Word: vann
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...very few Americans had ever heard of. Secretary of State William Rogers, Senator Edward Kennedy and conservative columnist Joseph Alsop were there, as were General William Westmoreland and Daniel Ellsberg, who was about to stand trial for leaking the Pentagon papers. They had come to mourn John Paul Vann, one of the nation's proconsuls in Viet Nam, who had died in a helicopter crash. "In this war without heroes," writes Neil Sheehan at the beginning of his engrossing and provocative new book, "this man had been the one compelling figure...
...middle of A Bright Shining Lie, it is difficult to disagree with this bold assertion. Perhaps Sheehan overstates his case when he credits Vann with saving the Saigon regime from collapse, not once but twice: after the 1968 Tet offensive and again in 1972. Nevertheless, in Sheehan's characterization Vann emerges as a personality to rival the most complex creations of fiction. He was a brave soldier, a brilliant analyst, a born maverick and a savvy political infighter. He was also, as Sheehan eventually learned, a shameless hypocrite with a "secret vice" he could not or would not control...
...adding fuel to the fire reverse discrimination, the Administration threatens to reopen the painful civil rights battles of the 1960s and 1970s. Former Birmingham mayor David Vann told The New York Times that most of the city's population--Black and white--had accepted the preferential hiring plan as fair until the Justice Department reversed its position, saying "what was right is now wrong...
Sara Badger Vann Würzburg, West Germany...
...imposing figure at 6 ft. 2 in. and 180 Ibs., Vann is a former high school basketball star, Marine sergeant and teacher in the Brooklyn public schools. He has become a power in the state assembly, heading the influential black and Puerto Rican caucus. A lifetime in Brooklyn has taught Vann the value of step-by-step organization. He is in no rush. The numbers, he says, are on his side...