The Fromson File

No sooner than the mourning for Christina-Tayloir Green had been put behind Tucson than we in Los Angeles were jolted by another incomparable episode of gun madness. The scene occurred on the grounds of Gardena High School, southwest of the central city. Police helicopters flew overhead. Detectives swarmed onto the school grounds, Several kids were [...]

I have seen too much human blood spilled in my lifetime — of people I did not know — mostly in wartime. I was trained to use a rifle and a handgun at Fort Ord. California before shipping overseas as a GI. In self-defense, I killed Chinese soldiers in Korea. In Vietnam, I had to [...]

I had dinner with Walter Cronkite the first night he arrived in Saigon on what was his personal fact finding trip “into country” after the Communists’ 1968 Tet Offensive. He was a hawk, a supporter of the conflict in Vietnam like so many Americans of his generation. Walter clearly was troubled by the visual images [...]

It has taken me nearly a week to reflect on how figures like Robert McNamara contributed to the erosion of the American people’s trust in so many of their institutions. It was his arrogance and self-confidence that so diminished whatever he had to say about Vietnam from the time the war began. McNamara was so [...]