A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan Page A

president spoke briefly to the family. He said that Vann’s death had been a personal loss to him as well as a loss to the country. He extended sympathy to them on behalf of the entire nation. He had felt friendship toward Vann, he said, and great respect and appreciation for Vann’s work in Vietnam. The last time he had seen Vann had been right here in this office during one of Vann’s home leaves. Nixon said there had been a shared understanding of the war in that meeting and that Vann had given him new insights into the conflict and into the desires of the people of South Vietnam.
    Peter had read Dale Carnegie’s
How to Win Friends and Influence People
. Carnegie recommended sincerity in dealing with others. Peter did not give Nixon a high score for sincerity. Richard Nixon was attemptingto be gracious to the Vanns. His apparent nervousness over Jesse and his personal mannerisms got in the way. As he talked, he smiled too much for what was not a happy occasion. His eyes moved constantly, without ever focusing on anyone in particular. John Allen had acquired his father’s habit of wanting to look someone he was meeting directly in the eyes. The president’s eyes seemed to avoid his, sliding off whenever their glances met. The family’s impression of insincerity was heightened by the makeup Nixon was wearing to cover his heavy beard for the television cameras that were shortly to appear. They had never seen a man wearing makeup before except on a stage and were surprised to go to the White House and be greeted by a president with pancake makeup on his face. The family got the feeling that this was some sort of theatrical performance, that Vann’s death had created an opportunity for Richard Nixon to do some public relations work as the bestower of a medal on a war hero.
    The president irritated them most by saying twice in the course of his remarks that he had wanted to give Vann the nation’s highest award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, but that the law prevented this because Vann had technically been a civilian official. Therefore, Nixon said, he was reluctantly limited to bestowing the second-highest honor on Vann, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. No one in the family believed that John Vann rated anything less than the highest award. Peter thought that the president should either have made a special arrangement to give his father the Congressional Medal of Honor or have had the good taste not to mention it.
    The president’s aides let the reporters and television cameramen into the room. John Allen received the medal for his father, because Mary Jane was no longer Vann’s legal wife. He stood in front of the president at the right side of the desk, where the colors and battle streamers of the country’s armed services hung from another row of flag poles crested by gold-plated eagles.
    Scowcroft kept his eyes on Jesse.
    Before handing the medal to John Allen, the president read the citation praising Vann:
    “Soldier of peace and patriot of two nations, the name of John Paul Vann will be honored as long as free men remember the struggle to preserve the independence of South Vietnam.
    “His military and civilian service in Vietnam spanned a decade, marked throughout by resourcefulness, professional excellence and unsurpassed courage; by supreme dedication and personal sacrifice.
    “A truly noble American, a superb leader,” the president read, “hestands with Lafayette in that gallery of heroes who have made another brave people’s cause their own.”
    Mary Jane resented being forced to watch from the side. She resented more the staged manner of the ceremony. She resented most that Nixon was giving Vann a second-best medal.
    “This is a dirty damn shame, John,” she said silently to him now, just as she had told him she loved him when she put a rose on his coffin. “He’s going to bury you second. The whole bag is still keeping you down.”

BOOK ONE

     

GOING
TO
WAR
     

  H E DIDN’T SEEM