From a hawk to a dove: reporting from Vietnam

Robert Hager

Robert Hager, an NBC News correspondent for 35 years, was a combat correspondent during the Vietnam War. He explains how the experience had a profound effect on him, as both a journalist and an individual, and how it helped shape the rest of his career.

What years were you in Vietnam as a combat correspondent?
I was there in 1969, the year after the Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.

It was the beginning of the time when Americans were on the downside of the war, we were starting to lose. We were losing territory and we were losing a lot of people.

At the time I was there we were still losing about 300 Americans a week. So, that was an incredible toll.

Can you explain your role as a combat correspondent and how that differed from the embedded correspondents of today?
The difference in the way we covered the Vietnam War, and the way the modern embedded journalist have covered the war in Iraq, is remarkable. I feel like the way we covered the war then resulted in more multi-sided coverage.  

I think when you are embedded, you tend to adopt the point of view of those you live with and are around all that time. We were much more independent.

The military — to its credit — gave us an incredible amount of independence. We could often travel without the company of a military public affairs officer. We had to sort of hitchhike on military helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

But, we could pretty much go wherever we wanted to, and report what we wanted to. The only rules were reasonable ones: we couldn’t report on an operation that was in progress because it might jeopardize American lives. But we could report on the operation once it was complete.

We were able to travel with Vietnamese troops. We were able to go into Vietnamese villages and we could talk to people. So, we had remarkable access to the Vietnamese people.

I reported from all over what was then South Vietnam — just scores of villages and towns all over the country. 

What was it like covering the war? Can you describe the mood while you were there?
Not as a reporter, because you don’t put your opinions in your pieces, but as an individual I went in there as a product of my generation — a hawk on the war.

President John F. Kennedy had told us that it was necessary to draw the line against the advance of communism and it had to be stopped wherever it was found. That was the generation in which I was raised and I had that understanding.   

After I saw what was going on there — how we didn’t seem to belong, how our side wasn’t motivated, how the average South Vietnamese citizen, for instance farmers in the field, cared only about tending to their own individual lives, tending their crops, and not about the political system that governed them. After I saw all that, I became a dove.

I underwent a personal transition in my thinking. As a journalist – you report the news straight – so that doesn’t come out.

NBC News Robert Hager, reporting for NBC News from Vietnam in 1969.

But, reporting the news, you could see there was a marked difference between the military briefings in which our commanders claimed that we were winning and when we went out on the front lines. When we were with the troops, you saw that we weren’t winning the war; we were losing the war and that eventually we would lose it completely.

So, I could see that and those were the things I reported to try to give that truth to the American people.

I also found it a terribly emotional experience, seeing war first hand, for the first time. Vietnam is an absolutely beautiful country, extremely lush in some areas, very mountainous, just filled with beauty, and with people that are very outgoing.

To see this country in those circumstances, involved in such a terrible war and caught in the middle of international and political ideas — between communism and western democracy — that were not really a concern to these people trying to live their daily lives. All of that, I found extremely moving to see as a young reporter.

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