Question

What were the "five o'clock follies

Answer 1

Five O'Clock Follies. The Five O'Clock Follies is a sobriquet for military press briefings that occurred during the Vietnam War.

Answer 2

The Five O'Clock Follies is how everybody refered to military press briefings that took place during the Vietnam War. It was described as "the longest-playing tragicomedy in Southeast Asia's theater of the absurd." These occured  in Saigon's Rex Hotel where journalists shouted at officials in order to complain about a credibility gap between official reports and the reallity.

So, the "Four O'Clock Follies was the name that press briefings received during the Gulf War.