Window Seat on the World: My Travels with the Secretary of State

By Glen Johnson

Reporter Glen Johnson was covering politics for the Boston Globe when he received a job offer that would embed him in the world of protocols, planes, and global peacekeeping. For the next four years, he accompanied John Kerry as he became the most-traveled Secretary of State in history.

The former journalist kept notes while Kerry worked out a power-sharing agreement in Afghanistan, negotiated with the Israelis, convinced Iran to get rid of its nuclear weapons program, developed a counter-ISIS coalition, and brokered climate change agreements, including the 2015 Paris Agreement. Kerry also confronted two lingering challenges: how to cooperate with an assertive China and a Russia that sidestepped its own wrongdoing but felt aggrieved and justified to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Window Seat on the World is an all-access look at life inside the nation's first cabinet agency: the complexity of State Department protocols, the grueling schedules, the delicacy of engagement with world leaders and foreign cultures, and the dedication of a longtime public servant and his team to the practice of diplomacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Disruption Books
• Release date: Jul 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781633310414

Glen Johnson

Glen Johnson was born in Devon, England in 1973. He is the author of 55 fiction and non-fiction books. In August 2014, he gave away all his belongings and bought a backpack and he started travelling around Southeast Asia. While he travels, he helps charitable organizations, writing and releasing books about their foundations, leaving them with all the royalties. His first charity book is called Soi Dog: The Story Behind Asia’s Largest Animal Welfare Shelter and it’s available in ebook and paperback worldwide. He has also started to release a series of books about his travel adventures as they unfold, and Living the Dream: Part One – Khaosan Road, Thailand, and Part Two – Krabi, Thailand is available from all good ebook retailers. He also loves to travel and has spent over eleven years living and travelling around the world – so far, he has explored forty-three different countries. At present, he lives in Bangkok, Thailand, but he has also lived in Mexico, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, and Singapore. He is also the lead writer on the development team for a new computer game called The Seed (2018), from the creators of the award-winning S.T.A.L.K.E.R Misery mod.Why not add Glen as a friend on Facebook. From his author’s page, you can keep up to date with all his new releases and when his kindle books are free on Amazon. He checks it daily, so pop on and say hello. Don’t be shy, he’s friendly and accepts friend requests.www.facebook.com/GlenJohnsonAuthorwww.facebook.com/RedSkullPublishing and all good ebook retailers.Glen has published 174 books worldwide (via two publishing companies he owns). 55 are his own work; the other 119 are modern-classic-fiction books that can be found on all good eBook and paperback retailers.Books Released by Sinuous Mind Books, and Coming Soon –Books released under his real name Glen JohnsonNON-FICTION BOOKS –CHARITY BOOKS (with Gary Johnson)Soi Dog – The Story Behind Asia’s Largest Animal Welfare Shelter (2015)BEES Elephants Sanctuary: A Haven for Old and Retired Elephants (Coming Soon)TRAVEL BOOKS (with Gary Johnson)Living the Dream 1 – Khaosan Road – Thailand (2015)Living the Dream 2 – Krabi – Thailand (2019)Living the Dream 3 – Penang – Malaysia (Coming Soon)FICTION BOOKS –APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN/HORRORTHE SIXTH EXTINCTION SERIES (A #1 Best Seller on Amazon UK Horror Short Stories)The Sixth Extinction 1 – Outbreak (2013)The Sixth Extinction 2 – Ruin (2013)The Sixth Extinction 3 – Infested (2013)The Sixth Extinction 4 – The Ark (2013)The Sixth Extinction 1-4 – Omnibus Edition (2013)THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: THE FIRST THREE WEEKS SERIES (A #1 Best Seller on Amazon UK Horror Short stories)The Sixth Extinction Series: The First Three Weeks 1 – Noah’s Story (2013)The Sixth Extinction Series: The First Three Weeks 2 – Red’s Story (2013)The Sixth Extinction Series: The First Three Weeks 3 – Betty and Lennie’s Story (2013)The Sixth Extinction Series: The First Three Weeks 4 – Doctor Lazaro’s Story (2013)The First Three Weeks 1-4 – Omnibus Edition (2013)THE SIXTH EXTINCTION & THE FIRST THREE WEEKS SERIES OMNIBUS (A #1 Best Seller on Amazon UK Horror Short stories)The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks 1-8 – Omnibus Edition (2013)The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Sixth Extinction America 1-12 – Omnibus Edition (2014)The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The First Three Weeks The Squads Stories & The Sixth Extinction America & The Seven Seeds of the Gods 1-23 – Omnibus Edition (2017)THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: THE FIRST THREE WEEKS – THE SQUADThe Sixth Extinction Series: The First Three Weeks – The Squad – Echo’s Story (2014)The Sixth Extinction Series: The First Three Weeks – The Squad – Coco’s Story (2014)THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: AMERICA SERIES (A #1 Best Seller on Amazon UK Horror Short stories)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part One: The Black Spores (2014)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Two: False Hope (2014)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Three: The Pods (2014)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Four: The Long Road (2014)The Sixth Extinction: America – 1-4 Omnibus Edition (2014)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Five: No Turning Back (2015)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Six: A Friend in Need (2015)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Seven: All Aboard (2015)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Eight: New Hope (2015)The Sixth Extinction: America – 1-8 Omnibus Edition (2015)The Sixth Extinction: America – 1-20 Omnibus Edition (2016)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Nine: Keep Running (2016)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Ten: Don’t Look Back (2016)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Eleven: Resurrection (2016)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Twelve: Alliance (2018)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Thirteen: Abandon (2019)The Sixth Extinction: America – Part Fourteen: Burn (Coming Soon)THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: BOOK EXTRASThe Sixth Extinction: The Seven Seeds of the Gods. Book One – Ancient Egypt (2016)The Sixth Extinction: The Seven Seeds of the Gods. Book Two – Ancient Mayan (Coming Soon)The Sixth Extinction: One Year On (England) (Coming Soon)The Sixth Extinction: Clarkson’s Discovery (Coming Soon)THE ENDLESS SERIESEndless: Part One – Sorrow (2019)Endless: Part Two – Fear (Coming Soon)Endless: Part Three - Anger (Coming Soon)THE EVENT SERIESThe Event: Part One – The Last Hope (2019)The Event: Part Two – Crashing Down (Coming Soon)THE HUMAN NATURE SERIES (A #1 Best Seller on Amazon UK Horror Short Stories)Lamb Chops and Chainsaws – Vol.1 (2012)Lobsters and Landmines – Vol.2 (2012)French Fries and Flamethrowers – Vol.3 (2014)The Human Nature Series 1-3 – Omnibus Edition (2014)Backpacks and Body Bags – Vol.4 (Coming Soon)THE EXTREME HUMAN NATURE SERIES (Extreme Horror Short Stories)Condoms and Cabbages (2015)GHOST (Short Stories)Sea of Trees (2017)Child Angels (2018)Tall Ghosts (2020)The Lost Cat (2023)HORROR (Short Stories)Quarantine (2020)Laugh Out Loud (2021)Secrets and Lies (2021)Blood Lotus (With Hathairat Phuekhiran – 2023)HORRORThe Watchers (2014)THE WAR OF THE GOD’S SERIESWar of the Gods 1 – The Devil’s Tarots (2012)War of the Gods 2 – Lilith’s Revenge (Coming Soon)THE SEVEN WORLDS SERIES (with Gary Johnson)The Gateway – World One (2014)The Keystone – World Two (2015)Even Jewel – World Three (2017)The Sleeping Gods – World Four (Coming Soon)The Turquoise Abyss – World Five (Coming Soon)Oceans of Fire – World Six (Coming Soon)Journeys End – World Seven (Coming Soon)THE SPELL OF BINDING SERIESThe Spell of Binding – Part One (2012)The Spell of Binding – Part Two (Coming Soon)THE PARKINGDOM SERIESParkingdom – Book One (2012)Parkingdom – Book Two (Coming Soon)OTHER BOOKSTales from the Lake Vol.2. Short Story: Prime Cuts (A mixed horror anthology with 18 other writers – published by Crystal Lake Publishing. 2016)Books released under the pseudonym J.G. NewtonEROTIC PLEASURES SERIES (#1 Best Seller on Amazon USA and UK Erotic/Suspense)Guilty Pleasures: Erotic Pleasures Series (2014)Dirty Pleasures: Erotic Pleasures Series (2014)Secret Pleasures: Erotic Pleasures Series (2014)Kinky Pleasures: Erotic Pleasures Series (2014)Erotic Pleasures Series 1-4 – Omnibus Edition (2014)EROTIC MONSTERS SERIES (#1 Best Seller on Amazon USA and UK Erotic/Suspense/Horror/Humorous)Frankenstein’s Monster: Erotic Monsters Series (2014)Dracula’s Lover: Erotic Monsters Series (2014)Mummy’s Desire: Erotic Monsters Series (Coming Soon)Werewolf’s Lust: Erotic Monsters Series (Coming Soon)COMPUTER GAMETHE SEEDGlen Johnson is on the development team as the lead writer (eight writers) for a new computer game series called The Seed. The Seed is a story-driven post-apocalyptic video game set in Eastern Europe in 2026. It’s a single-player 2D interactive novel, deeply rooted in HEXACO psychology – it showcases the gravity of choice. It’s by the same team that created the award-winning game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Misery mod.The Seed: Act 1 (2018)The Seed: Act 2 (Coming Soon)The Seed: Act 3 (Coming Soon)If you need to get hold of Glen Johnson, email him on: [e-mail]

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Creation

PROLOGUE

MOST OF THE PEOPLE

on our plane were asleep as the sun rose on July 1, 2013, and with good reason. John Kerry was amid a marathon trip typical of his frenetic four-year tenure as secretary of State.

We sweated through 105-degree heat in Qatar for a multinational meeting about the civil war in Syria. We flew on for our annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue with India. Then we doubled back to consult with Saudi, Kuwaiti, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli officials as Middle East peace talks sputtered.

Our final stop was the nation-state of Brunei for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Getting to Asia from Israel required an overnight flight, wiping out the travel team as we neared two weeks on the road.

Nonetheless, I was awake and looking out the window next to my seat when Kerry came running down the aisle, waving to me and calling my name. I gave chase as he returned to his cabin.

Look outside the window, he said, pointing his finger at the panes beside his desk. You can see the Mekong’s headwaters.

I came around the desk, looked forward of the wing, and sure enough, there they were: the outlines of the Vam Co Dong River and other tributaries of the mighty Mekong River. Each sparkled against the dark countryside as a brilliant sun illuminated their twists and turns.

With the map on a nearby big-screen TV showing most of Indochina, the secretary became tour guide while recalling a central part of his biography: his Navy service during the Vietnam War.

That’s the main Mekong, he said, tracing his long index finger down the map. And that’s the Saigon River, he said, turning to another ribbon of blue. I worked out of here for a while, down in here, he said, pointing to what is now known as Ho Chi Minh City. It formerly was Saigon, South Vietnam.

Moving his finger southwest along the coast, he said, Then we went down here and through these rivers, then we went down on this river, pointing to the Bô Đê.

We got a lot of action down there, he added, almost matter-of-factly.

The map abruptly disappeared from the screen, replaced by a page of flight statistics that had rotated into view. They showed our plane was at 37,000 feet, with another hour and thirty-eight minutes until landing.

It’s possible to recount the conversation at length because I had pulled out my iPhone and started snapping pictures as Kerry looked out the windows. When he walked over to the map, I switched to video mode, because the moment had hit me like a thunderbolt.

I was alongside John Kerry as we flew over the place that had come to define him as a man and a politician, and I was the lone pupil for a tutorial about his service.

A place only in my mind was now before my eyes, and the person for whom it meant so much was standing in front of me, telling me his story.

It was moments just like these that would make the grind of my four years in the State Department worth it.

I’d had a similar experience during our first trip abroad. We were in Berlin and Kerry announced he wanted to take a walk outside. I was sitting in a staff meeting, and most of our security team had already turned in for the night.

But as their radios crackled with the change in plans, everyone came running out of their hotel rooms. The guards threw on their clothes and shoes and earpieces and gun holsters as Fenway—the secretary’s security code name—headed for the exit.

The scramble paid off.

We walked into the square overlooking the Brandenburg Gate, the former portal between East and West Germany. It was the same spot through which a twelve-year-old Kerry famously rode his bike during the Cold War, before thinking the better of it and turning around to go home.

His father, a US diplomat at the time, was apoplectic about how close his son had come to causing an international crisis. He responded by yanking his diplomatic passport. The story became legend as Kerry told it throughout his 2004 presidential campaign, and that near-mythic tale had now come to life in 2013.

Kerry pulled out his cellphone to take a picture of the Gate. I pulled out my own cellphone to take a picture of him taking his picture.

Most around him thought he was just playing tourist, but I was struck by the history of the moment.

Less than five months later, flying over Vietnam, I had that feeling again.

Throughout my prior work as a reporter, John Kerry and Vietnam had become almost synonymous to me. I’d heard and read much about the decorated service that sparked admiration, as well as the subsequent antiwar protests triggering condemnation.

I was dockside at Boston Harbor during Kerry’s 1996 reelection campaign when retired Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who commanded all US Navy forces in Vietnam, defended the then senator. A Boston Globe columnist had raised the specter of him committing a war crime in 1969 while recounting how Lieutenant Kerry chased down and killed a Viet Cong soldier who tried to destroy him and his Swift Boat crew with a shoulder-fired rocket.

Likewise, I was sitting at the FleetCenter in Boston when the secretary began his 2004 presidential nomination acceptance speech by snapping a salute and declaring, I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.

And I witnessed the remainder of the race, as the campaign team for President George W. Bush shredded his war record with attacks by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and other critics. They accused Kerry, a Silver and Bronze Star winner, of embellishing his war record. They also said the recipient of three Purple Hearts was two-faced for opposing a war in which he once fought.

Now, as a part of his State Department team, I was making the first of four trips to Vietnam alongside Kerry. Each of them was infused with that personal history, but all were emblematic of the possibilities he pursued elsewhere in the world while serving as secretary of State—his final job in public service.

While Kerry had traveled to Vietnam seventeen times as a senator, he hadn’t been back in more than a decade when he accompanied Bill Clinton as the first president to visit since Richard Nixon.¹

He would visit for the first time as secretary of State in December 2013, during the last trip of his first year in office.

His focus was on educational and environmental issues, the latter to be highlighted by a sail back up the Mekong.

I’d first laid eyes on the river early one morning, from seven miles overhead.

_________

OUR FIRST STOP THAT

December was Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), which had been the capital of South Vietnam when it was known as Saigon. You could still see grassed-over bomb craters surrounding the airport, and revetments where American F-4 Phantom fighters had been parked near the runways.

HCMC is described by some as the Vietnamese version of New York, electric with energy and commerce. The people are notably friendly—especially to the Americans who were their wartime allies.

If that analogy holds, then Hanoi—in the former North Vietnam, and now capital of the unified country—would be considered its Washington. Hanoi is home to the Communist Party and political leaderships, both operating from mustard yellow buildings flying a national flag with a simple red field and a solitary gold star in the center. In the middle of the city is the tomb where their revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh, lies embalmed for public viewing to this day.

Ho’s gilded bust sits in every leader’s office, usually above the throne-like seats where the Communist officials greet their visitors.

We cleaned up at our hotel before a quick tour downtown preceding a series of meetings and an official dinner. Our informal host was Tom Vallely, a Massachusetts native and Marine veteran of Vietnam who’d become friends with Kerry during the antiwar movement. Tommy had a sobering distinction: he was the only member of his unit not killed or wounded in the war.

Now he was head of Harvard University’s Vietnam program.

Vallely led the secretary across the street from the InterContinental Hotel and past an overwhelming sight: a road full of motorbikes lined up at a stoplight. They looked like they were anxiously awaiting the start of a motocross race. The only thing restraining them was a police officer dressed in a khaki uniform holding up a baton, silently transmitting the message to wait.

Our destination was the Notre-Dame Cathedral, a Catholic sanctuary harking back to Vietnam’s French colonial days. The secretary attended Mass, offering tangible support for religious institutions in a country that, officially, does not recognize religion.

Afterward, Vallely turned the party around and pointed out an apartment building at 18 Gia Long Street. One of the last helicopters evacuating US citizens and desperate South Vietnamese took off from its famously flat roof after the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese.

Like Dealey Plaza in Dallas or Red Square in Moscow, it’s a spot you instantly know from the history books despite having never seen it in person.

Following his meetings, the secretary paid a nighttime visit to the US consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. He thanked a group of elderly Vietnamese who’d worked in the now-shuttered Saigon embassy and remained faithful to their American employer, even as war enveloped the city.

They now sat in the front row, some in wheelchairs.

You are the ones really defining this new relationship in modern terms, as Vietnam goes through this enormous transformation. I can’t tell you how much of a transformation it is, Kerry said. None of these big, tall buildings were here twenty years ago. And now there are—40 percent of the country is under the age of twenty-five, a young country for whom the war is ancient history.²

We left the consulate and went to a restaurant for dinner, a meal becoming less formal with each round of Tiger beers. With the group loosened up, the secretary suggested we visit one of his old haunts, the Rex Hotel.

It was a wartime crossroads for journalists covering the fighting, soldiers on liberty, and Vietnamese looking to make money off everyone.

_________

THE REX HAS A

famous rooftop bar overlooking Ho Chi Minh Square, a promenade running up from the Saigon River to City Hall. The hotel sat beside a traffic circle where motorbikes from all directions converged on a single loop. It collected them, circulated them, and spat them out a different path.

During our next trip to Vietnam, we’d return to find—much to our dismay—that the circle had been replaced with traffic lights and a standard four-way intersection. The city government changed the landscape while building a subway underneath to alleviate the traffic.

Secretary Kerry sat in the middle of a long table as the waiters brought aqua-colored cocktails and rounds of beer served in chilled mugs. Joining him was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Danny Russel, who’d evolved into an Asia expert after first visiting Japan to study karate in a dojo.

At one point, the secretary got up and started to walk around, looking at the stage where a guitar player and his group sat framed by a pair of Rex trademarks: romping elephants and an Aladdin-like crown. He moved over to the bar, running his hand across its surface and silently taking the measure of its layout. He then went back to the balcony overlooking the traffic rotary, watching its whirl of lights and motion.

During his remarks to the elderly Vietnamese at the consulate, Kerry foreshadowed what he seemed to be feeling at that moment:

We would sit up there, and we were having a beer, which we couldn’t have normally where we were, and you’d look out at the flares all around the city. And every so often you’d hear this b-r-r-r-r-r-t of gunfire from what we called Puff the Magic Dragon, that was flying around, which was a C-130 that would shoot. It was really eerie. I can’t tell you how totally bizarre it was to be sitting on top of a hotel, having a beer, sitting around, talking with people—a lot of press people used to hang out there—while all around you, you would be seeing and hearing the sounds of a war. And that was the sort of strangeness and duality of that period of time.³

I was the State Department’s official travel photographer, so I surreptitiously took pictures as the secretary remembered those moments from visits long ago. There were occasions such as this on each of our trips to Vietnam: times when John Kerry would go quiet and relive something none of us had been around to experience.

Each time, I tried to recede into the surroundings, working to capture but not interrupt it.

The following day, the group boarded a pair of propeller planes for the flight south to Cà Mau, a staging area for our trip up the Mekong Delta. The secretary wanted to call attention to the region’s environmental challenges and the Lower Mekong Initiative. It tries to prevent actions upstream—such as river damming and pollution runoff—that can harm people living downstream.

Those men, women, and children depend on rice grown in flooded fields, and protein from the fish and shrimp in the rivers and nearby sea.

Our flight took us from the chaos and modernity of the city to the tranquility and simplicity of the countryside. We flew through thick clouds and over rice paddies and shrimp ponds. The latter were outlined by retaining walls and stirred with water fountains providing oxygen to farmed shellfish destined for the United States and other markets.

After we landed, our motorcade passed houses with tin walls displaying the ever-present Vietnamese flag. Despite the remoteness, kids wore jerseys from their favorite British and Spanish pro soccer teams.

When we boarded our boat to head upstream, Secretary Kerry took up a spot at the center of the bridge. It let him survey the landscape and get a fresh breeze in his face through the open cockpit.

At one point, we passed under a bridge. He looked over and said, I remember going under that, referring to his Swift Boat patrols. Another moment, he pointed to the heavy canopy of mango and banana trees covering the riverbanks and said he and his crew never knew when the leaves of the trees would begin to shred, as hidden Viet Cong soldiers began firing at them with .50-caliber machine guns.

When we finally reached our turnaround point, the Kien Vang Market Pier, the secretary disembarked to deliver an environmental speech. A sampan cut through the water as he spoke.

That river is a global asset, a treasure that belongs to the region, he said. Sharing data and best practices in an open and cooperative dialogue will help ensure that many resources of the Mekong continue to benefit people not just in one country, not just in the country where the waters come first, but in every country that touches this great river.⁴

Afterward, Kerry met a group of Vietnamese girls from a nearby school, many dressed in flowing white dresses. He talked to them about how the United States and Vietnam were moving past their war history and into a new future based on economic and educational cooperation.

As sound as the trip was thematically and in execution, you could tell it really didn’t satisfy the Boss. It was clear he wanted to push upstream to the sites of his combat service, not as the lieutenant he once was, but as the secretary of State he’d become.

That would have to wait.

_________

OUR SECOND TRIP TO

Vietnam came more than a year later, in early August 2015, as the secretary visited to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of US–Vietnamese diplomatic relations. John Kerry had worked with his Senate colleague John McCain, a fellow Navy veteran of Vietnam and former prisoner of war, to normalize relations in 1995.

The centerpiece of the secretary’s 2015 trip was a major speech about the transformation of the relationship during the prior two decades. Among those in the audience was Vietnamese foreign minister Phạm Bình Minh, who also served as the country’s deputy prime minister.

By the numbers alone, the change truly was remarkable: In 1995, there were fewer than sixty thousand annual American visitors to Vietnam. By 2015, the number had grown to five hundred thousand. In 1995, fewer than eight hundred Vietnamese students studied in the United States. By 2015, there were seventeen thousand. In 1995, trade between the two countries was valued at $451 million. By 2015, it totaled more than $36 billion.⁵

During his speech, the secretary said:

Vietnam and our shared journey from conflict to friendship crosses my mind frequently as I grapple with the complex challenges that we face in the world today—from strife in the Middle East to the dangers of violent extremism with Daesh, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and dozens of other violent extremists, and also even the dangers of the march of technology with cyber intrusion and potential of cyber warfare. That we are standing here today celebrating 20 years of normalized relations is proof that we are not doomed merely to repeat the mistakes that we have made in the past. We have the ability to overcome great bitterness, and to substitute trust for suspicion and replace enmity with respect. The United States and Vietnam have again proven that former adversaries really can become partners, even in the complex world that we face today. And as much as that achievement matters to us, it is also a profound and timely lesson to the rest of the world.⁶

After the speech, Secretary Kerry went for dinner at a Hanoi restaurant. He sat with Ted Osius, the US ambassador to Vietnam, and three friends and fellow Vietnam veterans from Massachusetts: Vallely, David Thorne, and Chris Gregory. Joining them was Francis Zwenig, who’d been Kerry’s administrative assistant and staff director of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

Now gray-haired, the onetime soldiers ate and told war stories in the capital of the former North Vietnam, the city where McCain had spent his five years as a prisoner of war.

I took several photos for their scrapbooks and then waited outside.

Our third trip to Vietnam came the following year, in May 2016. We visited Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City alongside President Obama.

The good news for us staffers was that when the secretary accompanied the president, he was incorporated with the White House delegation. The State Department crew was left with little to do but wait at the hotel.

Most of us slept or gingerly explored the surrounding neighborhood. You never wanted to be left behind, and you never wanted to cause a diplomatic incident by being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. As tempting as the local delicacies may be, you also had to be careful about what you ate on the street.

Our plane was no place to end up sick.

One item on our own schedule was an interview with Margaret Brennan, a CBS News correspondent who covered the State Department. She’d asked to speak with the secretary in Vietnam for a biographical piece she was preparing for CBS Sunday Morning.

During the interview, conducted in Hanoi at dusk on a shiny scarlet bridge over a lake leading to the Ngoc Son Temple, she asked Kerry how serving in Vietnam had affected him.

He said, [It] gave me a sense of understanding how people in positions of responsibility, when they look at something, misunderstand it and mistake what’s happening, and make the decisions that cost lives, put people’s lives at risk, puts America at risk.⁷

Critics had accused him of duplicity, noting he opposed the Vietnam War after fighting in it. They also complained about such proclamations after he voted in Congress to authorize the Iraq War in 2002 but later opposed it.

As both a US senator and secretary of State, Kerry explained he had voted to give President Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq, but only after he’d been promised the administration would exhaust all possible avenues to avoid it. Kerry complained the president hadn’t kept that promise and, instead, had rushed to battle.

Kerry’s opinion of Vietnam, meanwhile, changed after what he saw during his combat tours.

The irony of the Swift Boat Veterans attacks is that Kerry had seen combat, unlike his opponents in the 2004 presidential campaign.

John Kerry and George W. Bush were at Yale University at the same time; but when they graduated, they took divergent paths. Kerry entered the Navy and volunteered to skipper a Swift Boat on the Mekong Delta. Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard and flew training missions over the Gulf of Mexico.

Bush’s running mate, Vice President Dick Cheney, got five draft deferments. He later told The Washington Post: I had other priorities in the 60’s than military service.⁸

Nonetheless, he and Bush were able to turn the Vietnam War into Kerry’s Waterloo.

That whole episode remains, to me, one of the most egregious misrepresentations of duty and honor and service that’s transpired in American politics, because it was committed to the advantage of a president and vice president who’d each found ways to avoid the same risks Kerry confronted head-on.

Brennan asked the secretary if the attacks had taken on an extra sting because of his continued connection to Vietnam.

What took on a sting were the lies, he said. I mean, just rank, unbelievably contrived, totally out-of-whole-cloth lies, which were proved again and again were lies, but which people were repeating again and again.⁹

_________

AFTER OUR STOP IN

Hanoi, we flew south along the Vietnamese coast. One member of our traveling party, Kerry’s dinner companion David Thorne, pointed out Da Nang, where he’d served during the war.

Thorne was the leader of a State Department economic development team, but he had a unique stature with the secretary, particularly when it came to Vietnam.

The two had been classmates and soccer teammates at Yale. They were reluctant to confirm it, but they also were members of the secretive Skull and Bones Society that counted President Bush and his father, former President George H. W. Bush, among its members.

John Kerry and David Thorne decided as college juniors to join the Navy after graduation, and each finished his military career a combat veteran.

The secretary went on to marry Thorne’s twin sister, Julia, and the couple had two daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa, before divorcing in 1988.

Despite that split, the friendship between John Kerry and David Thorne endured, and Kerry recommended in 2009 that President Obama nominate Thorne to be US ambassador to Italy.

Thorne had grown up in Italy after President Dwight D. Eisenhower picked his father, Landon, to work in the country as administrator of the Marshall Plan. Thorne became fluent in Italian and later ran his father’s newspaper, the Rome Daily American, during what amounted to two decades in the country.¹⁰

Thorne was at the bottom of the steps at Ciampino Airport in Rome when Kerry’s plane pulled to a stop during our first trip abroad in February 2013. The secretary smiled and shot him a trigger-finger greeting as he descended the stairs. The two now-diplomats hugged as an Italian honor guard saluted them both.

When his ambassadorship ended, David Thorne came into the State Department fold as senior adviser. In truth, he truly was an ambassador without portfolio. As one of the secretary’s closest friends, he went places and said things others would not. He also was a moderating influence, whether traveling with Kerry, walking with him between offices in the Harry S Truman Building, or sitting next to him at restaurants around the world.

If someone needed to speak truth to power, David Thorne could always do it. He was a constant for the secretary of State, tying together his past and present, his personal and professional lives.

Our group landed in Ho Chi Minh City just before President Obama, who was making his first visit to Vietnam.

The scene confronting us was overwhelming.

There were thousands of people lining the streets along the entire route from the airport to the hotel downtown. They were more than a dozen deep and cheered loudly as our motorcade passed. Some thought they were waving at the president, who was about a half hour behind us, but it was clear when the secretary took a walk later that he was tremendously popular in his own right.

As we crossed intersections or waited at traffic lights during our walk, people recognized the towering man with the thick head of hair. Kerry, they yelled, as they cheered and waved enthusiastically.

When we reached the Saigon River, the secretary told me about his first visit. He brought his Swift Boat to the same spot for repairs, docked it at a pier still there, and was picked up by a US Intelligence officer who’d been a buddy in language school. The pal was waiting with a motorbike and a bottle of Champagne, and they set out to tour the city before Kerry rejoined his crew and sailed away.

As we walked, the secretary remarked about the futility of the war: All that pain, suffering, and killing—and look at it forty years later, he said.¹¹

By the time we’d walked along the river and up the promenade past the Rex and City Hall, both of us were soaked through our suits from the humidity. We went back to the hotel, put on bathrobes, and immediately sent our jackets and pants out for dry-cleaning. It was the only way to save them.

That evening, the secretary addressed the White House traveling press corps at the request of President Obama’s staff. He spoke again about his own service in the country and the changes that had occurred since the late 1960s.

I have to tell you that for many years I have looked forward to a time when people would hear the word ‘Vietnam’ or the name ‘Vietnam’ and think more of a country than a conflict, he said. And with President Obama’s visit this week, with the crowds that we saw along the street today, the remarkably warm and generous welcome, the unbelievable excitement of people that we are here with a president of the United States at this moment is absolutely palpable, and I think it is a demarcation point.¹²

Kerry added: This is a prime example of the way in which the United States has been able to forge a new relationship out of the ashes of war and to create real peace.¹³

The secretary later headed back to the Rex Hotel for beers and cigars with his staff and another special guest. This time it was former US senator Bob Kerrey.

Like the secretary, the Nebraskan had been a Vietnam vet; but the former Navy SEAL left badly wounded after losing part of a leg in a battle just three months into his first combat tour. His bravery earned him the Medal of Honor.

Again I found myself with another pinch-me moment in Vietnam: the secretary of State sitting with a fellow decorated veteran back in a country where they had both once fought. Bob Kerrey had fended off his own war-crime accusations for the deaths in a village raid he led, but there also was no denying he’d displayed heroism on the battlefield.

The former senator and past president of the New School in New York City was in Vietnam for a ceremony the following day encapsulating the essence of what John Kerry had tried to do in the country since returning as a civilian.

Vallely and his Harvard colleague Ben Wilkinson had worked for years to develop a truly independent university in Vietnam. Pivoting off the success of the Fulbright Scholarship program, which had let many top-level Vietnamese officials study in the United States before returning home, the Fulbright University Vietnam was conceived as a place to provide a similar education within Vietnam itself.

Kerry marked various waypoints toward the university’s creation during his four years as secretary of State, but a ceremony on May 25, 2016, was the most significant. Government leaders planned to hand over an operating license to university officials—the veritable keys to the car.

The single smartest investment we can make in the next generation is education, and that’s what we are doing here today, Kerry said during the handover ceremony.¹⁴

Noting there were 22 million people under the age of fifteen in Vietnam, he added: The decisions that they make now and the education that they receive now—not in 10 years, but today—will have a pivotal impact on this country’s future and that of the region itself.¹⁵

The secretary closed by saying, Folks, it took us 20 years to normalize and almost 20 more to move from healing to building. Think of what we can accomplish in the next 20 years.¹⁶

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OUR LAST TRIP TO

Vietnam was our most momentous for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that it came in January 2017 during our final trip abroad.

First, the flight in was another of those overnight affairs with another of those sunrise spectacles. This time, the secretary and I were back in his cabin, but not to see the Mekong Delta. Instead, we looked out at Mount Everest—the highest peak on Earth—as we flew along the southern edge of the Himalayas.

He snapped pictures with his iPad. I did the same with my professional cameras.

Then, after we landed, Tommy Vallely and Ben Wilkinson were there again, but this time with a new sidekick: Ed Miller, a Dartmouth history professor specializing in the Vietnam War. He came to the country at Vallely’s request because he’d located maps depicting southern Vietnam during the time the secretary had served in the war.

Over dinner, the secretary ran his fingers over those maps. He retraced his routes up the region’s rivers and tributaries, pinpointing the sites of some of his more ferocious battles.

The plan was to return to the most famous of them all, the place where he chased down that Viet Cong soldier with the shoulder-fired rocket launcher.

For not just John Kerry but also those who’d covered his career and come to know him over the years, the last visit to Vietnam was to conclude with the ultimate step back into history.

We departed from Ho Chi Minh City with practiced efficiency. The group again split in two and boarded yet another pair of propeller planes. The cityscape turned to countryside on the flight south, and again we deplaned in Cà Mau.

We even drove past the same tin houses and Communist flags, to the same dock from which we departed in 2013 for that environmental speech.

This time, though, the secretary quickly left the boat’s bridge and instead stood in a hull opening near the bow. The spot allowed him to lean back on the doorframe and survey the muddy waters of the Bai Hap River as his hair flapped in the rushing wind.

Memories came back to the secretary in bits and pieces, with him again recalling a bridge or turn but especially a village we passed. Ed Miller came forward with his maps and Kerry unfolded them on his lap, struggling to hold down their corners in the breeze.

Unable to sleep the night before, the secretary spent time on Google Earth, searching the contours of the rivers and the recesses of his memory. He called back to the United States, speaking with his Swift Boat turret gunner and asking for his recollections of the area where they got into the firefight.

Then came the moment hours later on the boat when the secretary looked into the riverbanks and back into time, all the way to the moment of the battle. He pointed to the shore, and we realized he’d navigated himself back to the spot of that infamous firefight. To us, it was a thicket of vegetation. To him, it was the place where he almost lost his life.

We bobbed in the water for several minutes as the moment sank in. The secretary stood silently, looking across the water’s edge to a small clearing and the jungle beyond.

Kerry had told us over some of those boozy dinners in Vietnam how he’d worried about the safety of the crew as the firing began, and how that prompted his unconventional decision to turn the Swift Boat, PCF-94, directly toward the fire.

Steering the boat from broadside to head-on narrowed its profile and let its commanding officer make a beeline to their attackers.

When the boat beached, Lieutenant Kerry jumped off, M-16 in hand, and chased a man who tried to disappear into the thicket with his rocket launcher.

When the soldier stopped and turned back to face him, the lieutenant fired. The soldier fell, dead.

During the 1996 Massachusetts Senate campaign, then Boston Globe columnist David Warsh questioned whether Kerry had delivered the coup de grace to a soldier already wounded by another member of his crew—a potential war crime. Some of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and other 2004 campaign critics also suggested the Viet Cong soldier may have actually been a boy, which would be another pox on his killing.

Kerry had disputed such assertions whenever they were made, but they may have ended up costing him the presidency. He was left to take solace in his own integrity, the citations justifying his combat decorations, and the memories held for decades by him and his crew.

But now, in 2016, the rest of us on the boat with him had a chance to see the spot previously known only to them.

_________

WE MOTORED BACK TO

the dock in Cà Mau just as we had in 2013; but this time, Vallely and Wilkinson had a surprise for Kerry.

Working with local Vietnamese officials and the US consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, they’d found a shrimp and crab farmer who said he’d been a Viet Cong soldier whose unit regularly attacked US Navy Swift Boats during the Vietnam War.

Not only had now-seventy-year-old Vo Ban Tam seen action in the region where Lieutenant Kerry had fought, but he said some of it had been on the banks of the Bai Hap River. Some of it, in fact, during the battle on February 29, 1969, when the lieutenant beached his boat and shot the Viet Cong soldier.

Vo Ban Tam said that person was his comrade.

He was a good soldier, Vo told Kerry, providing facts that fleshed out a fleeting memory held by Kerry and his crew.

Vo explained the soldier had been twenty-four years old—not a teenager but, in fact, just two years younger than Kerry was at the time. He also specialized in firing the B-40 rocket launcher, but his