Category Archives: Frank Snepp Exclusives

Point-Counterpoint: Rory Kennedy’s Oscar Nominated Vietnam Doc

Point-Counterpoint: Rory Kennedy’s Oscar Nominated Vietnam Doc
by Frank Snepp, January 26, 2015

On January 26, David Mattingly who had served aboard the U.S. evacuation fleet operating off  in April 1975 wrote a much appreciated response to my cautionary posts about Rory Kennedy’s documentary, “Last Days in Vietnam” in which I appeared as a “talking head” and as an ex-CIA strategy analyst in Saigon. I quote from Mattingly’s message and offer some thoughts about it.

David Mattingly:

“… I enjoyed reading your unique perspective on the ground in Saigon. I think Rory Kennedy did tell a very small part of the story of what happened in 1975.

USS Midway

USS Midway

“My ship the USS Midway is having a reunion in April to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the fall. The Vietnamese community including many that were on the ship attended the 35th anniversary…

“If ever passing thru the DC area it would be great to meet you.”

My response:

Dave,

Those of us who came out of Saigon on April 29, 1975 are forever indebted to those of you who served with such commitment aboard the evacuation fleet and in the extraordinarily perilous final airlift.

But Rory Kennedy didn’t title her documentary “The Saigon Evacuation as seen from Shipboard” or “The Defense Attaché’s Office To the Rescue,” and her errors and omissions are not harmless or, I believe, coincidental.

She fixed on a story line shaped by her fascination with her key interviewee Henry Kissinger, certain military sources and newly available footage from Pentagon archives, and eliminated what didn’t fit.

One of the reasons I wrote to you specifically is that I had read your account of the evacuation and was grateful that you had mentioned the involvement of the CIA’s Air America. Except for my own brief reference in the documentary to the Air America helicopter in that famous rooftop photo in downtown Saigon, Kennedy omitted everything I had told her and written about CIA pilots carrying the brunt of the final airlift up through the early afternoon of April 29.

Henry Kissinger Former National Security Advisor

Henry Kissinger
Former National Security Advisor

Similarly, while giving Kissinger an unchallenged opportunity to speak his mind, she ignored the fact that what he said on camera about trying to negotiate a two-Vietnam stalemate as part of the Paris accords was at odds with now declassified Nixon White House tapes. In these recordings Kissinger can be heard declaring cynically that he was hoping simply to preserve the Saigon regime through the next U.S. election cycle and then meant to blame South Vietnam’s collapse on its own incompetence.

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Rory Kennedy’s Vietnam Doc Draws Fire

Rory Kennedy’s Oscar-nominated Vietnam Documentary Draws Fire from Journalists and her own On-Camera “Experts,” including CIA Veteran

By Frank Snepp, January 18, 2015

Rory Kennedy, daughter of the late Senator Robert Kennedy, has scored an Oscar nomination for her PBS-backed documentary “Last Days in Vietnamldiv_film_landing-date” about the evacuation of the Saigon embassy in April 1975.

But two of her key interviewees, backed by journalists who were in Saigon during the evacuation, are challenging the film’s objectivity and its portrayal of Henry Kissinger, who negotiated the 1973 ceasefire and helped shape Vietnam policy for the Nixon and Ford administrations.

The former Secretary of State was interviewed extensively for the documentary but was allowed to make allegations and self-serving remarks without any balancing perspective from Kennedy or anyone else.

Jim Laurie

Jim Laurie, former NBC correspondent

Jim Laurie, former NBC correspondent in Vietnam and one of Kennedy’s interview subjects, has delivered a cautionary letter to her, co-signed by other American reporters once based in Vietnam. It expresses concern about her handling of key events, including the breakdown of Kissinger’s ceasefire.

I am another of her featured “experts” who has faulted her treatment of the eyewitness testimony she got from me and others.

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Owner of LA Staples Center Faces Trial in Toddler’s Death

Six months after AEG Live was found “not liable” in the Michael Jackson wrongful death lawsuit, another AEG subsidiary, which owns and operates the Staples arena in downtown Los Angeles, faces a legal showdown over a fatal accident there.

In a blistering reversal of earlier lower court rulings, a California appeals panel has ordered LA Arena Company to answer charges of negligence and unlawful business practices in the death of toddler Lucas Tang, who fell out skybox at Staples four years ago.

Alleged deficiencies in the front-row safety barriers, including their low height, figured in the family’s appeal.

“The company always knew that the barriers were constructed in a dangerous way,” Scott Wellman, an attorney for the Tang family said. “Their own witnesses testified that people would stand or sit on them. And still no one at Staples did anything to make them safer.”

In her first public interview, the victim’s mother, Hoai Mi Nguyen, expressed hope that the case might have the positive result of forcing changes in safety procedures at public venues everywhere. “The past has happened and there’s nothing we can do to bring Lucas back,” she said. “If this case is what it takes to prevent [similar accidents], I don’t want this to happen again to anyone else.”

Neither AEG’s spokesperson nor LA Arena’s attorneys responded to requests for comment.

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Are California Medical Corporations Stealing the Physical Therapy Trade?

A spokesperson for the California Association of Independent Therapists says bill amendments would force physical therapists to present themselves in disclosure documents as “incompetents”

A long-running catfight between the states powerful medical lobby and independent physical therapists is heating up again in Sacramento, threatening an uneasy truce that promised new benefits for patients and taxpayers.

Recent amendments to a health care bill worked out by the warring parties earlier this year would place new burdens on independent therapists by requiring them to attach warning labels to their services. These labels, they say, would frighten off patients and drive them into the arms of competing clinicians who work for doctor-owned medical corporations.

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