Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author David Halberstam tells stories of a life and a career in which he "pissed off" John F. Kennedy and changed the role of journalists in America. The third and final Montgomery Fellow this term, Halberstam is "not just a witness of history, but actually a slice of it."
Halberstam, in an interview at the Montgomery House yesterday, said he considers himself a Dartmouth alumnus -- having received an honorary doctor of letters degree at last June's Commencement ceremony, where he also delivered the keynote address.
He said the degree, along with his friendship with College President James Freedman has made him feel "very connected here."
Despite being a 1955 graduate of Harvard University, Halberstam showed his devotion to his newest alma mater when he "sat on the Dartmouth side and rooted for Dartmouth at the Harvard-Dartmouth football game," he said, smiling. "Although I was obviously somewhat torn because I'm still somewhat a son of Harvard."
Halberstam added that he thought Dartmouth might have been a better place for him as an undergraduate, citing the College's atmosphere and particularly the size of the classes.
"I was just terrible at those big 400-person lecture classes," Halberstam said. "I just disappeared."
But whether he should have attended Harvard or Dartmouth, Halberstam said he got his real education from a lifetime of wonderful experiences.
"The world has been a university for me," he said. "I have been paid to learn for 40 years."
A star is born
Halberstam first rose to prominence as The New York Times correspondent in Vietnam in the 1960s.
Despite having written more than a dozen books, most of them best-sellers, he said he considers his coverage of the Vietnam War as his greatest accomplishment because of "the historic collision between the press and the government."
Halberstam said he and other news correspondents in Vietnam were the victims of "very ugly and very personal attacks" because of their reports which showed that disastrous battles were being portrayed as victories by the United States government.
"By drawing a seemingly mild line in the sand we were in a conflict with the government and the military that nobody had ever been in before," he said. "We were being attacked regularly by the military, the State Department, and even the President."
Halberstam said he never thought of backing down because of the government attacks on him and the other reporters in Vietnam.
"It didn't scare me," he said, laughing. "We got to enjoy the combat and thought, 'We'll send those sons of bitches a rock today.'"
Halberstam said he and the other correspondents, including his friend Neil Sheehan, felt they were doing their jobs and paid little attention to the attacks on their character.
"We were confident that what we were doing was right," Halberstam said. "You don't go into this profession for popularity."
He said his position as the New York Times correspondent set him apart from the handful of reporters in Vietnam.
"I was disproportionally powerful not because I was a better reporter but because I had a great instrument in the New York Times," he said. "It was very powerful in Washington."
Halberstam said his reporting disturbed President John F. Kennedy, who "knew Vietnam was on its way to becoming a disaster and wanted it put on the back burner."
"Kennedy was quite pissed off because I was forcing him to pay attention to things he wanted to ignore," Halberstam said. "In a moment of irritation he asked the publisher of the New York Times to pull me out."
Halberstam said the Pentagon Papers -- sensitive government documents regarding Vietnam policy which were leaked to the New York Times and ultimately printed -- showed the public that he and his colleagues were accurate in their reporting and revealed that the United States army was fighting a losing battle in Vietnam.
"The Pentagon Papers legitimized what we did and said that the journalists were right and the army was wrong," he said.
Halberstam said he has "made peace" with most of the people he battled against although he is still "wildly resentful of [Robert] McNamara," the U.S. Secretary of Defense who played a key role in the development of Vietnam policy during both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
"I think he [McNamara] is still lying," Halberstam said. "He can't come to terms with history."
Halberstam said he has moved on from Vietnam -- and that has prevented him from becoming bitter about his treatment during the war.
"My life didn't stop in Saigon in '63," he said. "If your life stops at that moment you could become bitter. My life is not a life of bitterness."
Halberstam said winning the Pulitzer Prize was "unusually sweet" for him because it vindicated him in his conflict with the United States government.
"I had been under a great deal of criticism and been hammered for being too left wing," Halberstam said. "Winning the Pulitzer was like the Supreme Court of our own profession ruling in my favor."
Happiness in journalism
Halberstam has been credited by Bob Woodward -- the former Washington Post reporter who was instrumental in bringing to light the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s -- with inspiring an entire generation of journalists.
Although Halberstam is no doubt honored by Woodward's remark, he said "success is not measured by prizes you win or compliments you receive."
"You measure it in the experiences you saw, the witness to history, how you feel about yourself and the texture of your life," Halberstam said. "I feel my life was uncommonly rich."
Halberstam spoke of the role of happiness in success in his keynote address during the College's Commencement last June.
Reflecting on that speech, Halberstam remembers he "focused on the pursuit of happiness. I told students to choose what they like to do because they will be good at it and it will make them happy."
He said he was honored to speak at Commencement.
"It was something that would have made my parents very proud if they had been alive," Halberstam said.
Halberstam developed his interest in journalism during college when he worked for four years on the Harvard Crimson.
"I lived in the Crimson's offices for four years," he said. "Very early on it struck me that journalism was the first thing I was really good at in my life."
After graduating from Harvard, Halberstam spent five years covering the early days of the civil rights movement for newspapers in Tennessee and Mississippi before becoming a reporter for the New York Times.
"I thought it was a fascinating story and a story in which reporters could make a difference," he said. "It made me like being a reporter and confirmed the validity of journalism."
A life after reporting
During the first few days of his 11-day stay in Hanover, Halberstam has held a book signing, gone to lunch with students and dinner with Freedman, delivered a lecture, spoken in three or four classes and still found time in the mornings to work on a piece for Vanity Fair and his new book.
Halberstam said he finds it difficult to lecture like he did Monday night when he spoke before a standing-room-only crown in Cook Auditorium.
"Lecturing is still alien for me," he said. "Writing is who I am. That's what's comfortable for me."
Halberstam said he enjoys going into College classes and sharing his experiences and views with students.
"I am in those classes what I have been in my life," he said. "In a way, because of Vietnam, I am right out of the pages of it. I'm not just a witness of history but actually a slice of it."
Halberstam views his effect on the profession of journalism with remarkable perspective. He said journalism today is a more competitive and prestigious profession than it was in his day.
"We were the first generation of people who went in and began to make it a profession," he said. "We showed that journalists must be not just willing to take on a sheriff in Mississippi but if need be the President of the United States."
Halberstam lives on the West Side of Manhattan with his wife and has a daughter who is in her third year of boarding school. He spends his time writing books and interviewing for research.
The critically acclaimed books Halberstam has penned include "The Reckoning," a book about Japan's rise as an economic superpower; "The Best and the Brightest," about U.S. government policy in Vietnam; "The Summer of '49," which focuses on a classic baseball pennant race; "The Powers That Be," about the dramatic rise of the modern media; and "The Fifties," which examines one of the critical decades in 20th-century America.
He is currently working to complete his 15th book, which will chronicle the civil-rights movement in Nashville in the 1960s.
"I don' t miss the daily reporting," he said. "There's a moment when you have to grow up and I think the mutation over to book writing was a fortunate one."
Halberstam smiles as he reflects on his historic career.
"I had runs in the South, Central Africa, Vietnam, Central Europe and the civil rights movement," he said. "I had a good run."
