A celebrated journalist finds himself reporting on the savage war in Vietnam while in combat with his own network.

In September 1969, Michael Maclear, the first Western television journalist allowed inside North Vietnam, was in Hanoi for major Canadian and U.S. networks. He recounted in gripping detail how an entire population had been trained for generations in guerrilla combat. His reporting that the North was motivated more by nationalism than Marxism was highly controversial.

Later Maclear was taken blindfolded to a Hanoi prison for captive U.S. pilots, some of whom...