Charles C. Rogers was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Richard Nixon in 1970. But a profile of the Vietnam War veteran was caught in an "auto removal process," the Defense Department says.

(Image credit: U.S. Army)

The pardon was one of the defining presidential moments for Jimmy Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. The move was pilloried by members of the military and conservative politicians.

Republicans' attacks on Tim Walz's military record mirror a 2004 smear campaign against John Kerry in some key ways. Here's how swift boating played out then — and what's different this time around.

(Image credit: Kerry Campaign)

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired on Kent State students, killing four and wounding nine. A former student who now teaches there reflects on that day and offers lessons for protesters now.

The U.S. dropped over 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos, including cluster bombs, in the 1960s and '70s. To this day, many people are killed, crippled and disfigured by them, writes Lewis M. Simons.

(Image credit: Jerry Redfern)

Depending on where you stand, Henry Kissinger is either a foreign policy mastermind or a war criminal. Some see him as a brilliant strategist who made tough but necessary decisions to advance American interests in a complex world; others point to his infamous order that American warplanes should "bomb anything that flies, on anything that moves" as evidence that he bears responsibility for the loss of countless civilian lives. But one thing both sides agree on is that few figures in the 20th century have had a more profound influence on how the U.S. conducts foreign policy.Kissinger grew up in an orthodox Jewish household in Germany, under the shadow of the Nazis' rise to power; he and his family fled to the U.S. when he was a teenager. Professor Jeremi Suri, author of "Henry Kissinger and the American Century," argues that Kissinger's experiences during the Holocaust have informed his approach to global politics throughout his career, as well as his relationship with democracy, war, and power. Today on the show, how Henry Kissinger shaped, and was shaped by, the 20th century.

A Vietnamese woman sued South Korea's government over a wartime massacre in her village by South Korean soldiers. A Seoul court recently ruled in her favor but the government will appeal the decision.

Unseen, they stalk their targets from thousands of feet in the air. Operators are piloting them from military bases halfway across the world. At any moment, they could launch a strike that comes without warning. The attack drone was supposed to be a symbol of the era of precision warfare — a way to wage wars with fewer casualties on both sides. It's a technology that's been honed since it was first dreamed up during World War 1. But are drones actually precise enough? Do drones desensitize us to the casualties of civilians caught between us and our enemies? In this episode, we will explore the past, present and future of drone warfare.

"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. This week on Throughline, we want to pause the news cycle to think about not just how war is experienced or consumed, but how it's remembered. A refugee from the Vietnam War, Nguyen calls himself a scholar of memory — someone who studies how we remember events of the past, both as people and as nations. As the world watches the war in Ukraine — and with the U.S. departure from Afghanistan still fresh — we speak with Nguyen about national memory, selective forgetting, and the refugee stories that might ultimately help us move forward.

(Image credit: Nik Wheeler)