A Bright Shining Lie

'A Bright Shining Lie' won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1989. Author Neil Sheehan, a journalist for The New York Times, had covered the Vietnam War as a reporter beginning in the early 1960s.

John Paul Vann was a United States Army lieutenant colonel who served as a military advisor in South Vietnam in the early 1960s. After retiring from the Army, he returned to Vietnam as a civilian official with the Agency for International Development (USAID), eventually becoming one of the most influential Americans in the country before his death in a helicopter crash in 1972.

Yes, HBO produced a television film adaptation of 'A Bright Shining Lie' in 1998, starring Bill Paxton as John Paul Vann. The film also featured Amy Madigan and Eric Bogosian and was directed by Terry George.

Sheehan was one of the New York Times reporters who received the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, leading to a landmark Supreme Court case on press freedom. His deep experience covering Vietnam informed the more than fifteen years of research that went into 'A Bright Shining Lie.'