US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0092/00926.txt

Text File | 1990-12-23 | 10KB | 197 lines

$Unique_ID{USH00926}
$Pretitle{84}
$Title{Vietnam 10 Years Later:  What Have We Learned?
Remarks of Eddie Adams}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Defense Information School}
$Affiliation{Department of Defense}
$Subject{vietnamese
vietnam
lot
carter
like
get
pictures
things
different
front}
$Volume{}
$Date{1985}
$Log{}
Book:        Vietnam 10 Years Later:  What Have We Learned?
Author:      Defense Information School
Affiliation: Department of Defense
Date:        1985

Remarks of Eddie Adams

Influence of Photos; Pictures Powerful

     Mr. Adams, whose photography loom Vietnam won the Pulitzer Prize,
compares the current state of Vietnam to that of the war years.  He says the
difference is striking and that even the contrast between Hanoi and Ho Chi
Minh City is like two different worlds.

     I want to start with a short story about a man who was president.  I
could tell you a lot of stories about Jimmy Carter, but I want to tell this
one in particular.  There had been three reporters who all knew Carter very,
very well.  They had known him when he was governor and over the years they
were big supporters of Carter.  The evening he was nominated, Carter turned to
them and said, "Thanks a lot guys but I don't need you anymore.

     I think that was one of the biggest mistakes Carter ever made.

     After Carter made that remark, they waited, and they waited, and the Bert
Lance incident came up.  These guys were so excited because they wanted to
throw the screws to Carter.

     I'm saying that because I've worked with military information people for
years, from virtually every country in the world, with armies and with all
nations.  In handling correspondents and photographers, the only thing you
have to do is be fair with them.  It's a two-way street.  Also, if you don't
know something, tell them you don't know.

     There are some correspondents too, who are going to shaft you every
chance they get, but you'll get to know who they are, and you have to handle
them as such.

Effective Photos

     I called an editor buddy of mine at the New York Times just yesterday,
and I said, "John, tell me something.  How effective are pictures?  In the New
York Times for example.  Tell me about pictures."

     He said, "Well, according to all their surveys, the first things people
look at in the New York Times are headlines.  The second things they look at
are the pictures, and the third things they look at are the cutlines."

     Pictures are powerful.  People will read something and they're still
skeptical, but if they see a photograph, that makes them believe it actually
did happen.

     But the camera can lie, too.  A Palestinian was telling me about a
particular photographer in Lebanon and said the photographer had tried to go
out on a small raid with them.  He wanted them to throw a few rounds at an
Israeli kibbutz just so he could get pictures.  You're going to meet people
like that. There are people who are pretty sick.

Vietnam Aftermath

     It must have been about a year ago that I was in Switzerland and France
tracking down former members of the Viet Cong who were thrown out of Vietnam
because the National Liberation Front does not get along well with the
Vietnamese.

     The Vietnamese are leaving the country like mad - some are being thrown
out and hundreds of thousands are sent into Russia to work in labor camps.

Agents

     I met the (South Vietnamese) chief of military intelligence. He was
working as a domestic in a little town in Switzerland.  One of the questions I
asked was: Quite often in Vietnam I would go out on the mop-up operation after
a B-52 raid and would hardly ever find bodies.  The guy just broke out
laughing.  He told me the name of the person in the Thieu government who was
working for them.  He went on to say they had at least a six-hour warning.

     Another man I met was a propaganda minister.  Ironically, he's working on
a newspaper in Switzerland now.  He writes a column that said a lot of their
information and propaganda came from Russia.  He did a lot of translating into
Vietnamese and he would go back and forth between Moscow and Hanoi.

North Vietnam Today

     I got back from Vietnam about two weeks ago.  I was there six days for
Time magazine.  When I was in Hanoi, I had expected the American POWs to be
paraded on the street at any time.  As we flew over a lot of the craters left
from the bombings, we saw that the Vietnamese made small lakes out of them.
They filled them with water and used them as rice paddies, et cetera.  As I
was walking the streets I expected to be stoned or hit by eggs or something,
but it was all different.  The North Vietnamese laughed and they were very
friendly.  They knew I was an American.  There were just two of us - the
writer and me.  We'd go to some of the restaurants, and I found that there was
hardly any food in Hanoi - very primitive.  You look around and you see how
primitive they're living and you wonder how they won the war.  Everything
seemed just totally wrong.  They were like a bunch of farmers that just didn't
know what they were doing - no sophistication.

     We got on the plane and went from there to Saigon on Vietnam Air.  It
used to be called Air Vietnam.  The planes used to be white and green.  Now
they're white and blue.  When I arrived at the Tan Son Nhut Airport, there
were only two other aircraft on the ground.  They were prop planes.

     In Saigon you could feel a little bit of resentment, and several things
struck me there.  The Vietnamese ao dai that the women wore wasn't worn
anymore.  I was looking around because I was photographing the city.  I just
wanted to do the typical bicycle with the, ao dais, so I asked one of the
government officials, "Where are the ao dais?  Why don't the women wear these
any more?"  He said, "Oh, they are too expensive."

     There are a lot of bicycles, very few automobiles.  What was amazing was
that Saigon was much cleaner.  I've never seen the streets that clean.

     There was a handful of Amerasian kids who hung out in front of the
Majestic Hotel.  They started following me everywhere I went.  I was looking
for a good place for a cup of coffee and one of the kids said he knew where
there was good coffee.  He said to follow him.  So I did, and we went around
the corner to a small dingy little coffee shop.

     There was a woman there who was about 28 years old, and she spoke perfect
English.  She came over to me and said, "You're not American are you?" And I
said, "Yes." And she said, "You really are?" I said, "Yeah." She said, "Well
how did you get here?" So I told her and then she asked me if I'd go to the
back room with her because she was afraid of being caught talking to me.  We
went to the back room and sat down and she said very quietly, "You aren't a
Communist are you?" And I said, "No." She laughed and cried at the same time
and grabbed my arm and started telling me that she had worked for the U.S.
Agency for International Development.  She has an Amerasian kid from someone
from USAID, and she was left behind.  Then she went on telling me that her
child could be killed if she was seen talking with me.  She was really
uptight.  She said that her child couldn't go to school, because he's half
American.  The Amerasian kids aren't allowed to go to Vietnamese schools.  So
a lot of them end up as street kids. She was really excited.

     I got her name and information and turned it over to the embassy in
Bangkok.

     The only traces of America I saw were a few wrecked planes at Tan Son
Nhut.  Just a handful, which they wouldn't let me go near.  It's like we've
never been there.  There were only two or three occasions when anyone spoke
English.  The signs on the government buildings where there used to be South
Vietnamese flags painted are all painted with the new Vietnamese flag, which
is red with a gold star.  They're all faded like they have been there forever.
It was just a very odd feeling.

     We drove from Saigon to Can Tho.  In Can Tho, when you had a cup of
coffee outside, crowds would automatically gather around you.

     The people in the South were not as friendly as they were in the North.

Remarks from Question and Answer Session

North and South

     In the north there was very little food.  In the south, there was plenty
of food.  The contrast is almost like two different worlds.

     The only military presence I did see, maybe in all of Vietnam, was in the
three cities that I went to in six days.  I saw about eight soldiers, and two
of them were in front of the presidential palace.  There were some students
training right on the grass with - I don't even know what kind of rifles they
were. They only had a handful of them.  They had a couple of Vietnamese
soldiers showing them how to hold a rifle.

     I didn't see one helicopter.  That was spooky also.  Not one. It was just
weird, strange.

On Camera

     In front of cameras you're a different person.  You'll do almost anything
if you know those cameras are running.  No question about it.  I blame the
press for a lot of things.  I don't blame it as much on a still photographer
as I do television only because you have a crew and this is Hollywood, man.
You get three people there: You, your sound man and your light man People do a
lot of strange things for those cameras.  In front of a camera they're
different.