James V. Kimsey Interview (page: 3 / 6) Founding Chairman, America Online	Print Interview

What was it like going back to Vietnam after all these years?

James V. Kimsey: The most striking thing to me when I went back in '92 and then in '95, was that they had eradicated every single piece of evidence that we'd ever been there. When I went to Saigon, I looked for MACV headquarters which had been pretty big. It was gone, completely. I went back to my old area; they had dispossessed the nuns in '75, when the communists came down Route 1, and the nuns ended up in a place called Quinh Yon. I went back to see what they'd done with the building that I'd built, thinking they'd made a school or a hospital out of it. And it was the Communist Party headquarters for the region. I had two of my sons with me, and one of my classmates who'd never been to Vietnam. I speak enough Vietnamese that these villagers knew when I walked in that I knew it used to be an orphanage.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. They figured I must have been there back in the days when the guys who are in charge now were on the other side of our bullets. And, so they arrested us, this was in '92, and locked us up in a room with Ho Chi Minh starring gruffly down at us and my son -- my youngest son -- said, "Well gee, Dad, what's going to happen now?" They're grown. I mean, they weren't little kids at the time, they were in college. And I said, "Well, we don't have relations with them. They could chop us up and put us in the rice paddy and nobody will ever even know we were here." And my classmate looked at me and said, "This is another fine mess you've gotten me into."

These Vietnamese were really angry with us. They charged us with trespassing and spying. This was the only place in Vietnam, north and south, country and city, where the Vietnamese weren't happy to see Americans, which was pretty curious. I think they were still scarred by the My Lai experience, and that part of the country is less sanguine about the American presence than most of the rest of the country.

I was retarded in not thinking this up right away, but after about six or eight hours it dawned on me. This was about the same as being arrested by a rural sheriff. Finally, I asked our jailer if our crime was so egregious that there'd be a fine involved. And of course, DING! they rang back, looked it up in the fine book and sure enough it was $100 for trespassing and spying, which I promptly paid and they let us get back in our little car and get out of there. It just ensured that every American that went through that little town in the near future would be arrested.

But it was an object lesson. The Vietnamese had fought against the Chinese for a thousand years, against the French for a hundred years, against the Japanese, against the Americans for twelve years or so, which was a long time for us. Subsequently, they had problems with the Cambodians and the Chinese again, so on their timeline of conflict we were just a small dot. Half the people that live in Vietnam now weren't even born during our Vietnam War.

Do you hold out much optimism for the relationship between our two countries?

James V. Kimsey: I came in second to be the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Pete Peterson, who came in first, is going to do a terrific job I think. He's a friend of mine and was an inspired choice by President Clinton. The thing I brought to the table was that I do know the Vietnamese very well and I know the American business community. I think a closer union between the two countries is in our and their best interest.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The potential for the Vietnamese people being one of our best allies in that part of the world is enormous. And, I think we're myopic not to take advantage of it. I think it's in both the Vietnamese and our best interest. Some would say less in the Vietnamese best interest because they have a very fragile and intricate social architecture that reveres their elders and has a reverence also for education. And, some think that Hollywood is now going to accomplish in Vietnam what our military failed to accomplish 30 years ago.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

I think it's very important that we take some of these steps more slowly than our quarterly profit-driven American businessmen would like to do. We need to establish good one-on-one relationships with Vietnamese who may be economically naive but are about to be provided with some of the most up-to-date technology in the world. There will be some interesting socioeconomic phenomena in that country. I think it's well worth watching.

I had an interesting conversation about the Internet with La Van Bong, who's the Vietnamese ambassador to the United States. They're trying to control the Internet and control the rate at which it proliferates and how the Vietnamese people get access and what kind of things they get access to. Mostly, they were not so concerned about revolutionary political thought that might get transmitted; they were concerned about pornography.

I had to explain to them that I started a company 15 years ago -- which is short in terms of long technological sine waves, but is fairly long in terms of the proliferation of the Internet. We understand this interactive medium better than anybody on earth, and we have been unable to stem the tide of hackers and spammers. With all the resources we've thrown at these problems, they have no hope of controlling the Internet. I think it will be a democratizing influence on the country. I think the Vietnamese have some responsibility to maintain the integrity of the fine culture they've created over the last thousand years. I think it's our responsibility to respect that culture and deal with the Vietnamese in a manner that looks out for their welfare as well as our own.

I want to turn now to that business you started 15 years ago. When you left the military, did a light bulb go off over your head that said "Internet, interactivity, high technology"?

James V. Kimsey: No. People have asked me a lot of times about why I got out of the military and went into business. I've given out a few stories about why I did that; two come to mind. When I was a company commander I had the First Company from the 82nd Airborne that went into the Dominican Republic in '65. You probably don't remember, but we did have a little incursion down there. Because I had the First Company, they would use my tent as a briefing station. After we went in and divided up the city of Santa Domingo, they would bring me all the VIPs that would come to the Dominican Republic.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. One of the people they brought to my tent who was a high level civilian who came into the tent for a briefing and went over to my cot, took the edge of my poncho liner and wiped off his shoe, because he had something on his shoe. And I started for him, to explain to him that that was rude and that was my poncho liner and I was -- a three-star general grabbed me by the arm and looked at my very sternly because he knew me well enough to know what I was going to do and by his look warned me not to do it. And, at that moment I realized that civilians got to tell the military what to do, and civilians with money got to say who those original civilians would be. And, so I decided that I should move to the head of the food chain.

Are you being slightly facetious?

James V. Kimsey: I'm being facetious, absolutely. Another story is that in my last tour in Vietnam I went and worked with Ambassador Colby in Special Operations. I spent a lot of time in Saigon and got to go around all of Vietnam and see the whole country in various capacities. One time I had been in a mission council mission with General Abrams, who was COMUS MACV then, and I was going to take him some stuff to look at.

After the meeting was over he was standing waiting for his jeep and he was despondent, looking down at his shoes and I was going to go over and give him a hug and tell him everything was going to be all right. And I stopped and said, "Here's a four-star general. And, if I work real hard and I'm very, very lucky I'll get to be one, and I feel sorry for him. So, I think maybe I might be in the wrong profession." Plus, at that time I was a major, and a major is one of the worst ranks in the army because it's mostly a staff position.

So you felt you had kind of run the course and you needed something else to do?

James V. Kimsey: The army was becoming less fun as I went higher in rank, and after eight years I decided that I should get out and be a businessman, without any clear idea what being a businessman was all about.

How did you find out what it meant?

James V. Kimsey: At the end of my second tour in Vietnam, I decided that I was going to get out of the army. I still had a few months before I got out of the service, so I took some correspondence business courses before I left Vietnam, and even after I got back. I talked to a number of people, and decided to go to work with this older fellow I knew who had a switch company. Actually, all I was looking for was a toehold somewhere in business. I remember thinking, "How hard can it be? Once I get a toehold I'll figure it out."

It would probably take way too long to explain the circuitous route I took to get where I am today, but I think the principle behind it was that business to me seemed sort of commonsensical. It didn't make any difference what business I was in. The basic philosophy underlying every business was the same. It was about getting people to understand the wisdom of your vision and about providing some kind of service or product to the clientele that would appreciate and want to pay you for it. I just had to figure out what those services and goods would be.

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