Veteran’s Day was originally known as Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I on November 11th.
So perhaps it was fitting that a baby born on Armistice Day in 1930 would be destined for an illustrious military career,
David Hackworth joined the Army shortly after World War II, and was decorated for his service in the Korean War.
By the late 1960s Hackworth had become the youngest Army colonel in Vietnam.
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He helped form what became known as Tiger Force.
After the war Hackworth became a journalist and author, and in 2002 wrote a book about the ragtag battalion he was sent to lead in 1969. He called the book Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts. He and I talked about the book that spring, including his wife’s essential role in writing it.
So here now, from 2002, Col. David Hackworth.
David Hackworth died in 2005 at age 74. He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
After Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president in 1981, one of his eary appointments was to name a new Secretary of the Navy, who was tasked with rebuilding a demoralized and under-equipped Navy.
He chose a 38-year-old Naval Reserve aviator named John Lehman. No stranger to Washington, Lehman had served on the National Security Council staff under Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration.
Lehman served as Secretary until his resignation in spring 1987. And the following year he wrote a book called Command of the Seas.
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And on top of all of his public service , Lehman is also a first cousin once removed of Princess Grace of Monaco.
I spoke with him when his book was published in the early weeks of 1989.
So here now, from 1989, John Lehman.
John Lehman is 82 now. He’s chairman of the Princess Grace Foundation USA. He lives in Pennsylvania and New York.
It’s been almost 50 years since the last American soldier came home from Vietnam. But the memories of the 10-year war that tore the nation apart still color the U.S. today.
On this Memorial Day I wanted to bring you an interview I did in 1993 with retired Army Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and war correspondent Joe Gallowaty. They had recently returned from a visit to Vietnam.
Joe Galloway. Photo by Cmichel67
They had gone back to the Ia Drang Valley, scene of the first major battle of the war in 1965, with Gen. Moore in command. On their visit, they met with some Vietnamese veterans who, nearly 30 years earlier, had been determined to kill them.
Get your copy of Joe Galloway & Hal Moore’s book
Moore and Galloway wrote a book about the historic battle, called We Were Soldiers Once… And Young. When it was made into a movie in 2002 the title was shortened to “We Were Soldiers.” Mel Gibson portrayed Gen. Moore.
So here now, from the fall of 1993, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway.
Gen. Hal Moore died in 2017, three days before his 95th birthday.
Veteran’s Day reminds us that combat is not an isolated event in a service member’s life. It is often a psychological wound that is slow to heal.
Serving in Iraq in 2004, Marine Sgt. Jeremiah Workman earned the Navy Cross for gallantry under fire, after a ferocious firefight in Fallujah in which he killed 20 enemy combatants.
But Workmen returned home with post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Protecting his mental health proved to be as big a challenge as protecting his men in Fallujah was
In 2009, the year he was medically discharged from the Marines, Workman wrote a memoir called Shadow Of The Sword. That’s when I met him.
So here now, from 2009, Jeremiah Workman.
Jeremiah Workman announced last spring that he will run for Governor of his native Ohio in 2026.
In 2012 Lippold wrote a book about the incident, and I spoke with him the day before the 12th anniversary of the attack.
It didn’t start with September 11th.
Almost a year before al Qaeda terrorists flew planes into buildings, suicide bombers affiliated with al Qaeda attacked the destroyer USS Cole as it was refueling in Yemen. Seventeen American sailors died in the attack.
The commanding officer of the Cole was Kirk Lippold, a 41-year-old Navy veteran. And even though an exhaustive investigation found nothing to indicate Lippold could have foreseen or prevented the attack, he was subsequently denied a promotion several times.
So here now, from 2012, Kirk Lippold.
Kirk Lippold is now 64. He works for a political marketing organization
In the 1980s, the presidency of Ronald Reagan was facing two distinct foreign policy challenges.
Members of Hezbollah had taken several Americans hostage in Beirut, Lebanon.
And in Central America, a rebel group known as the Contras was trying to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
To free the hostages, the Reagan administration undertook a secret plan to sell military missiles to Iran, in hopes that the Iranian government would persuade Hezbollah to release the hostages.
In Nicaragua, meanwhile, the U.S. was funding, arming, and training the Contras. That is, until Congress abruptly cut off the entire funding.
Oliver North with Bill Thompson’s daughter Jennifer
That’s when someone had the idea to take the money that Iran was paying secretly for those missiles and hand it secretly to the Contras. The plan became known later as the Iran-Contra affair.
When this plan became public in 1986, Congress was outraged. Hearings into the Iran. Contra affair began 35 years ago this week, May 5th, 1987.
And witness testimony quickly pointed to one man who seemed to have all the answers to the scandal.
Oliver North was on assignment to the National Security Council, and became the central figure in the Iran Contra scandal.
In July 1987, North appeared before I congressional committee, offering testimony that was at once defensive and defiant.
North was convicted on three felony charges but his convictions were vacated, and the criminal case against him was dropped in 1991.
And a short time later, North published a book called Under Fire. And that’s when he and I had the first of what would be several conversations over the next few years.
So here now from 1991 Lr. Col. Oliver North
Oliver North is 78 now. He lives in Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.
Today is March 30th, and it was 41 years ago today that a young man tried to kill President Ronald Reagan.
And one of the most controversial things that happened that day happened to a man with a long and distinguished military and public service career, general. Alexander Haig.
Haig was a graduate of West point m. He served in Korea, served in Vietnam, earned the silver Star and the purple heart. And by 1973 was the youngest four-star general ever in the US army.
In 1973, Haig became President Richard Nixon’s, Chief of staff just as the Watergate scandal was turning up to full boil.
In fact, many say that Haig was instrumental in persuading Nixon to resign the presidency in 1974.
In 1980, after being elected president in a landslide, Ronald Reagan chose Haig as his secretary of State. And it was the following March 30th, the day. John Hinckley Jr. Tried to assassinate the president, that Haig made a comment that will haunt him.
In 1992, Haig wrote a book called inner circles. And that’s when I have the chance to meet him. So here now, from 1992, general Alexander Haig.
