First Person Account - Wes Clark at the Kennedy Library
by Gordon Suber
March 11, 2006
My second visit to the John F. Kennedy Library for a day-and-a-half conference on "Vietnam and The Presidency" was greatly anticipated.
After all, with what the Boston Globe described as a gathering of "the titans of an era" that included the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, retired General Alexander Haig who had negotiated the Vietnam ceasefire, and later became the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces under Presidents Ford and Carter -- one could hardly disagree with such a statement.
And when you add President Jimmy Carter (via video), Ted Sorenson (President Kennedy's speechwriter and Special Counsel), Jack Valenti, (President Lyndon Johnson's Special Assistant), former CBS news anchor Dan Rather (who was on the ground reporting from Vietnam), Senator Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam Vet, Pete Peterson (a six-and-half-year prisoner of war, and the first American Ambassador to Vietnam after the war) - well, one gets the notion that he is attending a once in a lifetime event.
A panel consisting of Senator Hagel, as well as the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, Peterson, and Vietnam veteran and former Supreme Allied Commander, Wesley Clark, discussed Lessons Learned from the Vietnam War.
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The Presidential Libraries (including those from President Herbert Hoover through Bill Clinton) and the National Archives sponsored the conference.
Wes Clark's selection represented the best that came out of the Vietnam Era, a period that I lived through as a young man and witnessed tear apart the fabric of families and America itself.
Clark experienced combat, was severely wounded, remained in a military that was described by one conference participant as "broken" after the Vietnam War, helped rebuild the Army, and became a NATO Supreme Allied Commander.
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I did not take notes. If you wish to experience General Clark's appearance in what I describe in my political biography of him as "perhaps America's most comprehensive discussion of the Vietnam War," I suggest you go to C-Span's website to learn if they have released the video of the conference.
My father-in-law, a retired Army colonel who was Wes Clark's commanding officer for a period in Vietnam, and worked with General Haig on a number of assignments after that war, asked me to say hello to Haig. Here is part of that conversation:
Gen. Haig: And what do you do?
Suber: I am writing a political biography of Wesley Clark.
Gen. Haig: Is he running for president again?
Suber: General Haig, you'll have to buy the book to find out.
