I left Khe Sanh just as U.S. bulldozers and explosives were demolishing the combat base so that it could be abandoned. Back in Saigon I wrote and airmailed to Boston a three-part series [about the siege at Khe Sanh for the Christian Science Monitor] that was later submitted along with the Monitor's forms and letters nominating me for the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Describing my June series as "unique in-depth reporting of complex and hazardous events," managing editor Courtney Sheldon in his nominating letter also summed up some of my work throughout the year: "During 1968, Miss Deepe produced no fewer than 18 series of major articles on Vietnam for the Monitor, plus her regular string of daily articles. Among the best examples of her work under combat conditions was a series of six articles (March 20â??27) from Khe Sanh on the plight of the encircled Marines thereâ?¦.Indeed, she traced the pattern of conflict all the way from the man in the Khe Sanh dugout to General [William] Westmoreland in Saigon and the Pentagon in Washington."
The shock and awe of the Communists' Tet blitz was on the U.S. "leadership segment"â??the press, politicians and official Washington, according to a well-established polling firm. Clark Clifford, who had replaced Robert McNamara as secretary of defense on March 1, 1968, explained, "Tet hurt the administration where it needed support most, with Congress and the American publicâ??not because of the reporting, but because of the event itself, and what it said about the credibility of American leaders."
Within Johnson's official circles the psychological shock produced by Tet was profound. "The pressure grew so intense that at times I felt the government itself might come apart at its seams," Clifford, the 61-year-old confidant to several U.S. presidents, explained. "There was," he said, "something approaching paralysis, and a sense of events spiraling out of control of the nation's leaders."
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