Gareth Porter
Encyclopedia
Gareth Porter is an American historian
, investigative journalist and policy analyst on U.S. foreign
and military policy. A strong opponent of U.S. wars in Southeast Asia
, and the Middle East
, he has also written on the potential for diplomatic compromise to end or avoid wars in Korea
, Vietnam
, Cambodia
, the Philippines, Iraq
and Iran
. He is the author of a history of the origins of the Vietnam War
, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
Porter graduated from the University of Illinois
, received a master's degree in international politics from the University of Chicago
and a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian politics from Cornell University
.
During the Vietnam War, Gareth Porter served as Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service International
and later co-director of the Indochina Resource Center, an anti-war research and education organization based in Washington, D.C.
He taught international studies at the City College of New York
and the American University
during the period 1982-90.
Porter has written regular news reports and news analyses on political, diplomatic and military developments in regard to Middle East conflicts for Inter Press Service
since 2005. He was the first journalist to provide a detailed account of the alleged secret Iranian diplomatic proposal to the United States in 2003, and has published an in-depth analysis of an exit strategy for Iraq.
in 1969 for continuing the Vietnam War, and argued that there would not be a communist "bloodbath" in South Vietnam
after the U.S. withdrew its forces from Vietnam. He wrote a series of articles and monographs on the bloodbath argument.
His first monograph was The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered in 1973. He challenged the account of mass killings in North Vietnam
's land reform (see Land reform in Vietnam
) by Hoang Van Chi
, Bernard Fall and others. Instead of tens or hundreds of thousands killed, Gareth Porter suggested that 800 to 2,500 would be a more realistic estimate. His analysis was disputed by a non-academic critic, Daniel Teodoru, whose critique was entered into a hearing record and published by the Internal Security Subcommittee of the United States Senate
. Porter replied to Teodoru point by point, and his response was entered into a separate hearing record published by the subcommittee.
He also wrote a detailed exposé in 1974 of an account by U.S. Information Agency official Douglas Pike on what has been called the "Huế Massacre" by Vietnamese Communists during the Tet Offensive of 1968. Porter alleged that Pike manipulated the official figures for civilian deaths in the destruction of Huế
during Tet, primarily by U.S. bombing and artillery, to arrive at his figure of nearly 4,000 civilians murdered by the Viet Cong, and that Pike’s hypothesis about the Communist policy during the occupation of Huế was contradicted by captured Communist documents and other evidence.
In 1976-77, continuing his challenge to the bloodbath argument, Gareth Porter rejected early accounts of the mass killings by the Pol Pot
regime in Cambodia. With George Hildebrand he wrote a book, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, which documented the deaths from starvation of thousands of people in Phnom Penh in the last months of the war in Cambodia and argued that there was a legitimate basis for sending most of the population of Phnom Penh
-- much of which had been refugees from rural areas -- back to rural areas. Critics have argued that the book's sources included official statements from Khmer Rouge media about the availability of food in rural areas. Testifying before Congress in May 1977, Gareth Porter said that "the notion that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea
adopted a policy of physically eliminating whole classes of people" was "a myth fostered primarily by the authors of a Readers Digest book." Congressman Stephen J. Solarz
compared Gareth Porter to those who denied the murder of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust
. Gareth Porter rejected this comparison and cited reporting by reputable news outlets in support of this position.
But in an appearance on The Today Show in August 1978, Porter agreed that the Khmer Rouge
regime was guilty of mass killings and mass starvation. He reiterated that view in articles during the 1980s in The Guardian
, The Nation
, and Foreign Affairs
among other publications. He also wrote articles and op-eds criticizing the Reagan administration and congressional supporters like Solarz for a U.S. policy of collaborating with Thailand and China to strengthen the military forces of Pol Pot in Cambodia.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, investigative journalist and policy analyst on U.S. foreign
Foreign relations of the United States
The United States has formal diplomatic relations with most nations. The United States federal statutes relating to foreign relations can be found in Title 22 of the United States Code.-Pacific:-Americas:-Caribbean:...
and military policy. A strong opponent of U.S. wars in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
, and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, he has also written on the potential for diplomatic compromise to end or avoid wars in Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, the Philippines, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. He is the author of a history of the origins of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
Career
Porter graduated from the University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
, received a master's degree in international politics from the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian politics from Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
.
During the Vietnam War, Gareth Porter served as Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service International
Dispatch News Service
Dispatch News Service is a left-leaning news agency founded in 1968 by David Obst and Michael Morrow.DNS was the original outlet to purchase Seymour Hersh's story about the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, pushing it on 35 newspapers at $100 apiece....
and later co-director of the Indochina Resource Center, an anti-war research and education organization based in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
He taught international studies at the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
and the American University
American University
American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...
during the period 1982-90.
Porter has written regular news reports and news analyses on political, diplomatic and military developments in regard to Middle East conflicts for Inter Press Service
Inter Press Service
Inter Press Service is a global news agency. Its main focus is the production of independent news and analysis about events and processes affecting economic, social and political development....
since 2005. He was the first journalist to provide a detailed account of the alleged secret Iranian diplomatic proposal to the United States in 2003, and has published an in-depth analysis of an exit strategy for Iraq.
Controversies
Gareth Porter challenged the main rationale offered by U.S. President Richard NixonRichard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
in 1969 for continuing the Vietnam War, and argued that there would not be a communist "bloodbath" in South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
after the U.S. withdrew its forces from Vietnam. He wrote a series of articles and monographs on the bloodbath argument.
His first monograph was The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered in 1973. He challenged the account of mass killings in North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
's land reform (see Land reform in Vietnam
Land reform in Vietnam
Land reform in Vietnam was a program of land reform in North Vietnam from 1953 to 1956. It followed the program of land reform in China from 1946 to 1953....
) by Hoang Van Chi
Hoang Van Chi
Hoàng Văn Chí was one of the first Vietnamese political writers, a prominent intellectual who was an opponent of colonialism and later of communism in Vietnam. He used the penname Mạc Định...
, Bernard Fall and others. Instead of tens or hundreds of thousands killed, Gareth Porter suggested that 800 to 2,500 would be a more realistic estimate. His analysis was disputed by a non-academic critic, Daniel Teodoru, whose critique was entered into a hearing record and published by the Internal Security Subcommittee of the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
. Porter replied to Teodoru point by point, and his response was entered into a separate hearing record published by the subcommittee.
He also wrote a detailed exposé in 1974 of an account by U.S. Information Agency official Douglas Pike on what has been called the "Huế Massacre" by Vietnamese Communists during the Tet Offensive of 1968. Porter alleged that Pike manipulated the official figures for civilian deaths in the destruction of Huế
Hue
Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...
during Tet, primarily by U.S. bombing and artillery, to arrive at his figure of nearly 4,000 civilians murdered by the Viet Cong, and that Pike’s hypothesis about the Communist policy during the occupation of Huế was contradicted by captured Communist documents and other evidence.
In 1976-77, continuing his challenge to the bloodbath argument, Gareth Porter rejected early accounts of the mass killings by the Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
regime in Cambodia. With George Hildebrand he wrote a book, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, which documented the deaths from starvation of thousands of people in Phnom Penh in the last months of the war in Cambodia and argued that there was a legitimate basis for sending most of the population of Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic and industrial activities, as well as the center of security,...
-- much of which had been refugees from rural areas -- back to rural areas. Critics have argued that the book's sources included official statements from Khmer Rouge media about the availability of food in rural areas. Testifying before Congress in May 1977, Gareth Porter said that "the notion that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea
The Khmer Rouge period refers to the rule of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan and the Khmer Rouge Communist party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea....
adopted a policy of physically eliminating whole classes of people" was "a myth fostered primarily by the authors of a Readers Digest book." Congressman Stephen J. Solarz
Stephen J. Solarz
Stephen Joshua Solarz was a United States Congressional Representative from New York. Solarz was both an outspoken critic of President Ronald Reagan's deployment of Marines to Lebanon in 1982 and a cosponsor of the 1991 Gulf War Authorization Act during the Presidency of George H. W...
compared Gareth Porter to those who denied the murder of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. Gareth Porter rejected this comparison and cited reporting by reputable news outlets in support of this position.
But in an appearance on The Today Show in August 1978, Porter agreed that the Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
regime was guilty of mass killings and mass starvation. He reiterated that view in articles during the 1980s in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, and Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
among other publications. He also wrote articles and op-eds criticizing the Reagan administration and congressional supporters like Solarz for a U.S. policy of collaborating with Thailand and China to strengthen the military forces of Pol Pot in Cambodia.
External links
- Stories by Gareth Porter for the news agency Inter Press ServiceInter Press ServiceInter Press Service is a global news agency. Its main focus is the production of independent news and analysis about events and processes affecting economic, social and political development....
- Interview with Gareth Porter at Talk Nation Radio
- The Myth of the Hue Massacre, Herman, Edward and Porter, Gareth (1975), Ramparts (May-June 1975)