Poem that was composed in 1970. This was on new years day. Id like you to frame our conversation by reading it. David id be happy to. Its titled letters from plaku. If you are able save for them a place inside of you. And save up with backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go. Be not ashamed to say you love them though you may not have always. Take what they have left and what they have taught you while youre dying and keep them in their own. And in that time when men decide to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind. Michael odonnell, january 1st, 1970. Susan who was Michael Odonnell . David he was a young man who found himself in vietnam in 1970. He was a songwriter and a poet and a helicopter pilot and a hero and ultimately a casualty of the vietnam war. Susan how did you encounter his poetry . David i first read a book by harold evans. There was a section of the vietnam war in that section theres a small photograph of Michael Odonnell. And it said that young man wrote this poem, the poem i just said. And below that, shortly after writing this short poem, his helicopter was shot down and he remains missing in action. That book was published about 20 years ago. And at that time, michael was still recorded as missing in action. I was very curious about who this young man was. The poem moved my deeply. And i wanted to learn more about why he wrote it, who he was and what the story was behind the poem. And one thing led to another. And here we are. Susan 20 years of effort, so how did the book come about at this particular time . David well, initially i was struck by the poem and curious to learn more. I suppose at some level i was taken by his request that we remember people who served in vietnam including him. I began to do some investigating. Im an academic scholar. As i did, i began to meet the people in his world, his sister, his best friend. At that time i wasnt sure what i would do with this information. I didnt really have a full vision in my mind. My thought was to write an article about it. And then i put the material away as my career unfolded. About two and a half years ago, i decided i wanted to write this book because the story needs to be told that the more i reflected on michaels life and his experience and what he can teach us through his own story and his poetry, i felt like i wanted to tell that story. And a way to do that began to present itself in my mind. So i made a plan and wrote the book. Susan could you write a similar book about anyone one of the 58,000 who perished . Or is this Something Special about Michael Odonnell . David at one level he was one of 58,228 casualties of war. But at a another level he wrote poetry about it. He had a distinctive point of view about the experience he was living because he was a helicopter pilot flying in and out of the worst battles of the war. Then he had the capacity of the poet to write about that. So he recorded those experiences. And overtime he began to see as he was writing and experiencing the war that the odds were increasing. Help wasnt going to survive the he wasnt going to survive the war and he wrote about that too. So i think in many ways he was illustrative of young people who were caught up in the young war in the 1960s, but in many ways he was exceptional, i think. Susan he was born in august 13, 1945. You describe him as the quintessential post war baby. What does that david he understood that war was something that took four years that tended to that one reflected on the world war ii experience, there was a great victory, of course, great sacrifice, a great cost. But he understood something about the world he lived in as based on being really his family and his own life were informed by the second world war. There was a period of great prosperity. His parents were very well position. His life was very comfortable he wanted for nothing. He could indulge his own interests. And that was really in many way what is that period was like for most young americans. And vietnam was something on the horizon nobody saw it coming. Susan it sounds like they might have been more than middleclass. Is this family well to do . David i would say upper middleclass. His father was a professional. He was an Industrial Site and his career progressed rather he was an industrial psychologist and his career progressed rather nicely. So michael moved several times throughout his childhood to ever fancier houses. And then he went to high school in shorewood, wisconsin. He lived in a lovely house. He went to a very good high school. He in many ways he was living the American Dream at the time. Susan siblings . He had one sister, patsy who was four years older. She became the steward of his legacy after he was shot down. Susan you tell us that he had a challenge with his educational pursuits. How did he finally find himself . David well, like a lot of kids, he was obviously very bright and very curious about the world but not particularly interested in school. And he was never a distinguished student. In high school he was an athlete. He was very social he was on the Crosscountry Team and the wrestling team. He had lots of friends. But he didnt do especially well in school. And in college, he was interested in the music scene which is in the early 1960s. He arrived in college in 1963 months before john f. Kennedy was assassinated. And he was caught up in the folk music movement. He was interested in everything that went that. That. T went with but he wasnt particularly interested in school. So he was an indifferent student but a very good songwriter. He devoted time and energy to that. Susan he made an important friend through music. Would you tell me about that friend . David yes. In november of 1963 right after kennedy was assassinated or maybe december, he was writing a song about the assassination. He was already a musician. And Marcus Sullivan who was also an accomplished musician who was a sophomore saw him performing that and was very taken by michaels music because unlike all of the other kids there, he was writing and performing his own music. He wasnt writing peter, paul he wasnt just playing peter, paul and mary. Or bob dylan. So they became really good friends quickly. They both recognized within hours that theres would be an epic friendship that they would have an epic friendship and a be on. They wrote music beautifully. They harmonized beautifully. They were the best of friends in no time at all. Susan because you got to know michael through his writings and you have actually known Marcus Sullivan over the years through working on this, what did you learn about that friendship . What drew them together . David it was a love of music. I know, of course, i know Michael Odonnell i never met him. But i know him very well from the record of his other relationships and from his letters and his poems and his music. And ive been a very good friend of Marcus Sullivan for years. They have a great sense of music and a great sense of adventure. They were sympathetic characters. They discovered these same joys in life. Theres nothing like the best friends that you meet in college at this moment in your life when everythings in front of you. Theres enormous possibility and potential. They saw that in one another. And they loved each other very deeply. Michael was in many ways the more outgoing one. He was extraordinarily charismatic. He could be prankster or troublemaker. He never ever was accused of anything that stuck. He was just a lovable kid. And marcus saw that in him and liked. That and they were just i think young people at a very happy time in their lives. Susan would you have been a friend of michael . David i probably would have liked him. Im not a musical guy so i wouldnt have made the team. I gotten to know him well as i i would have i have gotten to know him well as i say through my own research of he was something quite wonderful in my character and it comes through in these ways through the record of his letters and his poems and his songs, especially the people that loved him whom ive come to know very well. He was a very special person and well worth the earth into the effort i put into getting to know him. Susan in addition to telling Michael Odonnells story, you trace the history of u. S. Involvement in vietnam. I want to go through some of that. Before we do who did you write , this book for . David its a wonderful question. I wrote the book for people who would be interested in the Human Interest in story about a compelling american kid who got caught up in one of the great tragedies in american history. I wanted to write a book that would engage people in all aspects of that story that is to say that the period of the 1960s, i dont see this book as a war story. I dont really see it as a book about poetry. But its a Human Interest story about what happened to Michael Odonnell and therefore to all of us in the 1960s. So the reader is you. Its my mother. Its my friends. Its people who care about the american story. Susan the vietnam story begins in the 1950s with harry truman. If you wouldnt mind i would like you to walk our audience through each of the vietnam era president s involvement with that conflict. So what was trumans approach to it . David so harry truman was confronted like all of his successors with the problem of expansion of communism. There was in the 1990s, the in the the very 1950s real belief that communism was the great toxic influence in world. And that it must be contained the way a virus is contained. His great concerns were Eastern Europe out of the soviet unit. Soviet union and in asia. And the advance throughout indo china that region where communism could expand through china. And the strategy that he developed was called containment. The idea there was not to confront an active war but to go actively creating lives and everything that goes with war. But to try to continue the advance of this, this really toxic political development, that was seen to be a threat to american democracy. So containment was his tragedy. So containment was the strategy. His goal was to do as little as he had to without distracting American Resources or the military. And he passed that on to Dwight Eisenhower. People talk about the domino series. The domino theory. Was it is same as containment . It was understood that if one nation falls, then the next one will fall. And after a while, this virus will take over the world. What no one really saw coming was that ultimately communism was not a sustainable phenomenon. It was not a Political Movement that was capable of sustaining itself. People didnt know that. It was a very real threat for harry truman and his administration. They took on the same sort of Dwight Eisenhower when he was elected took on the same sort of challenges that truman did. He, of course, had the successful led world war ii strategy. How did he fulfill it . Well, i think his political point of view wasnt radically different from trumans particularly with communism and southeast asia. So his view was to advance communism in much the same way. No one wanted to commit high levels of the American Military resources or funding or lives. That wasnt the goal. The goal was to do what we have to do to contain this problem while we focus on other greater issues. Everyone was more interested in the 1950s, in Eastern Europe than they were in southeast asia. The theory was that these countries would fall one by one and all of ashay dominated the all of asia dominated the communism movement. They were hope to minimize the damage and carry on with other initiatives. Susan you recount in 1954, the french defeat changed everything. Why did that change the policy so much . Well, the vietnamese rather the french had been vietnam for a very long time. And in 1954, it was the first evidence that that movement wasnt work r working. And the french had incompletely defeated. So someone had to step in to address what was still seen as a very real risk of the advance of communism vietnam. In vietnam. And if the french were not to be there, then somebody had to. And the americans took that responsibility directly because that was that. Sense of american exceptionalism in the our job was to preserve 1950s. The world for democracy. So eisenhower did have to commit it. Susan during those first two president s involved in policy, our commitment was in the form of military advisors. Who were they advising . David they were advising the South Vietnamese army. After the division of vietnam from north and south and the south seemed to be allied with the Democratic Values and the job was to advise out the series unanimous army and what strategy would help to contain the advancement of the north vietnamese and the north korean, vietnamcong all under the direction of ho chi minh. That was the goal. Susan the number of advisors grew from 900 to 16,000 . Yes. Susan what was the policy to drove that big exchanges . Big expansion . I think for kennedy this was reluctant acquiescence in vietnam. Kennedy did not take an active policy of bringing troops to vietnam or trying to escalate the war there but rather to contain it as well. But they had to send more american troops to advise larger number of vietnamese soldiers in order contain a Successful Mission in the north vietnamese. So he was a very cautious military leader. Following the bay of pigs. And he i think its clear from the record that he reluctantly made decisions to increase advisories in vietnam but never wants to engage in war there. But its true. By the time his administration , by the time he had been killed, the number would have increased exponentially. Susan do we have any inkling where he would have went . There is no obvious record, just the testimony of those who worked for him. My own view from having read all of the material i did in preparation for this book was that kennedy would absolutely not have allowed himself to escalate the war in anything the like the way Lyndon Johnson did. Because as i said he was a cautious leader. As i say in the book he was first and foremost poll a politician so he was very attentive to public interest. He was concerned about the longterm consequences. I think he was traumatized by the bay of pigs. Quite impulsively. As soon as he became president taking the word of his advisors perhaps more to that than he should have. I think he would have navigated vietnam much more carefully that said, it isnt obvious with the information they had at the time communism was seen as a very real problem in the world. And it may be its much easier 30 years late tore to reflect on the fact that communism wasnt a sustainable phenomenon. But back then it was seen as one. I think i would not have done what happened. He also would havent gotten us out of the war either. The world would have been a different place. Susan . By november 1963, how aware was the public in general about the war in vietnam . It was increasingly in the news. But it was not a major story. I think as you observe there were 16,000 american troops in vietnam at the time he was assassinated which is a small number compared to deployment any time. So i dont think it wasnt a major story. It was something increasingly looming on the horizon. But a year later, it was a very big story. Susan our first story was air first a to add to the conversation is of Lyndon Johnson, august 4, 1964. Was the gulf of tonkin resolution. Lets watch how l. B. J. Approached the vietnam war. [video clip] renewed hostile actions against the United States ships on the high seas and the government of tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action and reply. This new act of aggression aimed directly at our own forces, again brings home to all of us in the United States the importance of the struggle for peace in southeast asia. Susan what do we need to know about the gulf of tonkin . It remains unclear to what actually happened to american servicemen that precipitated to the gulf. Whether they were attacked in the way the president described as an open question. There was deceit involved in what they told the president about as far as the gulf of tonkin resolution. Congress took very seriously the claim that the president made that he needed to have the authority and the act quickly in defense of the american interest. So senator fulbright was the floor leader who helped to bring this resolution to a successful conclusion giving the president Carte Blanche to wage war. And no one anticipated in the senate that he would take that the president would take that authority as far as he did. I think the great lesson one has to learn was a that the balance of power function in a way to protect america interest even in war. If given too quickly and too powerfully, the president would have abused throws powers. Susan do we know now president johnsons motivation . David i explore these questions in the book. Theres a great industry on reflections on what exactly the president was trying to accomplish. My own view on this was that johnson was first of all, he was the new President Trump into his own explanation. He was on the one hand intimidated by the very high powered intellectually advisors gifted advisors who were then Lyndon Johnson advisors. He wanted to appear decisive and strong but the real ambition was throughout his presidency. It was his domestic agenda. He was not a Foreign Policy president. He wanted to change in the way Franklin Roosevelt did in the new deal. That was his greatest commitment. Was looking for expedient action to address this irritating situation in South Vietnam that you could just make , it go away by le