Book 4, "Taking on the System" Summary

Vann was angry that he was being forced to lose this war. He decided that he would do all he could to make sure Harkins did something about the apathy of his Vietnamese counterparts, or he would go above Harkins to Washington. Vann was friendly with the few reporters who were in Vietnam at the time. He had often used them to inflate Cao's ego. Now he intended to use them for his own purposes. The writer, Neal Sheehan, and fellow reporters flew to Ap Bac to take a look at the battlefield. They helped to move the piles of corpses from the dikes into the M-113s, appalled that the surviving soldiers from the M-113s refused to help.

While Sheehan and Turner, another reporter, were in Ap Bac, American Brigadier General...