People Remembered: Barry Zorthian

Veteran journalist and U.S. diplomat Barry Zorthian

Barry Zorthian, 90, died December 30 in a Washington, D.C. hospital of a staph infaction. Few correspondents could write his obituary better than Richard Pyle, an AP reporter in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Pyle wrote in part:

Barry Zorthian, a colorful U.S. diplomat who left his mark on American policy in Vietnam as a forthright and often combative press spokesman in the early years of the war, has died. By his own reckoning, Zorthian was the last surviving member of the original cadre of U.S. diplomats and military leaders whose policy decisions shaped events in America's longest war. Dispatched to Saigon in 1964 by then President Lyndon Johnson to defuse an increasingly acrimonious relationship between American officials and news correspondents covering the war, Zorthian used a mixture of charm, sly wit and uncommonly straight talk in trying to establish credibility for the U.S. effort. Many ex-Vietnam correspondents who dealt with him say Zorthian, more than any other government spokesman of recent memory, understood and valued the role of the press in a free society. Zorthian remained proud of his most controversial achievement - creating the daily Saigon press briefings that became known as the ``Five O'Clock Follies,'' where officials delivered battlefield summaries and answered questions from reporters.

Zorthian was born of Armenian parents in Kutahya, Turkey, in 1920. The family immigrated to the U.S. and New Haven, Conn., where Barry attended Yale University, edited The Yale Daily News and was a member of Skull and Bones. Graduating in 1941, he served as a Marine Corps artillery officer in the Pacific war and retired to the USMC Reserves as a colonel. After a postwar stint at CBS radio, Zorthian spent 13 years with the Voice of America, reporting on the Korean war and rising to program director, then did tours as a Foreign Service officer in India and Vietnam. From 1968 on, Zorthian worked in the private sector, including 12 years as president of Time Life Broadcast and Cable and then as its vice president for Government Affairs in Washington.