BROWNE, Malcolm Wilde

(b. 17 April 1931 in New York City), Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who made his mark in the 1960s by covering South America and Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam.

Browne is the son of Douglas Granzow Browne, an architect, and Dorothy Rutledge Wilde, a Quaker pacifist, and grew up in Greenwich Village in New York City. Browne attended Swarthmore College from 1948 to 1950 and New York University from 1950 to 1951. He was a laboratory chemist for five years before stumbling into journalism when, as an enlisted GI in postwar Korea, he walked into an army press-relations office that sought someone who could write and type. From 1956 to 1958 he worked in Korea as a U.S. Army correspondent for the Pacific Stars and Stripes. Disliking the olive drab uniform he had to wear, Browne bought all the red socks on sale at the 8th Army post exchange in Korea. He has worn red socks ever since.

After completing his enlistment in Korea, Browne returned to New York, where he became the editor of theMiddletown Daily Record (1958–1960). He then became an Associated Press (AP) reporter, first in Baltimore and then as Vietnam correspondent from 1961 to 1965. He continued to report on Vietnam from 1965 to 1966 for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and then as a freelance writer from 1966 to 1968. Browne was one of the first reporters in the early 1960s, along with David Halberstam of the New York Times and Neil Sheehan and Peter Arnett of United Press International (UPI), to question U.S. involvement in Vietnam under the administration of President John F. Kennedy. Browne was one of the first American journalists to settle in Saigon when U.S. involvement in Vietnam was at an "advisory" level. And as AP bureau chief, Browne saw firsthand the corrupt South Vietnamese government, which consisted of President Ngo Dinh Diem, his brother, and his brother's wife Madame Nhu, who was known as the "Dragon Lady."

In 1961 while at Bien Hoa, the headquarters of the South Vietnamese Air Force, Browne reported that U.S. Air Force pilots were serving in other than an advisory capacity. He photographed U.S. pilots being used for combat duty, an activity the Kennedy administration denied was taking place. In his memoir Muddy Boots and Red Socks: A Reporter's Life (1993), Browne recounts glancing "into the cockpits of some taxiing T-28 two-seat fighter planes—and [seeing] Caucasians behind the controls. Here, then, was visual proof. They were actively fighting, not just advising." However, Browne was unable to photograph this particular incident, as U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers had confiscated his camera.

Two years later Browne photographed the suicide by burning of a Buddhist monk in protest of the corrupt government of South Vietnam. This photo won Browne the World Press Photo Contest in 1963, and China used the photo as propaganda against U.S. involvement in the region. The publicity surrounding the photo was also a factor in ending the Kennedy administration's support of Diem's government.

In 1964 Browne's dispatches from Vietnam won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. His stories on Vietnam were hidden in old newspapers and smuggled out by travelers who were leaving the region. Much of Browne's reporting on Vietnam can be found in Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959–1969 (part one, 1998).

During the final years of the 1960s, Browne reported for the New York Times from Buenos Aires, Argentina; his reports covered topics such as the newly elected Marxist government of Chile. Other stories included those on Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Fidel Castro of Cuba, and South American guerrilla groups. Browne also wrote about Latin America being a haven to war criminals from World War II, and included reports on the government-sanctioned attacks on Argentina's Jewish communities. Browne's stint in South America was the longest assignment of his reporting career.

Browne's ease with languages, including French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and Vietnamese, helped in his reporting of foreign affairs. He won many awards in the 1960s for his news coverage of Southeast Asia and Latin America. As well as the Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo Award, in 1964 he won the Overseas Press Club Award, the Sigma Delta Chi Award, and the Associated Press Managing Editors Award. In 1966 he received the Edward R. Murrow Memorial Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the first half of the 1970s Browne covered other hot spots for the New York Times. He was correspondent for the Pakistan-Iran-Afghanistan region from 1971 to 1972, and correspondent for Indochina from 1972 to 1973. Then he became correspondent in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He returned to Saigon in 1975 as bureau chief for the Times. Browne was one of the last American journalists to leave Saigon as it fell to North Vietnam, and reported on Saigon's frantic last days as South Vietnamese were trying to evacuate the city.

Browne returned to the United States in 1977 and became a science correspondent for the Times. In 1981 he left the paper to work as senior editor for Discover Magazine, before returning to the Times in 1985 as a science writer until his retirement in 2000. He had one last stint as foreign correspondent when he covered the Persian Gulf War in 1991 for the New York Times. From 1995 to 1996 Browne served as McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton University, in New Jersey.

Browne married his third wife, Huynh thi Le Lieu, on 18 July 1966. He has two children, one each from his previous two marriages. In addition to his autobiography, Browne published The New Face of War in 1965. His work on Vietnam can be found in Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1969–1975 (part two, 1998).

Browne's autobiography is Muddy Boots and Red Socks: A Reporter's Life (1993). Articles about Browne and his career include Scott Sherman, "David Halberstam, Malcolm Browne: Seeing the War," Columbia Journalism Review 40, no. 4 (Nov./ Dec. 2001): 56.

Margalit Susser