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Critical oral history is beginning to catch on. Blanton notes that Eastern Europe organizations are especially interested, where topics have included the 1968 Prague Spring, the liberal reforms in Czechoslovakia that were put down by Soviet forces; the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall; and the rise of the trade union Solidarity in Poland. Even some traditional academic conferences are beginning to include at least one critical oral history session. Blight calls this "critical oral history lite."

The method has its limitations. "Not everyone has the wherewithal to pursue something like a crazy person for five or six years until you finally get to Hanoi or Havana," says Blight. The politics can be overwhelming; the logistics daunting; the cost prohibitive. (Blight once flew to Hanoi for breakfast and lunch when a serious, but delicate, issue arose.)

Politically, timing often is crucial. A planned conference in Havana in 1996 was postponed for six years when the Cubans shot down some Cuban-Americans from Miami who entered their air space. Conversely, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and his national security advisor were thrilled to host a conference in Moscow on the missile crisis.

And there's the challenge of getting the right people to agree to attend. "That's why McNamara was crucial," says Lang. "He was willing to let us use him as 'bait.'" Without McNamara, Fidel Castro probably would not have been at the table, nor would have the Vietnam project happened.

Reminder: In Iran, Blight and Lang took a photo of a license plate with the number 55 in Farsi, which looks like two upside-down hearts. The number has become a reminder to "keep it human."

It took courage, Lang says, for McNamara to participate in the conferences as well as agree to be the subject of the 2004 Academy Award-winning documentary "The Fog of War." (Blight and Lang supported a nervous McNamara during the filming and then wrote the accompanying book and study guide.)

Not everyone is willing to participate in critical oral history. They note that Henry Kissinger, for instance, attended one conference and said, "Never again."

For the current Iran project, Blight and Lang have enlisted as "bait" Thomas Pickering, a career ambassador with wide name recognition, and Bruce Riedel, who spent 29 years on the CIA Middle East desk and most recently has focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Each project is a novel unto to itself and each person is a whole courtship," says Hershberg. "Jim and Janet do a careful job at bringing together a diverse, carefully chosen group for each project." He credits their "blithe American over-optimism" as well as their understanding that no one likes to leave the writing of history to the enemy.

There was one particularly thorny conference, a lead-up to a larger one in Havana. McNamara called a late-night meeting to pound on the table and declare he would not be going to Havana. Lang chose to use the language of statistics, which she shared with McNamara: "Let's say it's a zero probability you're going to Cuba. But maybe there's an upper confidence interval of trivial non-zero? Is it single digit?" McNamara looked at Lang and growled, "Low double digits." Everyone left the room convinced the Havana conference was off. But Lang knew they would be going. And they did.

During an 11-day trip to Tehran in 2008, Blight and Lang noticed a license plate with two upside-down hearts--Farsi for "55." They use that number now as a personal shorthand to remind themselves, as Lang says, "to keep it human and don't be surprised when things are turned upside down."

The Iran project has already been turned upside down a couple of times. First, Blight and Lang changed the focus after realizing how emotionally powerful the Iran-Iraq War continued to be in Iran, and how it was a source of much anti-U.S. feeling, specifically because of the Iranian belief, now confirmed, that the United States provided logistical support for the Iraqis' use of chemical weapons. More recently, the project suffered a setback because of deteriorating U.S.-Iran relations. "This work never happens easily, never quickly," sighs Lang. But she's smiling. ~

C.W. Wolff is a freelance writer who lives in Kittery, Maine.

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