My Experiences up Close with the People Who Bombed a 700-Year-Old Civilization into Dust

Continued from previous page

As I wrote at the time, "It is not difficult to understand why reporters 'suck up' to powerful officials. Reporters and officials are not merely flattering each other for the fun of it. They are trading information, the oil of Washington, a commodity which brings careers, money,  Pulitzers, influence and fame to reporters, and political support to government officials to exercise the power they so enjoy. Information is literally power: the power to kill, the power to heal, the power to become rich. For all of the surface camaraderie and talk of 'friendship.' it is a deadly serious business."

I recently saw an interview where Ted Koppel mentioned discussing  he wiretapped conversations with his daughter Andrea Koppel, a CNN correspondent. I perked up my ears. Would Ted or his daughter be embarrassed that he had been caught sucking up to Kissinger? He chuckled as he explained that Andrea had been terribly impressed that he had had such access to Kissinger, apparently far more than she had to Secretary Clinton.

In Laos, I learned firsthand how big-time journalism works in America. The heart of the journalists' reporting was invariably based on interviews with U.S. embassy, CIA, USAID and USIS officials. And the basic story line was invariably the same: the U.S. was in Laos to protect it from a North Vietnamese invasion; the U.S. was generously supporting Hmong refugees fleeing from communism; the U.S. was only bombing North Vietnamese soldiers who were trying to “take over” Laos.

It was never reported that the U.S. was using northern Laos as a base to attack North Vietnam, that the North Vietnamese had no interest in conquering Laos because they were focused on Vietnam, and that at least until February 1971 when I left Laos, there were no more than a few thousand North Vietnamese troops in northern Laos. I thought this critical since it was a fictional “North Vietnamese invasion” of northern Laos that was being used to justify the savage bombing of civilian targets there that so upset me.

At one point in 1970 I set up an interview between  Time magazine’s David Greenway and the U.S. military attaché, who let slip that there were no more than a few thousand North Vienamese troops fighting in northern Laos. David found other confirming evidence for this figure, and told me he had filed a story with his home office reporting this. But when I went to buy a copy of  Time some weeks later, I read that 50,000 North Vietnamese troops had launched a massive invasion of Laos, complete with large red arrows.

On another occasion I was working with the  New York Times’ Sydney Schanberg and we went with 15 other journalists on a press junket to the Sam Thong refugee center. Around 5pm, as we were waiting for the plane to take us back to Vientiane, it was discovered that three of our number – T.D. Allman of  Time, Max Coiffait of Agence France Presse, and John Saar of Life – had taken an unauthorized stroll over to the top-secret Long Cheng airbase which no outsider had yet seen. All of a sudden, Pop Buell came running our way, furious, cursing a blue streak at the "bastards” who had broken the rules.

I was friendly with Allman, concerned for his safety (it was later reported that Vang Pao had wanted to shoot them) and delighted that these courageous journalists had defied executive branch secrecy and scored a major scoop. But the 10 or so journalists waiting at the airstrip had a very different reaction. They were furious at their journalistic colleagues! The ABC News correspondent was in a rage, looking at his watch and complaining this “stunt” would delay his much more important film getting to Hong Kong.