REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201160026-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: February 13, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201160026-3
STAT.
c PAuJ -,~
THE US & VIETNAM
OS ANGELES - A few
hawks and a great
many more doves de-
scended upon the Uni-
versity of Southern Cali-
~1Fa~%Ifl~D%'2 Y1Ce
uf ah 0
U MCF
past
A stormy conference on the Vietnam War
By H.D.S. Greenway
Globe Staff
fornia's campus last week for a
four-day conference on "Vietnam
Reconsidered - Lessons from a
War."
Journalists, veterans. academi-
cians, spies and anti-war activists
participated in or listenedtto panel
discussions from early moining to
late at night. They were probing
the past and trying to draw conclu-
sions for the future.
In many ways, as one panelist
complained, it was more Vietnam.
Revisited than Reconsidered. Jour-
H.D.S. Greenuxzy. foreign and
national editor of The Globe. cov-1
ered the ? Vietnam War for the
Washington Post and Time maga- 1
zine.
THE BOSTON GLOBE
13 February 1983
Kures on the stage may. have seemed. as au- .
j for Gloria Emerson said. "ghostly figures
,,emerging from Flanders Field.".
If the conference were. to be faulted, it
-.would be because so few of those who sup-
3,ported or conducted the war attended.
Conference organizers said it was not for
want of trying. Robert McNamara, Dean
Rusk, McGeorge and William Bundy, Gen.
William Westmoreland and Henry Kis-
?singer. to name a few, had all been asked
,butdeclined, according to USC's John Lan-
.guth; a professor of journalism who once
-..represented the New York Times in Sat-
gon: ....
;,j, Also noticeable by their absence were
,the' Vietnamese. There were only three
,Vietnamese out of more than 60 panelists.
,,;Former South Vietnamese leader Nguyen.
Cao Ky was scheduled to come but did not.
Nguyen Ngoc Dung, a deputy perma-
nent representative of the Hanoi regime's
$United Nations delegation. was denied per-
mission by the US State Department to at-
- tend,- according to conference organizers.
She addressed the conference by radio
,'hookup between Los Angeles and New
York. however, stating her country's es-
. ,.tablished positions.
Through all the rehashing of the past,
: the subject of Central America loomed like
the spectre of Vietnams yet to come. Was
_ the United States committing the same
mistakes In Latin America as it had in
Vietnam? Or would the lessons of Vietnam
.stay the hand of any present and future
;President?
The issue was addressed directly by for-
mer US Ambassador to El Salvador Robert
E. White on the last day. He said that "fear
of change" guided all our policies In Latin
America. caused the United States to
"wink" at repression, corruption and dic-
tatorship. We should. he said, work toward
a non-Communist "model for change-,
nalists, many of whom, like David
Halberstam. rose to fame in Viet-
nam,'watched television film clips,
read from their dispatches, con-
gratula ted - or, in one or two cases.
bitterly attacked - each other's
works and reputations.
Old friendships and enmities
were renewed but emotional scabs
were rubbed raw too - especially by
Vietnam veterans who spoke with
passion and anger at what ,they.
perceived as an indifferent. and
even hostile public. Vietnamese ex-
iles carried placards and flags of
the old South Vietnamese republic
outside the hall and shouted with
anger from within at suggestions
that they had come to America for
economic rather than political rea-
sons.
To the students. many of whom
were not even born or were in
grade school when the events un-
der discusslon.took place..the fig:
Latin Americans turned away from the
-United States, he added, only when they
saw that we did not mean what we said
about democracy and human rights.
The beginning of American involve-
'ment ''in Vietnam was discussed by old
Asia bands such as the New Yorker's Rob-
ert Shaplen. who has covered Vietnam
since the 1940s. and Archimedes Patti.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201160026-3