1. “Transcript of Nixon’s Acceptance Address and Excerpts from Agnew’s Speech,” New York Times, August 24, 1972.
2. Joshua Rothman, “Watching George McGovern Run,” New Yorker, October 21, 2012.
3. Janis Joplin at Woodstock from Facebook page of Frank Cavestani, www.facebook.com/frank cavestani, retrieved January 1, 2020.
4. Frank Cavestani and Catherine Leroy, dir., Operation Last Patrol (1973), documentary, no theatrical release.
5. Ron Kovic and Frank Cavestani, “Operation Last Patrol,” panel, Loyola Marymount University, September 24, 2012.
6. Author tried repeatedly to interview both Kovic and Cavestani.
7. “Transcript of President Nixon’s Address to the Nation on His Policy in Vietnam,” New York Times, May 9, 1972.
8. Arnold R. Isaacs, Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 36.
9. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1983), 652–654.
10. Flora Lewis, “Tho Rejects Nobel Prize, Citing Vietnam Situation,” New York Times, October 24, 1973.
11. Elizabeth Becker, “The Interpreter of Memories from the Killing Fields,” Washington Post, April 1, 2008.
12. Elizabeth Becker, “Ah… over here, Dick,” Far Eastern Economic Review, March 19, 1973.
13. Holly High, James R. Curran, and Gareth Robinson, “Electronic Record of the Air War over Southeast Asia,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 8, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 104–107.
14. Lee Lescaze letter to Elizabeth Becker, May 25, 1973.
15. Kate Webb, “No Peace Talks in Cambodia,” UPI, in Mainichi Shimbun (Tokyo), October 21, 1972.
16. Kate Webb, interview, Singapore Radio, transcript, Kate Webb papers (KWP), private family collection, Sydney, Australia, April 5, 1988, p. 36.
17. Webb letter to Camilla, KWP, January 13, 1973.
18. Elizabeth Becker, “Phnom Penh Being Flooded by Thousands of Refugees,” Washington Post, July 13, 1973.
19. Author interview with Kishore Mahbubani, March 8, 2020.
20. H. D. S. Greenway, “A Flower in the Sky Ends the Air War,” Washington Post, August 16, 1973.
21. Thomas W. Lippman, “Business as Usual with U.S. Pilots,” Washington Post, August 16, 1973.
22. Elizabeth Becker, “Cambodians Seek to Escape War in Northern City,” Washington Post, August 16, 1973.
23. Ith Sarin, Regrets for the Khmer Soul, 1973.
24. Elizabeth Becker, “Who Are the Khmer Rouge?,” Washington Post, March 10, 1974.
25. Elizabeth Becker, “American Advises in Combat,” Washington Post, March 13, 1974.
26. Department of State, “Alleged U.S. Advisors in Cambodia,” confidential cable to US embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 13, 1974, declassified June 5, 2005, www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974STATE050795_b.html.
27. Author interview with Stephen Heder, January 17, 2020.
28. Frances FitzGerald, “Vietnam: Behind the Lines of the ‘Cease-fire’ War,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1974.
29. Frances FitzGerald, “Vietnam: The Cadres and the Villagers,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1974.
30. Frances FitzGerald, “Vietnam: Reconciliation,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1974.
31. Frances FitzGerald, “One Year After the Paris Accords,” New York Times, January 28, 1974.
32. Frances FitzGerald, “Reporter at Large—Journey to North Vietnam,” New Yorker, April 28, 1975.
33. Isaacs, Without Honor, 351–385.
34. Webb, in Bartimus et al., War Torn, 81.
35. Frank Snepp, Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam (New York: Vintage, 1978), 407–413.
36. Ron Moreau, “Tributes to Kate Webb,” Correspondent, January 2002.
37. Snepp, Decent Interval, 557.
38. John W. Finney, “U.S. Rescue Fleets Picking up Vietnamese Who Fled in Boats,” New York Times, May 1, 1975, includes UPI pool report by Kate Webb from the USS Blue Ridge without Webb byline.
39. Carrie Collins interview with Catherine Leroy, “Vietnam War Reflections,” C-Span, April 29, 1985.
40. James Fenton, “The Fall of Saigon,” Granta, May 2, 2019.
41. Collins interview with Leroy.
EPILOGUE
1. History of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, www.vvmf.org.
2. Philip M. Boffey, “Vietnam Veterans’ Parade a Belated Welcome Home,” New York Times, November 14, 1982.
3. Nobel Prize 1997 to the six organizations, including the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, that comprised the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, www.nobelprize.org.
4. Author interview with Dominique Deschavanne, September 14, 2018.
5. Author interview with Robert Pledge, June 20, 2019.
6. Tony Clifton and Catherine Leroy, God Cried (London: Quartet, 1983).
7. Author interview with Fred Ritchin, February 8, 2019.
8. Catherine Leroy, Under Fire: Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2005).
9. Régis Le Sommier and Catherine Leroy, “They Were Soldiers Once,” Paris Match, reprinted in American Photo 16, no. 5 (September–October 2005): 28.
10. Author interview with Rachel Webb Miller, November 7, 2018.
11. Peter Mackler, Agence France-Presse internal memo, Kate Webb papers (KWP), private family collection, Sydney, Australia, August 20, 1997.
12. Webb letter to Alison Sims, KWP, May 8, 2000.
13. “No Regrets: Kate Webb 1943–2007,” Correspondent, May–June 2007, 7–9.
14. For a list of FitzGerald’s published books, see www.francesfitzgerald.net.
15. PBS, “Full Reading List,” The Vietnam War, a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/resources/reading-list/full-list/.
16. Author interview with Fredrik Logevall, January 31, 2020.
17. Transcript of Trial Proceedings: Public, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, Extraordinary Chambers, Courts of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cambodia, Trial Day 240, February 9, 2015, www.eccc.gov.kh/sites/default/files/documents/courtdoc/2015-02-17%2015%3A22/E1_259.1_TR002_20150209_Final_EN_Pub.pdf; and Elizabeth Becker, “Reporting Massive Human Rights Abuses Behind a Façade,” Columbia Journalism Review, October 3, 2016.
18. Transcript of Trial Proceedings, Trial Day 242, February 11, 2015, www.eccc.gov.kh/sites/default/files/documents/courtdoc/2015-02-24%2013%3A59/E1_261.1_TR002_20150211_Final_EN_Pub.pdf.
Praise for You Don’t Belong Here
“Becker, who also reported from Cambodia in the 1970s, fluidly sketches the history and politics of the Vietnam War and captures her subjects in all their complexity. Readers interested in women’s history and foreign affairs won’t be able to put this fascinating chronicle down.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An incisive history of the Vietnam War via the groundbreaking accomplishments of three remarkable women journalists… A deft, richly illuminating perspective on the Vietnam War.”
—Kirkus, Starred Review
“A riveting read with much to say about the nature of war and the different ways men and women correspondents cover it. Frank, fast-paced, often enraging, You Don’t Belong Here speaks to the distance traveled and the journey still ahead.”
—GERALDINE BROOKS, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of MARCH, former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent
“Riveting, powerful, and transformative, Elizabeth Becker’s You Don’t Belong Here tells the stories of three astonishing women. This is a timely and brilliant work from one of our most extraordinary war correspondents.”
—MADELEINE THIEN, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“Elizabeth Becker’s luminous book not only belongs, it demands at last that these daring, resourceful, and pathbreaking women take their rightful place in the history of the Indochina wars and journalists who covered them.”
—DAVID MARANISS, author of They Marched into
Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967
Every journalist should read this stunning book. Actually everyone should. Elizabeth Becker has that rare ability to weave the fascinating stories of three groundbreaking, very different women journalists with a riveting history of the Vietnam War. She challenges you to see who these women were in a place they allegedly didn’t belong, while describing what and how they witnessed it.”
—ANNE GARRELS, former NPR foreign correspondent and author of Naked in Baghdad
“Ms. Becker has done us a great service by shining a light on three hidden women stars of the wars in Indochina: Francis FitzGerald, Kate Webb, and Catherine Leroy. They fought their way through opposition from the ‘men’s club’ of war corresponding to focus on reporting the truth, proving that they actually did belong there. Put You Don’t Belong Here on your reading list!”
—JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY, coauthor of We Were Soldiers Once
“Elizabeth Becker resurrects the long-forgotten stories and enormous sacrifices made by a generation of women who paved the way for the rest of us. Elegant, angry, and utterly engaging, it is a long overdue story about a small band of courageous and visionary women. You Don’t Belong Here is a masterpiece of a book.”
—RACHEL LOUISE SNYDER, author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
“When these three women were born, ‘lady journalists’ wore flowery dresses and white gloves and wrote about fashion and housekeeping. Today, because of the tenacity and bravery of women like Leroy, FitzGerald, and Webb, women report from the frontlines of the bloodiest conflicts… and they aren’t wearing white gloves.”
—TONY CLIFTON, veteran Australian journalist
Here is a unique and valuable perspective on the Vietnam War. Elizabeth Becker has gracefully weaved admiring but clear-eyed portraits of three remarkable women who reported from its front lines. At a time when most female journalists were relegated to covering food, family, and fashion, these fought for a chance to take on the biggest story of their day, battling the military, their families, and male colleagues—hostile and amorous (sometimes both). Their work, in Becker’s description of French photographer Catherine Leroy, ‘eschewed classic heroics,’ recording both the courage and the human toll of war, earning the amazed respect of soldiers, and making an indelible contribution to our understanding of the war, then and now.”
—MARK BOWDEN, author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968
“In this meticulously researched and drama-filled book, we can feel the sweat and heat of the jungle, hear the explosion of bombs, and witness the lies and political machinations justifying the doomed Vietnam War. Most importantly, Ms. Becker, a master international journalist herself, profiles the extraordinary courage, talent, and raw determination of three wartime female journalists, who succeeded in a man’s world and helped pave the way for women everywhere to receive the recognition and respect they deserve.”
—ALAN LIGHTMAN, author of Einstein’s Dreams and The Diagnosis
PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.
I.F. STONE, proprietor of I. F. Stone’s Weekly, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published The Trial of Socrates, which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.
BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of The Washington Post. It was Ben who gave the Post the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.
ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.
For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by The Washington Post as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.
Peter Osnos, Founder
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