In one famous experiment, historians asked people living under Hitler's bombing of London to keep a diary. Then the historians took the diaries away from the people who had kept them. Thirty years later, the historians asked the people to write a recollection of their experiences. The diaries, of course, reveal a life of hell under the high explosive and incendiary bombs. The memoirs recall a pleasant adventure, a time of national unity.
Memory is like that.
I suppose it was because he could. In a way, he had to. To be in a position to observe life but not to be able to speak about it is very painful. Now let me tell you what the Vietnamese authors are doing. They have been in harness for a long time, and they are kicking up the traces.