Government. Host joining us now on cspan is Peter Prichard, the former editor in chief of the usa today newspaper and he is a former president of them museum and author of this book, killing grace a vietnam war mystery. What made you write a novel about the vietnam war . Guest i had always dreamed of writing a novel but then life intervened and and i becamea newspaper editor and an executive. E. But when covid it i finally thought i had the time to try to write a novel and i wanted to write something that wasnt really a a combat novel, that ws more in the vein of quiet american or the ugly american, both books had a great influence. Host without getting way any spoilers come whats the books s synopsis . Guest two mps in saigon in 1967 at the height of the war are called to investigate the murder of an american tourist named grace waverley whose body is found in the saigon river. And it appears to be a drowning, and she is an antiwar activist who said she came to vietnam ass a piece of tourist. But our real goal is to help smuggle arms back to her associates in the United States, and mps gradually realize that her death is part of a bigger conspiracy, and to try to avert a disaster. Host who is ben kincaid . Guest ben kincaid is a a lead np, and his partner is elijah jackson. And normally they are charged with enforcing curfew in keeping gis on the straight and narrow and out of the bars after curfew. But they get pulled in because the National Police dont want to investigate this particular incident because it involves an american. Oddly enough, at the height of the war there were 20,000 american tourists who visited vietnam a year. I was shocked to read that trauma so Peter Prichard, youre writing about something 50 plus years ago. Do you you have experience in vietnam . Guest yes. I also wanted to write about the antiwar culture, which i experienced. I went to college at dartmouth in the 1960s, and when i was a senior i watched four professors get on the steps of the dartmouth hall and announce that they were sending their medals back to Lyndon Johnson because they thought the vietnam war was an unjust and illegal war. And it dawned on me and ive been reading about the draft that i could get caught up in this, even before i started my adult life. So i i tried to get out of the war. I was a draft dodger. The best i could do was teach english to kids in massachusetts, and they were more mature than i i was. I had a hard time. I had very little discipline over the classroom, and at the end of the year i got fired for not correcting papers and two weeks later i was doing pushups at fort dix. By the end of that year i was in vietnam. Host so you were both a a draft dodger, as you say, and a veteran of the war . Guest yes, sir. I served almost 14 months in vietnam. We were advisors, supposedly intelligence advisers come to the South Vietnamese ninth division at the height of the war through the tet offensive. Host and so 67, 68 come eight come somewhere around there you were in vietnam . Guest yeah, 67 i arrived in country on january six, 1968 and i came home in march of 69. Host besides telling the story, mr. Mystery prichard, when you try to call bush anything else in killing grace . Guest yes. For a lot of people, particularly young people, they dont necessarily know a lot about vietnam. And i thought thet mystery formt and the conspiracy format would give me a chance to write about the conflicting currents in the country at that time. We always talk now about how divided the country is, but in many ways america was more divided back then when young men were scared to death of going to war and being killed in a war that was started in on certain circumstances. So never even declared war, and was very unpopular at home, once the buildup started drama well, lets go back to july 28, 1965. It was then president johnson. Ive asked the commanding general, general westmoreland what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He hasd told me, and we will met his needs. I have today ordered to vietnam the Airmobile Division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000, to 125,000 men, almost immediately. Needednal forces will be later and they will be set as requested. Thisll make it necessarily to increase our active fighting forces i raising the monthly draft call from 17,000 over a a period of time that 35,000 per month. And for us to step up our campaign for our voluntary enlistments. Host Peter Prichard, what do you think when you hear that nearly 60 years later . Guest well, it reminds me of the spring of 1967 when i walked out to my mailbox in amherst massachusetts and there were two letters inside. And it opened the first one and it was from the peace corps, and they said they had accepted me as an english teacher in micronesia. Skirts and me teaching people micronesia and. I opened the second letter and it was from general louis b hershey, and he said i was to report the new haven Induction Center and three weeks so didnt know what to do. So i called the peace corps and i got a nice woman on the phone and she said, sorry, mr. Prichard, but sorry, mr. Prichard, but in these circumstances, the Defense Department takes precedence. So thats the first thing it reminds me of. The second thing is reminds me of is how it was an undeclared war, which Congress Never really voted on or formally approved. There was only the talk and we were consumed by the specter of anticommunism and the domino theory and all of that was probably a false proposition, a fought assumption in which we fought a war in which 58,000 americans died and millions and millions of civilians and vietnamese decide. Host three million troops served from 1965 to 1973. 58,000 american servicemen and women gave their lives. Mr. Prichard, when you were there in 67, 68, did you see combat . As i said in my note, i never had to fire my weapon. We got mortared from time to time and wed have to run to the bunkers. I had some convoy duty. That was the closest i ever had to getting into combat. We were being shot at from across a rice paddy and we stopped the jeep and hid behind the jeep tried to see if we could see anything to shoot at and we looked up and the rest of the convoy had moved on and we were the only one one left and we drove as fast as we could to get out of there. The reality of vietnam, you could get killed in a thousand different ways, in an accident, run over by a truck, fall out of a helicopter, killed by friendly fire. It wasnt safe anywhere. Host what is the time frame that killing grace takes place in exactly. Guest it starts in early 1967 with a scene at the gridiron dinner where one of the organizers of the radical group is attending the gridiron dinner with his father, who is a washington lobbyist, and he imagines how easy it would be to have some kind of terrorist incident at the gridiron dinner and thats a spark that ignites his ideas about what to do about the war. And then, it continues all through 1967 and into 1968. Host it was the beginning of 1968 that the tet offensive began. What exactly was that . The t offensive was a series o coordinated a across the country. I think there were more than 500 attacks, including attacks near where i was in the delta and i have not been in country very long and we were all observing the tet holiday with the vietnamese and we were standing in the square watching the vietnamese man crawl up a greased pole to put something on top of it as part of ceremony and a young aide ran up intelligence, theres a formation moving down the river and we dont know whats going on. At least in the delta we had no warning that the tet offensive, it was a complete surprise although it proved to be a stunning defeat in terms of casualties that the North Vietnamese and the viet kong, it changed americans opinions about the war. And here is cbss mike wallace reporting on the tet offensive, january 31st, 1968. Good evening, im mike wallace, with a bold series of raids in the last three days, the enemy in vietnam the myth that think hit that. They hit the capital of South Vietnam and the state capitals in the United States and then as if to demonstrate that no place in that war torn nation is secure theyve struck at least nine military strong holds in unnumbered field positions. And tonight the magnitude of those raids became apparent in the u. S. Report on casualties. The communists paid a heavy toll for their strike, almost 5,000 dead, including 660 in saigon alone and almost 2000 captured, but allied casualties also are high. 232 americans killed, 929 wounded. Host Peter Prichard, it was more of a socalled moral victim for the viet cong than it was the military victory. Guest it was, for months the military had been telling the American People and all the soldiers there was light at the end of the tunnel, that we were defeating the enemy across the country and that there was hope that the war would end soon. Of course, when this offensive occurred, that completely upended that assumption. I remember listening to the radio the second morning of the tet offensive and general westmoreland came on the radio and said the embassy is secure and weve defeated the enemy. Well, it didnt seem very secure when the terrorists got inside the embassy and people had to throw guns at somebody up there trapped to get him to be able to escape. So it really proved to the American People that the war wasnt over and apparently wasnt going to end anytime soon. Host does the tet offensive play a role in killing grace. Guest in this particular book, the story ends just before the tet offense, but im doodling around on a sequel which will correct that problem. Host already a sequel. Guest well, im hoping. People have told me that they might read it, so well see. Writing a book is hard and you get into it and see what you can do, but as Kate Atkinson said, youre never quite sure you can pull it off until you do. Host well, just to give some perspective from 1961 until the fall of the saigon government, the u. S. Spent more than 141 billion dollars in South Vietnam, about 7,000 for each of South Vietnams 120 million people, approximately 800 billion dollars in todays dollars. How do you process that today . Well, in my book, all of the corruption that occurred and all of the u. S. Supplies that went missing and sold on the black market or ended up in the hands of the viet cong, it was an amazing stream of men and material, there was no way that anybody could keep track of where everything went which also plays into the plot of this book. And any servicemen who was serving there could see that. I mean, they were the whole premise of the war was faulty because instead of declaring war and making it a Real National cause that the people were behind, we had a policy that people only served 365 days in the war zone. And as a result, most soldiers were focused on crossing the days off on the calendar, rather than caring first about winning the war. They were focused on trying to get home and we tried to serve hot food to soldiers in the fields. We had pxs, there was a golf course in saigon which also played a part in the book. It was an insane way to fight a war in my opinion. Host have we changed that over the year and subsequent wars, in the iraq war, et cetera, how we leave personnel in the field . Yes, i think so. The defeat in vietnam and it really was a political defeat, really had a profound effect on the American Military and it led to the establishment of an all professional military and the end of the draft. And as a result, i think the military probably became better. It might not be better for the country because you have a force thats kind of separate from society and not everyone shared in the obligation to defend the United States, obviously, in israel everybody has to serve in the military. And ive long been a proponent of some kind of national service. Either serve in the military or help people in hospitals or being in the peace corps. I think that would bring people together more than we are today. You mentioned corruption. Why are black markets so ubiquitous and seemingly easy to form during conflicts like this . I think its mainly because of the volume of material and the opportunity to deal. Its just very hard to keep track of things in chaotic, wartorn society. It happens in the earthquake age. You know, people give all of this aid and enterprising criminals take a good portion of it and charge too much for it. Its just human nature in some ways, and i dont think anyone has devised a way to stop them from going missing during armed conflict. I think its a problem in ukraine, too. Peter prichard, before we talk more about killing grace and the vietnam era, lets go to the cspan Video Library in our way back machine. Peter prichard is former editor in chief of usa today and president of the newseum and appeared on cspan 63 times over his washington career and this was the first one. It was july 2nd, 1984. Just as the rest of the newspaper is different from most traditional newspapers because it has shorter stories and more stories, the opinion page is different because its a single topic page and any topic that we consider or do during that week will be very close to the news and we will run four points of view on that topic, besides our own. In addition to these among these four points of view will be the oppressing view which will be completely opposite of what we think in the editorial column. So that were the only newspaper in the United States that consistently every day runs an opposing point of view to its editorial position and our feeling is that that gives the reader a chance to read all the views and make up his or her own mind and thats what is unique about our opinion page and we find it is popular. Host so, mr. Prichard, what will al newheart and john, the other leaders of usa today and yourself thinking . What was your vision for this paper . Al was the founder. Al newhart, the chief executive of the gwinnett company the largest Newspaper Company in the United States and his vision was to have a National Newspaper available in every state that would appeal to travelers and to people who didnt get a full National Report in their local newspapers, and he thought that the company was in a great position to provide it because we had newspapers all over the country and cents allver the country and john came up with the concept of an opinion page that represented many points of view and did not have a dominant position as an institution on every issue. As a result, al said that usa today would not endorse a candidate in the president ial election in part because it would put a Bumper Sticker on your name plate and that it would turn off people with the candidate that you would endorse. And that was his vision and he thought that usa today could be a Unifying Force for the country and i think for a while, it was. I think it helped contribute to a common base of knowledge that people could form their opinions using. Were a long ways from that today with the multiplicity of sources that people listen to. And for a long time, the best selling daily newspaper in the United States and a mustread for many of us here in washington, what do you think of the paper today . Well, its changed a lot and i think usa today is suffering from the same forces that all other newspapers in america are facing. The Tech Companies have basically taken all of the revenues that used to go to the newspapers, i think that a newspaper revenue has fallen 80 from its peak and weve lost thousands of newspapers across the country so that people dont have a good news source in their communities. And because of algorithms, people have migrated to sources that matched their political points of view and i dont see the other point of view and its just made the whole media landscape worse, in my opinion. And its been very its been bad for democracy because we dont have a Common Knowledge base that we can all draw upon to form our opinion and to some extent people are living in silos and echo chambers listening to what they like to hear, but they dont hear any other points of view in many cases. So from daily writing and editing of news to novel writing, what are the differences . laughter well, you dont have to worry quite so much about accuracy. You can use your imagination. My mother said that newspaper writing is very cut and dry and the wonderful thing about novels is that you can exert your imagination and think of all sorts of Different Things that might happen. And its liberating in many ways. And i really enjoy writing. Its fun. However, in todays publishing climate, its difficult to sell books, its difficult to get published, its difficult for new voices and its just a tough economic situation. What kind of research did you do into killing grace . Well, since i was a vietnam veteran, i read books about vietnam for years. Most recently, i read max hastings wonderful history, and what they call vietnam, an epic tragedy is certainly what a tragedy that is still casting ripples across the world today. So i was familiar with many of the themes of the war and many of the things that we could have done better, and i also loved the quiet america, and i thought there might be a niche for a book by a veteran that was not a combat novel. There are lots of tremendous books by jim obrien, and many others, jim west, many other people that are basically about the combat experiences of the protagonists and i thought it would be fun to write a mystery set in vietnam that would try to capture some of the crosscurrents of American Opinion and the Antiwar Movement at the time. Now, are any of the principle characters in killing grace based on people you knew from that period . Yes, several o