CNN's Tailwind Tale - by Jerry Lembcke (Hardcover)

About the Book

Jerry Lembcke delves into the origins of CNN's 1998 story about U.S. soldiers in Vietnam using nerve gas on defectors and how it came to be believed, not only by those who told it, but by news reporters and the public. In his investigation, Lembcke shows that the myth of Opera...

Book Synopsis

Jerry Lembcke delves into the origins of CNN's 1998 story about U.S. soldiers in Vietnam using nerve gas on defectors and how it came to be believed, not only by those who told it, but by news reporters and the public. In his investigation, Lembcke shows that the myth of Operation Tailwind originated in the fiction of popular culture, the unreliability of memory, and the conspiracy-minded, ultra-Right wing, fundamentalist Christian community.

Review Quotes

An exquisite book that tempers criticism with compassion while exploring the power of myth in shaping memories of the Vietnam war among those who felt soldiers were betrayed by liberal elites. Lembcke has written an unusual and compelling study that blends media critique with explorations of folklore, popular culture, and apocalyptic metaphor.

Jerry Lembcke has once again produced a compelling discussion of a post-Vietnam myth. Like his last book, The Spitting Image, this one explores the strange mechanics by which collective experiences coalesce into rumors, rumors into the illusion of memories, and these false memories into reported 'fact.' With detailed discussions of post-war media, literature, and politics, the book will appeal to those interested in cultural history, journalism, and the making of national myth.

Like Oliver Stone's historically false but widely viewed conspiracy movie JFK, Lembcke asserts that CNN'sTailwind Tale developed a carrying power not because it was true but because it felt true.

With extraordinary doggedness, Jerry Lembcke tears the lid off one of the most remarkable-and peculiar-journalistic hoaxes in modern times. As Lembcke makes clear in this powerful book, sometimes even the media can be seduced by the too-good-to-be-true con.

About the Author

Jerry Lembcke is associate professor of sociology at the College of the Holy Cross. He is the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam and several articles on the news media, popular culture, and public memory about the war in Vietnam. He lives in Worcester, Massachusetts.