In my review of episode 8, I said:

Tet was like the chain reaction phase of an A-Bomb - it's all over in 30 nanoseconds; but it takes another whole second for the enormous energy released to begin to become manifest macroscopically.

That energy should have ended the war in 1968. Instead, we got Nixon, who prolonged it for another seven years. Nixon was what nuclear weapons people call "a tamper".

A neutron reflector is any material that reflects neutrons. The envelope (i.e., reflector) has an additional role: its very inertia delays the expansion of the reacting material. For this reason such an envelope is often called a tamper. The weapon tends to fly to bits as the reaction proceeds and this tends to stop the reaction, so the use of a tamper makes for a longer-lasting, more energetic, and more efficient explosion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_reflector

Nixon manipulated the Silent Majority to increase the damage done by the rightwing backlash to the truth told by the antiwar movement. He got Lieutenant Calley out of jail. He praised the hard hat counter-demonstrators. He lied about the progress of Vietnamization. He had Agnew run a fear-mongering campaign against the demonstrators. All this stoked the division in the country, "mak(ing) for a longer-lasting, more energetic, and more efficient explosion. "

It is quite clear that the entire country was now fed up with the war. However, Mr. Burns spends a lot of time on VVAW and his various ex-military protestor talking heads - implying, if not stating, they were the ones who really made a difference. He spends the balance of his time on the crazies, like the May Day Tribe. The moderate antiwar movement seems to be left out, with only talking head, Bill Zimmerman, decrying the bad tactics of the antiwar movement.

Daniel Elsberg - disappearee

The series gives full coverage to the Pentagon Papers and begins the tale of Watergate. You might think that you would want to hear from Daniel Elsberg, who is still quite alive, on this subject. But, you would be wrong. Mr. Burns parades military hero after military hero before the camera to tell of their emotional anguish and struggle. He will not let a man who is one of the major heroes of the antiwar movement, a man literally targeted by Richard Nixon personally, speak of his personal feelings.

It's all about the spin. And we can see the spin, Ken.

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UPDATE: HOUR2

The Vietnamized War

The second hour covers the major military actions of 1972, including the NVA Easter Offensive and the US bombing campaign, Operation Linebacker. By this time, US ground forces were no longer involved. Only 60,000 US troops remained. This leaves only airmen and POWs in contact with the enemy.

As a result of Vietnamization, the major powers reinforced both Vietnamese armies. Mr. Burns reports on the US buildup of the ARVN, and on North Vietnamese worries about Nixon's trip to China. He gives the impression that the NVA offensive was a gamble that did not succeed thanks to US bombing. The simplest trip to Wikipedia shows that the NVA was as well supplied as the ARVN, and that Nixon's diplomacy had actually increased the flow of weapons to North Vietnam.

The Chinese placated the suspicions of their ally, by reassuring North Vietnam that even more military and economic aid would be forthcoming in 1972. The Soviet Union, perceiving the growing antagonism between the People's Republic and North Vietnam, sought to widen the rift by also agreeing to "additional aid without reimbursement", for North Vietnam's military forces.

These agreements led to a flood of equipment and supplies necessary for a modern, conventional army.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Offensive

The Easter Offensive (1972)

While US airpower is on display, increased NVA capabilities are not mentioned:

The weather conditions made early ground support haphazard, and these difficulties were compounded by North Vietnamese anti-aircraft units, which advanced behind the front line elements. PAVN moved 85 and 100 mm radar-directed batteries south of the DMZ and, on 17 February, 81 SA-2 Guideline missiles were launched from the DMZ area, downing three F-4s. This heralded the farthest southern advance of SA-2 units thus far during the conflict. This classic high-low anti-aircraft coverage made aerial attacks extremely hazardous, especially when it was enhanced by the new shoulder-fired Grail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Offensive

Mr. Burns does not report on this, but instead gives the impression of continued complete US aerial dominance. I have yet to see a photo or video of a Russian SAM; only AA guns are shown.

Mr. Burns reports on the heavy NVA casualties, and leaves the impression that the final outcome of the Easter Offensive was a defeat for the NVA. He does not report what North Vietnam achieved with this offensive:

In return, it had gained permanent control of half of the four northernmost provinces...as well as the western fringes of the II and III Corps sectors (around 10% of the country)...by their own estimate, the PAVN had also dealt the most severe blow in the entire war, with over 200,000 ARVN casualties, one third of the South's entire armed forces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Offensive

Mr. Burns also reports on the famous "naked, napalmed girl", which was another major black eye for the US. He correctly points out that the bombing was done by a South Vietnamese pilot, although how that detracts from the fact that it was our guys who did it is unclear.

The POWs and the Peace Treaty

The POWs take up a lot of space in this hour. Their return was a major point in the peace negotiations. The negotiations were one of the most deeply nuanced situations of the entire war, and I felt that I was presented with a lot of facts, but no conclusions. For example, no comment about whether Nixon's "madman" theory of nuclear diplomacy was a good idea or not. Also, some of the negotiation story is narrated by unacknowledged war criminal, John Negroponte.

John Negroponte was sworn in as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Wednesday...As ambassador (to Honduras), he played a key role in US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring up the brutal military dictatorship of General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez in Honduras.

https://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/24/noam_chomsky_on_john_negropontes_...

Gee, Ken, I guess you didn't to mention that Negroponte was a US death squad guy, lest it detract from your constant condemnation of North Vietnamese treatment of POWs.

In pursuit of the peace treaty and the return of the POWs, Nixon launched the massive Christmas bombing campaign and the mining of the Haiphong harbor, which further damaged the US reputation in the world. However, it did lead the North Vietnamese to sign the treaty because Nixon's high level diplomacy with Russia and China left them feeling that Vietnam had become a sideshow.

That bombing campaign includes the story of Jane Fonda. It is fair for Mr. Burns to tell the well known story of Ms. Fonda, who discredited the antiwar cause with her extreme statements and actions - calling US POWs war criminals was another self-inflicted wound to the antiwar movement. In fact, to give him his due again, I don't think Mr. Burns showed the infamous picture, for which she later apologized, of Fonda standing in front of an anti-aircraft gun in a helmet. (NO. He did show it.) However, her behavior gets almost all the airtime, leaving people to ignore the massive bomb damage she walks through in favor of being outraged at her statements - and by implication all other activist visitors to North Vietnam.

At the end, we get a massive bolus of treacly shots of returning POWs, and a Forest Gump-like recitation of the joys of freedom and the pride of uniforms and millitary protocol from Dr. Kushner. Earlier, we had learned that Dr. Kushner's wife became a leading antiwar activist (with the most unbelievably ridiculous hairdoo I have ever seen outside of a Hollywood comedy). Mr. Burns did not bother to tell us how the doctor and his wife reconciled their attitudes.

The exaggerated importance of POWs does get one sharp jab. Somewhere in the episode, someone says (paraphrase) "you would have thought that the war was all about North Vietnam kidnapping 400 US airmen and our attempts to rescue them." Nevertheless, overall, the POWs are presented as complete heroes.

END UPDATE: HOUR2
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In the meantime, here are some of the topics that Mr. Burns left out:

Air America? General Vang Pao? Never heard of them.

There is one gigantic instance of CIA whitewash in this episode. The heroin epidemic among US troops is reported. However, the CIA involvement in the heroin trade is not mentioned, although it was documented at the time by Alfred McCoy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Politics_of_Heroin_in_Southeast_Asia

The CIA has spent 50 years denying the truth; and they are still at it today. Mr. Burns plays along with these drug pushers by not mentioning them. Apparently, the History Channel has done a better job with far less resources.

In Southeast Asia (SEA), during the Vietnam War, the CIA worked alongside Laotian general Vang Pao in an effort to help make Laos the world’s largest exporter of heroin. The CIA then flew drugs all over SEA, allowing the Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand, and Laos) to become the world hub for heroin.

Agents from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs managed to seize an Air America aircraft that contained large amounts of heroin, but the CIA ordered the agents to release the plane and halt any further investigations.

The CIA wasn’t just involved with the transportation of the drugs, however. The heroin was refined in a laboratory built at the CIA headquarters in Northern Laos.....After about a decade of U.S. military intervention, SEA represented 70% of the world’s opium supplier....At the same time, SEA also became the main supplier of raw materials for the U.S. heroin industry. Though the CIA’s website still denies that Air America was used to transport drugs, this is no longer a conspiracy theory.

Mainstream media has even addressed this issue, as the History Channel just came out with a new series titled America’s War on Drugs, which so far has addressed fairly accurate information regarding the war on drugs, including Air America’s role in transporting heroin (at least within the first two episodes that were released this week).

http://humansarefree.com/2017/06/the-cia-operated-drug-smuggling-airline...

The untold history of General Le May and Robert Mcnamara [NOTE]

The inter-service rivalries, which were already infamous during WW2 had only gotten worse in the nuclear era. But Mr. Burns has not one word to say about them. He also eliminated a major presence in the military debate - General Curtis LeMay. LeMay was simultaneously feared as a madman advocating preemptive nuclear war and derided as a cigar chomping buffoon, caricatured as General Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove.

There is an amazing history between General LeMay and Robert McNamara, a role reversal that was relevant to the Vietnam saga (and may even have been covered at length in documentaries about McNamara). But, its not grunt-relevant so it goes down the memory hole.

Early in his (WW2) command, LeMay came to depend on the guidance of his statistical analysis experts...he had relied in particular on a young Harvard statistician named Robert McNamara...Having begun as a capatain only two years before, McNamara was (in 1944) already a lieutenant colonel.

(ASIDE: To realize that McNamara planned the firebombing of Japan adds a whole new dimension of macabre to this rigidly controlled man.)

Also relevant was LeMay's constant agitation to use nuclear weapons against North Vietnam, and against China or Russia if they intervened. But, not one word of this fanatic's power to shape Vietnam policy, both before and after his retirement. All we get is the briefest mention that he ran as George Wallace's VP. Given his policies, it might have been worth mentioning what the Wallace/LeMay policies were, since they mean 20% of the electorate voted for nuclear anihilation.

LeMay had real power. He was to the Pentagon what J. Edgar Hoover was to the Justice Department...

When Kennedy brought Taylor out of retirement...to take over the joint chiefs, LeMay recognized the appointment as an assault on Air Force superiority. Taylor questioned the very premises of strategic air power...LeMay retaliated by challenging the idea that Taylor's reconstituted Army, built around a new Air Cavalry, should even be allowed to fly helicopters, since the air belonged to the Air Force.

the record shows that no one fought (McNamara) on a range of fronts more vigorously than his former commander. The battle between LeMay and McNamara had "monumental significance", one defense expert told me, a significance "that the country doesn't really understand." LeMay, convinced of his own notions of what American survival required, wanted nothing less than full control of the nation's capacity to wage nuclear war. McNamara defeated LeMay, preserving the Constitutional principle of civilian control, especially of the nuclear arsenal. "Whatever else he did, McNamara deserves a lot of credit for that.

In McNamara's view, the new Minuteman ICBM, just coming on line, made the new strategic bomber force redundant. (NOTE: And history has proven McNamara correct on this.)

-James Carroll, "House of War - The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of Ameridcan Power"

So, the real historical record shows that McNamara, like JFK in the Cuban Missile Crisis, actually played a large role in preventing nuclear holocaust. And, that role included dismissing nuclear options in Vietnam. This is all too deep for Mr. Burns. Not relevant to grunts. Yeah, the fear of nuclear war erupting over Vietnam and its various escalations isn't relevant to the story. The grunts didn't think about that at all.

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NOTE: I have commented on the lack of strategic focus in this series. Here is a prime example of that. I should have put this into an earlier episode; but I just re-discovered it.