Hedrick Smith: Neil Sheehan forced an American reckoning Reporter who died last week had a profound moral fervor about the people’s right to know the truth. (Brendan Hoffman for the New York Times) Author Neil Sheehan poses for a portrait in his home office on Thursday, September 10, 2009 in Washington, DC. By Hedrick Smith | For The New York Times | Jan. 12, 2021, 2:14 p.m. Washington — “It looks like a coup,” Neil Sheehan said. “I’ll call Mordecai. He’ll know whose tanks those are.” It was Saigon, January 1964. I had just shared with Neil the news that I had seen tanks in the streets surrounding the home of Gen. Duong Van Minh, then the South Vietnamese leader. It was normal for tanks to be on guard to protect Big Minh, as he was known, but what caught my eye was that the tanks’ guns were pointed at the house, not away from it, menacing Minh instead of protecting him. It struck me that someone might be putting the commander in chief under house arrest.