Robert Novak delivers remarks during the Young America's Foundation's National Conservative Student Conference in this Aug. 3st, 2005 file photo at George Washington University, Washington, DC. (AFP/Tim Sloan)Dan Southerland, Executive Editor
RFA
I had several brief encounters over the years with Robert Novak, the influential conservative political columnist who died Aug. 18. But the most memorable took place in wartime Cambodia.
As I embarked on a trip with Novak into eastern Cambodia in April 1970, my expectations were not high.
As a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor I had already met a few visiting columnists and other luminaries who came on brief trips to Vietnam. They had their views fixed and stories written before they arrived, as far as I could tell.
In Vietnam, U.S. military officers briefed and escorted them around. Indeed, Novak himself acknowledged that the U.S. authorities “did their best to make life easy” for him in Vietnam.
But Novak surprised me. In Cambodia at that point, there were no U.S. officers, helicopters, or airplanes to shuttle us around. The only way to find the war was to take to the roads and do basic reporting.
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