He was one of the first Western reporters to visit North Vietnam when he travelled there for the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1960s.

Greene later produced documentary films, including One Man's China, Tibet, Cuba va!, Vietnam!

[2] The Wall Street Journal argued that Greene purposely hid negative information about the extent of starvation in China[3] and called him a "fellow traveller.

"[4] Commander R. W. Herrick of the U.S. Navy reviewed A Curtain of Ignorance in Naval War College Review, writing, "There can be no question but that [Greene] set out deliberately to 'prove' his contentions that practically everything having to do with Communist China and its policies is good, while Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist regimes are unmitigatedly bad.

Herrick agreed with Greene's observation that "... on matters where great national feelings are aroused, scholars and experts are just as likely as the rest of us to allow their judgments to be swayed by the prevailing climate of opinion."