Riding the Tiger = The Vietnam War - episode 2 : by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

The Vietnam War
Episode 2 - Riding the tiger

Apropos 1961-1963 they opened with So What, from the Miles Davis classic album Kind of Blue.

Burns and Novick draw substantially on Neil Sheehan. He was a `gung ho' reporter, like David Halberstam, hopping on helicopters in the pre-embedding news control days. There was, at first, no critical distance. They were on the team.

Sheehan was one of that now almost extinct breed - the Ivy Leaguer who headed to the officer corps. (Though Yale restored Navy and Air Force ROTC in 2012).
David Halberstam and Daniel Ellsberg were of the same cohort. In 1971 Sheehan
obtained what became known as the Pentagon Papers which brought the Times a Pulitzer Prize.

Sheehan's principal book is the best take on the war, i/m/h/o: A Bright Shining Lie = John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. It views the war though the vision of Vann, a brilliant and fearless soldier who, though tragically wedded to victory in Vietnam, saw the seeds of defeat where the body counters saw victory.

Daniel Ellsberg, in a post-Tet letter to Vann wrote about the NLF losses "My own attitude about such matters now is that the VC are right to bet that the GVN and U.S. will fail to exploit ​any such `opportunities' and fanaics like you, me (before) and our friends were always wrong to imagine otherwise."
Episode 2 -
- George Conk