The Twenty-Third Charles L. Decker Lecture in Administrative and Civil Law

• Author: Adrian Cronauer
• Pages: 06

THE TWENTY-THIRD CHARLES L. DECKER LECTURE IN ADMINISTRATIVE AND CIVIL LAW*

ADRIAN CRONAUER1

How many of you have seen the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam?" Well, that certainly does wonders for my ego―probably doesn't hurt my bank balance either! It's been an interesting experience having a film based ever-so-loosely upon my experiences in Vietnam. Possibly because a lot of people know my name, but very few people know my face, which leads to some interesting things happening. For example, not

too long ago, I was at a reception in Washington and whenever you go to these receptions, they give you a little sticky tag with your name on it to wear. My wife calls them "nerd" tags. As I passed a group of people, someone noticed the name; I heard him say, "That's the guy they made that movie about, 'Good Morning,Vietnam!'" Another person said, "No, that can't be him, that guy doesn't look a bit like Robin Williams!" If that weren't bad enough, another person said, "Of course not, that's Judge Bork!"

But because of the ubiquity of the film on late night cable, my fifteen minutes of fame have stretched into fifteen years now, and over this period, I've learned that there are certain things people always want to know. So before I get into the substance of my talk, I might as well answer the number one question which is: "How much of that movie is real?" Well, you're in the military. You know that if I did half the stuff he did in that movie, I'd still be in Leavenworth instead of in Charlottesville this morning. There's a lot of Hollywood exaggeration and outright imagination in that film. I'll go through a very, very quick, abbreviated list.

Let's see, yes, I was a disc jockey in Vietnam. Let's see, anything else? Yes, I did teach English during my off-duty time; no, I did not teach my class how to swear and use New York street slang; and no, I was not teaching because I was trying to meet this particular, beautiful Vietnamese girl. At least not one particular, beautiful Vietnamese girl. None of the characters in the film are based on actual people for legal reasons like invasion of privacy and slander; they're all stereotypes. As is true of any good stereotype, though, you could name any character in the film, and I'd probably be able to think of at least a half-dozen people I knew during my four years in the Air Force who fit that stereotype.

The film was never intended to be a point-by-point accurate biography; it was intended to be a piece of entertainment. And it certainly was that. Robin was nominated for an Academy Award.

I take a lot of pride in "Good Morning, Vietnam!" because of the number of people who have told me it was the first film that began to show Americans as they really were in Vietnam rather than murderers and rapists and baby killers and dope addicts and psychotics. Of course, personally, the film has been a boon to me; it's opened a lot of doors. It also paid for law school-and you know how important that is!

It also has allowed me to use my name recognition to do things I believe in. I spent two terms as a trustee of the Virginia War Memorial and I'm still on the board, as I have been for about a dozen years now, of an organization called the Citizens Flag Alliance which is a coalition of about 120 different groups-civic, fraternal, veterans, religious, patriotic-all trying to pass a constitutional amendment to protect the American flag from being burned, spit upon, or otherwise physically desecrated.

Because of Robin Williams' portrayal of me, a lot of people are surprised to learn that I'm a life-long, card-carrying Republican; I have long worked on behalf of Republican candidates and was very active in the Bush/Cheney campaign. I was a National Vice Chairman of Veterans for Bush so, when the new administration came in, they asked if I would like to join them. We had some discussions about what I could do for the administration. One of the suggestions was working at the Prisoner of War and Missing Persons office.

My first reaction was a little lukewarm, but on the evening of 9/11, I was talking with my wife, and I said, "You know, if I were about thirty years younger, I might go back into the military." She said, "Adrian, did it ever occur to you that if you took that job that they're telling you about at the Pentagon, you might be able to make more of a contribution than you ever could in uniform." I thought about it and said, "Yes, she's right." So that's what I've been doing for the past two and a half years. I have a position description that goes for three or four pages. I've read it a dozen times, but still don't know what it says. Down at the bottom, though, it says, "other duties as assigned." So that's what I've been doing, other duties as assigned. In the past two and a half years, I've been to Hanoi, Danang, Saigon, Phnom Penh, Laos. I've been to Hawaii twice, Bangkok twice, Geneva six times, and also to Moscow, Kuwait, Baghdad, and several dozen U.S. cities, working on the issue of accounting for America's missing.

Our office is called the Defense Prisoner of War and Missing Personnel Office. Actually, that's a misnomer, because under United States law, there is no designation of "Prisoner of War." There are categories of missing. You could be "Missing," you could be "Missing Beleaguered," "Missing Besieged," "Missing Detained," "Missing Interned," "Missing in Action," and finally, "Missing Captured." If you are designated as "Missing Captured" then, by operation of international law, under the third Geneva Convention, that is called "Prisoner of War."

But that is only in...