hour-long event. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. i am the wilson center's vice -- senior vice president. event, whichday's is another in our ongoing books of wilson series that marks the publication of new books by fellows of the wilson center. james reston is a wilson center global fellow. >> [indiscernible] >> i believe so -- is it? i was once at an event henry kissinger was speaking at and the chair said can everyone hear me? and from the side, henry kissinger said, by definition, the people who cannot hear will not respond. [laughter] now audible. to repeat station identification you're at the wilson center and , today is another in our books at wilson series featuring the latest book by the remarkable james reston who is a wilson center global fellow. the topic of the book deals with a contentious period in the history of the vietnam war, and the book itself deals with the contentious debate over how to mark that war and the american'' role and sacrifice during that period. that was fraught with politics and contention over the appropriate artistic expression to memorialize that dramatic period in american history. the gold standard of book reviews remains "the new york times." they reviewed it this week and described the book as superb and unexpectedly affecting -- unexpectedly affecting in terms of the emotions it evokes as one reads it. it is a fantastic volume. jim has been affiliated as a fellow at the wilson center. it is remarkable the topics he has taken on in 17 books. the range from the renaissance to the contemporary is remarkable for any individual. his book, "the conviction of richard nixon" was a best-seller and inspired the film "frost/nixon." he has won awards for various publications and we are delighted to host today's event to mark the publication of his latest book. the wilson format is conversational, and we cannot have a better moderator and person to engage in this dialogue then jan scruggs, who is the founder of the vietnam veterans memorial fund. which was the organization authorized to build the memorial. he is an authority on ptsd and the memorial project float from academic-- flow from work he did while he was at american university. the format will be that jan and jim will have a conversation for 20, 25 minutes to discuss the main themes of the book, then over to you all for any comments or questions, and then the author will sign copies of the book, which are available just outside the door in the foyer. let me turn the floor over to jan. james: i had intended to speak for about 40 minutes, so i will see if i can compress what i had in mind to about four. i am arguing that there are two vietnam wars, there is the one fought between 1959 in 1975, and the second war began in 1979 and is still going on. that is on the question of how this war, the first lost war in american national history and very divisive, how that is to be remembered and how it is to be memorialized. i have been preoccupied in my entire literary life with the lot of my own generation, and the moral dilemma that it faced during the vietnam period, the decision as to whether to serve in the military or not, to avoid it, all my friends avoided service. after my three years in the army, 1965 to 1968, i became involved in the reconciliation movement, especially with vietnam war resisters, and wrote two books about that. this overarching theme of reconciliation after a divisive war, i believe, is an eternal question and one that we will face, perhaps today in relation to iraq and afghanistan and in the future, forever. i remember the choice my generation was faced with, to be involved or not in the ill-conceived, arguably immoral war, to protest and avoid or to serve. i was personally and deeply involved in trying to decide that in my own personal life and therefore very interested in how that extended to other of my contemporaries. this book is not about the vietnam war that was fought, but the memory of that war. how it should be remembered -- that first phase had its most intense time with the fight over a vietnam memorial, whether there would be one at all or if there was going to be one what should it be. that period is totally forgotten now, the intensity of the fight between 1979 and 1984, but i believe it is instructive to go back to that period and to that fight. with the ken burns documentary we are going to get this fight all over again with intensity. the book has two emotional ties for me. one is that i have one friend on the wall who was killed in january 1968 when the north vietnamese came through. i trained with him and knew him well. he was a good friend of mine. it is the brilliance of the vietnam wall that it is by virtue of its black granite a reflective surface, so i believe that almost by accident, the reflective quality of the granite to those who have survived is a magical accident that i came upon. the second emotional tie is the sculptor of the soldiers at the memorial was a friend of mine, and i was not sure when i started to focus on this question as to whether this book would work. i had done dual biographies before, pete rose, a baseball book, saladin versus richard the lionheart, a medieval book. the form of dual biography interested me greatly. whether i could do a dual biography was a question in my mind. i was interested in the artistic process that those artists went through. what should the place be for a lost war, a divisive war? what shape should it take, what went through artist's minds to try to figure out what would be appropriate. what would be the right move to go for? what i quickly understood from searching the library of congress was there was an enormous effusion of creativity that this commission brought into existence with 1421 submissions, all of those designs are in the library of congress. it is a fascinating range that goes from very kitschy to quite interesting, and there was significant competition. there is a very rich historical record at the library of congress of the materials that come out of the vietnam veterans memorial fund. this memorial began as a veterans memorial about one war and the veterans who fought in it. the magic of it as the decades have proceeded is that memorial has become universalized, it is not only about veterans, but about the entire vietnam generation and its dilemma. it is not only about the vietnam war, it is about all wars. it is not a place only for warriors, but equally for pacifists. even draftdodgers and deserters can go and have a place of reflection and contemplation about a choice that was foisted on an american generation that should never happen again. the story itself has six phases. it begins with one veteran's vision, a veteran who was wounded and then returned to duty, then witnessed a terrible accident of friends blown apart, and openly declares that he suffered, then and perhaps now from ptsd. his sacrifice and his service were something he felt should be memorialized personally and for all who served under these difficult circumstances. his determination to follow this through is an amazing thing. he felt strongly that if there was a memorial, it was not to be stuck away in some hidden place in washington, as if this was a shameful thing. it should be on the national mall in a prominent place, almost in your face. the second phase was beyond the raising of money -- an artistic competition. it was presided over by a handsome, prickly professional who gathered a panel of distinguished artists and architects to figure out how to choose between these 1421 submissions. what would be the best. there were several rules that were laid down for all those who submitted. one was the insistence of the veteran founder that all the names of the dead be on the sculpture or whatever it was to be. secondly, that it must be nonpolitical. the memorial does not state that the war was right or wrong. what happened there after was this remarkable scene in a hangar in andrews air force base where these 1421 submissions were put on display, and the seven or eight judges had to go through and winnow it down to a couple hundred and then 30 and then down to three and then to choose a winner. all of those submissions had to be anonymous. there were major architectural firms and major artist who put forward submissions to this. phase three was the results, with this 21-year-old yale undergraduate, her design was a single chevron in black granite, belowground. all of which were inflammatory and subsequent phases. the actual drawing of that submission was almost high schoolish. it was a black chevron that many people might have done. what won her the competition, and this appeals to the writer in me was not the design, but her description of what she wanted the memorial to be. it was walking through this park-like area of memorial appears as a rift in the earth, along polished black stone wall are merging from and receding from the earth and it goes on in a very poetic way. it was also part of the rules that that description had to be in their hand writing and there could be no print. i hope i have this all right so far. then came the next phase. this was the blowback. it has been described and i believe accurately as the art war. black granite was the color of shame, by it being belowground was shameful. only the dead were on the wall and not anything about the survivors, and this was unfair. it was depressing. there was no glory in it, no honor, no heroism. there had been no vietnam veterans on the panel of judges that chose the final result. this blowback was led by a powerful character by the name of jim webb, subsequently senator from virginia and a very failed presidential campaign. a powerful individual, indeed. very well-connected in washington who gathered congressmen and senators behind him, wrote beautifully written op-ed pieces in opposition, who went around and spoke all over the country against this. it was a powerful effort to undermine the maya lin design and it nearly succeeded. the fifth phase was the compromise where a superb figure was brought in and he was commissioned to do three soldiers, a three soldier sculpture and this was to satisfy veterans who hated that -- of shame as it was called. to hart's credit, he rejected the pressure to create a glorified sculpture which would glorify the experience of the vietnam veteran, or for it to be a heroic statue the way you might find at a place like quantico. when this started to gain legs, there evolved an interesting debate between the detractors of maya lin and the architectural community who felt there was a strong principle here of the integrity of an artistic work that had been chosen in the most professional and fair way. nevertheless, it became a washington story in which the white house became involved and congress became involved and ultimately, it felt to this agency in washington called the u.s. commission on fine arts to decide what to do about this. ultimately, they agreed that the statue would be added, but it would be added as an entrance experience, so as you entered from the lincoln memorial to the wall, you went past the three soldiers. it was therefore meant to not be two memorials, as was argued by the purists, but it was one integrated experience. frederick hart was very much -- bought into this notion of his respect for the winning design and he, too, won the day at the u.s. commission of fine arts by what he wrote with what he was doing with his statues in relation to the wall. he wrote, the gesture and expression of the figures are directed to the wall, affecting an interplay between image and metaphor. the tension between the two elements creates a residence that echoes from one to the other, i see the wall as a kind of ocean, a sea of sacrifice that is overwhelming and incomprehensible in its sweep of names. i place these figures upon the shore of that see, gazing on it, standing vigil before it, reflecting the human face of it, the human heart. that won the compromise and i would think won the day for frederick hart. it was still a shotgun marriage. the last phase is where we are at now. with this remarkable embrace of this work, and its place, it is the most accessible monument in the district of columbia, 5 million visitors every year visit it. it is copied all over the world. interestingly to me, when i was in north vietnam in december, it is also copied in the memorial to the north vietnamese dead in vietnam, the black granite with the names of those who were killed. it is a place for all of the vietnam generation, and it is a place for all generations to come. if you go there, it is a fine place to take a child. with this ken burns think we going to relive the vietnam war and get ready to see the fight start all over again. the rift of the generation is going to be on display, but at least now we have a place of contemplation for what is the ultimate cost of war. the brilliance of the black granite to reflect the experience of the survivors, beyond that, to celebrate the key players, the modest vietnam veteran whose vision and determination made this happen, the white-haired manager of the historic competition, but also the artists who are not here today, maya lin and frederick hart. thank you. [applause] jan: can everyone hear me? i'm the founder of the vietnam veterans memorial, born in the nation's capital and i grew up in bowie, maryland. ended up in the vietnam war at age 18, seemed like a good enough idea for me to serve for two years. got the draft out of the way. at american university i did research and i did become an authority on posttraumatic stress disorder -- to become an authority all you have to do is write an article for the washington post and appear in front of a senate committee. i figured that out quickly. i had some credibility when i came up with the idea for this memorial, which flowed from the idea of survivor conflicts. a lot of work has been done on survivor conflicts, people who have survived the holocaust in world war ii, tortured people, why did i survive and my children to not? people who survive wars, their life is different, even car crashes and so forth. i became interested in thinking of carl jung who was a student of sigmund freud who had this idea of the unconscious mind. he talked about these historical archetypes, what is the hero. who is the hero to jung? the hero is the man or woman who faces the dragon. he fights the dragon with a sword, he wins or he dies, that he is the hero for facing danger. flowing from this archetype came the idea of a memorial with names, names of the fallen from vietnam. the memorial would honor all. the trick i came up with was to separate the war from the warrior. that became a mantra. the vietnam war is one issue, service to your country is a separate issue. we tried to keep the vietnam war out of the vietnam veterans memorial which is not possible, but held off the lions at the gate for a while. in order to get this memorial built, i was very lucky. some graduates of the u.s. military academy at west point, who also went to the harvard business school, descended on this project early on and made the vietnam veterans memorial into a harvard business school problem. i owe a lot to the harvard business school, i owe a lot to west point for getting this done. this book is fantastic. it should be the official history of the vietnam veterans memorial. it is also a history of art and art history and washington, d.c. this is not the first time people have disagreed over a structure. i wonder if you could tell us about the fdr memorial. many of us have been to it, but we do not know about the one that was not built. james: you are putting me on the spot about details of the whole thing. for something like the vietnam war where the dead were a lot less than world war i and world war ii, the memorials for fdr and for george washington, and we know that general eisenhower continues on with terrific contention between the family yoursr this memorial of to have become a reality in five years is absolutely amazing. and, you know, even something like the george washington memorial, the design itself was totally different initially than what was built. in that respect, there is a connection between the and theon monument vietnam memorial in the sense that they are both very simple and indeed, quite scaled down. i mean, it is one of the things that surprises into all of this, going the way the vision developed for this thing, it was originally a design whereiwar andas not just the chevron stonesere a series of werehese stones going down meant to be the dominoes of the if those whoas ofd surfed down the stones the domino theory to their death. fromlking to her professor yale, the inspiration of her design, she said, the chevron is great, but what are these stones with the men surfing down to their death? get rid of that. final memorial was more of a scaling down. so putting a memorial in washington, much less on the national mall in less than five years is an extraordinary accomplishment. let me read -- some people are very good at writing. most of us are not. mr.me read something that reston wrote. there were important implications about this contest. who would control the memory of vietnam? would it be veterans? would it be artists? would it be resisters who took validation, politicians who simply wanted to allay the political pressures and put vietnam to rest. the competed in one of the largest architectural design competitions and the u.s. or thepe, later it clips by memorial to world war ii in new york to 9/11. tell us a little bit about professor andrew burr and he became somewhat infamous for , and forbe to my lens those who have not seen what she say whyn, when people was this controversial, it's -- youbeautiful design can actually see what was turned , and this is what she turned in. the largest architectural design competition in history. -- tell us all about andrew burr. >> before i do so, my rather bad joke about the gentleman over he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for managing with 1421 submissions fairness and professionalism. he is this very jolly young in 1980 who goes andrance in the summer looks at world war ii memorials in france where hundreds of thousands were killed and are memorialized and he was very, very interested and came back to put to the dean of the who was are school, famous, famous architects, this notion of having a course in funereal arts. memorializing the dead. and pelley bought into this. the course had eight students, including this young was aamerican girl who really rather bad students, student,- rather bad prickly and difficult, and was not doing all of her homework and so forth. but when it came to the vietnamment of this memorial competition, he changed his program that fall and asked his students to go ahead and imagine what they would like to the vietnamorialize war. the students came down with a couple friends to washington to look at the landscape of what is known as constitution gardens as part of the national mall and very much took on board the role shouldlity and how that , and she went back and famously, legend has it, had her initial design in a plate of mashed potatoes. designn presented this with the chevron and the steps and three to it, judges came in to replicate a normal architectural competition, and it was those three judges that came back and granite idea of a chevron that is below ground was very appropriate to the lost work, but what on earth were these steps going down? and to get rid of those, and that is what she did. ultimately, she got a fairly good grade for that project. with the final grade, and his bar gave her an incomplete. she came in in tears and anger in said if i get an incomplete in the course i will never get in to harvard architectural and was so graduate powerful and all of this that burr ultimately acquiesced and gave her this famous be plus -- b plus. it is the most famous undergraduate grade in the history of higher education. just but she was a very persuasive and top woman. there was someone else who was very extraordinary who referred to were as a nausea new. thethe uninitiated, that is young woman who is the archetype. everyone comes to save her. and its frederick hart, was of to him to come up with the statue. tell us a little bit about frederick hart. then we will have discussion. >> went to double artists get together -- when two artist get together on a project, you can be sure there will be blood in the water. to this notioned of the statue being added to her design as the mustache on the mona lisa. and there is, behind that a really rather important integrity of ae piece of art from the artist's standpoint. hart was no shrinking violet. he was a very, very good in fighter as an artist, and also very good with words and they went after one another in an article that i have milked for ,ll it is worth in the book them detracting one another's work. rt had a great booster in tom wolfe, but maya lin had a tremendous cadre of boosters who felt strongly her work of art should not be violated by this intrusion. >> it was red state versus blue state. ok, ladies and gentlemen, i am sure that someone would like add something. who is first? yes, there is a microphone. ok. that is the microphone person right there. ok. the gentleman right there in the white shirt. hey. very good. all right. go ahead. with an ngoliffe called the fun for reconciliation and development. congratulations for what you did . that is phenomenal. i still have the hair, but it is wider than it used to be. i am with a group called the vietnam peace commemoration committee, antiwar folks who are trying to lift up the memory of the antiwar movement in all of this process. or questionomment about what is not in the memorial, but it has come up in .iscussions this 50 8000 were not the last of the american casualties, of course. there are people who had psychological issues and suicides, agent orange, a variety of others. also there are the americans to -- who protested the war. whether it is morrison, who immolated himself or the kids i can't state, or others we do not know who are not recognized in the memorial, at least explicitly. and then we are doing a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the pentagon march. after a day of chat, chat, chat, we will welcome the vietnam memorial, and to honor and respect the work, but to point , the vietnamese and cambodians who died. not to say american memorials should do that anymore than a vietnamese memorial does it for american soldiers, but i don't think it diminishes what you accomplished and the value of the memorial to point out how much is not memorialized. >> you makes him great points. i am going to let it stand right there. fantastic. next? i'm off half the way here at the center. jim, congratulations. the am bob hathaway here at center. jim, congratulations. that is a rich and entertaining presentation. started out is, jim describing the vietnam war in a way that no one in this room, at least visibly took exception to it, but in fact it used to be a very controversial statement. jim described this as the first lost war in american history. i don't know any historians who would disagree with the adjective lost, but many of us remember that for a long time you couldn't get away with describing its that way. as a step may be toward enlightenment. the other brief comment i wanted you referredjim, to this basic template being copied around the world and you specifically mentioned the at non-. i remember how struck i was when i visited oaken nala some years awa some years ago and there is a monument there that lists not only the names of the japanese defenders and the american invaders, and all civilians. and it is on a scale, the number of names is on a scale which just dwarfs the vietnam memorial here. profoundly moving memorial, but thisso invokes memories of memorial. jim, my question is, i recall lin was that maya young, the fact that she was a woman, the fact that she was a lesion were all points of controversy. and given as reasons why this was the wrong selection. my recollection is this is a very scarring experience for her, notwithstanding the great honor. us up-to-date on what has happened to her sense -- since? how has she flourished in the decades since? that's an interesting question. ayatollah literary question for myself in righting this book as to whether i really wanted to develop a rather deep , to tapship with her her memory of the thing. and i decided that i did not want that, that what i wanted to do was capture the passion of , 79 to 84, that brought her into the international fame in which she basks to this day. she has done subsequent to that memorial some wonderful work, most especially people remember her memorial in montgomery to and she didghts era an interesting women's table outside the sterling library. she has done an enormous range of artistic works you can see in books that have been done about her, but she will always be defined by this amazing thing that happened to her when she 22.21 or i got a sense in facing this literary question at the beginning that i didn't really want to push her because it was clear to me that despite the importance of this to her it's a veryl fame, unpleasant experience for her to , and she did write to me she was happy to talk about the design itself, but she did not want to talk about the controversy that surrounded it. that is my experience with her. >> yes. a woman. we have not had a woman speak at. >> i think it is genuinely , tortant for younger people understand, if only we could get this across to them. i would love to hear from you whether you feel your goals at , whether you accomplished your goals and what kind of reaction other veterans have had who were involved with ?ou it is a major tourist attraction. you're not going to do any better than that. with these, however kiosks and the guys in the fatigues and all of that. i live in a different world. at but because of the vietnam veterans memorial -- and this is why am so unpopular among the establishment in washington -- we had the korean war memorial, the report to memorial, and with any luck, next year there will be a world war i memorial. we created this need for national memorials. i did not mean to do it, but i think they are absolutely fantastic. one of the things we had to face was the allegation there was communist involvement with the memorial design, and let's face got one of our design course int a landscape architecture at the california labor school. but that is how bad this got. this was very top. these guys were after us. they were unforgiving. they were brilliant. these guys have all come political campaigns. they had access to senators. even the day that the groundbreaking permit was issued 25 members called secretary watt don't give that away. a fellow working for james baker, a former secretary of the way, became very helpful to us, because of on connection, and well, behalf of the secretary, you will issue that permit, mr. watt, because you have problems and difficulties and you do not want this problem. you are going to issue it and issue it now. he bluffed his way into it. i got a bunch of construction equipment there and i said, make this place look like a b-52 came through with bombs. just make holes everywhere. book, which may be the only book for architectural design competitions. much for very acknowledging me earlier. i am going to make one point and ask a question, jan. we look at this whole process as one great controversy. if it had not you been for the full coif operation of the fine arts commission, the national planning commission, and a number of federal agencies around town, that memorial never would have happened. normally we look at federal agencies as constructionists. in this case, they protected the integrity of design all the way through. this discussion -- 35 years after the memorial, all of the think is arouses, i iten of what a touchstone was. jan, for some years, you had the idea of building a visitors center where these kinds of ideas could be discussed. it could be a forum for doing that. i would like to ask you how it is coming? jan: i don't know much about how the visitor center is coming along. i am a principal advisor where we are going to build a national memorial for those who are serving today, right now, in syria, fighting for the past 15 years. that is what i am doing now. i wish the best for the veterans memorial fund. you have a beard on in the back, which means you must be of above average intelligence. and it is gray. don't know about that. jim, one of the things you wrote that has always stayed with me, we all owned that war. it did not matter if you said i'm against it or i did not vote for george bush. in theas a similar theme wall. one of the things that strikes me, you see the reflection of the people looking at it. it forces the viewers in a way as if youheir gaze were looking into a body of water and i'm just curious if that was part of the design from the beginning and what the designers thought about that? absolutely a part of the design at the beginning. understood,really theeptualizing it that way reflective quality of it -- and she certainly could not have imagined what the blowback would be about the color of black being the color of shame and all the interesting point here is the detractors, most especially web -- when they they couldrealize not undermine this entirely, they made some demands and one of the principal demands was it would not be black, but it would be white. and if it was all white memorial it would not have that reflection to appear. you get no reflection from white granite. that is an extra important point in all of this. >> thank you, james. the book "rift in the earth," an important book in history. congratulations on this accomplishment, james. are available for purchase outside. we thank all of you for attending today. thanking jamesin and jan. [applause] >> just briefly -- my neighbor is a navy pilot -- you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's public television -- cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. welcome to kansas city, missouri, on american history tv. it is the largest city in the state. consonants of the missouri and kansas rivers, the location dated an important spot.