Don Agrella: City Editor Extraordinaire

Don Agrella (R) & Ed "Lou Grant" Asner (Middle).
Tribune Metro Editor Bernie Judge is on the left

OK, right off the bat, I will tell you Don Agrella would have yelled at me if I ever called him City Editor "Extraordinaire."

But the fact is, Agrella, who passed away at 92 Wednesday, was an extraordinary Day City Editor and newsman. For about five years he was my boss at the Chicago Tribune. Between 1969 and 1974 I worked for him as a general assignment reporter, rewrite man and assistant city editor. During those five years he provided me with a newspaper education that simply doesn't exist anymore.

Agrella's trademark in the newsroom was to assign reporters to stories by yelling: "Hat and Coat!" as in, "Yates, hat and coat!"  

Never mind that I or few other reporters in early 1970s ever wore a hat.

That would be my signal to trot over to the Tribune's gray U-shaped wooden city desk where Agrella would issue my marching orders: "Go cover this (fill in the blank) speech, fire, trial, meeting, press conference, etc. and  let me know if it's worth anything."

Only once during my incipient career as a general assignment reporter for the Tribune did I return and declare: "It wasn't worth a story."

"Is that right?" Agrella replied. "Well then, why in the hell does the Sun-Times have a story and what about this City News copy I am holding."

All I could do is gulp. "Sorry," I said. "I didn't think it was worth a story."

"In the future you go cover the story, call me and I'll decide if it's worth anything," he told me. "That way, you won't have to apologize any more."

Then, noticing that my 6'4" frame seemed to be sinking into the newsroom floor, he took pity on me.

"Look, it's my job to decide if something is worth a story. It's your job to report. OK? Let me do my job."

Then he smiled. "Now go and write me a 4-head." (A 4-head was a short, 3-paragraph story that usually wound up somewhere in the back of the paper).

I went back to my desk and wrote what was (in my mind at least) the best 4-head story Agrella had ever seen.

The Tribune newsroom in those days was alive with sound. No cubicles. No cell phones. No carpeted floors. Just a lot of noise--as in the clacking of typewriters, telephones ringing off their hooks, editors yelling at reporters and reporters yelling "copy" at copy boys (and girls). In those days yelling "copy" didn't mean go to the Copier and make a copy. It meant: "get over here and pick up this story I just finished and distribute it to all the relevant editors."

Newsrooms 40 years ago were studies in semi-controlled mayhem. How anybody ever worked in them, let alone wrote anything of quality baffles me today. Yet, work we did and the stories produced were often damned good ones too.

Don Agrella saw to that. He was a tough task master. He did not suffer fools nor did he tolerate sloppy reporting.

"You sure about this, Yates?" he once asked about an exclusive story I had just put in front of him.

"I am," I replied.

"Would you bet your mother's life on it?"

"I would," I said.

"OK," he replied. "But don't forget, you only have one mother, but there are a million stories out there."

I have to admit, that gave me pause. But I soldiered on. "Damn it, Don, it's a good story."

"I didn't say it wasn't good...but is it accurate?" he demanded.

Accuracy was at the top of Don Agrella's list of reportorial essentials. He might accept a poorly written story (he could always have a rewrite man or woman rework it), but God forbid that it be inaccurate.

And one thing you learned early on in dealing with Don Agrella: you never, ever lied to him. Don wanted to trust his reporters and if he couldn't take you at your word, you were on bad paper with him. I witnessed a few reporters fall into that trap and few, if any, ever climbed out of it and into Don's good graces again.

Between 1973 and 1974 I became a City Editor myself. I was the weekend version of Don Agrella, assigning reporters to stories on Saturday and Sunday and putting together a local report. I am sure I could never have done that job had I not had the experience of watching Don Agrella at work.

In 1974 I was promoted to Foreign Correspondent and went off to Asia. I never worked for Don Agrella again.

But one day in 1975, when I returned to Chicago for a few days after covering the fall of Saigon in April of that year, Don grabbed me and took me aside.

"You did a great job covering Vietnam," he told me. "And just so you know, the Sun-Times never had a story you didn't have. Looks like you learned something in my city room after all, Yates."

A few years later, while I was based in Los Angeles for the Tribune, I met with actor Ed Asner, who at the time was playing the part of Lou Grant, City Editor of the Los Angeles Tribune.  It was 1978 and Lou Grant was one of the top TV shows in America.

Asner asked me if I thought his portrayal of a tough city editor was accurate. I told him he should go to Chicago and watch Don Agrella at work. He actually did do that and one day, when Don wasn't expecting it, Asner walked into the Tribune city room and yelled; "Agrella, Hat and Coat!"

When Don retired from the Tribune in 1979 it was definitely the end of an era. He was an old school newspaperman leaving at a time when the business was on the verge of changing in ways that make many veteran hacks like myself, sad.

Once in the 1990s a bunch of us Tribune-ites gathered at Ricardos (once a classic  Chicago hangout for news people) for lunch. Don was in town from Florida where he had retired. I had just returned to Chicago from Tokyo where I had been the paper's bureau chief.

"Well Don," I asked. "Are you ready to come back to the Tribune city room?"

"What city room?" he replied. "The place looks like an insurance office. I couldn't work there. There's no noise."

I was one of the lucky ones. I got to work in a noisy newsroom for Don Agrella: a City Editor who was, without a doubt, truly "Extraordinaire."

European Vacation: Part III (Getting There)

Rome Airport (Just Kidding)

So far, in recounting my recent European vacation, I have talked about the German and Italian people, the drivers, my impressions of cities, food, etc. And the news on that front was mostly good.

Now comes the bad news. Getting there.

Short of teleportation (a technology that sadly is not yet perfected) the only practical way to get to Europe from California is by plane. Yes, you can book a cruise and go by boat, but that takes more than a week from this part of the world. And then I would be worried I would have to row part of the way.

So it's the airplane or nothing.

In my case, it was via American Airlines. Now, I am an AAdvantage member, which means I have accumulated thousands of miles--currently about 96,000 of them. When I booked my ticket almost six months before my intended departure it was with the idea that I would use my miles to upgrade from steerage to business class.

However, I received a rude awakening. Because the tickets I purchased were very inexpensive ones, I learned that I would be at the end of a long line when it came to upgrading. Those with full fare economy tickets and a myriad other people with more perks would be allowed to leapfrog over me in the race to upgrade. Buying a business class ticket outright was not an option--not when a round trip from L.A. to Munich cost about $8,000.

On the American Airlines AAdvantage website there is a button that reads: "Buy Upgrades." That should really read: "Buy Upgrades--Ha!" Because even with more than 111,000 miles I was not allowed to do so.

I am 6'4" tall. So the idea of setting in the back of a plane for 10 hours like Gulliver in seats that are built for people 5'8" is tantamount to undergoing some medieval form of torture. Not only could I not find room for my knees and feet, by the time I reached London's Heathrow Airport, my knees looked like they had been beaten with rubber mallets. For most of the trip my feet were stuck in the aisle where they were continually stepped on and kicked by a parade of passengers on the way to the broom closet American Airlines calls a toilet.

For those of you who have tuned into the new TV drama called Pan Am set in the 1960s, let me assure you that THAT was the golden age of air travel. 

Stewardesses (that's what they called them back then) were attractive and polite; passengers actually wore shoes and normal clothing, not flip flops and dirty shorts. And there was leg room--even in the economy class cabin.

In those halcyon days when I was a foreign correspondent, I knew people at the airlines with clout and was often upgraded automatically--no mileage expended, no begging reservation clerks or airline counter personnel. Alas, these days I am just another wandering peasant consigned to the torture chamber called economy class.

Today, traveling by air is something akin to putting a grubby bus into a cannon and blasting it toward some far away target. Inside people are crammed together in intolerable intimacy. Flight attendants are short-tempered, passengers are petulant, the food is awful, the air is foul and sleeping (at least in steerage) requires training as a contortionist.

Germany and Italy were wonderful once I got there. But getting there challenged my body and mind in ways I hadn't anticipated.

First, there were the never-ending security checks. Now, I don't really mind that so much. I would rather spend a few more minutes on the ground getting patted down, x-rayed, zapped, and electronically undressed than watch helplessly as some religious or political fanatic attempts to blow up the plane at 35,000 feet.

Having said that, it seemed there was no end to the security checks. After taking off and putting on my shoes so many times, I began to understand why there were so many passengers wearing flip flops, dirty feet and all.

The smartest thing I did was travel with carry-on luggage only. That meant no waiting at the luggage carousel for a suitcase that may or may not arrive. I had everything I needed with me on the plane--along with a small backpack for my laptop, Kindle, I-Pod and noise-cancellation earphones (a must on long flights if you intend to get any sleep at all).

The problem is that a lot of other people are doing the same thing. That means the ridiculously tiny overhead storage bins cannot accommodate all of that carry-on luggage and if you are one of the last people to board, you can forget finding a place for your carry-on bag.

The most irritating thing I noticed is that people sitting in one area of the plane often put their carry-on bags in the overhead bins in other areas. Which means it is highly likely that someone who boarded before you has already taken the storage space above your seat. On one flight I watched a man angrily toss someone else's bag out of the overhead bin above his seat. That almost set off a fist fight, until a flight attendant (not a Pan Am stewardess) interceded and moved the encroaching passenger's bag to the front of the plane.

"You can pick it up on the your way out," she said. Problem solved. Not really. Airlines are creating more problems than they are solving by jamming too many people and their bags into planes that have too many seats and not enough storage.

Air travel today is not meant to be pleasant...it is meant to be efficient. Air travel 30 and 40 years ago was a relatively pleasant experience. And it was still efficient. I actually enjoyed it--unless I was flying into a war zone.

The difference between then and now is that planes were not configured like buses  and those who traveled in them were a classier group of folks--or at least they took some pride in their appearance. Today, air travel has been reduced to the lowest common denominator--hence the great unwashed, dressed in tank tops, grimy shorts, flip flops and reeking of body odor. Not a pleasant prospect when you are confined inside a metal box for 10 or 12 hours.

The one bright spot in my travels with American Airlines was that I was able to use miles to upgrade to business class on the final 5 hour leg of the trip home--from New York to Los Angeles.

What a difference. I could actually stretch out my legs and I had more than enough room for my carry-on bag and small back pack. When I arrived in Los Angeles I was tired, but  my legs, feet and body didn't ache as though I had been subjected to some ancient Chinese torture device.

I do believe there is a remedy for some of the problems I have cited here. It is quite simple. Require airline CEOs, members of the board of directors and the sadists who design airplane interiors to sit for 12-15 hours in those God-awful economy class seats next to the malodorous bathrooms and noisy galleys. Perhaps then they will learn how appallingly awful they have made air travel.

Of course, you shouldn't hold your breath. Those are the people who always fly first class. And they don't have to use their miles to do so, either.

So how will I get to Europe next year? I am looking into that. I plan to consult a physicist to see how far along teleportation technology is.

If that doesn't work maybe I will have myself deeply sedated and shipped in a coffin. At least I will arrive rested, without aching knees and legs.

Someday, I hope, I will be able to say: "Beam me to Munich, Scotty" and find myself seconds later at the Oktoberfest in a beer tent along the Wirtsbudenstrasse drinking a liter of Augustiner.  

Now THAT'S the way to travel!

European Vacation: Part II

Ron at Trevi Fountain.

It may be apocryphal but Yogi Berra, the former N.Y. Yankee baseball player and master of malapropisms is credited with this quote about travel:

"I took a trip around the world last week, and you know what, it hates each other."

I think I know what he was trying to say.

Fortunately, during my recent trip to Germany and Italy I didn't encounter that notion. In fact, I found people in both countries pleasant, helpful and generally welcoming.

And that is saying a lot. After all, I am an American and Americans aren't the most popular people in the world these days.

Europeans tend to blame the United States for their economic woes--something to do with the national debt crisis and its impact on markets everywhere, I believe. In Asia and Latin America, where I lived and worked as a foreign correspondent for several years, people see Americans as aggressive exploiters of cheap labor in search of profits at any cost.

Then, of course, there are Washington's international political policies--never a popular topic of conversation no matter where you travel.

When I was traveling around the world as a foreign correspondent, I can't tell you the number of times I would be cornered in some bar or hotel lobby by someone who always began the conversation: "You Americans....as in "You Americans are always trying to impose your political system on the rest of the world...."or "You Americans think you have all the answers...." or "You Americans think you can buy friends with the all-mighty dollar."

Today, I avoid those conversations by keeping my journalistic past a secret. That way I don't have to spend precious minutes our even hours defending or explaining Washington's policies. And what's more, the almighty dollar isn't quite as almighty as it once was. More on that later.

When approached with such comments, I simply say: "Boy, ain't it the truth. Luckily for me I have a Southern California passport."

During this trip not one Italian or German accosted me about America's shortcomings--perceived or real.

Instead, they blew smoke at me...as in cigarette smoke.

It seemed as if everybody in Europe smokes. Non-smoking areas are essentially non-existent in many places--restaurants, bars, hotels, cafes, shops, etc. As a consequence, there is a lot of passive smoke floating around.

It's not as if there aren't warnings about the health risks of smoking. Graphic billboards and chilling messages on cigarette packs warn of impending doom if smoking isn't given up. In Asia I once estimated that about 60-70 percent of men smoke and about 40 percent of women. In Europe it seemed as if about half the population smoked regardless of sex.

It is always dangerous to generalize about people. Americans get that a lot, as in "Americans are this" and "Americans are that," when in fact, it is difficult to pin down any trait that can be called 100% American--unless it is a love of baseball, fast food and cars. Even then, that would be a stretch. I know a lot of people who hate baseball, never eat fast food and prefer public transportation when available.

Having said that, I feel I must generalize a bit here. For example, Germans love their beer. And for good reason. It is damned fine stuff. Must better than the mass-produced, preservative-laden swill that Americans call beer. (Of course, I am not including the hundreds of new micro breweries that have sprung up in the United States in the past 20 years or so. Those beers are almost as good as what you will find in Germany--and some may even be as good).

It just so happened, I was there for the opening of Oktoberfest. What an adventure that was! Perhaps a half million people crowded into Munich's Theresienwiese area--all looking for a beer tent to visit.

Germans love their cars also--and no matter what kind of car it is, it must be a stick shift. None of those automatic transmissions in my BMW 700 series, thank you!
Why is that? "Driving in Germany is considered a kind of sport and shifting gears reinforces that feeling," a German told me. I think I can understand that. When I was a kid I used to drag race. All of my cars had four on the floor. Automatic transmission? No way!

Now, on to Italy and more generalizations. Italians are definitely more friendly than Germans. Not that Germans aren't friendly. It just takes a bit longer to get to know them. There is a coolness there--perhaps it is the climate.

Or perhaps Germans are still angry about all of those Roman legions that marched from Rome into places like Gaul and Germania 2,000 years ago to subdue the barbarians. In any case, going from Berlin to Rome in a day was eye-opening.

Maybe it was the hands. People in Italy talk with their hands in way that simply does not exist in Germany. By comparison, Germans keep their hands in their pockets. Not really, but it seems that way when you put an Italian and a German next to one another and tell them to start talking.

I don't speak Italian. But by watching the hand signals, I felt I was learning the language. I do speak German and German is a difficult language to learn. I wonder how much easier it would be if Germans adopted the Italian way of using hand signals when they spoke?

Italians love to hug one another and kiss each other on the cheek. I like that. It is demonstrative of affection, if not always genuine. Nevertheless, it breaks the ice faster than a cold handshake or a nod.

Rome is a very big city. Yet, I found people there really friendly. Everybody is in a hurry, but they always had time to help out a lost American trying to figure out how to get back to the hotel or to some piazza or another.

Of course, about half the people I encountered in Rome seemed to be tourists like me. And like me, most seemed to be constantly looking at maps or asking directions. That's OK. Rome is a great city to get lost in. No matter where you are or how far you walk, you will always come upon a wonderful outdoor cafe or some picturesque piazza where you can stop, have great meal, a coffee or a beer (and I must say, Italian beer is better than I expected).

In fact, it doesn't really matter if you get lost in Rome.

As Yogi Berra once said: "If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else."

Amen, brother.

When It Is All Said and Done, There Is No Place Like Home

I just returned from a visit to Germany and Italy. And I must say, it is good to be home again.

Southern Germany--specifically Bavaria--is a stunningly beautiful place, with picturesque villages nestled in mountain valleys, lots of pristine forests and great beer! Italy, with its great food, its ancient Roman ruins, wonderful coastal cities like Sorrento, Amalfi, Positano, Ravello and of course Pompei--is a treasure.

I will no doubt go again. But when I stepped off the plane in Los Angeles after more than two weeks in Europe, I found myself really happy to be back the USA. And this is coming from someone who spent most of his journalism career working as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America--17 years, to be exact.

Perhaps it is the fact that Europe is overcrowded. In fact, according to the guide who took a small tour group through the Vatican in Rome, the Sorrento and Bay of Naples area is the most densely populated area in Europe and second most densely populated area in the world--after New Delhi in India.

After spending a week in Rome and Sorrento, I can believe it. In Rome people don't double park, they triple park! Streets are clogged with cars, buses and motorbikes all desperately engaged in a sluggish roadway rumba that moves agonizingly forward toward what must seem like some inaccessible goal.

Driving in Italy is an adventure, to say the least. The motorbikes, especially, are worth watching as they dart in and out of traffic, squeezing in front of buses, trucks and taxis. There don't seem to be any rules of the road. It is highway anarchy. Horns blare, people sputter epithets out of their car windows, shake their fists and slap their foreheads in frustration.

Pedestrians are like timid wallflowers at this chaotic motorized salsa--looking for openings to cross streets.

In Germany things are more orderly. They have to be. People there drive really fast--in fact, on some autobahns there are no speed limits. There are rules of road and people seem to obey them. Germans are nothing, if not orderly. That is how a nation of some 80 million people that is about the size of Montana and part of Wyoming are able to co-exist.

In both countries the only way to travel is by train. It is efficient, mostly on time and very comfortable. And you don't have the hassle of traffic jams, gridlock and people yelling at you or tendering obscene hand signals.

The only time I experienced anything approaching chaos in Germany was opening day of the 178th Oktoberfest in Munich's Theresienwiese area. There, hordes of people from all over the world flooded into the Wiesn in search of (what else?) Das gute Deutsche Bier! Aside from the occasional plastered refugee staggering from one of the 14 beer tents along the Wirtsbudenstrasse and the general crush of humanity, things were pretty orderly. Well, that's Germany for you.

Meanwhile, back in Italy, things are never really orderly. One wonders how the Romans conquered most of the known world during their 1,000 year reign and yet the Italians are still having problems trying to establish coherent traffic patterns along roads too narrow for most modern vehicles.

Wait, maybe that's the problem. The Italians are still using the Via Appia, Via Cassia and Via Aurelia. Actually, they are not, but many of Italy's modern roads are not much wider than those ancient roads that were fitted with standardized ruts to accommodate chariot wheels.

When I arrived back in L.A. what a joy it was to jump in my car and hit the L.A. freeway system. Of course, that was at about 11 p.m. when traffic was almost nonexistent--not in the a.m. when L.A.s freeways are often worse than Rome's gridlocked traffic.

What Italy lacks in modern highway systems it makes up for in delightful outdoor cafes and food that is to die for. I can honestly say that during the 7 days I was in Italy, I never once had a bad meal. The pasta was always al dente, the wine wonderful and the settings of the cafes--be they along Rome's Via Cola di Rienzo or in Sorrento's Piazza Tasso--were charming.

So much for the infrastructure of Germany and Italy.

Next: The German and Italian people.

CHINA: FRIEND OR FOE?

I began covering China in 1972--the year President Nixon made history by flying to Beijing to meet with China's aging Communist dictator Mao Zedong. That trip established diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China and eventually opened China's heretofore closed markets to international commerce.

In the interest of full disclosure I must say I did not accompany Nixon on his historic trip to China. I covered the event from Chicago's China Town. Sigh. At the time I had only been at the Chicago Tribune for about two years--hardly enough time to win the confidence of editors for such a major foreign assignment.

Then, in 1974, I was posted to Tokyo as the Tribune's Far Eastern Correspondent. China and its new relationship with its nervous Asian neighbors became an ongoing story. A lot has happened since the early 1970s when China was little more than an emerging Third World backwater.

In the late 1970s, after years of state control of all productive assets, the Chinese government inaugurated economic reform. It encouraged the formation of rural enterprises and private businesses, liberalized foreign trade and investment, relaxed state control over some prices, and invested in industrial production and the education of its workforce. By nearly all accounts, the strategy has worked spectacularly.

China today is an economic powerhouse--overtaking Japan as Asia's top economy and second in the world behind the United States. It is also the world's fastest growing economy--averaging annual growth rates of almost 10% for the past 30 years.
And that brings me to the current state of the U.S.-China political and economic relationship.

That relationship is, to put it mildly, stressed--even more than it was in June 1989 when the Chinese government killed some 2,000 to 3,000 of its own citizens during the Tiananmen Square massacre--a story in China I did cover.

Since the Tiananmen Square massacre the human rights issue in China has largely faded into obscurity. The story today has become the love/hate relationship that has developed between the world's largest remaining communist country and the world's largest capitalist nation--as well as all of the money that is being raked in, particularly by China. Human rights issues often evaporate when there is money to be made.

The problem today is that Washington's careless and unbridled spending spree has put all of those profits in jeopardy and China is not at all pleased.

That was evident this past Tuesday when the Chinese dictatorship attacked the U.S. government for endangering its massive dollar holdings, calling for America to rein in its out-of-control debt by slashing military spending and welfare. The regime also demanded international supervision of the dollar and even suggested the creation of a new global reserve currency.

The attack came in the form of an editorial from Xinhua News Agency, one of the dictatorship’s official propaganda arms, following the downgrade of American debt last week by Standard & Poor's.

China is Washington's largest single creditor, with more $1 trillion in treasuries as well as more than $1 trillion in other dollar-denominated assets. The U.S. government is officially above $14 trillion in debt, but the real figure including unfunded liabilities is estimated in the tens of trillions — possibly even hundreds of trillions. State and local governments are facing hundreds of trillions in debts and unfunded liabilities, too.

The Chinese regime’s editorial touted the fact that its own credit-rating agency, Dagong Global, downgraded U.S. Treasuries well before S&P. It also lambasted Western commentators for their "arrogant response" when the Chinese agency announced the downgrade, saying the move by S&P had proven that it was simply telling investors “the ugly truth.”

Dagong boss Guan Jianzhong took the opportunity to go on the attack as well. In e-mailed comments, he said the dollar was being “gradually discarded by the world” and that the “process will be irreversible.”

You can almost hear the Chinese rubbing their hands together in glee at this prospect.

Although China may dislike the U.S. fiscal stance, the country, as a long-term investor in and a trading partner, needs a strong American economy.

"The US government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," said the Xinhua editorial.

The response from Washington? Deathly silence. While there has been strident criticism of China from US politicians who have argued that Beijing keeps its currency at an artificially low level to help its exporters, China's harsh criticism of the Obama administration and what it sees as "out of control" Washington spending has left many U.S. officials at a loss for words.

America's biggest trade deficit is with China. Last year it reached $273 billion, the biggest deficit with a single country in US history. In 2010, the US bought goods from China worth almost four times as much as its exports to the world's most populous nation.

It is little wonder that the International Monetary Fund recently predicted that China’s economy would surpass America’s by 2016. Despite all of the Chinese regime’s boasting and lecturing, however, countless economists believe that its economy will soon experience a spectacular crash of its own.

I am reminded that in the 1980s, when I was covering Japan for the Tribune, there were similar predictions being made about Japan. "Japan as #1" was a huge best seller and the premise was that the U.S. was finished as the world's leading economy. We all know what happened to Japan in the early 1990s when its fragile economic bubble burst.

The difference, of course, is that Japan had no ambitions of becoming a global political/military superpower, whereas China does.

I am not convinced that the government in Beijing is any different than the one in power in 1989 that ordered the army to mow down democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square. Nor am I convinced that China is America's friend.

In fact, I believe if China could figure out a way to bring down the U.S. economy without losing trillions of its own dollars that are currently tied up in U.S. debt and treasury bills, it would do it in a heartbeat.

One can only hope that U.S. officials are smart enough to understand that. But given the Obama administration's dismal failure at managing our economy as well as international relations, I am not holding my breath.

Nguyen Cao Ky: American Ally, Vietnamese Patriot is Dead

When I heard the news of former Vietnamese Premier and Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky's death this week, I was immediately whisked back to Saigon about a month before it fell to the Communist North Vietnamese in April 1975.

It was March 27 and I had gone to visit Ky at his sprawling home on Saigon's Tan Son Nhut air base.

He greeted me wearing the black pilot's flight suit and purple scarf he liked to be seen in. I had never met Ky before, but I had heard a lot about him. Stories said he was a swash-buckling "Top Gun" kind of guy who never backed down from a fight and had a reputation as a womanizer.

He may have been all of those things, but the day I met him he was pensive and worried about the future of his country--as well he should have been. North Vietnamese troops were less than 50 miles from Saigon and everyday they were pushing South Vietnamese forces further south.

For those unfamiliar with America's war in Vietnam, Ky was a staunch American ally during that conflict. But even more than that, he was a combat pilot who eventually became the head of Vietnam's Air Force and in 1965 became Vietnam's Premier--a post he held until 1967.

From 1967 to 1971 Ky served as Vietnam's Vice President under Nguyen Van Thieu--South Vietnam's last president.

When we met in 1975 Ky had been out of Vietnam's political scene for almost four years--preferring to sit on the sidelines. Nevertheless, he still had tremendous support from Vietnam's Air Force and probably could have led a successful coup against President Thieu, who was under heavy fire for a strategy that called for abandoning the Central Highlands of Vietnam and allowing the North Vietnamese to take control of a large part of South Vietnam.

"That was without doubt a major military error," Ky told me. "And President Thieu must live with that decision the rest of his life. In fact, it may turn out to be South Vietnam's death knell. I do believe Thieu should resign, but I am not in favor of a military coup. Vietnam must remain united in the face of the onslaught from the North."

We walked around Ky's compound and as we did he pointed to a helicopter sitting nearby.

"See that?" he asked, pointing to a HUEY helicopter. "That is my last resort. If the Communists reach Saigon I will take my family out in that chopper."

That is exactly what he did--landing on the deck of the USS Blue Ridge on April 29, 1975.

Eventually Ky wound up in Southern California and in 1980 I met him again at his house in Westminster south of Los Angeles. He owned and operated a liquor store and was living in a 3,000 square foot two story Spanish-style home in a nice upper middle class neighborhood.

During his time at the top of Vietnam's political pyramid he, along with other Vietnamese officials, were often suspected of profiting mightily from the $686 billion (in inflation adjusted dollars) Washington poured into the South Vietnam between the early 1960s and 1973 when the Vietnamese peace agreement was signed in Paris.

When I asked Ky about such allegations, he bristled. He still had his distinctive black moustache but had lost the black flight suit.

"If I had stolen millions of dollars would I be here operating a liquor store?" he asked. "Wouldn't I be living like some sultan or king? Wouldn't this modest house be a palace?"

Ky paused to light a cigarette, and then continued. "Look, I am not a born politician. I am an artist, a flyer, a romantic. Back in 1967 I was very strong in Vietnam and I could have been president, but I stepped aside in favor of Mr. Thieu. I am just not a political animal."

Nevertheless, about a month before South Vietnam's fall, Ky was coaxed out of retirement to be part of a new "Government in Hiding." That unofficial entity had at first attempted an unsuccessful bloodless coup against President Thieu then when several were arrested, it went underground in an attempt to gain power before the North Vietnamese entered Saigon. Ky was not arrested because Thieu feared (probably correctly) that the VNAF would come to his aid.

As we sat in KY's compound on the outskirts of Saigon that March afternoon in 1975 we could hear the sounds of North Vietnamese artillery and mortars pounding South Vietnamese positions less than 10 miles away.

"It is only a matter of time," Ky told me. "Realistically, the NVA could come into Saigon anytime. But I think they are waiting to see if Thieu will step down. And I also believe they still are not quite sure what the Americans will do if they do roll into Saigon. After all, they are in violation of the 1973 Peace Treaty--though I have yet to meet a Communist who honors any kind of treaty."

I asked Ky if he was bitter at what many South Vietnamese considered a betrayal by Washington when it pulled its last combat troops out of Vietnam in 1973.

"I am not bitter about America's involvement here, but I am bitter about the fact that her policy makers never listened to my advice," he said. "That is a glaring weakness with American foreign policy. Washington politicians and bureaucrats think they know more than the natives of a country like Vietnam when in fact, they really don't. That is the arrogance of Washington and in my opinion it is an attitude that will always get America into trouble in countries they know very little about."

Of course at the time neither of us had any idea that America would eventually invade Iraq and become embroiled in Afghanistan in what has turned out to be the longest war in American history.

"I have consistently told Washington you cannot win a defensive war in Vietnam when the other side is engaged in an offensive war," Ky told me. "By fighting a limited, defensive war, the U.S. allowed the North Vietnamese to continuously re-supply their units in the field. Why did they do this? Because weak politicians in Washington were terrified that the Communist Chinese might intervene if the U. S. got serious about defeating the North Vietnamese. They didn't want a repeat of the Korean conflict.

"The worst thing that happened to South Vietnam was when we allowed the United States to take control of our war with the North," Ky said. " Long before America decided to quit the war, I realized that this would be the inevitable result of America’s lack of commitment to victory. I offered to lead a South Vietnamese attack on North Vietnam, which was defended by a single division of regular troops. All I required from the US was air support, and that US troops already in Vietnam would defend population centers. My purpose was not to conquer, but to force Hanoi to withdraw its divisions from the South in order to defend the North, and thus to bring about genuine peace negotiations."

Ky shook his head and stubbed out a cigarette.

"Would you like a 33?" he asked, referring to the popular Vietnamese beer. He retreated to the kitchen of his compound and returned to with two half-liter brown bottles of "33 Biere."

"You know, any military strategist with any training knows that the best defense is a good offense," Ky continued. "But even our defense was passive. So-called 'Search and Destroy' operations were kept within South Vietnam's borders. Enemy territory was always a safe rear base. The North Vietnamese also used neighboring Laos and Cambodia to establish lines of communication, supply bases, recuperation centers for their troops. The enemy general staff had adopted a plan of action calling on them to always take the initiative. When their troops are strong, they would attack, but when they were tired and weak they would withdraw to their rear bases to rest, recuperate and regroup."

Ky lit another cigarette. "Someday I will put all of this into a book," he said. Ky did just that, publishing "How We Lost the Vietnam War" in 2002 some 27 years after we shared those "33 Bieres" in his Saigon compound.

The gist of that book was less of a condemnation of the American military, which acquitted itself well on Vietnam's battlefields, than a disparagement of Washington's insistence on applying Occidental solutions to Oriental problems. In essence the book argues that America cannot project its values, beliefs and customs on an alien culture and expect success.

In 1980, sitting in Ky's house in Westminster, California, our conversation seemed to pick up where it left off in 1975.

"To insist that Vietnam fight a war while at the same time building democracy was impractical," Ky said. "Building democracy in the West, in England and then in the United States, took centuries of struggle. We Vietnamese could only begin to build democracy after achieving peace and independence. And even then, democracy could not be achieved overnight, but must be built in stages and in harmony with the cultural, social and economic traditions of each people. To accuse South Vietnam of not establishing a democratic regime and to use that as an excuse for abandoning South Vietnam was a blatant betrayal of a trusting ally that had put all his faith in the word of America."

Ky added that the White House and the Pentagon directly conducted the war from thousands of miles away, issuing contradicting policies with ever- changing directives that created confusion in commanders at the front."

"The B-52 carpet bombings ordered by President Nixon toward the end came too late and were too short-lived," he said. "They served only to pressure the Communists to come to the Paris peace talks so that America could prepare for an honorable withdrawal from Vietnam.

"After Watergate, America was a ship without a rudder," he continued. "Vietnam was left to its own devices, drifting along towards its fate. The disintegration of April 1975 was an unavoidable conclusion. My only regret and sorrow was that that ending was shameful and tragic."

Amen and rest in peace Nguyen Cao Ky.

Poor Jane Fonda: Gets No Love From Vietnam Vets and Gets Bounced from QVC

Jane Fonda has never been one of my favorite people. She may be a great actress (she has won two Oscars, after all), but her socialist activities stink. Nevertheless, for most of the past few decades I have been ambivalent about her.

Of course that was not the case back in 1972 when she chose to travel to North Vietnam and pose for a photo, seen world-wide, sitting at the controls of an NVA anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down American planes.

For agreeing to become a propaganda pawn for the Communist North Vietnamese she was quickly dubbed "Hanoi Jane" by G.I.s.

That little stunt simply will not go away and continues to haunt Fonda even today, when at 73 she wanted to hawk her new book "Prime Time" about aging and life cycles on shopping network QVC recently.

Apparently QVC received so many calls from outraged Vietnam vets that it cancelled her appearance on the show--a fact that infuriated Fonda and caused her to say this on her own website:

"I am, to say the least, deeply disappointed that QVC caved to this kind of insane pressure by some well funded and organized political extremist groups," Fonda wrote in her blog post. "Bottom line, this has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us."

I think Jane Fonda has adopted a revisionist view of her own leftist radical history.

The fact is, I interviewed several POWs who were being held prisoner while Jane was making her merry rounds in North Vietnam who told me they experienced severe torture for refusing to meet with Fonda when she visited their POW camp.

This was "real" torture--broken bones, dislocation of joints, burns and beatings--not pseudo-torture such as water-boarding which SEALS and other Special Ops trainees undergo.

As one of them told me: "I told my Vietnamese guards that if they put me in the same room with Jane Fonda I would strangle the bitch." As a result of that comment, he received an hour's worth of beatings with bamboo poles.

So when Jane says she never did anything to hurt the men and women who fought for our country she is either lying or conveniently suffering from "selective-memory-itus."

What she did back in 1972, at the height of the American involvement in Vietnam continues to be inexcusable--no matter how much time has lapsed. Her actions will trail her the rest of her life. Some back in 1972 considered her a traitor. Some still do. Allowing the North Vietnamese to use her as a propaganda tool the way they did comes very close to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Her visit certainly didn't give any aid or comfort to those American POWs who were tortured for refusing to meet with her. G.I.s in the field were just as angered by Fonda's fondness for their enemy.

I recall several telling me they used her photo during target practice. "We replaced Ho Chi Minh (the father of Communist North Vietnam) with Hanoi Jane's mug. And our hits went up!"

Fonda has continued to be involved in a number of causes since the Vietnam War ended, including protesting the War in Iraq and an anti-Israel stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I have never shied away from talking about this (her visit to North Vietnam) as I have nothing to hide," she wrote on her blog. "I could have pointed out (to QVC ) that threats of boycotts are nothing new for me and have never prevented me from having bestselling books and exercise DVDs, films, and a Broadway play."

Fonda has said she was "naive" back in 1972 when she agreed to travel to North Vietnam. I don't think being naive is an acceptable excuse. Was she being naive when cases of torture began to emerge among POWs returning to the United States and Fonda called the returning POWs "hypocrites and liars"?

At the time she was quoted as saying: "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed."

On the subject of torture in general, Fonda told The New York Times in 1973: "I'm quite sure that there were incidents of torture ... but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's a lie."

Fonda went on to say that the POWs were "military careerists and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to the law".

Though she still defends her anti-war activism, Fonda has acknowledged that the photo incident was "a betrayal" of American forces.

"That two-minute lapse of sanity will haunt me until the day I die," she wrote in her 2006 autobiography.

As well it should.