Office of the Historian

5. Memorandum From the Assistant Director for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, United States Information Agency (Neilson), to the Directorʼs Special Assistant (Harris)1

Washington, January 4, 1962.

SUBJECT

  • Foreign Correspondent Flap in Saigon

Re your query and Bill Clarkʼs2 plea, the following paragraph from a recent letter to me from our man in Saigon3 will be illuminating:

“As I am sure you realized a few weeks ago following the conclusion of the Ambassadorʼs conversations with President Diem, a background-briefing was called by the Ambassador at his home for American correspondents only. I tried very hard to argue him out of this since we have previously come under considerable fire for such a practice. I am by and large against it in principle, although I do understand there may be some very special reasons from time to time for doing it. Personally, I did not think this was one of them. The Ambassador not only conducted the briefing privately in his own home, but he released copies of the Jorden Report4 to the Americans who were at the briefing session, well ahead of the agreed-upon time of distribution the next morning to the entire press corps. I tried hard to object to this, and even in retrospect—the day after—I pointed out to him that this was not the best or most effective press-relations technique. I based my arguments not only on my own experience but on the blasts we had had from the non-American correspondents in Saigon. One of them [Page 7] even sent back the Jorden Report we had sent him with a little note to the effect that “please strike me from your list of publications and information materials. I no longer need to get my American propaganda from a source which restricts its outlets to its own people.”

I suggest that Don Wilson discuss this with Ambassador Nolting who arrives for consultation tomorrow. Don and I are taking him to lunch January12.5

  1. Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 306, USIA/I/S Files: FRC 68 A 4933, Field-Far East (IAF), 1962. Confidential. Initialed by Nielson. Attached to Document 16.↩
  2. Bill Clark, Public Affairs Counselor at the Embassy in London. He had forwarded a letter from the London Observer complaining about the exclusion of one of its reporters from a U.S. press briefing in Saigon.↩
  3. John Anspacher, head of the U.S. Information Service in Vietnam.↩
  4. A Threat to the Peace: North Vietnamʼs Effort to Conquer South Vietnam (Washington, Department of State, December 1961).↩
  5. No record of this meeting has been found.↩