John White oral history interview

The Scope and Contents note of this oral history was originally generated by feeding the electronic transcript into OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o on 2024 August 26. It was then reviewed and edited by a human.

Oral history interview with John White, Dartmouth Class of 1961, for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. White discusses his family and early life growing up in the Baltimore area and later Connecticut. He details his time at Dartmouth, where he participated in the Navy ROTC program and developed an interest in esoteric theories of parapsychology. He describes his service in the Navy, when he was stationed on the USS Pine Island and witnessed the Gulf of Tonkin incident, wherein he expresses his belief that the event was misrepresented to justify war escalation. White describes how this led him to write a letter accusing President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of misleading Congress, leading to a media storm and his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. White goes on to discuss how the fallout from his whistleblowing impacted his career, ultimately leading him to work with the Institute of Noetic Sciences and advocate for veterans. He reflects on his views on military power misuse, the peace movement, and his continued involvement with the Dartmouth alumni community.