Interview with Peter Goldman

Goldman, Peter ; McKiernan, Stephen

Peter Goldman is an author and journalist. He was the national-affairs writer, senior editor, and team leader of a special-projects unit for Newsweek magazine. Goldman wrote over 120 cover stories on race, politics, Watergate, criminal justice and other aspects of American life. Goldman additionally wrote several books on Malcolm X.

2010-04-23

In copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

187:25

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Peter Goldman
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 23 April 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:07):
Testing, one, two, three. Testing. Testing, one, two. Okay, good. I will keep double checking this to make sure this is working. Thanks again. Mr. Cohen, could you give me... Peter, I apologize. Could you give me a little bit about your background, where you came from originally, your parents, your college, your schooling, and how you chose journalism as a career?

PG (00:00:40):
Well, I will start with the last one first. I chose journalism as a career when I was probably eight years old and at the time wanted to be a sports writer at eight or nine, and just never changed. The sports part of it changed totally obviously, but I knew that is what I wanted to do. Ask me why, I do not know. But as a child, I was a reader and attempted to be a writer. I have the old-fashioned composition books with mottled-color covers and I would be writing all the time. My dad, when he was single, he came from St. Louis, had a graduate degree in economics, but he wanted to be a writer and so there may be a genetic connection there, and he actually had a fair start as a freelance. He sold some stuff to Mankins Old American-

SM (00:02:15):
Old American, yep.

PG (00:02:19):
Was talking to the New Yorker about writing a Wall Street letter for the New Yorker. But when he got serious about getting married and having kids, he decided that is not a stable life. At the time he was living in Greenwich Village, so he joined a stockbrokerage and was off to a hot shot start in that when the depression happened. He had a bumpy time for a while and wound up willy-nilly in the shoe business. He and my mother met in the '20s with both of them living at Greenwich Village. My mother had some talent as an artist that she never really attempted to pursue professionally. For a while during the depression, she was supporting the family working in the books department at Macy's. Department stores in those days actually had book departments, and rather good ones actually. They were pretty good bookstores. That was until my father found his way into the shoe business first as a retail manager then and other aspects sort of corporate side and then finally in his later years as a traveling salesman. Where am I from? That is a much more complicated question you want to know. I was born in Philadelphia. In between birth and my second year in high school, I lived in many places is the simple way to put it. If you want them all...

SM (00:04:44):
No, that is fine
.
PG (00:04:48):
We finally came to roost in the suburbs of St. Louis, which had been my father's hometown, and I went to high school there, went to Williams College.

SM (00:05:01):
Great school.

PG (00:05:04):
At the time, I was not especially happy there, but that is a whole another story.

SM (00:05:08):
Was James McGregor Burns there when you were there?

PG (00:05:10):
Yeah-yeah. They had a great faculty, a great teaching faculty actually. They put more stress on teaching than on publication. It was not a publish or perish school.

SM (00:05:26):
Right.

PG (00:05:26):
I was very happy with that part of it, but it was a school with a lot of problems. A lot of it was essentially ruled by fraternities. It had next to zero Black students that had a very clear quota of Jews, and if the fraternities had clauses and I saw one of them, it was standard for the fraternities. It is limited to white Americans of Christian persuasion, which meant the rest of us were outcasts. If you were one of the outcasts, you had a hard time with extracurricular stuff.

SM (00:06:31):
Now, what years were you there?

PG (00:06:33):
I was in the class of (19)54. I was there from (19)50 to (19)54. Then I went to Columbia Journalism School, which was a one-year graduate school program, and then I went back out to St. Louis, worked for seven years at the St. Louis Globe Democrat, which is now defunct. One of those years I spent at Harvard on a fellowship. Then (19)62 I got married to a New York newspaper woman. We met accidentally at a murder trial in Boston and courted for a year and got married in (19)61, moved to New York in (19)62, and I went to work for Newsweek at that point. Stayed at Newsweek on active duty for 25 years and have continued to do work for them ever since. Took early retirement in (19)88, but since then I have done work for them usually on presidential campaigns.

SM (00:08:04):
Obviously from all of your scholarship and your work and your writing from the book on Malcolm X to your book on the 12 young African American men-

PG (00:08:14):
[inaudible].

SM (00:08:15):
That project, certainly Vietnam veterans as they came back, of course many of them were treated poorly upon their return to America and some of your other early books that looked at the African American experience in the (19)40s, (19)50s and the (19)60s, can you say that maybe that experience of being at Williams College and seeing discrimination and exclusion really sparked something in you and then you wanted ... Well, how did your interest in African American issues develop?

PG (00:08:51):
It was another childhood phenomenon. When I was in grade school in New York, my last four years of grade school, I went to a private school that was progressive in both senses of the world. It was progressive educational philosophy, but also politically progressive. For a great school library, they had an amazing library, and I found my way to just willy-nilly to some books about the Black experience. The one that had the most powerful impact on me was Howard Fast's Freedom Road, a novel about the Reconstruction Era and the betrayal of the Reconstruction Era. It just had a huge impact on me. This is not right, this is not fair. The school was good background music for that because it was a recurring subject. As eighth graders, we got to write our own class play and it was about Jim Crow in the south and the part that everyone wanted and I did not get was the Black character, the Black protagonist. I got to play Senator Bilbo, who was the outrageous segregationist senator from Mississippi. Had to play him in short pants.

SM (00:11:04):
Oh my God.

PG (00:11:17):
Got laugh from some of the parents. So I really think that was the origin. My sister and I went around collecting signatures to allow Blacks into Major League Baseball. This was obviously before Jackie Robinson, that would have been (19)45, I guess. We got neighbors to sign petitions. So, it has been an issue with me essentially for all my whole entire life.

SM (00:11:58):
When you were doing that, was that just before Jackie went in, it was (19)47?

PG (00:12:04):
Jackie went to the Montreal Royals who were the Dodger farm team in (19)46. This was before that, it was (19)45. Our petitions had pictures of six Black ball players who would certainly have been qualified. Jackie Robinson was one of the pictures.

SM (00:12:30):
Probably Monte Irvin was in there and Larry Doby.

PG (00:12:33):
I do not remember the others. Satchel Paige was one.

(00:12:44):
So, it has been with me all my life, continued in high school. I continued to be fascinated by that, did a lot of reading. To me, the Williams experience was just an example of the unjust practice. You are in college for four years, you spend seven classes from the people who were seniors when you arrived to the people who were freshmen when you left, and I think during that whole time we had three Black Americans and one Black African, and two of the three Black Americans were essentially basketball mercenaries who flunked out in freshman year.

SM (00:13:49):
I have a lot of questions on Malcolm and some of your other books and your experiences, but the Boomer generation are those born between (19)46 and (19)64, and I have tried to make sure that I am inclusive here because someone early on in the interview process said they thought that Boomers were white men. That is the first perception they get. Then they said, well, maybe white women too. And I said, no. Other people say, when we talk about the 74 to 78 million Boomers, we're talking about all Boomers. Black.

PG (00:14:27):
It was one of the things I was going to raise with you.

SM (00:14:27):
Oh, yes.

PG (00:14:27):
If you had not raised it.
SM (00:14:27):
Oh no, because I want to make sure it is for everyone. That is why in all these different interviews when we talk about the break ... well, people used to go to church in the (19)50s and then church attendance went down and the African-American family was also fairly stable in the (19)50s and then in the (19)60s, the African-American family as well as many white families and the [inaudible] went up and all the other things. I am trying to connect everything here. It's for all groups, it is for Latinos, Native Americans, which I am trying to include here by getting different perspectives. The Asian American experience is very difficult because they were not in any anti-war activity and they were almost non-existent. So that is one group I am not sure if I am going to really be able to do well on. But what I am getting at here is when you think of that period between 1946 ... I break the periods for Boomer lives all 63 years now, Boomers are now 63 in the front-runner and the youngest is 46.

PG (00:15:32):
The Tea Party is the last Boomer movement.

SM (00:15:35):
Yeah. Well you may be right. I do not know what the average age is, but-

PG (00:15:44):
The average age ... The Times just did a full issue, which if you have not seen you ought to look at, which has a pretty good typology of the Boomers. I do not know if it was the average age or whether it was the location they used was 45 and up, but they are Boomers. The great majority of them are 45 and up, which would make everybody 45 and up as a Bloomer.

SM (00:16:23):
Did it say whether they were more conservative or more liberal?

PG (00:16:27):
Tea party people?

SM (00:16:28):
Yes.

PG (00:16:28):
Oh, much more conservative inherently. It is a conservative movement, got strands of racism, but I do not think that is the driving force. It is kind of a classic revolt of the petit bourgeoisie I think. It is the angry. They are economically better situated than the average.

SM (00:17:10):
They are the haves more than the have-nots.

PG (00:17:11):
They are more the haves than the have-not. They are the have-some, I would think.

SM (00:17:18):
I have not kind of pinpointed it. Do you feel also that they are more against those Boomers who were protesting in the (19)60s? That group, I do not know, do they shun them?

PG (00:17:32):
I have not seen data on that, but I doubt that they would have anything in common. It is interesting that the Tea Party movement does not seem to have violent feelings on the so-called social issues, which were the culture war, which has been typical of our slightly earlier past. The [inaudible] and standing in front of Republican conventions anywhere in the middle of a culture war. These people seem to be more Ross Perot rebels. Anti-government, anti-tax, anti- deficit. As I say, I think there is a strain of anger that we have got a Black president, but I do not think that is the central of that.

SM (00:18:35):
I have noticed that if you watch Mike Huckabee, oftentimes he takes shots of the (19)60s a lot. Of course, Glenn Beck does too, but I do not put them in the same category. I know that when Hillary Clinton was running for President, John McCain liked to make some comments about her, even though they are friends, that she is from the (19)60s and those kinds of comments. We all know what Newt Gingrich said when he came into power in (19)94, he made some commentaries about that era even though he is a Boomer, and certainly George Will oftentimes in his books will have a little segment about that period. Even Barney Frank, who I am a big fan of, we brought students to him, he even wrote in "Speaking Frankly," a book that came out in the (19)90s that the Democratic Party had to get away from the anti-war, those movement types and the George McGovern types, if the party was going to survive. And he is a Democrat.

PG (00:19:36):
Yeah. Well, I mean, my own feelings about the Boomer politics of the (19)60s are somewhat mixed. I think the most consequential Boomer movement was Black rather than white. The civil rights movement, when it really exploded in the (19)60s, starting with the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides, that was young, Black baby boomers, college students and people slightly older than college age. To me, it was a more mature movement than some of the later whiter movements. More politically mature, accomplished more, and generally stirred the country I think. It made it impossible to be overtly racist. That did not happen overnight, but we have evolved to a point now where in polling, it is impossible to measure racism because everyone who's polled knows there are certain things you do not say.

SM (00:21:39):
It is subtle of everything.

PG (00:21:40):
Yeah, yeah. It did not make racism impossible, but it drove it underground. They had political successes, like the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1960, the Voting Rights Act of (19)65, the engagement of the federal government, the war on poverty. So, I think that of all the movements, that is the one I most admire. The anti-war movement, I completely sympathized with it, but I do not think it was a mature political movement. I think in fact that the Boomers who were of fighting age really split in two directions. Boomers fought the war, young Boomers. Boomers opposed the war. The Boomers who opposed the war, I think were what we classically think of in an oversimplified way as who the Boomers were, privileged kids from suburban backgrounds, college-educated and deeply into self-expression and deeply against fighting the war. I am a member of the Silent Generation. I was in college when the Korean War was happening. There was no movement against the Korean War. There were a lot of reasons for that. The Korean War was in the penumbra of war, it happened five years after World War II. World War II united the country almost wholly, about as close to wholly as you can get. In the penumbra of that, people did not question wars. If the country called, you served. But we were not Boomers. We were the Silent Generation and we just shut up.

SM (00:24:53):
We’re not The Beats part of that though? We’re not the beats part of the silent?

PG (00:24:57):
Yeah, certainly in age terms. When I was in college, I was enamored of The Beats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That I was must reading for me. Kerouac, Chandler Broussard, Ginsburg. Yeah.

SM (00:25:19):
Pearl Kennedy.

PG (00:25:19):
Yeah, Pearl Kennedy. I was an English major and was very much taken with them. Part of the reason I was taken was because the degree to which they were white writers, but they intersected with the Black culture and adopted some of its language, some of its style. But I think the Black movement, the Black boomers very strongly influenced the style of all the subsequent movements, including the anti-war movement, the women's liberation movement, which consciously adopted the Black style of protest, the music, the march, the demonstration as an expression. I think the American Indian movement, about which I am not very well educated, but I think they borrowed heavily from the Blacks. So, to me that was the most con-, and it is not just because of my particular affection for Black America, I think it was the most consequential Boomer movement.

SM (00:27:12):
I think the gay and lesbian movement also took a lot from the civil rights movement.

PG (00:27:17):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

SM (00:27:18):
And even the Chicano movement, although the Young Lords tried to copy in Philadelphia the Black Panthers.

PG (00:27:27):
Yeah-yeah.

SM (00:27:27):
Now, when we are about the Boomers now, we are talking-

PG (00:27:32):
Just parenthetically, it is movements like the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, the Black P. Stone Rangers, that to me is not mature politics. The SDS to me is not mature politics. What do you accomplish if you blow up a ROTC building? What do you accomplish if you blow yourselves up in a townhouse in Greenwich Village? What did the Symbionese Liberation Army accomplish? Politics to me ought to have a reasonable prospect of gain or chance of gain or a realistic assessment of the possibility of gain for the common good. It should not be just self-expression. Abby Hoffman smoking dope and wearing an afro is to me, not-

SM (00:28:50):
I mean that is the hippies.

PG (00:28:53):
Yeah-yeah, yeah.

SM (00:28:54):
I have been interviewing some of them, so...

PG (00:28:56):
Yeah. Good. No, they belong in this project.

SM (00:29:01):
The Hippies and Yippies. I always have to check this to make sure. It is a crazy tape player. What is fascinating me, because actually, this particular area is the greatest interest in my life because I had an African-American professor at Ohio State University, Dr. Johnson. I was there in 1971, (19)72, and all these things were happening, and African American issues have always been very important to me. I did internships in prisons for prison inmates. I have spent my whole life really caring about this issue. Man, monumental. We had Dr. King celebrations every year for 33 years, wherever I worked to honor him. We have had a tribute to Bayard Rustin, and we have had a tribute to Jackie Robinson, but what I am getting at here is, what's interesting is if you look at the Brown versus Board of Education, I would like your comments on this, Thurgood Marshall, Jack Greenberg, they were the types that, it was more of a gradualist approach, and Dr. King was challenging. He loved them, but he was more, "I want it now. I do not want to wait."

PG (00:30:16):
The fierce urgency of now, which Obama used this quote.

SM (00:30:20):
So, he wanted it now, and I know some of the big four, not even as much as Dr. King, but then you have Stokely Carmichael challenging Dr. King, basically saying, "Your time has passed." Even Malcolm debating Bayard Rustin, I believe in (19)64, telling him, "Your time has passed." So more Black power type of a-

PG (00:30:45):
They debated each other several times. I saw Malcolm debate several people, and I think the only one who held his own required Bayard Rustin. Rustin was really good. It's very tough to debate Malcolm X, who first of all is very gifted at argument and second of all, the case for the prosecution is a whole lot easier given the history of race in America is a whole lot easier. The prosecution case is a whole lot easier to make than the ... Rustin was not arguing the defense, but he was arguing the defense of a strategy of one step at a time. Malcolm was arguing for essentially millennial strategy, give us [inaudible]. At the time he debated Rustin was before his conversion to traditional Islam.

SM (00:31:53):
Obviously, Malcolm died in (19)65. He was 39, just like Dr. King. I find that ironic. The irony that they both died at 39, both at the hands of a gun.

PG (00:32:02):
Yeah.

SM (00:32:02):
That they both died at 39, both at the hands of a gun. But do you feel that Malcolm was the inspiration for the Black Panthers and people like that? Because when you listen to Stokely Carmichael, or H. Rap Brown, or Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Dave Hilliard, that whole ... Huey Newton. I mean they were, Kent State's having their 40th remembrance ceremony, Bobby Seale's going to be there. There was a link between Black Panthers and SDS, and before, the Weathermen. Just your thoughts on those personalities, and Bobby Seale too. They were personalities. [inaudible] they were serious.

PG (00:32:49):
Yeah. There is an arc that was happening here, starting in Montgomery in the middle (19)50s, through the demonstrations led by King, not only by King, but king is the sort of cover boy of the movement. There were a lot of people that I regarded [inaudible]. He was the most prominent one. Which, and the first incarnation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which began as kids sitting in lunch counters. Its early members were, a lot of them were students studying for the ministry, believed in the doctrine of nonviolence. Believed, not in integration, but in desegregation. And I think sometimes movements get hung up on semantic difficulties, but I think that is, that it really is a difference. Integration meaning it is better for Black people to be in the company of white people. Desegregation means you cannot legally, that separate but equal is not viable. And the SNCC kids were younger, more radical than the people of King's generation. King, some of the field workers in King's organization, the Southern Christian Leader Leadership Conference, were also young and radical and being radicalized by the movement. Same with CORE, Congress on Racial Equality, which I had been a member of in the (19)50s. Did a couple of sit-ins before they were called sit-ins.

SM (00:35:31):
Were you with. James Farmer at all or?

PG (00:35:33):
I never, I was in St. Louis and it was during summers in my college years. I knew the local leadership.

SM (00:35:44):
Right.

PG (00:35:45):
Farmer was a distant and lofty figure. I did not meet him at ... I met him years later.

SM (00:35:53):
I knew when Roy Innis replaced him, or Bruce Wade McKissick, I believe.

PG (00:35:57):
McKissick.

SM (00:35:59):
And then after McKissick, Roy Innis.

PG (00:36:00):
Yeah.

SM (00:36:00):
Oh my God, it is not even in the same league.

PG (00:36:07):
But I think there was, even as the, even while the so-called mainstream civil rights movement seemed to be making progress, engaging the Kennedys, sort of. The Kennedys were quite timid, but Jack was obliged to say finally, for the first time by any president, this is a moral question. Lyndon embraced it wholeheartedly. So, they did what King urged them to do, which was to catch the conscience of the nation, and by doing that, make it politically impossible, make themselves a politically irresistible force to the people in real power. That worked. But a couple of things were going on. One was the increasing discovery, particularly among the younger movement people, that this all had to do with segregation in the south, that the real problems were much more difficult. The problems in the north, which was widely supposed by liberals, by white liberals to be the promised land, was not really the promised land. It had different forms of segregation, and they were not written into law. But housing segregation, which in turn led to school segregation and prejudices not much different from what you found in Alabama or Mississippi. They were just quieter. So, there were, with that discovery, that the relevance of what the mainstream movement had been doing was beginning to seem less important. And second was there was a, the doctrine of nonviolence began being called into question by people in the movement. Because there were too many funerals, was the way the young field workers in the movement expressed it, "I have been to too many funerals." And the doctrine of the non-violent movement was that you cannot defend yourself, or so it seemed to be. Malcolm arrives as a public figure in the early (19)60s. He becomes visible first, I think, on a program, TV program called The Hate That Hate Produced. I am not sure of the date. I think it may have been 1959, in fact, that looked at the Muslim movement, the Nation of Islam, with considerable horror. And Malcolm was one of the people, I think Mike Wallace [inaudible], I think he did. And Malcolm was an extremely, as you know, an extremely articulate spokesman for that point of view. And Malcolm's level of political sophistication even at that point was rising. He was straining against the bounds of the teachings of the Nation of Islam in this matter. Elijah Muhammad, his preaching was getting to be more speechifying and more politicized. So, by late 1963, he is still a member of the Nation of Islam, but he did, one of his most famous speeches was called Message to the Grassroots, and it is wholly politicized, and it is wholly a critique of white America and of the non-violent movement. And he often forgets to attribute the teachings to the ... He had ritually, practically every sentence, in his past, he had, practically every sentence would begin, "The honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us," such and such. In Message to the Grassroots, we do not hear much about the honorable Elijah Muhammad. So he was on, no matter what the cause, we know why he was first sort of suspended, then sort of shut down entirely and why he broke. But I think he was destined to break anyway because he was on this arc. As he gets on this arc, he begins to influence local ... This is way too much detail for you.

SM (00:42:35):
This is important because he was a major influence.

PG (00:42:39):
He begins to influence first the more militant local leaders in, people who were leaders in Cambridge, Maryland, for instance, Gloria Richardson, a number of others around the country. And in fact, the Message to the Grassroots was at a conference they had put together, and he spoke there. They called it the Conference on Grassroots something or other. So that is his first audience outside the orbit he had been in. And then he begins influencing the younger SNCC people, and SNCC is beginning to come apart at the seams, the people who were committed to something like the King doctrine, non-violent direct action-

SM (00:43:52):
The John Lewis types, yeah.

PG (00:43:53):
The John Lewis-

SM (00:43:53):
Julian Bond.

PG (00:43:55):
Julian Bond, yeah. Another good example. And they're moving toward Stokely, and Rap, and Willie Ricks, who was, a field worker, who was probably the first person to utter the slogan "Black Power."

SM (00:44:16):
Oh wow.

PG (00:44:17):
On the Meredith March, which would have been, was that (19)65?

SM (00:44:23):
Wow.

PG (00:44:24):
I am a little rusty on my dates. And that became the battle cry of the younger, cutting-edge movement. That, there was a direct influence of Malcolm X on those guys, the Stokely and the Raps and the SNCC workers particularly. And from SNCC it spreads into CORE. So, CORE, which had been called to Congress on Racial Equality, began kicking out its white members. SNCC kicked out its few white members. And King is moving more toward different issues, to the annoyance of the, what you might call the right wing of the civil rights movement, the Urban League, the NAACP. He begins talking about the war and about and about economic as against purely color problems. So, what we are seeing in that period is a radicalization, we are seeing ripples in a pond flowing out.

SM (00:46:09):
Right.

PG (00:46:13):
And it was affecting everybody, including King, who in the general public impression was the teacher of peace and nonviolence.

SM (00:46:33):
Even on college campuses in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, there was the split. And...

PG (00:46:38):
That is my experience.

SM (00:46:48):
Yeah, a couple times the [inaudible] came off today, even before, on the other side, I do not know why. But around that timeframe, many African American students were instructed to not protest the war anymore, you need to concentrate strips solely on issues of African Americans. And that is when they had big afros on college campuses and the real tensions when there were separatism, particularly in (19)71 and (19)72. I taught at Ohio State, and you cannot find, except for one picture of one African-American student at Kent State.

PG (00:47:23):
Yeah.

SM (00:47:24):
They were told to stay away, and "Your cause is not Vietnam. It's African American issues." So, this might be a continuation of it.

PG (00:47:34):
Yeah, I thought that the, actually, I think the style piece of that happened as part of the Black Power movement. The afros, Black is Beautiful, which to me was a crucial development. The idea that Black is Beautiful. Malcolm taught that the worst crime the white man ever committed against us was teaching us that we were inferior. And we believed, and that was the demoralization of the race, which limited its possibilities, that it had...

SM (00:48:40):
Right.

PG (00:48:41):
Great and potentially glorious possibilities. But that if you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, and you have accepted white standards of beauty among all the other white standards, that you're, it's not healthy mentally. So, I think the Block is Beautiful business was-was more than just a slogan, and I think the afros were more than just a style. It was an assertion Block is beautiful.

SM (00:49:28):
I know at Ohio State it was intimidation too, because you could sense it. And I was not really involved in this at Ohio State as a grad student. I will tell you a little bit more about it after the interview, because there is this thing I want to tell you about what happened at the Ohio Union, which is kind of historically, Glen Llewellyn was then the director. When you look at that, what does it mean, By Any Means Necessary?? Is that the call to violence? Is that the call to say that non-violence will not work anymore, so pick up a gun. If the cops are going to do something else, we're going to do something to them?

PG (00:50:11):
Malcolm, I think when Malcolm used it, it was meant to be mysterious. It was meant to be suggestive. Watch out for us. And it was not, he never, to my knowledge, preached aggressive violence. But he believed very strongly in arming yourself for self-defense. But he kept an ambiguity that was partly ... He was very politically, he was very gifted of political rhetoric, but he was also under legal advice to sort of watch it. The Smith Act was still in force, he could be tossed in the slammer for advocating the overthrow of the government by force of violence.

SM (00:51:23):
I have been looking, in preparation for this interview, looking at some of the tapes on YouTube of Malcolm. And I find that, and also, I found this with Abby Hoffman, the people that may not have liked his politics, but they liked him personally. I get a sense from Malcolm X and from Abby Hoffman, I do not like Jerry Rubin, but people liked him. If you got to know them, when Abby Hoffman was in jail, they did not like the other members of the Chicago Eight, but they liked him, because he was funny, he had a sense of humor, and they liked talking to him. With Malcolm, the tape that I really liked was when he spoke over in England, I guess at Cambridge or Oxford.

PG (00:52:09):
Oh, the Oxford Union, the [inaudible].

SM (00:52:10):
Yeah, that was, with Bill Buckley or whatever. I wish I could see that whole debate. But I think the students, boy, they were really listening, paying respect. But he had a sense of humor that was amazing, and how could you dislike him? And I am just seeing this from afar. And the other one I like, he responds to, he was being interviewed on a television show, it is actually in color, and they're asking him, "I would like to know your last name." It was Malcolm X. There is one on YouTube, and he tried to explain to him, "I do not have a last name."

PG (00:52:50):
Yeah, actually he did. It was Shabazz by that time. But he-

SM (00:52:54):
Yeah.

PG (00:52:57):
The doctrine of the Nation of Islam was, his name was Malcolm Little, and the doctrine of the Nation of Islam was what you think is your last name is actually your slave name, it was the name of your slaveowner. Which is historically accurate, in most cases.

SM (00:53:16):
You we're going to get into some Vietnam veteran issues here, but I think I already had your feelings on the Black Panthers and Black Power. I would like your thoughts on the 1968 Olympics with Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fist. We have had Tommy on our campus and he said, "I was never into the Black Panthers."

PG (00:53:37):
Yeah.

SM (00:53:37):
It was about black power. The second one was the 1969 takeover of the Cornell Union, remember, with the guns, and I think Harry Edwards was the advisor on that at the time. Those are major events. Some other ones, Freedom Summer in. (19)64, Fannie Lou Hamer, [inaudible]-

PG (00:54:00):
Which was not really called Freedom Summer by the sponsors, it was-

SM (00:54:05):
What was it called?

PG (00:54:06):
The Mississippi Summit.

SM (00:54:07):
Oh wow.

PG (00:54:09):
Freedom Summer was the name of a book by a white woman student, Sally Belford, who wrote her story of her experience.

SM (00:54:18):
Yeah, I think I-

PG (00:54:18):
It is quite a good book.

SM (00:54:24):
...I have that book. Then of course, the sexism that was often in the civil rights movement, where women were second class citizens.

PG (00:54:31):
Yeah.

SM (00:54:31):
These are just some of the things that were happening to boomer African-American women in that timeframe. And I know Dr. King, if he were alive today, would be very sensitive about this, really. But just your thoughts on that, those things. The Olympics first in (19)68, I do not know if that had any impact on you at all, or was...

PG (00:55:01):
Not a large impact. I thought it was a gesture, it was fine with me. Again, I tend to separate politics that ... meaningful politics from the politics of gesture. I think that was the politics of gesture. They were entitled to do it, it was an act of free speech and a gesture. I just, I do not think it helped anything, but, except a segment of Black America responded positively to it. But I do not think it advanced the ball anywhere. The Harry Edwards thing, I did not really think about at the time. You mentioned the women in the movement being the second-class citizens. So that was a very real problem. And what I want to just dial back to, we have talked about the transition to Black Power and purging the young militant movement of white people. There was a guy named Bob Moses who was in the early SNCC. I mean, wonderful, bright, educated, just almost saintly guy. Was not Stokely or Rap, he was not in that bag. In fact, it was almost the opposite. But he talked to me once about, white volunteers would come down to the south and would walk into a SNCC office, and there might be, in Mississippi, let us say, and there might be a young Black woman trying to type a document and really struggling with it, struggling with the process of typing it. And the tendency of, as Moses described it, the tendency of white kids, with the best of intentions, best of intentions, would be to say, "Let me help you with that. I can do it. I can do it faster. I studied typing," and moving the Black kids out of the way. And that had an impact. It did not send Bob Moses out into the street yelling, "Black power," but it was part of a cumulative impact of, over a fairly condensed period of time, a couple of years. It was part of the flow that led to the Black Power Movement.

SM (00:59:09):
When you think of that period, there has been a couple books, a lot of Jewish male and female students went south. I know David Hawk, who I interviewed, who was on the Mo Committee, the Moratorium. I know that, well, [inaudible], who was at Berkeley in the free speech movement, certainly Abby Hoffman. He went down there, and then of course they brought these, a lot of these ideas back to Berkeley and the free speech movement. Mario Savio actually was down there as well, in the summer. So, you saw this young people coming together. What I also liked about it was there were Catholic priests, there were Jewish rabbis, there were young people. And I know the relationship between Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King is something that needs to be pursued a lot more than it has. I think the relationship that those two men had with each other, and the criticism that they both received within their religious communities for their stands against the war in Vietnam are historic. And of course, he died young too. He looked like he was older, but he was not that old when he passed away, Rabbi Heschel. So that is the period, and that, boomers that were really influencing, and then a lot of them became part of the anti-war movement, and they went into the women's movement, and where all the other movements, there is a lot of links here, how important civil rights is to the boomer generation.

PG (01:00:50):
Oh yeah, no question about it. One of my ambivalences is that for some of the white kids who carried those influences back into various aspects of the struggle, there was a strain of wanting to be white Negro, so far as some of the [inaudible]. My view of the anti-war movement is perhaps heretical. I mean, I am glad they did it, I was rooting for them. I do not think it ... And that the war made it very difficult for Lyndon Johnson, literally difficult for him to leave the White House to go anywhere other than a military base in his last couple of years. Is that productive politics? I have mixed feelings about that. But I think the popular sentiment that ended the war was the sentiment of the families who were sending their kids to be cannon fodder. People in the anti-war movement were finding ways out. They were getting college exemptions, they were moving to Canada. They were hiding, they went underground. And so, I have always had a lingering question, it is not an issue, it is not a suspicion, but I have had a lingering question about the degree to which the motivation for a lot of what happened in the anti-war movement was self-preservation, not wanting to go to Vietnam and get trashed. The parents of the kids ... I wrote in the introduction to Charlie Company that the anthem that marked the turning point politically, that told us that the war was no longer sustainable, was not Give Peace a Chance, which was...

PG (01:04:02):
Give Peace a Chance, which was Anne and some of the student anti-war movement, the young anti-war movement. It was a Country song, Ruby, Do not Take Your Love to Town. A song by Mel Tillis. And it is the ballad of a quadriplegic veteran who's come home and his wife is straying, he's no longer sexually capable, and his wife is straying and he's stuck in bed and pleading with her not to go out and winding up saying, if I could move, I would get a gun and put her in the ground. That song, when it was first recorded, went nowhere. Two years later, it was number one on the Country Charts and high up on the National All Purpose Charts. That told me something very profound that Johnson and then Nixon had lost the faith of the people, of the people who had classically supported the war. That dear honor of-

SM (01:05:44):
I have seen ahead. A great movie.

PG (01:05:50):
Some of my friends objected to the closing scene in which they're gathered around the table and they start saying, God bless America. But that is unrealistic because look what it did to their family. I think it was exactly accurate. There are people who believe, a lot of people who believe that when your country calls you answer the call and you may die, your sons may die. But that that is part of being an American. And then when you lose those people, those tend to be working class people. People who really were not looking at much of the future beyond high school or maybe high school and community college or junior college. In the North, kids who were going to go to work for the auto plant or the steel mill, where their dads worked. In the South, where there's a strong military tradition. I think they are the people who entered the war and they did not have a movement. They were not out in the streets, but it was clear in polling that they were gone or that they were going. That that support was happening, made it impossible. I think it finally turned Nixon into Nixon, and probably Kissinger into, we got to find a way out of this thing with saving face. That we have got a weakness, is not supported. We cannot keep this going.

SM (01:08:10):
Some of the music of the (19)60s that really were the inspiration, obviously after Kent State, four dead in Ohio, which we will be hearing that in a week from now, a week from tomorrow, I will be there. And they will be playing that a lot because that was a very popular hit by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. And then you had Country Joe doing those songs that he wrote that are classic. And of course, she had John Lennon and his music. All we can say is Give Peace a Chance. And Bob Dylan and his music were anthems of the anti-war movement.

PG (01:08:50):
If God is on our side, He will stop the next war. And of course, there were anthems of the anti-war movement that I just do not think the, and I do not denigrate the contributions of the anti-war movement, but I do not think the anti-war movement ended the war. I think they helped, but I do not think they ended the war.

SM (01:09:20):
Do you feel it was when the people in middle America, Ohio, realized that their sons are coming home in caskets, they realize it's over? And while I cannot say it had a lot to do, the other two were white students killed on a college campus.

PG (01:09:47):
It is over because the kids are coming home in coffins or body bags or however they were coming home. And because there was very clearly no sign of progress, we went through a period between, I think the Tet Offensive, which militarily, a defeat for the other guys, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. Was a huge victory for them? A huge psychological victory. Huge. Had a devastating impact on the American national psyche and on the American war effort. In some months, or maybe a year later, maybe a year and a half, again I am rusty on the dates, we had My Lai. American troops massacre a village. You take those two and print those on the American public's psyche and you are in a... The old saying in politics is, when you have got a failing campaign, the dog food is purple and the dogs do not like it. And at that point I thought the dog food is purple and the dogs did not like it.

SM (01:11:35):
Charlie Company, they were 65 different young men who came home.

PG (01:11:44):
All of them did. We started with a roster of one company, which consisted of, I think it is somewhere around 160 soldiers. We found as many of them as we could. It was very difficult. Very, very difficult. We spent half a year just finding a workable, startup list of names, and with any contact information. Addresses, sometimes just a hometown.

SM (01:12:17):
Wow.

PG (01:12:23):
And they had fought in the (19)67, (19)68, (19)69 period, (19)68, (19)69 really, which was the period of America's maximum involvement. We had 560,000 troops there at the time. And we picked that particular company. We wanted a combat infantry company. I did not want any special, we wanted ordinary grunts. We did not want special forces. We did not want chopper pilots. We wanted just ordinary on the ground infantry grunts. We found our way to The Big Red One, has an alumni association. We have looked through their records, found one battle that sounded interesting to us. We wanted to get a collective account of one battle. We got a list of names of people who had served in that company, but with no contact information. The Army was only allowed to give us contact information for people who were still in the military, and I think only four of them were. So, we had to scratch and claw for half a year, as I say, and then another half year to do the, we had a team working on it, and to do the necessary interviewing. And for the magazine version we found 50 some, maybe 54, that included a couple or three who had been killed over there, and a couple who had died back home. And after we published the magazine version, we began to hear from other guys in the company and we checked them against our roster and they were legit. And so, for the book, I think we had 65 members, that is less than half the company. And one of the ironies was the battle that attracted us originally, none of them remembered. It was not that it was not that significant, but they told us about another battle that was significant, to the extent that any of those battle were significant. I mean, we were fighting over patches of real estate that nobody wanted. We would hold them for a few days and then leave.

SM (01:15:47):
And even Caputo, I interviewed him and he said, you read the Rumor of War, and even in (19)65 he started asking questions, what are we doing here? Because they are taking a hill. Then they have to go back and they would not lose as many people, but they would lose one. And then he lost his life and we just gave the hill up again. I mean, it was starting in (19)65 with the attitude, but (19)67 to (19)71 was the heyday.

PG (01:16:18):
Was the heyday.

SM (01:16:21):
These young men, did most of them feel they were discriminated against when they came home in terms of-

PG (01:16:26):
A lot of them.

SM (01:16:27):
A lot of them. Was it because of that image of My Lai, that Vietnam veterans were all baby killers? That kind of an attitude?

PG (01:16:37):
And it was not just My Lai, it was an unintended consequence of the anti-war movement, which was throwing around terms like baby killers.

(01:16:52):
Several of them told us when they were being flown home on commercial jets under contract to the government, they would get to the airport, duck into the first men's room they saw and change into civilian clothes. They did not want to walk through the airport in military clothes.

SM (01:17:24):
Is it true that at least some of them had a hard time getting a job, but also that some of your military organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars did not even welcome them? In the beginning.

PG (01:17:41):
In the beginning, and I think that is one of the reasons for the formation of the Vietnam Veterans of America, or whatever the group is called, their own thing. I think the traditional, the VFW and the American Legion, caught onto and began welcoming them. But I think if you're a young guy and you have got people my age sitting with their caps on, that is not an environment that is going to make you feel real good.

SM (01:18:34):
I can remember affirmative action included Vietnam veterans at that time. Because I worked at Ohio University and they put Vietnam veterans in with African-Americans and Latinos. And because there was a feeling that they were certainly being discriminated against too. And of course, when the wall was built, everything changed. It went from being not popular to being popular to be a Vietnam vet. And everybody wanted to be one and people lied about being vets. And what's the thing that you learned the most about Vietnam from these 65 men. They were mostly probably middle or lower class in terms of economics.

PG (01:19:19):
I will tell you the main line would be working class. It was not everybody, but working class. For some of the Black guys it was a job opportunity where there were none. For some of the white guys, a lot of the white guys it was, well, I am waiting for my factory job, but I just got my draft notice. And ooh, that is what you do.

(01:20:00):
What I learned was that all the stereotypes of the Vietnam veterans were precisely that. They were stereotypes. They were empty stereotypes that what we found, 65 is a fairly good sample. It's not a statistic out of a commitment of a couple of million troops over the whole period of the war. And of all Vietnam era veterans it's not a very good sample. But I am a believer in journalism. And what we found was, what the stereotype was, was they come home, they're crazy, they shoot up their families, they drank too much. They do drugs. They cannot hold jobs. That was the stereotype. In some cases, that is what we found. In some cases, we found people who just resumed-

SM (01:21:34):
Life as normal.

PG (01:21:35):
Life as normal. We found a tendency among them not to want to talk about the war experience, even to their own families. A lot of them had wives. Did not talk to their wives about the war experience. One of our guys was interviewing a vet down in Texas at the vet's home. And they sat and talked just as we were sitting and talking. And my guy looked up and saw 90 percent hidden behind the door frame, the veteran's wife. And she had been eavesdropping. And when he left she said, he has never told me any of those things. I think that is been true in past wars as well, that it was very hard for veterans to talk to anyone except people who had shared the experience. But what we were astonished by was the degree to which they... We were the big-time national press and suddenly we were asking them. And we had a feeling that a lot of them, a lot of them, maybe a majority, were just waiting for someone to ask them. Not family, they did not want to talk to the wife or the kids or their parents, but they wanted the country to notice them, I think.

SM (01:23:48):
That is why the words, welcome home, is such an important. If you see a Vietnam veteran, I always say welcome home. Because even though it's been 35 years or whatever, that means something to him.

PG (01:24:00):
I agree.

SM (01:24:09):
You're a journalist and your career as a journalist is amazing in its own right. You talk a lot about Malcolm and African Americans and the civil rights experience and how important it was for the other movements as a model for the movements that followed in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. We talked a little bit about the Vietnam veterans here. But I would like to talk a little bit about journalism and about newspapers and about magazines during that timeframe. Question I asked Richard Reeves, who I interviewed yesterday, we were about three hours on the phone, was the fact is between 1946, which is the time that rumors were born, and 2010, when was journalism at its finest and when was it at its worst? And I preface this by saying that two things. Number one, during the Vietnam War, even though it was a terrible war, it seemed like journalism was unbelievable because of the fact that journalists had total access to the war with Halberstam, Sheehan, Peter Arnette, Malcolm Brown, the names go on and on. Television, the reporters, they had access. The access that you did not see in other wars. And then of course you had the Pentagon Papers, which was very important. And the whole issue of Watergate and the coverage and then the whole situation with Woodward and Bernstein, investigative journalism to me, just as a person who's not a journalist, this seemed like a heyday. But I do not know when you look at journalism in the 1946 after the war to John Kennedy, was that a good period? Was it a good period from (19)60 to (19)70? When were the best periods during this timeframe?

PG (01:26:15):
Well, I always thought I walked into national journalism at the almost perfect moment. I started at Newsweek in (19)62, national affairs writer. They discovered that I was interested in civil rights. Civil rights was a burgeoning story. I had been there two months when they sent me to Ole Miss to cover and get shot at.

SM (01:27:00):
Wow.

PG (01:27:05):
And the civil rights movement was a monumental story for years. The Vietnam War and the anti-war movement was a monumental story for years. The other movements we have discussed, and Watergate, which became also my beat. I was not working as an investigative reporter. We did not really have a serious investigative capability and it certainly was not me. I am not good at sleuthing. But I wrote something like 35 cover stories on Watergate.

SM (01:28:04):
Wow.

PG (01:28:08):
And so that period in my life, from (19)62 to (19)74, that was the flowering of American journalism. Certainly, it was at Newsweek. It was when Newsweek engaged with those issues in a way that news magazines traditionally had never engaged with issues. We were doing journalism on Gaje, essentially on civil rights. The war, Watergate. Since I was working out in the provinces in the latter (19)50s, but I think beginning with probably the Montgomery bus boycott, well, probably beginning with Brown versus Board and the Montgomery bus boycott, we saw a flowering of journalism. I think journalism responded to those stories very, very well. So, it was not like the day I started at Newsweek was when the golden era of journalism. A lot of things were at play there. We had an editor at Newsweek who wanted to engage with those stories. A man of serious conscience with a very clear sense of right and wrong. Was not a liberal. He was like an old-fashioned-

SM (01:30:10):
What was his name again?

PG (01:30:12):
Oz Elliott. Osborn Elliott. O-S-B-O-R-N. Elliott with a double L and double T. He was a man of breeding, high church, but a man. He reminded me of the old Progressive Movement in the early part of the 19th century that if the good people would get together, we could fix everything. And I think that was a core belief for him. And it was a motivating thing for our engagement with the political and moral questions of the day. But I think there were other editors around similarly disposed. I think the issues made journalism better. The money situation made journalism better. In those days you could afford to cover stories and cover them really all out. For a big story we used to say, we're going to scramble the jets on this one. And we would scramble the jets. I wrote the Jack Kennedy assassination story, and I think I had files from maybe 15 to 18 correspondents. Similarly, with Nixon's resignation. And when you have money to throw at a story, you can really cover the socks off it. That does not much exist in the industry anymore. Everybody is shrinking.

SM (01:32:32):
And also, I will say this, people read. Magazines and papers. Because on my college campus, New York Times. Everybody was reading the paper. So, you knew that when you were writing a piece people were, and even the Binghamton Press, when I was at Binghamton, they were reading. And I remember Joseph Craft, you started to get his name. He wrote a lot of good articles and boy, I learned a lot from him. He was a good writer.

PG (01:33:03):
He was. Smart guy.

SM (01:33:07):
What are your thoughts on Daniel Ellsberg, The New York Times was involved in that.

PG (01:33:11):
And the Washington Post.

SM (01:33:11):
Right.

PG (01:33:15):
The Times, first.

SM (01:33:19):
There is a feeling today in journalism that... Here we go. Is this going? Yes. Very good. The audio. The computer will check it just to be on the safe place. I was just mentioning about the journalists, Woodward and Bernstein, and certainly Daniel Ellsberg. Your thoughts. Was he right in doing what he did?

PG (01:33:43):
I think so.

SM (01:33:46):
And then the relation. I did not know Neil Sheehan was somewhat linked to this. Because I am reading a book now by Harrison Salisbury where he talks about The New York Times and how he had approached The Times and so forth through that link. So, I am learning that as well. There is a movie out now. Any thoughts on Daniel Ellsberg? Because the Pentagon Papers were like...

PG (01:34:09):
It is not a story I covered, so I have no close information about it. I just was glad they did it. I think it was an act of great courage and it was a contributing factor to the end of the war, to the sense that this war never made any sense and we're losing it. So, I think my tendency is to honor him, but again, I was not closely involved in the Pentagon Papers.

SM (01:35:12):
The gentleman I mentioned who I interviewed a couple of weeks back, mentioned he thought you were a god because of what you did at Newsweek regarding gay and lesbian writers. And I am doing an interview with him about his book, 1968, and we're talking about Harvey Milk, and we're talking about a lot of the issues. Because I have interviewed a lot of gay and lesbian Americans for this book project. So, they are going to be well covered. But, obviously that was a very courageous stand to take. Could you explain now a little bit about, obviously it's very important to people who are gay and lesbian, but how important.

SM (01:36:03):
It is very important to people who are gay and lesbian, but how important, maybe the criticism you even had for doing it that the courage it took.

PG (01:36:09):
No. I felt it took zero courage. I think part of the gestalt, which Oz Elliot's reign lasted through the (19)60s, but the gestalt continued for a long while after that, and we were a magazine with conscience. I think one of our sins was that we did not notice that while we were writing, well, while we were taking sides essentially, in print with the Civil Rights Movement, with the Anti-War Movement, to a degree with the counterculture, which I was a little less happy with, we were working with a caste system, a gender caste system. The model for Newsweek was Time Magazine. Time was, I think, again, my dates are rusty, but it was seven or eight years older than Newsweek. Some of our senior leaders have, including Oz Elliot, came from Time. That caste system had been created a time where researchers actually were required to wear white gloves and they were really a serving class. The men were the writers and editors and the women were researchers, fact Checkers, clippers. Newsweek imitated many, many things about Time when Newsweek was born in (19)33, a date that is familiar to me because I wrote the 50th Anniversary Edition. I turned 50 about the same time as Newsweek did. The original model was Time and we did things the Times way and that endured. The Newsweek I walked into in (19)62 still had this caste system. The women were essentially an underclass and we were blind to it, all of us. In 1970, the women, all of whom had been schooled and they were children of the (19)60s, they were Boomer young women. They filed an equal opportunity complaint, hired a lawyer, Eleanor Holmes Norton. Now, a sort of member of Congress and essentially sued Newsweek. The reaction was interesting because Newsweek was not angry. It was sort of public humiliation because it obviously made all the papers and everything, but the management response was not angry. I think the management response was chagrin. How could we have been blind to this situation? It did not work wonders overnight, but one of their demands was that, "Since they have been kept in this box for so long, they wanted a course in Newsweek writing and reporting. They wanted classes." They asked for me and one other guy to teach those classes. I taught three, eight-week semesters. And a few of them actually turned out to be very good Newsweek journalists or got enough confidence in themselves to work outside the nest, for other magazines or freelancing and stuff. That was our big blind spot. I think gays and lesbians were not. Charlie may think I played some important role. I never thought of it.

SM (01:42:29):
He is very gifted in terms of his ability to write and his ability to think and to be very critical where criticism is due. So, he is not going to give a whole lot of praise, but he praised you.

PG (01:42:44):
Well, we are friends and have been for a long time. I honestly think he gives me too much credit. There was nothing brave about it.

SM (01:42:57):
Would you say that here we are again, Boomer Generation, we have been talking today a lot about African Americans, Boomers, and certainly women taken as a role modeling here. Can you also say that even what was happening at Newsweek or even Time, may have been happening at other newspapers and magazines around the country, that newspapers grew up due to these pressures of the Boomers, when in all these different movements?

PG (01:43:36):
I have only circumstantial evidence, but I think the circumstantial evidence is pretty good that they did. You began to see women with serious roles. My wife was an extremely gifted journalist, extremely gifted journalist. She worked for the New York Post when it was a good newspaper. It is very hard for someone seeing it now in the Murdoch Era to believe that. Back in its day, back in the (19)50s, (19)60s, even into the (19)70s, it was, in the (19)50s and (19)60s, if you were talking about what are the best written papers in America, the conversation would not have included the New York Times, would not have included the Washington Post, would not have included the LA Times, would not have included the St. Louis Post Dispatch, would not have included the Chicago Tribune. The conversation would have included the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Post. They had extremely gifted writing staffs. And one day, my wife Helen got a call. Helen Dudar, D-U-D-A-R, D as in-

SM (01:45:18):
It is in the book.

PG (01:45:19):
Yeah.

SM (01:45:19):
You had devoted, I think, one of your books to her. I think it was Malcolm.

PG (01:45:26):
Yeah. I also, when she was terminally ill, I compiled and self-published an anthology of her work. Did I just lose my train of thought?

SM (01:45:49):
Talking about newspapers and the New York Tribune and that.

PG (01:45:53):
The Herald Tribune and The Post, yeah. The editor of The Times called her one day, when she was still working at The Post, and he said, "I do not suppose we could tempt you into writing for our society page?" I will not quote her exact language because it would be like... But the short version was, "No."

SM (01:46:41):
It is really amazing. I worked at a medical school, I will not mention it, in Philadelphia for four years, the manager of activities, they did not have any women in medical school, and the first one started in 1965. Now they make up over half of the medical school. I am shocked. I heard about these stories in law school. I have heard all these. Now, there were obviously exceptions. Obviously, Phyllis Schlafly may have been an exception because she was a lawyer and she went through that timeframe.

PG (01:47:16):
There are always exceptions. But I think now the majority of students in all med schools are now women. When my wife was in the hospital with what turned out to be the terminal breast cancer-

SM (01:47:43):
That is what my mom had.

PG (01:47:44):
Yeah, it is pretty common. It is very sad, but common. We dealt a lot with the young woman resident who was running the service where my wife was hospitalized, and I liked her a lot. She was very straightforward. She leveled with me. There was no feel-good stuff, but there was sympathy without sugarcoating, which was very important to me. I told her, "How great it was, I was seeing more and more through my wife's illness, I was seeing more and more women in the profession on their way up." And she said, "Yeah, but it is still very tough in the prestige professions." Surgery, not so much, very tough for women to crack that. That is a fraternity. It's not universally, but it's pretty much a boy’s club. And I said, "Well, what about pediatrics? Everybody loves pediatricians." She said, "Yeah, we can, but it is not a prestige."

SM (01:49:24):
Everything is evolving and hopefully it continues to evolve.

PG (01:49:29):
I think that is an evolutionary stage, [inaudible].

SM (01:49:33):
Two of the questions I have asked every single person somewhat, is we have gone into just unique things that you have been involved in, is the issue of healing and the issue of trust. I have been prefacing the question on healing based on a group of students that I took to see Senator Edmond Musky in the middle (19)90s. We had a program where we took students to meet the leaders, small numbers of students. He had just gotten out of the hospital and Gaylord Nelson helped me to organize this. So, students, we put the questions together, and one of the questions they came up with is... They had seen all the divisions in 1968 and assassinations and the convention. And the question is, "Whether the Boomer Generation is going to go to their graves with lack of healing within their psyche?" And the reference was also made that it was a common knowledge that the Civil War generation went to their graves without healing. And you can see it at the Gettysburg Battlefield right now. I go five times a year over there to try to get a feel of war and everything. And the question was this, "Due to the tremendous divisions between those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who supported the troops, those who were against the troops, those who between black and white, between male and female, between gay and straight, between, and then of course, they had threw in the burnings of the cities throughout the (19)60s, and the tremendous divisions, is that generation that experienced it when they were young, going to go to their graves with really very sad feelings of not healing, whether that is the activists who participated or the people who experienced these things? Do we have an issue with healing as Boomers age and pass?"

PG (01:51:47):
I think the important question is the generations that follow, will the Boomer experience affect future generations in a positive way? I think there is some fragmentary evidence that, that is happening. The Boomers... I am 77, I feel as if my life is defined. I have done some good stuff. I have done some not so good stuff. Healing is not an issue with me. I cannot read the minds of Boomers. I guess that some of them will be sad or disappointed that they did not change America. The problem with the revolutions is you never get to the Emerald City because it does not exist. I hope they go to their graves in some degree of peace about their lives and times. My guess is they are far enough past it now that they have got their old war stories, but at peace. The Boomers I know I do not think are particularly broody about it. But I just do not know. To me, again, the real question is did the Boomer Generation advance the ball politically and socially? Are we a better society or are we more just society? To me, I know that Tea Partiers say, "That a just society is a Communist slogan." But to me, it is not. To me it is a [inaudible] principal [inaudible]. I think if they even incrementally advanced the ball toward a just society or what became called the Beloved Committee, they have a right to go to their graves feeling okay about it themselves. But I do not know, I do not think it is an answerable question.

SM (01:55:00):
The wall has done a tremendous part in healing a lot of the Vietnam veterans and their families. Although, I have gone to the memorial every year on Memorial Day and Veterans Day since 1994, after I had met Lewis Puller who wrote Fortunate Son. There's still a lot of healing amongst the Vietnam veterans coming together in brotherhood is very important to them.
PG (01:55:26):

I still know some of them from Charlie Company. I am still in touch with very few of them. And that book is what, was published in the early (19)80s, so it is-

SM (01:55:40):
To Heal a Nation, by Jan Scruggs.

PG (01:55:43):
No, my book was, I think, published in 1980.

SM (01:55:48):
(19)85, I think, was not it?

PG (01:55:50):
No, it was not that.

SM (01:55:51):
Well, I got the date here.

PG (01:55:54):
It does not matter, but it is 25 or 30 years later, and I am still in touch with a few of the guys.

SM (01:56:05):
Scruggs wrote his book because he felt it was not only to heal of vets, but to heal a nation, that is why he wrote the book. The question I have asked myself at times and others, is whether it has healed the nation, whether the wall has done some part in healing the nation? But most importantly, as people have said, "Please define this question in a more clear way. It's really what you're saying, Steve, is Vietnam veterans and those who opposed the war, the anti-war people, and can they ever come together and hug and be friends and be accepted at the wall?" Whereas Bill Clinton, when he came there, some people were yelling at him, "As a coward," and everything. And certainly, people like McNamara and Jane Fonda and those types, there would be a war if they were ever there.

PG (01:56:59):
I tend to doubt that, that is going to happen, the hugs between the Jane Fonda's and the veterans who knew people on that wall, that ain't going to happen. Again, among other things, there remains a class difference between the anti-war people and the people who actually fought the war. It was interesting when I wrote Charlie Company, the wall was still just a plan, it was an architect's drawing. The veterans we interviewed, almost to a man, hated it, hated it, hated the design. When it happened, they fell in love with it. One guy I am in touch with in Oregon helped bring up a scaled down model of it, a traveling affordable model of it that he's been up and down the West Coast with.

SM (01:58:27):
We brought it to our campus. We had over 5, 500 people that came. I would say, maybe only about one third were students. I mean, it is just like they came out of the woodwork and they came at night. But no one was around. I stayed there for four days. I had three hours of sleep, I think, in those four days. Veterans had come in after midnight when no one was around. I was amazed. Musky responded by saying... He did not talk anything about (19)68 when we asked him the question. He said, "We have not healed since the Civil War," talking about race. That is what [inaudible]. The other one is, and again, as a political science major and history major, dissent and protest is very important. So not trusting your government is really we are taught that, that is good for a democracy. But the question is, was the Boomer Generation more than any other generation that just did not trust because their leaders had lied to them, whether it be the Gulf of Tonkin with President Johnson, whether it be Watergate with Richard Nixon, McNamara's lies about the numbers and the bodies? You can even go back to Eisenhower, and he lied on national television about the U2 incident with Gary Powers, he lied.

PG (01:59:51):
One of my quarrels with the Boomer Generation is that they did not do what needs to be done in a democratic order, which is get serious about creating an electoral movement. The marches and levitate the Pentagon and blowing each other up, that was all to me, theater. If you want to change the trustworthiness of people in government, you have got to organize in a very serious way, and it is hard work, and you have got to elect people you trust. You have got to find people you trust out of your own ranks. And you have got to organize, you have got to get people to the polls. You have got to do all the hard work. You have got to raise the money, so that you can call attention to your movement. In that sense, when I talk about mature politics, that to me is mature politics. I think the Tea Party Movement, which I earlier called the Last Movement, is not there yet. They love to complain. They love rallies. They love signs. But they're not a party. They're not a serious political organization. I am nowhere near on their side politically, but if they want to be taken seriously, I will tell what [inaudible] to be taken seriously.

SM (02:02:15):
One of the things I observed in the (19)60s and early (19)70s is that when there was a protest... And I only got a couple more minutes, then I am done. The protests were, you could see posters from just about all the groups. When Earth Day took place, Earth Day and when Gaylord Nelson met with the anti-war people to make sure he was not stepping on the anti-war people, so there was a working relationship between that group and the beginnings of Earth Day. Phyllis Schlafly said, "All the people that were involved in the Environmental Movement were all former commies." That was her perception.

PG (02:02:53):
That is her perception of everything that is left of Genghis Khan.

SM (02:02:59):
But it is interesting, you could see the posters, you could see the... Actually, all of the movements, the posters were there, probably at the moratorium in (19)69 and in Earth Day, the first one. But now, it does not seem to be that way. It seems that they have become separated again. They're into the Women's Movement is really into women's issues. The gay and lesbian organizations are into their issues. The Latinos, they are into their issues. And of course, the Anti-War Movement is all scattered all over the place. So, it seems like there's a separatism happening within the movements even. I might be wrong in this.

PG (02:03:49):
I think at least in the period we're talking about, I think that is always just... We were talking about the cleavage over the pressure on King, not to talk about Vietnam or the economy. What you described, the students who did not show up, the black students who stayed away from-

SM (02:04:15):
Kent State.

PG (02:04:17):
... from the Kent State mobilization. I do not think that is new. And within those movements, there were many tendencies within the Civil Rights Movement, certainly. Even within the Anti-War Movement, you ran the range from the Fellowship of Reconciliation to the Weather Underground. I think that is inherent, that is inherent. And people with grievances are going to have a hierarchy of grievances. And the top at the of the hierarchy is the one that most affects me, my life, my friends, my circle, my peers. If I am a college kid and during the Vietnam War, all my friends are going to be agitated about the draft and the possibility of getting called up.

SM (02:05:54):
I am down to the last part, which is basically, you already spoke to this, some names, terms, people that were well-known during the period. They could be just quick responses. But my final question before that is, you had mentioned that you were there in Mississippi, James Meredith and you have obviously experienced so much, number one, were you at Malcolm's funeral?

PG (02:06:21):
No.

SM (02:06:21):
Okay.

PG (02:06:22):
No. I made a conscious decision to stay away.

SM (02:06:33):
Your meetings with him, they must be unbelievable memories, just interviewing him for a couple hours. What was it like to be in the same room with him?

PG (02:06:53):
What is your reaction seeing him on YouTube? It was very hard not to like him. I would love to be able to say, I got to be friends. I cannot say that because I cannot speak for him. The first couple of times I interviewed him, he was a prisoner of a theology that held that white people were devils, blue-eyed devils. But the first time I met him was in St. Louis. I had seen him during my fellowship year at Harvard. I had seen him speak at the Harvard Law School Forum. He happened to be there when I was in the middle of reading Sierra Lincoln's book called The Black Muslims in American. I was quite absorbed by it, so I thought I better go watch this guy. And I did and-

PG (02:08:01):
And when I got back to St. Louis, one of my first orders of business was to go to my city editor and say, "This is an important phenomenon in America, and let me go find out what they're doing here." They had mosques all over the country. And he said, " Okay." The St. Louis newspapers did not really cover the Black community in St. Louis very well. And so, I decided I was going to make that migration to start covering the Black community in St. Louis. And I started with a four-part series on the local mosque of the Nation of Islam. And a couple of months later, I got a call from Malcolm saying, "I am going to be in St. Louis to visit the local mosque. Would you like to meet with me?" And I said, "Yeah." Helen, my wife, was then freelancing, because we were looking for a year in St. Louis. And she was leading her not very successful freelance session. She said she wanted to see him. That conversation was, I think probably the best word I could find for it is civil. Was civil for the most part. But I thought it kind of got a little easier, a little more conversational, a little less interview-y. Went on for a couple hours and Malcolm was defending a theological position. But a lot of the reporters he was confronting those days were portraying him as a preacher of hate, dangerous dude. And we were not asking that kind of question. We were not coming on like district attorneys. We were just asking him civil questions about what's this all about? And by the end of it, the tone was pretty good. And as we were getting up to leave, my wife said one of the objectives of the Nation of Islam was to create a lot of small businesses, black owned businesses in the ghetto, was sort of the beginnings of building economic independence in their minds. And my wife said to Malcolm, "What if all those businesses succeed? And all the people running them got successful and they run off and joined the NAACP?" And at first, he did not understand she was kidding. And then there was a double take and then a wide smile. And I think that became a key to my subsequent interviews with him. And Helen interviewed him a couple of times there. She wrote about him separately in the New York Post. She wrote pieces about him. But I think in our subsequent interviews, they really were more like conversations. And I think I won his trust, but I also did not feel he was obliged to like me or embrace me as a friend. I did want his trust and I was happy when I felt that I won it. In fact, after the last piece I wrote about him, he had one of his staffers call me and say, "Minister Malcolm thought that piece was very fair."

SM (02:13:10):
So, you may have shown him that, because I was around students at Ohio State that really did not like white people, and if you show that you care about them, about what they are saying, we can never live in the skin of a black person. But if there is a sense that a person truly does care, and you may have been, he sense you cared about this.

PG (02:13:41):
I think I probably conveyed that. But I also think what was important to him was, he had two public persona when he was dealing with the White Press. One was playing the caricature Malcolm. People would say, "Are you teaching hate?" And he would do riffs like "by any means necessary", or if you ask them questions about the state of Black America and how his beliefs might help and responded with someone understanding. One of his, a line he used once when he was under a lot of pressure about his advocacy of Blacks owning guns for self-self-defense, he said, "I am the man you think you are." He said to a white reporter, "I am the man who you think you are." What he meant in the context of that conversation was, "If you hit me, I am going to hit you back." But I think he applied the same principle to just personal interaction. And if you respect him, he will respect you. And I think that worked between us.

SM (02:15:26):
That is very important because I think that TV segment on YouTube, if you have not seen it, maybe tonight or whatever, go on YouTube and check out the-

PG (02:15:35):
There is hundreds of them.

SM (02:15:36):
There is hundreds of them, but there is only a few that are in color. And it is actually one of the first ones. And it was a person challenging him about his name, and I did not think he was saying it in the right way. And I think he did not show any respect to Malcolm at that time. And you could sense it. Are there any other personal stories you would like to share about people you met during the (19)60s and the (19)70s, or (19)50s, (19)60s and (19)70s that would be little good anecdotes? Did you meet James Meredith?

PG (02:16:13):
I met him, but I had very little interaction with him. When I was down there, he was surrounded by US Marshals and Federalized National Guard troops. So, he was pretty insulated. I met him later on. I cannot remember the circumstance, but I never had a real conversation with him.

SM (02:16:40):
Specific instances, the ones that really stand out amongst the events that you covered? Obviously, you have mentioned, you wrote the article on the JFK assassination and you wrote about Malcolm and you covered James Meredith. Were there others that stand out? Watergate, but what other others that stand out?

PG (02:17:06):
Well, I think the whole Civil Rights movement, I was writing about that practically every week during the civil rights season, which tended to be spring, summer, fall. It tended to be a warm weather movement. The active street, the street movement. I remember scenes, but they do not particularly make great anecdotes. I covered George Wallace a couple of times, a couple of his campaigns. One when he was running his wife, maybe he couldn't succeed himself, so he ran his wife who had terminal cancer for governor in his place, and I just felt sorry for him. You asked earlier about, parenthetically, you mentioned Woodward Bernstein. We never got back to that. And you asked about-

SM (02:18:28):
Investigative journalism, which seemed to have brought in a whole new generation of writers that wanted to be like them.

PG (02:18:42):
And I think that was a very mixed blessing. I know them both well, I worked with them both. I excerpted their second book for Newsweek and I had to work with them for that. And I excerpted Bob's book on the Supreme Court. Got along well with both of them. I kind of got along better with Carl than with Bob. But Carl was more the writer. Bob's a very serious man.

SM (02:19:24):
He has been on TV. He was a commentator.

PG (02:19:27):
Yeah. Yeah. So, when we were working on the Final Days, which was their second book, I spent a lot more time with Carl than Bob, and also, we were friends with Carl's... One of his wives or Alfred.

SM (02:19:52):
Oh yeah. No, she was married to him.

PG (02:19:56):
Oh, yeah.

SM (02:19:57):
She's wrote a book out about something about Double Chins or-

PG (02:20:02):
I do not like my neck.

SM (02:20:03):
Yeah.

PG (02:20:05):
Well, she wrote a novel about him, and which became a movie about her marriage to Carl, which ended unhappily. Carl was a bit of a Tom Cat. I will look. I may have better inside information on the website. Just going back to that, I think that they were a mixed blessing in a number of ways. Obviously, what they did with Watergate was fantastic. That was a great, I think that was a great contribution. I think the subsequent book was, the Final Days was a great contribution too, as a first rough draft of history of the period. But as you said, I drew a lot of people into the business, and that is been a mixed blessing. I think it partly had to do with glory and money. Carl and Bob were played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in the movie. That is pretty glamorous. That makes sense. Carl looked pretty glamorous and they made a ton of money. And I think that was catnip for a lot of young journalists. And it changed. It was not their fault, but the character of investigative journalism began to change. When I was beginning my career, there was a kind of gentleman's agreement in the press, and it was all gentle. There was the kind of agreement that there were certain subjects you did not talk about, like people's sex lives, drinking habits, other vices. What the Watergate period led to was what came to be called character journalism. Look at Nixon. The guy was an epic neurotic, so much so that he was trying to tear up the Constitution. So, we have got to look closely at all these guys. Okay, that is good. That is a good outcome. But it's now what it became, which I think is connected with the glory and money piece of it. The definition of what is character has broadened and broadened and broadened. And now it is in the age of bedsheet journalism. And we look under bedsheets.

SM (02:24:21):
Edwards.

PG (02:24:22):
Yeah. And the National Enquirer got nominated for a Pulitzer for their expose of Edwards's a fair, which I think is a low moment. Now, do I find Edwards's behavior acceptable? No. The guy is what used to be called a cad. Clinton and Monica, or Clinton and Jennifer Flowers, I am not fond of that. My test is what matters to their conduct in public office, what matters to their capacity for leadership. John Kennedy was leading an extremely vivid sex life back in the (19)60s. Everybody in the business knew. Everybody in my business knew about it. It was just common gossip. And we knew a lot of detail. But the code was different then, and you did not write about those things. And the irony is that there were two of the women that we should have written about, probably. One was a woman named, who was, as it turned out, an East German-

SM (02:26:04):
Spy.

PG (02:26:05):
I do not know if she was really a spy, but she was connected with the East German Secret Service. And the other was Judith Campbell Wexner, who he was sharing with a mafia Don. And those would be legitimate subjects of journalistic investigation. I have said a moment ago that we knew his activities were common gossip, but we did not have those two names at the time. And I think if we had had those two names and their affiliations, we probably would not in that time, we probably would not have written about them. But it would have, there would have been conferences about them.

SM (02:26:58):
Even speculation about Marilyn Monroe.

PG (02:27:00):
Oh yeah. She is the most popular subject of the Kennedy stories. And I think it was real.

SM (02:27:10):
Peter Lawford was obviously a friend of hers. It is amazing, the story of Bobby Kennedy flying back to California, meeting with Peter going over to the house, and whether that is true or not. Then she died. Whether she would be on drugs or whether it was to shut her up. I mean, who knows.

PG (02:27:33):
I am a violent Eddie conspiratory theorist.

SM (02:27:35):
There are lot of books on Kennedy though, Kennedy and King on the conspiracy theories. The other question I have, and then you know what? You have been here a very long time and you do not have to respond to all these names, if that is okay.

PG (02:27:52):
No, go ahead.

SM (02:27:55):
But I want to ask you, Malcolm's death is very suspicious. And we had a speaker on our campus.

PG (02:28:05):
No, it is not.

SM (02:28:07):
Is there a link to Farrakhan and that fascination?

PG (02:28:11):
Farrakhan was involved, yeah. There are all kinds of CIA and FBI and New York Police Bureau of Special Services conspiracy theories. They are all junk. They all knew what was going on. We have bushels of tape recorded. The FBI, which was playing a really invasive role and to me, objectionable role in surveillance of Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam turned out to be a boon to historians, because there are bushels of transcripts of phone calls in which we have Elijah Muhammad saying, among other things, "The brother's eyes need to be closed," which was a death warrant. The FBI and the NYPD were privy to everything that was being said in the Nation of Islam. They had both, they had room bugs and telephone taps at Elijah Muhammad's home in Chicago, Elijah Muhammad's second home in Phoenix, Malcolm X's home, Malcolm X's office. They knew everything. A senior official of the New York Bureau of Special Services and Investigation told me, "We knew what they were thinking." They did not have to lift a finger because they knew Malcolm was going to be dead. There were six attempts by the Nation of Islam before the one that succeeded. I have interviewed in prison. Three people were convicted. Two of them should not have been, although they have been involved in one of the earlier attempts. I interviewed all three of those guys in prison. The guy we know was guilty and who was caught at the scene essentially told me the whole story, named the names of the assassins, told me how the assassination was generated. Another one of the, I think wrongly, in fact, I know wrongly convicted men, told me about a meeting at the New York Mosque where the national leadership from Chicago was extremely angry that the New York Mosque had not been able to whack Malcolm. So, they sent in Elijah Muhammad's son, Elijah Muhammad the second, a very-very tough guy who was in charge of the Fruit of Islam, which was their paramilitary corps. They assembled enforcers from all over the country in the Harlem Mosque. And Elijah Jr., as he's also sometimes known, said Malcolm then was living in a house that had been bought for him by Elijah Muhammad in Queens. They were trying the Nation of Islam after Malcolm defected and was trying to get him back. Elijah Jr. said, "What you all need to do is go out to that house and clap on the walls until the walls come tumbling down. Then you want to go inside and cut the nigger's tongue out and I will put it in an envelope and I will send it to my father." I have zero question that the assassination was the work of the Nation of the Islam and that while the FBI and the New York police, not so much the New York police, because it became a New York because it happened here. But the FBI no doubt celebrated. I mean, Hoover was nuts and they no doubt celebrated the outcome, but they did not have to. They knew they did not have to do anything. They knew this was internal, and that sooner or later his former brothers would get him, and they did.

SM (02:34:19):
When you talk about Malcolm here, because I do not like conspiracy books either, because I am tired of them, and I know Groden wrote one on the Kennedy assassination. We had him on our campus, but after he wrote that book, everybody's been reading it. But do you believe that the John Kennedy assassination is, as they say, it was Oswald. That Bobby was Sirhan Sirhan alone, that there was not a second person with a gun, and the third is Martin Luther King was the guy at the-

PG (02:34:52):
King, I think there were... The best evidence on King, I think, is not that there was a government conspiracy, but that a couple of rich and slightly illuminated brothers in Missouri put a bounty on his head. And this is not original reporting with me. This is stuff I have read and it's the most persuasive stuff I have seen on King, on the King murder. That James Earl Ray heard about this when he was in prison for whatever he had been in prison for before the assassination. He escaped and lived on the lam for, I think, a couple of three years and found his way to these brothers, and they financed him. That is the most persuasive version, I would say.

SM (02:36:06):
It is amazing that the King family was starting to believe him.

PG (02:36:11):
Believe Ray? Yeah.

SM (02:36:12):
Yeah, yeah.

PG (02:36:13):
Well, Ray was a story about Raul and yeah.

SM (02:36:20):
When the best books are written about the Boomer generation, which includes, is all-inclusive, all ethnic groups, and we have not even talked about Cesar Chavez, who was a very important person to me in the Latino community. Bobby Kennedy, he's a major figure too. Better than-

PG (02:36:36):
I covered a little of Bobby's (19)68 campaign and I interviewed, I did, I think three cover zones.

SM (02:36:43):
Did you ever get to meet John Burns, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, who ran his presidential campaign in... I mean, senatorial campaign in New York? He was our mayor in Binghamton. He was my very first interview. He has passed away quite a few years back. But when the best books are written on the Boomer generation after the last Boomer has passed on, what do you think they will be saying about the generation and the period?

PG (02:37:17):
I hope they will be saying something complicated. A generation is a vast population cohort, and they do not define very easily. They do not profile very easily. I doubt that a majority of Boomers lived what we think of as Boomer lives. We think most people got up in the morning, went to work, got married, had kids, lived plain lives. I think the politically active Boomers, which we sometimes... Boomers sometimes become shorthand for... The term "Boomers" sometimes become shorthand for the politically active minority of Boomers. So, my guess is they will get mixed reviews. I would give, if I were writing the book, I would give them mixed reviews.

SM (02:38:34):
Certainly, the media plays a role here, because you talk about if indeed they are only talking about Woodstock, summer of love, some of the more eccentric activities, along with the more serious too. But the media has to play a role here, and how history and history formed. You said that you would be willing to do this, but there is a lot of names here, so yeah. You want to use the restroom or?

PG (02:39:11):
Yeah.

SM (02:39:11):
But that is actually one of the questions I did not ask that is in here, and the books that influenced you in your life, but particularly some of the books that may have been written in the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, that really said a lot. Whether you read that for King's Books or Strike Toward Freedom, what are the most important books that influenced you in your life?

PG (02:39:35):
In my life, All the King's Man, The Plague. There is what nobody's ever heard of, by a rudder called Bernard Wolfe, called The Late Risers.

PG (02:40:02):
Writer called Bernard Wolfe called The Late Risers, which is Book of the 50s. The non-fiction works of James Baldwin. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, although it's a quite flawed piece of work. King's writings, although if I had to pick out a single document, would be the Letter from Birmingham Jail. The speeches of Malcolm X, of which there are several collections. A lot of political books and a lot of old books I am currently reading. I am reading up on the Gilded Age because I am finding so many parallels to our own time.

SM (02:41:30):
Did you ever read The Greening of America by Charles Reich?

PG (02:41:32):
[inaudible].

SM (02:41:33):
And then The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak?

PG (02:41:36):
I have not read that.

SM (02:41:37):
Those are major ones from that [inaudible 02:41:41] period and anything that Eric Erikson wrote and Kenneth Keniston, they were great writers of the movements that was happening on college campuses in that period. All right. Here we go.

PG (02:41:58):
Hofstadter. Richard Hofstadter.

SM (02:42:00):
Oh, yes.

PG (02:42:01):
Major influence on my political maturation, such as it is.

SM (02:42:09):
Did you read The Making of a Quagmire by Halberstam?

PG (02:42:13):
Yeah.

SM (02:42:13):
I thought that is a classic book too. A Rumor of War by Phil Caputo. What a great book.

PG (02:42:20):
I read a syllabus of war books during the run up to Charlie Company. Michael Herr...

SM (02:42:32):
Dispatches.

PG (02:42:32):
Yeah. But I also read some war novels from past wars when I was doing that.

SM (02:42:43):
I want to recommend a book for you to read if you have not read it. And that is Fortunate Son, not the book on George Bush. It's the book that was written by Louis Puller that won the Pulitzer Prize back in (19)92. And he killed himself in the spring of (19)94. And I am very pleased that Toddy Puller, his wife agreed-

PG (02:43:08):
Yeah. Is this Chesty Puller's son?

SM (02:43:09):
Yes, it is a great book. It is a sad story. The book is a really good story, but it is a sad story about how he ended his life. And Toddy Puller has agreed to be interviewed. She is a state representative in Virginia.

PG (02:43:25):
I met her once there just briefly on a political campaign.

SM (02:43:31):
I thought she would never say yes because there was friction at the end when he killed [inaudible] they were heading for a divorce. But the story is... I will mention that too. These are just to respond to some names and not in any length. The first one is Tom Hayden. Just quick thoughts, responses to these people, whether you like them, dislike them, thought they were important, not important.

PG (02:43:58):
I thought among that whole Students for a Democratic Society orbit, I thought he was the smartest.

SM (02:44:10):
Jane Fonda.

PG (02:44:13):
I do not think much about her. I do not really have a good answer for that or even an answer for it.

SM (02:44:28):
How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? The two hippies.

PG (02:44:34):
Hoffman, I thought once, this is off the record, I once smoked dope with him.

SM (02:44:39):
Okay. That will not be in the transcript.

PG (02:44:43):
Okay. He was fun to be around, but I thought he was mostly show business. I thought of him as a standup comic with political content. And he's not one my heroes.

SM (02:45:04):
What about Rubin?

PG (02:45:08):
Rubin was a standup comic without the comic sense and the revolutionary who winds up on Wall Street. It's not what revolutionaries...

SM (02:45:27):
Timothy Leary.

PG (02:45:30):
Leary... The whole drug piece of boomerism never appealed to me. I thought all that stuff was... Even though I smoked dope with them. I thought all that stuff was self-indulgent and I have no fondness for Leary or his works.

SM (02:46:18):
How about Daniel and Philip Berrigan?

PG (02:46:23):
I honor them. I think they were true Christians. And there were a lot of people who call themselves true Christians. They do not know a lot. I honor their memory.

SM (02:46:43):
I think you have already mentioned this, but the Black Panthers. I mentioned the seven names.

PG (02:46:49):
I thought the Panthers were interesting and attractive. But I have low respect for them in the struggle. I think Huey Newton, one of his classic documents was called Revolutionary Suicide. I am not a believer in revolutionary suicide. I once wrote a cover on the Black Panthers and it gave them mixed reviews and got involved in the picture picking. And the pictures were spread over... Some stories you wrote, there might be six pictures. We had a conference table covered with pictures. They were beautiful images. And the then editor of Newsweek looked at that tabletop and said there were too many pictures of these guys. They're not serious. And I went out there, I interviewed Bobby Seale in jail, interviewed him a couple of times since Huey was in prison and not accessible. I interviewed Donald Cox, David-

SM (02:48:27):
Hilliard.

PG (02:48:28):
...David Hilliard, a couple of others. I think it was an exercise in futility. I am not pro futility.

SM (02:48:44):
A lot of people that I have talked to said that Fred Hampton was probably the most dynamic of all of them. He was the one that was murdered in Chicago. Yeah, the FBI wanted him outed. The National Organization for Women, and I put in here Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinam, and Bella Abzug. The Women's... There are others but...

PG (02:49:07):
Yeah, I am pro feminist I think those people you have named were major contributors. Steinem, who could have lived a very soft life as a glamor girl.

SM (02:49:36):
She was a Playboy bunny.

PG (02:49:37):
Yeah. Instead gave her life to that. Gave her working life to that movement or commitment to that movement. I honor her particularly. But [inaudible] Friedan, Abzug, they're parts of what when America and Newsweek finally woke up to the woman question, they were very important.

SM (02:50:11):
The Feminist Mystique, Mr. Kaiser, mentioned to me, or Charles, that she's not very well liked, Betty Friedan, in the gay and lesbian movement because she was homophobic. And so that is an issue there. Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

PG (02:50:37):
I was for them. I do think the vets needed something [inaudible].

SM (02:50:45):
That was Bobby Muller and Ron Kovic and all that.

PG (02:50:49):
Yeah-yeah, yeah.

SM (02:50:50):
How about Mark Rudd and Rennie Davis? These are two other big names from that period.

PG (02:50:58):
No, I just do not think much of them. I do not mean that negatively. I just do not... They do not populate my interior landscape. I do not really have anything interesting to say about them.

SM (02:51:14):
How about SDS before The Weatherman or then The Weatherman themselves?

PG (02:51:21):
The Weatherman, I think, were practicing, essentially... I was about to say "juvenile," I will be a little kinder and say immature politics. SDS, I think was an attempt at being a white [inaudible]. And I think a lot of the women in SDS were not very happy with their roles as women in SDS.

SM (02:52:03):
How about Dennis Banks and the American Indian Movement? Do not forget the American Indian movement took over Alcatraz in (19)69 and the American Indian movement itself, we're not talking about the... I have learned this, that Native American movement was pretty strong even before AIM. But AIM looked at some of the more revolutionary tactics so that what happened at Alcatraz in (19)69 and what happened at Wounded Knee in (19)73 where there was violence. Because the FBI was all over this group.

PG (02:52:36):
Again, they are not part of my psychic population.

SM (02:52:41):
How about Stonewall and Harvey Milk?

PG (02:52:47):
Well, Milk obviously is a martyr, and Stonewall was a great liberating moment. But Stonewall was an amazing turnaround. And the Blacks went through the whole, "We're human too." And I think gays had to have similar moments. And I thought that was a major, major moment. Yeah.

SM (02:53:32):
How about the Free Speech Movement, when you think about that, what happened at Berkeley in (19)64, (19)65, Mario Savio, [inaudible]?

PG (02:53:37):
[inaudible].

SM (02:53:41):
Yeah, that particular group. Just your response on that movement.

PG (02:53:46):
I was not there. I did not write about it. So again, I do not really have...

SM (02:53:55):
Okay. Just the term "counterculture." Your thoughts on the counterculture, the hippies and yippies. I think you have already mentioned them, but I just...

PG (02:54:03):
Yeah, politically, I thought they were immature. I thought they had a high show biz quotient. In terms of political gain, I do not think they achieved actually anything much.

SM (02:54:26):
How about the conservative group, Young Americans for Freedom, which has often been forgotten? They were very strong in the anti-war movement, and they were conservative, Young Americans for Freedom. Of course, I think Bill Buckley was involved in that. So, I have down here Young Americans for Freedom and William Buckley.

PG (02:54:45):
Well, Buckley's obviously a seminal figure in the development of what we now think of as movement conservatism. I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but I have a soft spot for him in my heart because he essentially subsidized an anthology of the columns of Murray Kempton, who is one of my heroes.

SM (02:55:27):
God and Man at Yale. I do not know if you had that book.

PG (02:55:30):
I had it a long time ago.

SM (02:55:32):
I read it and I thought he was kind of a radical, conservatively. He handles the system at Yale. So, Barry Goldwater, and-

PG (02:55:42):
He was also an apologist for Joe McCarthy and-

SM (02:55:48):
He wrote a book on that.

PG (02:55:52):
And then one of the things that politicized me as a very young man was McCarthy. McCarthy and McCarthyism.

SM (02:56:06):
Barry Goldwater and Dr. Benjamin Spock. What a combination.

PG (02:56:12):
What a combination. Goldwater is... I think my first political cover was on the Goldwater campaign in (19)64. Another seminal figure. And really, I was happy he was not elected, but was nowhere near the monster that he was made out to be. He was really a classic libertarian, a western libertarian and a likable guy. Dr. Spock, Dr. Spock, I do not think much about. It's another one.

SM (02:57:15):
I found it interesting too that the irony, and there's a lot of irony in the (19)60s, in the (19)70s. The irony is that Barry Goldwater, who was really defeated by Lyndon Johnson. And then Nixon becomes president in (19)68, beating Humphrey. And then it was Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott that walked into the White House and told him that he needs to resign.

PG (02:57:40):
That is right.

SM (02:57:43):
McCarthy, Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy.

PG (02:57:47):
Bobby Kennedy is a major figure for me. Major positive figure for me. As I mentioned, I covered a couple of states in his primary campaign for President. I did an early Bobby cover when he was Attorney General. I did a cover on him when he was US Senator, thinking about running for President. I thought he was one of the most powerful political figures I have ever seen. And it was in an anti-matter way. Bobby wore tragedy on his sleeve. I think he never recovered from Jack's death ever. I think part of what success he had... I do not think he would have won the presidency. I think it was fairly well wired. You could still wire elections and in those days. We did not have primaries or caucuses in all 50 states. I think it was pretty much wired for Hubert. And I am not an anti Hubert. I think he got bashed around more than he deserved.

SM (02:59:34):
[inaudible].

PG (02:59:42):
But Bobby looked like a man in pain practically all the time. His hands shook when he would make speeches. I saw his... He did a famous speech to the University of Nebraska Medical School students in Lincoln. They had a podium, a carved wood replica of a sawed in half Greek column with fluted... And all through the speech, it was sort of sad and harrowing to watch. His fingers were working into the flutes, the fluting on the column, up and down, up and down. It was just a nervous tick. He was very uncomfortable in his skin. The only time I saw him relaxed and peaceful was in Indianapolis. He had gone to a stop on his schedule and he cut the stop short. Because he had, on the way there, he had passed a schoolyard for a... Must have been a preschool. The children were very small. And he led his staff and the not very large press corps into that schoolyard and just started connecting with the kids. And one little black kid, maybe four... He radiated something to children. He was extremely good with children. And children saw it immediately. And this little boy came up to him and Kennedy was squatting like this, and the kid just sat on his knee. Kennedy did not put him there or beckon him there. He just sat on his knee. And Bobby asked him, "What's your name?" And he said, "Eldridge," which I thought was interesting, it was pre-Cleavers.

SM (03:02:44):
Oh my God.

PG (03:02:48):
So, he was not named for Cleaver. And he said to Kennedy, "How did you get out the television?" He thought Kennedy lived inside-

SM (03:03:01):
Oh my gosh. Wow.

PG (03:03:07):
...the television.

SM (03:03:07):
Well, that is the one heck of a story.

PG (03:03:09):
Yeah. And it was so sweet. And he was so at peace. And it was the only time...

SM (03:03:19):
That is when he gave his speech too. He was in Indianapolis [inaudible], the impromptu speech-

PG (03:03:23):
I was not there for that one. [inaudible].

SM (03:03:28):
He did not like McCarthy.

PG (03:03:30):
No.

SM (03:03:31):
[inaudible] Eugene was [inaudible].

PG (03:03:32):
They hated each other. Eugene used to brag that... Well, he was furious at Bobby for getting into the race after he, McCarthy, had opened the door a crack. And he would say, "Well, I got the A students."

SM (03:03:53):
Wow. So how about Robert McNamara and John Kennedy? Just a couple comments on them.

PG (03:04:13):
John Kennedy, I think did a lot of good. And I am not one of his worshipers, but as an inspirational leader, I think that may have been his most important single contribution. The creation of the Peace Corps, which was actually Hubert Humphrey's idea. But it happened on Jack's watch. A lot of boomers did the Peace Corps experience. And I think it was a great happening for them and it led a lot of people, a lot, to public service. I think for the better. And Jack Kennedy was the first to say something that Eisenhower had refused to say that race was a moral issue in America. It was very important. To this day, you visit homes in a black neighborhood and the pictures you will see on the wall are Jesus, Jack Kennedy and Martin Luther King. McNamara, I really was not covering the policy under the war, so my feelings about him are really third hand from stuff I have read. Those guys all got themselves trapped into this notion that this was something doable, that this was something winnable. And by the time he... I give him credit for realizing late, way too late, but the fact that he realized it at all, that it was a losing proposition, that it essentially had been a mistake. I think [inaudible] he had a learning curve.

SM (03:07:08):
What about Nixon and Spiro Agnew?

PG (03:07:16):
Nixon, I think is one of the most wonderfully... From a writer's point of view, I think is one of the most-

(End of Interview)

2010-04-23

Stephen McKiernan

Peter Goldman

Peter Goldman is an author, editor, and journalist. He was the national-affairs writer, senior editor, and team leader of a special-projects unit for Newsweek magazine. Goldman wrote over 120 cover stories on race, politics, Watergate, criminal justice and other aspects of American life. Goldman additionally generated a half-dozen books, including the best-selling Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did to Us, and won numerous awards for the magazine. Goldman has a Bachelor's degree in English Literature from Williams College and a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University.

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Journalists; Goldman, Peter--Interviews

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