1963 October 22

President Kennedy Asks NY Times Publisher to Transfer Reporter David Halberstam from Vietnam

 

President John F. Kennedy on this day tried to get the New York Times publisher to transfer reporter David Halberstam out of Vietnam on this day, but the Times refused.

Kennedy was unhappy with Halberstam’s stories in the Times which indicated that American efforts to support the South Vietnamese government against the Viet Cong were failing.

This event was one of several attempts by President Kennedy to “manage” the news (see January 25, 1961 and April 27, 1961), and in this case to directly attempt to manipulate news coverage of a major event. On December 6, 1962, for example, a Pentagon official stated that the government has a right “to lie to protect itself.”

Halberstam’s stories proved to be prophetic about the Vietnam War. He later became a famous author of many distinguished books, including The Best and the Brightest (1972, about the Vietnam War tragedy), The Powers That Be (1979, about the news media), The Fifties (1993, about the decade), and The Children (1999, about the civil rights movement).

In addition to this incident, the Vietnam War created a number of civil liberties crises. They include (1) the lack of a Congressional Declaration of War as required by the Constitution (June 3, 1970); (2) threats to freedom of the press in the Pentagon Papers case (June 30, 1971); (3) spying on the anti-war movement by the CIA (August 15, 1967); (4) threats to freedom of expression, for example high school student protests (February 24, 1969); censorship of television programs (February 25, 1968); and directly and indirectly some of the events that led to the Watergate Scandal (May 9, 1969; January 27, 1972).

Read Halberstam’s book on the Vietnam War: David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1972)

Read his earlier book on Vietnam: David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era (1965)

See Halberstam discuss his experience covering Vietnam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw-xb3vAU90

Learn more about the anti-Vietnam War movement: Thomas Powers, The War at Home: Vietnam and the American People, 1964–1968 (1973)

Read more about resistance to the draft during the Vietnam War: Michael Foley, Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War (2003)

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