00:00:00.000 - 00:00:16.000

Any other questions? I'm happy to certainly question. In our survey of the Vietnam War, his name is Mr. John Wright. He served in the Army between 1967 and 1970.

00:00:16.000 - 00:00:35.000

He was an L-86 pilot, that means he was a helicopter pilot. I'm not sure what corps you were in. He was down in the Delta area. He's going to talk about his experiences.

00:00:35.000 - 00:00:46.000

I think maybe he'll tell you a little bit about going to chopper school and what it's like to be a helicopter pilot because that was one of the most important weapons that we used, tactical weapons, in the Vietnam conflict.

00:00:46.000 - 00:01:01.000

But also he'll tell us a little bit about the Arvan prison camps and their re-education camps. He went back to Vietnam just recently, and from the information that he has gained,

00:01:01.000 - 00:01:17.000

there's going to be a special on Channel 2 in February which I want you people to be aware of on his trip and people who went with him. These re-education camps would be the camps where the former Arvan POWs were taken by the North Vietnamese and to be re-educated to become communist

00:01:17.000 - 00:01:31.000

or thinking more along their lines. He was able to go in and see those camps, and this is going to be a special on Channel 2 in February, hopefully. So keep your eye open for that because you'll probably recognize the show on that program.

00:01:31.000 - 00:01:48.000

So Mr. Wright, if you'd like to tell us a little bit about your experience in Vietnam, how you got in, what your MOS was, what the helicopter school was like, and what your period of time was, and then about your second trip to Vietnam. Thank you.

00:01:48.000 - 00:02:02.000

So I was a global tour pilot in Vietnam, basically, but they didn't want us to go back to the United States, so I went to Hoa Chua, Arizona, so I just stayed in Vietnam. I toured about three and a half tours.

00:02:02.000 - 00:02:26.000

I'm going to pass something out that you can read later. This is about the controversy over Vietnam veterans, who are they, and how are they stereotyped. And some of this explains how difficult the war was,

00:02:26.000 - 00:02:46.000

and what was going on, who to trust, who not to trust. Even at this point, a lot of people thought that North Vietnamese were fighting for their country, and in fact, in my experience, we're just going to Vietnam like that. It is the ultimate totalitarian state.

00:02:46.000 - 00:03:06.000

The population is 1,975, the fourth poorest country in the world, and it's all because of the -- it's not even a communist state now, it's a new-like, kind of like the four of us mentioned before. And those are the victors, who a lot of people supported and said that they were pretty stupid.

00:03:06.000 - 00:03:27.000

In fact, they were probably responsible for a massacre of people. There's 25,000 people still in jail right now. When I was your age, I was lucky enough to know a lot about Vietnam. I had a lot of relatives that were in the military, and some friends in the neighborhood joined me.

00:03:27.000 - 00:03:43.000

So after two years of college, I figured if I was going to get out, I was probably going to go to Vietnam anyhow, and I had an opportunity to go to an advanced flight school. So I left Case Western Reserve University and went to flight school and learned how to fly.

00:03:43.000 - 00:03:59.000

Initially, the flight school lasted 24 months, but as the war went on and more pilots got killed and more people, the flight school gradually got supported until it was about 12 months, which really was quite -- >> Accelerated.

00:03:59.000 - 00:04:12.000

>> Yeah, it was really accelerated, but it wasn't so much. I mean, if somebody told you your life depended on this course every day, you kind of paid attention to it. And also, we had people that were there who said, "Forget about what they just told you.

00:04:12.000 - 00:04:32.000

This is the way it's going to be in Vietnam, because Vietnam is not like the other places in the world." So I was 20, bound up in Vietnam, and unlike a lot of veterans in fact, I knew a lot about Vietnam just because of the relative experience and the kind of training that I got in the military.

00:04:32.000 - 00:04:42.000

I had enough time. Generally, the veteran that went to Vietnam didn't know anything about Vietnam at all. They didn't even know where it was. That's something that generally falls --

00:04:42.000 - 00:04:54.000

the veteran may have just fallen from the military, but not trained that way. So they didn't know what they were getting into, like taking people, putting them on the move, and trying to survive. So you didn't know who the other people were, or you didn't speak their language.

00:04:54.000 - 00:05:07.000

So that was very difficult for a lot of veterans. And they showed up there. And so a lesson to learn, I guess, is to pay attention to what's going on around you. Because if somebody told me when I was in high school or even in college

00:05:07.000 - 00:05:20.000

that I was going to be in a flying helicopter, I'm hearing 40 miles an hour, two feet above the ground, 11,000 miles a week, and I never would have been. And knowing what was going on over there helped me to fast-survive that period of time.

00:05:20.000 - 00:05:33.000

And that can happen to anybody, very easily. I think you've got control of your life when you're young. There's other forces that let you fight. So you really have to pay attention.

00:05:33.000 - 00:05:47.000

Street smarts made a lot of sense to me. When I got over there, they took all the young kids that had no combat experience and put them into an OH-6, kind of the size of a Volkswagen. It's a scout helicopter.

00:05:47.000 - 00:06:01.000

It goes straight up, zero to 60 in six seconds. And I hadn't been in any rides yet. So they figured if you could survive this for about six months, then they could get you in a helicopter with some other soldier

00:06:01.000 - 00:06:15.000

to sort of ball that thing up and maybe you could survive the lesson. So that was basically--a scout helicopter. What happened is we flew around DC. DC usually weighted bushes and tall grass, as tall as this room.

00:06:15.000 - 00:06:28.000

And we'd have to fly below it all. >> The Alton Grass? >> The Alton Grass was, I believe, very sharp, too. And what would happen is they were very astute. They were not guys in pajamas running around.

00:06:28.000 - 00:06:36.000

These were professionals, far more professionals than any person. Because they'd been fighting for years. They knew their territory. If they came here to fight, we'd be here.

00:06:36.000 - 00:06:49.000

But if we went there to fight them, it's very difficult to do. And also when you're the guerrilla, it's easy to do. You could shut down Chicago. Any fort that there was in classical disorder, you could shut down Chicago.

00:06:49.000 - 00:06:59.000

And they never know what you're doing. If you knew what you were doing, you could shut down the water plant just like that. And you can't flush a target, you can't drink water. Chicago is a disaster.

00:06:59.000 - 00:07:09.000

And that's what the guerrillas did there. And obviously it was very simple to do. But they were very good. They had a lot of admiration for the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese.

00:07:09.000 - 00:07:23.000

I mean, anybody could be there. But it was generally high, and they'd come up and you'd shoot underneath the helicopter. So that's why we sat on three or four black jackets, sometimes my butt and my legs were in there because they wore the shoes.

00:07:23.000 - 00:07:31.000

Did you have a pillow on top of that? Yeah, well, gee, we had this stuff, this armor plate next to you. It was called chicken plate. It wasn't chicken plate for me.

00:07:31.000 - 00:07:43.000

We had it around my stomach down a lot. It stayed behind me because flying that low and that fast was very easy to shoot at. And so you were a scout trying to find them. What happened is the guerrillas, especially that we were looking for,

00:07:43.000 - 00:07:55.000

for a year were the equivalent of the Phoenix program. If you've ever heard of the Phoenix program, it was essentially ways to portray the stresses that we wanted to show for these officials and officers.

00:07:55.000 - 00:08:07.000

You know, that's what the war was. They did the very same thing. They had South Vietnamese friends that were, in fact, killed on the very same people that we were looking for because they associated with us the capability to fight disemboweled.

00:08:07.000 - 00:08:16.000

It was a pretty painful way to die. That was the way they fought the war. They thought it was perfectly fine because they were North Vietnamese who felt in fighting for their country, the South Vietnamese who were fighting for ours,

00:08:16.000 - 00:08:26.000

and I was fighting to stay alive. I guess I was there. But I became friends with a lot of South Vietnamese. I got put into a South Vietnamese training camp where we actually taught Vietnamese how to fly

00:08:26.000 - 00:08:42.000

and how to speak English over the radio so we could communicate. I couldn't speak Vietnamese. It was very difficult at first. So it was interesting to get to know people that were supposed to be fighting.

00:08:42.000 - 00:08:58.000

From there, I went to fly dust-off helicopters, the kind that you see with the Red Cross on the side, unarmed helicopters, rescue helicopters, which seemed like a real safe job, except the North Vietnamese thought the Red Cross was a target.

00:08:58.000 - 00:09:10.000

They had one on either side, one on the nose, and one with the rescue people, and they would call on the radio. They were screening and shooting in the background. We'd ask them if the LZ was safe because we had Vietnamese talking on the same radio,

00:09:10.000 - 00:09:26.000

North Vietnamese, and they'd say, "Sure, it's fine." We'd land there and get all shot up with people on the ground. And we did extractions, which were taking special force from people and flipping them out and dropping them into the blouse.

00:09:26.000 - 00:09:42.000

So actually it was a lot of fun staying there, moving out of this land. It was fun because I didn't lose any Vietnamese people. But when you were there and you're doing that, if I gave you a toy, a half-a-million-dollar toy,

00:09:42.000 - 00:09:58.000

and you were flying it, it was bad. You didn't even want it. That was much better than being there, at least for me, than being back in the United States. And at least we were doing some good, because the longer you were there, the more you survived.

00:09:58.000 - 00:10:14.000

And I stayed there for really quite a while, and then after that I went back to school for about three weeks and found it incredibly boring after three and a half years of being in Vietnam. In fact, I was here in Vietnam as a candidate for senior.

00:10:14.000 - 00:10:29.000

And I had a fiancée of Vietnamese. His fiancée was killed in 1975, and North Vietnamese took over. And she was actually run down by a truck in South Vietnam, outside of Saigon. Beautiful country.

00:10:29.000 - 00:10:48.000

And most people don't realize now the way we treat Vietnam is we are still at war with Vietnam. The legal relationship with Vietnam as far as trade is, it's dealing with the enemy after 1913. And so there is no trade going on with Vietnam.

00:10:48.000 - 00:11:04.000

And the reason is because of the totalitarian state. If you get a chance afterwards to look at this, this is a relief map of Vietnam. So you get an idea of what Vietnam was really like. If you look at a map, you really can't tell.

00:11:04.000 - 00:11:14.000

This is the lowlands. This is where the city of Hue is. Their religious center. >> DMZ is right behind it. >> The DMZ is right here, across the South Vietnam Parallel.

00:11:14.000 - 00:11:25.000

And so you can see these incredibly high mountains over here, and the pass which goes here, this is Khe Sanh, which our TV program is about, the place that I flew into. And this is Laos.

00:11:25.000 - 00:11:37.000

We signed an agreement that we would never invade Laos, so what Antarctica needs to do is build all our base camps in here. This is a place that now we found out is called Oster 6, which is bigger than any base we ever had here.

00:11:37.000 - 00:11:47.000

>> Bigger than Da Nang? Bigger than Cam Ranh Bay? >> This is like 40,000 people just in a small little area right here. And so this is where they fought the war from. It was very easy for them to move down here.

00:11:47.000 - 00:11:56.000

>> But you couldn't strike? >> You couldn't strike there because we signed an agreement saying we wouldn't invade Laos. And they knew that, and they said, "Well, who's going to tell us to leave?" We looked, and said, "I think we're just going to know when."

00:11:56.000 - 00:12:08.000

The American press never went in here. In this one area, if you were to take about 40 clicks from Khe Sanh over here, there's almost 500 MIAs right in this one area. And a lot of these MIAs were peace.

00:12:08.000 - 00:12:17.000

>> These still are there? >> Well, yeah. These MIAs were--we inserted them in helicopters, special forces people to watch the trails. >> Oh, and they never came out?

00:12:17.000 - 00:12:30.000

>> They never came out. And this would happen year after year after year after year at the same location. And it was very easy for people to disappear. I mean, we were there just recently with motor homes and equipment and all kinds of other gear,

00:12:30.000 - 00:12:47.000

and it was very difficult to survive in this area. The mountain yards, the equivalent of what I guess are American Indians, there's quite a group that live up in this area. So this is a mountain top zone, about 9,000 feet high. So this is a very high area.

00:12:47.000 - 00:13:02.000

What happens to weather, there's one weather system over here. A totally different weather system over here affected by lapse. So that if you're over here, it's nice and sunny, you're on the beach, you go away, have some great food, visit the religious statues, and you come back, you're dry, you're cured, it's like going to the sea.

00:13:02.000 - 00:13:23.000

And you do some, another world. It's just incredible because what happens is you've got mountains up there, you've got tigers, you've got elephants, you've got just an incredible array of flora and fauna up in this area. Snakes, they call them, two steps, big bed, two steps, big bed.

00:13:23.000 - 00:13:28.000

>> What kind were they? Do you remember? >> They were vipers. >> Vipers? >> Yeah, wooded vipers.

00:15:52.000 - 00:16:01.000

>> You ever get a chance to go to Vietnam, you can go. You got 3,500 bucks. >> You mean the passport? You can get a passport for me?

00:16:01.000 - 00:16:05.000

>> You can get a passport. You're American passport. You want to take a look at this. >> Okay.

00:16:05.000 - 00:16:27.000

>> So if you're at, you can have an American passport. It will allow you to go anywhere except Cuba and Afghanistan. Most places in Vietnam, in fact, are on travel. And it's about 3,500 bucks and it's an amazing trip.

00:16:27.000 - 00:16:49.000

What Vietnam needs right now, in fact, is the only way that Vietnam, in fact, is going to survive is with American help. Because nobody else wants to touch Vietnam because of their occupation of Cambodia and also the treatment of the freedom station. And now you realize that, in fact, the war was a religious war. The atheists up north against the Catholics down south.

00:16:49.000 - 00:17:02.000

Because the religious prosecution was unbelievable. Buddhists and Catholics were blocked up all the time. They walked down the street. You know, and you've seen, they let you, if you're there, they'll let you walk around.

00:17:02.000 - 00:17:12.000

And you say, "This isn't such a bad place. I don't want to go to Vietnam." So you better be careful. You have to be careful to get by thousands of bicycles.

00:17:12.000 - 00:17:27.000

But, you know, when you go there, it'll seem very free. But what happens is all the people you talk to on the street later on that day will be brought in for an examination. They'll be asked, "What did you say? Did they give you any money? What did they talk about? Were they agents of the CIA?"

00:17:27.000 - 00:17:43.000

Anybody, not only if you're 13 years old, you don't have to be accused of being an agent of the CIA. And there is a revolution going on there, too. You've got all people your age who don't know anything about the war there because nobody told them about it. All they want to do is have a free form of government.

00:17:43.000 - 00:18:02.000

They want to have some freedom and something, some positive way of life. So what's going to happen, probably within 10 years, you're going to see what's happening in China. It's happening right now. The number of people who are saying, "Hey, you know, I'm not going to be like our two generations before us and not consider it.

00:18:02.000 - 00:18:26.000

Wait." Because they can see what's going on in Bangkok and Singapore and China and all these other places. And they can see it in Laos, starting at the pre-war point of the government. The polio rate is just astronomical. There's people that are dying from traffic accidents that go to a hospital and meet up the next day, but die right there because of such poor hosting.

00:18:26.000 - 00:18:42.000

That's all because of their leadership right now. So if I can anticipate a question, I mean, a lot of people ask, you know, was it, were we, should we have been in Vietnam? Was it right or wrong? And that can't be answered.

00:18:42.000 - 00:18:55.000

It just cannot be answered, whether we were supposed to be there. I mean, there's one rationale. They say, "Well, look at the way people were doing that." You know, and that's a good rationale for saying, "Yeah, we should have been there."

00:18:55.000 - 00:19:11.000

But there's also another rationale for saying, "Who was the war fought right? Was the war fought wrong?" And that's correct. It was fought right. It was fought wrong. There's just two ways to look at it. There were a lot of honorable people there, and there were a lot of deceitful people.

00:19:11.000 - 00:19:36.000

And that includes the Americans, the Australians, the Koreans, the Latinos, the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese. I mean, it's just an incredible mixture of things happening. And with nothing, no television movie, nothing could do what Vietnam's about. And you'll find people that were in South Vietnam, in the Delta, who served there for a year,

00:19:36.000 - 00:19:49.000

people who served the next year had a totally different experience. People who served in the highlands over there, which froze at night. I mean, they almost could have skied in the cold up there. I can't believe what they heard when people were in the helicopter.

00:19:49.000 - 00:20:01.000

I can't believe that I would have been in the helicopter and had the helicopter sit up in the room. That must have not been a little bit more... >> And some of the grunts said that they didn't know there was air conditioning in Vietnam. But there is. It depends where you are.

00:20:01.000 - 00:20:18.000

>> It depends where you are. I had it 30 years ago. And I had a lot of fun. I went water skiing. I can't believe that you could be water skiing in the afternoon and find that shutdown. >> Did you ever know or hear of Colonel Paul Mann?

00:20:18.000 - 00:20:25.000

>> Yeah. >> Did you ever see him? >> Yeah. I actually flew alongside him a couple of times. The guy was terrible at the war.

00:20:25.000 - 00:20:41.000

>> As I'm reading his book now, "The Bright, Shiny Light," one of the things he brings out there is the complete corruption of the Vietnamese government and how they sold the enemy. >> But the problem was, in fact, that the Vietnamese were not corrupted.

00:20:41.000 - 00:20:49.000

We look at it as being corrupted. That was the way of life for 2,000 years. This place has been at war for 2,000 years. >> By our standards.

00:20:49.000 - 00:21:04.000

>> By our standards. So what we should have been, instead of impressing our form of right and wrong on them, we should have said, "Listen, we'll keep the North from coming into the South. You fight the war in the South because we're not going to do that with your people.

00:21:04.000 - 00:21:15.000

We don't understand what's going on." That would have been the right way to fight the war, and that's the way that everybody in the military talked to General Smoreland, who really was not the Commander-in-Chief.

00:21:15.000 - 00:21:27.000

I don't think anybody here can tell me who the real Commander-in-Chief was. >> They'll say Westmoreland, but they can say Abrams. >> It was Admiral Sharp. Admiral Sharp was, in fact--Westmoreland had a report on him.

00:21:27.000 - 00:21:35.000

>> Overall commander. >> Overall commander, and Sharp never visited Vietnam. He had no clue what was going on. The guy was a loony.

00:21:35.000 - 00:21:49.000

The air war was way to fight the war like the bombing of the North. >> He never set foot in Vietnam? >> Never set foot in Vietnam. And then Sharp made Westmoreland the backbone of the escape goal.

00:21:49.000 - 00:22:04.000

Westmoreland finds a very difficult time in doing that because Westmoreland grew up in a West Point generation. The commander was never ostracized. The president at that time, LBJ--one of the stories I'm going to bring out is LBJ, in fact,

00:22:04.000 - 00:22:15.000

went a little crazy over Khe Sanh. Made everybody during the siege sign a blood oath that Khe Sanh would not be lost. >> Does that sound like it off everyone's tongue, right? >> I mean, it's unbelievable.

00:22:15.000 - 00:22:29.000

So here you've got all these things going on, and then you've got groups of us-- I'll give you some names if you want to really go into depth and meet some Vietnamese here-- who I actually fought with in Vietnam, who we knew who we were fighting for. We were fighting for a village.

00:22:29.000 - 00:22:50.000

People that didn't want to have any--all they wanted to do was be left alone. They wanted to--then they hated the North Vietnamese, and they hated, of course, the Viet Cong, because the Viet Cong moved around, at least the North Vietnamese wore other uniforms than we could recognize. But these people fought for their villages, and a lot of them died because of that.

00:22:50.000 - 00:23:11.000

So if you were fighting for over 20 years and you grew up in it, you might not want to fight quite as aggressively as an American who was there for 12 months and was going to have long lines and this whole thing. So in fact, still at this point, there's no clear, concise idea of what's going on during the Vietnam War

00:23:11.000 - 00:23:24.000

because Hanoi, up until about a year ago, never wanted to talk about it because their tactic for fighting at Khe Sanh--just to take one battle-- this is broken. They absolutely wanted to kill everybody at Khe Sanh

00:23:24.000 - 00:23:38.000

because if they could kill all 5,000 soldiers or run through the place, it would be a tremendous political victory for the press. And what happened was they couldn't do that. So then they said that was not our objective at all to take Khe Sanh.

00:23:38.000 - 00:23:45.000

Our objective was to tie up the troops. >> Wasn't that about the same time as Tet? >> Yeah, it was during Tet. >> So they could use Tet as the scapegoat for--

00:23:45.000 - 00:23:59.000

>> Yeah, of course, and there's just no question. There's no question that they wanted to take Khe Sanh. They put their craft-trained unit--they put people who were 20-year officers trained in France and in Russia up against Khe Sanh.

00:23:59.000 - 00:24:09.000

They didn't put those people in Hawaii or the other cities. So they won either way. I mean, that's a great way to fight a battle. You say that's not my objective, but you did it.

00:24:09.000 - 00:24:16.000

That was my objective. So now they're starting to tie up. >> Did they equate Khe Sanh with the end of Van Phu or was that us? >> Both of them did.

00:24:18.000 - 00:24:32.000

>> But in fact, the Americans had learned from Vietnam. As Wes Moorland said--I mean, the Marines don't want to hear this, but they were bait for the North Vietnamese. And it sounds kind of cold to say, "Hey, there's 5,000 people out here,

00:24:32.000 - 00:24:42.000

and you're a bait for 40,000." But in fact, those 5,000 probably saved a lot of lives because 40,000 troops came over there and got obliterated by the two strikes. Just obliterated.

00:24:42.000 - 00:24:58.000

There are--you know, we talk about our MIAs, and that one area alone from Khe Sanh to North Vietnam has 40,000 MIAs. And they can't look for them because--the reason they can't look for them is because if you go out into the steppes, you're going to blow up.

00:24:58.000 - 00:25:07.000

And that's about the only way to get into these hills, 861 or Khe Sanh. Some of these areas, you fly in with the helicopter and pray that you're not going to blow up. >> Do you still mind? >> Oh, it's unbelievable.

00:25:07.000 - 00:25:17.000

You can sleep there overnight. Our little True Value tents can have a dinner. Boom, it's 12 o'clock. A little--because what happens is this area is so fluid

00:25:17.000 - 00:25:30.000

that the mines come down the side of the hills. You know, you've got the animals crippling the floor and falling below stuff. But the thing is, I mean, it's--nobody lived there for 2,000 years, 5,000 years before that on the side of this mountain.

00:25:30.000 - 00:25:36.000

It was like this, and nobody wants to live there now. So-- >> Well, who built Khe Sanh to begin with? Was that--

00:25:36.000 - 00:25:45.000

>> Actually, it was the French. The coffee--coffee from Khe Sanh is unbelievable. It's a very beautiful place. I mean, it's way up in the mountains, the air is clear.

00:25:45.000 - 00:25:56.000

>> And all the gypsies can be flown in, there's no roads in? >> Yeah, you can drive it. As a matter of fact, right now, the big danger at Khe Sanh right now-- and this is called Highway 9.

00:25:56.000 - 00:26:06.000

And this is way--which is what they wanted to take Dong Ho to see, obviously. And this is Lao Tse. And this is a paved road. Right now, you can get in your Toyota, drive here, and go about 65 miles an hour

00:26:06.000 - 00:26:18.000

right down Highway 9 to Khe Sanh. And that's how they did it originally. They got everybody by road there to Khe Sanh. And right now, this is the main drug trafficking area coming out of Laos,

00:26:18.000 - 00:26:29.000

right through here, heroin, pop, used to come out of Laos, from right down Highway 9. So for us, we were kind of armed at the teeth of the North Vietnamese, and they were even saying, you know, let's not go out on the road after dark.

00:26:29.000 - 00:26:38.000

It's a state here, and we're caught. We said, no, let's go out. We might go out. We might kill drug dealers coming down with their nice white Toyota Cruiser

00:26:38.000 - 00:26:46.000

to go to the rest of the station. We're going to kill this in the South. And so they're running out of there, and they're going down to the sea and stuff gets distributed out of there.

00:26:46.000 - 00:26:53.000

Because Vietnam and Laos doesn't have a good sea economy, drug addicts are very, very-- So it was going on while you were there recently. Yeah.

00:26:53.000 - 00:27:00.000

I mean, before you should have been. 60 days ago. Big business. A lot of people getting paid off, and what Vietnam needs is greenbacks.

00:27:00.000 - 00:27:11.000

I mean, American dollars. The funny thing is, you go up to Hanoi, you think, gee, this is like Hanoi's territory. It doesn't take long for people to walk up and say, you know, you're not a Russian. I don't think they're going to say that.

00:27:11.000 - 00:27:20.000

Yet, they didn't say that. Because what happens is the kids spit at the Russians because the Russians are difficult to control by language, rather than people.

00:27:20.000 - 00:27:29.000

The Russians, the way they eat. The way they view the difference between the Americans and the Russians is that the Americans thought they were doing a good spot of war against us. The Russians lied to us.

00:27:29.000 - 00:27:40.000

The Russians took all the ports and everything, and then they blockaded them off and won't even let the Vietnamese come in and work, and have not built them. The Russians took Haiphong, didn't they? Yeah.

00:27:40.000 - 00:27:46.000

They took Haiphong, they took Da Nang, which was the biggest seawater port. Is that a Soviet naval port now? Yeah, it's on the Libra. Oh.

00:27:46.000 - 00:27:55.000

And so we went in there with the Russians, you know, and tried not to speak any English, but changed things like they had T-shirts like the Russians had. So we went up there in Hanoi,

00:27:55.000 - 00:28:06.000

and what happens is the Russians are afraid to talk to the Americans because they're usually diplomats of some kind, and if they're in Vietnam, it's a hardship for us. They screwed up some time.

00:28:06.000 - 00:28:17.000

And so the last thing they're going to do is talk to the American, who could be a KGB agent, trying to compromise. And they might have to spend another year. They're going to have to spend a day more in Hanoi than they did in Vietnam.

00:28:17.000 - 00:28:29.000

What happens is the Russians, in fact, lied, and so that nothing's happening in all the Russian lines, and that deepwater port is being inoperated. But that's part of the thing.

00:28:29.000 - 00:28:46.000

You can go up there, you can talk to people, you can find out what's going on. Well, in essence, the next six months is going to be a real strength point for them because, in fact, they could start having some more approach money with Vietnam, start having some kind of relationship.

00:28:46.000 - 00:28:55.000

There is no diplomatic relationship, which is one of the reasons you have to be careful of going to Vietnam because they'll lose your passport. Because there's no American embassy there.

00:28:55.000 - 00:29:06.000

No American embassy there. Of course, you can go to a Canadian embassy, Australian embassy. There are so few of you there, you're probably off better there with the Paris passport because the Vietnamese aren't going to be able to keep anybody there,

00:29:06.000 - 00:29:18.000

especially Americans because that's just what we're waiting for, is somebody to do something for us. Is that considered to be a threat, though? Do you think there are Soviet nuclear subs operating out of--

00:29:18.000 - 00:29:30.000

There's no doubt that there are. Actually, Cam Ranh Bay is the biggest deepwater seaport in the world, let alone--the Russians only warm water seaports, so the Russians are never going to be there.

00:29:30.000 - 00:29:40.000

Oh, in other words, it's an MSI port, aren't they? They've got to have Vietnam. As a matter of fact, there's a relationship where the State Department and the Defense Department are saying we should let the Russians have Cam Ranh Bay

00:29:40.000 - 00:29:52.000

because they can look at the Philippines and we can look back at that. And if the Russians were not in Cam Ranh Bay, there would be an imbalance. There would be no deepwaters where we would have all our seaports. The Russians would have no warm water seaports.

00:29:52.000 - 00:30:03.000

So I don't think there's any realistic push for the Russians to be in Cam Ranh Bay. We don't want them. Because we can blast them, they can blast us, and we know where they are, we can keep an eye on them.

00:30:03.000 - 00:30:09.000

So it's a Mexican standoff. Yeah, it is. It should be. Which one works?

00:30:09.000 - 00:30:42.000

Yeah. It depends on Cam Ranh Bay. Okay. This is the inside of the rehabilitation center.

00:30:42.000 - 00:30:52.000

It looks great. But it's a visitor center. They've got all this artwork over here. And they've got these little teapots.

00:30:52.000 - 00:31:01.000

When they service teapots and turn them over, they start to play one song. It's unbelievable. It's too weird to believe. There was a fish ball.

00:31:01.000 - 00:31:14.000

There were no fish in there. They said the reason there were no fish is that the inmates were eating fish. But we thought, gee, where is this? This is very beautiful.

00:31:14.000 - 00:31:26.000

What are the reeducation camp prisoners eating this, and where is it? The guy said, well, it's not Vietnam, it's Wyoming. Because that's where the guy has relatives, and that's where he wanted to be. This is Vietnam.

00:31:48.000 - 00:32:18.000

Ten guys and 25 guys, then that means that we're obligated to pick up all the other people. There could be a never-ending stop to who was in and out of the reeducation camp. Well, anyhow, at some point there was a very difficult situation which happened with these folks. And they said, you know, we want to get out of here.

00:32:18.000 - 00:32:26.000

Please try to help us. Please release us. And the communist officials who were behind us weren't here. Because these are the guys who were essentially in the hierarchy of the--

00:32:26.000 - 00:32:35.000

and they're stuck. They don't know what to do. I mean, they can't release these people in the general population because the younger population has turned them into martyrs.

00:32:35.000 - 00:32:46.000

These people have become heroes. They've been in jail so long and survived. So what's happening is the communist officials are in a quandary as to what to do. They release them in the population, and these people are--

00:32:46.000 - 00:32:55.000

they're tough guys. These are really tough people who have survived this line-up where we've got some people who are there. Conceivably, could they be sent to the United States?

00:32:55.000 - 00:33:04.000

Would they accept them? Well, during our TV program, this is the strange thing, is that we're aiming for the release of about 25 people. And we're going to do it live on TV.

00:33:04.000 - 00:33:21.000

And then, after a month's call, you know, it's all accepted. So I'll show a little promo here. This was about two months ago. We were there for tests, and then we were back again.

00:33:21.000 - 00:33:35.000

It's fairly easy to get in and out of the country, and especially when they know there's going to be a national television special. They'll be able to hook up with General Bessie, who is the head of the joint chiefs of staff--retired joint chiefs of staff--

00:33:35.000 - 00:33:49.000

who's the head of the KFW-MIA program. And so he'll be talking with Winko Tak, who is their chief, and talking about the fact that they're working together, and maybe this will help them, and those kind of things.

00:33:49.000 - 00:34:02.000

Because what's happening is a lot of politicians are afraid to do anything about Vietnam. The easiest road to do that would be maybe at all. If you say, "Okay, no, we're going to bomb back into the Stone Age," you're giving a lot of support.

00:34:02.000 - 00:34:20.000

If you say, "All right, enough is enough. Let's start helping these people. If we help them, we can keep the other spheres of control." It may have been 20 years ago, but the Vietnam War is still vivid in the minds of those who fought there. But in addition to the memories of combat,

00:34:20.000 - 00:34:40.000

there is a clear recollection of the finest of human knowledge--cooperation, brotherhood, and self-sacrifice. I'm Bill Curtis. I'll be your correspondent and executive producer for Vietnam, the Second Tour, live. By now you've seen movies and television shows about Vietnam from Latune to China Beach,

00:34:40.000 - 00:35:03.000

but this is the real thing--real Vietnam veterans going back to the battle locations where they fought. Que Sanh, the most bombed target of any war, under siege by the North Vietnamese for 77 days. We'll chop her in with our veterans, spend the night at the fire base. We'll see what they saw, the mild ground our veterans held against all odds

00:35:03.000 - 00:35:17.000

and through endless days and nights of bombing. A journalist gave our men the label of the "Doomed Patrol." But what really happened to the men of that patrol? Now we can discover the truth of the events of February 25, 1968.

00:35:17.000 - 00:35:39.000

And then we'll meet some other veterans from the other side--the North Vietnamese who actually fought against our American veterans during the battle. We'll find out the real intentions the Communists had for Que Sanh. Did the Doomed Patrol's movements upset the Communists' plans for a full assault the next day on the fire base?

00:35:39.000 - 00:36:01.000

In Vietnam, our production team received permission to enter a Communist POW camp. During our live broadcast, we intend to show you a release of Vietnamese prisoners from a Communist POW camp where they've been held for 14 years and with a split-screen effect. We'll show you the reactions and emotions of their families here in the United States.

00:36:01.000 - 00:36:25.000

[unintelligible] This issue of Life Magazine on MIAs was one of our highest-circulated issues ever. As part of the marketing and promotion campaign for Vietnam, the second tour will be accompanied by the noted photojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths

00:36:25.000 - 00:36:40.000

who will be doing a six-page feature story on the television production and the veterans returning to the battlefields where they fought. It's scheduled to appear before the television show air date. The Missing in Action issue is controversial and emotional,

00:36:40.000 - 00:36:55.000

and we intend to interview the key players on both sides, both Vietnamese and American. But we want to do more. Since we'll be traveling with veterans who saw their friends go down, we're going to run our own search mission for veterans missing in action.

00:36:55.000 - 00:37:18.000

We'll also reveal previously undisclosed information about the American POW MIA story, including the secret plans for a 1981 Delta Force rescue mission in the Waos for POWs. It will be an exciting experience and an emotional one, too, and we want you with us for Vietnam, the second tour, live.

00:37:18.000 - 00:37:34.000

[wind] [unclear audio] >> An interesting turnaround, they were there and never realized it was going to be a TV program. >> That's scheduled for February?

00:37:34.000 - 00:37:46.000

>> Yeah, we're going to do it in February, which will be the actual anniversary date. It's going to be Tet Falls in February, the holiday. So it's a good time to be there because-- >> You're going to be there?

00:37:46.000 - 00:37:55.000

>> We'll actually broadcast live. Satellite digits can go anywhere now. That's what we're going to do. We're going to have our little satellite digit set up at Case High.

00:37:55.000 - 00:38:06.000

These kind of tapes are tapes that go to the-- >> There are blind dates. >> Yeah, there are. You're going to look at this where you're going to see all this jungle and everything.

00:38:06.000 - 00:38:17.000

Turn around and there's four little vegos. It's not there now. What you're going to see is something else. You're going to have two satellite digits.

00:38:17.000 - 00:38:35.000

One will be up north and Case High, the other one will be in the south. It's really broadcast live. That tape is actually the tape that goes out to the TV station, goes out to the program. And some sponsors, and so they can actually see most of the elements of the program.

00:38:35.000 - 00:38:51.000

So rather than seeing tour of duty and all these other things, that used to be pretty good. Now, you get to see real people in the real people at the time. >> What is your primary occupation? Are you just doing this on the side?

00:38:51.000 - 00:39:05.000

>> I'm a TV producer. I do a lot of TV productions. Last time we were in the state of All-Anglia, Chicago, Friday, November, we had a program out. It's called Squad 5, Engine 116, Rescue People.

00:39:05.000 - 00:39:13.000

>> You work for Channel 2? No. >> No, not in that program. I'm a video mercenary. I do a TV program.

00:39:13.000 - 00:39:34.000

And so we've done some other programs. The 60 Minutes piece that was on, with Bethany Dupree, we shot that. So we basically work in the southeast area, in the United States, in Singapore, at the office in Bangkok. It really is an office.

00:39:34.000 - 00:39:45.000

A place to hang out at. And we do TV programs. So that was the advantage of actually being there. At some point in the future, we'll probably do even more TV programs in Vietnam

00:39:45.000 - 00:39:57.000

to get ready for the kind of revolution that we're going to be coming up to. >> I was going to ask you, when you were down in the Delta area, Fourth Corp, did you ever do any operations with our riverboats? >> Yeah.

00:39:57.000 - 00:40:03.000

>> Support? >> Yeah, what we did actually in the helicopters was fly over. I mean, the riverboats used to fly down. It was a really incredible experience.

00:40:03.000 - 00:40:11.000

Especially the airboats, because the helicopters would just skim over these docks. >> Like swamp boats? >> Yeah, it's unbelievable. >> Right over the docks?

00:40:11.000 - 00:40:20.000

>> Well, they could go right over the rice paddy. And so all they needed was about that much water in the sub-water to push it back and get it forward across. They would jump over the--instead of having to follow the river,

00:40:20.000 - 00:40:33.000

they would use a shortcut to jump over it. Hopefully there was water on the other side of the way, so they just sat there. They had this huge, you know, buoyant but sitting duck made out of plastic. What would happen, there would be mines in the water,

00:40:33.000 - 00:40:41.000

and there would be wires strung across the river. >> Tread wash? >> Yeah, and so the boats would go down and hit this stuff. So what we would do is fly below, which is where the miniguns on each side

00:40:41.000 - 00:40:52.000

and just fire into the river and things would blow up. You'd have to fly about as high as the ceiling or flying below. And as fast as you could, because if you flew too slow, a hit of mine would blow back up into you.

00:40:52.000 - 00:41:03.000

And so you used to fly as fast as you could. >> You'd just break the river with-- >> Yeah, you'd just fly along the river and hit the river where the obvious places-- if the river was flowing real fast, then no mines,

00:41:03.000 - 00:41:12.000

but when it slowed down and you had to get to the gun, it was there. It was the ultimate video game. I mean, what video games are like? You know, if you can imagine you're zooming in and out of the river

00:41:12.000 - 00:41:22.000

and you get the minigun down here, but you're firing and you've got all these other controls. Your height and speed is all at one hand and your wrist on one hand. >> But you didn't fire yourself.

00:41:22.000 - 00:41:33.000

Did they fire at the same time? >> No, because you have a gunner in the back and you'd be flying with one pilot. >> Two-man crew? >> Yeah. >> Holy gosh. >> No.

00:41:33.000 - 00:41:40.000

>> Now, did the other guy know how to fly? >> No. >> So something happened to you? >> He was sitting on a phosphorus grenade. I mean, think about it.

00:41:40.000 - 00:41:51.000

He was sitting on a bag of phosphorus grenades that were behind him, and you'd take those out and mark positions for the jets. So we would have to get out of his way. But that was where--

00:41:51.000 - 00:42:00.000

sometimes it's called those hunter-killer teams, and they call them pain teams, and they go down and draw fire. They could never hit you. I mean, really, a bunch went by.

00:42:00.000 - 00:42:08.000

>> They tried to shoot you. >> They never hit you because you're fast enough or too slow. I mean, that was the other thing. One day, he flies too fast, and you fly a little bit slower,

00:42:08.000 - 00:42:21.000

and they would leave the target on you. So it became a very complex technique. But then I did get shot down a couple of times. Very controlled crashes.

00:42:21.000 - 00:42:30.000

>> Counter-rotation? >> When you're going that low and you lose the auto-rotation, one of the things you don't want is when you go up real high, because it shoots again.

00:42:30.000 - 00:42:42.000

So you don't want to carry the auto-rotate. So what you do is try to find water in the skid. The helicopter, as you know, is polished rocks. That's about how long it stayed on the surface before it went down.

00:42:42.000 - 00:42:51.000

So while you were trying to land, you were trying to get all your belts off and everything else. >> So the chopper sunk? >> Yeah, like that. I mean, it was literally like water just went down like that.

00:42:51.000 - 00:43:05.000

That's how fast it went. And if you're wearing body armor, boots, a helmet, you've got a .45, a radio to record everything that's going on, a camera. >> You've got to jettison that in a few seconds?

00:43:05.000 - 00:43:17.000

>> You get it off real fast. It's amazing how fast. And, you know, I mean, that was very interesting. But then after a while, you started pushing your luck, and in six months,

00:43:17.000 - 00:43:26.000

you learned that was a little bit too fast. >> How many missions do you think you had? >> The total hours I had was like 4,800 hours. >> 4,800?

00:43:26.000 - 00:43:36.000

>> Yeah, and you get air medals. I mean, it was unfair because the air medals that we would get were different than World War II because they used to fly long missions back and forth. You get an air medal.

00:43:36.000 - 00:43:52.000

Every time we took off the plumes on board, we'd get an air medal. So if you give the number of air medals, it's not quite the same. >> Not quite equal. >> If you want to know more about Vietnam, I guess one of the things is the apocalypse in Vietnamese.

00:43:52.000 - 00:44:15.000

I mean, I would suggest the guy that taught me was named Dung Dao, D-U-N-G-A-O. And he has a restaurant on Sheridan called Le Bistro. So if you like French food, American food, or Vietnamese food, you can have it at his place. There's a lot of Vietnamese people walking in and out of Le Bistro,

00:44:15.000 - 00:44:27.000

and they'd be more than happy to talk to you about what it was like to be Vietnamese because ultimately the Vietnam War was not in America. It was in Israel. And those are the people who can tell you what it was like.

00:44:27.000 - 00:44:45.000

I mean, you can walk in there, and you'll meet some North Vietnamese who fought against one of these. Now, if I go here, you'll actually meet some people who were born here. You'll meet re-education camp prisoners like this. You'll meet the children of the state, either 9 years old or from Vietnam.

00:44:45.000 - 00:45:03.000

And the folks in the incredible states. And there are people that will tell you about what it was like to be a Vietnamese living in the Vietnam War. That doesn't happen very often. Just basically because the Vietnamese don't reach out to talk to the school.

00:45:03.000 - 00:45:19.000

It's part of the culture. You ask a North Vietnamese going down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, incredible experience, unbelievable. They'll say, "Gee, what was it like to walk down the Ho Chi Minh Trail?" You say, "Well, it was hot. It took three months to climb the hill."

00:45:19.000 - 00:45:38.000

That's it. That's all. That's how you get to know them. If you approach them in a restaurant like Lovistro or anywhere on Argonne, or there's a known one called Cass Steward, in fact, a young group of people, went from a restaurant going out of business in the next month to being one of the top 25 restaurants in the city of Chicago.

00:45:38.000 - 00:46:01.000

You have to make a reservation to come on some fancy. So those are the interesting people who really want to know, go in more depth about what Vietnam was like, is like, and how it's done. Why don't you ask him a couple questions now? I don't understand what these re-education camps are. There aren't any Americans in there.

00:46:01.000 - 00:46:20.000

You don't know that. My gut reaction is that there are no Americans in there. Essentially what you'll see in the TV program is irrefutable proof that there were Americans alive in Vietnam in 1985. There's no question about it.

00:46:20.000 - 00:46:38.000

We gave a guy a lighting test in Paris and escaped to China and went into Taipei. In fact, this group of 12 people all passed the lighting test and saw America in 1985. The thing is, were they prisoners of war? Were they drug dealers? I mentioned that. That's a big thing going on there.

00:46:38.000 - 00:46:51.000

Were they people who violated their laws and the country? Were they Russians? I see people from a distance. You don't get to talk to me. I'm a Russian from America. Where I'm a prisoner of war. I've been there. I've got a dissertary.

00:46:51.000 - 00:47:11.000

Everybody starts looking like that. Most of the Vietnamese will admit that for a while it's important for them to use prisoners as tools. I mean, the North Vietnamese absolutely admit that. But then it became obvious to them that if they said now, tomorrow, when America turns up alive,

00:47:11.000 - 00:47:30.000

that that was being kept against its will by the communists, I doubt that the Bank of America is going to start an office. It just won't happen. They'll be further pushed down the scale. Their fourth worst country now, they'll be at the bottom of the list when America turns up alive and happens to take out those communists.

00:47:30.000 - 00:47:53.000

The consensus is that if there were Americans alive, people would look like Americans. In fact, they would kill their parents, slay their slaves, kill their wives. But some people stayed against their will. I mean, if you want to read some of the books, there's a lot of books about Americans, survivors' books, about Americans who stayed.

00:47:53.000 - 00:48:12.000

So the Vietnam government is probably just waiting for all those people in there to just die off. A lot of people have died already. These are the tough guys that have to die. And it's not 15,000 men who are in the reeducation camp. Sometimes they leave the reeducation camp.

00:48:12.000 - 00:48:28.000

They have this great presser that shows all the Americans who are in the Vietnamese leaving the reeducation camp. There's flowers and rose petals and kids in the Red Cross there. They leave. They go back to their home in Phan Rang. They're there for two weeks, and then boom, they go to jail because they violated the law.

00:48:28.000 - 00:48:43.000

So they're not in the reeducation camp. Everybody's on leave to go off to the world. And bam, they're back in jail. It's worse than Phan Rang. So it's a big country. During the Green War, we had those fellows that defected.

00:48:43.000 - 00:48:54.000

Do you think there were any Vietnam veterans that defected at the same time? Sure. Yeah, there were a lot. What about the other side? Sure. Bobby Garwood is one example.

00:48:54.000 - 00:49:09.000

Bobby stayed behind and defected. He became a Vietnamese. He was only 17. He was at a very sheltered little child who was beaten by his father. His mother died when he was eight.

00:49:09.000 - 00:49:25.000

Bobby was perfect to be termed. And so here he is. He hadn't even been in the military one year. Bobby Garwood was eight. He didn't have much of a life experience before that. Even now, Bobby Garwood is in a jail, and having his arms pulled behind him,

00:49:25.000 - 00:49:36.000

having his arms pulled out of his sides, it hurts. And the mind changes. And they were able to turn Bobby around and say, "We're nice guys. We won't do this anymore. We're sorry."

00:49:36.000 - 00:49:52.000

And so all of a sudden, Bobby Garwood became a Vietnamese. Garwood, in fact, before he was released, was given a shock treatment by the Russians and Vietnamese to try to get rid of his memory. There's a lot of good books on Bobby Garwood.

00:49:52.000 - 00:50:00.000

There's a lot of good books on him. I'm talking about his history. What year was this? Garwood was released in '78, perhaps. '78?

00:50:00.000 - 00:50:06.000

Yeah, he was Natu Procter. Why? For Chicago. For real?

00:50:06.000 - 00:50:17.000

And he lives up near Port Sheridan and the Ponce gas station. And the people from baseball in there don't even-- They treated him miserable. I mean, he should have been brought back.

00:50:17.000 - 00:50:29.000

They never talked about Bobby Garwood. The Marine Corps, the Russian military is like, "Well, geez, here's the one guy we get back there, and Bobby Garwood is a terminal. In fact, anybody--I could do that to anybody, but no one would ever release him.

00:50:29.000 - 00:50:48.000

No one can resist torture, be it Koreans or the Vietnamese. And before the Vietnam War, the standard as a captured soldier was to resist. In Kodak, that's what you called it? In Kodak, you had to resist to your fullest extent.

00:50:48.000 - 00:51:01.000

In fact, that was a mistake because people were broken faster because they had this wall that they couldn't resist. You start doing water torture. You start putting a rag in your mouth and dunking it in water. This is what the North Vietnamese did.

00:51:01.000 - 00:51:13.000

You feel like you're going to drown. You know you're going to drown. And it's like, "Geez, I can't possibly resist this," so you start talking and you feel worse about it. So now the code is basically resist as much as you can. Try to tell them all the wrong things.

00:51:13.000 - 00:51:29.000

Spend more time on telling how to give the wrong information than, in fact, trying to resist torture. You can't do this. It's impossible. And so a lot of people die in captivity because they're lowly broken, because they tell you, "I gave up. I died. Here, I'm never going to be able to go back."

00:51:29.000 - 00:51:42.000

That's kind of what happened to Bobby Garwood. When Bobby Garwood came back, they didn't know whether they could trust him or not. Bobby Garwood was never properly debriefed. He was never given hypnosis by the way, really, whether for Americans or not.

00:51:42.000 - 00:51:57.000

He does, to this day, say the word that makes all of it. And he was never given any lying check because none of these other things he was ever given. Now it's too late. There's been too much time since he came back. He didn't bring his brain.

00:51:57.000 - 00:52:12.000

And, in fact, because he turned against them, they withheld Bobby's $120,000 in back pay. It's unbelievable. The whole rationale was, "Let's forget about this guy. He's not a good example." In fact, he was an outstanding example.

00:52:12.000 - 00:52:17.000

You don't have to say much about Cali, either. Oh, Cali is— You tried various— Sure.

00:52:17.000 - 00:52:31.000

You had to abandon— In fact, just the opposite should happen. You should try to learn more about it. The Vietnam War, in fact, affects the way that the American State Department operates on a daily basis.

00:52:31.000 - 00:52:47.000

And it affects the American military on a daily basis. Lessons that were learned in Vietnam about the way the war was fought, the way the war was not fought. The CIA operates on a daily basis. Even the press operates differently.

00:52:47.000 - 00:52:58.000

The press to this day is still arguing about whether the press coverage of the Vietnam War was correct or incorrect. But I'll tell you something. They did both. There was very little middle-of-the-road kind of stuff.

00:52:58.000 - 00:53:14.000

The problem with the press then, and always has been, is a business of money, show business. And so if you go to K-Sign and say, "Well, gee, this doesn't look too bad," you know, you don't get paid for that story. They go, "John, terrible story. Get out of here. Put somebody else in."

00:53:14.000 - 00:53:30.000

So the next guy comes in, puts on his flak jacket, puts his helmet on, and stands in front of the one airplane that was shot down at K-Sign. You look at all the footage, there's a guy named Bob Stryker, who did all the stories for CBS. And he did 363 rounds of airplane. In fact, once he tried to set the airplane on fire so it would look better.

00:53:30.000 - 00:53:43.000

And, you know, it's a real scumbag, you know, because what it amounts to is everybody trying to get that story out. And you've got to punch your ticket on that story. Same thing with the American military, too. They've got to punch their ticket on Vietnam.

00:53:43.000 - 00:53:58.000

So the American military officer only had six months of field duty, and six months behind the lines. And in six months, I mean, you can't even find anywhere in Chicago in six months' time. And that was one of the other problems. That's never going to happen.

00:53:58.000 - 00:54:16.000

And, you know, I mean, obviously I'm still finding out things about Vietnam. We'll go over there and find out what all this actually has to say. We went to Singapore, and the people in Singapore treat Vietnam veterans unbelievably. We never had a case of rooms. They put us up in the best hotels they had.

00:54:16.000 - 00:54:32.000

They brought us to visit the -- it's like golf. You know, I must be a golf prime minister of Singapore. But he talked about the fact that had it not been for the Americans who experienced great pain in Vietnam, that Singapore would not have been a free country.

00:54:32.000 - 00:54:47.000

You know, which is great, but you can say when there's 60,000 Americans dead, and Native Americans, and people dying. In fact, all these things are starting to come up. Any other questions? Any other question/comments?

00:54:47.000 - 00:55:03.000

You went back there. Did you ever get any bad looks or anything before you came here? Did you ever get any bad looks or anything before you came here? No.

00:55:03.000 - 00:55:25.000

I think it was about an hour and a half, two hours after we arrived. Most of the Vietnamese don't have any grudges against America, and especially the American soldiers. They hold a lot of grudges against the people right now because that's who they're being oppressed by is their own government. Like I said before, they say, "We fought a war with you."

00:55:25.000 - 00:55:38.000

The Russians laugh at us. There's a real empathy that Vietnamese and Americans have. The Vietnamese say, "We would rather have you as friends than the Japanese, than anybody else on earth." We don't have to trust.

00:55:38.000 - 00:55:55.000

Thailand is trying to control Vietnam because Vietnam in 20 years, in 10 years, could take over a lot of the tourism. And Bangkok does. Now in Thailand, Bangkok does not want Vietnam to take over any of its tourism because that's the biggest business they've got in Thailand. So there's a lot of fluid.

00:55:55.000 - 00:56:10.000

There always has been. There's always been the rivalry between Cambodia, Cambodia's Laotians, Thais, Burmese, Vietnamese, all throughout history. And then the Chinese come in and perplex the whole thing. So there's no love lost between those people.

00:56:10.000 - 00:56:26.000

And it wasn't during the war, in fact. I mean, you've got a lot of Laotians and Thais and Cambodians working both sides of the fence. When there's a war going on, you just have to respond. Because it's not just, you know, just lots of deals going on in the background.

00:56:26.000 - 00:56:34.000

You make a mistake, you get killed. So that's the... And that still goes on to this day. Right now there's a war going on in Cambodia.

00:56:34.000 - 00:56:44.000

The news doesn't cover it because you get killed. So you don't get a lot of exposure. [Applause]