Patrick odonnell is a military historian a military strenuous written a previous but, beyond valor, operative spies and saboteurs, the printer assignment, day care return to missouri wines selected for the mind, not professional reading list. Give me tomorrow and dog company. His most recent is the first first seals. The numerous words are the way nick obey award in the oss sean baller word. Has also provided consultation with band of brothers and for documentaries produced by bbc, the History Channel and fox news. He served as a combat historian and a mean by full platoon during the battle of falluja and is in demand as an expert speaker on world war ii sabotage from the special operations and counterinsurgency on the battlefield. Over the past 20 years, odonnell has interviewed more than 4000 now 5000 veterans wanted americas worst world war i to afghanistan and specializes in unearthing and told stories that read like novels. Please welcome patrick k. Odonnell. [applause] well, its
Over the past 20 years he has interviewed 4,000, 5,000 veterans as part of americas wars from world war i afghanistan specializing in Untold Stories that read like novels. Please welcome patrick odonnell. [applause] it is really a pleasure and honor to be here. The beginning of my book tour, just came out this week. As jim said i have interviewed 5,000 world war ii veteran, spent an entire lifetime studying world war ii and the stories i will tell you tonight or today is an untold story. Most interesting story i have never come across in all the years i have been on this earth. The story begins right here in washington d. C. Only a few blocks away, is november 17th, 1942, and it is newly built, only been there since 1933 and is host for president s and galas and Everything Else but that night in 1942 the doors of the pool were barred by armed guards and tested something that was unique. This was the precursor of scuba and the beginning of the navy seals begins in that pool only a few b
Count down 100 days to the winter Olympic Games today, tuesday, october 29th, 2013. Captions paid for by Nbcuniversal Television this is today with matt lauer and Savannah Guthrie. Live from studio 1a in rockefeller plaza. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to today on a Tuesday Morning. Im Savannah Guthrie. Im matt lauer. Along side al, im thinking back to a year ago today, and you were talking about those competing european models and the United States model. The european model won out, and people up and down the east coast lost. Thats right. We were talking about it almost a week ahead of time, and the worst happened. Of course, it could have been a lot worse. Were going to look at the lessons that have been learned in one year. Guys. All right, al. Thank you very much. Meantime, we want to turn to todays top story. The renewed uproar over the nsas spying program, but the man in charge has his feet held to the fire later today. Nbcs chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell i
The direction alone doesnt tell us much about what his objective is here but poncho pass does tell us something. This is the view that pike would have from his Christmas Day camp and for several days before and after. Poncho pass is a low spot in the mountains a little bit to the southwest of the city of saliva and if pike looked south he would have found it very inviting place to cross the mountains. His mission is to get to santa fe. This is as good a place as any to try and do it. If he stands in the same spot and looks to the left he is going to see the high peaks of the northern end of the Crystal Mountains and he will realize if i want to cross its never going to get any better than this so he doesnt. He continues downstream which is exactly the behavior somebody who believed he was on the red river and intending to head home. Decides to cross this andres there would be two men behind on the arkansas. The horses are shot in the plan is to leave a couple of men behind but the hors
Risking their lives instead of staying at home on the ohio river and risking their lives a little bit less. So pike makes the same request of congress. He forged letters from jefferson and dearborn and secretary of state James Madison and things like that in congress, the committee reviewing the request votes in favor of granting him this but by this point the expedition is inextricable from the politics dividing congress over jefferson and burr and wilkinson in general and Congress Never votes. My guess, there is no record of why they dont vote. No one made the decision not to vote but the last evidence we have in the congressional record as of the Committee Voting to bring it to a vote on the floor and then it just disappears until the 1840s when we have a comments by his widow clara who is requesting that the reward be paid to her. By this point she is destitute. Then she dies before they do anything. My guess about whats going on is twofold. One is burr is acquitted and he has a lo