Government. Host joining us now on cspan is Peter Prichard, the former editor in chief of the usa today newspaper and he is a former president of them museum and author of this book, killing grace a vietnam war mystery. What made you write a novel about the vietnam war . Guest i had always dreamed of writing a novel but then life intervened and and i becamea newspaper editor and an executive. E. But when covid it i finally thought i had the time to try to write a novel and i wanted to write something that wasnt really a a combat novel, that ws more in the vein of quiet american or the ugly american, both books had a great influence. Host without getting way any spoilers come whats the books s synopsis . Guest two mps in saigon in 1967 at the height of the war are called to investigate the murder of an american tourist named grace waverley whose body is found in the saigon river. And it appears to be a drowning, and she is an antiwar activist who said she came to vietnam ass a piece of tourist. But our real goal is to help smuggle arms back to her associates in the United States, and mps gradually realize that her death is part of a bigger conspiracy, and to try to avert a disaster. Host who is ben kincaid . Guest ben kincaid is a a lead np, and his partner is elijah jackson. And normally they are charged with enforcing curfew in keeping gis on the straight and narrow and out of the bars after curfew. But they get pulled in because the National Police dont want to investigate this particular incident because it involves an american. Oddly enough, at the height of the war there were 20,000 american tourists who visited vietnam a year. I was shocked to read that trauma so Peter Prichard, youre writing about something 50 plus years ago. Do you you have experience in vietnam . Guest yes. I also wanted to write about the antiwar culture, which i experienced. I went to college at dartmouth in the 1960s, and when i was a senior i watched four professors get on the steps of the dartmouth hall and announce that they were sending their medals back to Lyndon Johnson because they thought the vietnam war was an unjust and illegal war. And it dawned on me and ive been reading about the draft that i could get caught up in this, even before i started my adult life. So i i tried to get out of the war. I was a draft dodger. The best i could do was teach english to kids in massachusetts, and they were more mature than i i was. I had a hard time. I had very little discipline over the classroom, and at the end of the year i got fired for not correcting papers and two weeks later i was doing pushups at fort dix. By the end of that year i was in vietnam. Host so you were both a a draft dodger, as you say, and a veteran of the war . Guest yes, sir. I served almost 14 months in vietnam. We were advisors, supposedly intelligence advisers come to the South Vietnamese ninth division at the height of the war through the tet offensive. Host and so 67, 68 come eight come somewhere around there you were in vietnam . Guest yeah, 67 i arrived in country on january six, 1968 and i came home in march of 69. Host besides telling the story, mr. Mystery prichard, when you try to call bush anything else in killing grace . Guest yes. For a lot of people, particularly young people, they dont necessarily know a lot about vietnam. And i thought thet mystery formt and the conspiracy format would give me a chance to write about the conflicting currents in the country at that time. We always talk now about how divided the country is, but in many ways america was more divided back then when young men were scared to death of going to war and being killed in a war that was started in on certain circumstances. So never even declared war, and was very unpopular at home, once the buildup started drama well, lets go back to july 28, 1965. It was then president johnson. Ive asked the commanding general, general westmoreland what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He hasd told me, and we will met his needs. I have today ordered to vietnam the Airmobile Division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000, to 125,000 men, almost immediately. Needednal forces will be later and they will be set as requested. Thisll make it necessarily to increase our active fighting forces i raising the monthly draft call from 17,000 over a a period of time that 35,000 per month. And for us to step up our campaign for our voluntary enlistments. Host Peter Prichard, what do you think when you hear that nearly 60 years later . Guest well, it reminds me of the spring of 1967 when i walked out to my mailbox in amherst massachusetts and there were two letters inside. And it opened the first one and it was from the peace corps, and they said they had accepted me as an english teacher in micronesia. Skirts and me teaching people micronesia and. I opened the second letter and it was from general louis b hershey, and he said i was to report the new haven Induction Center and three weeks so didnt know what to do. So i called the peace corps and i got a nice woman on the phone and she said, sorry, mr. Prichard, but sorry, mr. Prichard, but in these circumstances, the Defense Department takes precedence. So thats the first thing it reminds me of. The second thing is reminds me of is how it was an undeclared war, which Congress Never really voted on or formally approved. There was only the talk and we were consumed by the specter of anticommunism and the domino theory and all of that was probably a false proposition, a fought assumption in which we fought a war in which 58,000 americans died and millions and millions of civilians and vietnamese decide. Host three million troops served from 1965 to 1973. 58,000 american servicemen and women gave their lives. Mr. Prichard, when you were there in 67, 68, did you see combat . As i said in my note, i never had to fire my weapon. We got mortared from time to time and wed have to run to the bunkers. I had some convoy duty. That was the closest i ever had to getting into combat. We were being shot at from across a rice paddy and we stopped the jeep and hid behind the jeep tried to see if we could see anything to shoot at and we looked up and the rest of the convoy had moved on and we were the only one one left and we drove as fast as we could to get out of there. The reality of vietnam, you could get killed in a thousand different ways, in an accident, run over by a truck, fall out of a helicopter, killed by friendly fire. It wasnt safe anywhere. Host what is the time frame that killing grace takes place in exactly. Guest it starts in early 1967 with a scene at the gridiron dinner where one of the organizers of the radical group is attending the gridiron dinner with his father, who is a washington lobbyist, and he imagines how easy it would be to have some kind of terrorist incident at the gridiron dinner and thats a spark that ignites his ideas about what to do about the war. And then, it continues all through 1967 and into 1968. Host it was the beginning of 1968 that the tet offensive began. What exactly was that . The t offensive was a series o coordinated a across the country. I think there were more than 500 attacks, including attacks near where i was in the delta and i have not been in country very long and we were all observing the tet holiday with the vietnamese and we were standing in the square watching the vietnamese man crawl up a greased pole to put something on top of it as part of ceremony and a young aide ran up intelligence, theres a formation moving down the river and we dont know whats going on. At least in the delta we had no warning that the tet offensive, it was a complete surprise although it proved to be a stunning defeat in terms of casualties that the North Vietnamese and the viet kong, it changed americans opinions about the war. And here is cbss mike wallace reporting on the tet offensive, january 31st, 1968. Good evening, im mike wallace, with a bold series of raids in the last three days, the enemy in vietnam the myth that think hit that. They hit the capital of South Vietnam and the state capitals in the United States and then as if to demonstrate that no place in that war torn nation is secure theyve struck at least nine military strong holds in unnumbered field positions. And tonight the magnitude of those raids became apparent in the u. S. Report on casualties. The communists paid a heavy toll for their strike, almost 5,000 dead, including 660 in saigon alone and almost 2000 captured, but allied casualties also are high. 232 americans killed, 929 wounded. Host Peter Prichard, it was more of a socalled moral victim for the viet cong than it was the military victory. Guest it was, for months the military had been telling the American People and all the soldiers there was light at the end of the tunnel, that we were defeating the enemy across the country and that there was hope that the war would end soon. Of course, when this offensive occurred, that completely upended that assumption. I remember listening to the radio the second morning of the tet offensive and general westmoreland came on the radio and said the embassy is secure and weve defeated the enemy. Well, it didnt seem very secure when the terrorists got inside the embassy and people had to throw guns at somebody up there trapped to get him to be able to escape. So it really proved to the American People that the war wasnt over and apparently wasnt going to end anytime soon. Host does the tet offensive play a role in killing grace. Guest in this particular book, the story ends just before the tet offense, but im doodling around on a sequel which will correct that problem. Host already a sequel. Guest well, im hoping. People have told me that they might read it, so well see. Writing a book is hard and you get into it and see what you can do, but as Kate Atkinson said, youre never quite sure you can pull it off until you do. Host well, just to give some perspective from 1961 until the fall of the saigon government, the u. S. Spent more than 141 billion dollars in South Vietnam, about 7,000 for each of South Vietnams 120 million people, approximately 800 billion dollars in todays dollars. How do you process that today . Well, in my book, all of the corruption that occurred and all of the u. S. Supplies that went missing and sold on the black market or ended up in the hands of the viet cong, it was an amazing stream of men and material, there was no way that anybody could keep track of where everything went which also plays into the plot of this book. And any servicemen who was serving there could see that. I mean, they were the whole premise of the war was faulty because instead of declaring war and making it a Real National cause that the people were behind, we had a policy that people only served 365 days in the war zone. And as a result, most soldiers were focused on crossing the days off on the calendar, rather than caring first about winning the war. They were focused on trying to get home and we tried to serve hot food to soldiers in the fields. We had pxs, there was a golf course in saigon which also played a part in the book. It was an insane way to fight a war in my opinion. Host have we changed that over the year and subsequent wars, in the iraq war, et cetera, how we leave personnel in the field . Yes, i think so. The defeat in vietnam and it really was a political defeat, really had a profound effect on the American Military and it led to the establishment of an all professional military and the end of the draft. And as a result, i think the military probably became better. It might not be better for the country because you have a force thats kind of separate from society and not everyone shared in the obligation to defend the United States, obviously, in israel everybody has to serve in the military. And ive long been a proponent of some kind of national service. Either serve in the military or help people in hospitals or being in the peace corps. I think that would bring people together more than we are today. You mentioned corruption. Why are black markets so ubiquitous and seemingly easy to form during conflicts like this . I think its mainly because of the volume of material and the opportunity to deal. Its just very hard to keep track of things in chaotic, wartorn society. It happens in the earthquake age. You know, people give all of this aid and enterprising criminals take a good portion of it and charge too much for it. Its just human nature in some ways, and i dont think anyone has devised a way to stop them from going missing during armed conflict. I think its a problem in ukraine, too. Peter prichard, before we talk more about killing grace and the vietnam era, lets go to the cspan Video Library in our way back machine. Peter prichard is former editor in chief of usa today and president of the newseum and appeared on cspan 63 times over his washington career and this was the first one. It was july 2nd, 1984. Just as the rest of the newspaper is different from most traditional newspapers because it has shorter stories and more stories, the opinion page is different because its a single topic page and any topic that we consider or do during that week will be very close to the news and we will run four points of view on that topic, besides our own. In addition to these among these four points of view will be the oppressing view which will be completely opposite of what we think in the editorial column. So that were the only newspaper in the United States that consistently every day runs an opposing point of view to its editorial position and our feeling is that that gives the reader a chance to read all the views and make up his or her own mind and thats what is unique about our opinion page and we find it is popular. Host so, mr. Prichard, what will al newheart and john, the other leaders of usa today and yourself thinking . What was your vision for this paper . Al was the founder. Al newhart, the chief executive of the gwinnett company the largest Newspaper Company in the United States and his vision was to have a National Newspaper available in every state that would appeal to travelers and to people who didnt get a full National Report in their local newspapers, and he thought that the company was in a great position to provide it because we had newspapers all over the country and cents allver the country and john came up with the concept of an opinion page that represented many points of view and did not have a dominant position as an institution on every issue. As a result, al said that usa today would not endorse a candidate in the president ial election in part because it would put a Bumper Sticker on your name plate and that it would turn off people with the candidate that you would endorse. And that was his vision and he thought that usa today could be a Unifying Force for the country and i think for a while, it was. I think it helped contribute to a common base of knowledge that people could form their opinions using. Were a long ways from that today with the multiplicity of sources that people listen to. And for a long time, the best selling daily newspaper in the United States and a mustread for many of us here in washington, what do you think of the paper today . Well, its changed a lot and i think usa today is suffering from the same forces that all other newspapers in america are facing. The Tech Companies have basically taken all of the revenues that used to go to the newspapers, i think that a newspaper revenue has fallen 80 from its peak and weve lost thousands of newspapers across the country so that people dont have a good news source in their communities. And because of algorithms, people have migrated to sources that matched their political points of view and i dont see the other point of view and its just made the whole media landscape worse, in my opinion. And its been very its been bad for democracy because we dont have a Common Knowledge base that we can all draw upon to form our opinion and to some extent people are living in silos and echo chambers listening to what they like to hear, but they dont hear any other points of view in many cases. So from daily writing and editing of news to novel writing, what are the differences . laughter well, you dont have to worry quite so much about accuracy. You can use your imagination. My mother said that newspaper writing is very cut and dry and the wonderful thing about novels is that you can exert your imagination and think of all sorts of Different Things that might happen. And its liberating in many ways. And i really enjoy writing. Its fun. However, in todays publishing climate, its difficult to sell books, its difficult to get published, its difficult for new voices and its just a tough economic situation. What kind of research did you do into killing grace . Well, since i was a vietnam veteran, i read books about vietnam for years. Most recently, i read max hastings wonderful history, and what they call vietnam, an epic tragedy is certainly what a tragedy that is still casting ripples across the world today. So i was familiar with many of the themes of the war and many of the things that we could have done better, and i also loved the quiet america, and i thought there might be a niche for a book by a veteran that was not a combat novel. There are lots of tremendous books by jim obrien, and many others, jim west, many other people that are basically about the combat experiences of the protagonists and i thought it would be fun to write a mystery set in vietnam that would try to capture some of the crosscurrents of American Opinion and the Antiwar Movement at the time. Now, are any of the principle characters in killing grace based on people you knew from that period . Yes, several of them are. We have an interpreter at our unit in South Vietnam, it was delta, who was chinese vietnamese, they had grown up in the chinese suburb of saigon and one day i asked sergeant, i kept the same name, how is your war going . He said my war is terrible prichard and i said why is that . Youre not in combat every day, youre an interpreter and were relatively safe here, and he said its because i am chinese and all vietnamese hate all chinese. I said they do . Because i believed at that time what the government was saying which was that the chinese were threatening us in vietnam and it was all part of the domino theory and i had no idea there was historic emnity between the chinese and the vietnamese. That was one of the things that we didnt know. And another thing was that very few, almost none of the americans serving in vietnam civilians or the military spoke vietnamese and we were largely ignorant of their history, of their desire to evict intraders over the years, and we really went into it not understanding the difference between the north and the south. The difference between the two cultures and the difference will, the political will to win the war and the absence of that and the south and that was one character and then i went to the px, and read the book, street without joy and got even more depressed about what was what we were doing there. So, Peter Prichard, what kind of information were you given or education about vietnam prior to going over there and serving in the war . Well, thats actually kind of funny. So, we went to fort dix and had basic infantry training and three months after we got there and i had written down on the form that i would like to work in intelligence for the army, thinking that it might be less dangerous than being in the infantry. The big joke, whatever you wrote down, you would never get that assignment. However, i did get it and we were sent to fort in maryland, part of baltimore, to go to intelligence school. And they for three or four months, we studied the makeup of the pollit bureau, the soviet order of battle protocols and tactics. How to identify a c72 tank. There was virtually nothing about vietnamese history, about how to fight a guerilla war. About how to get information in a guerilla environment, no outside speakers about what the experience in vietnam was like and really, in terms of training, it was a disaster, completely useless. Well, it sounds like we were looking at it as a fight against communism and in your book you have a scene at the gridiron dinner where president johnson is speaking, again, i dont know how much of this is real and how much of this is novel, but you write that president johnson delivered an anticommunism message at the gridiron dinner that year. Yeah, he delivered many anticommunism messages. He did not do it at that particular gridiron dinner that year so as i said in my so forth. Publicly, johnson was very strongly anticommunist, however, he had grave doubts about getting the american soldiers involved in the ground in asia, but i think he felt hemmed in by the anticommunist fervor in the legislature and he felt in many ways, i think, that he had no choice and it turned out to be such a colossal mistake and im still a member of many vietnam veteran groups on facebook today and people are still suffering and dying and dealing with Mental Illness and agent orange and Everything Else because of the vietnam war and thats true of the vietnamese people and people in laos and cambodia and it was an epic tragedy, the only way to describe it and its just a shame that our government wasnt able to recognize that and cut it short. Host well, in killing grace, a vietnam war mystery, theres characters who express cynicism about their purpose of being in vietnam. Guest yes, there are lots of them. Starting with the cia man, bing darling. I think that, you know, the war there are a bunch of people who stayed in vietnam for a long time and they saw what it was like, mostly in working for the cia and other agents agencies and in many ways they got seduced by the country and thought that they could somehow make it better, but were unable to do it. And Edward Lansdale is one, and advise his role in advising the government and using more intelligence tactics than we did. But i think when you see that kind of a war wre the south was corrupt in many ways, i didnt represent the peop, many of the people were stealing goods. You could go to the black market and buy everything that american soldiers were meant to have from sea rations to jeeps, almost, and it was easy to be cynical quickly. And the whole body count idea that we were going to figure out how we won the war by counting the number of people we killed, that was just completely misguided. We should have been trying to change peoples minds instead of just counting. Host Peter Prichard when you were there in 67 and 68 was the question what the heck are we doing there . Was that a common refrain . It was. It didnt really get vocal and until later, until 1970, 71. The soldiers who served by that time had basically figured out and the country had figured out that it was mistake and that we probably sending people there to die for nothing, unfortunately, or not much. And as a result, drug use rose among the military. Friendly fire shooting rose. People use today kill their lieutenants if thinking theyd keep themselves out of the field. Things were really breaking down at that stage. And you know,ixon was elected in 72 and then he took three more years to really end the war, which led to more suffering. So, it we should have realized it was a mistake earlier and we should have cut our losses and gotten out. Probably not long after Walter Cronkite made his famous appearance on cbs news after the tet offensive and say the best we could hope for is an honorable peace. Host well, weve looked at the american side and some statistics regarding that, but the vietnamese said is significant as well. A country of about 120 million at the time. The estimates are that about two million civilians deaths and over one million fighters on both sides were killed. Did we ever was it you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but was it difficult to figure out who was for who . There was the vc, South Vietnamese, the french impact of the french being there for years. Theres chinese, theres the americans. It did get a little confusing, didnt it . Oh, it was completely confusing and you ow the typicalilla that american soldiers went out to seize or take or throw the vc out of it, whenever we went out to the village to take it over, the vc would probably fire a little bit and then leave. And then as soon as the americans left, the vc would come back and so, these villages the villagers were living in a society where during the day they were nominally under South Vietnamese control, but at night the vc controlled the place where they lived. And these were people who they werent serving 365day tours, they were trying to survive a war in which they were caught in the crossfire between both sides. And so, they were in an impossible situation. And the other part one of the other problems was that there were so many viet cong spies in saigon, in government positions, working for american newspapers and television stations and in some cases, we used to joke that the who washed our fatigues, knew where we were, and impossible militarily. The end of the summer he was with counterparts, you know, whenever we met you on the battlefield, we were never defeated. And the North Vietnamese negotiator looked at him a moment and then said, that may be true, but its also irrelevant. And one of the better quotes about the folly of the vietnam effort. Host and one of your characters in killing grace, vietnamese characters says that life in vietnam at that time was like being a caged tiger. What did she mean . Well, she also told, in love with me who works for the cia chief. And she also said, you cannot breathe through another mans nose. That the vietnamese just yearned to breathe free and were unable to do it and the vietnamese were trapped in this war and they were just trying to survive and they had a series of poor leaders and there was no particular political will to win the war and the North Vietnamese and the viet cong were much more determined to seize the south and liberate vietnam from all foreigners, than the South Vietnamese were to preserve democracy. And in fact, it wasnt much of a democracy. The elections were rigged or were never held and so the people had no hope in their leaders and then afterwards, anyone who worked for the americans were sent to the education camps or murdered or whatever, so it was just an unimaginable tragedy for those people. One of the different principle architects of the war, defense secretary Robert Mcnamara makes an appearance in your book. Secretary mcnamara came out later and saided war was wrong all along. Yeah, he knew, but never said so or never do anything to it, unfortunately. Yes, he makesnppearance and he goes out to a fortified hamlet. That was one of the ideas that the british brought to Southeast Asia that you could make these fortified hamlets and keep the vc from coming in at night and at the end of it, theres a scene where secretary mcnamara attempts to say, long live South Vietnam in vietnamese. Instead because he didnt use his tone correctly, and the vietnamese language depends on six tones, and what he told the audience, the southern duck wants to lie down so everyone laughed. And that incident actually happened. So i put it in there, i thought it was emblematic of some of our ignorance. Host so, 60 years on, Peter Prichard, president johnson sends more and more troops, general mcnamara didnt admit it was a mistake all along. What do you think the motivation was mere in washington to push this forward . You know, i dont know. I dont know just inertia, that we were so locked into our anticommunist mentality at that time that we felt we couldnt quit because it would be a defeat for american prestige and american influence around the world, that our allies would not respect what we did. And you know, there could have been that kind of damage to americas reputation and roles in the world, but i still think that would have been less deleterious than just causing more suffering for several more years because we couldnt end this war. And of course, the you know, there were all of these missed opportunities along the way. Ho chi minh had been at the services end of world war ii when he declared independence for North Vietnam used some words from our declaration of independence. He had worked as a dishwasher in new york, he knew something about america and had a lot of admiration for americans, but like all vietnamese he wanted to reject the invaders. Ned been invaded time and again for thousands of years and they didnt want anyone else to rule the country and since were a relatively Young Country that escaped domination by colonial power we should have been able to understand that. But somehow we couldnt. We couldnt understand what was going on and we couldnt find the courage to admit that it was wrong and to end it. Do hubris and mismanagement come up in killing grace . Yes, i certainly think so, in terms of the whole plot. I dont want to get too far into the plot because it will spoil some of it. But certainly what the fbi and the cia are attempting to do in the book are thats an amazing example of hubris, the idea that you can manipulate the Antiwar Movement for your own end by doing illegal things. And unfortunately, weve done that at other times in our Adam Clayton Powell who wrote a blurb for the book observed that this was not a very farfetched idea of what the agencies did in this book and it was something that could have happened and of course. He was a person who had a lot of experience being under fbi surveillance because of his famous father who represented, and one was one of j. Edgar hoovers targets. Host some of the characters are war protesters, you mentioned that earlier. Along with the civil rights movement, did these two groups have a common goal . Yes well, the black panthers and antiwar activists had an uneasy alliance, the black panthers were much more interested in equality for black people, but as part of it, they didnt want to see young black men just sent to vietnam for a cause that was so uncertain. Muhammad ali famously said, i dont think he actually said it, but he started at first, but the media invented it and then he started saying that no viet cong ever called me the nword. I dont think i need to go over there. And so there was an uneasy alliance, but there was certainly a segment in the Antiwar Movement that felt that protesting and marching and using your First Amendment rights was not sufficient. That you had to try to do something more dramatic, and they were looking at the monk and the famous malcom brown picture of the munk burning to death in the street. And i think this helped inspire the protesters to get more serious and really more dangerous. In fact, they were hoping to bomb fort dix, a dance at fort dix when the bomb went off in the Greenwich Village apartment killed one protester and wounded others. Host Peter Prichard, 1965 was only 20 years after the end of world war ii when the journalists and there are some in your book that are journalists. When they were in vietnam were they supportive of the goals and of preventing the domino theory or were they skeptical about the american role in vietnam . I think that most journalists when they went there early in the conflict were supported. You know, i read a lot of old magazines when i was writing this book, old life and time magazines and there was a lot of coverage of the american effort. They often observed how it was a difficult situation, but in general, fighting communism was endorsed by journalists just like it was by most of the American People in the early and mid 60s. Most enterprising ones, like e david, and neil sheehan and others, started covering the war more closely and more consciencely and they were able to do that because the American Military would fly journalists anywhere they wanted to go. You could hitch a ride on a helicopter almost anywhere in vietnam. It was really easy to do it. And so they would go places and see things that werent great, like when the americans burned down that village and the famous quote was, we had to destroy the village in order to save it, a zippo job i call it in killing grace. So they began to get more doubtful about whether this was the right way to go and at the same time, there were some civilian critics in the cia, who were critical of the body count strategy and they were talking to those people, too. So they gradually got more and more cynical about the aims of the war and began to believe that it couldnt be won. And wrote the best and the brightest, making of a quagmire, i think the first book and they were prescient books and sheehan wrote some, too. Their attitudes changed as the war went on and on. Host Peter Prichard, were all pretty familiar with how soldiers were treated after they returned to the states from vietnam. What was your experience . Well, i extended a couple of months because i found out that if you returned to the United States with five months left, 150 days, you could get out of the army. And i thought that was a good idea, but i didnt really realize that i was probably suffering from a little ptsd and i should have stayed in the army and just gone with some post and vegged out for five months. Instead, i just went home and lived in my parents basement and went down every night to the vfw club or the American Legion club in northern minnesota where i went to high school and we drank beer. I found two guys who had been to vietnam and wed sit there and drink beer every night. Oddly enough the world war ii veterans at the American Legion and the vfw never even came over to say hello to me. No one every thanked us for our service, no one even acknowledged that wed been there. And then when i moved back east, if you said you had been to vietnam people looked at you like, wow, how stupid are you, what happened to you that you would do something so dumb as to serve in vietnam . And there was no one ever said welcome home. And of course, there were many people being spat upon or laughed at or whatever. It was bad and i think it contributed to some of the mental problems that many veterans had after they returned. I think it only began to heal when jan scruggs, god bless him, and his friends managed to bill the vietnam wall which was an incredible accomplishment. Host have you been back to vietnam since . No, i wish i had. Everybody who has gone back has said its a healing experience and people ive talked to say the vietnamese people are incredibly welcoming and you know, theyve made it something of a great economic comeback. I mean, its still authoritarian regime and they work no of any kind, but they have a good Tourism Business and theyre quite welcoming to americans and forgiving, and i think many veterans want to be forgiven and visit the places that they served in and its a healing experience for many people. Jan, for example, the founder of the vietnam wall, has been back many times and organized a movement to pick up all the mines, unexploded mines in the countryside, which is a wonderful thing to do, to atone for some of the things that we did. On an individual level, did your experience in vietnam change your world view . Well, yes, definitely. I mean, i thought being in the army was a good experience. It was a wonderful way to meet people from all walks of life. It was a good way to instill discipline in a young person and it certainly made me more serious about the world and about whatever role i could play in it. And it was a good experience, even though i was sorry for the stuff we did. I mean, i was lucky enough that i didnt have to shoot anybody or i wasnt in handtohand combat or anything like that, as some of my friends were. However, one of my jobs was to type b52 strikes. Rolling thunder, we called them. So we would type up these strikes and say we want to bomb this area of South Vietnam where we thought there were a bunch of viet cong guerillas. Whether they were or not, we dont know. We were paying for this intelligence, i dont know how reliable it was, hard to tell, but the strikes were often next to where we were living, excuse me. It was like an earthquake and im sure it killed anything in its path. And im sorry for whatever involvement i had in that. Host in fact, you have an authors note in killing grace, i still ask god forgiveness for the contribution to what this undeclared war cost. Guest i believe in redemption. I think that everybody can feel sorry for things that they did and should. Host how did the war change the u. S. . Well, it you know, its still reverberating. It really damaged faith in institutions. It made people more cynical and distrustful of government. It polarized huge sections of the country. People came back and had terrible experiences and were unable to talk to their family about it. I think thats still true. Some cases. It increased our homelessness problem. There are still homeless vietnam vets even though there are only 610,000 left alive. Its it was a disaster and im so sorry it happened. I wish we could have avoided it. And i think it contributed to the divisions in politics we have today. Host so in 2021, when the pullout from afghanistan was happening rather chaotically. Any flashbacks. Any thoughts . Well, i thought was unconscionable. I mean, how do you pull out where it just becomes a mob scene and cant keep suicide bombers away. Im certainly not in support of an endless war in afghanistan if youre going to withdraw we ought to have sense and intelligence and a plan that doesnt keep People Killed on the last day of the war. That was one of my fears, when i extended, how stupid will i be if i get killed during the 45 days that ive stayed that i didnt have to stay . And you know, i thought it was a big failure. Host Peter Prichard is the author of this book killing grace, a vietnam war mystery and he was been our guest on cspan. Mr. Prichard, we appreciate your time. Peter, its a privilege to be on cspan and i love the civil discussion that your channel generates every day and distributes around the country. Thank you. Cspans student cam documentary competition is back, celebrating 20 years with this years theme, looking forward while considering the past. Were asking middle and High School Students to create a five to six minute video addressing one of these questions. In the next 20 years, whats the most important change youd like to see in america or over the past 20 years, thats been the most important change in america as we do each year. Were giving away 100,000 in total prizes with a grand prize of 5,000 and every teacher who has students participate in this years competition has the opportunity to share a portion of an additional 50,000. The competition deadline is friday, january 19th, 2024. Information, visit our website at student cam. Org. Weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday American History tv documents americas story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes from these Television Companies and more, including media com. 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