To Our Readers, Apr. 24, 1995

FRANK GIBNEY'S FIRST VISION OF Vietnam was postapocalyptic. "The ghosts of the war were everywhere," he recalls of his trip in March 1984. "The piles of Huey chopper parts at Tan Son Nhut airport, the musty bar of the Caravelle Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. In Hanoi rats scurried through the hotel; the water was cold." There was an air of huddled secrecy. "You couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone. The people who could articulate the state of affairs were diplomats, themselves grasping at bits of information."

Today Gibney is Time's Hanoi bureau chief, heading the first official...

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