After completion of the film The Spy in the Hanoi Hilton the CIA asked Captain Gordon Peterson and David to write an article for the agency’s magazine Studies in Intelligence. The article and film resulted in CIA director John Brennan presenting the pair with the 2017 Directors Award for “outstanding contribution to the study of intelligence.” The paper can be viewed on the CIA’s website.
During the production of Wheeler on America – Vietnam, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford spoke about the 1968 TET offensive, yet after the interview he suggested we focus on a scandal that had haunted him since ’68. He detailed his contention that in October 1968 Nixon torpedoed the possibility of peace talks in Vietnam to benefit his own election prospects. Clifford contended that President Johnson believed Nixon was guilty of treason and the proof we needed would be on the White House tapes. The tapes were being released chronologically and the tapes from 1968 wouldn’t be released for years. Consequently, Clifford recorded an interview prior to his death and the production team waited to see if there was indeed a “smoking gun” on the tapes. By the time the LBJ library released the tapes, Sir Charles Wheeler, Clark Clifford and presidential advisor Bill Bundy were all dead. The BBC insisted the story which Sir Charles Wheeler and David started twenty years earlier be told. Click on the button below to listen to the BBC Channel 4 radio broadcast, or read more in the article David wrote for BBC.com.
