Bob Timberg, what's "The Nightingale's Song"?

You live where?

Full-time job?

How many years did you work on this book?

What do you personally have in common with these five men?

Interestingly, though, I was also at the time that the so-called Watergate of the 1980s broke -- the Iran-Contra scandal -- I was the White House correspondent...

No. That's right. I'm a reporter. I'm a journalist. And it now looks like I'm an author. But this isn't my story. And you my story is of interest to...

Well, let me say this. I've asked a lot of people a lot of questions and I've never let them squirm off the hook -- so if the role is reversed, I guess...

Went in 1966 and got home in 1967.

I was there in 1960 -- '60 to '64. Interestingly, everybody in this book brackets me. In other words, John Poindexter and John McCain, with the Class...

Everybody spent a lot of time. McFarlane, Webb and John McCain spent a lot of time right from the beginning. John Poindexter wouldn't agree to speak...

Well, actually, as an old Navy man yourself, Brian, the Department of the Navy includes the Navy and the Marine Corps. And so the Naval Academy is the...

Three. Bud McFarlane, James Webb and Oliver North.

The first place I went was Quantico, Virginia, which is Marine officers' training. It's equivalent, in a way, to boot camp for enlisted men, but tougher.

Then I went to Camp Pendleton, California, for about eight months and then I was in the Marine Corps -- what you call mount-out. Essentially the Marines...

I think it was March of 1967. I think it was March.

In Vietnam in 1967, this was still a rough war and we were still -- as it was, in fact, for another five years -- we were feeling our way. We were starting...

I was the assistant operations officer for what was called the first anti-tank battalion. It was a unit that no longer exists. It was essentially a...

Oh, yeah.

Well, just about everybody was there. Even the people who were in the rear echelons in Vietnam saw something approaching combat. I mean, no place was...

I came home in February of '68.

Well, actually, you might -- I mean, I think the point we're edging to is, was I wounded over there? Yes, I was. And I came home and I had a few bad...

Now when you came back from Vietnam, were you coming back because you were wounded?

Where did you go, initially?

Yeah.

For a year?

How many operations?

When were you through with operations where you could go on with your life and you didn't have to worry about it anymore?

When you sat down to talk to these five men, the fact that you had been through all this -- did it make it harder or easier?

And, you know, people have said to me, "This must have been really hard for you to go through this again -- go back through all of this." And the fact...

There's a tale which may, in fact, be scientific truth, that a nightingale raised in isolation from other nightingales can never sing, but once exposed...

Let me read you the last line of your book. "And Oliver North, testing his wings, perfecting his songs, had become the nightingale." Those are the last...

And then I noticed like a month or so later, it said Oliver North is going to become a radio talk show host and it said he had like three stations he...

I would enjoy spending an evening with all of them and for different reasons and probably with different things on the top of the bar -- like I might...

There's the boxing story.

People went up to Webb and said, "Hey, Jimmy, you hit Ollie too hard, you might kill him." And Webb knew this was baloney. How -- I mean, no one was...

Jim Webb was a platoon leader, a rifle platoon commander and he was also a company commander. He won the Navy Cross, which is the nation's second highest...

Jim Webb today is not far from here. He's working on a -- as you know, he was Secretary of the Navy. He is now attempting to make his book -- the book...

Bud McFarlane's Vietnam experience was -- he was an artillery officer. He went in with the first wave of Marines and the first wave of American forces...

It wasn't that the war was so bad. I mean, war is just a terrible thing. But the Korean War was terrible. World War II was terrible. World War I was...

John Poindexter fits into this book for a number of reasons but also because he never went to Vietnam. And he becomes a person through which I try --...

Ollie North's Vietnam experience.

As years progressed, there became less close watching of Ollie North and I think that's what got him into trouble. Not that he was evil or sinister,...

John McCain III, the madcap midshipman, the congenital screw-up, got shot down and spent five and a half years in a Vietnam prison. And his tale in...

A lot of what I wrote is new. I probably did 400 interviews for this book -- I mean, beyond the reading of the documents. Most of this book is new....

Five and a half years, right.

Right. I did not write a story for The Baltimore Sun or anybody else for five and a half years.

Well, initially I had an advance from my publisher, Simon & Schuster, and that was going to be terrific if it took me what I -- my original plan was...

Were you being paid at this point?

What's she do?

How many kids?

You probably don't know this but this whole program, which is about six years old, started with the Neil Sheehan book, which took 16 years to write.

He wasn't wounded in combat nor was he in combat. He was a reporter but he worked for 16 years. What is it about this story that gets somebody like...

This book is a book about survivors. This is about people who said, "OK. That happened, and there are a lot of parts about it I don't like, but I'm...

There was a scene in the book where John McCain is being visited by a bunch of North Vietnamese and he just starts screaming the strongest language....

Orson Swindle of Perot fame was a prisoner of war with him?

John McCain came home to his ex-wife -- he's now remarried -- who was four inches shorter than when he left her?

Jim Webb was banned from the US Naval Academy?

And, as I say, he very seriously questioned the introduction of women into the service academies. Subsequently, he wrote a book, his second book, which...

Oh, no.

No. You know, it's funny when I first -- yes, on a computer, on a word processor.

No, I'm a slow writer. I'm a slow writer.

The thing that was hardest for me was when I started this, I said, "This book's going to start at Annapolis and I'm going to look at the early years...

I suspect that most people will not but I suspect that every man or woman that ever graduated from Annapolis or went to Annapolis knows precisely what...

Nor am I.

Changed?

You know, I do. I felt -- as I said, I had put this stuff all off to the side, and it was only as I got drawn into it with my sense that -- I had this...

I don't think -- people don't talk to me about it. Now, you mean after I've written the book?

Over the years?

What I did was, to a large extent -- I felt that sort of anger and hostility that many of my peers and comrades felt. And my sense was, I don't think...

Well, Senator McCain has read it and he -- Senator McCain is one of those who says, "Oh, yeah, great book, great book." I assume everybody has read...

Thank you, Brian.