The Story That Died

This chapter begins by discussing a story that the author got from Senator Tom McIntyre, who was President Lyndon Johnson's campaign manager in New Hampshire and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He found out that General Westmoreland had asked the president for an extra 206,000 US troops in Vietnam. Johnson already had 550,000 troops in Vietnam, and he was insisting the war was nearly won. Asking for 206,000 more was all but admitting that the US was defeated. The author decided to pitch the story to his boss in Albany, Earl Aronson. However, Aronson did not greenlight the story and it ended up being picked up by the New York Times. Soon after, the author handed his notice and later took a job at United Press International in Moscow. The chapter then recounts how the author had fallen in love with journalism when he was still in high school in his native Sarajevo; he had written some stories for the city's Oslobodjenje (Liberation) newspaper.