The Associated Press bureau that operated out of Saigon starting in mid-1965 was a great one — a place of legends, a bureau created by arguably the most underrated editor of that era. Wes Gallagher was new at his job as general manager of the AP, and determined from the start to show that this story and this war, whether his constituent papers liked it or not, and whether the news was good or not, was a very important one. All three of the bureau members, Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and Horst Faas, would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize, Browne in 1964, Faas in 1965 (the first of two), and Arnett in 1966.

They were very good, the men and in time the women of the AP bureau. Like the other reporters in Saigon in those days, they lived the life of the obsessed. No one had a personal life. No one ever took a day off. Vietnam was a great crucible for anyone who wanted to become a serious journalist, not just because it was dangerous and you had to calibrate the value of every operation you went on, but because of the immense political pressures involved. Washington had invested so much in the appearance of the war that you were always under scrutiny. Since the war did not work, not from the beginning, any story that was important, and that had any significant dimension of truth, was bound to draw the anger of both Saigon and Washington. That meant any reporter working in Vietnam knew it was important to have your facts beyond dispute every time you filed.

For the ten years he was in Vietnam no one drew more anger than Arnett. He seemed to be a lightning rod for the Johnson...

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