A Real Journalist, Bernard Fall

 Fall with Americans In Vietnam.

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Fall was considered to be an expert on French indo China, and he devoted much of his life to accurately reporting and writing books about both the French and US experiences there, in hopes of avoiding the catastrophe that came anyway.

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For contrast, consider todays best known “Foreign Correspondent”  Andersen Cooper.  He is the son of uber-wealthy heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. He was a child and youth model, and attended the most elitist schools in New York, grew up surrounded by wealth and celebrity. On the other hand, Fall was from Austria, but his family fled  to France to evade fascism. After the Fall of France, his father joined the resistance, was captured, and tortured to death by the Gestapo. His mother was sent to Auschwitz, where she was one of the 1.1 million murdered. Bernard evaded capture, and began fighting with the resistance. At age 16 Cooper is partying a exclusive clubs in Manhattan; at 16 Fall is in combat against Nazis and executing collaborators. The former is the training of a celebrity, the latter is that of a combat journalist.

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Fall emigrated to the US and became a well known author and college professor. He spent many years in South East Asia, and was an acknowledged expert in the cultures. He had personally interviewed Ho Chi Minh.  To the great cost of our country, the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations chose to ignore Fall’s warnings. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover painted Fall as a French spy, and they believed him without any evidence.

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Fall continued anyway, covering the war from the front lines. On February 21st 1967, while operating with Marines, he stepped on a land mine and was killed. He was a husband, father of three, and his life ended at age 40.

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You can see an old film of his widow reading the letter he wrote addressed “send only on case of my death” at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpNE4p8nmnQ

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Fall’s two best known works are “Hell in a Very Small Place” and “Street Without Joy.”  Andersen Cooper’s best known work is co-hosting the broadcast of New Years eve with comic Kathy Griffin. In all fairness, Cooper is a much better celebrity than Fall was.

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In the story: Thought for The Day – Have we squandered the great gift? I pointed out that celebrated American writers Neil Sheehan, and David Halberstam were both tricked by a North Vietnamese spy posing as a journalist. When you read their work, you get the impression most of it was filed from a hotel bar, not the front lines. They were easy to fool because unlike Fall, they were never soldiers, nor did they speak the language. It is worth noting that Robert Capa, Dicky Chapelle and Bernard Fall were all killed by land mines, a fate that Neil Sheehan, and David Halberstam  were in little danger of in Saigon bars, and something that seems very unlikely to befall Andersen Cooper  on New years eve in Times Square.

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-ww.

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