very young, the McCarthy hearings were going on. If they could have heard that voice on television, may not understand it all, telling people their communists and, of course, going through the threat of nuclear war and all the things, but parents giving as much as they can to their kids. And all of a sudden, the first-stage boomers go into seventh grade around 1960 when President Kennedy's going in, and everything kind of changes. Is there something about the 1950s that maybe really has not caught on here, or was that it really had an influence on boomers when they were young? And I want to add one other thing here. The beats were also part of the (19)50s, and of course, Kerouac and Ginsburg and those people, and their whole very being was challenging authority and the status quo. So, your thoughts on what was it in the (19)50s that may have influenced these young people subconsciously before they even started getting into junior high school?

PC (02:06:39):
Well, I think that one thing is that... I think we are talking about a number of levels of human psychology, and particularly mass psychology. One, that I would just say, was boredom. No. Sometimes boredom is a great motivator. I think that a lot of these people that grew up in the (19)50s were just kind of bored. They wanted action. They wanted excitement. They wanted things to happen. So I think that was a factor. I think the other one was privilege. I had mentioned this earlier. This was the first generation in America, its Black component excepted, that had never really known hardship and hard times, so it was comfortable. It had the luxury to think about things other than getting a job, surviving, rising just a little bit in society, hopefully from the lower class over to the middle class, and that kind of thing. And then another would be that there is a certain hypocrisy that they saw in their parents' generation that was, I think, undeniably there, particularly the racism that existed. At that time in the (19)50s, it was really quite virile. I mean, I remember it really, very clearly. One thing I remember is 1962, I was driving with two of my college buddies down to the big migration in Fort Lauderdale. We got lost. There were no interstate highways to follow at that time, and there's all these old US highways and state highways and stuff. Anyway, we got lost in the middle of Georgia somewhere at night, and we stopped at a gas station to get gas and ask directions. And I remember that I was really thirsty, and I went around to the side of the building, and I was just drinking at a water fountain. And while I was bent over the water fountain, I felt this tap on my shoulder, and it was the gas station attendant, who was a pretty beefy guy, big guy, and he had a type of [inaudible]. I think it was a blunt... It was probably an open-ended wrench, but it might have been a ratchet, I do not remember. Anyway, a large metal tool, and tapping me on the shoulder. And he says, "You do not look like no nigger to me, boy." And he pointed up to the sign, says, "Colored only," or is it blue? This is scary stuff. So, I think that there was a perception of a certain hypocrisy. And I think, too, is that when they talk about... Okay, we have the boomer generation and the greatest generation, which were the parents of the boomer generation, is that... Well, the greatest generation, I think too, it was probably a bit over materialistic, even though its materialism, in a lot of ways, contributed to the comfort and the security with which the boomers were brought up in. But I think that they may have resented that. They may have seen that their parents were too concerned with getting ahead, making a living, the old 1950s organization-man idea, and rebelled against that as well.

SM (02:11:16):
When the best history books are written, they are usually about 50 years after an event. Some of the best World War II books have been written in the last 5 to 10 years, and that is 50 years after World War II ended in (19)45. When the best history books are written about the boomer generation, 50 years, or even after boomers have passed, what do you think they will be saying about the generation? And again, the people that will be writing these books will be the generation Xers, of which is the generation that followed, or even most likely, millennials and future generations. So, they would not have even been alive during the time the boomers were alive.

PC (02:12:04):
Well, I could not project that far ahead. I would suspect that this, whatever you want to call them, generation X or generation Y, anyway, people might... I have two sons. They are 38 and 36, so I guess they are generation X. I do not know.

SM (02:12:24):
Yep, they are generation X.

PC (02:12:36):
And my impression is that if any of them ever write the history of the boomers, it probably will not be too positive a portrait. I think they may see the boomers as just a bit too self-involved, too self-centered, kind of like that newspaper reporter that told me like, "What the hell is going on here? People my age are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you guys keep arguing about this goddamn Vietnam War that took place 35 years ago." They may not be as impressed with the boomers as the boomers quite often are of themselves.

SM (02:13:17):
Mr. Caputo-

PC (02:13:18):
But I do not know. I cannot think about it. But then going further into the future than that is impossible for me.

SM (02:13:25):
Yeah. One of the interesting things is for some reason, millennials, which is people born after, probably in the mid-1980s in fact, they seem to get along fine with the boomer generation. There is really strong links because their parents are boomers, and now 85 percent of all the parents of college students are generation Xers. So, it is interesting, the links they have got. In the mid-(19)90s we did programs on the generation X and boomers, and boy, there was friction between these two generations. There is no question. And the friction was based on this, and it was very clear cut that there were two things that generation Xers thought about boomers. Number one is, "I am tired of hearing about what it was like when you were young. I am sick of it. You're too nostalgic." And the other reaction was, "Geez, I wish I lived during that era because there is no issues today for me like there was for you." So those are kind of some interesting comments. And we did two programs where we had panels on that. Those came out clear. The last question I have here is what do you hope your lasting legacy is going to be?

PC (02:14:50):
Oh, I think that if somebody who wrote some pretty good hardcover books that they will, it is to be hoped, be read a hundred years from now.

SM (02:15:07):
Well, I can guarantee you, Rumor of War will be read 300 years from now. No, I am a history major, political science major as an undergrad, and I have about 20, 25 books that I have read in my life, and I am a reader. Your book is there. Your book is just-

PC (02:15:27):
Oh. Well, I mean, I hope so. I think of, I am trying to remember it. Let me see if I can quote it exactly, probably will not be able to, but it's from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. And it's a whole passage he has on the brevity of life. And he says something like, he says, "Brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, and even this is carried on by poor mortals, who must themselves die and be forgotten."

SM (02:16:09):
Wow.

PC (02:16:12):
It is always good to... Yeah. I hope that my book will be read 100 or 300 years from now. A thousand years from now, it may not be.

SM (02:16:28):
Well, I hope it is still, will always being book form. I am worried about people reading on computers. But anyways, I do recommend that you do read Fortunate Son while you are out in Arizona. Pick it up in the library or buy it. I know they have copies of in the bookstore. I think Lewis Puller's book is excellent. He was one of the inspirations for me getting started in my project here because we took students down to Washington to meet him at the Wall two days before the Women's Memorial was dedicated. He spent over two and a half hours with seven of our students at a bench across the way there. And then in the spring, of course, we all know he committed suicide. It was very sad. And I have my own story about it. It is going to be in the opening of this book, things I am going to say about that, but I encourage you to read it. It is a great book. Are there any questions that I did not ask that you expected me to ask?

PC (02:17:32):
Gosh, no.

SM (02:17:33):
No. I guess I have covered it all then. I will turn my tape player off. Thank you very much. One thing I want to mention is that I went through 50 interviews before I realized I had to get waivers for all of my speakers. They all said, "You can use my tape," and once they get the transcript and edit it and stuff. And so, what I am doing now, I am having to send out waivers to the first 50 people I interviewed, and 7 of them had died, so I got to go to the family estates. So, I just wanted to let you know, sometime in the next couple of weeks I will be sending, through the email, a copy of the waiver, then you can make a copy of it, print it, and then send it back to me on the computer.

PC (02:18:17):
Okay. And I will try not to die between then.

SM (02:18:19):
Oh yeah, do not die. But Senator Gaylord Nelson was one of my earlier interviews.

PC (02:18:24):
Confuse your...

SM (02:18:25):
Yeah. Well, I just found out one of my interviews... just died recently, and it was Forrest Church from All Souls... the son of Frank Church. And then Jack Smith, I interviewed, and he passed away, and of course, Senator McCarthy, and so there's been a few. But I want to thank you very much for taking this lengthy time with me. It's an honor to talk to you. And one thing I do miss, and that is taking pictures of you because the way this book is going to be broke down, it's going to be broken down into seven different sections, and you will be in the veterans’ section plus the authors section. And I usually take pictures of all the individuals, 90 percent of the people I have been in person. So somehow, I need to get some updated pictures of you to put at the top, but I will be emailing you on that.

PC (02:19:18):
Okay. Yeah, I have got a friend of mine here who is a pretty good photographer. He could just get a shot at me.

SM (02:19:23):
Yeah. I do not know if you are ever in the Philadelphia area in the spring, and I do not know if you are [inaudible] or speak in that area. I got two people that I have already interviewed but are going to be in Philadelphia, Washington, or New York in the spring. And I am just going to take their pictures, anyway.

PC (02:19:37):
No, I do not plan to be.

SM (02:19:40):
Right. All right. Well, you have a great day. Thank you.

PC (02:19:44):
Okay. All right. It was good talking to you. I guess we certainly covered a lot of ground here.

SM (02:19:52):
And I will keep you updated on how the project is going. I got a lot of transcribing to do, and once I get it transcribed, you get a copy of that as well. And I will get the waiver to you first, and we will go from there.

PC (02:20:07):
All right, okay.

SM (02:20:08):
Well, thank you very much and happy holidays.

PC (02:20:11):
All right. Happy holidays to you, and you are welcome.

SM (02:20:13):
Yep. And talk to you...

(End of Interview)

2009-12-12

Stephen McKiernan

Philip Caputo

140:17

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Journalists; Authors; Marines; Caputo, Philip--Interviews

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