Arthur Hailey - Evening News

One Partridge report which was not aired involved a criticism of negative personal opinion presented in a news context by the venerable Walter Cronkite, then anchorman for CBS. Cronkite, reporting from Vietnam, declared during a CBS "post—Tet special”that "the bloody experience of Vietnam”would "end in stalemate,” and "for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us . . .”

He continued, "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe . . . the optimists who have been wrong in the past.” Therefore, Cronkite urged, America should "negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

Because of its source, this strong editorializing—intertwined with honest news—had tremendous effect and gave, as a commentator put it, "strength and legitimacy to the anti-war movement.” President Lyndon Johnson was reported as saying that if he had lost Walter Cronkite, he had lost the country.

Partridge, through interviews with a series of people on the scene, managed to suggest that not only might Cronkite be wrong but that, well aware of his power and influence, the CBS anchorman had behaved, in one interviewee's words, "like an unelected President and contrary to his own vaunted tenets of impartial journalism.”

When Partridge's piece reached New York it was discussed for hours and went to the highest CBA levels before a consensus was reached that to attack the national father figure of "Walter”would be a no-win gambit. However, unofficial copies of the Partridge report were made and circulated privately among TV news insiders.

Partridge's excursions into areas of heavy fighting usually kept him away from Saigon for a week, sometimes longer. Once, when he went underground into Cambodia, he was out of touch for nearly a month.

Every time, though, he returned with a strong story, and after the war some were still remembered for their insights. No one, including Crawford Sloane, ever disputed that Partridge was a superb journalist.

Unfortunately, because his reports were fewer and therefore less frequent than Sloane's, Partridge didn't get noticed nearly as much. Something else in Vietnam affected the future of Partridge and Sloane. She was Jessica Castillo.

Jessica . . .

* * *

Crawford Sloane, driving almost automatically over a route he traveled twice each working day, had by now turned off Fifty-ninth Street onto York Avenue. After a few blocks he swung right to the northbound ramp of the FDR Drive. Moments later, alongside the East River and free from intersections and traffic lights, he allowed his speed to increase. His home in Larchmont, north of the city on Long Island Sound, was now half an hour's driving time away.

Behind him, a blue Ford Tempo increased its speed also.

Sloane was relaxed, as he usually was at this time of day, and as his thoughts drifted they returned to Jessica . . . who, in Saigon, had been Harry Partridge's girlfriend . . . but in the end had married Crawford Sloane.

* * *

In those days, in Vietnam, Jessica had been twenty-six, slim, with long brown hair, a lively mind and, on occasion, a sharp tongue. She took no nonsensefrom thejournalists with whom she dealt as a junior information officer at the United States Information Agency (known as USIS overseas).

The agency had its headquarters on Le Qui Don Street, in the tree-shrouded 'Eincoln Library”which used to be the Rex Theater, and the old theater sign remained in place throughout the USIS tenure. Members of the press went to the agency sometimes more than they needed, bringing queries that they hoped might allow them time with Jessica.

Jessica played along with the attention, which amused her. But in her affections when Crawford Sloane first knew her, Harry Partridge was firmly number one.

* * *

Even now, Sloane thought, there were areas in that early relationship between Partridge and Jessica of which he had no knowledge, some things he had never asked about and now would never know. But the fact that certain doors had been closed more than twenty years ago, and had remained closed ever since, never had . . . never would . . . stop him wondering about the details and intimacies of those times.

Jessica Castillo and Harry Partridge were drawn instinctually to each other the first time they met in Vietnam—even though the meeting was antagonistic. Partridge had gone to USIS seeking information that he knew existed but that had been refused him by the United States military. It concerned the widespread drug addiction of American troops in Vietnam.

Partridge had seen plenty of evidence of addiction during his travels through forward areas. The hard drug being used was heroin and it was plentiful. Through Stateside inquiries made at his request by CBA News, he learned that veterans' hospitals back home were filling up alarmingly with addicts sent back from Vietnam. It was becoming a national problem, rather than just military.

The New York Horseshoe had given a green light to pursue the story, but official sources had clammed up tight and would provide no information.

When he entered Jessica's cubicle office and broached the subject, she reacted in the same way.”I'm sorry. That's something I can't talk about.”

Her attitude offended him and he said accusingly, "You mean you won't talk because you've been told to protect somebody. Is it the ambassador, who might be embarrassed by the truth?”

She shook her head "I can't answer that either."

Partridge, growing angry, bored in hard.”So what you're telling me is that you, in this cozy billet, don't give a goddamn about the GIs out in the jungle who are shit-scared, suffering, and then—for an outlet, because they don't know any betterdestroy themselves with drugs, becoming junkies.”

She said indignantly, "I said nothing of the kind.”

Oh, but you said exactly that.”His voice was contemptuous.”You said you won't talk about something rotten and stinking which needs a public airing, needs people to know a problem exists so something can be done. So other green kids coming out here can be warned and maybe saved. Who do you think you're protecting, lady? For sure, not the guys doing the fighting, the ones who count. You call yourself an information officer. I call you a concealment officer.”

Jessica flushed. Unused to being talked to that way, her eyes blazed with anger. A glass paperweight was on her desk and her fingers clenched around it. For a moment Partridge expected her to throw it and prepared to duck. Then, noticeably, the anger diminished and Jessica asked quietly, ""at is it you want to know?”

Partridge moderated his tone to match hers.”Statistics mostly. I know someone has them, that records have been kept, surveys taken.”

She tossed back her brown hair in a gesture he would later become used to and love.”Do you know Rex Talbot?”

"Yes.”Talbot was a young American vice-consul at the Embassy on Thong Nhut Street, a few blocks away.

”I suggest you ask him to tell you about the MACV Project Nostradamus report.”

Despite the seriousness, Partridge smiled, wondering what kind of mind dreamed up that title.

Jessica continued, "There's no need to have Rex know I sent you. You could let him think you know . . .”

He finished the sentence.”. . . a little more than I really do. It's an old journalist's trick “

"The kind of trick you just used on me.”

"Sort of, “he acknowledged with a smile.

"I knew it all the time, “Jessica said.”I just let you get away with it.”

“You're not as soulless as I thought, “he told her.”How about exploring that subject some more over dinner tonight?”